We Are the Church: Become the Miracle

Good morning. Welcome to Eagle Creek Church. Good to see all of you today. I’m Matt, I’m the pastor here. And everyone joining us online, welcome as well.

I want to do a quick encouragement to everyone who is online. I run into people now and then out at different places, and they’ll say, “Oh, are you Matt?” And I’m like, “Yeah, are you the pastor at Eagle Creek Church?” “Yeah, that’s me.” “Oh, well, we attend your church online.” And I met some people in Raymore at Lowe’s, again, I’ve met people at Lowe’s in Raymore a lot recently. Once again, I have a son who bought a house and is remodeling it, and thus in Raymore, we’re at Lowe’s doing that quite a bit. So, I’m not picking on the person I met, but I am picking on you, because you said you and your wife are watching. So join us, show up at church. How many say worship’s a little different when you’re in the room, right? It’s a little different when you’re in the room. So we want to encourage you to come out. Plus, we’d love to get to know you. If you’re part of our church and you’re local, stop in on us sometime, you’ll find we don’t bite, we’re pretty nice people around here, and you can hang out with us. We’d love to get to know you. You’re welcome to join online if you can’t make it, but if you can, we’d love to be able to meet you.

We’re in this series, We Are the Church, and I was thinking about my son’s house. We’re in the middle of this remodel project, and the other day we were out there, and Sherry and I were over. By the way, some of you are thinking, “You have teenagers, and you’re like, someday they’re all going to get out and they’re all going to be on their own, and we’re going to be free and we’re going to have no responsibilities.” I’m sorry to tell you, you’ll be sanding walls and painting and taking up old carpet and watching kids and taking dogs in for the weekend, and it just keeps going.

Anyway, Sherry’s out on the street, and there’s a lady, an older lady, who’s, I hate to say a nosy neighbor, but I think she’s maybe qualified. And we know that because it had not been her first time down the street, slowly doing the walk by. “What are you doing over there to that place? It looks terrible, us neighbors hate you guys.” You know, it’s one of those things, like the lawn’s overgrown. Yes, we don’t have a working lawn mower over there, so I was over working on a lawn mower, so we got a working lawn mower over with my weed eater. And someone told me I had some marks on my forehead, I’m like, “Oh yeah, they had some pea gravel in one of the beds and I shot my head with it.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t notice that.” Okay.

But I’m in there, and we’re trying to clean it up and cut down, and we had this huge, I don’t know, 40-yard dumpster, massive thing. It was one of those homes where the person was moved out and the kids live out of state, so they literally left everything in the cupboards and in the bathrooms, there was nothing moved from the house. Literally, they had the old kids’ letterman jackets and the kids didn’t want them. And so, it’s closets and closets of storage and garage fulls of everything, in a dumpster. And so, the neighbors, of course, are looking at this overgrown, it had been overgrown for a long time, overgrown mess of a house, fences falling down, and all this. They got a really good deal on it, you know, it’s one of those things. So, I was like, “Go for it,” you know, it’s a mess, but that’s how you get a deal. So, they got a good deal, and that sort of stuff. And so Sherry was having to talk to the neighbor and assure them, “We see, we know, we’re getting to it, we’ll take care of it.”

And it’s one of those things, sometimes it’s interesting, you’ll look at a person and you’ll think, “What a mess, oh my gracious, what are they doing to themselves? What are they doing to their lives? I don’t understand why they’re wrecking their own marriage, they’re wrecking their own kids, they’re wrecking their own employment,” “Here where we work, you can’t act that way and expect to keep a job.” And boy, they have no control over their tongue, and they blurt things out and they say hurtful things, and they think they’re just having fun drinking, but everyone who’s around them knows it’s more than fun, “You have a problem with drinking,” and they don’t seem to get that that’s a problem. And they’re just blowing their money and they have nothing in savings and they’re broke all the time and they never see, you just, the list.

