What Kind of Man is This? | Matthew 9:1-8

Matthew chapter 9 verses 1 to 8. Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town.

Matthew 9:1–8

Some men brought him a paralysed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man,

Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven. At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves,

This fellow is blaspheming. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?

Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up and walk.

But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

So he said to the paralysed man, Get up, take your mat and go home. Then the man got up and went home.

When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe, and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.

Well, let's pray before we go further into the passage.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your kindness to us in sending your Son and giving us your Word.

Thank you for filling us with your Spirit that we might know you.

Heavenly Father, we pray that as we look at this passage, that you work amongst us by your Spirit,

that we might better know you, love you and serve you. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, do you like a good puzzle?

In fact, probably I should ask the question differently and ask, What kind of puzzles do you like?

Because I think that all of us like solving things in different ways.

In fact, I think human beings are kind of wired to solve puzzles or solve mysteries and work stuff out.

So whether that's kind of with hands-on projects, some of us kind of like that kind of thing,

like construction or renovation or a plumbing job or electrics.

And in those kind of jobs, you tend to have, like you've got your job to do, but in order to get that job done,

you've got a whole lot of steps along that. And each of those steps is kind of a puzzle.

And then you've got the puzzle of kind of sequencing those things,

like you take out this part here before you put that up against that.

And then so there's all kinds of thinking and ordering that.

And some crafts are pretty much the same, like sewing.

You're kind of working out, OK, I need a seam allowance here and I've got to flip this over and sew it.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

I think sewing is like construction, like in floppy stuff basically.

Others of us like mathematical problems.

We like to solve logical things and do things like coding, put together a sequence in that way.

Other people like the tactile puzzles, like doing a cube or those bent-nail things

or where you've got to get the ring off the horseshoes or whatever,

and kind of figuring out with your hands and with your eyes how to do that.

And then there's visual puzzles like jigsaws and word puzzles like crosswords.

And some of us like a story with our puzzle.

So we like a kind of a good mystery to solve, a good mystery novel or a detective show on the telly.

And there's something really kind of satisfying, isn't there, of nutting through a problem

and then kind of getting to the end of that and seeing how it all kind of falls out.

So you're on site there and you've done the job and you're like, you know?

Yeah, you know, and you're just like, yeah, before you leave.

And if no one's around too much, then you're like, yeah, you know?

Because it's satisfying to get through that. We're kind of wired in that way.

And things have more meaning to us when we work through them and come to the end.

And this passage is kind of mysterious.

There's a whole lot of things in it that are kind of a bunch of problems that need working out.

And I think that what we do sometimes when we read the Gospel or when we read the Bible generally

is that we can get kind of feel a little bit intimidated by all the problems

and then we kind of skip over them and not really solve the problem and figure it out.

Or we kind of get to stuff and then we kind of leave it and file it in our brains under something like

weird stuff that Jesus said and kind of not worry about it too much.

But the problem with that is that when we do that, when we don't kind of solve the problems

and pay attention to the detail, it tends to be that each passage means the same thing

because we're not kind of getting what's different in this one.

And so what we need to do is we need to pay attention to the details

because Matthew doesn't tell the story in a straightforward way.

He doesn't just like come out and say, and this is the meaning, which he does in some places.

He'll sort of point out meaning to you, but he doesn't.

And he hasn't been in this section.

And so what that does is it causes us to have to work through it.

It causes us to puzzle over it.

And the reason I think that he does that is because that's how Jesus spoke

and that's how Jesus acted and taught.

So he kind of brings us into it as if we're in the crowds,

as if we're trying to kind of figure it out like they were trying to figure it out at the time.

And so we're kind of armchair detectives kind of working through the clues.

But at the same time that Matthew kind of invites us in to kind of look over his shoulder, if you like,

he's very careful to put it together in a way that allows us to get to the meaning.

He's focusing us on the meaning.

He doesn't want us to get it wrong.

He wants us to work it out, but he wants it all there.

He wants all the clues so that we get to the right place.

And so we should be confident that we're going to be able to get there

and get the meaning if we just do the work and get through it.

And that's what we're going to do with this passage.

