So this passage of Scripture, like really every passage of Scripture, is our Lord showing very clearly, not in theory, not in doctrinal statements, not in orthodox religious tenets, but in life, in living hope, in living portrayal of himself and his power and mercy to save, he shows us how sinners are saved by the grace of God through the redemptive power of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the message of all of scripture, you see. This book is a gospel from beginning to end.

What is it when the serpent is lifted up in the wilderness, showing how that Christ must be lifted up between heaven and earth on a cross? What is that story? What is the message of look, look to him and live? But good news, good news for the for the sinner, good news for the hopeless, good news for the incurable, good news for those who couldn't do anything for themselves. And looking to Christ alone pictures what we must do from our hearts spiritually to look away from, to abandon all other hope.

And we know, spiritually speaking, that a sinner will not look to Christ until he abandons every other hope. We see that in the woman with the issue of blood. It wasn't until she spent all that she had that she looked to the Savior. And this man here, an incurable malady, simple story of who saves, how he saves, why he saves, and we as sinners before God find hope in this gospel, this gospel of his power, this gospel that overcomes our inability, this gospel that doesn't leave it up to us, but gives the power to come to God, the power to do the works of God. power to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the work of God.

So let's read this story again and go through it verse by verse, beginning in verse nine again of chapter 12. When he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue. Now where he's departing from is from when the disciples, he had walked through that cornfield with them and showed these haughty, I know more than you Pharisees, that they were ignorant of the word of God, and he's gonna show them again in this passage. He went from that cornfield to their synagogue, right in their very stronghold of their religious error and anti-Christ, preposterous, so-called gospel. all of the trappings of their religion, all of the works-based, freewill nonsense, the very stronghold. He went right into their synagogue, not an accident. Just as he orchestrated the event in the cornfield, he orchestrated this. He went deliberately right into the very teeth of the synagogue of Satan and showed them that by that being ignorant, of God, knowing the Word of God almost to the point of memorizing it all, and yet missing the message of God, which is his Son and what he accomplished on Calvary. You will not come to me. The scriptures speak of me, and you won't come to me that you might have life.

So he went right in their face, and when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue. Behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days that they might accuse him? So here's the son of God. What would happen if the Lord Jesus Christ walked through that door? How would we treat him? We know how religion would treat him because they always have. They wanted to discredit him. simply because he threatened their authority. It's not complicated. It's always back to that question, who's God and who's not? Who's the authority and who's not? Who is it up to? And who is it not up to? That's the issue today. If salvation is up to you, then boy, good for you. But if it's up to God, we better fall on our face at his feet. We better come to him for mercy and bow, begging. Mercy beggars get mercy. And the Lord delights to show mercy to beggars, to the impotent, to the helpless.

The Lord not only doesn't help those who help themselves when it comes to salvation, he deliberately will not help those who are of a mind to help themselves. If you be circumcised, if you do even the most religious, most, in your mind, the best possible thing you could do, and even do it in obedience to God. If you do anything to recommend yourself to God, Christ shall profit you nothing. If you walk an aisle, Christ shall profit you nothing. No, that's not, sinners aren't saved by walking aisles and repeating prayers.

And he went right into the place where they did that kind of thing. It's always been the same. It's always, you know, me, I, mine, the Pharisee, praying in the temple. Well, he prayed with himself in the temple. I don't know if that's really prayer or not. He prayed with himself and talked about himself and bragged on himself and looked, trusted himself.

And the Lord went right in there where they were doing that. And there just happened to be a man with a withered hand there. And the Lord calls him one of his sheep here, doesn't he? There was one of the Lord's sheep in that Antichrist religious place. And the Lord went and found him. The last place you might expect a sheep to be huddled up with a bunch of goats, and the Lord found one. He knew he was there. He knew him from eternity. He'd fixed his heart on him from eternity.

And so they went, of course, with the Lord, when the Lord clashes with religion, religion doesn't like it, doesn't like it. They wanted to accuse him, basically discredit him, to exalt themselves. And that's what religion does today. They discredit the Christ of the scripture in everything that they say to exalt the flesh. Same thing happening this morning all around us.

And he said unto them, what man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep? And if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it and lift it out? They were hypocrites. They didn't no more keep the law of the Sabbath than the man in the moon. And here they are throwing the law of the Sabbath into the teeth of God's son, who is the sinner's Sabbath. They didn't keep the Sabbath. And he illustrated that to them very clearly, but in the same breath, he's saying, this is one of my sheep. He's in the ditch right now, but he's not fixing to be. And I came in here to lift him out.

He's the good Samaritan. He'll lift you out now. He's not going to wait on you to crawl out. He's going to lift you out. That's our Savior. That's the Christ we preach. He came to seek and to save, not to seek and to offer or seek and to make it possible. He came to come right, he came down here right where we were and saved us.

How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore is it lawful? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath day. So he showed that their religion was a farce. And listen, look, if you want to wash feet, Wash some feet. That's not going to bother me a bit. If you want to, you know, have a dress code, self-righteous, all of it's self-righteous. It's you doing something in order to please God. But look, we can disagree on things. You can have a choir. There's nothing wrong with having a choir. We can do things a little bit different. But when you're dead wrong on how a sinner is saved, you got a problem with God. when you're dead wrong on the truth of how God has mercy on sinners. Here's a man's soul at stake here, and they're on the wrong side of that. They're on the opposite side of God's son on that. Now we got a problem.

