Sermon: Encountering The Holy - Pt. 2 (Luke 5:1-26)

Encountering The Holy – Pt. 2
Sunday, April 26th, 2026
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Luke 5:1–26

Prayer

O Lord, You have searched us and known us. You know our sitting down and our rising up; You understand our thoughts afar off. You comprehend our path and are acquainted with all our ways. For there is not a word on our tongue, O Lord, but You know it altogether. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us; It is high, we cannot attain unto it. And yet we ask, for You to condescend, to reveal Yourself to us, reveal us to ourselves, so that we may know our true condition, and thus seek from You the healing and grace that we need. We ask for all of this in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Introduction

Last Sunday we said that Luke chapter 5 is all about encountering the holiness of God. And we saw that when a person encounters The Holy One in faith, that Holiness then extends to you, it reaches out to you, it touches you, it enters your soul and starts to change you. When someone truly encounters the holiness of God, three things typically happen.

• First, you are struck with a sense of your own sinfulness, you realize that you are not holy and God is way more holy than you thought. You say with Simon Peter, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. You fall on your knees and cry out with the leper, Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.
• And then Second, because of that confession of sin and uncleanness, God forgives you. God cleanses you. He says to the leper, I am willing, be thou clean. He says to Simon in essence, I will not depart from you, no, come close and follow me.
• And then Third, after we are forgiven and healed and made holy, God charges us to bear witness to His Holy Love. For Peter this meant becoming an apostle, a fisher of men. For the leper, it meant going to the temple and testifying to the priest. And this morning we will see that same pattern again in how Jesus forgives, heals, and charges the lame man to Rise up and walk.
• And so with that pattern in mind, let give you a fresh outline of our text. We are picking up in verse 15 in the aftermath of healing the leper. And so we’ll divine our text into three sections.

Outline of the Text

• In verses 15-16, we have The Importance of Private Prayer.
• In verses 17-20, we have The Love of Faithful Friends.
• And then in verses 21-26, we have The Power of Christ to Forgive.
  • The Importance of Prayer, The Love of Friends, and the Power of Christ to Forgive.

Verses 15-16 – The Important of Private Prayer

¹⁵But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities.

¹⁶And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.

• Note this. From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to his final words from the cross, Jesus is a man of prayer.
  • Recall that at his baptism in Luke 3:21, we are told that it was while Jesus was praying, that the heaven was opened.
  • We were just told in Luke 4:42 that, he departed and went into a deserted place.
  • And here now Jesus withdraws himself again into the wilderness to commune with His Father.
• This habit of seeking solitude for prayer, is something that Luke highlights all throughout his gospel, these verses are scattered throughout.
  • We will see in the next chapter, Luke 6:12 it says, And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.
  • In Luke 9:18 it says, Jesus was alone praying.
  • In Luke 11:1 it says, As he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray…
  • In Luke 18:1 it says,Then He spoke a parable to them, that men ought always to pray and not to lose heart.
  • And the last words from Jesus to his disciples before he is arrested are, Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation (Luke 22:46).
• So from beginning to end, Jesus is a man of prayer. And if Jesus is a perfect man and we are not, how much more do we need to pray, so that we may overcome our own weaknesses and temptations by God’s power?
  • For Jesus, his prayers are borne from love. It is not hard or wearisome for lovers to talk to one another, in fact, few things delight us more. It’s hard to stop two people who are madly in love from communicating. Even when they are separated by distance, their thoughts are constantly upon each other, they text and call one another, they express their love by all means possible. And so it is for Christ in relation to His Father. And so it ought to be for us who love Christ and His Father.
• So do you make it a habit to withdraw yourself at times, for private prayer? Do you have a routine to seek out solitude and silence with Your Creator, Redeemer, and Lover of your soul? If not, you are missing out.
• Do you ever withdraw yourself from the myriad screens and sounds and distractions of this world, and not merely because you are introverted and need to recharge, or because you are anti-social, but because your soul thirsts for God. You know from experience what we sing in Psalm 63, O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: My soul thirsts for thee, My flesh longs for thee In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.
  • Or as Psalm 42 expresses, As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
  • Do you know the goodness that awaits you in prayer, where you may unburden yourself, and pour out your complaints, and give vent before the Lord to your frustrations and needs? Do you know the hidden treasures that God retains for those seek Him and seek Him earnestly?
    • God says in Jeremiah 29:12-13, Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. God wants to be found by you. He wants you to seek for him with all your being.
• One of the reasons God gave us the Psalms is to teach us how to want. Paul says in Romans 8:26 that so often, we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. And so the Spirit has given us His Word to shape and form our longings. To teach us what we should want, and in what order and proportion, and that we should desire to have God most of all.
• When a child tastes of something sweet, a piece of candy, he naturally asks for more. We see this every week in the fellowship hall around the snack table. We have to help them stop wanting more. Well, such should be our appetite for God, except with God you cannot ever have too much of Him.
  • It says in Psalm 104:34, My meditation of Him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord.
  • It says in Psalm 119:103, How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
• Jesus knew this sweetness, and so was constantly in prayer. And so have you tasted and seen that the Lord He is Good?
• Perhaps you say “But I am so busy. I’ve got a full schedule.” And I say to you, Jesus was busy too. Jesus knows the difficulty of getting away from other people. It says in verse 15, and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. Jesus was more famous than you. More sought after than you. People were hunting him down because they needed him. And yet Jesus still made it a point to withdraw himself into the wilderness, and pray.
  • He did not ever say that prayer would be easy, or that finding time to pray would be easy. But he did reveal that it was essential, vital, and a wellspring of joy for those who find it.
• So there is a time to withdraw, and a time to be present with others. And Christ shows us that both are essential to doing the will of God. And this brings us to verses 17-20 where we have a great example of love in community, love in action.