We're going to kind of work through each little puzzle in it

and as much as possible to solve every piece

so that when we get to the end that we're going to see the meaning more clearly.

And I think that we can see the end or at least part of the end already.

We've been seeing in this section of Matthew since the end of the Sermon of the Mount

that we've been working through ideas about Jesus' authority.

We've seen his authority to teach, his authority to heal,

his authority over the natural world, over the demonic.

And now in this passage we see his authority to forgive sins.

So I'm sure that you got that when Lucy read through it.

But we need to think about what exactly does this authority mean for us

and what exactly does it teach us about Jesus.

So make sure that you have your Bible open.

We're going to be going verse by verse and you want it there in front of you.

So look at verse 1.

It says Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town.

Now maybe that doesn't mystify you at all.

And if it doesn't, that's great.

It doesn't mystify Matt over here.

Gold star.

Or you can grab a Bickey at morning tea, if that's you, well done.

But for everybody else, I think there's one thing that is actually confusing in there

and that is where is his hometown?

Where is his hometown?

Now you might say well Jesus' hometown is in Nazareth

because we know that when he went down to Egypt he came out and moved to Nazareth.

Except that that would be an odd thing to say that he stepped into a boat, crossed over and went to Nazareth

because it's not on the water.

Nazareth is in the hills.

That would be like saying I stepped into a boat and went to Brookton.

You don't go to Brookton in a boat.

You don't go to Nazareth in a boat.

And the reason is that Jesus' hometown is Capernaum.

So if we went back in Matthew to chapter 4, verse 13 or 14, somewhere there,

he moves to Capernaum at the start of his ministry.

Now why is that important?

Firstly so we don't get confused.

Secondly because it was in Capernaum that Jesus said that the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.

And then he goes out and then he kind of moves out from Capernaum because of the crowds there.

He goes out, he goes in a boat.

That's where he calms the storm.

He doesn't even get to sleep in the boat.

Literally he gets woken up after saying that.

He goes across to the other side of the lake, is asked to leave there and comes back.

So he literally has no place to rest his head.

And he's back in the same place.

It's also important because it's his town.

That's been the centre of his ministry since he started it.

And so he's known there.

This isn't an event that just happens in kind of a place that he walks into and isn't known.

People know him.

Capernaum at this time has a population of about 1,500 people.

I've lived in a town that size.

When I lived in Fitzroy Crossing that's what the population was.

It's like a size of a town, 1,500.

I was only there for three years.

But even in that time you don't know every single person.

But you know of, like there's only one degree of separation between you and anybody else.

So back in Matthew 8 verse 16 it said, this is just before he left and went away.

Matthew 8:16

It says, When evening came, many who were demon possessed were brought to him.

And he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.

Like when there's 1,500 people you don't miss that.

We're going to come back to why that's important.

Okay, so in verse 2 some men bring Jesus a paralysed man who's lying on a mat.

So it's on some kind of stretcher that they've brought him.

And there's a couple of hard things that's going on there.

So firstly it says that Jesus saw their faith.

So how do you see faith?

Well you see faith in action.

So they obviously by bringing this guy they believe that Jesus would heal him.

And they've gone to trouble.

These aren't guys who just like a guy, he doesn't just happen to live on this bed

and he has friends that carry him about everywhere.

Like they've gone deliberately and put him on something so that they can bring him to Jesus.

So the words that Matthew used there, it's kind of like he's not just like on a mat where he hangs out.

They've put him on a mat.

So like in Australian terms it would sort of say something like they've chucked him on a mat.

Like they just chucked him on the mat, they've brought him to Jesus.

So their faith of all of them, including the paralysed man himself, is seen in the actions.

And just it's worth noting here because we'll come back to it that here and everywhere else in the New Testament

that there's a connection between faith and forgiveness.

Secondly, still in verse 2, Jesus says,

Take heart son, your sins are forgiven. Which is a really odd thing to say, isn't it?

Because that's not what they were expecting. That's not the set up.

The set up is guy paralysed, friends went to trouble to get him there.

What are we expecting? We're expecting a healing. So why?

Why does Jesus say this? And why focus? Why do that?

And why say that his sins are forgiven?

