"F.O.L.L.O.W.ME pt.5: WONDER -

Authority to Do the Impossible"

Mark 2:1-12 March 2/03

Frodo's Failure / "Saddam I Am": Wanting to do Wonders

The major item in international news lately has been the threat of war between the United States and Iraq. Criticisms and comments have abounded from both sides. One poem I heard on CBC radio poked fun at Iraq's leader by starting with a Dr Seuss poem and making a satirical takeoff from it with the starting line, "Saddam I am". More recently, someone emailed this graphic to me which some ingenious person has created with the title, "Frodo has failed." Who can tell us the significance of what we see here? (Pres.Bush is wearing the "ring of power" from the movie/book Lord of the Rings: Frodo was trying to destroy the ring because it would give the evil Lord Sauron power to wreak incredible havoc on the whole world. Ring itself gave the wearer wonderful powers, including invisibility)

        It's easy to be critical of those who wield great power, whether Saddam Hussein or George W Bush. We snipe at them partly because we see blown up a hundredfold the same lusts for power and status that we are tempted by ourselves. Secretly, maybe we're a tad jealous that we don't have the amazing power and authority world leaders do. We would like to be able to work wonders, whether by wearing a magic ring or otherwise. We become frustrated by the tedious hum-drum of everyday life, our own smallness and insignificance in the grand scheme of things. As I proved to myself this week, sometimes I can't even scrape off a windshield without snapping a cold, brittle plastic wiper blade! Trapped in the ordinary, we yearn for the wonderful. In the spiritual realm, we find our high moral ideals too often defeated by temptation. We're ashamed of our failures, our powerlessness. Or we may feel insignificant to others, alienated, that we're a "nobody". If anybody's wonderful, it's certainly not us!

        The good news is, Jesus Christ is truly wonderful. Inviting us to follow Him, He draws us into a shared experience of the wonders He can perform in our own lives. When He stretches a beckoning finger to us, we find we don't need our own "ring of power"; we don't have to be jealous of Saddam. For Jesus' disciples, constant "wonder" is the order of the day as we accompany Him who is a man but through whom the universe was made.

Jesus Raises the Roof

Mark's second chapter begins with an account that's a good sample of how wonderful Jesus is; there are 3 miraculous aspects wrapped up in one incident. The scene begins with Jesus speaking to a houseful of people; the crowd's pouring out into the street. All at once He's interrupted by some bits of tile and roofing compound falling from the ceiling. It's not too surprising somebody might be up on the roof, because in those parts roofs were flat and used as we might our yard or patio. You could catch a little more breeze up there; sometimes even goats grazed on the grass that grew from the cracks in the roofing compound.

        Suddenly, a paralyzed man was lowered from a hole in the ceiling by four of his friends. They were so desperate to get help for their buddy that they were prepared to go to extreme and creative measures to bring his plight before this talked-about Rabbi. If it were us, we might have been pretty perturbed at the interruption, but Jesus calmly took it in stride. He capitalized on the situation as an object lesson by which He might illustrate the spiritual truths He'd been speaking about. V.5 says that when Jesus saw their faith - their desperation, their determination to bring their case before the Lord at all costs - He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Miracle 1: forgiveness (vv.6-7)

Here is the first miracle, the first cause for wonder: forgiveness. Jesus didn't do the obvious thing and heal the man's paralysis right off, but delved deeper into the unseen regions and blockages of the man's life. This spiritual tack took the breath away of the specialists in religious law who were there listening. They didn't say anything, but thought to themselves (v.7), "Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

        Here is the first wonder, in fact, the primary wonder for believers, that in Jesus we have forgiveness for our sins. His name is Jesus, Heb.Jeshua, "Yahweh is salvation" - God saves! In every dimension, spiritual as well as physical. The scribes were quite orthodox in their reasoning that God alone can forgive sins. Their reasoning was right, just their assumptions were wrong: they were mistaken to assume that because Jesus was a mortal man, He didn't have some unique relationship to God. How could an ordinary man pretend to act on God's behalf? That's blasphemy, sheer arrogance, to claim to do things only the heavenly Judge has authority to pronounce!

