Not Going Well

When life feels overwhelming and “not going well,” true faith shines through friends who step in, carry us, and bring us to Jesus—just as the paralytic’s companions lowered the roof to reach Him. Jesus first forgives sins, then heals, showing that forgiveness matters more than physical miracles. This sermon challenges listeners to recognize moments of need, borrow others’ faith, and act with compassion, reminding us that when we can’t walk by faith alone, we can rely on one another to experience God’s transformative power.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I have to say, I uh feel very undeserving of that applause. Uh for the for the student pastor that left you guys a few years ago and hasn't been back, I I feel very undeserving. Um yeah. Yeah. Um no no no no no. Um thank you. But uh if you haven't had the chance to meet me, if we've never met before, I have the more and more I come back, the more faces I don't recognize, which is awesome. Like that I'm really excited about that every time. And so um, if I haven't had the chance to meet you, Dylan Wages, um I was the student pastor here. Gosh, August 15th will make three years since I was uh last here. Um and so that's crazy that that uh how fast time flies. But um Church of the Grove has always been my home. Uh it's where I came to know and follow Jesus. It's where I was raised and trained um by Nathan and Russ and so many others uh to just be a disciple of Jesus. And so uh no matter where I go, uh where where life takes us, uh this place will always be our home. Uh my wife Katie and I uh and our soon-to-be uh son, which is really exciting. Yeah. That is uh that feels really good to say, kind of for the first time. Um we still we live here in town, we live in social circle, we're natives here. Uh you've probably seen us around town, you know, watch walking our dogs before. Um, if you've never met us, so come say hi. Um we'd love to we'd love to meet you. But I talk a lot. Uh if you've ever spent any time with me or listened to a message before, I talk a lot about my story of coming to know Christ and and how that all happened for me. Um and I usually talk about how it really, in my mind, makes no sense. Like it in my in my imagination, I just can't drum up or think of a way that it makes sense that I came to follow Jesus. I met him uh when I was 16 years old here at Church of the Grove, and it's a long, long story about how uh I had never grown up in church, never really attended church, um, didn't come from a Christian background or Christian family. And so how I got from there to meeting him at 16, crazy. It doesn't make sense. But along the way, there's stories after story in that time of how someone else was responsible for bringing me to Jesus, that I could eventually encounter him. It's safe to say, I think I can say confidently, that I may not have ever fully known or surrendered to Jesus, if not for the faithfulness of other people, continually bringing me back to his feet. Continually bringing me back to him. When I was 15 years old, um my dad had met Russ Butcher at an event, and Russ Butcher had invited us to attend church at Walnut Grove when they were still meeting in the high school. And um I was only, uh my parents were divorced. I only saw my dad every other weekend, and so I started going to Church at the Grove every other Sunday with my dad, and I had this was not to mention had I never been to church before, I had never been to church in a high school before. That so all of this was just totally strange, totally weird. It didn't make any sense. Um and but my dad kept bringing me back. He kept taking me back. And one Sunday he told me that he had gotten me a spot at their student summer camp, and I was like, oh gosh, like I do not want to do that. I don't know anything about these people. I do not want to go stay for a week with them in some strange place. Not for me, right? But I went because I didn't really have a choice, and it was great. What happened next, I I never could have expected. I started to want to go to church. I still didn't really fully understand the gospel yet, but I wanted to go to church. I liked the people that I had spent time with, um, and in those next few weeks I started to crave it. So as a 15-year-old, I experienced something that I had never experienced before. Now, what happened in those next few weeks is something that I don't think I realized in the moment, but I realized it reflecting back. Every Wednesday night that followed, my dad would leave work. Keep in mind I lived with my mom, I didn't live with my dad. He would leave work, come to my mom's house, pick me up, take me to student ministry on Wednesday nights, sit in the parking lot for an hour and a half, two hours, waiting for the service to be over, then take me back home to my mother's house. In my mind as a 15-year-old, I it didn't make sense what he was doing. But he kept, and he may not have even understood what he was doing, but he kept taking me back to the feet of Jesus. He kept taking me back to the community and the presence that I needed. And as the weeks went on, I met more and more people who began to see something in me and say, hey, we we want to we wanna we wanna invest in this kid. Josiah Butcher, Russ's oldest son, started to be the person that would pick me up every, not just Wednesday now, but every Sunday