Luke 5:1–26

0:00 I think one of the great dark horse candidates for the greatest line in English literature is C.S. Lewis' opener to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in the Chronicles of Narnia series. He writes this at the very beginning of it. There once was a boy named Eustace Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. It's a great line, and it's also a great beginning to the story of Eustace Scrubb, which is one of the great redemption stories in the Chronicles of Narnia.

0:34 There are lots of those in those books. And yet Eustace Scrub is one of the more famous ones. Eustace is a terrible boy. He causes all kinds of trouble as the group sets out on the voyage of the Dawn Treader. He's selfish, he's mean, he's crude, all of it. And the climax of his story comes when they come up on the voyage of the Dawn Treader. The boat lands on this particular island and Eustace goes and finds a cave. and it turns out that the cave has a dragon's treasure inside it. And so Eustace thinks that he's finally found the thing that he needs in order to have status that he needs among his compatriots.

1:08 And so he lies down on the dragon's hoard and he falls asleep. And Lewis tells us that that night he, sleeping on a dragon's hoard and thinking dragonish thoughts, became a dragon himself. And so the rest of the story is how Aslan, the great lion who represents Jesus, has to save Eustace from being this dragon. It's an interesting story because Eustace thought he needed one thing. He thought he needed status.

1:39 He thought he needed wealth. He thought he needed this horde that a dragon had pulled together of gold and silver and jewels. And yet it turns out that he needed something entirely different. Not riches, not status, not wealth. He needed a different heart because his heart was dragonish. That's Lewis's point. And it's what we're going to talk about today as we begin again this long series in the book of Luke. If you're new to Third Avenue, let me tell you kind of how we're doing this. We're going to be diving into Luke chapter 5 today. And we're going to make our way today, only for a few verses.

2:12 But over the course of the spring, we're going to be making our way all the way through, I think, probably the end of chapter 8. And then, God willing, every spring, every January, we're going to return to Luke and go through another chunk of Luke. And this is probably going to take us another five to six to seven years, should the Lord tarry. But eventually, we're going to make our way through the entire book of Luke. We're just going to do it in chunks at a time. Luke, to give you just a bit of an introduction to it, if you want to go ahead and turn there, our text this morning starts on page 860.

2:44 If you're using one of these Bibles right here, Luke is one of the four Gospels that begin the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So his is the third. It tells a lot of the same stories that Matthew and Mark do, but at more length, usually, in Luke. You usually get more detail. You get sort of more eyewitness testimony because Luke is writing as a representative of Peter and of Paul. So turn over to the book of Luke. Let me tell you just a little bit about it. It's actually the first half of a longer work that we know as Luke-Acts, which includes not only the book of Luke, but you've got to skip over and grab Acts, because the same guy who wrote Luke also wrote Acts.

3:25 And those two books together tell the story of the first few decades of the Christian faith. So Luke begins a few months before Jesus' birth, and then if you run through all the way through Luke, all the way through Acts, it ends up when Paul, the apostle, is preaching the gospel at the very heart of the empire. at the end of the book, he's under house arrest in Rome. Probably this book of Luke Acts, the whole thing taken together, was written sometime in the early 60s. Now, it's not worth going into a whole lot of detail about how scholars date these things. This one, though, is pretty easy. We pretty much know, almost for a fact, that Paul died right around the year A.D. 67, so almost 2,000 years, what is it 1970 years ago something like that we know that that's when Paul died AD 67 and at the end of Acts like I said Paul is still alive so Luke is not writing after Paul is dead he's writing before Paul is dead and so what we do is say well Paul died in AD 67 we're pretty sure that Luke

4:26 doesn't know he's dead so we just back it up a few years and say probably in the 60s that's how we get there. So that's how we know the book was written in the 60s. This book, Nor Axe, tells exactly who wrote it. Sometimes you get that in the Bible. You'll have certain books of the Bible that say very straightforwardly, this book was written by so-and-so. Luke and Axe don't do that, and so you have to do a little bit of sleuthing work in the books themselves to sort of read between the lines and pull out clues. But without going into too much detail, you do all of that work and you come up with, oh, this is the guy who wrote the book. His name is Luke. He traveled around with Paul a lot. He was not an eyewitness of Jesus, but we actually do know quite a bit about him. Apparently, this guy, Luke, that wrote this book was a well-off, fairly well-educated guy who, like I said, wasn't an eyewitness of Jesus, but became a Christian through the testimony of the apostles and then followed them around on some of their missionary journeys as they were spreading the gospel. We think that Luke was a Gentile. We also think that Luke must have been

5:30 because of the way he writes in certain places. We think he must have been a physician, which means that from everything we can tell about him, he was probably in a pretty high social position in Roman society. He writes like a guy who knows how to speak to those in power. So he's probably in a high social position and he uses that status to call people to believe in Jesus well this this book that he wound up writing Luke Acts as we call it or you know you could just you could just talk about Luke it's it's majestic I mean from start to finish it is this epic work telling the story of the first decades of Christian history and it is so epic in part because Luke is such an incredibly skilled writer and the work that he did compiling all of these stories from eyewitness accounts and and then putting them in a kind of logical order is it's just mind-blowingly magnificent part of why it's mind-blowingly magnificent is because luke doesn't care that much about our sort of modern hang-up with chronology he's just not that interested in

6:35 letting us know that this followed after this and that followed after that in fact a whole lot of times in his book, he'll take things that are separated by a whole bunch of time, like maybe even sometimes years, and he'll stick them together in the same place and say, at one time this happened, and at another time this happened, and then sometime this happened. And what he's doing is not trying to tell you that this followed this followed this, which is a particularly modern hang-up. What he's doing is pulling those stories together thematically to make a theological point to you, to teach you something about Jesus, and it's not just the facts of his life as they happen.