        But what had Jesus been trying to communicate before He was interrupted? Mark says (v.2) he was "preaching the word" to them. Mark's gospel keeps us in suspense until halfway through, in chapter 8, as to what Jesus' key teaching really was. There He starts to unfold His special relationship to God the Father, Christ's wonderful and unique role in dying for our sins to bring us forgiveness -- that "the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected...and that he must be killed and after three days rise again" (8:31). He'd proceed to tell us that whoever wants to save their life must lose it (8:35). In chapter 10(43-45) He'd expand on this, saying whoever wants to become great must be the servant or slave of all; just as "even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Jesus alone had the right to wear the mythical "ring of power" because He alone, the sinless perfect God-man, submitted to horrific punishment and death vicariously on our behalf. He paid the price we owed; He was sentenced with the verdict that should have been ours, suffering for our guilt. This is the first and foremost wonder of all: Jesus' authority to forgive sins comes from His sacrificial submissiveness to the heavenly Father's plan.

        From that springs the possibility of a wonderful new relationship with God, an eternal close and loving fellowship, adoption into God's family. So Jesus says to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven"...not "fellow" or "mister" or "grasshopper" or "worm", but "Son".

Miracle 2: knew in His spirit what they were thinking in their hearts (v.8)

Socrates (a wise person though not a Christian) said, "Wisdom begins in wonder." Let's continue to become wiser then as we ponder the second miracle Mark notes here in v.8: "Immediately Jesus knew in His spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts." Christ has this remarkable supernatural ability to peer into our thought life and know what's going on inside us; He hears the silent murmurs and pleas and praises of our hearts. Lk.6(8) records the healing of a man with a shrivelled hand on the Sabbath; it notes about Jesus' critics that He "knew what they were thinking". In John 1(48) when Nathanael first meets Jesus, he asks, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you." John 2:24f says Jesus "knew all men.He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man." After the resurrection, Peter acknowledged this when he said, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You." (Jn.21:17) When we encounter Jesus, it's like He has a complete instantaneous scan of all our thoughts, history, hopes, and fears. He sees right through to our innermost qualms and doubts about God. In Rev.2(23) He says, "all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds..."

        Let's be filled with wonder, then, at this God-man who knows our thoughts, sees us inside-out. As David was awed when he wrote in Psalm 139(1-6), "O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD...Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain."

        In the movie What Women Want (not one I'd necessarily recommend), a character played by Mel Gibson finds he can overhear what women around him are silently thinking. At first it's kind of a nifty ability, but before long it becomes an unbearable burden to him, almost a curse, because with the knowledge comes a crushing sense of responsibility. He's thankful to be rid of the ability before the end of the movie. But such intimate knowing of us is part of the wonder of our Lord Jesus.

Miracle 3: purposeful physical healing (9-12)

The English critic John Ruskin wrote, "I would sooner live in a cottage and wonder at everything, than live in a castle and wonder at nothing." We continue this wonder-ful study with the third miraculous aspect in this event: purposeful physical healing. Jesus' response to the legalists' unspoken criticisms was to say (v.8-9), "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?" To say one was as easier as to say the other. These were just words. To do either was another matter: both were quite impossible for an ordinary person. But then that's the whole point of the story, that Jesus is no ordinary person.

        He comes to this critical point in v.10 - the claim to be the Son of God which He did not trumpet, but concealed, yet which slipped out in a thousand ways through His ministry and eventually got Him crucified. He said, "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins..." then proceeded to tell the paralytic to get up, take up his mat and go home - which he did. It was amazing enough that Christ could heal someone so paralyzed. Yet what really knocked people's socks off was the way He linked this, or made it a sign of, His even more wonderful authority to forgive sins. The word "authority" (Gk.exousia - power, authority, or right) describes Jesus as the wonder-worker of all time - not only in the visible realm of physical healing, but even more wonderfully in the unseen, spiritual realm of forgiveness, the clearing of our eternal account with God, and His power to "set us right" with God's healing and sanctification by the Holy Spirit in our inner person.

His Name is Wonderful (Isaiah 9:6)

Centuries before Jesus was born, Isaiah prophesied about Him in words picked up by Handel in The Messiah, "His name shall be called Wonderful..." (Counsellor, Prince of Peace, and so on) The disciples discovered that to be a follower of Jesus was to find yourself continually in the presence of the Amazing. Mk.2:12 ways the healing of the paralytic "amazed" everyone. The Gk.word "existemi" is behind our English word "ecstasy" (better than the drug!) and literally means "to become separated from something, to lose something ie spiritual and mental balance; to throw out of position, to displace, to amaze, astonish, throw into wonderment." That's the normal effect of encountering Jesus - He blows you away! Unbelievers will shake their heads and say of a convert, "Boy, they've really lost it!" As companions and followers of the Risen One, we're continually being "thrown into wonderment" by Him.

