Well, good morning. It’s good to be with you. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 9. We’ve made it to a new chapter in Matthew.

Matthew chapter 9.

And it says, And getting into a boat, he crossed over and came to his own city.

And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,

Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, This man is blaspheming.

But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven,

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 paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.

And he rose and went home. And the crowd saw it. They were afraid, and they glorified God who had given such authority to men.

And then, several years ago, my uncle lives up in Kentucky. He sent me a picture.

And it was a picture of him. It was a picture of me camping. And he had this caption, had a great time with my nephew, Chad. And I’m like, seriously, I was looking at this picture, and I’m like, oh, that’s so great. But I was racking my brains, like, I don’t remember going camping. And I was like, when did this happen? But it’s me. I’m looking at me in the picture. I’m like, that’s me. And like, I was, seriously, like, freaking out. I was like, I don’t remember going camping. And it was strange. And I was shown it. Oh, I guess I should, I could have brought it and put it up. All that to say, my uncle went camping with his family all week. And all week, they’re seeing this guy that was this spitting image of me. And so before they left, they said, hey, I’ve got to get a picture with you. So they got a picture with this guy.

And he sent it to me as a joke. And it had me and a lot of people fooled. They looked just like me. And it wasn’t until I heard that, and I really looked at him. I was like, who is this guy? And I started to wonder, like, do I have a brother that my parents didn’t tell me about? I have to get my hands on that picture and bring it sometime. But I was wondering, who is this guy? Who is this guy’s real identity? Because it’s not me. I didn’t go camping.

And, you know, when we think about Jesus and his ministry, we’ve been slowly just sifting through. It’s really interesting, is it that Jesus, who he is, his identity, he couldn’t be more plain and obvious about it. The last thing Jesus is trying to, is to keep his identity secret from everyone. He’s not doing that. He’s being plain, both through the power of his teaching, the authority of his teaching, through the miracles he’s doing, even the titles he’s starting to use about himself, son of man. He’s making it plain and obvious that everything you ever hoped for from the Old Testament, from the prophets, like, I am it. So Jesus has made his identity plain. But the great tragedy so often in the gospel accounts are that people could not, see him. As much as Jesus made himself plain to the people, Jesus’ identity was often concealed.

And so I think that becomes the real issue for us this morning, the great question in this passage, and it becomes the great question in all of life. Who is Jesus to you, really? It becomes a very pointed question to your heart. And I say it is the most important question that everything really hinges on. Who is this Jesus? Who is this Jesus?

Back in verse 1,

it says, And getting into the boat, he crossed over and came to his own city. And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, This man is blaspheming. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise and walk?

So up until now, Jesus has done a lot of stuff, hasn’t he? And we’ve slowly seen it. Jesus has healed demon-possessed, oppressed. Jesus has calmed the storms. Jesus has healed sick people. So it’s really to the point of saturation. We’re kind of like, Matthew, why do you want to keep telling us that Jesus can do this stuff? Like, we get it. Jesus is kind of lord over physical and spiritual realms. That seems to be obvious.

But we read an encounter that Jesus has with another paralytic, though we see he’s healed paralytics plenty of times before. And this is different. Jesus gives an unexpected response to this paralytic, and it leaves a lot of the people that are listening to him really flabbergasted at what he says.

He’s approached boldly by this paralytic, and Matthew leaves out what Mark and Luke tell us, that this paralytic and his friends are doing so bad, wanting to get in front of Jesus. They cut a hole in the roof of who knows whose house to drop these paralytics down. So you’re sitting listening to Jesus, and here comes like these men. And that’s incredible, but one commentator noted, and I thought it was interesting, Matthew leaves that on purpose because it seems he’s not interested in talking about their bold attempt, which is interesting. But more, I think, what Matthew wants us to see is Jesus’ response to what they’ve done here. Jesus’ response.

And Jesus does not do that thing we’ve come to expect. We don’t expect him to do. Instantaneously heal, right? Wow the crowds immediately. Jesus just says something. It’s very different than what he’s done with the paralyzed person before. Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness

over this man. And Matthew says, here’s the reason why Jesus forgives the man. It says because Jesus saw this band of friends’ faith. Jesus perceived these people have a great reliance upon who he is. And not, simply as some miracle worker. Not at all. But by grace working through faith, they see Jesus for who he is. And I think if you’re in the crowd, it’s anticlimactic. Maybe you took off work. Like, Jesus is like my part of Capernaum. Like, I want to see something. And it’s anticlimactic, right? These folks in Galilee, they were used to a good show.

