Clean (Luke 5:12–16) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 39)

Transcript

JRNT 91
7/20/2025
In Plain Sight – The Gospel of Luke (Part 40)
Luke 5:17-26
Jesse Randolph

Well, one sure way to tell that a critic of Christianity is not to be taken seriously is when they say, not only that Jesus isn’t Lord and the Jesus isn’t Savior or that Jesus isn’t God. But when they take the further step of saying that Jesus never existed. That He is some sort of ancient myth. There are arguments like that, that are made by this group known as the “Jesus Atheists.” There is one named Thomas Brodie, who wrote: Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus. These are not book recommendations. There’s one named Richard Carrier, who wrote: On the Historicity of Jesus. Then, Earl Doherty, who wrote: The Jesus Puzzle. Each of these men, and each of their arguments can be completely and totally rejected out of hand. Not only because the overwhelming majority of secular and Christian historians have found their arguments historically, to be utterly hollow. But more importantly, their arguments conflict with the Biblical record which testifies, not only to Jesus’ existence, but His very noticeable public ministry, right?

When the eternal Son of God came to earth. When He came down from heaven. When He left glory. When He put on flesh. When He set His foot on this planet to visit His people. When He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He did so in a very public manner. He didn’t come to this world to sort of hide out in obscurity. He didn’t shut Himself off in Joseph and Mary’s basement. He didn’t lurk as some shadowy figure off in the distance. No. Through His teaching in the synagogues. Through His conversations on the roads and in the marketplaces. Through His encounters with the sick and the diseased and the demon possessed. Through His run-ins with the religious elite of the day. He had a very public ministry. Where He was seeing all sorts of people in their different states of sickness and sin and where He Himself was seen by others. His ministry was very much carried out in plain sight. Which we are going to see in our text for this morning, in Luke 5: 17-26. Go and turn there with me, to Luke 5:17-26. God’s word reads:

“And it happened that one day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing. And behold, some men were carrying on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down before Him. But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus. And seeing their faith, He said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’ The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, ‘Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?’ But Jesus, knowing their reasonings, answered and said to them, ‘Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, “Your sins have been forgiven you,” 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,’ - He said to the paralytic – ‘I say to you, get up, and, picking up your stretcher, go home.’ And immediately he rose up before them, and picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God. And astonishment seized them all and they began glorifying God; and they were filled with fear, saying, ‘We have seen remarkable things today.’”

I’ve broken the text this morning, which is rich and so powerful, into six sections. Here are six points for this morning.
Verse 17 we’ll see the: Visible Force
Verses 18-19 are: Visible Faith
Verse 20 is: Visible Forgiveness
Verses 21-24 are: Visible Friction
Verse 25: Visible Fruit
Verse 26: Visible Fear

Let’s start at verse 17 with Visible Force
“And it happened that one day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.”

So, the scene starts with those familiar words, “And it happened.” Luke is making it clear, as he often does, he’s transitioning to a new scene. Note right away what our Lord is doing, He was “teaching.” “And it happened that one day He was teaching.” Jesus was carrying out His primary role, the primary function of His ministry. To be a teacher of the truth, a proclaimer of the “good news” Luke 4:43 the “good news of the kingdom of God.”

As we’ve already seen, Jesus did do a lot of teaching. So, Luke’s lack of specificity here doesn’t exactly zero in on the specific scene that we’re thinking of. Like, where? . . . where did this scene take place? What was the location? What was the timeline? Luke doesn’t give us all the details. But Mark does. I’m going to ask you to turn back with me to Mark’s Gospel. Go ahead and keep a finger in Mark’s Gospel. Because we’ll be going there multiple times today, as we did last week. But in Mark 2, we get Mark giving us a few more details about the location, the setting, and what was going on in this scene. Look at Mark 2:3 just to begin, it says, “And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men.” Then verse 4, “And being unable to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof over where He was; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the mat where the paralytic was lying.” And then verse 5, “And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.’”

So, this is definitely the same scene, right? This is not a coincidence. These are different accounts of the same account. But then, look up the page at Mark 2:1 which gives us more of the context and it says, “And when He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home.” So, tying in Mark’s recording of this event, by cross-referencing the words of this, the second Gospel with the words of Luke in the third Gospel, we get a clearer picture of where this scene took place. It took place, as Mark says, in “Capernaum.” The same location of the miraculous haul of fish. The same location of the cleansing of the leper that we saw last week. We’re also told when this scene took place. It took place, Mark 2:1 says, “several days afterward.” Well, “several days” after what? Several days after the healing of the lepers, that’s the context of Mark. If you look up at Mark 1:40-45, right before this is the cleansing of the leper that we studied last week.