It's not because what we may jump to, it's not because he, you know,

Jesus is saying that there's a sin behind the fact that he's lying on the mat.

Like if we could just get rid of his sin, that would be okay.

That's not what's going on and Jesus has made that clear.

So in John 9 verse 3, there's a blind man and Jesus makes it very clear that the guy is not blind

John 9:3

because of a particular sin that's going on in his life or his parents life.

So that's not it. What Jesus is doing is Jesus is being deliberately provocative in the way he's speaking.

So in the face of such obvious physical need, obviously the guy wants healing, needs healing.

He makes an outrageous statement of saying, take out your sins are forgiven.

So he makes the issue forgiveness.

He shows that this guy, however obvious his problems are, the big issue for this guy is that he needs forgiveness.

And that's the bigger gift that Jesus can give the guy.

And that should cause us to take heart. That's what he says to the guy, to take heart.

So meaning to be confident in life, to be encouraged in life.

Because we can all get discouraged by the physical stuff that's going on.

We can get discouraged in our life because of our circumstances or our housing or our health or whatever it is.

But Jesus tells him to take heart and we should all take heart and encouragement in our lives

because we can know if we're Christians that our sins are forgiven.

It is a wonderful place to take heart but also to remember that in our own ministry.

It's that people have great physical needs and it's wonderful that we meet those needs.

That we meet the needs of people who are homeless or without food or who are sick.

And if we're able to help in those ways, to help in mission, to build those things for people, they are wonderful.

That reflects God's nature when we do it and we shouldn't stop doing it.

But we shouldn't get confused and stop at that point. That's not the mission.

The mission isn't that, to fix the physical needs.

We need to be like Jesus and go beyond and to be offering people the forgiveness of sins.

Moving to verse 3, we see that the teachers of the law are triggered, to use the modern saying.

So what are they triggered by and do they have it right?

So they take exception to what Jesus is saying.

So look again closely to work out verse 3. Just look back at verse 2 and what Jesus actually said.

So he didn't say, I forgive you.

Like as if this guy has done something to him personally and the guy comes and Jesus says, well I forgive you.

What he says is, you are forgiven. Your sins have been forgiven.

So he is in saying that, he's declaring, not just that he forgives him personally for a personal wrong,

but his sins generally are forgiven and putting it that way implies, they are forgiven by God.

So these guys take exception to that.

In fact what he says, he says, afentaisu ha ha matiai, which is slightly different from saying, not afentaisu ha ha matiai.

And you say, what's the difference there? Well the difference is subtle.

And it's hard to kind of get into English, but what he's saying there, what Jesus is saying is he's suggesting that his own words are forgiving sins.

It's like saying, instead of just saying your sins are forgiven, it's like saying that but at the same time saying, I am forgiving your sins.

Or your sins are being forgiven as I say this.

So in other words, he's suggesting in that kind of subtlety of his language that it is him that is causing,

not him that is causing himself to forgive, but that he is causing God to forgive this person generally.

And in a sense, the scribes are kind of right. Kind of right. In the sense that if somebody is doing that and they do not have the authority, that is blasphemy.

But then look at verse 4 and look at how Jesus reacts to what they're saying.

First it says, knowing their thoughts. Now that seems like a mysterious thing that needs puzzling out, but it's actually the one not mysterious thing that's actually going on here.

So it's nothing kind of miraculous about knowing their thoughts. He doesn't do that in a miraculous way.

They're talking amongst themselves. He knows what's going on. He's reading their body language and he gets where they're going with this.

It's not that he can't know it miraculously. It's just that he doesn't need to in this point. There's nothing mysterious there.

The bigger question is why does Jesus tell them that they're entertaining evil thoughts? So they kind of call him out on this blasphemy charge.

Jesus declares that their thoughts are evil. That's why the location is important. We're at the heart of Jesus' ministry here.

All around them they've been seeing Jesus' authority, incredible authority in healing sickness and casting out demons.

They're the teachers of the law. They should know. They should understand. They are guilty if they don't interpret these rightly.

In fact, as we kind of hear about as the chapters go on, they are rejecting. They are sinning against the Holy Spirit when they reject the signs that Jesus is performing.

