Yeshua is the Messiah who can forgive our sins and heal our paralysis. Yeshua is the Messiah who loves all human beings, no matter their social, economic or religious status. Yeshua is the Messiah who can free us from “religiosity”. Yeshua is the Messiah who is doing something radically new that we must adapt to. Yeshua is the Messiah who must be followed above all else.
I’ve got some good news and bad news. First, the bad news:
Humanity is alienated from our great Creator God, who is the Source of Life and Blessing. Being alienated from the One who is the Source of Life and Blessing means that we won’t be blessed and we won’t live forever. That’s bad. That’s very bad.
The Word of God reveals the source of the Creator-creature alienation. Very early in human history, our first parents rebelled against our Creator, and became alienated from Him. Sin, confusion, chaos, domination by the devil and death followed their rebellion and took control of humanity. Adam and Eve (who were very real people) were alienated from the Creator. Instead of getting closer to God, Adam and Eve ran away from Him. Not just their relationship to God was corrupted, but every aspect of who they were was affected. Their bodies, their souls, their wills, their minds, their spirits – all became corrupted.
Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat from the Tree of Life and were exiled from the delightful Garden of Eden. They were no longer headed toward life but death – the First Death – physical death, followed by the Second Death – Gehenna, Hell, the Lake of Fire (which is also a real place).
The consequences of the alienation of our first parents from the Creator were transmitted to all of their descendants. That ruining of body, soul, will, mind, spirit, relationship to God, that loss of eternal life – all of it was passed on like a horrible disease, infecting all of their descendants – you and me.
Because our alienation from God has so corrupted our nature, and because we are dead in our trespasses and sins there is not enough we can do on our own to end this alienation or its many tragic consequences. We can never be good enough or religious enough to fully atone or end our alienation from the Creator or overcome the real and deadly forces of Satan, sin and death. All human efforts are inadequate.
That’s the bad new. Now the Good News. What we are utterly incapable of doing on our own, God is completely capable of accomplishing! The good and merciful Creator had a plan to rescue ruined humanity from our horrible and hopeless condition. God the Father sent His eternal Son whom He loves on a great mission to save many human beings. The Son of God left Heaven and through the incarnation, came into this world and became a human being. Immanuel, God With Us, was born into the Chosen People. The young carpenter turned Rabbi became Israel’s Messiah – our ultimate Prophet, Priest and King and Savior. That’s the good news!
After we understand that Yeshua is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world, we need to fully commit ourselves to do what He wants us to do, to have the values He wants us to have, to embrace the goals He wants us to embrace.
Yeshua had just finished a very busy time of ministry. He was returning from the eastern shore of the Kinneret to the western shore. Matthew tells us that Yeshua stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to His own town. Some men brought to Him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. Most people looking at this man would think that his physical problem, paralysis, that prevented him from functioning normally – leading a normal life and being able to work and support himself and his family – was his most immediate problem. But Yeshua dealt with his spiritual problem first – because our greatest need is not for physical healing, or more money, or have a good relationship with a member of the opposite sex, or even for economic or political justice. Our greatest need is for forgiveness – to experience atonement with our Creator, who is the Source Of Life And Goodness, so that we can be reconciled to the God from whom the whole world is estranged and live forever with Him.
This paralyzed man and his friends had faith, trust, confidence in God the Father and they had loyalty to Yeshua. That was the fertile soil for spiritual and physical healing to grow. When Yeshua saw their faith, He said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven”. How wonderful that the Son of God declared this man’s sins forgiven, because if the One who created humanity and who will sit on the Great White Throne judging humanity says that someone’s sins are forgiven, they are forgiven!
When someone harms us, we can forgive that person, but ultimately, only God can forgive our sins, and according to the Torah, mere words uttered by an ordinary rabbi can’t provide that kind of atonement. The Torah-teachers understood this and were upset at Yeshua’s declaration of forgiveness. At this, some of the Torah-teachers said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming”! But what they didn’t understand is that Yeshua is no ordinary rabbi! He is the divine, eternal Son of God who has the authority to give forgiveness or withhold forgiveness! He wanted, and still wants, the Jewish religious leaders to know this, and so God used Him to miraculously and instantaneously heal this paralyzed man – proving that He has the authority to forgive sin.
Knowing their thoughts, Yeshua said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? (The evil thoughts were denying that Yeshua isn’t who He claimed to be. He is the Messiah and the Savior, and to deny that is evil.) 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 paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home”. Then the man got up and went home. Wow! This miracle, especially resulting from this confrontation between Yeshua and the Torah-teachers who were challenging His authority to forgive sin, was a powerful vindication of Yeshua’s claims. Miracles like this weren’t everyday occurrences, even among the Chosen People. Prophets who did miracles were rare in our history, so this made this miracle very special, and the people there knew it. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man. And Yeshua was man – but also the authoritative Son of God, and Immanuel, God With Us.
Because of the Fall, humanity is like this paralyzed man. We are spiritually immobilized. We can’t do what we need to do. We can’t even move back to the God who is able to heal us. But Yeshua is the Messiah – the Prophet, Priest, King and Savior whom the Father sent to us, and He can heal our spiritual paralysis – if we know who He is and transfer our loyalties to Him. He can restore full spiritual functionality to us – which is our greatest need!
Once we know that Yeshua is the Messiah, we must follow Him. Following Yeshua – going where He goes, doing what He wants us to do, working with Him, living for Him, embracing His mission, embracing His values – is more important than career, status, wealth, or any of the comforts that money can buy. As Yeshua went on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow Me”, He told him, and Matthew got up and followed Him. It must not have been easy for Matthew the tax-collector to leave his career and follow Yeshua. Tax-collectors made more money than most people. They enjoyed more comfort than most. Yet, following Yeshua became more important to Matthew than earning a good salary or enjoying comforts.
