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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to our
11th week of studying through the book of Matthew. We're in Matthew chapter
nine. We're going to look at verses one to eight today.

And I just sorta have to share with you, we looked at chapter eight last week,
chapter nine this week. In one sense, as you look at these two chapters, they
sorta give you a day in the life of Jesus. All the events that happen, one piles
upon the other and then the next happens and the next happens as you read
through these two chapters.

Jesus' schedule for just one day is pretty amazing. Let's just walk through it
real quickly. This schedule is, you take the boat to Capernaum.

He talks to a teacher about following him and then he gets back into the boat.
He starts to have a nap and then he's awakened by the disciples because of the
storm and then he calms the wind and the seas. And then he gets to the other
side of the Sea of Galilee and he heals two demon-possessed men.

And then he has to have a meeting with the entire angry town over the casting of
the demons into the pigs. Then he has to leave town on the boat and he crosses
over to Capernaum. And then he heals the crowds.

And then a man is brought to him on a mat, a paralyzed man that he heals. Then
he discusses that healing with the Pharisees. And then he goes by Matthew's tax
booth and he calls him to be a disciple.

And Matthew says yes. And so the evening is all about a party at Matthew's house
with Matthew's unbelieving friends. That's one day in the life and ministry of
Jesus.

And this chapter, as we walk through this day and we learn from Jesus this week
in this chapter, this particular chapter, chapter nine starts with the healing
of a paralyzed man. And in this miracle, there is teaching for all of us about
what to do when you're paralyzed. Whether it's physically or emotionally or
spiritually, whether it's in a relationship or a circumstance or a job or a
health struggle or your heart towards God.

You're in a paralyzed, stuck place, either actually or for many of us
spiritually. What do you do? What do you do?

In this miracle of Jesus, there is a teaching for us. And in this miracle, he
teaches us what to do when you feel paralyzed. Listen to what happened in verses
one to eight.

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men
brought him a paralytic lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to
the paralytic, take heart son, your sins are forgiven.

At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, this fellow is
blaspheming. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, why do you entertain evil
thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or to
say, get up and walk?

But so that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive
sins. Then he said to the paralytic, get up, take your mat and go home. And the
man got up and he went home.

When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe and they praised God who had
given such authority to men. Have you ever heard anyone say, I don't know what
to do. I don't know where to turn, I feel frozen in place.

In this miracle that Jesus worked, there are two powerful truths to help us when
we feel paralyzed in life. Very simple truths. Number one truth is get some
friends and second truth is get to Jesus.

That's what you do. First, you get some friends. Notice some men brought this
man lying on a mat.

Now you might remember from Mark's gospel that they actually had to dig a hole
in the roof to get this man to Jesus. They did anything and everything they
could to get this man to a place where he could be healed. But in order for that
to happen, the man who was paralyzed had to decide to trust some people.

The moment you decide to stop trusting all people, you have built a loneliness
into your life and often a sense of paralysis into your life. You can't move
ahead, you can't move back because we need people in our lives. Yes, it hurts to
trust because some people break your trust but it hurts much more not to trust.

And one of the keys to breaking out of a stuck place in life or of walking
through a place that seems to stay stuck no matter what you do, how do you live
with that kind of place in your life, is to get the right kind of friends in
your life. Who are the right kind of friends? Well, there are a couple of
indicators here.

They are people who are willing to help carry you and they are people who will
have faith with you. Look for those kinds of friends. Do you have any of those
kinds of friends in your life?

People who are willing to help carry you. They carried him physically or he
would not have been able to get there. There are times in your life when you
need people to carry you.

Maybe not physically but emotionally, spiritually. We are not meant to make it
through life all by ourselves. That's why the Bible tells us to bear one
another's burdens.

That doesn't just mean you're to bear other people's burdens by the way. Another
means sometimes you have to let people bear your burdens because we're not meant
to carry it all by ourselves. People who are willing to help carry you.

You need some friends like that in your life. And also you need people who will
have faith with you. There's an interesting thing, a phrase that's shared with
us by Matthew here.

It says that Jesus saw their faith and so went to heal this man. So their faith,
whose faith? Well, really all of them, all of them.

The man who needed healing and the four men, the friends who brought him, he saw
their faith. Without the man's faith, he couldn't have been forgiven of his
sins. But without the faith of his friends who carried him, he couldn't have
been taken to a place where he could meet Jesus.

It took both of their faith to get this man to Jesus. When someone is coming
into a relationship with Jesus, Jesus sees the faith of the one who's telling
the good news that gets them to a place of faith. And he sees the faith of the
one who's accepting the good news.