This kind of drives at the heart of the passage. It's about authority. If Jesus has the authority to do this, then they're wrong.

It's not blasphemy. If they've rejected the signs and are calling blasphemy what isn't, then that is evil.

We're going to get into the significance of rejecting the signs in a moment.

Verse 5 is a genuine head-scratcher. It comes across as a bit of a riddle, partly because we're just not really used to the rhetoric or the argument style that Jesus used

and would have been understood by the teachers of the law and his audience there.

He says, which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up and walk? We've just been saying how hard it is to forgive sins.

Is that the hard one? Is it harder to forgive sins? We've just been saying that that's only God that can do that. Or is it harder to say which one is it?

What we've got to do is pay attention to what Jesus says. He says it's not which is harder to do or to have achieved for you.

It's which is harder to say. The harder one to say is to say that, to get up and walk.

The reason for that is that anybody can walk along and say, son, your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven.

You can't do anything, can you? You're just like, that's kind of weird, dude. Keep going.

But if you call it out and you say that you're going to say, get up and walk, and you've implied that when you say that, he's going to get up and walk.

You're not saying, I'm going to pray for you. Wouldn't it be great if God healed you and you were able to get up and walk?

You're saying that on your command you're going to do it. Well, sooner or later someone's going to call you out and say, well, go on.

Do it then, right? So that's the harder one.

After choosing to focus on forgiveness, Jesus focuses then or says that it's the harder one to tell him to get up and walk.

Then he chooses to do it anyway. So he said we're going to focus on forgiveness and then he chooses to go ahead and heal the guy.

Of course, the answer to why he does that is tied up in what he says.

He says, but I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

I want you to know. They ought to have known already, but he wants them to really know. He wants to demonstrate it.

So he wants to do something that they can see in front of them to demonstrate the authority that they can't see.

Notice that he tells the guy to take his mat and go home.

The point of that is that it proves his healing. He doesn't kind of stagger out of there.

He's able to pick up the stretcher, the bed that he's on, that they've carried him on.

He's able to carry that himself and walk all the way home.

So this is not some Benny Hinn miracle crusade where they get the guy to wheel him out in a wheelchair just so they can get the guy out of the wheelchair.

Or when they kind of lift the guy up and everyone's around him, seemingly cheering and hugging the guy, but actually they're holding the guy up.

That's not what's going on here. He demonstrates it in an irrefutable way.

This happens in a small town where people know. It didn't limp out of there.

So in bringing this together, what is it all focused on?

All these little mysteries that we've been looking at and working through, none of it is focused on the paralytic.

None of it is focused on the man. We don't know why he was paralysed. Was this from birth? Did something happen to him?

Who were his friends? How did they know about Jesus? Why did they bring him?

What kind of sins did this guy have personally? Not important.

How far away was his house? What exactly was he lying on? We don't get a description of it.

How did he feel about being healed? How did he respond to Jesus?

In other passages, Matthew tells us how the people respond to getting healed or Jesus, but that gets cut out.

In fact, Matthew's cut out details, cut out every kind of little part other than the bits that he wants us to focus on.

So what's that? All these mysteries point to one thing, and that is the issue that's raised by the scribes, by the teacher of the law, through their interaction with Jesus.

Is this blasphemy or is it legit?

In fact, it's like the whole thing is a set up for the last verse.

So let's not miss what it's set up for.

The last verse says, When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe.

Just imagine being there.

The amazement at this incredible show of authority.

You're in the house, you're in the crowd there.

The teachers of the law are calling a blasphemy.

Jesus basically says, If I can get this guy to get up and walk, then I have authority to forgive sin.

That's what's going on. And the guy gets up and walks and goes home.

You are filled with awe. What on earth is going to happen in this moment? That is incredible.

And it says they praised God. So they're filled with awe and they praise God.

Notice that they don't praise Jesus.

That's not their immediate action. Say, Well done, mate. Thanks for moving here.

They praise God. They're filled with his reverent awe about what's going on.

And that is the right response to make.

The crowns have it right, especially given what gets said next.

They praised God who had given such authority to man.

