Abounding Hope

I’m going to read from the Bible. I don’t know if you have a Bible with you, but I’ll tell you where I’m reading from: from the Gospel of Mark.

Let me take a moment as well just to set the context for this. The beginning of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is set forward. He’s tempted in the wilderness. And he then steps forward and goes into Galilee, and he says, “The time is fulfilled, … the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe … the gospel.”[1] He then goes on to call his first disciples. He goes into the synagogue. There’s a demonic encounter in the synagogue. He deals with the opposition that comes there. So he’s, first of all, been opposed by Satan in the wilderness; now he’s opposed by this demonic power in the synagogue. And the impact that comes from that is that the people find themselves saying, “‘A new teaching [from this man] with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.”[2]

And immediately he leaves the synagogue, and he goes out from there. Then you have the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the crowds are building; people are fascinated by what’s going on. And early in the morning, Jesus goes away to pray. And the disciples come, and they find him, and they say to him, “You know, this is going really, really well. I mean, people are loving what you’re doing, and everyone is actually looking for you.”[3] And Jesus said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”[4]

And what then follows is what I’m about to read. Okay. (There’s no extra charge for that little summary.)

And in that context: “A leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, ‘If you will, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.’ But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

“And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered [there], so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and 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 the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak like [this]? He[’s] blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, ‘Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic—‘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 all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’”

A brief prayer:

Father, what we know not teach us. What we have not give us. What we are not make us. For we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

Now, if you’ll permit me, I want to take just another moment before I come to this text. I try to teach the congregation where I live that it is very important to view the culture through the lens of Scripture rather than viewing Scripture through the lens of the culture. And I’ve just read here from an ancient record of an ancient event, far removed geographically and in many, many ways from the context in which we sit here tonight in all of the privileges and benefits of the United States of America and in one of the most significant cities of it all.

And we come at a point in history that is different from the history that has gone before, and perhaps in some ways far more significantly so than has ever been the case. I was eleven when Bob Dylan wrote the song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” when he called the mothers and fathers to get out of the way so that youth could get on, when he called the congressmen and the senators to get out of the road because the walls would be rattling, because the times were going to change. We’re in the threshold of Vietnam and with the protest songs and everything that was there. And the idea was that somehow, perhaps, there was going to be a change. Joni Mitchell wrote about getting back to the garden,[5] fascinatingly, in the upshot of Woodstock. And the Moody Blues followed that up by their song “Question,” with the refrain that came, “I’m looking for someone to change my life. I’m looking for a miracle in my life.”[6] That’s [1970]. Jackson Browne—if you like Jackson Browne—has a wonderful song: “Your Bright Baby Blues.” He’s writing about a girl. But strikingly, as he writes in that song, it goes along these lines:

I’ve been up and down this highway,
Far as my eyes can see;
No matter how fast I run,
I can never seem to get away from me;
No matter where I am,
I can’t help thinkin’ I’m just a day away
From where I want to be. …

Now I need someone to help me,
Someone to help me, please.[7]

Now, that cry is not really far removed from these two stories that we have just read. Both individuals are foundationally in need of help.

The world in which we live in tonight is a broken world. After all the history of time, we realize that it’s not difficult to have a conversation, even with a total stranger, and to discover that they’re prepared to acknowledge—globally, nationally, familially, in whatever way—that things are clearly not just the way they need to be. And as a result of that, the culture looks for heroes, looks for answers—looks for, essentially, a savior.

And right on the threshold of all of those longings, with a lineage that goes back far further than we realize, artificial intelligence beckons. And the people who are on the forefront of that intelligent movement are themselves bemused by what’s going on. In The Times of London the other day, there was an article on the fellow who is the CEO of Google’s DeepMind—an incredibly clever person who has all kinds of things that he knows, stuff that I don’t even know enough to not know what they are. But in the midst of all of that he says in what is happening to us, “there will be … admittedly more challenging [times]: there will be nothing a human can do that a computer can’t do better. Except perhaps”—and here we go—“wrestling with what ‘humanity’ is then for. ‘I think we will need some new philosophers … This would be [a] perfect time for a new [Immanuel] Kant to arrive.’”[8] So, we’re creating things that actually, apparently, have so much control that we can’t control them ourselves. And so somebody needs to be able to figure this out. In fact, Google, said one of their CEOs, “is really an engineering company with all these computer scientists that see the world as a completely broken place.”[9] And you get it at funny levels. The futurist who is a video game designer—a girl by the name of Jane McGonigal, I think Irish—she recognizes that. And this is what she says: “‘Reality is broken’ but can be fixed by making the real world more like a videogame, with points for doing good.”[10]

And Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away”[11]—changing times and unchanging truth. Peter, quoting from Isaiah in his first letter, says,

All flesh is like grass,
 and [the] glory [of man] like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
 … the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.[12]

And then he says, “And this is the word that by the gospel was preached to you.”[13]

And this is my last quote, but in a fascinating book that I just picked up, These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means—the guy is Christopher Summerfield at the University of Oxford, the professor of cognitive neuroscience, blah, blah, blah, obviously phenomenally clever. I would never have been anywhere close to him in the school. I wouldn’t even be in the same school. And he says things—and this is standard stuff: “Physicists now have a fairly decent sense of how the universe began.”[14] Really? “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”[15] He says this happened 13.8 billion years ago. Okay. He wanders through this stuff. It’s very, very clever. Some of it I don’t even understand. But this is what he says: “What if…” he says.

What if—and here is the dream that has tantalized philosophers, scientists, and assorted utopians since the Enlightenment first dawned—what if we could automate that process, and build an artificial mind that imbibed all knowledge, one that could tell us exactly what was right, what was true, how the world worked, and what the future might hold?[16]

And the prophet says, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom or the strong man boast in his strength or the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this: that he knows me, the living God.”[17]

The generation that is growing up around us is growing up believing three fundamental lies: one, there is no creator God; two, there is no ultimate truth; and three, there is no definitive morality. No God, no truth, and no moral parameters. The level of sexual incontinence in the continental United States is at such a level as such was present in the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire. And the only answer is a revival of the church of God. It’s not political. It’s not going to be anything other than that God sends somebody like Whitefield or Wesley riding their horse all the way through New England again and beyond and declaring, “There is salvation in no one else. There’s no other name given under heaven among men by which you must be saved.”[18]

Sorry for the long introduction. Now to the text. We must get on with it. All right.

The generation that is growing up around us is growing up believing three fundamental lies: one, there is no creator God; two, there is no ultimate truth; and three, there is no definitive morality. And the only answer is a revival of the church of God.

What Jesus does here, of course, is just surprise his disciples. Because the disciples have assumed that this is the way it’s going to go. “Everyone is looking for you.” Jesus says, “Let’s go.” And it is in that context that the encounter comes with this man with leprosy.

I have two points that we consider: first, a man with leprosy who’s restored, and a paralyzed man who’s forgiven. And you have the text before you. You can check and make sure it’s actually there.

A Man with Leprosy Who’s Restored

The encounter with the leper, of course, is dramatic. The man’s condition is such that he was essentially defined by his disease. To be a leper was to be immediately removed from family, removed from any cultural context of engagement, and to be an outcast within the framework of society.

The gravity of the man’s condition was more than matched by the intensity of his approach in coming to Jesus. It says that he came to Jesus, and he bowed down before him. He came to him on his knees. He comes within touching distance of Jesus. That’s quite a remarkable thing in itself, because the lepers did not come within touching distance of anybody at all. Clearly, Jesus’ reputation had preceded him. The word was on the street: “This Galilean carpenter, whoever he is, has the power to transform and change lives.” And so we assume that this gentleman, this leper, was convinced at some level that if he could get to Jesus, then Jesus could actually restore him to health and to society.

The compassion of Jesus, of course, is there, printed boldly for us. Jesus looks at this man, and he’s filled with compassion. The word that is there in Greek is the word that has to do with your bowels. In fact, if you have a King James Version—I always loved that when I was a kid, the “bowels” part, because I thought it was distinctly rude. And my mother would tell me, “Just be quiet. That’s not what it means.” It just means at a gut level. If you get frightened when you’re flying and you go to the toilet about twenty times, that’s your splanchnizomai thing that’s going on in there. And the response of Jesus to this man—it’s the same word that is used, incidentally, in the story of the prodigal son, where the father saw him when he was a long way off, and he was moved with compassion for him.[19] He was moved. He was stirred at the very core of his being. And Jesus is moved in that way.