Back to our text, Luke 5:17, “And it happened that one day He was teaching” Luke tells us. So, on this day, just a few days after the cleansing of the leper, while still in the town of Capernaum. And then look at what comes next, still in verse 17, “and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.” Now, this is the first time in Luke’s Gospel that we encounter either of these groups, the “Pharisees” and the “tax collectors” These are terms, if we’ve been around church at all, or for any amount of time, that where most of us are familiar with. Having studied the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That term “Pharisees” is loaded with all sorts of cultural and stereotypical baggage in our day. You know, a “Pharisee,” to many of us today is somebody who takes their religion a little too seriously. Somebody who is stuffy and pietistic and Puritanical. Somebody who looks over the shoulders of how other people carry out their faith and looks down on them condescendingly and disapprovingly.

What does the Bible teach? What do the four Gospels teach about the “Pharisees”? What does the Bible teach about this second group, the “teachers of law”? Well, the name “Pharisees” comes from a Hebrew verb parash, which means “to separate.” The “Pharisees” whose origins go back some 200 years before the birth of Christ, they were known as “the separated ones.” They were the separatists. But they weren’t separate from the state like we think of separatists today. They were separatists from other Jews. They separated from those who didn’t take their treatment of the Mosaic Law as seriously as the Pharisees would have liked them too. The “Pharisees” held to the words of Leviticus 10 that the people of Israel were commanded “to separate between the holy and the profane.” To distinguish “between the unclean and the clean” and they took that very seriously. They were willing to separate from fellow Jews who deviated from the Pharisee’s interpretation of the Law.

Speaking of which the Pharisees by this point had adopted a very unique interpretation of the Law. They were committed, not only to strictly adhering to the Mosaic requirements, what we see in the first five of our Bibles, what they called the Torah - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They also wove into their interpretation of the Law, various oral traditions. That they ascribed to Moses, that they ascribed to previous generations of elders in Israel. They believed that it was their call, as the Pharisees, as the separated ones, to spur Israel on to greater and greater obedience to the Law. The way that they did this is what’s interesting. Because they ended up building a fence around the Law and they would say it that way. They were listing out these hundreds of extra-biblical principles – these Pharisaical regulations that covered every aspect conceivable of daily living. The whole idea was to protect the Law. To not even let someone get even close to violating the Law. We do know of some of these regulations, just by reading the Gospel accounts.

We know that Jesus had these multiple encounters with the Pharisees in our New Testament and we see Him criticizing their elevation of their traditions, their man-made traditions. Like in Luke 11, He interacts with a group of Pharisees, and says this to them in Luke 11:42, “But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb and yet disregard justice and the love of God.” Or in Matthew 23, Jesus addresses these crowds and His disciples in verse 5 of Matthew 23, speaking of the Pharisees, He says, “They do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments.”

Then there are those interactions that Jesus had with the Pharisees where He speaks of and criticizes their rituals of fasting and oath-taking and handwashing, of all things. In fact, turn with me to Mark again. This time to Mark 7. In Mark 7 we have Mark, painting this picture of the types of battles that Jesus would have with the Pharisees, over their traditions, over these fences that they attempted to build around the Law. Mark 7, picking up in verse 1. It says, “And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with defiled hands, that is, unwashed.” Now, look at this summary in verses 3 and 4 about the types of traditions the Pharisees followed as it related to washing in preparation for meals. It says, “For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.” Reading on, verse 5, “And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, ‘Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with defiled hands?”

Now, the background to this statement, is that there was a provision in the actual Law, in Leviticus 15:11, which required that hands be “rinsed.” But that’s all that the Law said. That the hands be “rinsed.” The Law didn’t go any further than that. That’s where the fence of Pharisaical tradition came in. Which created regulations about: the color of the water that hands had to be washed in and the type of vessel that the water had to be poured out of. There were even regulations about how high the pitcher had to be held up, as it was being poured over hands that were being washed. How pure one was if they washed up to the wrists, verses how pure they were if they washed up to the elbows. These are the types of regulations, the ‘fence’ keeping regulations that the Pharisees enacted. So, they were the keepers of the Law, the keepers of the “fence”, you could say.