Sometimes you look at a life under construction and all you see is a mess. And sometimes we need Jesus to kind of walk out with us down the street and say, “Hey, you see that mess over there?” “Yeah, I’m working on that mess right now.” And before long, there won’t be a 40-yard dumpster in front of their home, and we’ll pull up some of the weeds and we’ll cut that. We actually did that on Friday, we were over, trimmed the branches and brought the hedge trimmers and the lawn mower and, you know, whatever. So we trimmed it all up, and then they hauled away, just, it per chance, it just worked out, the 40-yard dumpster. So I’m sure all the neighbors love us now. I have no idea, but I would assume so based on that.

But you can’t see at the moment what God is doing. And sometimes in those dark, messy moments, God is getting ready to do something really significant in that life. And I think as a church, as Christians, whenever we start to view people, and it’s hard, can I just say it is hard sometimes when someone’s mess is affecting your life. I mean, when it’s your next-door neighbor and their home’s like that, when it’s the coworker right next to you and their life is a mess, when it’s your kid, your mom, your dad, your whatever, your good friend, and you’re like, “Your mess is affecting my life.” It’s hard to be as gracious as I’m talking about right now.

But I think as a church, we have to adopt that mindset. We have to say, “I don’t feel like being very gracious, and I want to be very mad about them about their mess, but I also want to try to look at people through the lens of Jesus,” and say, “So Jesus is in the middle of something here, I can’t see it, but instead of being mad about their mess, maybe I should say, hey, can I go home and get my lawn mower and come over and help? Can I be a part of the help in your life? Can I maybe pray for you today? Could I invite you to sit with me at church? I think you would like it, it’s not all stiff and stodgy, I think you’d be cool with it. Can I be a part of your story coming towards God?”

And there’s this moment, and the story we’re going to read today in Mark chapter 2, and whenever we get there, Jesus is in this situation where it’s maybe hard for him to notice every need that’s happening around him. And it would be hard for anyone, and all of us, I know we can’t see every need in every life all the time, but there are moments where you can, and moments when you can make a difference. And this is one of those moments. And it gives us a lens to say the way the church ought to look at people, the way you and I ought to look at people that we love that are struggling in their life. And to know this is a moment where I can be part of the difference God wants to make.

So let me just start Mark chapter 2, verse 1 through 17. He starts off with this, this is the very end of the story. When the story is all over, the conclusion to his story will be this. So you’re going to know the end principle before the beginning of the story. So the end principle is Jesus’s principle. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous but sinners.”

I want to pause right now and say, so that means Jesus is walking by those wrecks of a life, and he’s saying that one. How many of you can look at this and say Jesus by nature is a remodeler? He is. He’s like, “You know what, it’s got a lot of problems, I’ll take that one. I’ll take that one.” “Oh, don’t you want something nice in the new neighborhood?” “No, I don’t, I want a remodeler, I want a fixer-upper.” How many of you are thankful that Jesus goes after fixer-uppers like you and me, right? I’m glad Jesus goes after fixer-uppers because I give him plenty of work to do. Any of you give him plenty of work to do?

So, he’s just saying, “That’s my heart, that’s my target.” How many of you would admit that as a Christian, that target of fixer-uppers is sometimes elusive for you, that you don’t always stay focused on fixer-uppers, sometimes you’re like, “I just want people who have it all together.” A few of you, it’s like, “Okay, now and then it’s like, I’m just done for a little while with a fixer-upper, I want it.” And then you’re like, “I’m going to join a small,” we have all these small groups coming up. Can I tell you, in some of the small groups, you’re going to get in there and you’re going to find out someone in that small group’s a fixer-upper. And you’re going to look around and try to figure out who it is. And if you can’t figure it out, it’s you. And that’s okay, hopefully you’ll be surrounded by some really good people that can walk you through that.

These DGroups, I thought we would have, you know, five or 10 or 15, and I think we’re up to 16 or 17 discipleship groups that are starting this fall, and we really just announced it two or three weeks ago. In fact, we’re doing our first training right after next service, down over here in the welcome room. And we have a ton of people that are getting trained to be able to disciple people, because all of us need someone who makes an investment. And so Jesus is saying that’s who I came for, people that need that investment, I’m really like a doctor for the soul of people that are broken, and I’m looking for that.