He saw their faith. And sometimes your faith helps someone else get to a place
in their life where they can have faith, where they can have faith. Look for
friends like that and be a friend like that.

Be a friend who is willing to help carry people, who's willing to help people to
have faith. That's what gets us out of stuck places in life. You get some
friends.

You get the right friends and then you get to Jesus. Other people need to help
us and strengthen us in our lives, but their encouragement is not enough because
we need more than just human encouragement. We need more than just human power.

We need God's power. And these men got their friend to the right place. They got
him to Jesus.

And Jesus says to him, "Your sins are forgiven. " Now, why did he say that? You
notice there's this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees.

And he says to him, "Your sins are forgiven. " And they say, "Well, he's a
blasphemer. " That's because they believe that no one could forgive sins besides
God.

And I believe the same thing. So for Jesus to say, "You are forgiven of your
sins," he was claiming to be God. And for them, that was blasphemy.

Now, it would have been blasphemy except for the fact that Jesus is God. So
they're struggling with whether Jesus is God or not. And Jesus is confronting
this belief of the time when he says to the Pharisees, "Which is easier to say,
take up your mat and walk "or your sins are forgiven?

" You see, the belief he was confronting was they believed that all sickness was
due to some sin. So if Jesus could cause this man to walk, it meant he had to
forgive the sin that caused the sickness. It was, in their belief, impossible
for it to happen without the forgiveness of that sin.

Now, by the way, their belief was not correct. Imagine the burden that this
belief put on people. There's something wrong with me.

There's something wrong with my child. Whose sin? Have I sinned?

Have they sinned? What's happening here? But Jesus, knowing the teachers that
were there, was confronting this belief.

And so the Bible here says the son of man, Jesus says, has authority to do this.
Now remember this phrase, the son of man, is Jesus' favorite title for himself.
And it is not just saying, I'm a human being.

It is from the Old Testament. The son of man is an Old Testament prophet's
phrase that points to the Messiah coming. So when Jesus says the son of man, he
was using a phrase that wasn't as familiar in the day.

It was sort of a backdoor way of saying, by the way, I'm the Messiah. I'm the
one that God was sending. And the son of man, who has authority to forgive sins,
who has authority to heal, he says, take up your mat and walk, and the man does
exactly that.

And he was released from his paralysis. And Jesus wants to do the same in my
life, in your life. He wants to release you from the paralysis in your life,
from the paralysis of fear or of doubt, or of anger, or of bitterness, or of
unforgiveness.

It starts by recognizing his forgiveness in our own lives. It goes to
recognizing his forgiveness for other people, and recognizing his power to heal.
this story.

This man is released from his paralysis, but there's a group there that day that
remained paralyzed, that remained paralyzed in their unbelief, the Pharisees.
The Bible says Jesus knew what they were thinking. Now, Jesus wasn't omniscient
while he was on this earth.

He didn't know everything, but he is God in human flesh, and he did often know
things that other people didn't know. He often knew the thoughts of the people
that were around him, and he knew that these teachers were thinking he's not
God. No one can forgive sins but God alone, and no one could heal besides God.

And so, Jesus confronts that belief. Get up and walk, and the man did. So, these
religious teachers, according to their own belief, they have a moment of choice.

Are they going to be consistent in their own beliefs and fall down and worship
Jesus? Because he's just proved to them, according to their beliefs, that he's
God. Well, they did not.

Instead, they stayed angry. Instead, they remained paralyzed by their unbelief.
Now, the Pharisees, they're not in God's word for us to point at.

Wow, look at those ugly, evil Pharisees. They're in God's word for us to relate
to. We all have more Pharisee in us than we like to admit.

Places in our lives where our unbelief is keeping us stuck, keeping us
paralyzed, and maybe a lack of belief in God's protection and care, and maybe a
lack of belief in God's promise to use you to make a difference through your
life, and maybe a lack of belief in trusting God with forgiving someone else,
and maybe a lack of belief in—and you fill in the blank—a place where you're
struggling to trust God. You're holding it in your own hand. That's where I'm.

That's where you're being a Pharisee. But that's where Jesus wants to work in my
life and your life. That's where he wants to release us from that paralysis.

Let's ask him to do that right now together. Would you pray with me? And just
say in your heart, "Jesus, I don't want to stay stuck.

I want to get to a place of trust in you. So whether it's about my life and
material things, or it's about forgiveness, or it's about something that
happened in my past, or you know what it is, Lord, whatever it is, I want to
give it to you, and I want to ask you to work to heal me, to get me unstuck. I
want to believe.

I want to trust you with this, and I do it right now. In Jesus' name, Amen.