Most of humanity are like Matthew while he was collecting taxes. We like money. We like our comforts. Most human beings, if they had the choice to make a big salary and live comfortably or a meager salary and not live comfortably, would choose to make a big salary and live comfortably. But Yeshua wants us to choose to serve Him above work or comfort. Is that you? Are you like Matthew the tax-collector or Matthew the disciple?
Yeshua is the Messiah who loves all human beings, no matter their social or economic or religious status, and wants them to get closer to God. He will not reject those whom society may reject. Tax collectors were not popular among the Jewish people. At that time the Jewish people were impoverished by the Roman and Jewish political leaders, who squeezed as much taxes as they could from us. Tax collectors were resented for participating in this oppression. Ordinary rabbis, who were role models for their communities, would shun them. And ordinary rabbis would shun men and women who had a reputation for being notoriously irreligious. But Rabbi Yeshua is no ordinary rabbi! While Yeshua was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your Rabbi eat with tax collectors and sinners”? On hearing this, Yeshua said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners”.
The reality is that all of us are spiritual tax collectors and sinners. Because we are motivated by self-interest we oppress each other. We sin against each other and harm each other. And, we are do things that go against God’s will and hurt Him. We must understand this. We must understand the reality of the Fall and the reality of sin and the corruption of human nature. We must understand that we are sinners, not righteous. We must understand that we are spiritually sick, not healthy. We must understand that our own religiosity or efforts at good behavior or self-improvement can never be enough to heal us. We must understand that we need radical help from the Three-in-One God of Israel. We need radical surgery from the Great Physician of our souls. We need a spiritual heart implant, a new nature that only the Great Physician can provide.
Rabbi Yeshua understood this, but the other rabbis did not. Because He understood that all of us are tax collectors, sinners, spiritually sick, as the Great Physician He was willing to heal all of His patients – the obvious sinners, but also the sinners who had a veneer of religion – but who were still sinners very much in need of a Savior. True religion understands this and gets beyond the outer form of religion and goes to the heart. True religion emphasizes mercy, not sacrifice (the quote from Hosea 6 – I desire mercy, not sacrifice); substance, not form; spiritual reality, not rituals and ceremonies that have no transforming power. Is that you?
Religion is good. Religion is necessary. Religion is essential because religion express the most basic truths about what we believe and how we reinforce those beliefs and put those beliefs into practice. All of us have a kind of religion, a worldview, a core set of beliefs and practices. Religion is essential but the danger with religion is that we substitute the outward form for the inward reality. That can be deadly for those involved in religion because it gives the appearance that we are close to God when we are not, that we are right with God when we are not, that we are saved when we are not. The danger with religion is that it can keep us in a deadly state of complacency, and prevent us from taking the radical action that we need to get right with God.
The Jewish people were the one nation on Earth with the true, God-given religion – and we knew it. But, that also made it easier for us to fall into the trap of substituting external religious observances and human efforts for a genuine saving relationship with God. Yeshua is the Messiah who is able to free us from the deadly complacency of religiosity and give us true religion – genuine closeness to God which will transform us and save us. Then John’s disciples came and asked Him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?” Yeshua answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. Religion likes to take refuge in familiar observances sanctified by time. The religion of Israel said that the old ways were good and should be followed, but it also taught that God was going to do something radically new. He was going to send the Messiah who would make a new covenant with us.
Yeshua is claiming to be that long-expected Messiah, the Seed of the Woman, Immanuel – God With Us, the King of Heaven, the Savior of humanity, the Redeemer of the Universe! His arrival is amazing, wonderful, miraculous, joyous. The arrival of the Son of God was like being with a groom on his wedding day – only better! Having the King of the Universe with us on Earth in a human form was something radically new. It was a time for new understanding and great happiness – not fasting. It was time to consider that some new things might be to be done, new ways that were needed. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved”. There are situations in which the old forms, the old containers, the old patches, the old ways of doing things, simply won’t do. New wine needs new wineskins. New clothes need a new patch. The coming of the Messiah is one of those radically new situations and the Chosen People needed to understand that.
The Messiah’s arrival was something radically new. He was furthering the salvation plans of God. He was about to die on a cross, rise from the dead, ascend back to Heaven and give the Holy Spirit to His followers. He was about to start grafting the Gentiles into the Jewish Tree Of Salvation. This was something radically new. It was new cloth, new wine, and we needed to understand that, and adapt to these advancements in the salvation plans of God. If we did, we wouldn’t lose anything essential of what we had before. On the contrary, we would receive new blessings and have new brothers and sisters joined to us.
Yeshua is the Messiah who can forgive our sins and heal our paralysis. Do you know that He has forgiven your sins, and that you are no longer spiritually paralyzed? I hope so!
Yeshua is the Messiah who loves all human beings, no matter their social, economic or religious status. Are you trying to love humanity like that? I hope so!
Yeshua is the Messiah who can free us from “religiosity”. Is your religion true religion that focuses on substance, not form; spiritual reality, not rituals and ceremonies that have no transforming power? I hope so!
Yeshua is the Messiah who is doing something radically new that we must adapt to – providing salvation for all, uniting Jew and Gentile. Are you helping Him with that great task? I hope so!
Yeshua is the Messiah who must be followed above all else – above career, money and comfort. Is that you? I hope so!