So Jesus is in a packed-out house. In Mark chapter 2, verse 2, it tells us this. Many were gathered together at the beginning of the story, now we went to the end that Jesus says, here’s my overarching theme for these stories, there’s two stories together here. “Many were gathered together, so that there was no room, not even at the doorway.” You couldn’t even squeeze past anyone, it was packed, you couldn’t get up. “And he was preaching the word to them.” So, that’s a pretty good story for Jesus, that he’s packed the room up, he’s preaching the word and people are trying to get to him.

And in that environment, there’s some friends that decide they have someone that needs to get to see Jesus. Only you couldn’t get to see Jesus because of the environment that he was in right there. And so, the first principle I’m going to talk to you about today is this concept, is just simply, carry somebody in need to Jesus.

Carry Somebody in Need to Jesus

Carry somebody in need to Jesus. And in Mark 2, verse 3, it says, “They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men,” probably four friends that were trying to get him through the door. So, I don’t know how far they had come from, I don’t know if they were from a farm a ways away from the village or if they were from right there in town, or where it was, but either way, how many of you ever had the job of carrying, like, I’m using the example, I’m picking on my son a bit, but he and I, Sherry and his wife Anya, were over there, and they had one of those big king-size floppy mattresses. You ever tried, have you moved the big king-size floppy mattresses? I’m just not built for moving king-size floppy mattresses. And they heard a big kaboom as we got it out of the house, because I was like, “I’m not walking down this windy brick stairway to toss it,” we’re throwing it over the rail, and I don’t know, it hit something at the bottom and made a lot of noise and they thought we had died.

But have you been on the end of maybe a dresser or a bed or a piano or something like that, and your fingers are starting to give way, and you’re like, “Sit it down, sit it down, sit it down, I’m losing it.” You been, anyone, you know that feeling? I’m just wondering which one of the four guys was the guy, you know, after they had walked about a half mile with him, he was like, “Guys, guys, guys, we got to sit him down, sit him down. No, no, I’m gonna drop him, sit him down.” And yet they made it. And yet they made it.

And there are people in our lives that are just hard to get to Jesus. How many you know, there are some folks that were a little easier and some folks are kind of hard to get to Jesus. And it’s like, “I’m trying, I’m trying, I mean, I prayed for them, and it’s like, I think it’s worse now that I’m praying, I don’t know what’s going on, I’m trying, Lord, and it doesn’t feel like I’m getting” the Lord’s like, “Hey, carry them a little further, they’re not there yet, bring them a little further, they’re not there, keep going.” Okay, “Can I get the light end? I want to carry his feet this time, someone else get his head, he’s got a kink in my back, my shoulders thrown out.” And but you jump back on there and you say, “I know it is sometimes hard to pray for a husband that doesn’t love Jesus and doesn’t want to be in church with you, and he doesn’t want the kids to go up and leave him on a Sunday morning because he worked all week.” You’re like, “I don’t know how to get my husband to Jesus, I’m so burned out, I’m so frustrated, sometimes I just want to quit and stay at home with him and say, ‘You win, I’ll stay at home, the kids will stay at home, we’ll do it your way.'” And then I realize, how am I ever going to bring him to Jesus if I back away from Jesus? And I can’t. And I have to push and I have to try and I have to take the next step a little bit further.

Some of you are in that circumstance, some of you have been in that circumstance. And it is, I hate to say it’s easy to give up, it’s not easy to give up, but it’s easier than fighting constantly. And some people just get to that place where it’s like, “I can’t push any further, I can’t go any further with this person.” But Galatians chapter 6 and verse 2 tells us this, it tells us we’re to “bear one another’s burdens,” and then what’s the next phrase, it says, “and so fulfill the” what, “law of Christ.” It’s an interesting thing that it’s saying, this is like the law of Jesus, to care for others, to love others, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is like the law of Jesus to go the extra mile with someone, to carry their burdens.

