Welcome to BibleTalk

Getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over the sea and came to His own city. And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.”
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Both Mark (2:ff) and Luke (5:17ff) have provided more details of this account in their gospels. The ‘they’ in today’s verse were four friends of the paralyzed man. They care enough, and had enough faith in Jesus to carry the paralytic to see Him. Then finding the place so crowded that they could not reach the Lord they took him to the roof, made an opening and lowered him down to Jesus.

Faith+love+perseverance is able to accomplish amazing things! It did then and still can in our day.

A number of years ago my wife Alice and I were in the U.K. traveling around England, Scotland and Wales as well as Germany and France as I was preaching and teaching. During the course of that time I was also invited to spend time in Israel, first with a man and his wife–both observant Jews–in Netanya, and then with a Christian couple in their home just outside of Jerusalem. And where Mark Swiatosz, part of the BibleTalk ministry would manage to join up with us for the balance of our time in Israel.

The lovely Jewish man, Norman Feingold, was very, very involved with Magen David Adom, which is Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service. He was the founder of the Christian Friends of that great organization! I spent hour after hour sitting with Norman at his dining room table discussing the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments. He was extremely well versed in both. He was knowledgeable about the biblical accounts of Jesus perhaps better than 90% of most Christians I know. During the course of one of our discussions the topic of today’s Scripture came up. Speaking of the men carrying the paralyzed man to Jesus. Norman said to me, ‘Do you realize that was the first ambulance service?’ That still blesses me to this day!

The apostle Paul would write to the Galatians, and to us, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” {Gal.6:2} Solomon with his wisdom had written that ‘Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor.’ {Ecc.4:9} And it would do us well to remember that Jesus did for us what we could never do for ourselves, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” {1Pt.2:24}

Love is an action verb. There is the saying of it, and then there is the doing of it—and both are required! That truth rings out all through the Word. Prayerfully consider the words of Jesus: He told His disciples:

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12-13)

PERFECT LOVE CASTS OUT FEAR