Miracles | Week 4 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

but we've been in a series looking at the miracles of Jesus. And, again, the whole theme of the series is what what John tells us is that Jesus did miracles not to to prove that he was a magic genie, but he did miracles to prove that we could trust him as the savior of the world, that he was the Messiah that all the Old Testament prophets spoke

about coming one day. And so if you have a Bible, which again, hopefully, you do, go to Mark chapter two. We're gonna continue in that series this morning looking at, one of these incredible moments with Jesus when when he's back home.

And again, I was thinking about it in kind of preparation for this. I don't know if you guys can remember when the the iPhone first came out. There was so much hype about it. I was in college. I remember going with a bunch of my friends from

the fraternity that I was in, and we'd lined up for like six hours outside of the Apple store. We bought as many of these original iPhones as we could get because we were convinced that Apple was gonna change the world. And the part that's funny is the biggest phone that Apple was competing against was a BlackBerry, right, with the tactical keyboard and all of that stuff. And if you remember, the original iPhone, it actually didn't go over very well. We bought all these phones thinking that we'd sell them for 10 times what we bought them for and everybody would go crazy on eBay.

But it actually didn't work that way. A lot of people returned those phones because there were some functions that Apple didn't have built into there.

But what did start in that day was kind of a revolution where people started to envision what Apple had always seen was a computer in your pocket that could do all types of things. And eventually, the iPhone three g came out, that's what kind of took everything over. And BlackBerry, you know, was famously slow to move over to getting rid of a tactical keyboard, and they since ceased to exist. All that to say, what I was thinking about was what people undervalued is that they thought Apple was just coming with a better widget and a better phone. But what Apple was coming with was a way to completely revolutionize

the way that we thought about phones. The reason that I say that is I think the the greatest mistake that we will make with Jesus is thinking that he's just a

better way to find happiness and joy in this life or he's a he's a better person to look at for wisdom and wise counsel in this life. But what what I want you to see, what I think the story in Mark chapter two shows us is that Jesus is and always has been a guy that came to offer us a way to be born again, an entirely new way to understand

our humanity. And the story in Mark chapter two is so important because it's in Jesus' hometown. It's one of the few miracles that he does in his hometown. Okay? Again, Mark chapter two, the the story begins in verse one. It says, when Jesus returned to Capernaum

several days later several days later, the news spread quickly that he was he was back home. Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room,

even outside the door. Now, again, it's kind of confusing sometimes because Jesus, yes, he was born in Bethlehem, but Capernaum or Capernaum

was his hometown. This is where he grew up. And often his ministry would happen outside of his hometown. But in Mark two, he's he's come back and the the scriptures tell us that he's he's in this house, whether it's his home, a home of people that he was connected to. Some people said maybe it was even a church. He's in this house and the reason that that matters is this story shows us what's possible when Jesus steps into our home. Right? When we stop and invite Jesus into our home, I I think this story shows us what can potentially happen

when Jesus is in the room. The part that's amazing to me in the story is that this house is packed. Right? There's people all over the house. There's people outside the doors trying to get in. And again, these are, you know, people that worked, pretty difficult jobs, often twelve, thirteen, fourteen hour days. If they didn't work, they literally didn't eat. And yet news has spread in the hometown of Jesus that Jesus was going to be there. And the people made a priority to be in the presence of Jesus.

I start by just saying, I think part of what we need to understand and realize is people living in an Americanized, westernized Christian culture that prioritizing

Jesus is almost as important as anything else that we will do. We've got to make being in the presence of Jesus a priority. Again, I put it in my notes this way that one of the things we got to start with is realizing that Jesus is worthy of our time and attention.

Church attendance is at an all time low, and I'm here to just gently nudge you. I know we're sitting at home watching this, but to remember how important gathering with the people of God is, being in the presence of Jesus. It's incredibly important because watch what can happen. It continues and says that while he was preaching

God's word to them, four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. Now, again, if you've been around the the Bible, you've heard this story before.