7:14 It's magnificent. If you want to think about Luke itself, the sort of overall overarching structure of the book, it's pretty simple. It's just geographically based. You have three main movements in the book of Luke, and they all have to do with geography. So for the first nine chapters, That's kind of where we are for this spring, part of next spring. First nine chapters of it is all kind of in Galilee. That's where it all happens. All of these stories are Jesus' Galilean ministry.

7:46 In the middle of nine, though, the geography switches. And from nine to 19, so 10 chapters, you have stories that are about the time when Jesus was making his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. Jerusalem in order to be crucified. So it's the journey. So if 1 through 9, middle of 9 is sort of Galilean ministry, 9 through 19 is the journey to Jerusalem, and then 19 to the end of the book is all about stuff that happened in Jerusalem. Now that's where you get the passion narrative of Jesus's death, the narrative of his resurrection, lots of other things that happened during that time. Now as all that's unfolding, as Jesus is moving from Galilee toward Jerusalem, then in Jerusalem, as that's all happening, Luke has a few goals. He's got a few things that he wants to accomplish with his book. He's not interested in just, you know, keeping it hidden. He doesn't play the whole Easter egg game. He's not interested in you having to think about it real hard, actually.

8:44 He's very straightforward about what he wants. He wants you to believe that Jesus is the Christ. And he says so in the very first few verses of the book. I mean, he's very straightforward of that. I want you to know for certain that these things happened. They're not just myth, they're not just legend, they're not just fables, they're true. And he wants the main guy that he's writing to, Theophilus, which maybe one particular guy may also just be anybody who loves God. That's what Theophilus means, Theo, God, Phyllis, love.

9:17 So anybody that loves God, right, it may be anybody. He wants you to know for certain that these things happen. He checked them out, he verified them, and therefore you can take them to the bank. Another thing, though, is that it has to do with the fact that Luke was a Gentile and not a Jew. So a huge part of his book, which my guess is should be of particular interest to most of you in the room, is that Gentiles, those who are not Jews, Gentiles really do belong in the kingdom of Jesus.

9:54 Now that ought to strike most of you as particularly important, I would think, because most of us in this room are not descended from the Jews, which is not. We, most of us, are Gentiles. And so you need to understand that for Luke to write this is very good news for you because it wasn't just a given that you would be included in the kingdom of God. You were not a shoo-in to hear the gospel and be able to respond to it with saving faith. In fact, the most likely outcome of the whole thing, the most expected outcome would be that you might have heard at some point as a Gentile about this guy, Jesus, who saves people from their sins. And yet the repeated refrain to you is, and yet not you. This is for a particular people, the Jews, and you Gentile are excluded. That was the most likely thing. And yet Luke writes this magnificent book to say no no this gospel this good news of salvation is for everybody

10:55 and he wants you to be certain of that he wants you to stake your life on it again and again well today we're going to pick up in this book where we left off last spring jesus's public ministry at the end of chapter four has just begun and already you can see two things starting to happen So for one thing, there's two themes that are kind of intensifying, even here at the very beginning of his ministry. For one thing, people are just starting to get the word that this is an extraordinary man. Something crazy is happening in and around Jerusalem and Galilee.

11:29 There is stuff going on. So not only is he just an extraordinary teacher of the scriptures, not only can he bring out insights from the Old Testament scriptures that nobody else can bring, But he also seems to have this unique spiritual authority that allows him to do things that nobody else can do. Things like heal sickness and command demons.

12:00 So that's one thing that's starting to happen. Word is getting out. But that, in its own turn, causes something else. It causes intense interest by the religious figures of the day. And it's not necessarily a friendly interest. You know, interest can take on different forms, right? You can have a friendly interest in something, you can have a puzzled interest in something, or you can have a hostile interest in something.

12:31 Well, the Pharisees, Sadducees, religious leaders of the day, don't ever, I think, hit friendly interest, at least most of them. There's a couple. I think mostly they go from puzzled interest to hostile interest. And that's the intensification that you see going on here. So what we're going to see as we look at 5, 6, 7, and 8, those chapters, is both of those themes. Interest in Jesus by the people and then interest in Jesus by the Pharisees. You're going to see both of those intensifying. More and more, Jesus is going to be using teaching and miracles and authority to show the people who he really is.

13:07 And at the same time, the religious leaders are going to feel more and more threatened by what he's revealing. That's what's going to happen over the next few chapters. We're going to see that in the passage today. We're looking at the first 26 verses of chapter 5. And you're going to see both of those things kind of happening. Jesus revealing and the Pharisees getting threatened. But here's what's interesting about this passage in particular. It's kind of unique to this particular passage. And I want you to be on the lookout for it in these accounts here as we read them.