But he doesn’t heal the man’s body. He does a much greater thing for the man the crowds can’t perceive. Jesus heals the man’s soul.

Jesus says, take heart. Which means, hey, be encouraged. You should be really encouraged. My son, or you could translate it, my child. These are just very intimate terms. This man is no longer what he was. He now is a child of God. He’s near. This man has truly been healed.

And as amazing as that may seem, it wasn’t amazing to everybody. It didn’t sit well to scribes. Remember, we talked about the scribes. Those who thought they knew the law the best. And what they knew about that law said that only God could forgive people who broke His law. Only God could do that. And if you dared try to raise yourself to God’s level, you were a blasphemer. And that was a great mistake to make. The law tells us in Leviticus 24, whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him, the sojourner as well as the native. When he blasphemes the name, he shall be put to death. So it was really all fine and well when Jesus was like this miraculous charity worker. You know, like that’s fine. But now, so they think Jesus is infringing upon their territory. You don’t know God the way we know God. What they’re doing in their hearts by calling Jesus a blasphemer, it’s essentially accusing Jesus of defamation. They’re accusing Jesus of defaming the glory of God. The glory, the majesty, the place that God has alone. That’s what they were accusing Him of.

Now, they’re right in their definition of blasphemy. You give them that. But oh, how they were wrong in accusing Jesus of it.

Jesus knew the quality of the faith of those friends in the paralytic. But so He knows the state and nature of their hearts. That word evil, when it says they thought evil in their hearts about Jesus, they thought evil in their hearts about Jesus. That word is slander just the same. So catch what’s happening. They are slandering Jesus because they think Jesus is slandering God. They are blaspheming Jesus because they think Jesus is blaspheming God. So you kind of have to make a choice as the reader who you’re going to side with. Either they’re the blasphemer speaking against Jesus or Jesus is the blasphemer blaspheming God. It all depends, doesn’t it, on who you think Jesus is and how bad you need Jesus.

So I want to say this this morning. If we really want to say that I know who Jesus is, here’s what you and I need to be able to do like this paralytic and his friends. You and I need to be able to say I need Jesus alone to save my soul. You need to be able to say that with all conviction and mean nothing else by it.

You know, Jesus asked them the question, which is the harder thing to do? Which is the harder thing to do? Which is the harder thing to do?

Heal a paralyzed person or forgive sins?

Well, we know Jesus has done the healing, but can he do the other one?

And here’s the reality for us, friends. That’s the hardest thing we could ever ask of Jesus. The forgiveness that you and I receive from, you know, God, that enables you not to forgive one another. You and I loving and forgiving one another as we so often do, you know, you yell at each other, you yell at your wife or whatever. Hey, I’m sorry. Like, that’s not good. The reason you’re able to do that is because it’s predicated on this. God in Christ Jesus forgiving you first, right? But understand this, the pathway of pardon, the way of forgiveness, that was no stroll in the park for God. That was no easy feat. There was no loophole around it. The pathway required nothing less than a bloody death. It required the father give up his son and the son give up his wife. And the son willingly laid down his life. So this is the hard thing Jesus has done. And something only Jesus could do. No mere man could do it. You and I can’t do it. You and I are in the fallen line of Adam, which means we have the sin problem. We’re under the same curse as any other man. But Jesus is unique in that he’s a full man, but he’s without a sin nature. He was born without a sin nature, but he wasn’t born without the fullness of his divinity. Christ was always God. Christ will always be God. So it’s God in the flesh alone that uniquely qualified Jesus to do the one thing that you and I needed him to do most. You and I need him to carry the burden of the weight of our sins so that we could be guiltless before God. You and I needed Jesus to spill his blood so you and I could be clean and pure before God. You and I, and it’s a big thing to say when you think about it, you and I needed Jesus, the son of God, to die for us. To die so that we could live.