morning and start taking me to church. And as again, couldn't drive, never done this before. I would not have been able to get there without these people carrying me. I was lost. I had never heard the gospel. It was a pivotal time in life when at 15, when you're making decisions that will shape the rest of your life, and through the faithfulness of other people to carry me to Jesus, the gospel became not just something I heard once, but something I experienced and something I desired. There's no telling where I would be today if not for those people. And I think some of us in the room have a similar story. I imagine that for some of you it was a parent or a grandparent who introduced you to Jesus at a young age, or maybe it was a spouse, a coworker, or a friend who saw that your life was missing something and needed it, and needed Jesus, and they carried you to his feet. It's likely that that journey wasn't easy. You may have resisted, you may have pushed back. Heck, you that may even be the case this morning, and you may not even want to be here. And that's okay. I get it, because I've been there. But what I think, at any given moment, what I think is true for almost every one of us, is that at some point you've either been the one that was carried, or you're the one that needs to be carrying someone right now. Some of us have been both at different times in our lives, but the question this morning isn't which one you are, it's whether you're willing to keep being that person or become the person for somebody whose life needs it. Are you willing to carry other people to the feet of Jesus? Last week we kicked off a series called The Empty Chair, and the idea is simple that there's a chair, a table, uh a relationship, a coworker, a group text near you where there's somebody that doesn't know Jesus. There's somebody that's life is broken and needs healing. And each week we're looking at a different story from Scripture where Jesus went after those people and his followers went after those people. And we've looked at a simple framework to kind of give us some categories. We we called them the three knots. So we have someone not in church, someone whose life is not going well, and someone who's facing something they're not prepared for. So last week we looked at the person who's not in church, people like Zacchaeus, written off but not out of reach. And this week we're moving into that someone's life who's not going well. This isn't always true, but oftentimes the people around us whose lives aren't going well, we don't need them to tell us that their lives are going well. It's obvious. Right? That's not a mystery. The mystery, though, is why we often don't do anything about it. It's the couple you know whose marriage is falling apart. Everyone kind of knows it, but it feels awkward, so we don't talk about it or bring it up because it feels intrusive and like it's none of your business. It's the mom who just got a diagnosis and sent it in the group text, and everybody said praying for you, but then nobody's talked to her ever since. It's the coworker who told you he got let go and you've been thinking about reaching out to him every single day since, but have never done it. We don't miss these people because we're unaware. We miss them because something's in the way. Awkwardness, busyness, the fear of saying the wrong thing, the assumption that someone else is gonna take care of it. And most of us let whatever's in the way win. Whatever's blocking win. That brings us to our big idea this morning that we're gonna see in Mark chapter 2, and it's the idea that sometimes the greatest act of faith is carrying someone else's. Sometimes the greatest act of faith is carrying someone else's. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Mark chapter 2, and what we're gonna see here is that Jesus has come back to Capernaum. This is kind of his home base for ministry, if you will. And uh, word gets out fast that he's here, that he's back home, he's in Capernaum, and people start showing up. So we look at the first two verses of Mark 2. It says, When Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home. And soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no room even outside the door. Now, picture it. Uh, if you've seen The Chosen, uh, there's a really, really beautiful uh episode that covers this scene, and you'll get up, you can really get a visual for what might have been happening here. But this isn't just a handful of curious onlookers, right? Like this is wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder. There was no more room, not even at the door. If you got there a few minutes late, you weren't getting in. There was nothing that you could do, right? And I imagine it a little bit like what would happen if, like, you know, like Taylor Swift walked into a Walmart, right? Like you would never, like you would just, you would never be able to get close, right? It's like a celebrity just kind of engaging in our culture. It was, it was almost like that. There's just no way you're gonna get access to him because of the crowds. You were lucky enough to be close enough to hear what he was saying, much less be in his presence or hope to be healed by him. That's what makes what happens next even more incredible. Verses 3 through 4. While Jesus was preaching God's word to them, four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. They