And Jesus is saying, listen, it’s not easy to carry a burden, but it is a law of mine for my followers, that they do this, that they walk that extra mile and they carry that heavy load and they carry that burden, because someone has to step up and someone has to be part of the answer for that person’s life and see the miracle.

I want to tell you something that you may not realize, some of you do, but you may not, so I just want to say it. When you see someone that you love, that you care about, that you’re connected to, and you think they need God, like really bad in their life right now, sometimes we get this idea that they will see Jesus in us, and when they see Jesus in us, they will be attracted to the Jesus in us, and then they will come to us and ask us what to do about their life. And that does occasionally happen, okay.

But how many of you know that when Jesus gave the Great Commission, the Great Commission was, “Go therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to all nations, baptize,” it was like, “You’re going, you’re going, you’re going, you’re baptizing, you’re teaching them to observe.” It wasn’t, “Stay in Jerusalem and wait, and all the world will be attracted to Jerusalem as a magnetic force of my presence, and when they all show up at Jerusalem, they’ll all fall at your feet and begin repenting, and then you can just hand them a Bible and they’ll all read it, and you don’t need to do anything.” How many of you understand that is not the Great Commission, right?

Okay, so, the Great Commission involved us seeing other people’s needs, it involved us recognizing, how many have you ever been so burnt and so hurt and so broken that you weren’t thinking about, “Oh, that person’s a great Christian.” You’re just thinking, “I am struggling, I’m having a hard time, I want to hide out in my home and not go out and have to see people right now.” And someone has to go after you in the middle of your darkness sometimes. And when people are in a place of addiction, when people are far from God, when people, like the paralytic, can’t get themselves to Jesus, someone has to go after the people who can’t get themselves to Jesus. Someone has to go find them. Someone has to go talk to them. Someone has to go show God’s love to them. Someone has to go invite them. Someone has to go and share faith with them.

How many of you know the paralytic wasn’t getting there if someone didn’t go get him? It, right, amen, it wasn’t going to happen. So for you and I, we’re thinking they’re going to see Jesus in us, and Jesus is thinking we’re going to see the need in them. And so how about if we go along with Jesus and say, “I see them, I see their need, and I’m going to reach out and I’m going to be part of the God equation that is supposed to happen in their life.” They’re struggling with need, Jesus is there to grant grace and forgive them and heal them and meet their needs, I’m going to help to put that together for their life.

Refuse to Let the Crowd Become a Barrier

The second thought I want to give you is this. Just refuse to let the crowd become a barrier in your life, and to that other person’s life. Refuse to let the crowd, the busyness, all the obstacles that are in the way, your schedule, everything that would just be like, “Well, I tried, but they were busy and I was busy, and it just never worked out, and so I just really couldn’t do the thing.”

This is what happened in Mark 2:5. It says, so the doorway’s packed, the house is packed, and it says, “And when they couldn’t get near him because of” the crowd, “they removed the roof above him.” How many say that’s a very creative way to get to Jesus? I kind of wondered, had they just yelled, “Hey, get out of the way,” or we’re going to dig a hole in the roof, if the owner of the house would have said, “Hey, hey, hey, I don’t want them digging a hole in my roof, get them out.” But I don’t know, they apparently didn’t go that route, they just said, “You know what, I know how these roofs are made.” Maybe one of them said, “I patch these roofs all the time, I’ll fix it back up afterwards, guys, it’s okay.”

How many of you know, if you’re Jesus and they have dirt, they were basically, they had wood, they had sticks, and then they have palm leaves or that sort of stuff, and then a clay over the top that’s supposed to help it to run off, sometimes they do another padding of leaves to try to help the water run off the side, the sloped roof there. And so you’re digging through that, at some point digging through when you hit the clay and you hit the sticks and it drops on the person’s head below. So at some point Jesus is like, “Huh, I think I am being rained upon by dirt right now.” You know what’s going on in this moment? You can kind of picture that moment with a worn-out group of guys hauling a guy up to the roof.

