Miraculous Encounters: Jesus' Divine Power Unveiled

At the outset of chapter five here, Luke records three separate miracles that

go far beyond church, just a mere display of Jesus's supernatural power.

In fact, a closer look here in this passage actually shows us that each one

provides really a deeper insight into Jesus's identity and his ministry.

And so I want us to consider them in order this morning. So we're going to take,

first of all, you guessed it, miracle number one, right? Miracle number one,

Jesus had already announced that he was sent to have an itinerant preaching ministry in Judea.

We saw that back in chapter four, verses 42 through 44.

And chapter five here opens up with a scene of the people that are thronging to Jesus, right?

And in verse one, it says, listening, look there in the verse,

listening to the word of God by the lake of Gennesaret, that's another name

for the Sea of Galilee, by the way, when Jesus sees two boats belonging to three local fishermen.

Who were they? Simon, James, and John, right? Verse 10.

And he has Simon put him out from shore so that he can teach the crowd more effectively.

It tells us that in verses two and three. And we're not told much at this point

about Jesus's relationship with the three fishermen there.

But we know that Jesus has been in Simon's house and has even healed his mother-in-law.

Because if you've read the first four chapters, you know, in verse 38 and 39

of chapter four, that happened.

And that Simon finds, you know, he finds it appropriate actually to refer to

Jesus in verse five as what? Anybody know? You see it?

Master. And at the conclusion of his teaching here, he instructs Simon to go

out, Father, and to put his nets again. We see that in verse 4.

And Simon has a frustrated reply in verse 5. It's understandable, right?

Y'all, these are not just mere recreational fishermen, right?

They've just put in a long night. We've got to put it in perspective.

Of a long night of fruitless labor and then clean their, you know,

out their empty nets and they're heading out again into the sea,

get this, at the wrong time of day, must seem like a complete waste of time to them.

In fact, because, only because really that Jesus says so, Simon is willing to give it a try.

If you look there in verses six and seven, it talks about this.

It says the results here in that passage, it makes it clear as we read it and

we look at it, that Jesus has performed a miracle.

Because why? The catch of fish is so great, church, that the nets almost break

and the boats threaten to sink.

That's how great it was. And the meaning of this miracle, it may not be immediately

obvious to us, but it's not lost on Simon Peter.

And in fact, on the face of it, his reaction is surprising.

The first time you read this passage, it ought to shock you.

We'd expect, what, joyful gratitude and enthusiasm, that to be at the forefront, right?

Like, whoa, look at all these fish, yeah, you know, right? But was that how his reaction was?

Well, at least recorded here, Jesus, you know, he had just turned a financially

devastating night, by the way, into an unprecedented windfall.

So I'm sure there had to be a little bit of joy in his heart, Brother Ronnie.

But the first thing out Simon Peter says is he fell at Jesus' knees in verse

8, and he begged him to what? Go away, to leave.

Like, why on earth would Peter, as he's almost always known after this particular

episode in Scripture, make such a request?

The only answer can be that the miracle here, as we see it, has made him acutely

aware, church, of Jesus's divine holiness.

After all, only God himself has such mastery over nature, right?

God alone controls the fish of the sea. And as a sinful man,

he talks about in verse 8 of chapter 5, Peter is astonished,

along with his companions there, as partners by this revelation of Jesus's nature.

As he talks about there in verse 9 and 10, In fact, in coming face to face Eastwood

with the reality that he is in the presence of the Son of God in human flesh, Peter,

church, is undone by his sinfulness because he's in the presence of Almighty God and he realizes it.

And so like Adam and Eve, think about this, hiding from God,

if you remember, after their rebellion in Genesis chapter three, verse eight,

or the Israelites, think about this one, trembling at the appearance of the

Lord on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19, 16, a sinful man like Peter cannot stand to

be in the presence of a holy God.

Wow. In fact, in his masterful book, some of you may have read this book over

the years by R.C. Sproul. It's called The Holiness of God.

He reflects on the meaning of this miraculous catch of fish.

I'm going to just share this one thought from that book.

He says, we noticed that Jesus did not lecture Peter about his sins.

There was no rebuke, no word of judgment. All Jesus did was to show Peter how to catch fish.

But when the holy is manifest, no words are needed to express it, he says.

Peter got the message that was impossible to miss.

The transcendent standard of all righteousness, he says, and all purity blazed before his eyes.

Like Isaiah before him, Peter was undone.

Y'all, that's what it's like when majesty shows up, right? That's what it's

like when God shows up in this kind of miracle.

And Peter saw fast the superficial results, if you will, and he was undone.

He realized his sinfulness.

And I would suggest, though, that we have still not seen the most surprising

part of this story because Jesus' response to Peter, it's just as unexpected as Peter's.

