Jesus Can - Week 3 - St. Peter - Pastor Michael Ewart

We often forget about our primary problem (sin) and our most needed solution (forgiveness). Jesus didn’t. His healing of a paralyzed man was a reminder about the purpose of his miracles, to point to his authority to forgive sins and thus solve our biggest problem in life. 

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The episodes are the weekly sermons from 922 Ministries (St. Peter and The CORE) of Appleton, Wisconsin.

Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for this time together. In your word, we ask that through this time you will strengthen our faith, that you'll give us ears to listen as we listen to your word of truth. So to that end, I ask that you would bless the words of my mouth and then also the meditations of our hearts, that all of this may be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

So I have a question for you I'd like you think about, and it's this.

What is your biggest need right now? What would you say is your biggest need? I think it'd be really fascinating to hand a microphone around, but you probably don't want to do that. But I'm curious what your biggest need is right now. And I bet we would hear quite a variety of answers.

I think some of you might answer, my biggest need is health. I got that diagnosis, or I've got this chronic pain. And if I was healed, man, that would just change everything. That's my biggest need. I think some others of you, you might say that your biggest need right now would honestly, pastor, it would be a few thousand dollars.

I've got this debt load. I just can't seem to get in front of it. And if I just came across a few thousand, that would get me ahead of the game. I'd feel so much better. It would take such a burden off my mind.

That would be my greatest need right now. For some of you, your greatest need might be a relationship issue that you're struggling with. There might be a spouse that you're just not getting along with or maybe is working toward a divorce or an estranged child that you want to reconcile with or that neighbor that you're kind of feuding with. And you would say, Pastor Michael, if that relationship could get fixed, that would be game changing. That is my biggest need.

Or others of you, you might say my biggest need is that I'm in this job that is just draining the life out of my soul. I don't love every Sunday evening. I'm dreading Monday morning because this job is just not for me. It's not me, but I need the income. Pastor, if I could find a job that fits my skills and interests better, that is my greatest need at this moment.

And if we handed that microphone around, I bet there'd be a few more. You'd all add your own needs to this list. At any given moment in our life, those perceived greatest needs that we have might shift and change over time. But what I'd like to suggest to you today is that there is something maybe a little bit beneath the surface that when we think about it, actually perhaps will even rise to the very top of the list of our greatest needs. And the greatest need that maybe we don't immediately recognize, but is definitely real is the need to have our sins forgiven.

Of course, pastor, that's the church thing to say. But listen to me. Unresolved guilt, that's the opposite of sins forgiven. If you live with unresolved guilt, it is a burden you are carrying. It is affecting your mental well being.

It is affecting your emotional health. It is affecting probably your physical health. It is robbing you of joy in life, and it is making you doubt your relationship with God and how good things are between you and God. There was a study that was done that says that the average person in a given week spends 5 hours feeling guilty. 5 hours feeling guilty.

And as I thought about it and as I wrestled with this thinking about this message for today, I think that that number might be a little bit low. I think it might be higher than that, to be perfectly honest. So I sat down and I brainstormed some things that people typically feel guilty about. Some of these things I feel guilty about or as counseling people for all these years, things that I know that sometimes you feel guilty about. I came up with a pretty long list of things.

Let me share it with you. Have you ever felt guilty about any of this? Guilt that you should be spending more time with your kids, parents? Any of you ever felt like maybe you should spend more quality time with them? Ever feel guilty about that?

Or maybe there's that friend that you have that's got a need right now, and you know that to be a good friend, you should be spending more time with them or calling them or investing in them. They need it. You're in the position to give it, but you haven't. And now you're feeling guilty about it? Maybe you felt guilty about not getting that right present for that special someone on that certain occasion, whatever it may be, and they deserve something better.

You wanted to give them something better, but time slipped away suddenly. It was their birthday, it was Valentine's Day. You didn't get them the present. Now you feel bad about that because you feel guilty they deserve something better. Do you ever feel guilty about the quality of your work?

