Focussing on Jesus No.2 Jesus and Forgiveness

Breaking the Chains by Godfrey Rust My first escape bid came at the age of nought. Nine months in mummy's tummy, no more room in the womb, so with the help of nothing but two midwives, one anxious father and the best technology the NHS had to offer, I've always been a gambler. I made my dash for freedom, lowering myself carefully on the umbilical cord ready for the big push.

I got caught. They threw me in the crib for six months solitary confinement, then two years in the cotton playpen with nappies off for good behaviour. With native cunning I survived play school and nursery, but from then on it was just one institution after another, until at 18 I came out from behind bars and began leaning on them instead.

It soon became clear that my family was keeping me under house arrest. My children were born in captivity and then one day with a shock I found I had been taken hostage. I was held alone in a small room for seven to eight hours at a stretch with a minimum of comfort, a bare desk, a swivelled chair, a secretary, two telephones, an American Express card and five weeks holiday a year.

At weekends I got parole. I began to look everywhere for some hope of freedom. I combed the Sunday papers and collapsed exhausted under the weight of the supplements.

I bought a microwave, a dishwasher and many labour saving devices, but they just left me in a vacuum. I asked my bank manager who said he could find no interest in anything free. I reached for it in a love affair with no strings and still got tangled up when I pulled the other one.

Looking deep into my personal computer I typed escape and it replied unspecified command or file name. I searched for it on a desert island with only eight gramophone records and Sue Lawley for company, but I got fed up being asked questions so I got away on a raft of unused bibles left by previous castaways. I opened negotiations with the devil who couldn't promise freedom as such but offered some very interesting terms.

By now I had worked out where everyone else had gone wrong in the past. They had made the mistake of dying so I trained my body and mind not to be a slave to anything. I nearly made it if I could just have controlled a few small details like my temper and my need to eat and drink and my annoying habit of falling unconscious for eight hours every day.

I'm sure I would have found freedom. Finally I set out to look for it on the open road in my XR3i GT soft top cabriolet 0-60 in 4.5 seconds but I got stuck in traffic in the Wandsworth one-way system so I dialed it up on my car phone and I got its answering machine. I'm sorry freedom is not available at the moment, please leave a message after the atonement.

I had run out of ideas. Turning on my radio I realised I was not alone. Whole countries were trying to get out.

Eastern Europe had made a break for it, leaving the iron curtain on the latch and just a few short-range missiles for cover. The USA had built a space shuttle but it only took six people at a time and anyway it kept coming back. The Soviet Union in desperation attempted to declare independence from itself while Britain just tried to tunnel its way out.

Nobody made it. It was easy to be wise after the event with all that pent-up anger, banged up in the world day after day, slopping out into the seas and oceans, living three or four to a house in intolerable conditions with nothing to do all day but live and die. It just had to explode.

They rioted in the squares, they lit fires in the rainforests, they made holes in the roof. It was as if they'd found out that the prison was inside them and they were held by chains of pride and fear and death. They were guilty but were hoping that there might be some helpful miscarriage of justice and when they were looking for a fresh alibi God came innocently by disguised as a man saying if the sun shall make you free you shall be free and they said indeed we don't like your kind coming in here.

You're not a normal offender, you interfere with people. Take that they said handing him a crown and that they said look we've had a little whip round for you and they said anything you say will be taken down and used against you and God said nothing and it was taken down and used against him and here they said is something we really cross about. It's our little way of saying we blame our parents, we blame society, we blame somebody else, we blame you.

Here is your fixed penalty fixed to this wooden beam but they didn't know that each nail they hammered through his wrists and ankles broke a link of the chain that bound them and when he said it is finished and they shut him up under maximum security tightly wrapped behind a stone, behind a seal, behind a guard and dead just to be on the safe side after a little while they heard him say here I am I've found the way out and come back for you. All charges against you have been dropped you are free to go and follow me or else stay here in the prison of yourself if you're afraid of what it might be like on the outside. The chains are broken look it's you who's holding them together.

