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The Story of the Paralyzed Man · Life For Toledo

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  I'm thinking today of a very specific verse.
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  It's kind of like, it's nested in a story. It's
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  about a paralyzed man who is before Jesus, and
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  Jesus forgives his sins. He says, your sins are
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  forgiven. And then they're really like challenging
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  him in their heart, and they're wondering, how
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  can Jesus say that? I mean, that's sort of, you
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  know, blasphemy or whatever. And then the man
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  is still laying there on his mat, paralyzed,
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  and Jesus says, which is easier, to say to the
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  paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven, or to
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  say, get up and pick up your pallet and walk?
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  And then he says, but so you can know that the
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  Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive
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  sins. And then there comes this verse. He looks
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  at the paralyzed man and he says, I say to you,
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  get up, pick up your pallet and go home. The
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  man immediately gets up and he takes his pallet
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  and he walks away. Now, this causes all kinds
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  of problems, of course. And that's the way it
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  was with Jesus during his public ministry. Everything
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  that he did that was good for one person caused
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  a lot of trouble with other people. And I think
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  it's a little bit like that in life. That's why
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  people say no good deed goes unpunished, because
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  there's always complications every time you try
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  to do good. But guess what? We've got to do good.
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  You can only overcome evil by doing good. And
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  so it is our job to be going around helping people
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  pick up their pallet and go home. If you see
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  a need, I'm not talking that you have to give
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  up everything that you are, everything that you
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  have, or really sacrifice or whatever, but you
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  ought to want to meet that need. We ought to
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  want to help a person get moving again. So I'm
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  encouraging you today that you would, I would,
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  that we would all get moving again, that we would
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  make a difference again. We remember that to
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  be a city is to be in community. To be in community
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  is to care about your neighbor. It's a Christian
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  foundation. It's not stodgy.