But a man who's paralyzed, a man who culturally would have been told because of whatever ailment he was struggling with, he was an outcast of society. He wasn't supposed to be there. He was too far gone. He had too many things wrong with him. This guy, his friends tell

him, hey, Jesus is coming into town, and they do whatever it takes to bring this person to Jesus. And I think this story reminds us that it doesn't matter what culture says, it doesn't matter what we've done, what things have been done to us, that every single person,

they have a place in the presence of Jesus. It's why I love who Jesus was, is he often would go after the people that culture discounted. Right? In in a culture that said women were second rate, Jesus used them to facilitate ministry. In a culture that saw kids as afterthoughts,

Jesus told them to come to me. In a in a society that said people with leprosy had to live on the fringes, Jesus touched them and brought them near. Right? Again, tax collectors, people that everybody hated. Jesus says, no, there there's hope in a future for not just some people, but but all people. And one of the things I love about God is that even though he knows the worst of us, he he always is thinking the best of us. So this paralyzed guy is brought to Jesus. Verse four says they couldn't bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole

through the roof above his head. And then they lowered the man on his mat right down in front of Jesus. And verse five says, seeing their faith. Again, if you're at home, turn to your kids or your spouse and say, their faith. Because it was seeing their faith that Jesus said to the paralyzed man, my my child,

your sins are forgiven. The reason that this miracle is so powerful to me is the healing happened to the paralyzed man, not because of his faith, not because of his obedience, but because of the faith of his friends.

And sometimes, I think you and I, we forget that there is no such thing as neutral community. The the people you are spending the most time with, they are either bringing you into the things of God or they're pulling you away from them. But the lie that we convince ourselves of is that, well, our community is just neutral. That there is no such thing as a neutral community.

What this story tells us is that the people we choose to live life with, the people we choose to circle our our our lives with, they have the power and the potential to bring the things of God into them even when we're lacking faith. And sometimes there's a miracle that God wants to do in your life through the faith of the people in your sphere of influence. And it also says that God can use our faith to impact other people's lives while they're struggling. And that's a that's a mind blowing thought to me. But again, I want to remind all of us who are listening to this. Make sure you don't pick friends that enable you. Pick friends that empower you. Because your friends will determine your future. I I promise you, there's so many implications that are here, but for time I gotta move forward. Verse six, it says, but some of the teachers of religious law

who were sitting there thought to themselves, what is he saying? This is blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins, which they're correct. Right? There there's a reason that Jesus specifically

forgave this man sin because he was trying to show all of us what we've been saying in this series. Jesus isn't just a genie worker. He's the savior of the world. He's the messiah. And he was proving that he was God by saying that he can forgive sins. And now this upset all kinds of people because they said, wait, only God can do that. And that's the whole point. This is ultimately what Jesus is trying to set up. Verse eight, Jesus literally, he knew immediately what they were thinking. So he asked them, why do you question this in your heart? Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven or stand up, pick up your mat and walk? So I will prove to you that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. And then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, stand up, pick up your mat, and go home. See, Jesus knew that he was God and that he had just been able to forgive all of their sins.

And this again was an emphatic statement to the world that Jesus wasn't just another good teacher. He was the savior of the world whose greatest miracle that he can do for all of us is to restore what was broken when sin entered the world, and he can restore our relationship with God again. It's the greatest miracle that God wants to do in all of us is this thing called salvation

where we who are far gone can be made right again in the eyes of God, where the the penalty that Jesus paid on the cross can actually be something that satisfies God's wrath for all of us. That's the ultimate thing that Jesus came to do. But he also knew it's easy to say that. Right? Because nobody in that room

nobody in that room would have been able to know, well, how do we know for sure if his sins were forgiven? So then Jesus does the secondary thing, which is he heals this man's physical body. Tells him, stand up, pick up your mat, and walk. Right? To validate that he was the savior of the world. Now again, this is where things get a little bit tricky is because I think we live in a culture that run after Jesus primarily because we we live in a world that is broken. We live in a world that has all types of things that are happening, and people are dealing with things that are heartbreaking.

