Please be in prayer for our service Sunday as we look at another person (and his friends) who are desperate for the Lord Jesus Christ. To be sure, Luke is setting us up for Jesus' statement in 5:32: I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.
In other words, Jesus will not save the "self-righteous," and self-sufficent. He only saves those who come to terms with their sin and desperate situation before a holy God.
Interestingly, situated between the accounts of the desperate leper (5:12-16) and the desperate paralytic (and his desperate friends) (5:18-26) stands the Pharisees and the teachers of the law (5:17). This group has it together. They aren't desperate; why should they be? All their "i's" are dotted and all their "t's" are crossed theologically and morally.
No one was more religious, moral, or zealous for the Law of God than the Pharisees. And yet, Luke wants us to see that it's only the desperate who can benefit from the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Pharisees are left out in the cold. Their righteousness will not deliver.
Indeed, Jesus says elsewhere, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:20).
He tells Nicodemus, a Pharisee, (and ruler of the Jews), unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).
No wonder we are desperate. If the Pharisees can't make it with their religious commitment, who can? Only those who understand this and come desperate to the Lord Jesus Christ in repentant faith.
Can't wait to hear the Word preached. Thank you Brian.
ReplyDelete