The King of All Authority

Good morning church. Today's scripture reading comes

from Matthew 9 verses one through 8.

If you're using a Bibles under the chair that's in that's on

page 763. This is Matthew 9 verse one and

getting into the boat and getting into a boat.

He crossed over and came into his own city and behold, some

people caught him, caught 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 know that, 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.

When the crowd saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God,

who had given such authority to men.

This is God's word. Good morning Port City Church,

how we doing this morning? That's wonderful.

I'm so glad you are good. My name is Will and I am one of

the pastors here at Port City and I'm so excited to open God's

word with you all this morning. I don't get to do it often.

I'm excited when I do. Before I start there's two

things I want to point out. One is that Pastor Tanner is not

with us this morning. That is a praise, not because

he's not here, but because of why he's not here.

So they have welcomed into the world their new little baby boy.

So we are excited for them. You can all pray for them as

they transition from three children to four.

And as someone who has four children, I can tell you that

they need prayer, but they are doing well.

So that's something that's exciting.

The second thing is I want to acknowledge my kids.

Where are my kids at this morning?

Can I get a woop? Woop.

That was disappointing. Guys, this is like like every

single Sunday you guys are in service.

Your parents tell you to be quiet.

This is your moment, OK? Don't let me down.

Especially my kids. You got to carry the room.

OK? Can I get a woot?

Woot. That was that was acceptable,

Barely, but it was there. I want you guys to know that I

see you. We are excited that you guys are

in here this morning, OK? We love seeing you in here.

We believe that God's word is for all of us, not just the

adults. And you guys are way cooler than

the adults. No offense to my adults.

One thing I want to call out is if you guys can write down, I've

got 4 points, OK? If you can write them down and

bring them to me at the end of service, I got some candy for

you, OK? Does that sound like a deal?

Wonderful. We got a deal.

Perfect. All right, now with that out of

the way, let's jump in to the sermon this morning.

All right, so over the past six weeks, we have been in the book

of Matthew walking through chapter 8, and as we've seen

Jesus do a number of things, right?

So we've seen him cleanse A leper.

We've seen him heal the centurion's servant.

We've seen him calm a storm while sleeping on a boat.

If you remember Pastor Tanner talking about that, and last

week we saw Jesus cast out demons, right?

Hopefully you guys remember that.

One thing that has kind of been woven its way throughout the

text over the past series is this idea of Jesus's authority,

right? So far, if you remember, Matthew

has displayed the authority of Jesus over nature.

You could see that in his healing of sickness, right?

In his calming of the storm. That's nature and then over the

demonic, right, as we saw in our story last week, he cast out the

demons and clearly he had authority.

If you remember, Pastor Tanner said he said go and they went

right. If you remember that well, in

the passage this week we are going to see that Matthew

identifies 1/3 area of Jesus's authority.

It's the authority to forgive sins.

My sermon this morning is entitled the King of all

authority. Can somebody say all authority?

Not just some authority, but all authority?

And I'm glad that we serve a God that doesn't just have a little

bit of authority, right? I'm also glad that we don't

serve multiple gods, each with partial authority, right?

We have one God with all authority, Amen.

We can trust him. And this morning we are also

going to see that Jesus is that king.

He is that God who has all authority, all right.

And in fact, in our text today, we will find that Jesus was very

clear about who he claimed to be.

He didn't give us any wiggle room for interpretation.

OK, I love this quote for from CS Lewis.

He says this. I'm trying here to prevent

anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often

say about him. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a

great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.

That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and says the sort of things that

Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he

is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the

Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him

as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and

God. But let us not come up with any

patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

It's my hope this morning that you will be confronted with who

Matthew is claiming Jesus is and who Jesus is claiming himself to

be. And you will follow the

countless others who have gone before you and as CS Lewis says,

fall at his feet and call him Lord.

And God, let's pray this morning as we get started.

Father, I just come to you this morning.

Lord, I pray that you would lift up these meager words of mine.

God, I pray that you, your spirit, would move.

Father God, I pray that you would make known to us, Lord,

the authority that you carry. God, that you are God.

Lord, you are not just another teacher.

You weren't just a prophet, Lord, you were God.

You claim to do things that only God can do.

Father, I pray that you would remind us this morning, Lord, of

how scandalous this gospel is. Lord, that you would remind us

of the, the just, the, the, that we would be in awe of the fact

that you can forgive our sins. God, you met our greatest need.

Lord, I pray, Father, that you would be with me as I preached

this morning, Lord, that you would give me confidence, not in

myself, but in your word. Lord, we love you and your name

we pray. Amen.

