This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Well, good morning, everyone. I'm coming. I've got my poly filler, I've got an orange bag, I've got a Bible. And I have a question for you as we get going. The question is, what were you doing 265 days ago?

You say, I can't remember what I was doing yesterday. That's fair. I'm not sure I remember, but 265 days ago. I wonder if you are making or avoiding and New Year's resolution. 265 days have gone by.

I don't know if you made one and it's been broken and long forgotten, but the reason I start there this morning is that in our Bible passage, this true story from the life of Jesus, we see some people who are resolved to persevere and to get the job done. No matter what, they are going to make sure that they bring their friend to Jesus. So let me lead us in a word of prayer that we might see something of their faith and their example and then see why it's so important for people to meet with Jesus. Let's pray. Almighty God, please help us this morning to receive from you to see the beauty and the richness of the Lord Jesus and all that he has done for us.

Amen. Amen. Now I'm looking for a clicker for my slides instead. I've got a man here on the keyboard. On the keyboard.

There we go. Now we're up and running. So what's going on in our Bible passage? Well, quite simply, Jesus has been, as we've walked through Luke's gospel in this little series, doing some really amazing things in terms of healings and engaging with people. But we're now in a different area.

Notice verse 17, if you've got a Bible. One day, Jesus was teaching and the Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal those who were ill. Some men came carrying a paralysed man. We'll pause there.

So Jesus is now teaching in a house that is absolutely jam packed full. I don't know when the last time you were in a room that was really packed was. I experienced it recently and it's quite hard to move around a room like that. A bit awkward. Packed full and Jesus teaching and these friends turn up with a man on a mat.

They've missed their opportunity. Presumably they've heard something of Jesus healing ministry and the powerful works that he's been doing, and they've got together and they said, we've got to get our friend to Jesus, but it's a bit too late and he's in the middle of a teaching session. Well, the first thing I want to show us this morning, which I've just been really taken by, oh, I cannot click on, on the slide. Maybe if you just click one, it'll. Let me, then.

There we go. The first thing I'd love us to see was they were desperate to bring their friend to Jesus. They were desperate to bring their friend to Jesus. It got me thinking, what else were they meant to be doing that day? Should they have been at work?

Should they have been with their families? How did they arrange it? They didn't have WhatsApp groups or a telephone line. Did one of them take a lead and go and knock on the other's door and say, look, Jesus is here. Today is the day.

We're going to get our friend. We're going to get him on the map, we're going to carry him to Jesus where Jesus is. We are desperate to get him in front of Jesus, but they encounter various barriers. Notice verse 18. Some men came carrying a paralysed man on a mat.

They tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. And presumably someone at the door said, are you kidding? Have you seen how packed it is in here? There's no way. By the way, he's teaching now.

He's not healing. We're listening to Jesus teach. It's totally inappropriate for you to try and muscle your way in. No, you can't come in. But they are undeterred.

They're going to keep on trying to bring their friend to Jesus. Verse 19, when they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus. It doesn't make much sense to us and we'll just jump onto the next slide. If we think of english houses with kind of a pitch roof, but this is the kind of house that they would have had a roof where they could climb up those steps on the side. Everyone's crowded inside the house.

They go up on the side and what do they start doing? They start pulling tiles off the roof. I mean, can you imagine it if bits of plaster were falling on you now? I mean, I imagine Jesus stopped talking. Everyone probably looked up as these tiles were removed and then they lowered the man down towards Jesus.

And we see really clearly they were desperate to bring their friend to Jesus.

They're not going to be deterred. And I wonder, just five minutes into the sermon, whether I could give you the big headline application. I think for many of us in the room this morning, if we're christians this morning, followers of Jesus, are we also growing in that desperation to bring our friends to Jesus? If we just jump back one slide to where that title is, they were desperate. Are we growing in that desperation?

And I was thinking, well, how do we grow in that? How do we get that sense of that? I've just moved here only a few months in and I think when you're new in a place you can see all the opportunities, it's exciting to hear about. West End has faith and the three, two, one course, Christmas and Easter. But I wonder, having been longer in other places, whether when you've been somewhere for a while, you think, well, there'll be another Christmas, there'll be another three two, one course.

But are we desperate to bringing our friends to Jesus, knowing that when they encounter Jesus, something dramatic happens, there's always a reaction. And I was thinking, how would we grow in that? How can I personally grow in that? I was thinking, maybe it's a bit like this. Maybe you've got a neighbour down your road that you really want to bring along.

I'm going to call the neighbour Jeffrey. Geoffrey lives a few doors down. And you think, look, I feel it on my heart, God's put on my heart, that I need to try and engage and reach out and say, would Jeffrey come to something? Maybe the three two one course. Maybe I'm praying aloud, God, give me an opportunity to invite Jeffrey and make it so obvious that I don't miss it.

And then when I do miss it, give me another chance because I'm going to blow it. It's hard work. And I wonder if you say that prayer out loud for a few days and you're thinking about Jeffrey, whether it changes how you come out of your front driveway. You come out and you're kind of half looking, thinking, is Geoffrey there? I wonder if today might be a day.

