We welcome you to Stone's Hill today!

A typical Stone's Hill service has:

* music (so feel free to sing out);

* some announcements (things that are upcoming that you can be a part of);

* a message out of the Bible (God speaks to us through his Word);

* and an opportunity for you to respond to the message (either immediately in the case of a decision that needs to be made OR in the future as you live out the message in your daily life.)

So relax and enjoy your morning! We're so glad you are here!

The Chosen - Episode 6
The Gospel is not so much an argument to assent to (though there are many arguments one can make for the Gospel); but more than this, the Gospel is a person that you place your confidence in.

Episode 6
Episode 6 was a doozy. Three incredible healings. We’ll focus on the lame man.

Jesus is teaching in the house of Zebedee and the crowd is gathered outside, so much so, that no one can pass through the group. The lame man’s friend, Tamar, saw what Jesus did for a leper earlier that morning. “Jesus of Nazareth!” Tamar cries out on top of the roof. She kneels down and lowers her voice as Jesus looks up at her. “My friend has been paralyzed since childhood… Please. Do for him what you did for the leper.”

Her friends situate the paralytic over the rooftop opening, but finding it too small, they begin ripping planks from around it. “If you are willing Rabbi,” Tamar says, “I know you can do this.” The lame man is slowly lowered through Zebedee’s roof. The people eagerly await to see what might happen. The Pharisees, who can’t stand Jesus, are challenging him by asking “By whose authority do you teach?” In other words, what are your credentials behind the stuff you are saying and doing. They can’t stand Jesus getting this attention and contradicting their traditions.

But rather than be drawn into this ill-timed challenge for a debate, Jesus focuses, instead, on the human need. Jesus peers up at Tamar and says to her, “Your faith is beautiful.” Jesus turns to the paralytic, who sits before him, his useless feet splayed, and Jesus says to him “Son, take heart. Your sins are forgiven.”

The Pharisees cry foul. “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” But Jesus replies, “But I ask you, which is easier to say: ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or ‘Rise up and walk.’ It’s easy to say anything, no? But to show you, and so that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins – ‘I say to you my son, Rise, pick up your bed. And go home.’”

When Jesus is At Home... Mark 2:1-12
The Word is taught (v.1)
The Hurting are helped (v.2)
The Failures are forgiven (v.3-4)
The Critics are confronted (v.6-10)
The Miracles are manifested (v.11-12a)
The Lord is glorified (v.12b)

Addressing the Sin First
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Crippled by circumstances, immobilized by fear, stunned by the decision of someone else, numbed by loss, buried underneath a healthy load of depression – it was into this kind of world that Jesus came. He could have tended to all of our emotional and physical needs, but the spiritual priority came first. He eventually had to leave a house surrounded by inquisitive friends and a hole in the roof and die on a hill with thieves in order to freely offer forgiveness to those who hadn’t even ask for it. He had to set right a wrong relationship with God and to reverse a cosmic curse that fills our world with paralytics.

When Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven” there is an implied claim that Jesus is making and that the religious leaders certainly caught. Do you know what Jesus is claiming when he looks at a man and says, “I forgive your sins, all of your sins, now?”

He’s saying, “All your sins toward other people have really been against me. Everything you’ve ever done in rebellion has ultimately been against me.” The only person who could possibly say to a human being that everything you’ve ever done wrong has been against me would be your Creator, the Person who made you, who says, “I made you for a purpose and when you violate that purpose, you’re violating the very thing I made you for.” Only your Creator, only your Lord, could say that. Jesus was saying, “All sins are against me. When you lie, it’s my commands you’re breaking. When you trample on some human being, that’s my creation you’re trampling on.” All sin is ultimately against Him.

Why did Jesus address his sin first? The reason Jesus addressed his sin first was to set him up for entire life restoration. The paralyzed guy probably thought, “If I could just walk again, I’d never be unhappy another day of my life.” The plight of human history - the big thing you want finally comes. But the euphoria doesn’t last. Several months or even years would pass, and he’d grow complacent and the rush of the miracle would give way to daily plodding through life. Jesus created a moment that he could remember - the day that Jesus set him free.

This man has known dependency, humiliation, confinement, boredom, loneliness, frustration, shame, despair. This was his identity. He had a lot of accumulated paybacks. He had four friends, but he had many hurts. Jesus wasn’t just going to heal his body and let him think that he had received his deepest wish. Jesus drove him deeper to a new identity. And while his four friends were incredible and could provide some community and connection, they could not do for him what Jesus does for him here.

This paralyzed man and everybody there had the unspoken assumption that it was sin in this man’s life or the lives of his parents that placed him in this mess. Somebody got on God’s bad side and this man is the result. He had heard it for so long, that he believed it himself. No doubt, the man had a lot of time to think and to grow bitter over his plight. Jesus realized that you can be a paralytic on a mat and still harbor the most egregious sins of all: resentment, judgmentalism, and lovelessness. The healthiest legs in the word can’t run fast enough to free you from sins of the spirit. Jesus started this man’s wholistic healing with the spiritual first. All of his short-comings and failures were exposed in the presence of one who even knew what people were thinking.

Your sin is ultimately against Him. Receive His forgiveness today.