13:38 We're going to read all 26 verses. And I want you to be on the lookout for something. In each one of these three stories that we're about to read, Peter, the leper, the paralytic, people encounter Jesus thinking, like Eustace, that they need one thing. only to find that Jesus gives them something far deeper and more important than they ever would have guessed. That's what I want you to see, so watch for that as we read it. Let's look at Luke chapter 5, starting in verse 1. On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land, and he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

14:30 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets. When he had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken.

15:02 And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. He charged him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing as Moses commanded it for a proof to them.

15:38 But now even more, the report about him went abroad. And great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus. But finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus.

16:13 And when he saw their faith, he said, Man, your sins are forgiven you. And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, Who is this that speaks blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God alone when Jesus perceived their thoughts he answered them why do you question in your hearts which is easier to say your sins are forgiven you or to say rise and walk but that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins he then said to the man who was paralyzed I say to you rise pick up your bed and go home and immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.

16:50 And amazement seized them all. And they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, we have seen extraordinary things today. All right, so you read these three stories, and I think what you've got here are some accounts, which if you're not reading carefully, if your mind is kind of being lazy on you, which our minds often are when we read the scriptures, can seem mostly pretty unremarkable. At least as unremarkable as any story about Jesus can really be. But they're also related to one another, and they're doing a certain thing together. So I wonder if you saw it. I mean, on one level, you've got this thing that we've talked about a couple of times, this intensifying authority of Jesus. He just, in these three stories even, he has control, and shows that he has control, over more and more uncontrollable things. He has power over more and more untameable things. So we go from control over creation to control over this horrible, incurable disease to control over, it turns out, sin itself. And then

17:57 people react to that in various ways through these stories. But I wonder if you notice the other thing. I mean, that's on the surface, I think. But did you notice the other thing? Did you notice the theme of each one of these people encountering Jesus with one thing they think they need from him, but then Jesus giving them something else. I mean, think about it. Peter thought he needed fish. He gets a new identity. The leper thinks he needs cleansing. He gets turned into a witness and testimony about Jesus's power to heal. The paralytic and his friends think that he needs use of his legs he gets forgiveness of his sins and that's what luke wants us to see i think our need as human beings is always always always deeper than we think our need as human beings is always deeper than we think friend your need this morning whatever you whatever you think it is

18:59 whatever you came in here thinking about you know maybe it was even on the back burner of your mind Whatever it is you think you need, your actual need is even deeper than that. And what these stories are trying to teach you is that Jesus is the only one who can meet that deepest need. So that's the main idea. Jesus gives what we truly need. He gives what we truly need, and that is always more than we come asking for. He gives us what we truly need, and that is always more than we came asking for. I want to step through this text in three points, each of them telling us something about Jesus and what he came to do so number one he's got the power to astonish and change that's the story of the power to astonish and change second he's got the mercy to embrace and restore the mercy to embrace and restore and then finally third he has the divine right to forgive and give life so those three he has the power to astonish and change the mercy to embrace and restore and then

20:02 the divine right, the power, the authority, the divine imperium to forgive and give life. So let's look at it. Number one, Jesus has the power to astonish and change. So by the end of chapter four, Jesus has stepped fully into his public ministry. In fact, the last couple of verses of that chapter tell us that he began a sort of preaching tour around the region of Jerusalem in Judea. Well, at some point, again, Luke isn't a stickler for the chronology here. Jesus makes his way up to the Sea of Galilee. It's called the Lake of Gennesaret here in Luke. It has a lot of names throughout scripture, but this is the Sea of Galilee, and he's teaching on the shore of the sea, and the crowds are pressing in because word has gotten out. Well, he notices that the crowds are pressing in, and so there are people out there who can't hear him, and so he notices that there are a couple of fishing boats, and the fishermen have gone, and they're cleaning their nets and getting finished for the it's morning they've spent all night out on the lake they haven't caught anything but they're cleaning up he notices these boats and you know he knows enough about sound

21:04 physics and all the rest to know that if he gets in one of those boats goes out into the lake the sound will carry a lot farther and people even further back will be able to to hear him so he speaks to one of the captains of the boat simon he says take me out into the into the water a little bit and then he he preaches because sort of from a floating pulpit and it's interesting right? Floats out there and he speaks to the people. Well, once that's done, he does something that is pretty surprising, I think. He tells Simon, who's later going to be renamed Peter, he tells Simon, the captain of this boat, to put out into deep water, in other words, sail out a little bit farther, and put your nets out. Put your nets out. In other words, go fishing here in the morning now that's a bit of a crazy thing to do for a lot of reasons for one thing it's morning and most fishing is done in that area at any rate at night that's when the fish come out the fish do not come out in the morning for whatever set of biological reasons it doesn't happen the fishermen know that they've been out all night and they haven't caught anything Jesus