I talked to Jeffrey. Maybe a few days go by and you haven't seen Geoffrey and you think, should I knock on Jeffrey's door? Think, I live in West Sussex. I couldn't go and knock on someone's door. Surely not.

But these friends here, they're an example to us. They're desperate to bring their friend to Jesus. They know lives change.

Maybe it's a family member and you can't physically bring them to this church, but actually you could share a sermon online or you could offer to read the Bible and pray with them. I don't know. It just starts to create our urgency as we pray about it. They were desperate to bring their friend to Jesus. They weren't going to let barriers get in the way.

And of course, they anticipate that when they bring their friend to Jesus and lower him down in this dramatic way, Jesus is going to deal with the big problem, which is obviously the fact that he can't walk, and we'll move on. I think if you click into the PowerPoint, it might let me do it. But there we go. Smash legs or smash lives. This is our second and only other point this morning.

Smash legs or smash lives. Jesus fixes them all. The next slide will show us a picture of Doctor who. Here he is. I don't know if you're a fan.

Probably not. That's okay. There was a series a little while ago where the guy in the picture, the Doctor, kept on discovering these cracks through life. The episode was resolved, but you'd keep seeing the crack. And it was like this big storyline of the world is broken and cracked.

And to be honest, no amount of poly filler is just going to resolve it. Asch told me, do not squeeze the handle, which makes me very tempted to squeeze the handle, but I'm going to obey no matter. Poly filler will fill the gaps in our life, the crackness, the damage that we know. The next slide will just list some of the things that we all know are in our world. War, terrorism, climate change.

We prayed about lots of those things in our life. They're there, aren't they? All these things that crowd in all the brokenness that we see. And we'll go back to our headline that says, smash legs or smash lives. Jesus fixes them all.

Let me try and show you that from the passage they lower the man down, he's there in front of Jesus. Presumably everyone's a bit stunned by that. Jesus saw their face. Verse 20. He said, friends, your sins are forgiveness.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law began to think to themselves, who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone? So Jesus understands the crackness of the world. It's based on Genesis three. It's a bit like if you go to the doctors and you've got a really high temperature, and all the things on that list are the symptoms, but actually the infection that runs through everything is our broken relationship with God.

But we see smashed legs or smashed lives. Jesus will fix them all. But the Pharisees are put out by this. Only God can do what he's promising to do. I was really grateful if you were here last week to Ben's helpful, talking about the last passage that we looked at, the demon possessed man.

And the demon possessed man says, jesus, you can't come into my territory. That's a boundary you cannot cross. And Jesus says, I'm the Lord of heaven and earth. There's no boundaries here. And again, the Pharisees think, this is a boundary that you cannot cross.

You might be a wise teacher, Jesus, or a prophet, but only God can forgive sins alone. Jesus is like, yeah, you got it. Yes, but smash legs or smash lives, Jesus will fix them all. And he poses it this way. Verse 22, he says, let's think about this.

Which is easier to say. He knows what's going on in their hearts. Verse 23, which is easy to say, your sins are forgiven, or get up and walk. Words are easy to use, aren't they? And I might say to my wife, yes, I'll do those dishes in five minutes.

I will. Or we maybe say at work, yes, I'll have that project done by the end of the week. We can say those things, but we know that we find it hard often to deliver on them. But for Jesus, fixing this man's legs is as easy as forgiving his sins. He's powerful enough to do both.

And he says in verse 24, I want you to know that the son of man, that's the title Jesus is using for himself from the Old Testament, has authority on the earth to forgive sins. So he said to the paralysed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home immediately. He stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.

You see, in the brokenness of that situation, Jesus instantly is able to restore and fix, and it points to a much bigger fixed. Think about that man. He doesn't have weeks of physiotherapy to help him walk again. He doesn't need to go and see the doctor and have regular checkups. He jumps up, picks up his mat with his strength and walks out.

And that house, that had been so crowded, boy, do I think that they made room for him. Yeah, they made space. As he wandered through praising God. And what's the reaction of the people? Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God.

They were filled with awe and said, we've seen remarkable things here today.

As I was preparing for this, I was thinking about just this situation, and I was listening to a podcast that was available just briefly of this woman doing an incredible hike in the States. And I thought, oh, it would just be something to have in the background while I'm doing washing up or whatever. And then very quickly it got very heavy because the reason she was doing this incredible hike was because her mum had died. She was about 25, her mum was 45. Mum had died from cancer very suddenly and very quickly.

And it was like everything in her life had become completely destabilised. She was married, but she started to have multiple affairs, just searching for something to fill that void. She started taking heroin, became an addict, broke off lots of relationships just in this broken place. And I was thinking, gosh, this is a world where we're encountering people who have smashed lives. And Jesus is showing in this story that anyone, anyone with smashed lives or smashed legs, he can fix and restore and heal them all.

It's quite remarkable.

When I was thinking about this, I was on a train and I was hoping this week I had a grand plan that I would go onto the streets of Linfield and I'd ask people to tell me what they thought the world's biggest problem was. Maybe things on that list. And I had a cold. It's a bit hard to go and just randomly stop people on the streets. I kind of chickened out, to be honest.