I don't know if you ever thought about it before, but Jesus does not argue with

Peter's statement of his own sinfulness, does he?

He doesn't say, Peter, don't talk that way. You need to believe in yourself,

Peter, and have confidence in your abilities. He doesn't say that, does he?

Instead, what does Jesus do? He simply tells him not to be afraid.

And you know what else? He commissions Peter to a new career.

Peter will now fish for men, for people, right? In Luke 5, verse 10 there.

Luke 5:10

And the sense of that phrase is that Peter and his companions,

who seem to be included here, given their response in verse 11, will be engaged in what?

In rescuing people from spiritual danger.

Man, I don't know if y'all thought about this, but the word picture that Jesus uses is inverted here.

I mean, while fishermen, you know, snatch living fish away to their death,

Peter and the other disciples will be engaged in snatching spiritually dead

people away to life, because the Bible says we're spiritually dead apart from Christ.

So how amazing it is that Jesus, the Holy Son of God, would use sinful people

like Peter to help accomplish his saving work in the world.

But y'all, you know what else? That's good news for us, Amen.

I mean, some of y'all may be saying, now, Judd, I don't know.

You don't call me a sinner. I'm not. I'm just telling you, the Bible says we're all sinners, right?

I don't have to. God said it. I don't have to say it. You're right. We all know it's true.

Thank the Lord, he can use us. He can use us. He commissions us, in fact.

Well, let's look quickly at miracle number two.

Miracle number two. We're not told anything significant about the setting of

Jesus's next interaction, but who is it with again? Who?

A leper in verse 12 through 14. And only though that it took place in one of

the towns, it says in verse 12, and the law of Moses provided instructions,

we know this, for dealing with people who suffered from leprosy, right?

Especially if you go back to Leviticus chapter 13 and 14.

Leviticus 13 · chapter mention

And the result was that basically the individual was considered ritually unclean,

if you remember, and was required to live in isolation from the life of the community.

You can read about that in Leviticus 13, 45 and 46. It tells you a little bit

about that. But here's what I want you to see today.

Merely entering a house where leprosy had broken out was enough to render an Israelite unclean.

That says that in verse 46 of Leviticus 14. And lepers,

not only that, y'all, lepers were required to walk about announcing their wretched

condition, lest anybody accidentally even come in contact with them and risk

contracting their uncleanness, right?

They had to announce it. And so I think that helps us a little bit to understand

that this tension there that's lying just beneath the surface of this truly

miraculous healing, right?

I mean, the leper here in this passage was taking a risk and coming to Jesus.

Doubtless he had grown accustomed to people just avoiding him, right, at all costs.

But he doesn't question whether Jesus is able to heal him, does he?

Rather, he is unsure whether Jesus is willing to do so.

Verse 12, right? And so you can easily sense his anxiety here as we look at this passage.

Will Jesus reject him because he's an unclean outcast?

Far from it, right? Far from it. I mean, while Jesus presumably could have healed

the man with the word, and he does in the next miracle that we'll consider here

in this passage, but Jesus actually does something that's probably shocking.

What does he do? he reaches out and he touches it.

Wow, can you just imagine for a moment, if you can just put yourself,

I know it's imperfectly, but just try to even imagine yourself in that leper's shoes.

People avoided him at all costs. He had to announce his condition.

And Jesus walks up and actually touches him.

Imagine the tenderness here, the care with that gesture, what that would have

communicated to a man that is used to people avoiding him at all costs. Look at verse 13.

Jesus tells the man what? He tells him to be clean. And guess what it says?

Immediately the leprosy left him. Wow. When our God says a word,

y'all, he knows what he's doing. Amen.

He has the power and majesty to accomplish it. You know, all that's left here

for this guy in this passage, this leper, this former leper,

I should say, all that's left is to follow the instructions of the law relating to his cleansing.

That's including showing himself

to the priest and performing sacrifices it talks about in verse 14.

But did you notice something else there? despite Jesus's instructions that the

healed man shouldn't tell anybody except the priest about what happened. Is that what happened?

The news about Jesus, actually, it says here in verse 15, what did it do?

It spread all the more as the crowds continued to flock to him for healing and teaching.

Verse 16 tells us that Jesus actually often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

That's something we can learn too, right?

I mean, there is a time to step away. There's a time to go to the prayer closet, right?

There's a time to be recharged, so to speak.

And just as the miraculous catch of fish was more, y'all, than a display of

power. Yes, it was that, but it's more than that.

So this healing is more than just physical restoration of this man's body,

right? In fact, according to the law, leprosy made a person unclean and unable

to participate in the religious life of the nation.

And so even worse, it was a contagious condition, right?

We talked about that. Merely touching a leper made a person unclean himself.