Then saith he to the man, stretch forth thine hand, And he stretched it forth and it was restored whole, just like the other one. Now, when the Lord gives this command, we know that this illustrates and shows plainly how a sinner is saved. God commands men everywhere to repent. We don't have the ability to do that. The command of the gospel is, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. You can't do that by nature. And that's clearly illustrated here. It's clearly shown what God demands of the sinner.

And remember, in the scriptures, always the hand has to do with work, with ability. The right hand of God, it's called his hand. because it's his power. His hand is synonymous with his power. The scripture says of men, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all of your heart. So the hand illustrates your ability to accomplish, to work, to do. And that's what's at stake here. God's got to be pleased. God's got to be satisfied. He has commanded do and not do. And the power of man is impotent. The so-called power of man, man is impotent. We see this pictured in all of the scripture.

You know, the Lord didn't go around handing out cold medicine for, you know, to make somebody's cough better. He healed incurable people. Very specific reason for that. And that's the issue. If you can heal your own soul of the disease of sin, then you're God. If everything, if all of the purpose of God having a universe is left up to you and what you decide and what you do, then you're God. And that's what we've wanted from the start. So this is the issue, the hand. What are we going to do for God? God demands perfect obedience. We have no power. We have no ability.

What the law could not do, and that I have a withered hand, it's weak through the flesh. The law can't accomplish salvation because the law requires my obedience to it in order for me to be saved. And the flesh is withered, it's useless. And God, the Lord Jesus Christ comes along and says, stretch forth that hand. He says to the leper, I will, be thou clean. If that leper could have been cleansed any other way, I'm sure he would have gone and did that. If the woman with the issue of blood could have been healed any other way, and again, her spending money, that's the same thing. How did she get that money? She worked for it. But in spiritual things, we have no ability to earn any credit with God. And so he's got to do something for us. He's got to exert power for us. And this is the means whereby he does it.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that does the impossible. Everyone that stretches forth his hand. When the gospel goes forth, God speaks. He speaks to the, who? His sheep. His sheep. He didn't come in there to save everybody in that synagogue. He came in there to save his sheep. That's what he's doing in this world. He said, I've come to seek and save the lost sheep. My sheep. I know my sheep. And they know me and they hear my voice and they come to me. They come to me. When I say stretch forth thy hand, they do. But that's not in their power to do. That's the power of God unto salvation, which is contained in the gospel that we preach. The gospel that we preach. So that's always the issue. Who's it up to? Did that man make a decision that morning to stretch his hand out? You know, I'm tired of having a withered hand. I'm going to decide to stretch it forth today. Or did the Son of God decide to come and save a helpless, hopeless wretch that just happened to be one of his sheep? You see how fully And completely, this shows forth, sets forth the simple gospel. Salvation is of the Lord.

The Lord Jesus said, Lazarus, come forth. That's always how he saves a sinner. He speaks to dead in trespasses and sins, wretches, and calls them forth from the grave of sin and depravity. into the light of life. And He is that light. He is that light in that life. And so this is clear.

You know, there's a couple of other, I better wait till the next hour to speak about this, because this will take a little bit of time, but there's two other accounts of this event in the scriptures, and it's important to look at them too, and we will. But this is the Lord Jesus Christ putting on a clinic regarding how he saves sinners. And the Lord orchestrated all of this.

And here's, I want to talk more about what I said a little bit earlier, how that he came right into the synagogue now, because he comes into the synagogue of a sinner's heart, too, because that's where religion is seen. You know, that, well, me and the Lord have a good thing going. That's nothing but the synagogue of Satan in your heart. That's your, you know, man isn't born irreligious. He's just born dead in trespasses and sin. We're religious by nature. He said in Romans 1, when they knew just from the fact that we exist and just the beauty and glorious nature of this natural world, that there's a God, But we're not going to glorify Him as God. What are we going to do then? We're going to make gods that make sense to us, that do things for us. The one that made the sun isn't making me king of the world, so I'll make some gods that'll make me king of the world. I'll make gods that will do what I want them to do.

" And that's what religion has done. They want a Jesus who will cater to them and cater to their unbelief. They don't have to bow to him. They don't even have to show up early if they can always come and worship later on if it's convenient. They worship a Jesus of convenience. convenience to them, convenience to the flesh that will accommodate their preconceived notions that they're God and he's not. One that will bow to them instead of them bowing to him. One that they made instead of the one that made them.

And he goes right into the face of that religion Saul of Tarsus was full of it, wasn't he? The synagogue was his heart. The place that he worshiped the false god, the free will god of religion, was right in here. And the Lord came right where he was. in spite of him, in spite of him.

What was that man with the withered hand doing there? I don't know if he was a long time synagogue goer or if he was just there, you know, searching, you know, for God and was disappointed in it. He may not have been happy there, or then again, he might've been right in the big middle of it. It doesn't really matter if you don't know Christ. You can be an atheist or a Methodist. If you don't know Christ, you're just as lost. You're just as lost.

But he came right there where, where is God's mercy the most absent in this world? In anti-Christ, free will, man's will, man's way, man's works, religion, And God busted right in that door and came in because one of his sheep was there, and he just had mercy on him, had mercy on him. There's nowhere that his mercy won't reach. There's nobody too far gone. Look again at Saul. How far gone was he? How far gone were we when he came where we were? What a glorious, illustration, a glorious portrayal, a living portrayal.

Because we don't serve doctrines and our hope is not placed in doctrines and stances on points of religion. Our hope is in the living Son of God. And what a glorious thing to see a sinner saved just like I was and remember what he's done for me. Worship. That's how worship happens.

May he give us the grace to worship him this morning. Amen. You're dismissed.