And when we consider the worthiness of Jesus as God,

I think what ought to grip us is our unworthiness for such a price to be paid. You know, that Jesus would do this for us, that Jesus would pronounce forgiveness over sinners like you and I. So when Jesus says to that paralytic, your sins are forgiven,

that meant Jesus would forgive you. Jesus would shortly pay for that forgiveness with his own blood. That’s what it meant. It wasn’t an easy thing for Jesus to say. Not at all. And you know, people often ask that question, how are people in the Old Testament saved? Like if Jesus hadn’t died yet, how do you get saved? The answer is the same from Abraham all the way to the last person that gets saved before time ends. And that’s by grace, through faith, in Christ. Grace alone, faith alone, in Christ alone. The Bible tells us Abraham believed God and it was counted. It was counted to him as righteousness. Now, the clarity you and I have about who God’s Messiah is is very different on this side. But none the same. There’s one way to be saved and it’s through the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s why it’s so imperative. And I say in our time particularly, it’s so imperative that you and I hold to the exclusivity of Jesus, that Jesus alone can save. Jesus says, I am the way. Jesus says, I am the truth. Jesus says, I am the life. Nobody comes to the Father except by me. So you’ve got to seem, and I think to the world it seems like, why are you so flat? And why are you so narrow? And why are you so cold? Or why are you so hateful to say that? It’s not hate, but what a waste for Jesus to bleed down a cross if there was some other way to be saved. You’re defaming the cross when you say, surely there’s some other way besides the cross. It can’t be so. There aren’t alternative methods of salvation. There aren’t a multiplicity of spiritualities that make one new and whole. Jesus alone satisfied the righteous requirements of the law, so Jesus alone is the way of forgiveness. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.21,

for our sake, he made him, catch this, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Christ, you and I would become the righteousness of God.

You know, really the height in England, Puritan era, you had really great theologians, wonderful orthodoxy, and there was a rise of both Sossianism and Unitarianism. And you’ve probably heard of Unitarianism, but those kind of came around the same time.

Faustus Sossianus believed this. He denied that Christ offered any atonement or satisfaction to God for sinners. He held that sinners are pardoned and accepted by God through divine mercy and on the ground of their own repentance and reformation. So largely, Unitarianism, believes everything, which means it believes nothing. They deny a judgment. They deny punishment. They deny the need for one Savior. They deny the divinity of Christ. But friends, it just doesn’t make sense if you read the Bible, even cursory, but honestly. It doesn’t make sense. The Bible’s quite clear. You and I cannot affect a reformation in ourselves. How can you repent of the flesh in the power of the flesh? You can’t do it. The Bible tells us that we’re spiritually dead. We cannot affect a good reformation in ourselves. The law of God makes us sure of that. The moment you say you can produce a reformation in yourself, you are saying you have risen above the law and you have perfected it. Not so. You and I need Christ to make a movement where we have no movement. We need Christ to make a change where there is no change. Much like the paralytic lying before Jesus. Jesus, at His mercy. Jesus, will you do something? And Jesus did something. The paralytic could do nothing but receive. So Jesus, friends, let me say it again to you. He is our true forgiveness.

You and I, time and time again, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the cross of Christ.

Because when we sit at the foot of the cross of Christ, we don’t dare take lightly our sin. And we don’t dare take lightly what a hard thing, it was for Jesus to be able to speak the words over us. You are forgiven. Your record of debt, it’s canceled. You are considered a true child of a true father now. Friend, religious zeal won’t get you there. Putting your best foot forward and your worst foot behind you is not going to get you there. And ever increasing knowledge of doctrine and knowing more better stuff, that’s not going to get you there at all.

Any doctrine you learn, it’s just going to get you there. It’s going to be a new window by which you should see a more beautiful picture of the gospel. Any good deeds you do, an overflow of having truly been changed by the gospel,

relinquishing more guilt and shame of your sin, that’s going to be only due to a greater grasp of the forgiveness you have, not some new age method of learning to forgive yourself and cope with your shortcomings. Not at all. In Christ Jesus, we see He is good alone and I need Him. And before the Father, Christ is my goodness. And Christ is my forgiveness. And Christ is my righteousness. So the gospel message of forgiveness and Jesus Christ alone, that’s the centerpiece of Christianity. It’s a beautiful centerpiece and we can never move it out of its place. You know, it’s not the basics. I think people, well, that’s the basics and you can move on to better. There’s nothing bigger. You don’t move on to better things. You just drink deeper from the same well. Like I just, I want to come back to that simple, beautiful message that God died to save sinners.