But y'all, did you notice again? Here, Jesus reverses that dynamic, doesn't he?

Y'all get this today. He touches the leper. And instead of Jesus becoming unclean,

the leper becomes clean. Amen.

Wow. I mean, instead of the leper's defilement passing on to Jesus,

Jesus's cleanness here actually is conferred on the leper.

I mean, wow. It's like makes you want to shout, right? It's a perfect picture,

church, of Christ's redeeming work.

As the Holy One replaces our sinful disease represented by this man's leprosy

with his own spiritual life.

He raises us to life in Christ.

2 Corinthians 5, 21 talks about that.

Well, quickly, let's look at miracle number three. I know you're already anticipating this one.

Well, in this passage, Luke actually whisks us off to yet another time and place,

this time to a home where Jesus is teaching and healing the sick.

Jewish religious leaders specifically who pharisees and

teachers of the law they had come from every

village it says in verse 17 of galilee

and from judea and jerusalem and presumably here to evaluate his teaching that

had created so much excitement but these four unidentified men what do they

do they try to carry in a paralyzed man in order to what it says in verse 18,

to lay him before Jesus.

Why do you think they wanted to do that? Well, presumably for healing, right?

They find that the task is impossible, though, due to the density of the crowd

in the house, it talks about in verse 19.

But they're undeterred. These guys are undeterred about this,

and they carry their friend up where? Do you remember?

On the roof of the building of the house.

Houses in Israel, by the way, at that time were normally constructed with ladders

or stairs leading up to the roof, offering access to fresh air,

extra space, if you will, for daily tasks.

Talks about that in Acts 10, 9, tells us a little bit about it.

But after opening some kind of space in the roof, in those roof tiles, verse 19, look at it.

The four men lower the fifth into what? Into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

Yet again, church, Jesus's response is surprising.

We might expect that he would be annoyed maybe by the interruption.

And presumption even of these men. Not to mention, guess what?

The roofing materials must have been raining down on some of the crowd, right?

And we can even imagine that Jesus might just simply heal the man and move on

with his teaching, like to get him out of the way, right?

Get it over with. But look at verse 20. Instead, when Jesus saw their what? Their faith.

He saw their faith, church. church, presumably the faith of all five men and

Jesus's ability to heal, he told the paralyzed man, what did he say to him?

First of all, he said, what? Your sins are forgiven. He told him his sins were forgiven.

And, you know, Luke doesn't make it clear why Jesus chose to address this man

in this particular way, because after all, no other healing in his ministry

makes an explicit connection between a person's condition and their sin.

You can look back in Luke 13, 1 through 5, talk about that, but we have to ask

ourselves, maybe you think about it, are we to understand that this man's paralysis

was somehow connected to sin in his life? That's a question.

Well, it's surely true that all death and disease is connected inevitably to

the presence of sin in our world, in our fallen world.

That's why we die, right? We all sin, and the wages is death.

But it's also true that some individual suffering is more directly connected to personal sin.

We can look in Psalm 32, verses 1 through 4.

Psalms 32:1–4

But I have to say this, we cannot conclude just on this passage that definitely is the case.

But whatever the case is, here's what I want you to see, that the Pharisees

and the teachers of the law understand the implication of Jesus's statement

here that this man's sins are what? Forgiven.

They know, think about it for a moment, they know that only who can forgive sin?

God alone. And so Jesus's words to this paralyzed man, essentially,

in many of their eyes, amount to blasphemy, right?

Tells us that in verse 21. I mean, and they're thinking And Jesus here has just

claimed to exercise a privilege that belongs to who alone again?

God alone. And in a sense, they're correct.

God is the only one who can forgive sin.

But if, as Luke has already shown us here, Jesus is the divine son of God in

human flesh, then he does indeed, according to verse 24, have what?

Authority on earth to what?

Forgive sins. When it comes to who he is, church, Jesus has,

in effect, raised the stakes here by closing down the options.

Get this Eastwood today. Don't miss it. He is either God or.

Or a blasphemer. Either he's the author and bringer of truth,

or he's living and proclaiming a lie, right?

Or maybe he believes all this and it's not true, and he's a lunatic, right?

I mean, just like somebody once said, Lord, liar, lunatic, right?

We got to choose. And this testifies that he is Lord of all, right?

And the problem is that a claim to forgive sins cannot be verified canon empirically, right?

You can't see it in other words, just immediately.

There's no way to evaluate whether or not the paralyzed man has really been forgiven.

But you know what it says in verse 22? Jesus knows what? He knows their thoughts.

He knows what all these people are thinking.

By the way, he knows what you're thinking right now, right? And he wants the

skeptics in the crowd to know for certain that he has the authority,

church, to forgive sins in verse 24.

So he gives them a kind of proof that they can see by telling the man what?