They frequently actually had a little ladder or steps up the side, because they would actually use that upper floor as a place to often basically wash clothing and stretch it out and dry stuff out on the roof, that kind of stuff. And so they were used surfaces, people were used to being up there, and so they’re gone up, it probably wasn’t seen as crazy that they went up on the roof. To us, in our homes today, we wouldn’t do that. It was different, the way they used their homes at that period of time.

And so they’re up there and they’re doing this, and they just decide, you know what, I’m not going to let any barrier get in the way of this person coming to Christ and experiencing the grace that God has for them. And it really does become a priority issue in our life, to say, “Okay, they’re putting me off.” How many of you ever had someone put you off like three or four times? “Oh, sorry, it just ain’t going to work out.” “Oh, I ain’t.” You’re like, “No, I’m gonna work this out. What are you doing on Christmas Eve 2029? Let’s make some plans.” “Oh, you got plans on Christmas Eve?” “Well, that’s great, because we have services on the 23rd as well. So, what are you doing on the 23rd of September at 4:30 p.m.?” “I don’t know.” “Great, let’s go to church together.” But the point is you’re just saying, I don’t want a barrier to be in the way, and I want to figure out how I get past barriers to see people become believers, to see people find a miracle that they’re needing in their life, to find some hope. And sometimes it’s a little extra tenacity that’s needed in our life to go for that.

This is what the word of God tells us. Jesus says this actually in Luke 14 and verse 23. He says, “Go out into the highways” and “the hedges,” and then what’s it say, “compel” people. He doesn’t say, “And shine the light and then people will come to your corner where you’re standing at the highway and the hedges.” No, he’s like, “No, you go out and you’re going to be compelling, you’re going to be convincing, you’re going to be talking to people about coming in to the family of God, to the hope of God, to the grace of God, to the forgiveness of God, to the family of God, that my house may be filled.”

Now, it’s interesting, can I just throw this out here as a pastor? Every now and then, people get worried, and I’ll tell you, and it does get off, there are pastors that become so focused on the numerical growth of a congregation that they lose focus on the spiritual growth of the people within the congregation. How many say that’s kind of unhealthy, right? Like, you just want to have more numbers, right? Now, how many of you would guess that Jesus didn’t have that same issue? How many you think that Jesus might have been concerned about the souls of the people that were coming into his kingdom, right? He was wanting to save the souls, to cleanse the souls, to give them healing and purpose and redemption, restoration, make them part of the family of God.

I think Jesus had the right intentions and the right motives about building the kingdom of God, because it was his kingdom, right? I really think Jesus had the right intention, and yet he still preferred a full house than an empty house. Now I think about why does Jesus prefer a full house over an empty house, and there’s a few things that seem kind of obvious to me, but one of them would be that he actually knows the soul of every lost person not in his house. He knows them, he knew them from birth, he knew what he created them to be, he knew every day of their life before a single day was lived out, and every day was written in his book. He knew every hair on their head, he knew the day they would be born and the day they would die. And they mattered to him when he died on the cross for their sins. They mattered to him. He died to pay the price for their sins.

And he begs and pleads, “Compel people, go find people, bring them in, compel them to come in that my house may be filled.” My family and my table should be full of every child of God I’ve ever planned to be a child of God. I want to know that every single one of them is at the table. And it was a banquet that was occurring. He said, “I have a banquet and I want my banquet, my table, to be full.” Now, in Revelation, we learn that that banquet is probably called the marriage supper of the Lamb, where all those who are followers of Christ gathered together in the great feast, in the great marriage supper of the Lamb. And he’s probably speaking of the moment when he’ll sit down across the table, and I don’t know how he’ll do it, but I bet he’ll see every one of us at his table.

And he’s saying, “I see their faces, and their seats are empty today, but you can make their seat full, and it matters to me. And I see them and I love them and I know them and I died for them. Would you please go compel them to come in? Have some tenacity about you. Go after things. Let things matter so much that even if you get rejected, you’ll realize I was rejected too. And I fought through for you all the way to the cross. Even when I said, ‘Father, if you’re willing, remove this cup from me.’ When I said, ‘Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done,’ I went to the cross. I was tenacious for you. Will you be tenacious for me? Will you go reach them? Will you not quit?”