Now, what about these “teachers of the Law”, back to Luke 5:17. Luke mentions that they were both Pharisees and “teachers of the Law.” Well, in Greek, that word for “teachers of the Law” is just one word. It’s a compound word; it’s a fun word to say – Nomodidaskaloi. It just combines two simple Greek words; but it mashes them together. Nomos means “law”. Didaskaloi means “teacher.” They were “law teachers” “teachers of the Law.” They were the Jewish experts in interpreting the Law. We see them elsewhere referred to in the New Testament Gospels as “lawyers” But not in our English or American conception of the term, like a barrister, or an advocate. More like they were learned in the Law. They were scholars of the Law. They’re also called elsewhere “scribes”, these teachers of the Law. Matthew 5:20, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” Jesus says. Or look down the page in Luke 5:21, it says, “The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason . . .” He’s talking about the same group as mentioned back in verse 17 “the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.” There was an overlap, in other words, between these groups. There were Pharisees and scribes, Pharisees and lawyers, Pharisees and law teachers. But there wasn’t always this perfect overlap, because you could be a Pharisee, but not necessarily a teacher of the Law. All teachers of the Law were Pharisees, but not all Pharisees were teachers of the Law. The Pharisees were typically laymen, and the teachers of the Law were more of the learned class. These were the PhDs in Theology.

Well, as we turn our eyes back to the scene here in Luke 5. We see that both of these groups, “Pharisees and teachers of the Law” were right there in Capernaum. “And it happened, it says, that one day He was teaching, and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the Law sitting there.” They are “sitting there” listening to Jesus’ teaching. What was He teaching? We’re not told. But as strong as a candidate as any would be He was teaching “the good news, Luke 4:43, of the kingdom of God.”

What I find fascinating is that just about any other day of the week, these Pharisees would have otherwise been eating that message up and wanting to hear this message that Jesus came to proclaim. That’s because, like any other Jews during this time, they were looking for the return of the promised Messiah. They were looking for the Messiah who had been promised to them, to come. The only problem was, through their tradition-colored glasses their judgment of what the Messiah’s coming would look like had been colored. It had become clouded and now, they believe, by this time, that it would be their Law-keeping or even more specifically their fence-keeping, which would usher in the coming of Messiah to deliver Israel.

So, when Jesus came, as we’ll see and He starts associating with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners. When He comes, and He doesn’t insist that His disciples comply with the Pharisees man-made traditions. When He starts saying things like that, He is Lord over the Sabbath, as He’ll say in Mark 2 it’s really no wonder that this group of Pharisees and law teachers rejected Him. Because He came preaching a message of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself. But this was a group, which by definition, was utterly self-righteous. They thought they could earn something, get something, even force God’s hand, to bring back the Messiah through their own compliance with self-imposed legal demands. They’d been totally swallowed up by empty formalism. Rituals and ceremonies and fasting and tithing and phylacteries and ostentatious prayers. This was a group, who as Jesus Himself would say later whose hearts were far from Him.

Back to our text, verse 17. This is the group that’s gathered around Jesus, they’re “sitting there.” He[s] teaching.” They had come, Luke says, “from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.” That’s pretty remarkable, geographically, to know that Jesus was already on the Pharisees radar, all the way from Jerusalem, some 80 miles away. They were coming all the way up to Capernaum, that long haul from one city to another, because His reputation was spreading, and was continuing to spread. They were coming all the way from Jerusalem up to Capernaum, to check in on this man and to check in on His teaching. To see what sort of miracles or other stunts He might try to perform. They were there to observe Him and to watch Him. They were doing so with great suspicion and skepticism.

So, here are these Pharisees, these teachers of the Law. This Visible Force of authority. This Visible Force of religiosity and power and they’re “sitting there” before Jesus. They’re just waiting for Him to slip up. They’re waiting for Him to fall into their trap. Luke, very briefly, shifts the focus back to Jesus at the end of verse 17, with this clause, saying, “And the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.”
Luke often links that word – “power” – Dunamis – to healing in his Gospel. Luke 4:36, “For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” Luke 6:19, “And all the crowd was trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all.” Luke, when he links power and healing, isn’t saying here, even in Luke 5:17 that there were any times where Jesus didn’t have the power to heal. It’s not like His power to heal was somehow limited at any one point in time. No. The power of the Lord, when He says this, “the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.” Luke is simply calling attention to Jesus’ inherent, divine ability to heal on this specific occasion. He’s setting the stage literarily.

So, we’ve considered the Visible Force that was there in Jesus’ presence. These Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from “every village of Galilee and Judea and from [as far off as] Jerusalem.” Now, Luke is going to redirect our thoughts toward some new players in this account. A group which had evident faith.

For our second point: Visible Faith.
Look at verses 18 and 19, “And behold, some men were carrying on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down before Him. But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.” These verses shed more light about the setting in which Jesus was teaching. It was an indoor setting. It says they brought this man in. It was a crowded setting, so crowded that they didn’t use the doorway, the normal way you would enter a building. They came through the roof, as we’ll see in a moment. Mark, again, gives us a few more details about this. Go back to Mark, if you would, to Mark 2. I believe I have already highlighted some of these passages, but these will help us set the context, again, for what Luke records.

