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REDEMPTION THROUGH THE ROOF #1
SNAPPY ANSWERS
“Boy, I walked into that one!” Have you ever said that
to yourself? You make a big, big statement, with 500 witnesses present,
to the effect that such-and-such could never be true, could never happen
. . . and you give a big why. And two seconds later, the very thing you
say is impossible — happens right there in front of everybody.
There was a cute Reader’s Digest anecdote, July 2002, in the “Laughter,
Best Medicine” section. A lot of sermons get birthed right there, as you
can imagine. A devout Jewish teenager asks his dad if he can borrow the
car that night. “No,” his abba says. “Not until you start studying the
Talmud and get a hair cut.”
All right. A month later the kid is back. “Okay, Dad,” he says. “I’ve
been studying the Talmud real good. So how about those car keys?”
“No,” Dad says. “You’re supposed to study the Talmud AND get a haircut.”
And the kid sees his opening. “Come on, Pop,” he says. “I’m an expert
on the Talmud now, and all the prophets had long hair.”
And the dad just smiles. “That’s right, son,” he says. “And everywhere
they went . . . they walked.” Boom! Stuck on your own argument. Kind of
like that exchange on a plane where a flight attendant is trying to get
Muhammad Ali to fasten his seatbelt. And the champ says with a boast,
“Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” She comes right back at him: “Honey,
Superman don’t need no airplane either.”
Bob Hope, in one of those “road” movies he did with Bing Crosby, once
mused to his fellow entertainer: “Can you believe it? When I was a kid,
my folks offered me 500 bucks if I would give up my singing and dancing
lessons.” And Crosby, who always did get in the last word, asks him: “So
what did you do with the money?”
And we can’t open up our Bibles here on Monday without remembering the
old story where a dad, very impatient with his teenage son — who probably
had long hair and wasn’t studying the Talmud very much; in fact, he was
sleeping in till noon and then watching the Cartoon Network the rest of
the day — snapped at the dozing kid: “Why don’t you get out of bed and
make something of yourself? Why, when George Washington was your age,
he had already surveyed the entire territory of Virginia!” And the bleary-eyed
son, reaching for the TV remote, responds to his father: “Yeah, Dad, and
when Washington was your age, he was President.”
Well, friend, that’s probably enough “snappy comebacks” to fill up an
issue of Mad magazine, so let’s quickly move to more spiritual ground.
But there’s a marvelous story in the Word of God — in fact, it’s so good
that you can find it in Matthew, Mark, and Luke — where the enemies of
Jesus just completely set themselves up. They stake everything they’ve
got on THE pivotal question that exists about this Carpenter from Nazareth:
Is Jesus Christ what He says He is? Is He the Son of God? Is He divine?
I would suggest to you that this continues to be the central question
for us as well, 2000 years later. There are well-meaning but unsaved people
right here in this building where I work who are still grappling with
that one. Was Jesus just a good teacher, or was He God?
In any case, back to our story. Have you heard it before? Jesus says to
a very sick man — with a big crowd around — “Good news. I forgive all
your sins.” Which is easy to say, but hard to prove. And the priests and
Pharisees standing around say to themselves, “What?! What’d He just say?
Did He just say that He forgave that guy’s sins? ‘Cause now we’ve got
Him! Only God can forgive sins. So, Jesus of Nazareth, you phony Carpenter,
you’ve just committed blasphemy, and your public stoning’s going to be
on the six o’clock news!” And they all begin muttering to each other.
“A: only God can forgive sins. Only God has that kind of power. B: if
this guy were God, and had that kind of divine power, we wouldn’t be standing
around the cot of a man who’s ten minutes away from death, now, would
we? He’d be well. So, C: obviously this long-haired teacher from Galilee
isn’t God. Does anybody know where we can find a good rock pile around
here?”
And Jesus, in one smooth, quiet moment, undercuts everything they’ve just
said and thought. He heals the man right on the spot, demonstrating that,
A: He does have the power – to heal AND forgive sins. B: He IS the Son
of God. And, C: Good luck with the rocks, because He will give His life
for this lost world when He chooses to do it; until then, He’s under the
protection of His Father in heaven. Who, by the way, really IS His Father.
Let’s go to Luke chapter five to begin to flesh out this great little
vignette — there’s nothing little about it, actually; this is a crossroads
moment in human history — and try to set up the situation. Here’s the
scene, beginning in verse 17:
“One day as He [Jesus] was teaching, Pharisees and
teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from
Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was
present for Him to heal the sick.”
One of our Voice of Prophecy staff members had an interesting
experience just a few months ago. He was making evangelistic presentations
in the city of Chiang Mai, which is in northern Thailand, about 500 miles
north of Bangkok. These Christian meetings had been well publicized, with
newspaper ads and posters around town, and the church had a good crowd
of maybe 300 people attending. And sitting on about the fourth row, there
were two Buddhist monks, prominently present in their saffron-colored
robes and shaved heads. By the way, they had notepads so that they could
write down all the verses, all the discussion points. And as this preacher
from Voice of Prophecy got up to share the Christian message, he could
see these two men scribbling furiously. If he talked about heaven compared
with nirvana, they wrote it all down. When he talked about the resurrection
and about eternal life, they wrote it all down. And it became clear, as
the week progressed, that there were people in that city who were diligently
looking for an opportunity to have a confrontation. Fortunately, through
some kind and reasonable dialogue, these Christians persuaded their Buddhist
friends — and the Thai people truly are lovely, sweet folks — that this
was simply an honest, fair exchange of ideas. No one was there to deceive;
they had no intention of “sheep stealing” or coercing anyone’s conscience.
And the confrontation ended well. But back in the city of Capernaum, where
this biblical battle of wills takes place, these men from the opposing
camp were very much present. In the Tyndale New Testament Commentary for
the book of Mark, which also has this story in chapter two, author Leon
Morris has this to say:
“Jesus had quite a reputation by now, for Pharisees
had come even from Judea and from Jerusalem, as well as locally. The Pharisees
took their religion very seriously. They were so anxious not to break
God’s commandments that they ‘put a fence about the law.’ For example,
when the law said, ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain’ they went further by refusing to pronounce the name at all. This
hedge of all the provisions of the law (‘the tradition of the elders’)”
— speaking of “reading the Talmud” — “had the unfortunate result of externalizing
religion. Men then put a great deal of effort into the outward without
necessarily coming to love God in their hearts.” Then Morris adds this:
“They were the unofficial religious leaders of the day and they spearheaded
the opposition to Jesus.”
So even before a word is spoken, you get the tense feeling that conflict
is coming. Maybe even violence. People who love and admire Jesus are there;
curious onlookers are there; relatives are there. And these protectors
of the status quo are there in substantial numbers. It’s standing room
only, as the story soon makes plain. The New International Version text
notes explain that there may have been as many as 6,000 of these Pharisees,
these “separated ones,” in all of Israel, and they were the “self-appointed
guardians” of the Law.
“Already,” they write, “Jesus had run counter to the
religious leaders in Jerusalem. Now they came to a home in Capernaum to
hear and watch Him.”
So Jesus, knowing His audience, begins to teach. And
of course, He doesn’t just know the critics are there because of what
they’re wearing or because they have Pharisee name tags on. We’ll find
in this story that He can read their minds and hearts. As they think about
entrapment strategies and piles of stones and executions, He knows they’re
thinking about it even as they’re thinking about it! Talk about pressure!
Then all of a sudden, this sick man shows up. And in a most unique way.
He doesn’t come in through the chimney, but he does make a rather abrupt
entrance through a new hole in the roof. And . . . he’s not looking for
the Christmas present you and I might think he is.
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