All right, as we jump into our text this morning, let me just

start out by sharing that this story is actually found both in

Mark's Gospel and in Luke's gospel.

But Matthew's telling of the stories a little bit different,

right? His is not in the details, but

in the length. It's a lot shorter.

Those of you that like somebody that gets to the point, Matthew

gets to the point. He removes a lot of the extra

stuff, and his focus is primarily on the dialogue.

He's much more vague when it comes to the details that are

presented and the other two gospels.

He removes anything that doesn't point to the true focus of what

he's trying to get across here. OK, the center of this passage

is not the faith of the man or his friends.

It's not the links that they went through to get to Jesus,

and it's not those that opposed Jesus.

The focus of the passage from Matthew is what it teaches us

about Jesus. Now, I'm going to supplement a

little bit from those other stories to kind of bring it

together. But for the most part, I don't

want to lose sight of the purpose of Matthew's telling of

the story, which is Jesus is God.

All right, let me set the scene for us this morning.

OK, so Jesus is back in his city, Capernaum, and word has

begun to spread that he's back. People have begun to talk and,

and tell, hey, he's back. He's, you know, he's here and,

and on this particular day, he's sitting in a house and he's

teaching people. People have come from all over

to hear him teach. Some of them have come to refute

his teaching. Some have come out of curiosity.

Some have come because they follow him, so much so that the

house is completely full. And in this text, in Matthew's

text, he refers to this people as some people, right bring a

paralytic to him that's lying on a bed.

Now, in Matthew's account, he leaves out the detail of how

they actually bring the paralytic to Jesus.

He only tells us that they brought him.

Now, in the other gospels, we find that they actually had to

lower him through the roof of a house, right?

Which is an interesting detail to leave out.

You think he would bring it in there, but he doesn't.

He doesn't want to distract us. Matthew doesn't spend much time

on the details in the coming of the friends, likely because

they're not the focus. They're not who he wanted to

focus on, right? We're not told exactly how they

came in, but only that in their coming, Jesus was able to see

their faith. He was able to see it, right?

More than likely it was the perseverance that they showed in

bringing their friend to Jesus, namely through a roof, right?

That that showed them or that exemplified that faith.

And in Matthew 92, it says this. And behold, some people brought

to him a paralytic lying on a bed.

And when Jesus saw their faith, let's stop right there for a

minute. The first thing that I want to

highlight this morning, kids, this is my #1 is the faith of

his friends. Can somebody say the faith of

his friends? Wonderful.

All right, now here, let me just say this again, OK?

This is not the main point of the passage.

Matthew is not making a statement on faith here.

But I do think that there are a couple of things that we should

stop and just mention while we're here.

You might remember that this is not the first time Matthew's

commented on faith in our series over the past six weeks.

If you'll remember, he praised the faith of the centurion in

Matthew 810. And he said, it says when Jesus

heard this, he marvelled and said to those who followed him,

truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such

faith. Again, He on the other side, he

called out the lack of faith in his own disciples in Matthew

826. When they're on the boat, he

says, why are you afraid, O you of little faith?

And again here Jesus comments in Matthew 9 verse 2, and I'll read

Matthew 9:2

it again. It says, 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.

Somebody say forgiven. Awesome.

This text could have just said that he saw his faith is in the

paralytic, right? He could have just said I saw

his faith and his sins are forgiven.

But that's not what he says. He says I saw their faith and

his sins are forgiven. Jesus's attention to the faith

of the man's friends should demonstrate to us the importance

of intercession on behalf of others.

I don't have a formula here. I don't think Matthew's

presenting a formula or a promise, and this is not the

focus of the story in Matthew, but I think it's something that

shouldn't convict and encourage us as believers.

Faith in Jesus here, this can never come by proxy.

We can't receive that receive Jesus because of somebody else's

faith, but it rarely comes without friends who also have

faith that Jesus can save their friend.

I'm going to say that again. Faith in Jesus can never come by

proxy, but it rarely comes without friends who have faith

that Jesus can save their friend.

Now, I also want us to take note of the fact that in the text,

the man and his friends don't ask for anything, right?

If you remember, he just, he just kind of comes in.

There's nothing He doesn't say. Jesus, I need this right?

He may have said something, but it doesn't tell us that he did.

But based on the circumstances, A paralytic man comes through

the roof. Our assumption and likely the

assumption of those that were there, Jesus, they would have

expected Jesus would, would heal his most visible need, right?