Mark 2:1 starts, “And when He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room, not even near the door; and He was speaking the word to them. And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men. And being unable to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof over where He was; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the mat where the paralytic was lying.” We do have a few more details from Mark here. Like the fact that Jesus was teaching in a home in Capernaum. That’s new information. Or the fact that there were four men who laid this man down through the roof. That’s new information that Luke doesn’t have.

But who was this paralyzed man? Who was he? The man mentioned in both Mark and Luke, he’s also mentioned in Matthew we’re not told. We’re not given the name. We don’t’ have any sense of how old this man was. Or how long he had been in this condition. All we know is that he was a paralytic, and that he was on a “stretcher”, as Luke says and he was on a “mat”, as Mark says. We know he would have been extremely limited in his strength. Extremely limited in his motion. He would have been very weak, potentially with muscles that were totally atrophied. But the extent of his affliction. The cause of his affliction. The duration of his affliction, we’re not given that information. All we know is what Luke, the physician, has told us. All we know is what Mark has told us. Which is that he “was paralyzed.” He couldn’t move around. He had to be carried. These men, these four men, these four friends with evident faith, with visible faith, they brought their friend to see Jesus. Look back at Luke 5:18, “And behold some men were carrying on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed. And they were trying to bring him in and to set him down before Him.”

Whenever I read this passage, I naturally think of how several in my life, when I was unsaved and when I was in rebellion against God. Did for me spiritually, what these four friends were doing for this man physically. They brought me to Christ. Did you have that experience? Can you think of that person who brought you to Christ. Who brought you the good news of the gospel? Praise the Lord for faithful people like that. A couple of years ago, I gave that challenge to our church, about: “Who’s Your One?” Who’s that one person that you’re willing to write down in your prayer journal and share with, repeatedly. That you’re burdened for to give Christ to or to bring to Christ? I wonder how that’s going? Don’t lose steam. Don’t lose motivation. Right here, we have an example of this man, I think we could even say, was “the one” of these four men as they sought to bring him to Jesus.

The account picks up in verse 19, “But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.” Now, sadly, there have always been those who for a variety of different reasons, have made it their mission, for some their life’s work to hunt for and dig up so called inconsistencies in the Bible. Believe it or not, this passage is a chosen target for many. This is the reason, in Luke, here in verse 19, we’re told that these men let their friend down through the tiles on this roof. Well, you go to Mark, and we just saw that the men “removed the roof over where He was”, it says, that the meaning is, they literally “unroofed the roof.” Mark also says that they “dug an opening” into this roof. I say, roof, by the way, from California. I hear ruff, a lot. I think it’s roof, two O’s, side to side. Anyway, I digress. They let this man through the roof, through this opening. And the question is, was this man let down through tiles, as Luke says? Or was this man let down through a roof? Did they dig an opening and remove the roof, as Mark says?

Now, I just have to say, can you imagine being so dead set, I would even say, hell-bent on disproving the truth and the veracity of the Word of God; that you make a career out of comparing what Mark said about this roof to what Luke said about this roof. Like, is your life going to be any more fulfilled, if one was right and one was wrong? If one was telling the truth about the roof and one concocted this massive scheme whereby he was going to give different details about the roof. Sadly, that is where a lot of the critical scholarship of our day comes from. From big-brained individuals with blackened hearts, who are arguing not only from a position of unbelief, but ultimately from disbelief. Who are arguing from a position of refusing to submit to the authority of the Word of God and trying to do what literally no one has been able to do for centuries prior, is to find one inconsistency in it. You can’t do it. “The law of the Lord is perfect.”

I digress. What’s actually going on in this passage about tiles and a roof? I’m glad you asked. The word used for “tiles” here in Luke 5:19, is keramon it comes from a Greek word keramos. That word keramos can also be translated clay. So, the word can depict, it’s wide enough in its range of meaning, it can depict not only tiled roofs like we think about in any picture of a Mediterranean kind of landscape. But it can also refer simply to sunbaked mud, clay, which can be mashed into piles which are like tiles, resemble tiles. So, the word is broad enough in its range and its scope to mean the kind of roof that Mark would say these individuals dug out. Or broad enough to encompass the word that Luke uses here for tiles. Tiles of clay, you could say. So, is there a contradiction between Luke and Mark? Answer: No. Did the critics win on this one? Answer: No. Is this one of those gotcha moments, where we have to say, Opps, I guess we were wrong about the Word of God, maybe it does have contradictions? Answer: No.