You did a project, you did something at work, you did something at home, and you look back, you look at it, and it wasn't your best work. Let's be honest and you feel bad about that. You could have done better, but you didn't. You ever feel guilty about binge watching Netflix? That one's a little too close to home, isn't it?

You watch an hour and then maybe a second hour and maybe a third hour. You stay up till midnight. All right, three in the morning, you watch that show, you binge watch it. You feel guilty because now you're not fresh the next day, there were so many more things you could have been doing with that time. Or maybe it was the TikTok videos one after the other.

Or maybe it was the endless scrolling on Instagram or Facebook and wasted much more time than you anticipated. And now you feel the guilt from that.

Maybe with the new year, you made a resolution about trying to be healthier, and you're feeling guilty because you've already broken it. You're not spending the time in the gym that you wanted. You skipped the workout day, or an entire month of working out. Or maybe you're feeling guilty about eating too much. Or maybe you're feeling guilty about drinking too much.

Maybe you're feeling guilty about not eating better and being healthier with your choices. You might be feeling guilty about spending. You know you're overspending your income and you're in debt, and that's a burden you're carrying. Or you're feeling guilty about not saving enough for retirement or the future or that car that's going to need to be replaced. You're feeling the guilt from that.

Maybe you feel guilty because you said some harsh words to somebody and you know that it hurt them because words can hurt and you shouldn't have said it. But in the heat of the moment, you said those words. Or maybe you feel guilty because you didn't say the encouraging or the loving words that were needed in the moment, and you let the moment pass and you didn't say it even though you knew it would have made a difference. Somehow you let the moment pass, and later you feel guilty because you didn't say what you could have or should have said.

How about this? Have you ever been at work and working? Maybe a little bit of overtime? You're focused on your job, and you're feeling so guilty because you should be home right now. Or you're at home and you're thinking about everything you got to get done at work, and you're feeling guilty because you should be at work getting more stuff done.

And bonus points if you ever felt that in the same day. Some of us have. Do you feel guilty yet? Do you think 5 hours is accurate? I think it's got to be higher than that, doesn't it?

And I haven't even mentioned the big things, the things that really, really weigh heavy on you. That sin you said, I'm never going to do that again. And then you did. Or that addiction that you just keep going back to, even though you promised you never would. Or maybe it's that thing from long ago.

I think almost everybody has this in their past, that thing that happened a decade ago, three decades ago. But when you remember that you did this thing, you still feel shame. Maybe even still makes your face a little bit red. You see how unresolved guilt can be a weight that we have to carry around. And the worst part of it is that it also affects our relationship with God.

And sometimes we even feel guilty about things that in the big scheme of things, they're not that big a deal. And yet the guilt keeps coming back about those things, too. About three, four weeks ago, I don't even know what I was doing, scrolling on social media, bumped across an article about personal finance because it's kind of an interest of mine. And I read this article, and it was generic. It honestly sounded like it was generated by AI.

I thought the author was so lazy, he typed in a quick question, and then whatever came out, he copied and pasted onto his page, reached a couple of conclusions that were faulty and bad for people who would have followed that advice. So I wrote all that out in a comment real quick. This sounds like an ai generated article that is boring and lame and not accurate, and I hope nobody listens to this. Well, a day later I get a little email that says that somebody had responded to it, which I usually don't even see those, but I clicked on it. I went back and the author of it had replied to me.

But this was on LinkedIn, which I hadn't noticed, which means they can look me up and all the details about me. And he called me out in his comment. Oh, this is a very fine comment from a pastor of a church in Appleton, and what an example you're setting for your parishioners by posting something in social media like this. And when I saw that, my heart sank and my face turned all red. If somebody was walking by my office at that moment, they're probably wondering why my face was red.

And I felt so embarrassed. And I thought, oh, I sure hope nobody sees this, so don't tell anybody, please. And I thought, what if one of my own members saw this? And immediately my first reaction honestly was to try to defend myself. And then I thought, no, that's not right.