Can you imagine like just his paralysis is pretty obvious,

right? If he's laying on a bed, they're

like, this guy needs to be healed of his paralysis.

But that's not what happens. We've got a couple of doctors in

the room. Just imagine that somebody comes

in to you and they have a gunshot wound in their arm and

they're like, I need some help. And you're like, OK, and they're

like, I've got a cold. Like that's not what happens,

right? Normally it's the most visible

need, but in this situation, what does Jesus do?

Jesus's response showed the man that he had a much more

foundational problem than others may have realized.

Right? There was something else going

on. The second point in our passage

today #2 is that we have a king. The king who forgives.

Somebody say the king who forgives, I'm just making sure

y'all are awake and don't have to do the head nod thing that

Daniel told us about this morning.

All right, let's continue. In Matthew 9, verse 2 says, and

Matthew 9:2

when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, take

heart my son, your sins are forgiven.

You see, if Jesus had just healed this man, there would

come a day when he would need healing from something else

again, right? Pastor Tanner's talked about

this in previous series. We've discussed this.

When Jesus performed a miracle, it only temporarily solved some

of the needs of the individual's problems.

When he fed the 5000, they got hungry again, right?

They wanted another meal. When he told the storm to stop,

I don't know about y'all, but I've seen it storm and it floods

here, right? It stormed again when he raised

Lazarus from the dead. He eventually died again, right?

Our world is broken. And though in these stories we

have pictures of the Kingdom of heaven breaking, in these

stories we know that we have a much deeper and more

foundational problem that must be solved than merely physical

healing. Now hear this.

This passage shows us that our visible need is merely a

physical symptom of a spiritual problem.

Our need is a visible symptom of a spiritual, a physical symptom

of a spiritual problem. And it shows us that we don't

just have a king who heals, but thankfully we have a king who

can forgive. Now, if Jesus were only a king

who could heal, it might make a select few people's lives easier

and better for a moment, right? But their greatest problem under

the surface death would eventually get them.

Everything else is just like plugging holes in a sinking

boat, right? If you got a boat with a tons of

holes in it, you stick your finger over here, it's still

coming in over here. And then you come over here and

plug this hole, it's still coming up over here.

That boat is going down, right? We can try to deal with the

symptoms of the issue, but ultimately it's going down

unless the root cause problem is solved.

That's what Jesus understood. Now, there's nothing in this

text to suggest that this man's sin was directly linked to his

sickness or that he was unusually sinful, right?

We're all dead in our sin. But there's nothing to suggest

that there was something extraordinary going on here.

But we do know that the separation of man from God is

the root of all suffering, right?

And Jesus would understand this better than anybody.

And instead of providing a temporary fix, he jumps to

solving the man's most foundational need.

Now, if Jesus had just healed the man from paralysis, it would

just be another story, right? He's healed a blind man.

He's he's healed another man with paralysis.

He's cast out demons. This would just be kind of in

the line of those stories. But the thing that sets this

story apart from the others is not the miracle, it's the

forgiveness of sins. And as I've been reading this

passage and thinking about this over the past few weeks, I can't

help but think that some of us don't really believe that our

greatest need is our sinfulness and separation from God.

Many of us think that that if we could just stop this suffering,

or if we could just catch a break, we would be good.

Right? Lord, just get me over this

thing. And someone that doesn't truly

understand that their biggest need is forgiveness from sins

could have responded in disappointment at Jesus's

initial response. Jesus, I didn't ask for that.

I didn't ask you to forgive me of my sins.

I asked for healing. I want to walk.

I wanted to walk out of here, right.

I'll never forget having a conversation with a friend of

mine from from high school. We had a conversation a couple

years after college and we're just kind of catching up.

And I could tell that he, he wasn't happy.

Life was hard. He wasn't where he had expected

to be in his career, didn't have a relationship.

And and I just kind of levelled with him and I was like, man,

Are you ready to follow Jesus yet?

Like you've been trying things your own way?

Are you ready to trust Jesus and his, his response just

absolutely broke my heart. He said.

There are still a few more things that I want to try first.

There's still a few more things that I want to try first.

Now, that is someone who doesn't understand that their single

greatest need is not their change of situation, but it's

their need for salvation. You see, most of our culture is

not offended by Jesus who heals. They're not offended by a Jesus

who gives to the poor. They're not offended by the

moral teacher, Jesus, the societal revolutionary Jesus,

the spiritual guru Jesus. Many people can create a version

of Jesus that fits their preferences, like the famous

scene from the Talladega Nights, the ballad of Ricky Bobby when

he insists on praying to baby Jesus or little infant Jesus

because he likes the Christmas Jesus the best, right?