According to the rabbis, according to the religious establishment, to touch a leper was to become ceremonially unclean. But the law, the ceremonial law, in this instance gives way to the law of love. And Jesus touched him, and he cured him. And by his touch, he actually is displaying the way in which he identifies with the man’s predicament. The picture of our predicament before God as sinners is such that it is the touch of Jesus that makes it possible for us to enjoy a forgiveness that we don’t deserve, because Jesus takes upon himself a punishment that we actually do deserve. And one of the commentators actually says that when you see the healing miracles of Jesus, they are actually sacraments of forgiveness. They’re pictures of the nature of forgiveness. It’s a picture, really, if you like, of 2 Corinthians 5: that he who knew no sin became sin for us in order that in him we might become the righteousness of God[20]—that he takes upon himself. And in this instance, he touches the man.

And instantaneously, he is cured. It doesn’t take him twelve weeks. He is instantaneously made new. And Jesus gives him a word of direction, and he tells him, “I want you to go and show yourself to the priest.” The background to this you can read in Leviticus chapter 14.[21] To do so was an expression of gratitude. It was at the same time the provision of evidence, and it was the avenue of reentry into the community from which they had been barred. And it was, in other words, in the man’s best interests to do what Jesus said.

But the directive of Jesus is met by the disobedience of this man. And this is fascinating when you think about it. Because Jesus had already silenced the demons, but he can’t silence this fellow.

We can’t stop on this. We can’t stop on this. But sometimes, less is more. Sometimes, in our zeal to communicate, we might be not doing just as fine a job as we imagine—especially those of us like me with a big mouth, and we feel like if we’re talking all the time, then something must be happening, when in actual fact, silence is golden in many cases. And this man couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was told, “You go and tell yourself to the priest, and that’s all that needs to happen.” And yet he just decides, “No, I’m not going to do that.” And as a result of that, we’re told that it changed the whole direction of the ministry of Jesus in short order. And Mark actually tells us that Jesus was no longer able to go the places he was normally going. He goes out into the remote regions and so on. There’s no dip in his popularity, but there is a dip in the places that he can go.

And so, that’s the story of the leper who’s restored.

A Paralyzed Man Who’s Forgiven

Mark then tells us that Jesus goes back to Capernaum, and we have this encounter with the paralyzed man who’s forgiven.

It’s important we acknowledge the fact that it says in the text that Jesus was there in the house, and he preached “the word” to them. The important thing, I think, for us to understand in this is that the physical dimensions of what Jesus does in both of these lives is not the significant thing. It is what Jesus is doing at the heart level of these individuals.

And this, of course, comes across very clearly in the story of this man. The crowds are flocking to the place. There’s not enough room inside or outside. He’s “preaching the word to them.” The people have been fascinated by his miracles, and they want to know exactly what he’s on about. Well, what he’s on about is “I’m here to tell you that the kingdom of God is at hand.” That’s because he wants them to know that he’s the King and that he’s inviting them to repent and to believe the good news.

So, that’s the context in which these fellows show up. And they decide that, having brought their friend to see Jesus… Incidentally, most of the talks I heard on this when I was a child were guilt trips. It went like this: “Well, there were four men who took their friend to see Jesus.” And then they said, “But the half of you haven’t brought anyone to a church service in the last five months,” you know. And I’m like, “I don’t think that’s what the passage is about.” But I was too small; I didn’t know. But it never really stuck me. It was like, “Well, I think it’s about something other than that.” It is true that the half of us have not brought someone to church in five months, but that’s none of my business this evening.

These fellows were so committed to getting their friend to Jesus that one of… If I’d been one of the four and I came across that, I said, “Oh, we’re not supposed to do this, obviously. I mean, this is… We’ll come back on another day. Maybe it will be not as crowded if we come next Tuesday or something like that.” I’d be the guy to say, “I’m going home.” One of my friends—if it was my wife, actually, she’d say, “No, no. We came here. We’re going in, right now.” And someone says, “Well, we will go in right now. We’ll go down through the roof.” And so they dig through the roof. It’s a mixture of vegetation and clay, not like the roofs here. But nevertheless, it was a drastic action. It was a dramatic intervention.

But what we’re going to see and what we need to see is, as I say: The physical aspect of what takes place pales before the dialogue that ensues. Yes, they broke the roof. Yes, they dropped him down. It’s a fascinating picture, isn’t it? I mean, Jesus is presumably speaking, and there’s a distraction, and then it’s like, “Oh, it’s not just a distraction. This is an invasion!” And I think Jesus probably said, “Well, let’s just take a moment while we welcome our latest visitor, who’s dropping in on us unexpectedly.”

