Thoughts from Watkinsville First Baptist 9/19/10

Since my first week here at UGA, I've been going to Watkinsville First Baptist Church each Sunday, attending the college Bible study and the regular service. The usual trend is that the Bible study will be an incredible discussion of the gospel and life applications of the day's passage; and the service will be a sermon on living out our faith. The last couple weeks, I was a little disappointed with the main service (for reasons left unsaid, considering today's message on language and avoiding gossip), but today was a little different. Although the main service was still not quite top-notch, I felt like I got more from it than I did last week, even if all I got from it was directly from God rather than through the actual message. Today's message provided the Scripture, and God provided the interpretation.

I just want to share some of my notes from today, both from the college Bible study and from the main service.

In the college service, we studied Mark 2:1-12, the story of the four friends who lowered their paralytic friend through the roof of a house where Jesus was preaching. (I just realized that my notes on my iPod didn't save for some reason, so this is all from memory. And this blog post is as much for myself as it is for anyone else because I want to remember all of this as clearly as possible, which will probably be easier if I write everything out rather than rewriting my disjointed notes.) Verse 1 says that Jesus came "home" to Capernaum. Jesus was not from Capernaum, but Peter was, which is evidence that the gospel of Mark was dictated by Peter. (There are other reasons biblical scholars believe this, but this is just another additional reason to add to the list.) Verse 3 says, "Some men came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four of them." The way this is written, it sounds like the four men cared for the paralytic and believed that Jesus could make him well. This is made even more apparent in verse 4 when the four friends climb up on the roof and dig a hole through it to lower the paralytic down to Jesus inside the house. They must have had a lot of faith that Jesus could heal the paralytic.

Then we come to verse 5: "When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" There are two interesting points in this verse, and I'm going to start with the second half of the verse because that's how we did it at church today. Jesus said that the paralytic's sins were forgiven. This completely changes Jesus' ministry for the rest of His life. Up until this point, many people considered Jesus to be a prophet. After all, Elijah raised a kid from the dead, Moses turned water to blood, and lepers were healed before Jesus' time. He didn't have to be the Son of God to perform miracles. But He did have to be God to forgive sins. So when the teachers of the law were asking among themselves what authority Jesus had to forgive sins, they were asking a legitimate question. No one but God Himself can forgive sins. So Jesus asked the crowd, "Which is easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'?" Obviously, it's harder to tell a paralytic to start walking because the effect of the command can be proven: if the paralytic starts walking, then the miracle worked. But only God can forgive sins, and it can't be proven physically that one's sins are forgiven. So Jesus uses the miracle of healing the paralytic to prove that He has God's authority to forgive sins. If Jesus wasn't the Son of God, He would have been a liar, and God wouldn't have given Him the ability to heal the paralytic if He were lying about His identity as Christ.

Now, going back to verse 5 again, Mark says, "When Jesus saw their faith." Why does it say "their faith" instead of "his [the paralytic's] faith"? Well, the five men (the paralytic and the four carriers) must have been friends because the four men had to carry the paralytic around everywhere. One of the four men must have suggested that they go see Jesus, thinking that He could heal the paralytic. The paralytic had to have agreed to go because the four men wouldn't have taken him somewhere he didn't want to go. So their faith was also his own faith. Plus, if the paralytic believed that Jesus could heal him, the fact that the four men agreed to carry him to the house, climb up onto the roof, and lower him down to Jesus shows that they had a tremendous amount of faith that the Man preaching in the building had the ability to make their friend well. "Their faith" is their collective faith: If they didn't all believe that Jesus could heal the paralytic, they wouldn't have gone to Him.

The picture of the five men can also be a picture of witnessing and one of accountability. In the case of witnessing, the four men represent the witnesses and the paralytic is an unsaved person. The four friends had the mindset of "If we can just get our friend to Jesus, he can be healed." We need to have the same mindset about our own friends, thinking that, if we can introduce them to Jesus, He might touch their lives and save them. And in the case of accountability, we need to carry each others' burdens and pull people along in tough times, helping each other to grow in Christ, even when it seems inconvenient. I've always understood the miraculous nature of this story, but I never saw the modern application of it until today. So that was awesome.

We also looked briefly at Revelation 21:3-7. What stuck out to me in this passage was verse 5, where it says, "'I am making everything new!'" Although Revelation is primarily about the end times, this statement sounds like it is talking about the present. It sounds like it is an image of sanctification, the process of becoming like Christ. Sanctification is not an event, and it appears in the wording of this verse that renewal is not either. We are continually being renewed in Christ until He returns, when we will finally be completely new. Until then, we are constantly being changed into the image of Christ. I just thought that was a cool perspective of that verse. (We didn't actually talk about the verse that much. This was just one of the notes I made on my own because I felt like God was trying to teach me something.)

Then, after the college service, I went to the main service. For the last couple weeks, we have been going through a series on Proverbs. Today's sermon was on speech and language. Honestly, I remember very little from the sermon except that the main message was that we should watch our language in order to show that we are devoted Christians. What I really focused on was what God revealed to me in Proverbs 18:13, 21; and 10:21. Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." At first glance, this verse sounds like it's saying that, if we don't control our language, we will die and possibly lose our salvation. But I don't think that's what this proverb means. "The tongue has the power of life and death" — I believe God gave me a spiritual magnifying glass today so that I could see the fine print in this verse: We, as Christians, hold the key to life for non-Christians, the spiritually dead. We know the way to life—Jesus—and by sharing the gospel with others, we give them the key to life. But when we fail to share the good news with others, we abuse our power and condemn others to eternal spiritual death. Proverbs 10:21 also says something similar: "The lips of the righteous nourish many, but fools die for lack of judgment." The words of the righteous—in other words, the gospel—save people and help them grow in Christ, but fools—the unsaved—die because of our lack of judgment—our failure to realize our dire need of Christ in our lives in order to live and our failure to share the gospel with others.

And on an unrelated note, Proverbs 18:13 refers back to verse 12 of the same chapter by saying that our pride ruins us because we judge others without knowing their circumstances.

So... Those are my notes from today. I really enjoyed writing all of this down, and I hope it helped someone in some way.

Until next time, God bless!

Michael

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"I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing." ~ 1 Timothy 2:8

"I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to live is Christ and to die is gain." ~ Philippians 1:20-21