Get up and walk. Get up and walk.

Y'all, it's an easier thing for somebody to say your sins are forgiven, as he did in verse 23.

It can't be proven or disproven at this point. But if somebody says,

church, get up and walk to a paralyzed man, it'll quickly be evident to everybody

whether or not they're a fraud.

So when Jesus tells the man, get up, take your mat and go home,

verse 24, guess what he's doing?

He's offering proof that his words about the forgiveness of sins are valid as well.

Y'all, the stakes could not have been higher in this miracle.

Either Jesus would be proved to be God in human flesh, or he'd be shown to be

a blasphemer who claimed authority that he really didn't have.

When the man stood up and he went home, as we see in verse 25,

that truth is now inescapable.

Jesus, church, has the authority that only God has, the authority to forgive

people's sins. Aren't you grateful?

What should be our response? We're closing now. What's the response?

Hey, praise the Lord. You know, sometimes it's tempting though to turn Jesus

into a one-dimensional figure, you know.

If you place a high value on being morally upright, doing what's right,

then you might be attracted to the power and holiness of Jesus.

If you value compassion, mercy, then you might be, you know,

compelled by the forgiveness and tenderness of Jesus here in these miracles.

But Luke is not going to let us walk away, Eastwood, with anything less than

a full-orbed portrait of Jesus, if you will.

You see, the one whose power and holiness here terrified Peter and whose compassionate

touch actually cleansed the leper and whose word actually forgave the sins of the paralytic.

And also Luke here, he's also not going to let us walk away without seeing how

we ought to respond. You see, Jesus is powerful and holy, but that doesn't mean

that sinners cannot come to him, does it?

In fact, his compassion is such that we see in verse 15 that people, what?

They flock to Jesus, right, for his healing touch.

He's able to cleanse us, he would, and even commission us for service in his kingdom.

Do y'all get what that means?

All of us have sinned to fall short of the glory of God. And when Jesus rescues

you and touches you and cleanses you, your sins are forgiven past,

present, and future. And he even commissions us for service.

You see that great commission that we talk about every week and even in our

motto that reflects that, that's not a suggestion.

That's a command. God has commissioned us as a believers, as a congregation

of believers, part of his body of Christ in this area, right?

In fact, here he's able to cleanse,

even commission us for service in his kingdom. And guess what else?

Making unworthy sinners like me, like you, into fishers of men.

Somebody ready to go fishing? I'm just saying, fishers of men, verse 10.

When we grasp what a privilege it is, Eastwood, to be called into his service,

which we have been if we're believers, then we'll be willing,

like verse 11 says, to leave everything and follow him.

You see, I don't know if y'all remember, but the way Christians really define

themselves in the word of God, in the New Testament, you know,

they didn't call themselves Christians, right?

That was a derogatory term, you know, like kind of making fun of them,

like, oh, you're like Christ, your little Christ, right?

They called themselves disciples of Christ or followers of Christ.

And here Jesus said, he's going to make us, he's commissioned us to be fishers of men.

In other words, church, get this, as this is all setting this up.

We have been made for mission.

We've been made to go outside these four walls.

We've been commissioned. We've been given power from on high.

We have a message to share. In fact, the people in Jesus' day were filled with

awe, It says, and spontaneously in verse 26, just like y'all did a few moments

ago, when I said, what's your response? They gave praise to who?

Thank you, Lord, first of all, for forgiving me of my sin.

Y'all, when you realize how much God has just forgiven you, right?

I don't know about you. I'm just simply saying the grace that it took God to

forgive me of my sin, that blows me away. That's amazing grace, right?

Aren't you grateful that even though our sin is exceedingly sinful,

that we have wicked hearts, that we're dead spiritually before Christ,

that once he touches us, just like he touched this leper even today,

once he touched you, you were made whole, you were cleansed,

you were sanctified, right? You're brought into his kingdom.

All the old things pass away. We all become new creations in Christ.

That, y'all, that is something that gives us desiring our hearts out of gratitude,

out of thankfulness for what God has done, giving him praise that we get the

privilege to walk out these doors and to fish for men.

But you also know in that, I just got to close with this, that part of that

there when he says, I'll make you fishers of men, follow me and I'll make you

fishers of men. Sounds like a promise to me, Brother Ron.

And also, it's also he says, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men.

If you're not following Jesus, what? You're probably not fishing.

He said, because if you follow me, guess what? I'm going to make you fishers of men.

I don't know about y'all, but man, I wish I had like a rod and reel up here this morning.

Now, I probably wouldn't have a real hook on it because, Brother Ronnie,

if I just cast it out that way, somebody might get hurt, okay?

But I'm just saying, think about it, y'all. What a privilege we've been given.

What a privilege to touch people where they are, to make a difference in this world.