The reading tonight is taken from Mark's Gospel chapter 2. Mark's Gospel chapter 2. A few days later when Jesus again entered Capernaum the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left not even outside the door and he preached the word to them. Some men came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four of them.

Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and after digging through it lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic son your sins are forgiven. Now some of the teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming.

Who can forgive sins but God alone? Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts and he said to them why are you thinking these things? Which is easier to say to the paralytic your sins are forgiven or to say get up take your mat and walk but that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralytic I tell you get up take your mat and go home. He got up took his mat and walked out in full view of them all.

This amazed everyone and they praise God saying we've never seen anything like this. May the Lord bless us the reading of his word. Well turn will you to that passage that Brian read earlier.

It's from Mark's gospel in chapter two. Mark is a fast-moving gospel that's why you often find in the authorized version I'm not too sure of the translation in the NIV I get it as the evening proceeds very often descriptive of Jesus's diary is straight away. Straight away he does this straight away he does something else he wasn't exactly a file a fax man but he got it all worked out and although he was a very busy man he had time to spend hours days in the company of his father as well as give occasion for the disciples to talk to him and also to engage in his public ministry and last time we were focusing in on Jesus and his teaching about creation the animal world now we're picking out from the second chapter of Mark's gospel our Lord's astonishing claim to be able to forgive sins.

Just close your eyes for a moment think again of the worst thing that you ever did and bring again to your forefront of your mind the thought Christianity is the religion of the forgiven and God can wipe out anything that you did press the delete button and pronounce you whole made righteous through Christ Jesus the blood of Jesus Christ God's son cleanses penitent sinners from all sin. Well let's go back to chapter two of Mark's gospel. Wonder how your day started off I had a terrible start I mean it was my car mind you it was my stupid fault for leaving the ignition on overnight that didn't exactly help and I was I was up quite early around around five o'clock and I'd got by the time nine o'clock came I got everything smoothly sorted out for our service this morning in terms of just putting the bits and pieces together and I was congratulating myself on my orderly presentation or at least as it would be for for the bits and pieces of our family service which I which I love so much and then when I got in my car about 10 minutes to 10 the Johnny thing wouldn't go and I thought I'll use Rowena's little mini and then I thought no she's on standby because one of our relatives by marriage is extremely sick in London and she may have to get down to the station and go up so I can't use that I use my bike so I transfer my bible and bits and pieces to my bike and set off within 50 feet the chains come off the bike and I hate getting my hands all messy because you got this spotlight here it reveals everything about you doesn't it so I managed to gingerly get the thing on and then get moving again and then the pannier fell off so then I had to pick everything else up and then when I got to the tab a number of things were wrong we my good friend Joyce who'd put these lovely flowers together these flowers weren't where they should be and I was I was just so much in the tears and I'm thinking gosh somebody is sort of in a calculated way trying to stop me from getting the sort of peace that I really need to be able to to conduct this this service and and then I thought of a of an occasion not that long ago in Maybridge when we were still responsible for the week-by-week ministry there and somebody came into the into the service a little late it was a mother with two children and I don't think she was over familiar with the style of service and just when I started to preach I'd been praying that the kids would go out but they didn't and and would you believe it she gave them a bag of crisps each now I can't prove this but I came to the conclusion that both of those prams also got microphones attached and they were linked to quadraphonic speakers and that Smith has sort of overdone it in terms of a bumper pack and it seemed to me that for for the whole of my address all I got was crunch crunch crackle and you know there is a limit to what you can cope with when you're preaching on the on the patience of Job and you feel justified to also have a rash of boils as as he did because of the the pressures.