Do I offer an apology? That doesn't really cut it either. Then I noticed that LinkedIn has a delete feature. You can delete your comment. So I promptly deleted my comment.

And I still feel bad that there's a guy out there who thinks so little of me. And I'm hoping that nobody else saw it and thinks less of pastors or the christian church or how I represented Jesus. This just kept coming back into my mind again and again over the subsequent two or three weeks after that. Now, in the big scheme of things, it might just be this one guy who I'll never meet. And is it really that big of a deal?

Maybe not. But the guilt just kept coming back. And maybe you have felt that guilt too. So I hope that I've convinced you whatever you were first thinking was your greatest need. I hope that maybe you've bumped this one up on the list, or maybe on the top of the list that your unresolved guilt is your greatest problem and resolving it and having the forgiveness of sins is actually your greatest need.

What we're looking at today is one of the miracles of Jesus. We find it in Matthew, chapter nine. And in this miracle we learn something about the forgiveness of sins. By the way, these miracles that we're looking at, you should probably know this, that a lot of you already do. But we are a church that these miracles of Jesus, you should know that we believe they actually happened.

We believe that they are real history, that these happened. In Palestine there really was a storm and Jesus really did calm it. I say this because there are many christian churches today that their approach to the miracles of the Bible are that of course they didn't happen, because of course miracles don't happen. They are made up stories intended to teach a spiritual moral, which we will glean from it if we will just study it for a little bit. No, we are a church that believes these are history.

And it's critically important to believe they are history because they teach us something so important about Jesus and therefore something about how Jesus relates to us that we must know. So with that, let's dig into Matthew chapter nine. Take a look at today's story as Jesus teaches us about guilt and what he does with it. So Jesus stepped into a boat. He crossed over and he came to his own town, stepped in a boat.

He was on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. He had just healed or cast out two demons and cast them into a herd of pigs. And it's a fascinating story. End of Matthew, chapter eight. You got to go read it.

And he gets on a boat. Then he goes to his own town, which is somebody's thinking Nazareth, aren't you? Actually that was his hometown where he grew up, but his own town during his ministry was actually capernaum. It was a fishing village on the northern side of the Sea of Galilee. That's where Jesus goes back to Capernaum, back to his home base.

And it says some men brought to him a paralyzed man lying on a mat. Matthew, who wrote this, his accounts about the miracles of Jesus were extremely brief. He did not include any details. Mark and Luke also record this same miracle and they give us a little bit more background to it. So let me just share that briefly with you.

Jesus goes back to Capernaum. He enters into a house. The crowds hear that Jesus is back in town. They pack into that house to hear jesus preach and teach and for him to heal people. And the house is overflowing with people.

And then these four men bring their paralyzed buddy on a stretcher. They carry him up to where Jesus is, but the crowd is so packed there's no way they're getting through there with a stretcher. So they go up onto the roof. Houses back then often had a side stairway up to the roof. It was kind of almost like a patio that you could use.

They probably grilled out, I don't know, and went up onto the roof. And how are we going to get down to Jesus? They start pulling tiles off the roof, ripping the roof open. And I'm imagining Jesus inside the house packed with people. And all of a sudden pieces of roof start falling in on them and suddenly sunlight is seen right above them and everybody stops.

A hush falls over the crowd as everybody watches. The hole gets big enough and they lower their paralyzed friend through the hole right in front of Jesus. That's what the other gospels tell us. We might say, Matthew, why didn't you include any of that? And he goes, because it didn't matter what I'm about to say, that's just extra details.

It's interesting, sure, but not anything that's essential to the line of the story. So Matthew tells us some people brought a paralyzed man to Jesus lying on a mat. Verse two says, when Jesus saw their faith and whenever you hear that phrase we start rubbing our hands together like oh, here it comes, here comes the miracle. Can't wait. He said to the man, take heart son, your sins are forgiven.