We all chuckle. I did too.

I don't know if I should chuckle, but I did.

But in reality, many people do this, don't they?

Many people, they like baby Jesus.

They don't want to deal with the whole Jesus.

They don't want to deal with the grown man Jesus who claimed that

he could forgive sins and who claimed that he was God.

But guess what? That's Jesus.

We can't just pick the Jesus that we like, the nice teacher

Jesus, the societal revolutionary Jesus that I'm

spiritual but not religious. Jesus.

The real Jesus made specific, unavoidable claims about who He

was, and we have to deal with that Jesus, and not just the one

that we would prefer. We don't want a king who can

forgive because that means that we are a people who need

forgiveness and we don't like to admit that we are in need, do

we? I know that I don't.

But the single greatest gift that Jesus has to offer us is

the forgiveness of our sins, which is our greatest need.

It would be far greater to spend time on earth as a paralytic and

to go into eternity with our sins forgiven and all made right

again, than to be healed from paralysis only to suspend

eternity in hell. As I continue, another point

that I want to point out in this passage is how Jesus tells this

man that his sins are forgiven. Jesus doesn't say your sins have

been forgiven as if to say that that they were forgiven in the

past by someone else, right? And he doesn't say your sins

will be forgiven, as if to say somebody's coming that's going

to forgive your sins. Somebody else is coming, right?

What does he say? He says your sins are forgiven

as in this instant, as in I am declaring your sins are

forgiven. Jesus is claiming that He is God

and that He has the authority to forgive this man's sins.

Jesus is claiming to be God here.

Jesus is claiming to be God with us.

Think back to Matthew 1 and the promise of the Angel to Joseph.

I'm going to read it for us. Matthew 1 verses 21 to 24 says

Matthew 1:21–24

she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for

he will save his people from their sins.

Amen. All this took place to fulfill

what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and

they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with

us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he

did as the Angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife. Matthew is presenting Jesus as

God with us in this text, the God who can forgive us from our

sins. But everybody didn't like that,

did they? Let's talk about the response of

the scribes. Kids #3 you guys are crushing.

It is the response of the scribes.

Matthew 9 Three, if we continue on says and behold, some of the

scribes said to themselves, this man is blaspheming.

Now we can be quick to judge the scribes, right?

We can be quick to to cast stones at them.

But the reality is that they actually understood what was

going on here. They didn't misunderstand what

Jesus was saying. Jesus was claiming to be God and

they knew that. The text tells us that.

They said to themselves, this man is blaspheming.

And honestly, if it were any other man, they would be right.

That was what he was claiming. Jesus was claiming to do

something that only God can do. They knew that the old, what the

Old Testament taught, only God can forgive sins and there is

only one God and God does not like to share His glory with

another. Isaiah 4325 says I, I am he who

blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not

remember your sins, that I is God, right?

Isaiah 4422 says I have blotted out your transgressions like a

cloud, and your sins like mist return to me, for I have

redeemed you. That's God.

Deuteronomy 64 hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.

There is one God and Isaiah 4811 for my own sake, my own sake, I

do it. For how should my name be

profaned? My glory I will not give to

another. So if this were not Jesus, their

response was correct. They understood what God said.

And if Jesus were just healing this man, that would be one

thing. They would still try to come and

catch him as they often did in His teaching or things that He

said. But here Jesus was claiming

something that was much greater than that.

Jesus was claiming to be the Son of man.

Daniel 713 through 14 says. I saw in the night visions, and

behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son

of man. And he came to the Ancient of

Days and was presented before him.

And to Him was given dominion and glory, and the Kingdom that

all peoples and nations and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass

away, and His Kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

If it were anyone else who claimed the authority to heal

sins, the scribes would have been completely justified in

their condemnation. Their fault was in not

recognizing who Jesus really was, the Son of God who does

have the authority to forgive sins.

Now the next thing that we see is that there was a problem.

The problem was that although this man's sins had been

forgiven, there was not a verifiable way to see that his

sins were forgiven, right? Like imagine if you just started

walking out into the park and you just started walking up to

people and said, hey, guess what?

Your mortgage is paid off. They would still check their

phone to see their account balance is 0 right before they

started making plans with that mortgage payment every month.

They're like, let me see, right? And it's not like Jesus could

pull up, you know, this man's like sin balanced and be like,

bro, I just paid off your debt. You're good, right?

Couldn't pull out the Lamb's book of life and be like, bro,

you're right here, we're good. You know he didn't do that.