I wonder if our Lord ever felt the same way in terms of well Sabbath or Sunday in our terminology when when he went along to the synagogue or to the church you see when he when he kicked off his ministry in in Galilee he he really did have a fairly rough ride I mean he pitches into the synagogue in Capernaum and his preaching debut there which you read of in the in the first chapter is punctuated by somebody going virtually the whole of his time that he's preaching you may not get that translation in Mark's gospel but if you check Mark with the parallel in Luke you will discover that he was disturbed for the whole time that he was ministering a demonized man who was going ooh and then eventually articulating his comments about about Jesus and so I guess that our Lord in some sense although he's the master of every situation was was glad to get a little bit of peace and quiet and his disciples who'd only just been called to follow him must have wondered what on earth they'd landed themselves in for. I mean they had been fishermen and that had been a fairly tranquil life compared with the one that was opening up in following Jesus. So our Lord goes back into the wilderness where he often got his refreshment and time of relaxation and he comes back to Capernaum and he gives the synagogue a miss and he finds himself in somebody's home and this home becomes quite crowded because wherever Jesus was people would come and this place is packed and it seems as though there are some men who want to get in to listen to what the Lord has to say and because of the crowd they can't manage it.

Now admittedly our Lord is an unusual man he's not just the son of man he is the son of God but I guess even the patience of the son of God must have been stretched when in the middle of his address at least he'd been talking for some while some flakes of wood started to drop from the ceiling of the house and then gradually daylight could be seen in the roof. What had happened was that these four men who were so keen to bring one of their friends who was sick to Jesus had seen that they couldn't in any way make it in the house so they'd shinned up the equivalent to the drainpipe haul this paralyzed man onto the flat roof ripped open the roof and started to drop him down in the middle of the crowd. Now many of you have read this so often that you've probably forgotten or can't even get the freshness of that occasion.

Can you imagine what it must have been like? I mean my bag of bumper crisps and the problems at Maybridge really just fade into insignificance and even the difficulty of my car not starting and the chain coming off my bicycle and even Jesus had to stop when this happened. These four men were so persuaded that only Jesus could help their sick colleague that they went to the extreme of ripping open the roof of somebody some householder in Capernaum and gingerly presumably letting their friend down into the middle of the gathering. Well what does Jesus do? He has to start preaching.

I mean even the beloved Lord has at times to recognize that there are some situations where you have to do a rethink and our Lord when he sees what is happening he sizes up the situation and he not only perceives that the man who has been dropped literally in front of him is in need he identifies the faith of these fellows who've gone to such extremes to ensure that their friend has an audience with Jesus and he says because of their faith having spotted their faith he speaks to the paralyzed man and he says an inappropriate word, son your sins are forgiven. Inappropriate because that's not really what they wanted. I mean the man it wasn't so much his internal spiritual condition that was at the forefront of their minds when they intruded upon Jesus it was the fact that his legs wouldn't walk he was paralyzed and Jesus speaks to his spiritual condition before he makes any move in regard to a physical dilemma.

What is your greatest need? It is to have an encounter with Jesus. Your greatest need is not an improvement of your eyesight or the curing of your hearing if that happens to be defective. Your greatest need is not the introduction to a partner if you're single and you wish to be married nor is it to gain a job if you're unemployed.

Your greatest need is an encounter with the Lord Jesus and for him to perceive what is really wrong in your life. Oh the gift that thou wouldst gie us to see ourself as others see us. You remember the words that come from north of the border? Oh the gift that thou wouldst gie us to see ourself as thou dost see us.

This man paralyzed in limbs also represent a man who's paralyzed in his soul. Now our Lord Jesus will never in a disarming fashion put on one side the problems of physical disability but he is more concerned to deal with the problems of the inner sickness the inner paralysis and this is what you find him engaged in doing. And very often in the Old Testament you discover that the healing of the body and the curing or the pardoning of sin are linked together and both result from the gracious activity of the Lord.

For example in Psalm 41 the psalmist says the Lord speaking of a sick person will sustain him on his sickbed and restore him from his bed of illness. I said oh Lord have mercy on me heal me for I have sinned against you. Juxtaposition very often in the Old Testament is the need of the body and the need of the soul.

Who heals all thy diseases who cleanses all your iniquities once again the conjoining of both. But the most important thing in the Old Testament and in the New Testament teaching in the poetry of the psalmist and in the declared word of Jesus is that a man might know that inner healing. Why? Because when the physically blind go to heaven they will then have sight throughout eternity.