It’s like water. I don’t like drinking water. I drink a lot of Diet Coke and I know I shouldn’t. But every once in a while, I’m like super thirsty and you drink water and you’re like, you know, water is good and water is enough and it satisfies by itself in a way that nothing else will and nothing else can. And it’s the very same way that you and I need to constantly come back to Jesus and say, Jesus, it’s not religion. It’s not this. It’s not that. It’s just you. I just need you to save my soul. And I know here we talk a lot about, hey, we need to be a Christ-centered community that’s word-saturated, prayer-dependent, gospel-proclaiming. And those are good things. And I think a healthy Christian is doing those things, is living that way. But you can’t misplace it. Like, Jesus, I’ve prayed enough now. Am I saved? Jesus, I’ve lived in community enough. Am I saved? Jesus, I’ve shared the good. Am I saved now? The answer is always no. You’ve never done those things well enough. When we truly sit at the feet of Jesus and we just believe that wonderful truth that we’ve been loved and we’ve been forgiven in Christ, then I’m set free to pray. Man, because Jesus forgave me, man, I have access to a Father I can pray to. Because Jesus has saved me, I want to tell the world about it. Because Jesus saved me, I get to live in community. Because Jesus saved me, I can grow deeper in the Word and a greater knowledge and obedience of what the gospel is and what the gospel means.

You know, you and I just can never hear the gospel enough. And I think sometimes as a preacher, I think, I share the gospel a lot. I should come up with something fancier, like some better, bigger words. You know, like they’re probably tired of hearing that one. But, you know, my parents were up yesterday and we were talking about just people we knew like when I was growing up. And when I was growing up, there was this guy who I loved and he was the model of Christianity to me. I mean, he loved God, loved the Word. I mean, I just always thought the world of him and a lot of, you know, friends around did. And he was just the guy, you know, maybe you had like a role model like that. All to discover, like he’s all but apostatized. He’s all but renounced the faith now. And it’s like, how do you get there? So please never, ever think you’ve heard the gospel enough. We need to hear it more and believe it more. You and I, we’ve not graduated from anything. We need to hear it and believe it. Jesus, keep me, keep me in the gospel. Abide in me until the very end because there’s so much that’s going to pull you away from just understanding, realizing, living in that great desperation. Like, Jesus, I need you to satisfy my soul. Like water in a desert. Like that’s my situation, Jesus, until I’m with you. We can’t lose that. A full gospel message.

We’ve heard it, but have we understood it? We’ve seen it, but have we perceived it? We’ve agreed to it, but have we loved it? That’s what it means to really see Christ and desire him. It’s a spiritual reality we constantly need to be going deeper into.

I want you to look back. I want you to look back at verse 6 with me.

Jesus says, But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

He then said to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.

And he rose, and he went home.

You know, Jesus never owes anybody an explanation. For anything. Jesus certainly doesn’t have to give a demonstration to prove himself. But how often is Jesus kind to stoop down to your level and mine? How often he comes down to where we are to lift us up. And Jesus proves his deity to these doubting, slanderous scribes by healing the paralytic. Not that it necessarily affected a change in them, but surely it did in the paralytic’s life. That paralytic, he obeyed Jesus. He got up, he took his mat, and he went home. And I can imagine he went home to lay down on that mat. I imagine Jesus was thinking, get up and go throw that old nasty thing away. You don’t need it anymore. You’ve been changed. So Jesus did in this man’s life only what Jesus could do. Not as some imperfect prophet, like in the Old Testament, and God gave him a measure of power to do a miracle. Jesus, Jesus came as one who has all authority and all power over everything. That’s who Jesus is. And I want us to see this, that as great as it is, and wonderful as it is, and it’s the greater thing that Jesus saved this man’s soul, and Jesus forgives sins, I don’t think we can miss out on the miraculous work that Jesus has been doing, what Jesus is doing in healing this man’s body. I don’t believe that as Christians we can discount the physical world, discount our bodies as irrelevant. Everything should be spiritual. That’s Gnosticism, if you’ve ever heard that term. And ancient Gnostics believed only the spiritual was good. So anything physical, like this physical realm, it somehow is a production of evil. So I want to get away from what’s physical and what I can touch. It’s wrong. I need spiritual. I need knowledge of the spiritual. They believe the function of Christ was to come as an emissary of the supreme being, God, to give salvation, spiritual knowledge, or gnosis. As a divine being, he neither assumed a properly human body, so Jesus wasn’t a real person,

neither was he real, he was maybe a ghost, a phantasmal human appearance, or maybe he possessed some man named Jesus. So no way could the divine touch the physical. That was an impossibility.

