Seeking Symptom Relief

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So your doctor says to you, get more rest, exercise, and sleep. Lose some weight, reduce stress in your life, and you say, yeah, but can I have a Xanax. Uh-huh. Or I say that. We say that. There's some version of that. If you take a look at what's happening on commercials and they're selling symptom relief. It's, it's theologically a way, what I would call a theology of glory, is that you can stay just the way you are, but I will reduce your symptoms or eliminate the headache so that you can continue living too fast, drinking too little water, being too concerned about things, so that you can continue on in your lifestyle that you've chosen, which is killing you, but symptom-free. All right. I think that's the struggle that is at the core of this message and this incident and this event in Jesus' life, and it happens in the Gospel of Mark. Welcome to Thrive. The sign outside says you belong, and I want you to know that you do belong here, that I've recently been coming here a while myself as a retired pastor, and I'm honored and to just give John a little, little break every now and again, and to bring the Word of the Lord, and I can promise you this is a place that wants, if you don't belong, do belong. But I understand there's a, there's always a stress and attention in that too, right? You want to belong, but do I want to belong to these people? I don't know. Try a Thrive Hangout. Far beyond John's you'll discover that there is community, that God has prepared for you here, so welcome, and we'll welcome back Pastor John next week after, you know, let him have two weeks in a row. He'll be back. Seeking Symptom Relief, Receiving Something Better. This is this text, so this is the full movie. When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home, and many were gathered together so that there was no room, not even at the door. He was preaching the Word to them, the Logos, and they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. When they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. When they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to them, Son, I love that, Son, your sins are forgiven. Some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, why does this man speak like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? In their hearts, not out loud. And immediately, remember that's Mark's favorite word, and immediately, there he goes again, immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit, they had thus questioned within themselves, said to them, why do you question these things in your hearts? There's our question. Which is easier to say, Son, your sins are forgiven, or to say, rise. Here we go. You may know the Son of Man has authority on earth. He said, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home. And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them. So they were all amazed and glorified with God saying, we never saw anything like this. Which, by the way, as Pastor John and I unfold the Gospel of Mark, you'll see that's another common theme. People go, who is this guy? It's like, what? Who ever heard of somebody stopping the weather pattern? Whoever heard of somebody curing a paralytic, touching a leper? Who is this guy? Even at the very end of the book, it has a very, very different resurrection story. And the women went away terrified. I'm sorry, I might be taking John's thunder, so we won't go too far ahead. Part of that is, that's a common theme in John, is rather than people going, oh, that's Jesus. They go, who is he? How does this work? This is crazy. He captures their attention. He holds it fast. Have you seen or heard of the movie called The Chosen? It's this series of things the church is doing. They've got a different, they've got a phrase in there that I like called, get used to different. That's kind of what the Gospel of Mark is kind of saying, is like, Jesus is kind of coming at a tangent. And rather than people going, oh, finally the Messiah is here. They're going, what? That's the same thing. We never saw anything like this. To which you and I in the 21st century would go, duh. So what we have to start with is really what I would talk about, systemic nature of sin. And the reason why that's important is because a thorough understanding of the nature and the comprehensive understanding of sin is critical to the understanding of the answer that Jesus gives to the question. And it's really important when we talk about symptom relief versus lifestyle change, versus being changed from the inside out rather than the outside in, it's really important to understand the pervasiveness of sin. And even within our culture there's sort of a mild to moderate to sometimes hard pushback bec...