What I really would like us to zero in on though, for a moment here is the perseverance of these four men. They had no way to bring their friend in on the stretcher through the doorway, like a normal person would. But they were undeterred. So, they took him all the way up to the roof. Note the ingenuity and the perseverance of these men. It really ought to make us think and pause, at least for a moment about our own level of commitment. Our own level of determination. Our own level of diligence in our faith. Not only as we bring people to the feet of Jesus, as it were. As we share the hope of Christ with them. But just consider the example of these men for a moment. Sit back and reflect on it. Does your zeal for Jesus Christ in any way mirror or resemble theirs? Do you have that same tenacious faith and determination to get to Him, as they did? Are you willing to labor and sweat and toil to get closer to Him? To be in His presence?

I’m not saying that in any sort of hyper mystical way and I’m not saying that in some very specific means of application. We are not called to go climb on roofs, and lower our friends on cots, down to visit somebody teaching. That’s not the application here. But maybe the application is waking up 15 minutes earlier every morning to draw near to Him in prayer. Maybe the application is carving out a physical space in your place of residence where you can have an undistracted time to study His Word and draw near Him that way. Maybe it’s getting closer to Him by being diligent to pursue relationships, authentic and godly relationships where brothers and sisters in Christ will ask you hard questions and get to know you for you who you really are and spur you on in your walk with Jesus. That could be the application here.

Recentering ourselves on this scene. There are these four men. They’ve just taken this friend of theirs on this mat up this exterior staircase, that’s what it would have looked like up to the roof of this house, this building. They’ve just clawed their way through this clay to create this opening to lower their friend. There’s the paralytic himself. One wonders what he must have been thinking through all of this, as he’s looking up and going down, looking up at the sky, as he’s lowered down into this room. Then, we think about Jesus, He’s the one doing the teaching in this scene. Was He distracted? Was He just continuing on with His teaching? I mean, imagine if somebody repelled through the roof right now, in the middle of the sermon, it would be a little distracting. I’m not sure if I would keep going. Probably, I would. But then, there’s the people. Right? The people, the people that make up the crowd. Jesus was teaching them and there’s this rustling now happening above their heads. They see this pop of daylight coming through the roof and then that little hole starts to open a bit wider. Now, debris is falling down, and sticks and mud and dirt and other debris is falling to the floor. Then, all of a sudden, they see this man on a mat, a stretcher, being laid down in their midst. Most likely the scene has the four men mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, holding a rope that was attached to each of the four corners, as he’s being lowered in. But it would have been surreal. That brings us to our third point. We’ve seen Visible Force, the presence of the Pharisees. We’ve seen Visible Faith. Now, we have:

Visible forgiveness
Look at verse 20, it says, “And seeing their faith, He said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’” “Seeing their faith.” That is quite the interesting expression, isn’t it? Because “faith”, by definition, is something we hold or affirm internally. Faith is not something we “see”. Hebrews 11, in fact, says almost in the exact opposite way. Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” So, you and I, mere mortals that we are. We can’t walk into a restaurant full of strangers and look into the hearts of all those around us and say – awe, that’s a person of faith, that person is saved. I will one day be in glory with that one. Oh, that one is definitely hell-bound. That’s not our prerogative. That’s not our sphere.

But Jesus could do that. Jesus, we’re told in John 2:25, “had no need that anyone bear witness concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” Jesus would say, Himself in John 10:14, “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me.” So, Jesus, in other words, as God. Has and always has had this inherent power and ability to see into the hearts of man. To see man’s faith or his lack thereof.

Here in Luke 5:20, of course, the faith that Jesus “saw” was this very visible expression of faith. He “saw” the faith of these four men, who brought their friend to Him as they lowered this paralyzed friend on this mat into His presence. He “saw” the faith of the paralyzed man himself, who allowed himself to be lowered into this room. As Jesus looked up, like everyone else surrounding this teaching scene, in this house in Capernaum as the hole in the roof opened and the man was lowered through this opening as the ropes and the muscles of those who were lowering the mat, were flexing and stressing. He “saw” their faith. What was the object of their faith? Well, the object of their faith was Jesus. They had faith that He was heaven-sent. They had faith that He could heal. And their faith was shown to be real by their efforts to do anything they could do, to get their paralyzed friend in His presence.

Look what comes next. Still in verse 20, “And seeing their faith, He said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’” Note that Jesus there didn’t say, “God forgives you.” No. He said to the paralyzed man directly, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”
Just like He said to the woman who kissed His feet and anointed those feet with perfume in Luke 7:48. He said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.”
Just as He said in Luke 8:48 to the woman who had that hemorrhage for 12 years. He says, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”
Just as He said to the ten lepers in Luke 17:19, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”
Just as He said to blind Bartimaeus in Luke 18:42, “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.”
That’s what He’s doing here. As God, He’s proclaiming that this man’s faith has saved him. His sins are forgiven.