They put him down there. I imagine their faces are filled with anticipation, just ready for Jesus to show them what they came to see. But neither they nor anybody else in that gathering, I’m sure, was ready for what they heard. Because what did they hear? A provocative statement! Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Now, again, if I’d been one of the four, I’m not sure I would have had the guts to say it out loud, but under my breath I would have said, “Oh, no, no, no! No, we didn’t come for that! No, we came for a visible transformation. We didn’t bring him in here for an invisible forgiveness!” Surely that was an inappropriate response. Some might even say it was irrelevant. Everybody knew that they had carried him on that bed for the express purpose.

The reason Jesus came was to save.

Now, here’s the question: Why did Jesus tell the man that his sins were forgiven? There’s nothing to suggest that there was any correlation between the man’s physical condition and any particular sin in his life. In actual fact, the Bible, in many places, and not least of all in the book of Job, warns us about equating someone’s suffering with their sin. So why does Jesus say it?

I take it—and it’s open to challenge—I take it that the reason Jesus said it as he said it, when he said it, was because he was putting his finger on the man’s, and every man and every woman’s, greatest need: the forgiveness of his sin. It’s not that he was unconcerned about his legs. He healed the man. It’s not that Jesus is unconcerned about our marriage or about our addiction or about whatever we’re into—about our fears, about our failures, about our singleness, about whatever it might be. He cares about all of these things. But the reason he came was to save.

We used to sing it at the Crusader class in suburban Glasgow:

He did not come to judge the world;
He did not come to blame;
He did not only come to seek;
It was to save he came.
And when we call him Savior,
And when we call him Savior,
And when we call him Savior,
Then we call him by his name.[22]

This is not a belief in a God who’s up there somewhere. This is not a belief in a power somewhere. It’s a belief in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what happens next, of course, as you know, is that the response of the religious authorities was not particularly positive. We might put it that way. From the very beginning of the gospel, Jesus has been opposed. He’s been opposed by Satan. He’s been opposed by the demon in the synagogue. But here, now, with this assembled crowd in the house, we might have thought—expected perhaps—that there would be compassion and there would be forgiveness on the part of those whose position in society as religious authorities would tend in that direction.

But what we discover—and Mark makes it clear—is that the stiffest opposition to Jesus comes from the religious establishment. Now, that is the potential for a diversion which I will ignore. But it is not that their theology is wrong. Their theology is right. What did they say? “No one can forgive sins but God alone.” That was right. But what they couldn’t comprehend was that the One who had said what he had said was none other than the very Messiah of God that they had known about and pondered and envisaged and so on. No, he must be guilty of blasphemy! Because they’re unwilling to consider the alternative: that he actually is God.

So Mark says that, knowing what was in their hearts… That’s fascinating in itself. They weren’t gutsy enough to actually say it to him. They didn’t say it out loud. They thought it. Jesus knows what’s in a man. He knows what’s in us. You can’t fiddle it with Jesus. You can’t… We can’t do that! He knows us inside out. John’s Gospel, he says, “And knowing what is in a man, he didn’t disclose himself to them, because he knew what was inside of them.”[23] And in this case he knows too.

So he says, “I’ve got a question for you fellows: Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Pick up your bed and go home?’” Now, if this was a seminar, I could say, “How many think A is the easy one, and how many think B is the easy one?” and so on. I’m assuming—and this is open to challenge—that it is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” Because, after all, how could that be verified? “Your sins are forgiven. Have a great afternoon!” Right? What are you going to do with that? It’s much harder to say to a paralyzed man, “Take up your bed, and walk out of here.”

So Jesus says, “Having, if you like, said what is easy, I’m now going to say what is difficult, so that you will know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Now, these religious authorities understood that phraseology, “the Son of Man,” because it was a picture, a prefiguring, of divinity itself in the incarnate Christ.[24] And so he’s actually saying to them, “Yeah, I’m not guilty of blasphemy. In order that you might know that I am who I am—that I am the very Son of Man about whom Daniel spoke all those centuries before—that you might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you: Take up your bed and walk.”

Now, what appeared, of course, to be easy to say was going to be achieved at great cost. Because Jesus knew that he was moving inexorably towards the time when he would make atonement for sin—that that was an easy expression of a vast difficulty that yet stood before him.