22:05 tells them in the light of morning put your nets out you you're gonna you're gonna catch some fish which would have sounded a little bit crazy to this hard-bitten fisherman Peter second it is just not easy to put the nets out because i mean if you're thinking about a little you know minnow net or whatever that you just do that's not it these nets are huge i mean they're made out of cloth that can be a hundred feet wide there's sort of a circle that you throw out and then you have to go around you have to put the nets out and then you have to drag them in arm over arm it is not a small thing to put the nets out and these nets are wet right they're not even dry nets so they're much, much heavier, two to three times heavier than normal. And Jesus is telling them, put them out in the morning when there are no fish. Third, he's a carpenter for crying out loud. He doesn't know anything about fishing. And Peter has done fishing all his life. He's a carpenter and, you know, at best a Bible teacher, right? That's what he does. And he's like, put your nets out. Just

23:09 Put the nets out, Peter. But then look at verse 5. Simon, this is Peter. Peter answered, Master, we toiled all night and got nothing. In other words, we worked, we toiled, we worked hard. It wasn't like we were being lazy. All night, we did it at the right time, and we took nothing. This just isn't the time for fish. He's making his case to Jesus. You don't know what you're talking about. but at your word I will let down the nets what on earth what on earth he knows it's crazy he knows it's not supposed to work but there was something about Jesus that had captured his trust something he'd seen something he'd heard something about Jesus captured his trust and so he says you you know what, Jesus, I don't really agree with this course of action.

24:10 I don't see right now with all my fisherman's logic how this is going to work. But because it's you telling me to do it, Jesus, I'll do it. You see the point? Peter trusted Jesus and obeyed him, even though he still had his objections. Now, friends, that's important. That's important. Because there are going to be things about what Scripture teaches that you do not fully understand.

24:43 And that you even have objections to, just like Peter. And yet you should obey anyway. If you have questions about the Bible's teaching on human sexuality or the Bible's teachings about hell, friend, that is not a reason for you to walk away from Jesus. It's a reason for you to obey him even when you don't quite get it. That's true if you're not a Christian too.

25:16 There may be things about Christianity that you just don't understand, right? I just don't get it. I don't understand the sexuality teachings. I don't understand how there could be enough water to flood the world. I don't understand this stuff. Friend, just put that aside. It's all smokescreen. You can figure that out later. Act on the knowledge that you have. Let Jesus capture your trust and then obey him and see what becomes clear when you've accepted him for who he really is.

25:49 That's what happened with Peter. Jesus is enough for him to act. Jesus is enough for Peter to put something on the line just based on Jesus' word and what he knows about him already. I wonder if that's true of you yet. i mean maybe you're not quite at the point of saying yeah yeah yeah i'm ready to give my whole life to jesus i'm ready to walk away from everything else and follow jesus maybe you're not there that's fine i wish you would get there but for now let's just say for the sake of argument that's fine the question is are you at the point of saying okay okay jesus is intriguing enough for me to ask and get answers to some serious questions.

26:33 I'm not going to set this on the bottom shelf anymore. I'm not going to put this in a cabinet and get on with the other things that I'm interested in. This is interesting to me. I'm going to put this to the test. Now, you've got to be careful with that, right? If you're going to put the Lord to the test, what I don't mean by that is that you get to set the terms of the test. I mean, you notice it is not that Peter says, Lord, give me lots of fish. And then Jesus says, throw out the nets. That's not what happens.

27:04 No, he hears what Jesus commands, throw in the nets, and he says, okay, I'll trust you enough to do that. Let's see what happens. And what happens is that the nets immediately fill up with fish, more fish than one boat alone could handle. So they call in help, they haul in the catch, and when it's all over, Peter is standing in front of Jesus, his beard dripping, he's soaking wet, He's breathing hard from the work, and he says the most astonishing thing. Look at verse 8. This is just utterly unexpected. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down to Jesus' knees and said, Thank you for the fish, God.

27:41 No, he says, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. Now, why say that? How is it that lots of fish leads to guilt over sin? Lots of fish leads to guilt over sin. Well, it's because his mind wasn't just on the fish themselves. It was on the one who had the power to bring the fish. And he knew that it was only one person who could command creation like that.

28:17 Now, there's arguments sometimes about what kind of miracle this was. So is this a miracle of knowledge or is this a miracle of will? Is it a miracle of just Jesus knowing that at that time there would happen to be a school of mackerel floating by or swimming by or whatever? Is that all it was? And he's just like, throw it now. Or was it a miracle of will that he made the fish be there? I have fished a few times with my father and fish guides.

28:50 Fish guides are great because fish guides know where the fish are. Fish guides know that 100% of the fish in a particular lake are in 1% of the water. And 50% of the time, they know where that 1% of the water is, where 100% of the fish are. But I have never, in all my years, seen a fish guy stand in a boat in the middle of the lake and extend his arms and go, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, and fish swim up to the boat.

29:21 Never seen it once. because that guy can't call the fish. He's not the Lord of the fish. He's not the Lord of the seas. He doesn't get to do that, but this guy, this guy who could call the fish, this guy who could bring the fish whenever he wanted to, he had to be something special. And in his presence, because Peter's steeped in the Old Testament, he knows who controls the waves. He knows who controls the currents. He knows who controls it all. In his presence, Peter's immediate response was to become immediately, painfully aware of his own sinfulness.