Of course, there’s only One who can ultimately declare that someone’s sins have been forgiven. There’s only One who can ultimately declare that a person has been saved. You can’t make that proclamation. I can’t make that proclamation. In fact, I’ve never made that proclamation. I’ve never used the phrase, “Oh, you’re definitely saved.” “Oh, you know what you are? You’re absolutely going to glory.” “You’re totally a believer.” You know why I don’t say that? Because it’s not my prerogative to do so. That is not my proclamation to make nor is it yours. That proclamation, that declaration belongs to God alone. Only God, in an ultimate sense, say, “Your faith has saved you.” Only God, in an ultimate sense can say, “Your sins have been forgiven.” Only He has that right. Only He has that ability.

Back to our text, verse 20 when Jesus said to the paralyzed man on the stretcher, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” He was making a declaration, a pronouncement which was reserved for God and God alone. Not only that, as He did so, He was fulfilling prophecy. I know this sounds so ancient at this point. Because this was like a year ago, when we were in this text. But in Luke 1:77, Zechariah, remember him? Father of John the Baptist, as he’s prophesying over his son, and who his son would be the forerunner to Jesus. He says this, Luke 1:77, that the coming Messiah would “give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” Well, here He’s doing so saying “your sins have been forgiven.”

Sin is what had led this man, this paralytic, like any man at this time, to violate God’s law. Sin in that more indirect sense is what has led to this man being paralyzed in the first place. The reason we have paralytics in this world is that it is a fallen world, cursed by sin. Sin was the direct cause of this man’s spiritual paralysis. The only solution for this man’s sin problem is what it has always been, faith. Jesus forgave this man’s sin on the basis of faith. “Seeing their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”
In this moment, Jesus declared this man’s sins, Psalm 103:12 “as far as the east is from the west.”
In this moment, this man’s sins, which once had been “scarlet”, Isaiah 1:18 were not washed “as white as snow.”
In this moment, all of his sins, Micah 7:19, had been “cast into the depths of the sea.”

Sitting there in Capernaum, in this house, having heard Jesus teach what He was teaching having seen this paralytic lowered through the roof. Having now, heard Jesus declare that this man’s sins were forgiven were the Pharisees, these teachers of the law. No doubt stewing and brewing. No doubt having a really hard time with what had just happened. No doubt confounded and disturbed by the claims that Jesus was making to this ability to forgive this man’s sin. Had He just said what they thought He said?

The scene was about to intensify, as we now see in verses 21-24. This is our fourth point, where we’re going to see now:

Visible Friction
Verse 21, “The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, ‘Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?’ But Jesus, knowing their reasonings, answered and said to them, ‘Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, “Your sins have been forgiven you,” 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,’ He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, get up, and, picking up your stretcher, go home.’”

I mentioned this earlier, but those terms “teachers of the law” and “scribes” are synonymous. One of the reasons we can say that is what we see here at the beginning of verse 21, where Luke now, moves to describing that group He had called the “Pharisees and the teachers of the law” in verse 17, as now the “scribes and the Pharisees” in verse 21. He’s referring still to the same two categories, the same two groups. It’s the same scene, the same house in Capernaum, the same Jesus, the same paralytic and the same two groups. And note, as least initially, how these “scribes and Pharisees” had at least in one sense some sound Biblical thinking.
They knew that there was only one God. They were good monotheists. They affirmed the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!”
They knew that God was the One spoken of in the passages I mentioned just a minute ago. They knew that God was the One who declared sins to be forgiven “as far as the east is from the west.”
They knew that God was the One who took once-scarlet stains of sin and washed them “white as snow.”
They knew that it was God who “cast” sins “into the depths of the sea.”

The rub was, to attribute to Himself a power that God had. For Jesus to do so, as though He were God. From their vantage point, to rob God of His glory that was blasphemy. Blasphemy was not merely about cursing the name of God. Or ascribing profane ideas to the name of God. Blasphemy, in these times, was also equated with acquitting yourself to God. So, the thought process of these scribes and these Pharisees the Pharisees and law teachers, it followed what in formal logic is knows as a syllogism.
Major premise – God alone can forgive sins
Minor premise – Jesus, a man here, is claiming and pretending that He can forgive sins.
Conclusion – Jesus is a blasphemer; He’s broken the Mosaic Law.
And blasphemy was a huge deal, under the law. It was a sin punishable by death. Leviticus 24:16 says, “Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him.”

So, from the vantage point of these religious leaders Jesus was undoubtedly blaspheming God. They asked this question among themselves, “Who is this, verse 21, who speaks blasphemies?” The sense here is “who does He think He is!?” In their eyes, He’s committing a capitol crime. He’s eligible for the death penalty. He is making a claim to be God and like they ask here “Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

Isn’t this such an amazing twist? Look at what Luke records for us in verse 22. Jesus had just done what only God can do by declaring this man’s sins forgiven. And so now, Luke, moved by the Holy Spirit, tells us now that Jesus read their minds. So, first, He reads the hearts of the friends of the paralytic when He “[saw] their faith”. And now, He’s going look into the minds of the scribes and the Pharisees, to see what it is that their talking about. They “began to reason,” it says in verse 21, and “knowing their reasonings,” it says in verse 22. He knew what they were talking about. He was right there in the inner court with them.