Their impediment is just for a while. But the non-forgiven blind man is in great difficulty. That's why I was pressing the question to Brian, do the physically blind need to hear the message of salvation? And the answer is yes because the physically blind can be doubly blind, blind in their eyesight and blind in the eyes of their understanding.

And the concerns of our Lord Jesus for this man who was not blind but was paralyzed was not just that he might be able to walk but rather that he might know freedom in his inner spirit that freedom which was mentioned in the poem that Becky brought to our attention. So here is Jesus and he deals with this man in this most extraordinary fashion. The man has got into the company of Jesus and in an equally extraordinary fashion Jesus diagnoses his condition and addresses it.

When Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic son your sins are forgiven and that immediately caused controversy. Why? Well we don't have a confessional here do we? We have no representative of the Pope here. We have no one who has been ordained into the sacrament to the priesthood as the Catholic Church knows it to be able to remit sins.

Who can forgive sins? No man. Only the one sinned against can remit sin and here is Jesus and they who criticize him know the inference that he is making. Son he says to this fellow your sins are forgiven.

So this is not just some ordinary rabbi making a sweeping statement in Capernaum. This is a man who in a loaded fashion is beginning to disclose his own identity. This person who has lived for years in northern Galilee is here making by implication sweeping claims to be able to deal not only with the demands of the rabbinical office in terms of being a teacher but he can cope with someone whose life needs to be put right before God and so he says to this man in whom there must also have been faith as there was with his companions your sins are forgiven and the scribes the clergy of those days they are concerned.

Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming and they're dead right in their next question. Who can forgive sin but God alone? And this don't you see is the uniqueness of the Christian gospel starting to surface now. It is the religion of the forgiven because the founder of this gospel has the ability to remit sins.

Where do you first discover him? In Mark's gospel. I mean how does Mark commence the life of Jesus? He skips over the nativity narratives they're dealt with by Luke and by Matthew. Mark he is governed by an immediacy.

He wants you to see Jesus in action and the first thing that you see in Mark's gospel in regard to the Lord Jesus is when he is plunged in water. Beginning the ministry of Jesus first of all there is his willingness to be baptized by his cousin John. Now why did John baptize? He baptized because Messiah was coming and what was it important for John to achieve as far as the congregations were concerned? That they would be ready to receive the ministry of the Messiah.

So he offers them a baptism of repentance and he dunks them one by one. Hundreds, thousands from the villages, the hamlets, the towns, from Jerusalem itself. People come and they are immersed in water in order to prepare for the hearing of the word of God from Messiah and one day in John's open air audience there is someone different.

John spots him. He stands out and this individual comes to John and asks for baptism. It is none other than his cousin Jesus from Nazareth and John can't understand this.

You want to be baptized rather me be baptized by you and Jesus says that it is right for him to fulfill the father's will. What is God's will that he Jesus will identify with sinners? Now he'll do so on the cross but at the beginning of his ministry he will do so as he is plunged into the waters of the Jordan. He identifies with your sin and my sin and somebody has said as you see Jesus go down into those waters imagine your sin.

Do you remember the one that I've twice asked you to bring to the forefront of your mind? Imagine your sin having being written on a piece of paper and you've taken that paper and you've pinned it to the slight garment that Jesus in the interest of decency would have been wearing. So he's got the paper clip of your sin and my sin. The leaflets of all believing sinful mankind pinned to him and they go down down into the water with Jesus and as he is raised from the water so he identifies with all the wrong that you have done, the paralysis in your own spiritual life, the things that you have done that nobody knows but God knows.

Jesus took them upon himself identifies with them at the beginning of his ministry and absolutely at the end of his ministry when it's not the Jordan that he plunges in but he plunges in to the death of the cross and he dies for you and he dies for me. And this is basically what is found here in this chapter. It's the outworking of what Jesus is beginning to achieve, paying the price for human indiscretion, for human willful rebellion.

Who can forgive sin? God alone. Yes and this man who is in this private home in Capernaum is God's own representative bringing a message of salvation and forgiveness. And so our Lord points out and it's not for me to expound thoroughly the incident for reasons I've already explained but our Lord points out to those who debate his claims that it's much more easy for a person to know the quickening of their physical body than what it is for someone to be able to grant them absolution.

