- So Jesus circles around and winds up back where mark began the story - Capernaum - which has quickly claimed Him as their own "He's home!" and the people are drawn to Him.
- He's preaching to an overflow crowd and others with needs can't get close enough.
- Unless they get creative. Love will cause that. Even if the person on the mat didn't have a lot of faith, the people who carried it did. And this was a planned operation. You don't lower someone without ropes. Otherwise it would be "he fell down from a hole in the roof."
- Notice Jesus says "their faith" not "his faith." Church can do more together than people can apart.
- All heck breaks loose when Jesus forgives his sins. Wonder if He knew that the majority of people there that day held to the idea that most birth defects were caused by the sins of the parents?
- Fight's on.
- Jesus identifies the heart as the problem and then says "so you will know..." - how in your face is that?
- “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!”12 And the man jumped up, grabbed his mat, and walked out through the stunned onlookers
Mark 2:11-12 (NLT) Contrast this with the leper. The healed man did EXACTLY what Jesus said to do.
- the result?They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, “We’ve never seen anything like this before!”
Mark 2:12 (NLT)
- Jesus' recruiting by walking around snags Levi from the tax collector booth. Again a man leaving his life's work to follow Jesus.
- Levi immediately went through his Rolodex and invited his coworkers and friends to meet Jesus. That must have been quite a crowd of sinners!
- Pharisees took notice and rather than learn from Jesus, criticized both Him and His followers.
- Jesus had the ability to take the heart of Scripture and make it plain. "healthy people..."
- Jesus was talking with the disciples all the time about how to live in harmony with God. They made choices about that life that others didn't and people noticed.
- Jesus wasn't afraid to be different than religious people. "We never did it that way before" wasn't part of His boundary markers.
- Jesus was also not afraid of ordinary life - He knew about wine and wine skins because that's what common people drank.
- Again, Jesus didn't make the practice of religious acts anything more than ritual that points to God.
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