So what Jesus does, He knows this and he offers to show them

something that's equally impossible for us, but it's

equally easy for him to do. He now offers a visible sign of

his authority. The next point, this is the last

one, kids, is the King who heals.

Matthew 9, four through 7 says this, 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 guess what, He rose and he

went home. Now it's one thing to claim to

be something, right? Anybody can claim to be

anything. It's another thing to actually

believe that you are the thing that you claim to be, but it's a

whole nother thing to back up that claim.

Now follow me. Somebody who claims something

but doesn't believe it is what we call a con man, right?

But somebody that believes that they are what they claim but

can't back it up is what we call crazy right now.

I'm never going to forget this story.

There was a guy that I went to high school with.

I don't know his name, but he used to always walk around in

like a long black leather coat, right?

And he was obsessed with the Matrix movie franchise.

And those of you that you know know what that is, you can kind

of see he he believed that he was Neo.

He used to tell people he was Neo from the movie.

And nobody kind of took him seriously.

But one day I saw him in a wheelchair and I asked somebody.

I said, hey, what happened? Like what happened to him and I

was told that he believed that if he jumped off the back of the

stadium, he would go into the matrix and he broke his leg,

right? We live in a culture that

believes a lot in belief. We talk about manifesting this

and we talk about manifesting that.

But belief is something that belief in something does not

actually make it true. I'm going to tell you a secret.

Do you know what actually makes something true?

If it's true or not, that is what makes it true.

Jesus didn't just claim to be God, He believed that he was

God. And he didn't just stop there.

He offered a visible sign of that spiritual reality.

Now somebody who claims, believes, and backs something up

is the real deal. And that's what Jesus did.

The text tells us that Jesus's healing of this man was not just

for healing sake. It says this, but that you may

know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive

sins. The physical healing was to

evidence as a sign of the spiritual healing that had

already happened. And in Matthew 98, we see this.

When the crowds saw it, they were afraid and they glorified

God who had given such authority to men.

We're told that the response of the crowd was out of fear and

glorifying God as they should. And as we close this morning, my

question to you is, how are you going to respond?

As a quote from CS Lewis that I opened up with reminds us, Jesus

didn't didn't give us much wiggle room.

He claimed to be God. He claimed to forgive sins.

You can no longer pick the versions of the parts of Jesus

that you want to believe in or you want to worship.

Worshiping only part of Jesus is no worship of Jesus at all.

You must deal with the whole Jesus, the one who claimed to be

God and the one who claimed to forgive sins.

Either you look on him and tremble and fear and with

Thanksgiving glorifying God that he sent Jesus as God with us to

solve our greatest need, or you reject Him.

It's my prayer this morning that you would choose to acknowledge

Jesus as Lord of your life, that you would recognize that our

greatest need is not a change in situation, but that we need

salvation. You see, God sent his Son Jesus

as Emmanuel, God with us to live the perfect life that we are not

capable of living and to take the penalty for our sin that we

deserve so that our greatest debt could be forgiven and the

perfect sacrifice of the only one with the authority, Jesus on

the cross. If that's you this morning, or

if that's something that you have questions about, please

come and talk to myself or one of the other pastors this

morning. Anyone who's been up here would

love to have that conversation with you.

Now, maybe you've already taken that step.

Maybe you already call Jesus Lord.

I encourage you this morning to be reminded of the great scandal

of the gospel. It can become very normal to us,

right? But the scribes were shocked

because they understood how big of a deal Jesus claim was.

Let's never forget the miracle that we have experienced in the

forgiveness of the great debt that we have owed.

Let me close this in prayer. God, we come to you this

morning. God, I thank you that you have

the authority, Lord, to solve my greatest need.

God, I thank you that you didn't just remain in heaven, but you

came down in the likeness of man, fully God and fully human.

Lord, You live the life I couldn't live perfectly the way

that I couldn't do it, Lord. And you took the debt that I

owed, Lord, and you gave me the ability to walk in newness of

life, to be forgiven of my sins, to become a child of the king.

God, I pray that there are those under my voice this morning,

God, that don't know that freedom, God, that they have not

had their greatest needs solved, Lord, that you would save them.

God, would you call them to salvation?

God would they today stand face to face with the whole Jesus and

surrender to him as Lord. They would stop trying to earn

things. God that they would stop trying

to, to, to solve their problems and their situations.

Lord, but they would solve their greatest need, which is that

they are enemies of God. Lord, but you didn't leave them

there. You made a way for them to

become family. Lord, and we love you and your

name we pray. Amen.