But friends, that’s what you and I celebrate, the incarnation. The incarnation. The incarnation. The fullness of God came into contact and was incarnated in the fullness of man. In other words, the beauty of the incarnation for you and I is this. It doesn’t just show us that Jesus is Lord over the body and the soul. It shows us that Jesus in the flesh came to redeem and restore both the body and the soul. When Jesus rose up from the grave, he rose up in a new glorified body. When Jesus ascended into heaven, that was in his physical body. And when Jesus comes back and breaks open the clouds, he’s going to be coming back in a physical body. So yes, I need Jesus to set my soul free, but you and I need Jesus just as well to affect healing for the world that is to come. And I think desiring a body that doesn’t experience the slow, you know, effects of time, the ailments of the flesh, all you see in the world around you. I don’t think that’s about, oh, because I want a pleasurable life. That’s not about a pleasurable life now. It’s about looking forward to enjoying the fruit, the fruits of Christ’s labor on the cross that he’s made all things new, that Jesus intended for you not to be healthy and to enjoy God’s creation in a body. He didn’t intend for us to constantly be sick and see the people we love sick and see the world around us. But that’s never part of God’s plan. So Jesus’ work on the cross, it was sufficient, yes, to save your soul, but to give you hope of a new heaven and a new earth in which to enjoy God. Paul says in Romans chapter eight, for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together. And the pains of childbirth unto now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as we eagerly await adoption of sons, the redemptions of our bodies. So I’ve been renewed spiritually, but boy, is the renewal coming. And I’m going to be in a glorified state, body and soul, free from sin, free from the effects of the fall. And I believe we should be looking forward to that, that Jesus won for us bodies that won for us. That won’t fade, that won’t corrupt.

The elements of the flesh we have now, we have a lot of them, don’t we? We all have different ones and we get older, you get, you know, it gets different.

They’re a constant reminder, things are not as they will be.

Things are not as they will be someday. And I think those seasons, when you and I were in seasons of suffering, we see people around us suffering, we see things, that reality becomes more real, doesn’t it? It pushes you either to, it pushes you to hope. Like, yeah, this is bad, but it reminds me of the cross. So let your suffering be, and again, this is one of those, we can talk about those weird, if I’m a disciple, I have to believe weird things. I have to believe that my suffering, that seeing, you know, decay and corruption in this world, it’s a precious sign to me that God has and He’s going to make that right. So even the darkest of things, it only should push me in faith to hope and believe that Jesus is going to make things better, that Jesus has body and soul, raised us above the fall to life incorruptible. We died in Adam, but friend, if you have hope in Jesus, you will come alive in Him on the last day, on the day of the resurrection.

If Jesus has skin, I want skin like His.

I want it free from corruption. And it’s a strange thing to consider that Jesus in eternity past did not have a body, but Jesus is never going to change. He’s always going to have a body. He’s always going to be a man. That’s too much to process that He would put on something He created and never take it off again. But how He’s loved us in making it new in Him and in Him alone.

Matthew Henry said, It’s a matter of comfort to us that when we have buried our godly friends and relations, to think that they shall rise again. As the soul at death is not lost, but gone before, so the body is not lost, but laid up.

Think you hear Christ saying, Thy parent, thy child, thy yoke fellow shall rise again. These dry bones shall live. Man consists of body and soul and provision is made for the happiness of both. Provision is made in the cross and the blood of Jesus for the happiness of both.