couldn't bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat right down in front of Jesus. So we have a man paralyzed, unable to walk. And keep in mind, this is a very, very different time in human history than we live in today. In a lot of ways, a man like this would have been an outcast. In Jesus' time, disability was widely assumed to be related to God's judgment for something. A paralyzed man wouldn't have just been pitied, but he it would have been quietly assumed and talked about as if he was being punished by God. There would have been barriers to participation in not just religious life, but social life. A man in this condition would not have felt welcome, would not have felt uh engaged in most public places. So there was also no social safety net. We didn't have disability assistance or welfare. There were no accessible workplaces. So a man that couldn't walk, couldn't work, which meant total economic dependence on other people. So this is real desperation. This is not just a physical challenge. This is real full-on life desperation. This man could not get there himself. He could have never gotten to the presence of Jesus on his own. Whatever his condition, he didn't walk in, he didn't crawl in, but he was carried by four people the entire way. And even though something stood in their way, his friends didn't quit. They get there, and the house is already full. It's already packed. This is the moment, if it was me and my just natural cynical nature, you know, I probably show up and I'm like, well, we tried. Guess it wasn't meant to be today. It's a little too crowded, so I guess we'll just try again. Nobody would have blamed them for saying that. That's the reasonable thing, right? But they didn't do the reasonable thing. What they did instead cost them something. They climb up onto somebody else's roof, they start tearing it apart, digging through the mud and the thatch, and above, a room of people, including Jesus himself, teaching. This is far from subtle, far from quiet. It's expensive, disruptive, and probably a little embarrassing. They're ruining a stranger's roof, interrupting a packed house, interrupting a teacher on the chance that it gets their friend closer to Jesus. Made it to God's people, no matter what. Sure, it's not as dramatic, but it still costs them something. This is what carrying someone looks like. It costs you something real, sometimes over and over and over again until that person gets where they need to go. Sometimes the greatest act of faith is carrying someone else's. Carrying someone else's. What happens next? One of my favorite verses in this passage, verse five. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, My child, your sins are forgiven. Let's read that again. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, My child, your sins are forgiven. Emphasis on their faith. Not his, not just his. We don't know if the paralyzed man said a single word. We don't know if he asked to be healed. We don't see him confess belief or say anything. We see him lie there on the mat while four other people drop him through the roof to get him close to Jesus, and Jesus responds to him, anyways. Somebody else's faith was enough to get this man met by Jesus. The guy on the mat didn't have to have it all figured out. He just needed people who wouldn't stop carrying him. But the second part of that verse is arguably the most shocking. I don't think what Jesus said here was what anyone was expecting. This is just theorizing, but I think that the people, the friends, I think they knew that Jesus could heal their friend physically. I think they knew that he could make him walk. I don't think that they were expecting him to say, My child, your sins are forgiven. Instead of looking at the legs, Jesus looks past them and goes straight for something that nobody else in the room even brought up. Jesus is the only one thinking about this man's spiritual condition, his sin. My child, your sins are forgiven. We don't know what they were thinking. But if I was in the room and I had just dropped my friend through the wall, I'm probably sitting there saying, that's great, Jesus, but that's not really why we came. But Jesus knew what he was doing. He wanted everyone present to see that the obvious issue wasn't this man's deepest problem. The fact that he was paralyzed and couldn't walk wasn't the biggest problem. Sometimes we do this too. I think we think that the crisis is the crisis, the diagnosis, the job loss, the marriage. And if we could just fix that one thing, that everything would be okay. But Jesus doesn't always fix the obvious first. This man had a body that didn't work, but more importantly than that, he had a soul that needed to be made right with God. And Jesus dealt with that deeper wound first. Sometimes the person whose life isn't going well needs more than just their circumstances fixed. They need to be forgiven. They need the grace of Jesus. But not everyone in the room saw things that way. Verse 6 through 7. But some of the teachers of the religious law who were sitting there thought to themselves, what is he saying? This is blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. And Jesus knew immediately what they were thinking, so he asked them, Why do you question this in your hearts? Is it easier to say to this paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven? Or stand up, pick up your mat and walk? Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, Stand up, pick up your mat and go home. The man jumped up, grabbed his mat, and walked out through the stunned onlookers. They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, We've never seen anything like this before. For the religious leaders present, this was an opportunity to catch Jesus. What they said isn't necessarily wrong, right? The statement itself isn't wrong. It is true that only God can forgive sins. But what they didn't realize is that God was in the room. God was in the room and Jesus was about to prove it. Four men climbed onto a roof, tore it apart, lowered their friend down at a real cost to themselves because the person that they loved needed Jesus. And we contrast that to the religious leaders sitting in the same room, watching the same miracle, and all they could focus on was whether the theology or doctrine was technically correct. Our attitude and our response to the person whose life is not going well reveals who we really are. Our attitude and our response to the person whose life is not going well reveals who we really are. That's what this picture shows us. Going back to the question that Jesus asked, he said, is it easier to say to this paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven? Or stand up, pick up your mat and walk. On the surface, this sounds a little backwards. Obviously, right, if we're just if we're just looking at it on paper, it's easier to say to somebody, your sins are forgiven. Why? Because nobody can check your work. Nobody present in this room can say, oh well, yeah, his sins are or are not forgiven. It's much harder to say, stand up, pick up your mat and walk. I've healed you. Because you can check that pretty quick. If he's not walking, it's pretty clear. But Jesus knew what he was doing. And he knew that more than physical healing, this man needed spiritual healing. And he still healed him physically. The miracle that everyone could see became proof of the miracle they couldn't see. The miracle that they could see, the the healing of his legs, became proof of the miracle. They couldn't see that Jesus had the power and authority to forgive sin. Four friends refused to let anything stand in the way. On the strength of their faith, their friend was healed and forgiven. The crowd was left stunned. They showed up expecting to hear a teaching. And they left experiencing the power, presence, and authority of God. And none of it, none of it at all would have happened if not for the faithfulness of four friends to carry their friend to the feet of Jesus. Sometimes the greatest act of faith is carrying someone else's. This morning, as we reflect on this story, I think that there are really two groups of people here in this room. You got those of us that are on the mat, and you got those of us that are on the roof. If you're on the mat, life is not going well right now. And if we're honest, maybe you've stopped expecting anybody to notice. Maybe you've even stopped believing there's much Jesus could even do about it. And you've decided that the strongest thing you can do is carry it on your own and not make it anyone else's problem. Here's what I want you to hear from this story that we just saw. You were never supposed to carry it alone. And you were never required to have your faith all figured out before you could be carried. You're never required to have all the right answers or have the perfect, presentable life before you could be carried. The man on the mat, as far as we know, with the story that we have, didn't do anything other than let his friends carry him. He didn't do anything other than let his friends carry him. He believed that Jesus could heal him, but he never would have gotten there without them. And you need to hear this. That needing to be carried is not a weakness. It's just true of all of us all the time, more often than we'd even like to admit. There are seasons in our life where the most faithful thing you can do is not believe harder. It's not, well, you just need to trust God more. It's stop pretending you can get there by yourself. Let the faith of others carry you, strengthen you. It's not a weakness. So if you're on the mat, I want you to let somebody in this week. Tell one person the truth. Tell one person how you're actually doing. Let the roof open. For those of us that are on the roof right now, we're probably not there permanently. Let's be clear about that. Because maybe you were on the mat a season ago. And we'll probably be on the mat again one day. That's just kind of how life on earth works. But right now, today, as it stands, you've got what it takes to carry somebody else. You've got the tools, the time. And if we're honest, looking back on the last 25, 30 minutes, there's probably already someone in your head. The Holy Spirit's probably already placed a name, a person, a family? Will you let the crowd get in the way? You've thought about reaching out to them for weeks. You've thought about saying something for weeks, but you haven't. Will you let the busyness, the awkwardness, the assumption that someone closer to them will take care of it? Will you let that stop you, or will you climb up on the roof and cut it open? For most of us, carrying someone this week will not be near as dramatic as it was in this story. But