It’s as though Luke here is tipping Theophilus off to the fact of this ultimate answer. That Jesus is God. He’s dropping these crumbs of truth all along the way, so the scribes and the Pharisees, they’re upset because He’s claiming to be God. Luke is saying to Theophilus, by virtue of the fact that Jesus can read their minds “Oh, He is God.” That’s the punch line. He knew what they were thinking. He knew the depths of their internal deliberations. Before a word was even on their tongues, Psalm 139:4 He knew it. Luke here is affirming what the author of Hebrews would affirm in Hebrews 4:13, “here is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account to give.” What Luke revealed here about these scribes and these Pharisees in Jesus’ day, as He looked in on their reasonings is no less true of us today. There is no thought we might entertain. There’s no word we’re thinking. There’s no plot in our minds. There’s no streak of deceit in our hearts that Jesus, the omniscient, omnipotent God, doesn’t see, or already know.

Earlier this week there was a story that went viral. I’m somewhat reluctant to even share, but I’m going to go ahead and share it, to make the point. This story went viral about this wealthy CEO who was at a Cold Play concert. Right? Some of you are nodding, you know the story. He and his love interest, who was not his wife, were caught on the “kiss cam” at the concert. When they were found out, when the giant camera points to them, and they realize “oh no, we’re caught, we’ve been found out” they do what sinners do, they duck, they hide. The man ducked like a missile had just cruised over his head, out of that camera shot. And the woman, the lady who was not his wife, turned her back to the camera, so as not to have her face shown anymore.

The obvious principle there is that our sin, like the Bible teaches, does always find us out. And tying it back to our text in Luke 5:22, the point here is Jesus sees it all. He sees all of our thoughts, all of our ideas, all of our reasonings, all of our desires He sees it all. He saw it here in 1st century Capernaum and He sees it all today.

So, back to our text. Look at the question He, our Lord, poses to these “scribes and Pharisees” at the end of verse 22. It says, “He answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts?’” Now, that alone must have set them back. I mean, surely these religious elites were perplexed at what He was asking them. “How does He know what we’re reasoning in our hearts?” “How does He know what we’re thinking?” No doubt, the hair is starting to stand up on the back of their necks. He then poses this question to the same gathering in verse 23, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins have been forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk?’” So, He knew what they were thinking. He knew “their reasonings.” He knew which gears were turning in their minds. He knew that they thought they had Him in a pickle. He knew that they thought they had busted Him for blasphemy. So, He asks them that question, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins have been forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk?’”

Which would have been easier, is the question? Answer: Well, the easier of the two options would have been to say, “Your sins have been forgiven you.” Why? Well, because anyone can “say” those words. Anyone can say the words “Your sins have been forgiven you.” Just like anyone can “say” “I’m a member of English royalty.” But then, you try to walk into Buckingham Palace, and you see how that goes for you. Right? The words can be said. So, though He had actually already forgiven the sins of this paralytic. To the Pharisees, who He still has to contend with, who are still looking on Him merely saying those words, He knew, weren’t going to prove anything to them. Since forgiveness, like faith as we saw earlier is something that is not seen by others.

The two options that Jesus presented to the “scribes and Pharisees” here though it was equally easy, in one sense, to mouth the words, “Your sins have been forgiven you.” Or “Rise, get up and walk.” Only one of those commands had actual risk attached to it. Only one could physically and visibly be disproven and that was which command? The command to “Get up and rise and walk.” Telling this paralytic “Rise, get up and walk” would only lead to two outcomes. Either the man would get up and walk, proving Jesus, in that moment, to be not only victorious, but be the God who can forgive sins. Or this man, after hearing that command, would still be laying flat on his mat, on his stretcher lame and limp and still unable to move and Jesus would be shown to be a fraud and a blasphemer.