When Jesus said those words, I imagine a little murmur went out through the crowd and people started giving each other funny looks. Did Jesus miss the big thing here? This guy can't walk. Why is he spending time talking about the forgiveness of sins when he's got a paralyzed guy in front of him who needs to be healed? Obviously.

Why did jesus start with that? And I would suggest to you that Jesus didn't make a mistake. That's usually a safe assumption. And Jesus addressed the man's biggest need first. This man was struggling with unresolved guilt.

Why am I so confident about that when the text doesn't explicitly say it? First of all, because we all do. Second of all, because it's what Jesus addressed first. And Jesus addressed people's needs. So in those days, if you had some kind of problem like this, everybody assumed you're a sinner.

You ticked God off. I don't know what you did, but look at how you're suffering and how God doesn't take it away. I don't know what you did, but God is clearly mad at you. And people would have been telling him that for as long as he was paralyzed. And he might not have even known what he did.

Or maybe he had a guess. He had something he had in his mind that maybe he had done at some point. Like we can all probably come up with something from our past that's pretty big. And he just assumed because everybody kept telling him, man, I'm not right with God. God is mad at me.

I'm not good with him and he's not good with me. He's carrying this enormous burden, this heavy burden of guilt all his life. Jesus knew that. And so Jesus says to him, take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven.

Take heart. That means have courage. I know you're afraid. Don't be, Son.

Child, what a term of endearment Jesus uses for this man. Your sins are forgiven. Your debt is removed. Your sin is sent away. It's never coming back as far as the east is from the west.

You are forgiven of all your sin. And I imagine that paralyzed man just suddenly felt a hundred pounds lighter. What? I'm right with God. God is smiles upon me.

I'm his child. He must have been filled with so much joy at the announcement of Jesus, but not everybody was. When Jesus said that, at this, when Jesus said this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, this fellow is blaspheming. Teachers of the law means Old Testament scholars, church people, people who should have known better. They think in their mind this fellow is blaspheming.

Blaspheming here means to defame God by claiming some kind of equality with God. Jesus is forgiving this man's sin. Therefore he is claiming some kind of equality with God because only God can forgive sin. They knew what was happening here. Jesus is claiming divine authority from God to forgive sins.

How dare he? They thought he is blaspheming God. He is defaming the name of God. They were furious on the inside, but they didn't say anything on the outside. But knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. He's God. He knew. I know what you're thinking about what I just said and what I just did. And then he goes on, which is easier to say?

Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or get up and walk. That is an interesting thought question, isn't it? It kind of makes us think a little bit. Which is easier to say? Well, on the one hand, to say your sins are forgiven is pretty easy to say, and then is it true or not?

There's no external evidence, so it's easy to say. But to actually forgive sin, well, that takes God authority to take up your mat and walk, well, that takes an ability to heal, and you're kind of on the line. Then either it works or it doesn't. It's going to reveal who you really are. And yet the higher authority is needed for the forgiveness of sins.

So, boy, which one is it? They're thinking. We're thinking it's got the brain turning. But Jesus answers the question for them. I want you to know, I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

So he said to the paralyzed man, get up, take your mat, go home. Then the man got up and he went home. Jesus proved his authority. Just like that. Just that simple, that quick.

By the way, that's how almost all of Jesus'miracles worked. When Jesus healed somebody, he didn't pray over the person for an hour or half a day or keep coming back day after day until finally the person gradually, eventually got healed. Nope. Jesus would say the word and they were instantly and fully healed. If you look in Matthew's gospel, there are so many instances of this to a storm, he says, be still, and it was instantly.

To a man with a longtime incurable skin disease, be clean. And the skin disease was gone. He was whole again to a man who couldn't hear and couldn't speak, be opened. He could hear. He could talk just like that to a little girl who had died, jesus said, get up.

She did. She opened her eyes, she sat up. Jesus has power and authority over all of our diseases.