And we run to Jesus, and we just want him to fix all of those things. But the part that's hard is sometimes God doesn't do exactly what we want him to do when we want him to do it because he's often writing a story that's much bigger than we can ever comprehend.

And the reason that it's so important for us to have a foundation of understanding that the greatest miracle that Jesus wants to do in our life is to reconcile us with our father so that we can spend eternity with him in heaven is because then it begins to set everything else in its proper order. Right? Yes. We serve a miracle working God. Yes. We believe that God still heals today. But does that mean that God will always heal all the time?

No. Think the scriptures are clear in there. There's multiple times where Jesus actually doesn't heal people. There's times where the disciples come to him and they say, hey, there's a whole line of people that need physical healing from you.

What do you do? And he says, I've gotta go. I've gotta go to the next city to keep continuing to preach the message that reconciliation

for humanity in their soul is here. But sometimes it leaves us in a tough spot. Right? It leaves us in a tough spot where we go, well, well, what do we do? Does it mean that God's not good if he's not fixing all of these things? And what I don't wanna do is to throw soft and easy answers at what I know to be really hard questions. Trust me. I I know some of the stuff that you all are are walking through. And I know that there are moments where our heart breaks and is begging, God, would would you show up and would you do something here?

And sometimes that's where the enemy can come in and get a real foothold into our lives if we're not careful because he'll try to trick you and to go back to going, all Jesus is is a genie that is supposed to fix everything. And if he's not fixing everything, maybe you can't trust him. And I'm here to tell you, the tension that we live in on this side of heaven is we know that there will be a day where all brokenness will be restored, where everything will be made right, every tear will be wiped away, and all healing will be complete.

But until that day, what we try to live in is the tension of calling heaven's realities into earth, asking God to heal, believing that he still does today. But sometimes,

God's understanding, God's plan is greater than ours. And so what we have to sit back and just go, God, look, we trust you. We believe that you are good, and we will worship you regardless of what does or does not happen in front of us. Because we don't have a theology that says your goodness is dependent on what you do for us today.

Because Jesus, again, he didn't come to be a genie. He came to reconcile all people back to themselves.

And the greatest hope for all of us is that one day we will all spend eternity with him in heaven. So I say all this to say to you sitting there, man, I don't know what it is you're walking through, but we serve a miracle working God that wants to intervene in your circumstances. We will pray and believe that God is going to do immeasurably more than we could ever hope or imagine is what the scriptures say. But we also go, God, you are God and we are not. Your ways are greater than our ways. Your understandings are higher than our understandings.

And so if you're in that tension, let me just go, man. We're with you in it. We're we're there for you. We are praying for you and we are praying with you. But don't miss the greatest miracle that God wants to do in your life, which is restoring

your relationship with God because of some things in your world that aren't the way that you would have them be if you were God. That's the tension that we have to live in as humans. We let God be God and we fill our roles.

But I promise you, there's beauty in there if you can see it. Let me pray for you. Father, I thank you. God, I thank you for every single person

that's on the other side of this camera that's watching this. And Lord, I know through the power of the Holy Spirit that you are speaking individually and specifically to every single person.

And God, I pray that you would do what only you can do. That you would, Holy Spirit, be the comforter, that you would be the encourager, you would be the reminder that you are of the goodness of the God that we serve.

And, father, right now, we just refuse to allow the enemy to try to step into any circumstance or situation that would tell us that you are anything other than good. Father, we worship you because you are worthy, and you prove that you can be trustworthy

because you are the only person in the history of the world that conquered death. So, Jesus, we put our hope in you. We know that one day all things will be made right and all things will make sense. But until that day, we walk not by sight, by by faith. It is in Jesus' name all God's people said, amen and amen. You guys are incredible.

I hope to see you back next week at Echoes Church.