29:54 which is exactly the right response over and over again when people encounter the god of the bible this is what happens isaiah when he sees the lord high and exalted on the throne says woe is me i'm a man of unclean lips and i live among a people of unclean lips at the end of job when job finally comes to his senses god appears to him he says i despise myself and repent of my sins john the apostle in revelation when he sees the risen jesus says i fell at his feet as though dead and what i want you to see from all of this is that that's not just the thing you should do and so you do it it's not that you walk into the presence of god oh dang i'm supposed to fall on my face that's what you do right it's not it at all you know it's not like it's not like walking up to the king of England and being reminded that you're supposed to bow or curtsy or whatever. No, when you walk into the presence of the creator of the universe, you become painfully

30:54 aware of your own unworthiness to be in front of him, and you fall on your face. But look what that leads Peter to do here. Look what he says in verse 8. He says, depart from me, O Lord. Now, most of Peter's reaction here is exactly right. Most of it. He's astonished by what Jesus has done. And that leads him to recognize Jesus for who he is.

31:26 And that recognition then leads him to recognize himself for who he is. But right here, his reaction, his impulse is to flee from Jesus. I have to get out of here. I need you, Jesus, the Holy One, to go away. I need you to depart, which I think is a very human reaction. We become aware of our own sinfulness. We become aware of the holiness of God, and our immediate reaction is, I have to get out of here.

32:00 You might be feeling that right now. Friends, that's exactly wrong. It's exactly wrong. When you see your sin, and it shows up in all its light in front of the king of glory and holiness. When that sin becomes to you hateful and real, you should run to Jesus, not away from him. Because he's the only one who can save you from it. You know, there's another story, another time.

32:35 Years later, this is like three years later, after Jesus' resurrection, where something very similar happens to this. It happens again. It's after Jesus' resurrection. The disciples don't really know that he's resurrected yet. And they've gone out and they're fishing. Peter among them. And they're hauling in the nets. And it's early morning. You know, the whole story from the end of John. And they see Jesus walking on the shoreline. And John, who's called the beloved disciple, one of them looks at Peter and he says, Peter, Peter, it's the Lord.

33:08 He sees him. He's fishing. They pull in all these fish after Jesus tells them to pull it in. And there's this miraculous catch of 153 fish. And John finally says, Peter, look, it's the Lord. But listen, as John writes, to the difference now in Peter's reaction. Here's what John writes. The disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, it's the Lord. And when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he wrapped on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and he threw himself into the sea, and he ran to Jesus.

33:42 He can't help but think that that was meant to remind Peter of this moment right here. It's the same thing, and yet Peter now runs to Jesus. Why? Why does he run to him now instead of saying, get out of here? Why does he do that? Because he knows him now. He knows that he's a God, a king of mercy and compassion and grace. He knows that even though he sinned worse than he did in his entire life, he denied Jesus three times, he runs to him, not away from him.

34:16 Because he knows who he is. Do you know who Jesus is? Because if you do, if you do, you will flee to him, not from him. When you see your sin. Well, back to the story. Peter's standing wet, shivering, painfully aware of his own sin. And in 10 and 11, Jesus gives him something he never expected. He basically commissions him, calls him to a life of bringing others to the same exact realization about Jesus that Peter had.

34:48 Look at verse 10. So also were James and John, sons of Zebedee. They were also astonished. And Jesus said to Simon, don't be afraid. From now on you will be catching men. Now, that phrase, catching men, or especially catching, it's really pretty wonderful. I want you to know what it means. It's actually made up of two Greek words that are stuck together. One of them is catch, and one of them is alive. So you will be catching alive men. So the idea, unlike hunting or fishing, is not that you're going to be caught so that you can be killed.

35:19 It's being caught so that you will stop running after death. It's being arrested in your pursuit of death, caught alive, so that you can now live. Our little dog, Riggins, loves to get out of his yard, and when he does, he runs, and every single time, he runs straight toward death, Rudy Lane, and it causes a gigantic panic among my family when the dog is out, and when everybody goes into the neighborhood, and then eventually somebody will text or call or whatever it is, and the idea is all Always, I caught him alive.

35:57 He was running toward death, but we got him. And he's not dead. And it's a glorious moment. And some of you know exactly what that's like spiritually. Because Jesus caught you alive when you were running headlong toward death. Praise God for him. Praise God for him catching you alive before you ran headlong into death. and look at that last phrase they left everything and follow him best catch of their lives i mean this was an infusion of capital that would have set peter's fishing business up forever and yet he leaves it all because he had been given something far far more than fish his life was changed forever because of it here's the second thing jesus has the mercy to embrace and restore he not only has the power to astonish and change he has the mercy to embrace and restore. So starting in verse 12, you get another account of Jesus teaching again in the cities around Galilee. And as he does this, a man comes up to him whom Luke says is filled with

37:02 leprosy. Now let's talk about leprosy for just a second, because you got to understand the stigma and the medical situation in order to understand how amazing this story really is. First thing to understand is that it was just utterly shocking for this man to show up in the city in the first place. Leprosy, medically speaking, is actually a group of various skin diseases, some of which were not fatal, but some of which were in fact fatal. And that seems to be what this man has. So Luke says that he's full of it. He's filled with leprosy, which may even be a technical way of saying that the disease was in its final stages. It may be a way of saying like, this is stage four leprosy.