Verses 17-20 –The Love of Faithful Friends

¹⁷And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.

¹⁸And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy [a paralytic]: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him.

¹⁹And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.

²⁰And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.

• This is a famous scene in Christ’s ministry. Both Matthew and Mark also record this miracle. And for Luke this is a pivotal moment in the story.
  • For example, here, for the first time we are introduced to the Pharisees. And they will become Jesus’ adversaries for the rest of this book.
  • This is also the first time that Luke uses the word faith (πίστις). Of course, the reality of faith/believing is been present all along, in Mary and Elizabeth, in the shepherds, and John and others. But this is the very first time that Luke uses the word faith, and it is also the first time he uses the word forgiveness. And that is not an accident for so careful a writer as Luke (not to mention The Holy Spirit!).
• So this is a key moment in Christ’s ministry and a miracle with profound implications. And what is curious is that the faith that Jesus sees here, and the faith that Luke emphasizes, is not the individual faith of the paralytic, but rather the shared faith of the paralytic’s friends.
  • Now don’t draw any errant conclusions from this. This is in no way intended to demean or exclude the necessity for personal faith in Christ. Jesus teaches that necessity elsewhere. But here, Jesus sees, and Luke records that it is the faith of the man’s friends that occasions forgiveness. Without their faith to bring him to Jesus, this man would not be there to be forgiven and healed.
    • The communal faith of these four friends is the essential occasion for the man to exercise his faith in Christ.
  • And this is what Luke is highlighting for us, the love and actions of faith-filled friends.
• How did Jesus see their faith? Well of course according to His divinity, Jesus can see everything. In the very next verses Jesus will read the thoughts of the Pharisees as sign to them that He is God. But here, I think what Luke is drawing our attention to, is that Jesus sees what everyone else sees: A hole in the roof. An room past capacity. And the audacity and resolve of these men, to bring their friend to Jesus.
  • Jesus can see the faith in their souls, but he can also see the outer works of faith. For as Paul says in Galatians 5:6, the only thing that avails for anything is faith working by love. And James 2:18 says, I will shew thee my faith by my works.
  • So the love that these four men have for their friend motivates them to get together, to pick up the stretcher and carry him all the way to Jesus. And then to be un-repelled by any obstacles on the way, including the very physical structure of the house he is in. This is an audacious faith that manifests authentic love. And Jesus sees it, and he sees the man and says, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.
• Do you have friends like this who would bring you to Jesus if you were impaired? Are you this kind of friend to someone else?
  • It says in Proverbs 17:17, A friend loveth at all times, And a brother is born for adversity. And O, what adversity it must have been to be this man, paralyzed, lame, unable to move, unable to get yourself to Jesus even if you wanted to. But God had already blessed this man, by giving him four faithful friends, who could do for him what he could not do for himself: get to Jesus.
  • Do you have friends who would do this for you? Are you that kind of friend for others? Because this is what God wants us to grow up to be for one another in the body of Christ.
    • Paul says in Galatians 6:2, Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
    • In 1 Corinthians 12:18, 26-27 he says, But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased…And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.
    • So you have some role to play as a friend of God and as a member of Christ’s body. And one of the ways you can develop these friendships is, (well first by being friendly), but by seeking to carry the burdens of others.
    • Where there is a need, there is an opportunity to bless. And it says in Proverbs 22:9, He who has a generous eye will be blessed. And in Proverbs 11:25 it says, The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters others will be watered himself.
• To connect this to our previous section on private prayer. One of the ways we can bring people to Jesus is in our prayers before the Lord.
  • It is a mark of faith, hope, and love to intercede for our friends and family, and neighbors who need salvation. So many people are unwilling to come to Jesus. They don’t want to come to church because they are ignorant of their own lameness. They don’t want to get up, they want to sit on their couch and scroll their phones and stare at the television. They think they are fine, but they are headed for destruction.
  • And so from love for these people, we bring them to Jesus in prayer. We do this privately; we do this publicly in our liturgy each week. We persist in our prayers for them, tearing the roof off as it were so that God might convert them.
  • Do we have this burden for the lost? Or are we more like the Pharisees, taking up room in the church, while our own hardness of heart is keeping other people out.
• Well, what do we all most need from Jesus? In verses 21-26, Jesus shows us what we need.