here's what you can do, very practically. Show up without being asked. Bring a meal, cut their yard, pick their kids up from school. Don't wait for an invitation. Ask the real question and mean it. Not just, hey, how's it going in the lobby? But hey, how are you actually doing? There's a second part to this though. You have to sit still long enough and listen long enough to hear the real answer. Don't try to verbally solve their problems. Just listen. Pray with them, not just for them. Not just a text message that says, I'll be praying for you, but hey, can I call you right now and we and we pray together? Hey, can we stop whatever we're doing, wherever we are? Can we pray? And then keep showing up after the first week. The first week, the the casseroles come, the thoughts, the prayers come, but rarely do they keep coming in the third, fourth, fifth week. Be the person still fighting for that person a month later, when everyone else has moved on. And if this person doesn't know Jesus, don't stop at the physical needs. Jesus didn't just heal his legs, he went after the man's soul. So if you're carrying someone this week, don't just fix what's visible. Pray for them, point them to Jesus, and be willing to have the conversation that really matters the most, that carries eternal impact. Imagine a church known for this. Not known for how many people are in here, how good the worship is, how big the building gets or expands, but for how relentlessly we carry people who can't get there on their own. Imagine what happens if every person in this room takes one name. This week, someone whose life isn't going well, they need to be carried and decides that you're done letting what's standing in the way keep standing in the way. That if the path is blocked, that you'll tear the roof open. And that's who I want us to be. Because I wouldn't be standing here today if not for countless people carrying me. And let me tell you, that wasn't just in the first two years of my faith. I've not gotten 10 years later and graduated from needing to be carried. I need to be carried all the time. But I want us to be a church full of people who are willing to keep carrying each other again and again and again as long as it takes. Because that's what was done for us. The man on the mat couldn't get to Jesus on his own. He needed to be carried. And what's true of him, it's true of every single one of us, that we could not ever have gotten to God on our own strength. Our sin stood in the way, like a door that we couldn't get through or cut through no matter how hard we tried. So Jesus did what those four friends did. He carried us. He carried our sin on the cross and all the way to the grave and all through his resurrection so that our relationship with God could be restored. We didn't get ourselves there, we never could have. There's nothing that we could have ever done. Just like the man on the mat, we were utterly helpless. So if you've never let Jesus carry your sin, if you've spent your whole life trying to get to God on your own strength with no way through, hear this. Jesus already did the carrying. He already did. All that's left to do is to let him carry it. And you can respond to him right now if you never have. In a few moments, Brandon's gonna come, we're gonna sing, we're gonna worship. But we've also prepared the table of communion as well. This is a moment that the Lord instituted in our gatherings to have us sit and reflect on his body broken, his blood shed, and the ramifications for our life for us. So I'd encourage you when Brandon comes and is singing, and we're, don't just come up here and take communion because everyone else is doing it. Jesus warns us in Scripture. He says, when we come to the table of communion to examine our heart towards him and examine our heart towards our brothers and our sisters, and make sure that we are, there's nothing standing in the gap. Examine where your heart is with him. Don't let this be a ritual that we just do blindly. Confess. Thank God for what he's done and turn to him. But also, if you're standing on the roof, let this be a moment that you intercede for others and pray the body and the blood of Jesus over others as well. Father, we give you all the glory. Thank you for your word. Thank you that we have access to the stories of faith and the stories of healing and the things that you've done in Scripture. Thank you for dying on the cross for our sins. Thank you for rising from the grave to bring us to new life. Lord, I pray over the soul in this room that has never heard that good news before and needs to respond to it, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would come into their life right now, open their eyes to their sin and lead them to turn to you and repent. Come to Jesus. Father, I pray for the person in this room that is walking with you but is going through the unimaginable, going through the challenging. God, I pray first that you would meet them there, but that you would surround their lives with people to help carry them to you. And I pray for those of us that need the boldness and the courage to step out, to do what we've never done before, to ask the hard question. I pray that you would fill us with that courage and boldness to do so. And Lord, as we come to this table of communion, fill us with gratitude and awe for what you've done. We love you, Lord. It's in your name.