But our Lord can do both and so he says to the paralytic, I tell you get up, take your mat, go home. And here is this special illustration of the authority of Jesus. He is saying that what has happened internally is validated by what is happening externally.

The paralyzed man will never be lowered through a roof that's been torn open by his overenthusiastic friends into the presence of Jesus again. He can get up, he can walk and he does. He praises God, everyone praises God who is there and they say of we have never seen anything like this.

So in summary, ours is the gospel, the religion of forgiveness. Let's have the overhead. In conclusion, what is the meaning of forgiveness? And the word in the original means to send forth, to dismiss.

When Jesus forgives your sins, he breaks the sin from you. He sends it forth, he disconnects it from you. The meaning of forgiveness, the dispensing of forgiveness that can only come from our Lord Jesus Christ, God's representative, Psalm 133.

Who would stand if you made a record of sins but with you there is forgiveness. Only the Lord Jesus as God's ambassador has the right to forgive sins. But finally, if your sins have been forgiven because you have come to the great dispenser, what is the responsibility that belongs to you? Our Father, say it with me, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. There's the rub.

You come and you ask for absolution and he will grant it to those who call upon him. But having been forgiven, you have the responsibility to forgive other people. Why? Because the religion you have embraced is the religion of the forgiven and the forgiven become forgivers.

Otherwise, you cannot know the cleansing that Jesus offers. Let us pray. Father, we thank you that in the most remarkable way our Lord was disturbed in his teaching.

And in an even more remarkable fashion, he sized up the situation and was able to speak to the inner needs of a man as well as meeting his external problems. We thank you that here we have a cameo of the great dispenser of sins, the great dispenser of absolution, clearing up the account of a needy man. Lord, we're needy.

Some of us here so very needy. Take the pages from our lives that haunt us. Rip them out of your memory.

Press the delete button. Whom the sun sets free is free indeed. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God distanced our sins from him and from us.

Blessed God, we thank you that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. We thank you for the command of our Lord as he told a man that instantaneously his sin had been forgiven. Speak that authoritative word and grant us, gracious Lord Jesus, absolution and pardon from all our sins.

In your name. Amen. Let's shift our last hymn to, When peace like a river attendeth my soul, when sorrows like sea billows roll.

And it's got to be in hymns. And I left my hymn book down there. Can someone give me the number? Sorry? 757.

It's also coming on the overheads, I think. Thank you. When peace like a river.

Let's stand at 757 in mission praise. When peace like a river. When peace like a river.

Though he be in Christ, be in Christ and serve him. In Jordan above he shall go. But when he shall be high, or in life as in death, He will bring a sign of peace to my soul.

It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. And all is forgiven, for your coming we praise.

The sign of good reign is upon us. The song of the angel, of blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul. It is well with my soul.

And all God's people said, Amen. And the saints rejoiced. Hallelujah.

Ours is the religion of the forgiven. I cannot grant you absolution, but I can point you to the old rugged cross and assure you, if you've confessed your sin before the cross of Christ, then it is well with your soul, and you can go out with a clean sheet, and today and tomorrow can be the first days of your new life. A better manifesto than Paddy Ashdown or John Major or Tony Blair could ever give you.

That's the reason why I'm a preacher and not a politician. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your grace.

From vanishing point to vanishing point, you're God. We thank you that you are the sinner's friend, and you can restore what went wrong at Eden and in a million Edens in the course of history. Receive us to yourself.

Help us to see you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly throughout the remainder of our lives. Amen. Christ my soul, the King of Heaven, to his device may you cling, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, who are ye, his gracious king.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, praise the everlasting King. Praise him for his grace and favor, to all fathers give his prayer. Praise him still the same forever, slow to try and swift to bear.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, for we'll sing his praise forever. Father, why keep him that cares us, when of evil praise he does? In his hands he gives, he bears us, praise him thus for all our faults. Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, why the earth is thirsting us.

The angels held us to adore him, he will love me for it. Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him,