But I did have one good conversation on a train. I was sitting on a train with this family, the three of them, teenage daughter, two parents and me, and I said, probably ten days ago or so. And I said to them, look, I'm getting ready for this talk at church and I wonder if you could help me. We had a very friendly conversation. I wonder if I could just ask you what you think the world's biggest problem is.

Straight away, two of them said climate change. The dad thought for a little bit and he said, I think violence probably tops climate change. Anyway, they mulled on it for a moment and the mum said, yeah, I've recently seen a few of the kind of Sci-Fi films where health issues are gone and people live forever. And I thought, I'm not sure I like that idea, because if I lived forever, I'd still have to battle climate change and violence in the world and all this stuff. And then she said something.

It was just incredible that she said this. She said, it's almost like we need something that fixes all the problems all at once. And I was like, that's very interesting that you would say that, because Jesus here is saying, smash legs or smash lives. He's the one who will fix it all?

So then I was like, great. This is a wonderful inn. And then I heard, next station, Hayward's heathen. I got 30 seconds. Never have I been more desperate to try and say something into that situation.

And I said, oh, yeah, it's really interesting. Well, actually, I'm going to be doing something about Jesus and blah, blah, blah. I said something and I got off the train. I thought about staying on the train. Maybe I should, Karen.

But anyway, I didn't do that in that moment. Desperate to share, because Jesus will do incredible stuff to repair and restore broken legs and broken lives.

In this Bible passage, there are all kinds of different reactions to Jesus. That map really what we can expect as we invite friends and families to meet him. We know when people get close to Jesus, there's always an impact, always something changes. So I want to give you maybe just 30 seconds. If you've got a Bible in your hands with the person next to you, just have a look down.

I spotted four different reactions and I wonder if you might have a little look. We can lose the PowerPoint now. Thank you. We can just go back to the screen, chat with the person next to you. You're allowed to actually speak and say something.

What reactions do you see to Jesus in this passage? I'll give you 30 seconds just to have a look.

10 seconds more.

All right, let me pull us back together.

I spotted at least four different reactions. I'm just going to walk you through really quickly those different responses. The first response, I think, is anger. We see it a little bit here, but we're going to see it grow among the Pharisees and teachers of the law. They say, you're not meant to be doing this, Jesus.

You're into a boundary you shouldn't have crossed. And they get increasingly upset, angry about that. The second reaction is a kind of amazement from the crowd, which is a good reaction in part, but I think it doesn't really go as far as we want to go. It's a bit like, I don't know if you see an incredible sporting achievement, but from someone, from another team and you think, I'm impressed by it. I'm amazed even by it, but actually it hasn't done anything inside of me.

But there's two other much better reactions. The first, and we spoke about it at the beginning, is the faith of the friends, desperate, not letting anything get in the way of bringing their friend to Jesus. But, of course, at the centre of our story, the biggest reaction of all is the man immediately. Verse 25. He stood up in front of them, took what he'd been lying on and went home praising God.

When people meet Jesus, their lives get changed. All those decades or years where he'd been paralysed, it's like in a moment everything's changed. And he has so much joy to look forward to, so much hope of what is to come. And Jesus is reminding us here this big miracle is pointing to a much bigger truth about what he's come to do to restore relationships.

But as we continue next week, we're going to see the challenges and how broken do we really think we are. I went shopping this week. I was in the charity shop and I bought a cup. I bought this cup, one pound sticker on it. Last of the big spenders, hey, one pound cup.

But it's got a little chip or crack in it, a little bit chip, a little bit cracked. And sometimes in our life we can face situations and we say, it's a little bit broken, but I think I can work with it, I can mend it, I can get by, I can try through my own effort. I don't need Jesus, I can just push on. Well, this passage is saying, actually we're much more broken than we would often care to admit and we'll see more of that next week. It's a bit like this.

It's a bit like we take our cup and instead of it being just a little cracked and a little chipped, I get out my hammer.

Now you're paying attention. Hey. And I just.

It's broken, really broken. Really smashed. You're hoping I'm going to do a magic trick and fix it. I'm not going to do a magic trick and fix it. I can't.

But that's the whole point. I can't fix it. I can't fix the brokenness that runs through every barrier of life that we just got used to and tolerated, our will being broken, our relationships being broken. Now this story is telling us that only Jesus, only Jesus can deal with our brokenness. And when we bring people to him, boy, do their lives get changed.

Some will get angry like in the Christmas story. Some will want to silence and kill him like Herod does, but some, like the wise men, will bow down and worship him. And the smashed lives that they bring to him he will so carefully and brilliantly put back together. That's the gospel hope this morning. It's why we're desperate to bring people to Jesus.

Let me lead us in a word of prayer, Lord Jesus, even as we come before you, this morning. We're aware of our own brokenness, and we thank you that you so lovingly and carefully will fix us all the hurt and regret the bitterness that we've carried. Lord, help us, even in the next few minutes of our service, to lay them before you, to invite you to do what you did for that man, to fix the brokenness of our lives. And, Lord, we pray. We're desperate.

Please increase that desperation in us to bring friends to meet you. Please give us many opportunities in these coming days to do just that. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.