And so these four friends represent the heart of tenacity that I think every believer needs to adopt towards a friend, towards someone that God leads and shows you and puts in your pathway.

Live Out of Faith That Jesus Can Bless

The third one is this. The third one is, live out of faith that Jesus can bless. In Mark chapter 2 and verse 5, it tells us this. It says, “And when Jesus saw” whose faith, “their four friends,” like you’re going and reaching your friend and you bring them to church with you, and then Jesus says, you know what, you’ve had so much faith for this friend, I’m going to do a work in their heart. “And he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.'”

Now, I’m going to pause, this is going to be an interesting little teaching here, little aside. Jesus did not say, “You’re healed of your paralysis.” That’s not what he says here. He says, “You’re forgiven of your sins.” It’s interesting, you can come into church with a first need to you that is a second need to Jesus. You can walk in and say, “I need this, God.” And God looks at your life and he says, “No, you need this. You need to learn to trust me.” “I need your provision and a job that pays more money.” And God says, “No, you need to learn surrender and sacrifice.” “But I don’t want surrender and sacrifice, God, I want the–” “But you need surrender and sacrifice.” How many of you know that God will provide the miracle you need before he’ll provide the miracle you want, right?

And in the moment, Jesus says, “There’s something about you.” I know everyone right here, it’s obvious to them, you need healing from paralysis. “But I see something deeper in you that you need. You need forgiveness for your sins and for your life.” And your friends had enough faith to get you here, they thought for your paralysis, but I’m going to do the real miracle in your life right now.

I don’t know what it is you’re believing for, for your friend, for your child, for your relative that you’re going to bring here. What if Jesus does a different miracle in their life? Will you be okay with that? What if he says, “That’s great that you brought him here for this, but I’m going to do this in their life instead.” We have to surrender to the miracle Jesus wants to do in our lives and in others, not the miracle we want, but the miracle we need, not the miracle we want for them, but the miracle that they need in their life.

And so that concept there of letting go of the miracle and trusting God with it is incredibly important. In James chapter 2 and verse 17, the kind of faith that God honors, “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” And you say, well, why did God honor their faith? Because it showed that they did some works. They brought him, their faith was big enough to act on for them. So I wonder, is your faith big enough that you’re acting on it? If your faith is big enough that you’re acting on it, then I think God can honor that. It’s no longer dead faith, it’s living faith. Jesus looks up and says, “I see living faith in you, and therefore I’m going to do something about it.”

And so I want to question and ask you, is that expression of faith that you have expressing itself in action? Are you saying, “I’ve been praying for them, I’ve actually gone and talked to them about my faith and what God’s done in my life, I’ve tried to do it carefully, I’ve tried to not offend them and push them away, I’ve tried to make it a natural, easy conversation, we’ve hung out, I’ve showed interest in their life, I’ve offered to pray for them, and they’ve let me pray for them a few times, and then I did invite them, they didn’t come yet, but I’m actually acting in faith.” I would like to present an active faith that Jesus can bless in my life towards everything God has called me towards. Someone give me an amen on that. I would like for you to present an active faith towards everything you’re believing Jesus for in your life. If you’re believing Jesus for something in your life, act in faith on that.

Not foolish faith. Foolish faith is like, “I want this, I’m going to do my thing my way and then ask God to bless it.” Faith is just like, “I know in God’s word this is an obedient behavior, I’m acting on the word of God, not the whim of man.” Okay, some people will act on their personal whim and then say, “I acted in faith and God needs to bless it.” I’m like, well, that’s not faith, that’s your personal whim, and you’re asking Jesus to bless that. Faith would be, just open up the Word of God, be obedient to it, you know that’s God’s word, and you’re not going to get that one wrong because God’s word’s always right. Okay, so I’m going to act in faith aligned with the word of God, and Jesus says, “I can bless that. I can move. I can do something in your life related to this.”

