From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part three of a series. Read part two.

Would you be this determined to bring someone to the Savior?

In our examination of the account of the healing of the paralytic in Mark chapter 2, we have now come to the point at which Jesus' preaching is interrupted in a most unusual way. We read in verse three, "Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men."

Four men are carrying another man. Apparently they are bearing him on some kind of litter or stretcher. And we are told that the man is a paralytic. In fact, in the original the Greek word is paralytikos - the word from which we get our English word "paralytic."

This word can indicate many different types of paralysis. It could have been the kind of paralysis that is caused by a stroke that would affect the ability to walk, talk, and move to a greater or lesser extent. It could have been the kind of paralysis that results from severe spinal injury. Or, it could have been the result of a disease, such as multiple sclerosis, or what we call today ALS, infantile paralysis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Over time, these diseases produce a complete paralysis of the body. The one who is affected by these diseases loses the ability to use his limbs until they become absolutely useless. The one affected loses the ability to speak. Eventually he cannot even hold his head up. And eventually it affects the person's breathing and heart action, so that death comes.

I tend to think, because four men brought this man to Jesus, and because they would let nothing stand in their way, that therefore the man was in that kind of severe difficulty, and that death might have been very near. We do not know that for a fact, but I believe the Gospel accounts give every indication that this was what we would call an emergency case, a life-and-death situation.

We see also the determination of the four who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus. Verse four:

And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.

These men literally took the roof apart in order to get the paralyzed man to Jesus. We are told here in Mark that they broke through the roof. The sense of the Greek for breaking through is in fact digging through.

Archaeologists tell us that the roof of a typical house in the Middle East at that time was a structure made up of several layers. The first layer, on the inside, was the rafters, the structure on which the roof rested. Then above that was a layer of reeds. And above that was a layer of heather or other springy vegetation that had been cut and placed there as insulation. And on top of the heather, earth was deposited and beaten down into a solid mass. On top of that was the outer layer, the part exposed to the sky, made up of tiles, so that the roof would shed water when it rained.

When I was a child I saw this Biblical event portrayed in a movie. In the film, all the four men had to do was lift away some tiles, and there below them was Jesus. But the real thing was not that simple. We are not seeing the Hollywood version. We are seeing the real thing. It was not that easy.

These men had to literally tear the roof apart: take off the tiles, dig away the dirt, tear away the insulating material, tear away the reeds, in order to get this man to Jesus. They were absolutely determined to bring him to Christ.

Imagine that in your mind's eye. Jesus is preaching in our midst. And then we begin to hear noises on the roof up above us. Then we hear tiles being pulled away, then we hear digging and chopping over our heads. We begin to wonder what in the world is going on. Soon debris from the ceiling starts to fall down on us. And then we see a little daylight, and then more debris, and more daylight, and more debris, and more daylight, until we begin to see the four men up on the roof, and they are working away until they have opened a bed-sized hole in the ceiling.

As we are looking up these men disappear to one side, and a few moments later they come back in view above us. We see that they have a man, on a bed, and they are letting the man's bed down through the hole they have chopped in the roof. Some in the crowd have to back away, so that there will be room to let down the man on his bed, all the way to the floor.

And now there he is, lying on his bed in the middle of the crowd, unable to get up, unable to move, perhaps unable to speak. And Jesus Christ, the Son of God, sees him, and moves to him. And we read this, in verse five: "Jesus saw their faith."

What does this mean? How did Jesus "see" their faith? We shall learn the answer as we continue.

References:

Next: A Double Miracle

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