Verses 21-26 – The Power of Christ to Forgive.

²¹And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

²²But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?

²³Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?

²⁴But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.

²⁵And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.

²⁶And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange (παράδοξα) things to day.

• It is a strange thing to the natural man, to prefer forgiveness of sins over the ability to walk. If you had the choice, which would you choose, physical paralysis with spiritual freedom, or physical freedom with spiritual paralysis? Which is the greater gift? Forgiveness and freedom from the bondage of sin, or the ability to move your body as God intended?
  • Both are great gifts that we can easily overlook, and yet one is far superior to the other. It is not until we break a bone, or injure ourselves, that we come to appreciate a fully functional body.
  • But here Jesus is showing us that what is more essential, more fundamental to restoring our nature, is not the healing of the body, but the cleansing of the soul.
  • Before Jesus says, arise up and walk, what does He say? Thy sins be forgiven thee. But because forgiveness is invisible, and unverifiable to the people around, Jesus also restores his power to walk.
  • The conclusion that Jesus wants everyone to go home with is that He is God, He can forgive sins, and He can repair anything and everything that sin has broken. That is why He came.
• And so to encounter the Holiness of Jesus, is to see that your sins must be eradicated in order to permanently heal your body.The wages of sin is death. Our bodies decay and suffer because of our first parents’ sin.
  • The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” (Genesis 3:4). But death is all we have known after rejecting God’s Word.
    • In Adam all die, it says in 1 Corinthians 15:22.
    • And in Romans 5:12 it says, Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
  • And so it is significant that Jesus says to the paralytic in verse 20, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. No name is ever given to the paralytic in any of the gospels, it’s why we call him The Paralytic. But when Jesus forgives his sins, he chooses to call him Man, Adam, Ἄνθρωπε. Signifying that Jesus came to heal our humanity, to deal with the universal problem that afflicts our nature. Sin is the source of every disease, disorder, disability, and death. And Jesus came to conquer them all.
  • In verse 24 he calls himself,The Son of Man, the Son of Adam, the new High Priest who shall restore us to God’s Garden Paradise.
    • For here in Jesus are the same divine hands that formed Adam from the dust and breathed life into his nostrils, and those holy hands are touching lepers, forgiving sins, and saying to Mankind, Arise and walk.

Conclusion

Do you know your lameness? Do you know that your personal sins are the greatest problem and threat to your wellbeing? Do you believe that Jesus has the power to forgive sins, and He promises to do so for all who look to Him in faith?

• Every Lord’s Day, we reenact the gospel pattern of encountering God’s holiness. We begin our service by coming boldly before His throne, with Psalms and thanksgiving upon our lips. And then we fall down on our knees before His holiness and confess our sins. We confess individually, we confess corporately. And then what we say to one another every week, after we confess our sins?
• I say, The enemies of God are brough down and fallen, and you say, but we are risen and stand upright (Psalm 20:8). You see God is still working this miracle, every time we confess our sins honestly to Him. He says to us then, Arise and walk. Walk by faith, not by sight. Walk with Jesus, wherever He goes. Go to your house, glorifying God. For he has done great things for us. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.