Jesus took the more difficult option. He chose to perform the miracle which they could see to prove that this man’s sins had been forgiven and that He was in fact, God. Look at verse 24, this is Jesus speaking, “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,’ He said to the paralytic ‘I say to you, get up, and, picking up your stretcher, go home.’” Note, Jesus there doesn’t say “I have authority.” It doesn’t say it that way. He uses the phrase, the term “Son of Man.” “The Son of Man has authority.” That’s a title that’s used 69 times in the Gospels for Jesus, all by way of self-identification. It’s His favorite reference for Himself, or to Himself. It’s used 25 times in the Gospel of Luke alone. So, we’ll have plenty of time to tease it out, as we go throughout the series. But the point is this is His chosen form of self-designation. It’s a title that stresses Jesus’ perfect humanity. We’re all “sons of man” in the sense that we’re descendants of Adam. But He is the perfect “Son of Man”, the perfect human, the spotless Lamb. But it’s also a title related to His deity. Which we get from Daniel 7. I won’t turn you there, but you’re welcome to turn there. We’re in Daniel 7:13, it says, “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and came near before Him. It’s a picture of God the Son and God the Father. And to Him meaning, to the Son, the Son of Man, was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not be taken away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”

Here, in verse 24 of Luke 5, Jesus is identifying Himself for the first time in this Gospel, as that “Son of Man.” A title which testifies again, not only to His perfect humanity, but to His complete deity. “His dominion is an everlasting dominion.” And then, having identified Himself as “the Son of Man” and “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Now, look at the rest of verse 24, “He said to the paralytic.” Those are Luke’s words of interjection there. He’s signaling that at this moment, Jesus turns from the scribes and the Pharisees back to the paralytic, and He says, “I say to you, get up, and picking up your stretcher, go home.” Again, He went with the more difficult option. He took the more difficult route. He gave him the more difficult command, “Pick up your stretcher, go home.”

Now, we’ve got to get to points five and six, with a few minutes to spare. Here’s our fifth point:

Visible Fruit
Verse 25, “And immediately he rose up before them, and picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God.” The fruit of this man’s faith was evident for all to see. There was no delay. There was no passage of time. Rather, “Immediately he rose up before them” it says. His paralysis, gone. His ability to now use his joints and muscles and bones in a normal functioning way, restored. All in an instant and all because Jesus, God in flesh, said, “Get up.” The One who caused mountains to rise on the third day of creation is now saying to this man, “Get up.” At the sound of His voice, the command to rise. He says, “pick up your stretcher.” Back in verse 24, the man heeded that command, and “picked up what he had been lying on”, verse 25, and he “went home glorifying God.” He’d been on a stretcher moments earlier. But now, he’s on his feet, carrying that stretcher out of this house in Capernaum glorifying and praising God.

That brings us to verse 26, our sixth and final point:

Visible Fear
Verse 26, “And astonishment seized them all and they began glorifying God; and they were filled with fear, saying, ‘We have seen remarkable things today.’” So, this once-paralyzed man is now walking out of this house in Capernaum, and it leaves this impression on these crowds; and understandably so. They’re seized with astonishment. They were full of awe. You could say it this way they were beside themselves. Because there was no human explanation for what they had just seen. And now this man is walking out of the house, stretcher in hand, and they are astonished. So, they begin glorifying God.

They were now praising God. It’s a lesson for all of us. We should all be praising God, glorifying God whenever He does anything in our lives. It doesn’t always have to be something as big or miraculous as this a man that was once on a stretcher, now walking out with his stretcher in hand. Our instinct should be to praise God whenever we see Him move in anyway in our lives. When He answers a prayer. When we get to hear His Word proclaimed. When we get to see growth in grace. All of these things. Big things, small things should give us occasion to praise God. Not only were they amazed though. Not only were they glorifying God. It says, they “were filled with fear.” Visible fear as they realized they had seen “remarkable things” this day. Things that were out of the ordinary paradoxa is the word. You know the word that underlines or undergirds that.

Now, I’ll close with this. There’s a noticeably silent crowd at the conclusion of this scene. Their silence really screams. The Pharisees, they had come to corner Jesus. They had come to trap Jesus. They had come to pin Him down. To find something fatal against Him. To accuse Him of blasphemy. But they failed. The Son of Man had come. He had come to seek and to save that which was lost. He had come, as we read in the scripture reading this morning to “give His life a ransom for many,” And there would be no stopping His divine mission.

There’d be no stopping His mission. But I need to stop. Let me pray.

Father, thank You so much for this time this morning, in Your word. Thank You for a section that has so much in it, in terms of its depth, its breadth, as we consider the deity of Jesus Christ. We consider His perfect humanity as the Son of Man. As we consider His response to opposition from the Pharisees of His day. As we consider Your good work through Him, and Your advancement of the message of the gospel of the kingdom of God through Him. God, I do pray that we would take lessons away from this text this morning. Surely it set in historical context of its own, but there are things that we can learn about our own faith, and our own sense of conviction, and our own willingness to go to great lengths ourselves to be in the presence of Jesus through prayer and through His word. But also, to bring others there along with us. God, use the text that we’ve been looking at today, and considering today, to bring transformation in our hearts, this week for Your glory. In Jesus name. Amen