The God Who Heals

FBC Hull 9-21-03 a.m. service

The God Who Heals

Luke 5:17-25

Primary Purpose: God desires to heal us in all areas of our lives, especially of

sin sickness

Broken--the man in our passage today was broken. A man who was

paralyzed and laid on a mat all day long. The Pharisees and Sadducees

would have said of him that he brought the trouble on himself. They would

have taught him that his sin was the cause of this problem. He had done

something to offend Almighty God and God was unhappy with him. It didn’t

matter that the man might not be able to think of any sin or guilt that he knew

of. That is the way they looked at sickness.

So when the man hears about Jesus and his miracles, he believes that if

he can only get to Jesus then he can be healed. He goes to Jesus and find out

that Jesus can do even more than he expected. (Read Scripture)

Here we have a familiar story of men bringing a paralytic to Jesus.

This is one of the few times we see Jesus teaching inside. It was very

crowded and they couldn’t get through the crowd, so they go up to the

rooftop, which sometimes was open as a patio. Their expectations and faith

all rest on Jesus. They are determined to get to Jesus any way possible.

They don’t wait for Him to come outside. They dig through the tiled roof and

lower the man on a mat before Jesus. They demonstrate great faith in Jesus.

Jesus watches and waits till they have completed their task. He could

have stopped them, but then we wouldn’t have the testimony of their faith. It

is this faith that Jesus honors. He openly forgives the man of his first

concern-- his sins. He is claiming a authority that belongs to only God.

It’s good to know that God desires to cleanse us and heal us of sin. In

Isaiah 1:18 the Lord says to Israel.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins

are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as

crimson, they shall be like wool.”

God desires to cleanse us all of our sins. I can’t do that by myself.

Only God can forgive sins. But Ps 32:1-2 says

“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are

covered. Blessed is the man whose sins the Lord does not count against

him.” Notice it doesn’t say that blessed is the man who doesn’t sin. There is

no such animal. The Bible says that we all fall short of the glory of God. The

issue isn’t whether or not you sin. The issue is whether or not your going to

the right source to be cleansed.

We are cleansed by something that Jesus called repentance. That

means a turning from sins. A change in the direction of our lives. I heard

about a man who saw his dog walking across his lawn with his neighbors

dead cat in his mouth. The man was horrified to see that the dog had killed

the cat. He was determined to try and not allow his neighbor know about it.

So, he took the cat from the dog and proceeded to wash the cat and clean it,

brush it’s fur etc. That night he sneaks over to the neighbors house and

places the cat on the back porch. Then sneaks back home feeling good that

he won’t be discovered. The next morning, he is going to his car for work

when he sees his neighbor visibly shaken. “What’s wrong” he says. The

neighbor replies, “It is the strangest thing I ever seen. Fluffy got hit by a car

yesterday. We had a funeral service for it in the backyard. But, then we got

up this morning to find the hole empty and the cat clean and on the back

porch.”

The man tried to clean the cat outwardly, but he couldn’t change the

fact that the cat was dead. A lot of people try to do the same thing with God.

They try to change their outward appearance. They may give up a few sins or

stop doing some things. They feel better about themselves and maybe even

feel that God is pleased to. But, God doesn’t desire to just change us on the

outside. Scripture calls us dead in our transgressions and sins. Jesus doesn’t

tell us to be changed on the outside first. This was the problem of the

Pharisees. Jesus told the Pharisees in Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you,

teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed

tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but ont he inside are full of dead