Notice that God has given this authority to Jesus.

The authority is not Jesus'. It has to be given to him.

So they gave such authority. It says, reading it again,

They praised God who had given such authority to man.

I'm not emphasizing the incredible amount of authority that's been given here.

So the crowds get it. They understand the proof that has been given.

Jesus has such authority.

Other people have done other miracles. God has given authority to others.

He gave authority to have signs to Moses.

Moses was able to exercise that. He gave authority to heal to Elijah.

But such authority he has never given to somebody who can at a command heal,

demonstrating his authority to forgive sin.

And it says they praise God who had given such authority to man.

This incredible authority has been given to a man.

Let's not miss here what the crowds figured out.

We might jump too quickly and say that Jesus can heal these people because he's God.

And that's not quite it. That's not what Matthew gets us to focus on.

It says that God gave him that authority.

Now don't get too nervous here. I'm not about to deny Christ's divinity.

I just want to make sure that we get there in a biblical way.

And actually it's a constant witness of the New Testament that Jesus' authority,

in fact his ability to do miracles, are from God the Father.

It's not like Jesus has that in and of himself, but it's derived from God the Father.

So if you look at the end of this Gospel, Matthew 28, 18,

all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. He's given that authority.

Listen to this from John 5, verses 26 and 27 in John 5.

John 5:26

For as the Father has life in himself, so he granted the Son also to have life in himself.

And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of man.

And then in John 5, 36, so just a bit further on, he says,

For the works that the Father has given me to finish, the very works I am doing, testify that the Father has sent me.

So he does the miracles, but that indicates something, that teaches, that shows us something about the Son.

Now this may sound a little bit strange, I don't know, perhaps it does,

and if it sounds a little bit strange, then we need to revisit our understanding of the Trinity.

So when we say, when we confess the Trinity, and we say that the Father, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all fully divine,

what we mean by saying that is that whatever makes God God, is true of the Father, it's true of the Son, and it's true of the Holy Spirit.

So if the Father has eternity, then the Son has eternity, and the Spirit has eternity.

They share entirely in the divine essence.

If the Father is infinite, the Son is infinite, the Spirit is infinite, because they are the one God.

But this does not mean that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are the same, or that they have the same relationship.

So one way that Muslims, you'll find plenty of clips on YouTube that do this,

the Muslims call out Christians and think they have a game set match, is they say,

you guys believe in the Trinity, and then they say, and then they point to a holodiverses where the Son is subservient to the Father.

And we should be saying, yeah, that is exactly what we believe about the Trinity.

The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

They are separate persons within the Godhead.

And in saying that, we need to understand that the Father is eternally the Father.

And being eternally the Father means that He is eternally the Father of the Son.

And if the Son is eternally the Son, the Son is eternally a Son.

He is eternally the Son of the Father.

And the Son then eternally submits to the Father.

It didn't happen at some point in time.

That's the way they're derived eternally, that the Father will always and has always submitted to the Father.

And the Father has always been the source of the authority of the Son.

He's the Son. And He's bestowed with the Father's authority from the Father.

And what this means for us is that authority and submission,

which are two ideas that are completely on the nose in our culture, right?

But authority and submission are eternally good things.

If it's good enough for the eternal Son to submit to the Father, then it's good enough for us.

And if submission is an eternally good thing, then it's good for us to submit in other right relationships when it's right to do so.

And if authority is something that is good and right, then it's good and right for us to act as authorities under God when it's appropriate for us to do so.

Furthermore, when it comes to miracle passages, we have a tendency to say that the miracle proves that Jesus is God.

So He does this and that proves that He's God.

And that's kind of true, right? So don't throw that out if that's what you've been heard.

That is kind of true, but it jumps too quickly to the answer and misses what's actually going on there.

So if you say that, it's a little bit too much like, or you could be misunderstood of saying that Jesus is God the Father.

So it shows that Jesus is God, meaning God the Father.

Or at least that He's somehow the same as God the Father.

Or there's this kind of number four thing that Jesus is, that is kind of God, not Father, Son or Spirit.

But we want to see what's actually going on and we want to see that this God the Father is the source of the Son's authority and power and ability to do miracles.