Stop Criticizing and Start Celebrating

And then the fourth one is, stop criticizing. Stop criticizing and start celebrating when God does something. In Mark chapter 2, verses 5 and 6, it says this. It says, “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there and they questioned him in their hearts,” because they said, okay, two things, two things that were true of the scribes and true of the Jewish people, this is what everyone in their day believed as a Jew. Number one, “no one can forgive sins but God alone.” You can’t do it, right? So, they’re like, you can’t forgive his sins, you’re not God. That would be the immediate thought, that’s like blasphemy, to forgive a sin, because that’s something only God can do, is forgive sins. Now how many of you know it was not blasphemy for Jesus to forgive sins, because Jesus was God, right, God in the flesh. So it’s not actually blasphemy, but they think it is.

Secondly, they thought sickness was a direct result of sin. Okay, so if he’s in sin, then God would strike him down with sickness. And they believed that it could even go back to a parental sin, the parent was sinful, therefore the child was sick, so it would be passed down a generation. So they look and say, “He’s a paralytic because he’s sinful.” And Jesus takes that barrier immediately away and off the table by the very first statement coming out of his mouth. “Your sins are forgiven.” If your sins are forgiven, then there’s no barrier to the miracle that’s about to happen.

Right now, I want to tell you something. The first miracle of every life in this room needs to be the miracle of Jesus saying, “Your sins are forgiven.” It’s the first and greatest miracle, besides being born and being alive itself. Created in the image of God has to be the first and greatest miracle, the fact that we’re created by God in the image of God, that’s our first and greatest miracle, that we get to exist in this universe because of the hand of the God who created us. But the second one is that we have sinned and are separated from him because of our sins, not only now, but we are eternally separated from him because of our sins. And when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, our sins were covered and paid for by him when we accept and believe in Jesus as our savior. And in that moment when we believe, every sin that we would have been judged for is wiped away, eternally forgiven, so that there will be no judgment on the day we die by God. Amen, amen. That’s a beautiful moment, the first and greatest miracle.

And Jesus is offering the first and greatest miracle, but because he’s offered the first and greatest miracle, now he can do the second miracle in his life. And so they’re all questioning him. And in Mark 2:9-12, it says this, “Which is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and take your bed and walk’?” Now, this is one of Jesus’s revelations of his true nature, there’s several statements throughout the New Testament where Jesus indicates his true nature, this is one of them. “But that you may know that the Son of Man,” meaning the son of God, it’s a reference to an Old Testament passage here, “has authority on earth to forgive sins,” which no one has. But he’s saying, “I do have authority to forgive sins.” He said to the paralytic, “I say to you, pick up your bed and go home.” And “he rose and immediately picked up his bed and he went home before them all.”

Here’s the miracle of all miracles, is that when Jesus finally catches a life and he forgives a life for their sins, for all the sins that they’ve done, all the little pieces along the way, “Oh, you’re paralyzed, we’ll take care of that. Oh, you have an addiction, we’ll take care of that. Oh, you struggle with brokenness from your past, I can take care of that. Oh, your heart is heavy and full of depression, I could heal that too.” The important thing is you’ve become a son or daughter of God. And every messed up life that you’ve ever driven past and said, “What a wreck, what a mess, what a dumpster fire.” Did you know that if Jesus just gets a hold of their life, if someone just gets them through the door or through the roof or through the window or down the chimney, I don’t care how you get them there, if you get them there, if you get them there, Jesus will forgive them their sins, and he’ll cleanse them of all the garbage that haunts them. Amen.

And so I look at the moment when they believed, and when they said this is the miracle, the miracle happened when four men picked him up. At that moment, when they went from here to here, the miracle had happened, because Jesus was going to heal him, Jesus was going to forgive him. The miracle was started in the moment. Right now, when you pick someone up in your prayers, I think the miracle is starting today. Right now, when you reach out to that person you love, the miracle is starting today. It’s now. We don’t see it now, but our faith that has happened now is unleashing the miracle that’s going to happen tomorrow.