37:42 The situation of a leper was written about in Leviticus 13. Let me read you just a few couple of verses from this. The person with such an infectious disease as leprosy must wear torn clothes, must let his hair be unkempt, must cover the lower part of his face, and cry out, unclean, unclean. As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone. He must live outside the camp. It is a horrible life. Intense isolation, rejection. Anytime you go anywhere near the normal population of the city, you have to mess your hair up and you have to wear torn clothes and stay bent over and cover your face.

38:20 And you have to scream out, unclean, unclean, to warn everybody to leave you alone. Imagine having to do that. Worse over time, leprosy became a kind of analogy, a kind of parable of moral and spiritual corruption. So that's why the guy calls himself unclean and not just unhealthy. He knows that this disease of his is a parable. It's a picture of moral, spiritual uncleanness that goes all the way to his soul.

38:52 Now, of course, it's just a picture, right? It's not saying that this guy has leprosy because he's worse than anybody else. It's not saying that everybody else is innocent and he's not. But it is, in fact, a picture. It was a particularly poignant picture. And over time, that rottenness of his body would have given this man a deep sense of what sin had done to his soul. You want to know what Paul's thinking about when he says you're dead in your trespasses and sins? You think of yourself as a spiritual leper. That's what he means. From the soles of his feet all the way up to the top of his head.

39:26 He is wholly unclean, and so he comes to Jesus. You can see in verse 12 there what he does. He bows down at Jesus' feet. And then he says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Now that's interesting, isn't it? Because this guy, when he comes to Jesus, doesn't seem to have any doubt at all about Jesus' power to heal him. He's not worried about that. Just like Peter, something has caught his interest. He's got no doubt that if Jesus wants to, he can heal.

39:57 What he doubts is whether Jesus will want to in the first place. He doesn't doubt his power. He doubts his mercy. He doubts his goodness. That is probably, I would guess, where some of you are today. You're not doubting that Jesus can save sinners. You're doubting that Jesus will save you. Sometimes that's about the bigness of your sin. Sometimes that's about your small vision of Jesus. But we get ourselves, even as Christians, into that kind of messed up logic all the time.

40:32 I know Jesus can save sinners. I know Jesus saves sinners just like me. I just don't know that he's going to save me. What's the fine print? This man was so aware of his own uncleanness. He was so aware, not only of the physical sickness, but also the spiritual sickness that it pictured, that he doubted if he was even worthy of Jesus' mercy. But now listen to me carefully, because here's the thing.

41:04 At this point in the sermon, when we get to this point of the story, what we want to do is make the turn immediately to this guy doubted whether he was worthy of Jesus's mercy. And what we want to do is turn it into, but he was worthy. And you're worthy. Nobody is ever unworthy of the mercy of Jesus. But you do realize that's exactly the wrong lesson to take from this. Because this leper knew and he was right that he was not worthy of Jesus' mercy.

41:43 And you're not worthy of Jesus' mercy. No matter how bad you think you are, no matter how far you think you are sunk from God's mercy, if you're sitting there thinking, I'm not worthy of being saved, let me tell you something straight up. You are exactly right. You're not worthy of being saved. But friends, that's exactly what's so mind-blowing about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're not worthy, but God saves anyway. Every other religion in the world, every religion in the world has the logic, God saves because.

42:23 God saves because you did this, because you didn't do that, because you did that ritual, because you did that thing. God saves you because Christianity alone says God saves even though. Even though you're a sinner, even though you're a rebel, even though you continue to do that, even though that continues to plague you, God saves in spite of sin. You're a sinner, you're a rebel, nevertheless, God saves. That's the unique logic of the Christian gospel.

42:54 And that's what this man learned. Look at 13. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I do will. Be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. See what happens there? Jesus doesn't just speak to him. He could have. He does that many times, right? You know, be well, right? He could do that. He doesn't. He touches him. And it's not just touches, like, with a finger, right? It's not that. No, it's more like grasped him, grabbed him.

43:27 I mean, maybe with a hand on the shoulder, right? You can grasp somebody on the shoulder. Maybe that, maybe, who knows? Word has a big semantic range. Maybe it was a full embrace. We don't know. But no matter what it was, even if it was just a finger, it wasn't, a grasp on the shoulder, a full embrace. The point is that that's just unthinkable. You don't do that because normally what happens is that infection and uncleanness flows from the sick to the well. That's how it works. You touch something unclean, the uncleanness infects you. You touch something sick, the sickness infects you.

43:59 Disease is contagious. Health is not. It always goes one direction. Until Jesus. Until Jesus. And in Jesus, that inexorable, unstoppable forward march of death and sickness and uncleanness is stopped in its tracks and reversed. Cleanness flows from Jesus to the leper. Health flows from the well to the sick. Mercy flows to the guilty.

