Mark 2

 Here again are my rough (very rough) notes for my message on this passage.  

Sin, Forgiveness, and Healing

  Mark 2:1-12

In the Bible, there are several words translated Sin. Each one covers a different aspect of how we do things that are destructive to ourselves and disobedient to God.

The word used in the passage we are looking at today carries the idea of missing the mark. Like if someone is shooting for a target and hitting something else.

Sin - Missing the Mark

Some may want to say what does it matter if we aren’t exactly right as long as we were trying hard. That’s what matters isn’t it, our good intentions?

However, if someone misses the mark with their shotgun and blow out the tire of your car are you okay that they missed the mark?

What if a surgeon misses the mark and takes off the wrong leg or doesn’t get all the cancer?

When the Apollo 13 spacecraft had an explosion and the craft was disabled and the flight controllers had to find a way to get the astronauts home. The makes of the Movie summarizes what Gene Krantz NASA’s Director of Flight operations as saying “Failure is not an Option.”

Missing the mark not being where God wants us to be is just as fatal as if the people at Mission Control missed the mark with Apollo 13.  

When we begin looking at Mark chapter 2 we see that the crowds are still there blocking any entry to the house.

We see no evidence that anyone looked back and saw these people with their burden willing to move out of the way.

Here again people are hindering others from getting to Jesus.

The friends aren’t to be dissuaded.

Side not here: We need to be thankful for friends that are willing to do what they have to get people to Jesus.

The friends climb up on the roof and begin to tear through.

If we think of someone tearing through our houses today it would destroy it. But the construction of the day the roofs were made of sticks laid across the roof beams and then covered with mud that would dry and become like plaster.

After this was done the homeowners or I have to believe the guys who did it could lay the sticks back in place and re-mud it and it would be as good as new.

Jesus then does something that angered the teachers of the Law and may have made those who looked on question.

Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus literally said, “What has caused you to miss the make is gone.”

This was by all accounts blasphemous. The Jews believed only God could forgive and only God could make that kind of pronouncement.

Then it says Jesus knew in His spirit.

HOW? By the Holy Spirit.

So Jesus poses a rhetorical question? Which is easier or the word could also be translated better. To offer forgiveness or to do a miracle?

The answer is neither is easier or better in human strength and wisdom.

We can’t grant forgiveness for God and neither do we know what is best.

Only God can do these things. Only God can cleanse the unclean.

I want to pause a second and look at the other way this Greek word can be used. With is well or better. Because I think Jesus is asking both. Which is easier and which is better.

We think we know what is easier and better in our lives and in the lives of others. The truth is we don’t.

Jesus told his disciples it is better to be maimed in this life and make it to heaven (Matthew 18:2-9). Scholars agree that Jesus isn’t saying we should physically hurt ourselves but that we need to realize that getting to heaven is worth more than any comfort we could have on earth.

You may think that ease you want in this life is what you need but Jesus knows that the ease you need is something longer lasting.

It’s easy not to diet but what really makes life easier?

It’s easier to give into your fleshly desires but is it easier or better in the long run? No.

What is best for this man?

Jesus knows but

Jesus then says, in order to prove I can forgive, I will do what is equally impossible for a mere man. He did the miracle.

Jesus is showing like we saw in the previous chapter that Jesus can make right what is broken, he can cleanse what is unclean.

Jesus can make things right and take us from a place where we have missed the mark to the place God want us to be.

 

Mark shows this again by what he tells us next about the calling of Levi(matthew).

Mark 2:13-17

Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus is showing not just that he can do miracles but that he can transform sinners.

The problem was that the teachers of the Law saw Jesus as missing the mark. They thought Jesus was where he shouldn’t be.

If you can’t help you shouldn’t be in a sick ward, if you’re there you have missed the mark. However, if you’re a doctor then that is exactly where you should be.

They couldn’t see Jesus as one that could forgive sin and transform people. They could not see him as a doctor.  

What doesn’t this teach us?

1.   That we should just hang out with sinners pretending they are saints.

2.   That we should participate in sin.

What does this teach us?

1.   Jesus came to bring forgiveness to bring people who have missed it and bring them back to God.

2.   Jesus knows who and what is correct.

 

Extra: Verses 18-22 They disciples of John and the Pharisees fasted because they were didn’t have something. Jesus was saying his disciples had what they needed.

 Photo by Rasmus Gerdin on Unsplash