So what we really mean is that Jesus is God the Son.

So the miracle shows that Jesus is God the Son, that is the Son that derives His authority and power from the Father.

So when we think about the miracles, we should think like the crowds do, who see this incredible authority that's been given to Jesus and then ask as they do, as they did, or the disciples back in the boat.

Remember back in the boat in 827 where they say, what kind of man is this?

What kind of man could be given such authority?

And the answer is that there's only one kind of man that could be given that authority.

And that is a divine human man, the second person of the Trinity, who has been granted this authority eternally by God the Father.

So when we see a miracle, we think, who could God have given that miracle to? Such authority in that miracle.

And the answer is only God the Son because it wouldn't be fitting for it to be given to anyone else.

So the miracles show that Jesus is God the Son, not because He has authority in Himself to do the miracles, but because God gives the miracle to Jesus.

And when we think about that, we conclude rightly who He is.

But the crowd can't be all the way there yet, can they? We have kind of the perspective of the whole of the Bible.

But what they might be puzzling over is what Jesus has said in verse 6.

He said, but I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

Now if they knew their Bible, which they generally did, they would be thinking of the Son of Man in Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

So if you're able to flip in your Bible, flip over to Daniel chapter 7 verses 13 and 14.

Daniel 7:13

This is an incredibly kind of standout passage in the Old Testament because it doesn't quite make sense there.

So Daniel chapter 7 verses 13 and 14. So this is a vision and he says the vision's been going on.

Daniel 7:13

We've seen all kinds of images of power and falsely used power.

And then he says in verse 13, in my vision at night I looked and there before me was one like a Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven.

He approached the ancient of days and was led into His presence.

So there's a human being there being led into the presence of God, which doesn't entirely make sense.

How can a human being?

But that's a bit surprising, but the authority that's given in the next verse is the truly extraordinary thing.

He was given authority, glory and sovereign power.

That's the kind of authority and glory that God has.

He was given authority, glory and sovereign power.

All nations and people in every language worship Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion and will not pass away and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Notice that just like in our passage, this authority is given to the Son of Man.

So Daniel 7 gives us a taste of the authority that is given to Jesus.

The man who is the incarnated eternal Son, who is given this authority of the Father or of the ancient of days.

And this authority is the Gospel.

That's the Gospel, that authority that's given to Jesus.

The kingdom is established, it's the Gospel of the kingdom and the kingdom has been established

when authority is given to the King Jesus to reign over all the earth, over all the heavens.

And you are invited into that through His death and resurrection.

And if the Gospel is about authority, then your response to it is about submission.

You can't have it both ways, you can't want a Jesus who has authority to forgive sins.

But you don't want Him to be the ultimate authority in your life.

And we said earlier when we were unraveling clues that Jesus forgives those who have faith.

And we saw there our need for forgiveness is greater than our need for physical things.

But our faith is our faith in who He is.

That is believing that He is the Son of Man who has, in Matthew's word, dominion.

That is an everlasting dominion, one that won't pass away, that His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Jesus is that person, He's not your Swiss army knife who jumps out to solve your problems when you have them.

He's not your tool in achieving your potential. It's not all about you, it's about His authority and glory.

And so we need to submit to that.

But this passage isn't just about our need to submit generally.

The whole section has seen His authority and therefore our need to submit to it.

But this passage has highlighted two things particularly.

That is what we've just said, our need for forgiveness.

Not a particular sin, we haven't focused on what this paralytic man needed forgiveness for.

But we all have sin that needs forgiveness. Every one of us.

That is our greater need, greater than all our physical things that we have.

So we need this.

But secondly, the second major idea that we have here is that Jesus can provide that forgiveness.

So if that's something that you have not experienced before,

then please see that this person, this Jesus is offering you forgiveness today.

And please accept that gift. Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, you are awesome beyond our imagination and your Son has been given such authority that is beyond us.

Authority that we cannot comprehend and yet have little taste of in what we read in your Word.

Heavenly Father, please send us out inspired by this wonder, by this person who is our Lord.

And let us cling to this offer of forgiveness because it is so wonderfully gracious that you've done it.

Amen.