So, we say, “Yes, Lord, we’ll pick him up, we’ll carry him. It’ll be hard, it’ll be heavy, and at times we’ll struggle, but we’re going to do it.” As soon as Jesus does the miracle and he leaves the house, before he’s out of town, he meets another man who’s struggling in sin and broken and battered, severed and separated from his own people. And his name is Levi. And he says to him, “Your sins can be forgiven too. Why don’t you follow me as well?” And “he got up from his place and followed him.”

I want to tell you, whether you’re broken in sin or you’re rich in sin, Levi was rich in sin, the other, the paralytic, was broken in sin, Levi was rich in sin. But both were separated and both needed forgiveness, and both needed the miracle of grace in their life. So whoever your friend is, you say, “They’re not the dumpster fire, they live in the perfect mansion up on the hill, that’s their life, that’s what they have.” Did you know that Jesus was not afraid to walk up to the worst and the most broken, and the most broken that live up on the hill? It didn’t matter to him. He saw people for who they were and who they could be, and he believed in them, and he saved them over and over and over again.

And so I want us to pray for those that we love that need to know his love this morning, God’s grace over their lives. And then if you’re not yet a follower of Jesus Christ, you can say, “I so need his forgiveness today.” I’m going to invite you to pray with me this morning, wherever you’re seated, and say, “Jesus, forgive me of my sins. I believe you died on the cross and paid the price for those sins. I choose to follow you. I choose to serve you. I need your forgiveness.” I’m going to give you that opportunity.

Would you bow your heads in prayer with me right now? Begin to pray out for that person that you love that needs to come to faith in Christ. Take your first step of faith and say, “Lord, for this coworker, for this friend, for this neighbor, for this family member, I pray grace. I pray an open door. I pray a moment when I can walk them to you, Jesus, maybe in a personal conversation, maybe in a discipleship group or a small group, maybe to one of our church services. I don’t know where the door will open, but Lord, when it does, help me to pick that moment up to carry them to you. They can’t see you, they don’t know that they need you right now, but I see it, I know they need you. Lord, open that door.”

If you’re not yet a follower of Christ, I want to lead you in prayer this morning, right where you’re seated. In a moment, I ask you to raise your hand and say, “Pastor Matt, I’m praying with you, I’m giving my life to Jesus Christ, I want to be a follower of his today.” I’m going to lead you in this prayer. In fact, all across this room, we’ll pray along with you and support you as you pray out to Jesus. But when you do that, I want you to reach a hand up towards heaven and say, “Jesus, I’m reaching out to you. Save me from my sin. Jesus, forgive me of my sin. Jesus, wash me of everything that I’ve ever done against you.”

And so right now, as we begin to pray, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if you’re ready to do that, would you just reach a hand up towards heaven and say, “Lord, forgive me. God, give me your grace.” Reach your hand up high and say, “Lord, I’m reaching out to you, save me now, wash me now, purify me now.” Amen and amen.

Those that are joining in prayer right now, church, would you just join in? Would you pray with me? Let’s pray together right now.

Jesus, thank you that you gave your life for every sin that I ever committed. I believe you’re the son of God who lived a sinless life and died on the cross to pay for my sins and rose from the dead to give eternal life to all who believe. I believe in you, and I’m following you for the rest of my life. You’re my Lord. You’re my Savior. Amen.

And amen. Would you give a hand for those that prayed with us today? Amen.

Church, would you stand with us? We’re going to worship as we go. I want to encourage you right now, go out. When you walk through the back doors here or the front doors and you walk out and you head out to the parking lot, you are literally heading out into the highways and byways where Jesus said, “I want you to go out there, and when you get out there, I want you to compel people to come in.” Would you do that? Go out, compel people to come into the kingdom of God. Let’s worship as we go.

We have people up here to pray for you, I’m inviting our prayer team up. And if you have anything, you need a miracle over a family member, God to lead a kid to Christ, or whoever it is, you come on up, and we’re going to pray that God will do miracles in your family, miracles in your life. God bless you. We’ll see you next Sunday. Take care, everyone. He’s alive.