And so it was that he sends the man out and on. It’s the same deal as we just listened to in terms of Terry and Olivia. Terry McCutcheon, my friend, as I quoted it already today—you know, he told me his story. He said, “I had to get clean in order to discover how dirty I was.” He got clean. He got sober. But he wasn’t saved. If simply what you want to do is come up with a mechanism to stop all that crazy stuff or a physical healing… We’re all going to eternity. We’re all going to stand before God. We’re all going to give an answer. And the great, crying need of us all is the same need.

Can you imagine what it must have been like? And I’ll stop now, because I’m getting tired of this myself. But can you imagine what it must have been like? I presume he’s got a wife, this fellow, and a couple of kids. And let’s say the wife’s doing the dishes—which is what should really happen. (I only say that ’cause my wife’s not here.) But anyway, she’s doing the dishes, and she shouts to one of the boys, “Who’s that just came up the path?”

And the son says, “It’s Dad.”

She says, “It can’t be Dad.”

“No, it’s Dad.”

And he came in the house. And what did he tell them? “I met Jesus. He fixed my legs. But that’s not the big deal. That’s not the big deal.”

If you imagine if we could bring him back tonight, so he could be the third person that speaks—so we’ve got Terry, we’ve got Olivia, and then we’ve got the paralytic—what would he say? I think he’d say something like this: “You know, when they got me on that bed and I went up there, I thought this was the issue. That was what I needed in order to make sense of my life, in order to live my life. But I’ve been here in heaven for all this time, and I’m glad that I got the chance to speak third at the Hope for Addiction thing, because it’s so obvious to me that Jesus put his finger on the deepest need of my life—and that, of course, is the gospel.”

And that is why what you folks are doing here is so wonderfully relevant: Because it is good news combined with good deeds—good news, but not just a bunch of talk; action into the lives of people, carrying them on the beds, praying with them on the beds, meeting them in the ward, sitting with them as they come off those dreadful tremors. Why? Because of a genuine love and concern for them, and because we have the privilege of saying to them, “Jesus died in order that we might live.”

Our God and our Father, we thank you that the Lord Jesus “came to seek and to save the lost”[25]—which means us. All we like sheep have gone astray; every one of us has turned to his own way. But you, the Lord, have laid on him, your dearly beloved Son, the iniquity of us all.[26]

We thank you for the tenderness of Jesus—that he extends such an invitation to come to him, to learn of him, to take the yoke that he places upon us that wouldn’t chafe our necks or burden us, because, he says, “I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”[27] Thank you for the privilege of addressing these issues of addiction in the awareness of the truth that we’ve considered now. And thank you for the healing power of Christ. And we pray in his name. Amen.

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[1] Mark 1:15 (ESV).

[2] Mark 1:27–28 (ESV).

[3] Mark 1:37 (paraphrased).

[4] Mark 1:38 (ESV).

[5] Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock” (1969).

[6] Justin Hayward, “Question” (1970).

[7] Jackson Browne, “Your Bright Baby Blues” (1976).

[8] Tom Whipple, “Demis Hassabis: ‘AI Will Affect the Whole World … It’s Going to Change Everything,’” The Times (UK), March 17, 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/celebrity/article/demis-hassabis-ai-could-cure-all-diseases-in-10-years-09pcqh7cb.

[9] Patrick Prichette, “Google ‘More Than a Search Engine,’” interview by Alan Kohler, ABCNews, November 21, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20101123022937/http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2010/s3072238.htm.

[10] Evgeny Morozov, “Is Smart Making Us Dumb?” Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2013, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324503204578318462215991802.

[11] Matthew 24:35 (NIV).

[12] 1 Peter 1:24–25 (ESV). See also Isaiah 40:6, 8

[13] 1 Peter 1:25 (paraphrased).

[14] Christopher Summerfield, These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means (New York: Viking, 2025), 12.

[15] Genesis 1:1 (ESV).

[16] Summerfield, These Strange New Minds, 13.

[17] Jeremiah 9:23–24 (paraphrased).

[18] Acts 4:12 (paraphrased).

[19] See Luke 15:20.

[20] See 2 Corinthians 5:21.

[21] See Leviticus 14:1–32.

[22] Dora Greenwell, “A Good Confession,” in Songs of Salvation (London, 1874), 27. Paraphrased.

[23] John 2:24–25 (paraphrased).

[24] See Daniel 7:13.

[25] Luke 19:10 (ESV).

[26] See Isaiah 53:6.

[27] Matthew 11:29 (paraphrased).