        It started early in Jesus' earthly life. When He was twelve years old and visited the temple, engaging in discussion with the religious theologians, Luke 2(47) says: "Everyone who heard him was amazed [existemi] at his understanding and his answers." Mt.12(22) records a typical healing, that of "a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see.All the people were astonished and said, 'Could this be the Son of David?'" In Mk.5(42) Jesus raises from the dead the daughter of Jairus; it says, "Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old).At this they were completely astonished." Then there was Jesus' transfiguration: Mark (9:2,6) says the disciples "did not know what to say, they were so frightened." So wonderful they were speechless. But the most amazing event of all was the resurrection - not just a temporary physical healing for the duration of this life only, but a whole new glorified spiritual body and eternal fellowship with God.

        But it was after Jesus' ascension to the Father's side that His wonders really started spilling over into people's lives permanently. Observing the effect Jesus has on people leaves others really scratching their heads. At Pentecost believers experienced the ecstasy of the filling with the Holy Spirit, and spoke in foreign languages; this "amazed and perplexed" the bystanders (Ac.2:7,12). Cornelius and other Gentiles experienced something similar in Acts 10(45); those who'd come with Peter "were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles". In Acts 12(16), Peter is freed miraculously from death row in prison; he went to a house where other believers were praying for him. We're told, "when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished."

        But my favourite is the change that came over Saul, the zealous Pharisee who on the road to Damascus was knocked to the ground by the Risen Lord and commissioned to become an evangelist to the very group he'd been hauling off to prison. Luke records in Acts 9(20-21), "At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?" The wonderfulness of Jesus is something we continue to witness in the change He makes in believers' lives today. "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (1Tim.1:15): the One we worship dries up alcoholics, makes the critical loving, the stingy generous, those in bondage free, the broken-hearted whole, the grieving comforted. And some of you are living proof of this wonder.

        Jesus is a wonder, a mystery. Paul wrote to Timothy (1Tim.3:16), "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory." He described his purpose to the Colossians (2:2f) as this: that believers "may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." All wisdom, all knowledge, hidden in Him -- no wonder He's so so wonder-ful!

Truly Wonderful: Newness in Christ

Thomas Carlyle said, "Worship is transcendent wonder." Some of you maybe thought "Worship" was going to be the final letter in our acronym "FOLLOW" describing 6 essential aspects of being a disciple of Jesus. But Wonder spontaneously results in Worship. Mk.2:12 records, "This amazed everyone and the praised God saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'" Paradox erupted into doxology. There was something humble and self-effacing enough in Jesus' manner that deflected praise off Himself, towards the Father. He wasn't shining the spotlight on Himself, otherwise an instant "Jesus-cult" would have formed on the spot. His wonderful work was performed with the attitude of a servant. This too is part of the wonder, that the most wonderful person of all time should also be the most humble, the most gentle and caring, not competing to wear the "ring of power" or make a name for himself or declare "Saddam I am" in world headlines.

        To keep our life in Christ fresh, we need to guard against ever losing the wonder of knowing Him. Ravi Zacharias said, "The older you get, the more it takes to fill your heart with wonder, and only God is big enough to do that." HG Wells admitted before his death that his soul was no longer moved by the sight of the stars in the sky. Late in life, Charles Darwin (father of atheistic evolution) wrote in his autobiography: "I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last 20 or 30 years. Up to the age of 30, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds...gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare...I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight.But now, for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost any taste for pictures or music...I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight that it formerly did...My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts..."

        Are we unconsciously yielding to Satan's ploy to steal the wonder of knowing God from us? To substitute the Enemy's deception that we can find significance instead through a "ring of power" we cobble together ourselves? Vance Havner warns, "It is easy to lose the wonder.The spirit of the age is against us.Iniquity abounds and the love of many waxes cold. We know too much. We have tried all the thrills...A lot of religious activity today has lost the wonder. We engage in shop talk about men and methods and movement, but we do not exult in the wonderful news that Christ died and rose again."

        One of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, Karl Barth, visited the United States in 1962 at the age of 76, just a few years before he died. His lectures were published in a book called An Introduction to Evangelical Theology; one chapter is titled, "Wonder". Although I find reading a lot of Barth tends to make one hard to understand, I'd like to close by sharing his description of how the real cause of wonder for us is not the miracles themselves, but Jesus, the "new event" behind them all...(pp.69-71) "...He is the miracle, the miracle of all miracles!...Christ is that infinitely wondrous event which compels a person, so far as he experiences and comprehends this event, to be necessarily, profoundly, wholly, and irrevocably astonished."

        As George Beverly Shea sang, "There's the wonder of sunset at evening, / the wonder as sunrise I see; / but the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul / is the wonder that God loves me." (song - Phil Main, "He was a Wonder") Let's pray.