I’m sure you have heard of the coronavirus going around. And what better testimony to a brother, a brokenness that Jesus has saved us from. Can you imagine a world where you never hear about a virus? Where you never hear about death? You never hear about decay? It’s almost unimaginable, isn’t it? But that’s the hope we have in Christ Jesus. I think on a humanistic level, most people’s response is, Oh, it’s just a virus. It’s just another this. No, it’s not just another thing. It’s sin. It’s sin that ruined everything. And if I don’t have Jesus as my one hope, I’ve got hope of nothing because Jesus alone explains what’s broken about everything, what’s broken about people, what’s broken about creation. So let that be to you, please, a deep consolation. And I think sometimes messages like this, they roll off our back because, hey, everybody knows fine right now. It’s not always going to be that way. And when you think you’re fine today, you’re not fine tomorrow. And really, if you open your eyes up and you live outside yourself, you’ll see a lot of other people who aren’t fine around you all the time. And that should break your heart as a Christian. So again, you’ve got deep consolation in the Spirit because of what Jesus did. But you know what we also have, and here comes in that evangelism part, you and I have deep consolation to give to the world. I know this doctor. I know this physician of soul and body. And I know he’s made a promise that on the last day, if you trust in him, he’s going to resurrect you to what the Apostle Paul called life incorruptible. So friend, enjoy it and live in the freedom of Christ and that hope. But wouldn’t you, if you really believe that Jesus was the physician of the soul and the body, wouldn’t you be preaching that good news to people who didn’t have it? And people don’t have it. Many people don’t have it. Share it. Give it away. The gospel message that you and I have.

Verse 8.

It says,

And we’ve talked about this a little bit before. Crowds are fickle things.

The crowds were amazed. I think there are seas about what they saw.

But what we don’t see in the crowds is what we see in the paralytic. We don’t see belief. We don’t see surrender. What we don’t see are these people coming to this spiritual realization. That this Jesus has power. This Jesus could save my soul. This Jesus could heal my body. This Jesus is real life. This Jesus is not just a man. This Jesus, He’s God as well. And they miss it. They miss it. They don’t see it. Because the same people that were wowing and praising Jesus at the start of the ministry are the same people putting Him on the cross in the end. You and I need just a spiritual conviction by faith. That Jesus is who Jesus said He was. He was the Son of Man. And He loved to call Himself the Son of Man. But oh how He was the Son of God. Oh how Jesus alone is our life.

Jesus has a similar relevant discussion with Martha. You probably remember this or you’ve read this story. In John chapter 11, you know Lazarus, Martha’s brother, has died. And Jesus says to her, Your brother will rise again. And Martha said to Him, I know that He will rise again. I know that He will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. And Jesus said to her, Here’s where we’ve got to get it. Jesus says, I am the resurrection and life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? Do you believe that?

She said to Him, Yes, Lord. I believe You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. He had to draw Martha out of Jesus. She had this vague religious experience. And she needed to be brought to a realization of how bad she needed the person Jesus. And without Jesus, there would be no resurrection. So who is Jesus? Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

A whole new life. Soul and body made new because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That’s who Jesus is.

And I know sometimes we go in these seasons, like we wonder, you know, prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it. That old hymn says, and it’s like, I got to just come back to it. Like, I can’t keep wondering. Like, I get away from that. I get caught up in stuff. And like, I just boil it all down to like coming to church. And this is, and it’s not that. I got to just come back to the beauty of simplicity and sitting at the foot of the cross and just saying, Jesus, it’s not even like the strength of my faith. It’s just knowing the object of my faith. Jesus is good and powerful. And I’m taking you at your word. And you are life, Jesus. You are life. That’s who you are. That’s your identity. Jesus is the life. Jesus is the resurrection. Friend, is that your hope of heaven? Is that your hope right now?

Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you for Jesus.

And I don’t have enough words and good enough words to just describe the mystery of your love for sinners.

But I want to know the mystery. And I want to love the mystery. And I want to live in the truth of the mystery. And I want to know Jesus and desire Jesus more than anything. And I pray that would be true for each and every one of us, Lord. That we could join the friends, join the paralytic, and having a real faith.

A faith so real that just believes by grace that Jesus is God. Jesus is the Son of God.

Lord, I just pray you’d make that so real for us. That we would gladly part with the world. We would part with ourselves. We would part with the small-mindedness that we have.

See the kingdom of heaven. See the kingdom of God. And live for it and it alone.