44:30 And he's healed. Friends, that's what Jesus does. That's what he does. He doesn't just tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do better. Mercy and healing and righteousness and glory and sanctification and all the blessings of eternity flow backwards from him to you. Put your faith in him and see that happen. Look what it goes on next in verse 14. Jesus tells him to go do the normal sort of rites before the priest at the temple.

45:04 And they had this whole involved ritual going all the way back to the Old Testament. It lasted over a week, lasted eight days in order to confirm that a leper really had been healed. It involved sacrifices and burnt offerings and all the rest of it. But look at that last phrase there. Do all of this stuff, he says, so it will be a proof to them. So it will be a proof to them. What does that mean? Well, it's not talking about a proof to the priests. That's not what it is. Priest is singular in that verse. Them is plural.

45:36 So it's not saying so it will be a proof to the priest. It's to them. It can't be that. So probably it means so it will be a proof to the people, like all of them. So there's a sense where it's just showing that he's clean, showing that he's healed. He can reenter society. But that word proof is more interesting than that. It's not just a display of your cleanness. That word there is the word from which we get the word martyr, marturion.

46:10 And it means not just a display of cleanness, but a testimony about how you got clean. see the point your healing leper former leper will be a testimony to them it'll be a declaration of your experience of what jesus has done for you so you see what happened this guy came in thinking he's just going to be cleansed that that was like the end goal that's as far as he could think jesus turns him into a marturion a testimony of jesus's own power he didn't just have his skin changed. He had his whole life changed. Jesus embraced him. He restored him. And now this guy wanted nothing more than to tell people what had happened to him. There's an interesting lesson there when it comes to your evangelism as a Christian. Your evangelism as a Christian should not be a duty that you do as if you're trying to sell somebody something that they don't want. Your evangelism as a Christian ought to just be an overflowing, I can't really help but

47:15 tell people what Jesus has done for me because it's the best thing that's ever happened. And you know the glorious thing about that is that you don't have to be able to answer all the difficult questions that people ask when you give your testimony. Look, we've got, I mean, it's like God tells the Israelites, you're going to have quail meat coming out your nostrils we have theologians coming out our nostrils in this church if your friends neighbors co-workers have hard theological questions i promise you we have that covered what you need to do is entrance them with what jesus has done for you and get them here and let the lord work here's the third thing Jesus has the divine right the divine imperium to forgive and give life so by verse 17 words gotten out about him so much so that the religious leaders

48:15 have actually decided to send a committee to check him out he's teaching in various homes and places around around synagogues around the area so at one point here Jesus is teaching crowds are gathered around there's this little committee of the teachers of the law that show up to see what's going on. You can see in verse 17 there that they're sitting. In other words, they're the honored ones. And not everybody got to sit. That's just not how it worked. If you were sitting, you were one of the honored ones. You're the investigatory committee, right? Everybody else would have just been standing around, crowding in, looking for any, you know, spot that they could sit or stand or whatever.

48:48 But you're just looking for any way you can get within earshot of Jesus. And Jesus is standing in the middle of the house and he's teaching and all of a sudden, what was that? We've had this happen here at 3rd Avenue when pieces of our ceiling have fallen off in front of me. And you can't help but just look up and go, what in the world? Well, that's what started to happen. Pieces of the ceiling start falling off in front of Jesus and he continues teaching and looking up. He probably knows what's happening anyway, but he keeps looking up and all of a sudden there's a dude coming down through the ceiling on a mat in front of him.

49:24 Now, I want to pause here for just a second and think about something that I think gets overlooked way too often. How much did these guys, another gospel tells us there were four of them, plus the paralytic, how much did these four guys have to love their friend to do all of this? I mean, this was not a small job. I mean, you've got to carry this dude from wherever he was to wherever Jesus is here. And then you've got to get to the door and realize, whoa, there is no way we're getting this mat inside this house.

49:56 It's not going to happen. Then you have to get over the temptation in your own heart to just go, man, this ain't going to happen. I mean, let's get this dude home. It's just not going to happen. Or even if you're theologically minded to say, well, I guess the providence of God didn't want us here in the first place. If God wanted us in here, he would have made a way for us to get in here. Then you've got to go up on the roof, probably a staircase to get up there, because there were flat roofs, and so you could hang out up there. So there's probably a staircase, more like a deck. they persist. They tear the ceiling out, and it's all falling down in front of Jesus.

50:30 And probably people were laughing, mocking, ridiculing. You bunch of idiots, what are you doing? You're tearing out. You know you have to pay for that, right? But they persist because they're willing to endure whatever ridicule, whatever mockery, whatever laughter was necessary to get their friend to Jesus because they loved him. How often are you and I not even willing to endure a raised eyebrow from our friend? I promise you, I promise you, brother, I promise you, sister, if your coworker raises his eyebrow in skepticism at you when you mention Jesus, it will not blow you away.

51:12 You'll live. Be like these guys. Endure the mockery. Endure the laughter. Endure it all because you love them. now at this point as a reader you you basically think this is just going to be a run-of-the-mill healing story there's some sort of amazing persistence to get the guy there but basically what you're thinking is okay i i got this seen it before jesus is going to speak to him maybe put his hand on him the guy's going to get up and that's going to be that right awesome wow it's going to just be another of these healing stories but that's not what happens to the utter astonishment of everybody. Jesus looks at this guy. He's on the ground in front of him. He's probably still sputtering from dirt because they've dropped him through this earthen roof, at least in part.