But what's the bigger miracle here? Jesus proves he has power and authority to forgive sin. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe. That's a word that's very closely related to fear. Jaw dropping moment.

He healed a guy, he forgave his sins. Both are true. They were filled with awe, and they praised God. The only appropriate response in a situation like this, who had given such authority to man. So can you imagine being in the crowd that day, seeing everything that transpired?

Jesus giving the command, take up your mat and go home. And seeing a man who was paralyzed stand up, pick up his mat and hike right on out. Yeah, praising God is the appropriate response in a situation like that. So what is Jesus showing us today? What is he proving to us he could forgive that man's sin?

What does he do for us? You might have a perception of what your greatest needs are, but could it be that this unresolved guilt is the greatest?

It truly does cause issues in our life when we carry around a burden of guilt that is not resolved. Guilt is like an alarm in us. You might be focused on a certain task or job or even on a vacation, but then guilt coming back into your mind. It's like all of a sudden you're distracted from what you're doing. You focus on that guilt, and it takes you away from the moment.

Guilt challenges your sense of worth. I am a worthless person. How could I have done something like that? And you pull yourself down when you have unresolved guilt. Guilt can lead you to avoid a person.

If you feel like you harmed somebody in some way and there's still something between you, they might not even be mad about it, but you know you did something wrong. You tend to avoid that person because every time you see them, you remember what you did, and it makes you feel bad. Guilt can even affect your physical health.

There was a group of people, and they were made to feel guilty about something first. And then the researchers said, okay, guess your weight. How much do you think you weigh? And they did this with a control group, and they found out that people who were feeling guilty estimated their weight to be higher than it actually was. We sometimes describe guilt as this burden, this weight, this thing pressing down on us.

You actually physically feel heavier. When you feel guilt, it makes physical activity harder. It leads to depression and stress and anxiety. Is guilt your biggest need? I believe it is the resolution of that guilt is your biggest need.

So, just out of curiosity, I did some research. What do secular counselors or psychologists, what do they say about guilt? How do you get rid of those guilt feelings? That unresolved guilt. What would help?

What do they say? Here's what I found. Number one. Practice mindfulness and breathing. Oh, that's useful.

I'll think about it more. Yeah, that's going to take away the guilt. Distract yourself. Okay, so if you're feeling guilty, go binge watch some netflix. That'll distract you, and you'll feel better about yourself then.

I don't think that's good advice. The other advice I heard, don't beat yourself up about it. Well, gee, thanks. That's great, too. Remind yourself perfection doesn't exist.

Nobody's perfect. If you could just convince yourself of that, the guilt feelings will subside a little bit. Do you see what all these solutions have in common? The secular world would say, if you are feeling guilt, you need to develop your inner lawyer to defend yourself better. Lie to yourself more convincingly.

Self deception on a higher level will convince you the guilt isn't as bad as you think it is, and you will have a little bit more peace. You need to get better at lying to yourself.

I don't think these are good solutions. Jesus solution is so much better. Instead of trying to shrink the guilt as much as you possibly can by deceiving yourself, what if guilt, the full size guilt that you carry, what if it is just taken away completely? What if it is completely gone? What if the son of God says to you, take heart, son.

Take heart, daughter. Your sins are forgiven. Wouldn't that change everything? By the way, if you couldn't guess this, fill in the blank, then. That's, like, the easiest one ever.

Your sins are forgiven. Jesus promises you that this is true. Yeah, but, Pastor Michael, you don't know me. You don't know the sins I've committed. You don't know the thing I keep falling back into, the guilt that I bear.

I don't need to know. Do you do what that paralyzed man did? Do you know that Jesus has the solution for your guilt? Do you go to Jesus and lay your sin before him, kind of like we did at the beginning of the service today? Do you know that he is the one that can forgive you?

The one who has the authority to do that? Do you trust in him and his death on the cross for your salvation? Well, yeah, pastor, your sin is forgiven. It is.

