Welcome to the Daily Blade . The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit , the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil . Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson , and they stand ready to equip men for the fight . Let's sharpen up .
All right men , welcome back to Mark , chapter 2 . We've been in it all five days and here I want to look at the attitude of the religious leaders and I want to warn you , I want to extol you , I want to rebuke you .
If you need to be rebuked , please do not have the critical heart of the religious Pharisees that we see Jesus come in contact with over and over and over .
And I'm telling you , one of the great shadows about doing ministry with men especially bold , strong , opinionated , hard-nosed , love the Lord and ready to push back darkness , kind of men is one of the greatest shadows that men like us can have is that we can have a critical heart towards the work of God and actually be opposed to what God is doing , instead of
a part of what God is doing . Beginning in verse 5 , mark 2 says and when Jesus saw their faith , he said to the paralytic son your sins forgiven . Now some of the scribes were sitting there , questioning in their hearts why does this man speak like that ? He is blaspheming . Who can forgive sins but God alone ?
And immediately Jesus , perceiving in his spirit that they thus question within themselves . And they said to them why do you question these things in your heart , 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 sin .
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 . All right , when God's hand moves in a mighty way , which attitude do you take ?
There were two types of observers here to this miracle of Christ . One group of guys looked at him and said you're not doing this right . Who do you think you are ? Another group of people looked at God in amazement and worship and said we never saw anything like this .
Now listen , man , I might be reading my own mail here , because I pastor a church and God's hand has always been on it , or , you know , since we started 13 years ago , and one of the things that just really fires me up is the number of people that fall into this pharisaical kind of attitude . They're always trying to poke holes in what God is doing .
Another place I see it is when Jesus heals this man on a mat by the pool of Bethesda . And what the Pharisees see . Jesus looks at this man and says do you want to be healed ? We'll talk about this at some point . Jesus heals the man and he says pick up your mat and walk .
And you may say well , why in the world would Jesus tell the guy to pick up his mat ? Because crippled people don't need mats . And the reason is because people would identify that man by his mat , and God often uses the biggest messes in our life to preach the gospel message to the glory of God .
But when the Pharisees saw this man carrying the mat , because he did it on the Sabbath , they didn't see the in a place that you didn't expect it . Do you see the miracle or do you always look for there to be some kind of place where somebody messed up ? Are you the kind of person that is critical in your heart ?
By the way , if and when you do that , you are not playing for team Jesus . Now listen , I am all for protecting sound doctrine . There is no doubt about it . The Bible says that we are to test every spirit . There is no doubt about it . The Bible says that we are to test every spirit . There is no doubt about it .
But there's one thing to test the spirit the moment you realize that if this spirit points to the person and work of Jesus , if this spirit aligns with the scriptures , if this spirit makes much of Christ , then you better get on team Jesus , because if not , you're playing for another team and you're playing for the enemy .
Some people say , well , I'm just being the devil's advocate , the devil does not need an advocate , the devil is our enemy and surely the devil does not want Jesus to get the glory that he deserves .
So when a thing happens I mean I can't tell you the number of times we will here at our church we will celebrate over a hundred people coming to Christ at a service and I have some skeptics go . How do you really know if that person actually got saved ? And I always tell them listen , man , do you want them to be saved ?
Because it sounds like you're more critical of what Jesus is doing than hopeful for what Jesus can do . And the last thing in the world we want in our church is some kind of easy believism where people think , well , all I've got to do is this yeah , all you've got to do is surrender your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ .
All I've got to do is this yeah , all you got to do is surrender your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ . And so , men , how about , instead of raising up an army of men with critical hearts , we rose up an army of men that were just looking to celebrate the work of God .
That maybe we could give some people some grace and some mercy , especially if it's in a different kind of church , or maybe they didn't do it the way you would do it but that we would be so aligned with the spirit of God that , when God moved , we could sense it , we could smell it and , most importantly , we could celebrate it , and we would be the kind of
men that would say we never saw anything like this . Let's be those kind of men .
Amen . Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go . If you want to help equip other men for the fight , share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review . Stay sharp .