51:56 And he's probably sputtering dirt, and he sees what's going on. Jesus looks at him. He's like, oh, this guy doesn't have the use of his legs. And Jesus thinks in his mind, I know exactly why this guy has come. I know what he needs. And then he says, hey, your sins are forgiven. What is that guy supposed to think? That's not why he'd come there. What are his friends supposed to do? They're like looking down through the hole. Jesus, that's not why we brought him. We didn't bring him for you to say some religious mumbo jumbo about his sins.

52:30 The guy needs his legs. We brought him here so you can heal him. That's what he needs from you. Oh, but here's the thing. Jesus knew his need better than he did. He knew his need better than his friends did. He knew that far more than this guy needed legs, this guy needed forgiveness. And so he looks past the thing that the man had come asking for and he gives him what he really needs. Look, most of the time our problem is that we just don't know what we need.

53:03 As human beings, we don't know what we need. We don't know what to pray for. We don't know what to ask for. We don't know what we're coming to church looking for. We don't know what we need. Now, what do you think you need? Most of the time it's stuff like money or healing or relationships mended, something like that. Spouse, children. What are you thinking? What did you pray for last night? What did you ask God to do or to give you?

53:36 My friend, whatever it was, here's what you need to learn from this story. Your deepest, most glaring need is not whatever that is. It's to be forgiven of your sin. It's to be declared righteous and forgiven of your sin. Now, if you're a Christian, what you should do with that realization, that information, is rejoice that you have been given that already. Because it's the greatest gift that you're ever going to be given. I mean, think about it. What exactly would happen if for the rest of your life, you do not get what you are asking God for?

54:13 What would happen if God just decides for the rest of your days to not give it to you? You want to know what will happen? You will stand in glory with Jesus on the last day and receive all the blessings of eternity. That's what's going to happen if you don't get what you're looking for. You should rejoice in that. Whatever else you think you need, whatever it is, however large it seems, it is a pebble on top of the Mount Everest of the fact that you are forgiven of your sins. And if you're not Christian, if you're non-Christian, well, this may be the most important thing that you need to come face to face with in your entire life.

54:52 You need, above all else, to see your need for a Savior. You need God to reveal to you not just who he is, but who you are. All three of these men had to get there. Peter had to get there. The leper had to get there. This paralytic had to get there. They had to see their sin. in all of its gory horror. And when they did, and when they despaired of it, they found Jesus ready to meet them. One more thing going on here.

55:26 As soon as Jesus says this, that your sins are forgiven, the teachers of the law start grumbling. This is what they're going to do for the whole rest of the story. They grumble. And the thing is, they're not wrong in what they say. And basically they say, what in the world? Who can do this? Who can forgive sins except God alone? and they're not wrong it's not like just anybody can go around you're forgiven you're forgiven you're forgiven you're forgiven right you can't do that i can't do that as your pastor right i mean i understand from the bible that you can come to me and you can confess anything you want to there is there's no way that i am ever going to make a cross over you and say te absolvo because i can't do it what i'm going to do is send you to jesus they're not wrong it is only god that can do that and so they're basically charging him with blasphemy because it is only God that can do this. In fact, even Jesus knew that.

56:19 But here's the question they failed to ask. When they said that, who can forgive sins but God alone? The question they didn't ask was, oh, maybe, just maybe, that's exactly who we're dealing with here. So, In 22, Jesus makes that point. He says, why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven you or to say rise and walk?

56:51 Now, you see the logic there, right? I mean, the logic is moving from a lesser thing to a greater thing. In other words, if I can do the harder thing, which is to heal this guy, if God is going to honor that kind of authority in me, then you need to understand that he's honoring this authority too, right? That's what he means. So what's harder? It's harder to say, rise up and walk and to have that happen. That's harder. And so then he tells the guy, rise up and walk. And that's what happened. And when the man gets up and walks, takes up his mat and walks out, the point is, if Jesus has authority to do that, then he also has authority to forgive.

57:29 Because it's actually only God who can do both of those things. So if he can do one, he can do the other. Look, here's what I want you to see. But Jesus has, and Jesus alone, has the authority and power and ability to give you everything you need, even if you don't yet see what that is. He has the power and the authority to give you everything that you need, right down to the deepest of those things.

58:01 The forgiveness of your sins. I mean, maybe you already have that. Maybe you're a Christian. If so, praise God. Take a minute today to be astonished again at what Jesus has given you. But maybe, just maybe, maybe this is the day when, for the first time, you come to see that. Friend, don't stop this morning. Don't stop this morning just with what you came asking for. Let Jesus give you what you really need. Forgiveness and grace and mercy.

58:34 Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are the one who forgives sin. We thank you that you are our God who is also our king, our champion, our mediator, our representative. You're the one who stood in our place and took the wrath of God when you died on the cross so that we wouldn't have to endure that wrath ourselves. Father, we pray that you would remind us of the great gift of forgiveness. And then, Lord, that you would cause our hearts to rejoice and to trust in you for it.

59:05 We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.