And this is your greatest need to know and believe. Your sins truly are forgiven. To have that forgiveness from God, that truly is your greatest need.

This forgiveness of Jesus is yours. The forgiveness of your sins is given and proven by Jesus. It's both given and proven. He did that with the paralyzed man, right? He forgave his sin.

He gave it, and then he proceeded to prove it by healing him and making him walk. Jesus has given forgiveness of sins to you, and he proved it. See, imagine that burden of guilt weighing down on you, pressing heavy on you, dragging you down. And now I want you to vividly imagine Jesus coming up to you personally. He lifts that burden of guilt and shame off of you.

You feel your back straightened, you feel 100 pounds lighter. But what does jesus do with it? Well, he takes that heavy burden onto his own shoulders. Oh, and by the way, he does that for every single person, he piles the guilt and shame up on his own shoulders. He goes to the cross and the wrath of God, that should have come on us for all that guilt and sin, and it instead is poured out on Jesus.

And now do you understand why at the cross he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because the shame and guilt and sin of the whole world piled up on him, and he paid the debt in full so that just before jesus died, he could cry out. And it was true. It is finished. It's paid for.

It's sent away. It's done. I did it. You're forgiven. He gave it.

And in that moment, we think, well, that's great, but something that big, that heavy, that important, there's going to have to be some incredible evidence to back that up.

That's what we're celebrating in four weeks, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus foretold his death for sin, but he also foretold that on the third day, he would breathe life again. He would be resurrected, and he pulled it off. He did it. And so you, because your forgiveness is proven at the resurrection of Christ at the empty tomb, you can have full confidence that you are fully, freely, completely forgiven of all sin for all time.

You are right with God. The burden is removed. God smiles upon you. You are his own dear children. Take heart, son.

Take heart, daughter. Your sins are forgiven. What does that lead you to do? Same thing it did for the crowd. Praise God.

Praise God. What other response could there be? He has taken away the guilt of your sin. When you appreciate the enormity of that guilt and what it does with your relationship with God, when you understand just how offensive sin is to a holy God, when you understand that Jesus loved you so much. The father loved you so much, he sent his son.

Jesus loved you so much, he took that guilt from you on him. And he went to a cross and was put to death there and separated from his heavenly Father because of our sin and guilt. And therefore your sins truly are forgiven. When you know and appreciate all that, what other response can there be but to praise God? Because this changes everything, doesn't it?

Just renew you on the inside? And now you want to listen to Jesus even closer. You want to follow him even closer. You want to yield to him in every area of your life. Whatever he says goes because he is the one who took your sin.

He took your guilt, he took it to the cross. And you are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. So you obey Jesus. You yield to Jesus.

You shout his praises to everybody around you. You reach out to everyone and share what you know. The good news that is so true that with your guilt, with that burden, you couldn't, you couldn't bear it. You couldn't get rid of it, you couldn't forgive it. You couldn't self deceive yourself enough to fully free yourself from it.

But Jesus took it. Jesus forgave you. It was Jesus. It was Jesus. It was Jesus.

You couldn't, but Jesus can. Jesus can. So go in peace today. Your sins are forgiven. Walk with a lighter step as you exit today and praise God because the guilt is gone and you are free.

Amen. So let's stand and let's go to our God in prayer.

Heavenly Father, our guilt is great. We have messed up on so many occasions and it's such a heavy burden, which is why we are so grateful today to hear what Jesus has proclaimed, to know what Jesus did. Our sins are gone. They are forgiven. As far as the east is from the west.

The debt is entirely paid. And so we leave today with joy, with peace and praising you. Lord, we ask that our life this week would look different because of this truth that we have believed that we would change so many aspects of our life. To line up with what you would love to see, not to get something we don't have, but to celebrate what we do have, the forgiveness of all of our sins and to live lives that give honor and glory and praise to your holy name. So help us to do that.