Luke chapter 6 and we're going
to pick up in verse 6 and we're told that it came to pass also
on another sabbath that Jesus entered into the synagogue and
taught and there was a man whose right hand was withered. So here
we are. It's on another Sabbath day. And our Lord goes into their
synagogue to teach the people. It says there that he taught.
Now when our Lord taught the people, you can be certain that
he taught them the gospel. He spoke the gospel of God's
salvation because he was preparing the heart of the people for his
redemption work. He was preparing them for his
redemption work. We know from his preaching at
Nazareth that we're told his words were full of grace, full
of grace. It says back there in Luke chapter
4, that all bear him witness and wondered at the gracious
words which proceeded out of his mouth. And that word, gracious
words, really is grace words. They wondered at the grace words,
the words of grace that proceeded out of his mouth. Why? Well,
his redemption is a work of grace. When Christ died for his people,
he established the covenant of God's grace for them. He established
it for them, and we know that There in Nazareth, he declared
God's sovereign electing grace. Christ preached the sovereign
grace of God. Some people think that we shouldn't
preach the sovereign grace of God, but Christ did. He preached God's sovereign grace. He spoke of when the prophet
healed Naaman the leper from Syria. And he declared how another
prophet went to a widow in Sarepta. And they were both Gentiles.
And that means that God passed by all the widows and all the
lepers in Israel, in Judah, in Jerusalem, to heal Gentiles. And the people didn't like it.
It provoked their flesh, and that's why the Lord did it, because
it shows, it exposes the wicked heart of man. It shows us our
hatred and enmity against the true and living God. And it says
there in Luke 4.29 that they rose up and thrust him out of
the city and led him unto the brow of the hill wherein their
city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. It's
their city, that's the foundation of man, flesh. Enmity against
God, that's his foundation. Why did Christ preach this? Because
his redemption is successfully accomplished. All for whom Christ
died, they are saved. They are delivered by what Christ
has done for them. He died for the election of grace. And all who Christ, there's none
in hell for whom Christ gave his life. There is not a soul
in hell for whom Christ shed his blood. He is the successful
Savior. He cannot fail. We know that
his gospel was for sinners. He says in Luke 5.32, I came
not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Why? Because Christ gave his life
for sinners. He didn't give his life for the
self-righteous. He didn't give his life for those
who can save themselves, who will appear before God in their
own works. He died for sinners, the just
for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to
death in the flesh, but quickened, made alive by the Spirit. And
so Christ came teaching the poor and needy sinner. And you know,
the poor and needy sinner, they hear Christ gladly. The poor and needy sinner hears
Christ gladly. They rejoice in Christ, the successful
Savior. Needy sinners love to hear Christ. They feel welcome to come to
Christ. They want to come to Christ because they're a needy
sinner and that's who Christ came for. That's who Christ saved. And so they hear him gladly and
they receive his words. Now on this day, there was a
needy sinner who had need of being healed of their infirmity. And the infirmity, we're told,
is this man's right hand was withered. His right hand was
withered. It didn't work. It was dried
up, shriveled up. There was no juice, no life,
no strength in his arm. It was dried up. It was withered. When I was studying this, there
is apparently a little known or little used manuscript. I
don't think it's in any translations that we use today. But we're
told that this man was a plasterer. That's what he did for a living.
He was a plasterer. And you would put that plaster
on the wall or however they did it. I don't know which way. But
his hand didn't work anymore. He wasn't able to provide a living
for himself. He had no strength, no ability.
So I doubt that he worked. Maybe he tried to put the hawk
there in his right arm or something and pin it there and do his left
arm, but it wasn't going to be the same. It was going to be
corrupt, defiled workmanship that wasn't suitable. It wasn't
sufficient. And there's a spiritual picture
in this in regards to our salvation. This man's withered right hand
is a spiritual picture for you and I. We see ourselves in this
man. The sinner sees themselves in
the weakness and the insufficiency of this man's strength and ability
to provide for himself. The gospel that Christ would
teach this people there in the synagogue would declare, and
it declares to us today, that no man can save himself. We do not have the strength.
We do not have the ability. Our works are insufficient. They're
corrupt. They're defiled. God is not pleased
with the works of man, even religious works. Even our religious works,
the works that we try to do good to please God and hope that he'll
accept us for what we have done. God isn't pleased with those
works. He calls them filthy rags by the prophet Isaiah. That's
what our righteousnesses are. They are filthy rags in God's
sight. And so we're all ruined by the
fall. And the perfect holiness of God
reveals that this flesh is corrupt. The Lord is showing us that we
are needy sinners who cannot save themselves and cannot work
a righteousness to come to God and be accepted of Him. Isaiah
40 verse 6 speaks of the glory of God which withers this flesh. Our Lord, through His Word, by
His Spirit, withers the glory of this flesh. He's withering
us. He's making us to know that we
are insufficient to stand before holy God and be judged of Him
in that day and think that we're going to have eternal life in
His presence. He's exposing that. The last thing we would want
is to go through this life blindly, thinking that we're something
when we're nothing, only to stand before the true and living God
and find out then that all our works are rubbish. They're trash. They're dumb. They're insufficient
and unacceptable to him. So he's teaching his people now. He's showing us now what we are,
that we are needy sinners without strength. And Isaiah says, the
voice said, cry. And he said, what shall I cry? Here it is. All flesh is grass. And all the goodliness thereof
is as the flower of the field. And the grass withereth. The
flower fadeth. At the end of the season, what
happens to the grass on your lawn? It turns brown and crunchy. It withers and dies. And that
flower doesn't last very long at all. In fact, there's a flower
called a day lily. That means in the morning, it
opens, the flower, it blooms, and then at night, that same
flower dies and does not open again. It goes that quickly in
a day. That's our lives, brethren. That's
our lives. We are but like a flower. We
wither and fade and die, and all our beauty passes away. It
goes away. All our strength is withered
and gone. The grass withereth and fadeth
because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people
is grass. That's what we are. Our Lord
tells us we are grass that withers, fades, and dies. So before God's
law and holy justice, we cannot stand. The Lord is teaching us
that our hand is withered. Our hearts are covered with a
veil. Our thoughts are darkened. Our spiritual nature, it's dead. We don't have a spiritual nature.
We're dead to the things of God. We don't understand the spiritual
things of God. We don't know how to worship
Him and approach Him and be accepted of Him. We're very religious. We invent things, and we think,
we try to do what is good and right sometimes, but they're
insufficient. God is not pleased with our sincerity
and our best attempts, our best efforts. All we are is flesh,
and that is as strong and as lasting as grass. It comes up
for a season, and then it dies. And so this man's right hand,
it was withered, and that's us spiritually. We're withered. Our strength is corrupt. It's
withered. We cannot keep the righteousness of the law by our
works. In Genesis 6, 5, we're told that
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually. And that's a description of man
before the flood. And then that flood came, and
it destroyed all living flesh that was in the earth. It destroyed
all the flesh, and it purged the sin of the people that were
there on the earth. It put it all away. but it could
not touch the wickedness in the heart of those eight souls that
were preserved of God in the ark. And so when that ark settled
and that door opened and their foot hit the ground, immediately
that sin began to have its way and do its work again. And it
was not long before they were building the Tower of Babel and
being persuaded to dwell in the cities. And they invented many
things, many things, many wicked things. And that sin just spread
and spread. Reminds me, I was thinking of
San Francisco. I'm told in San Francisco, it
was one time a beautiful city, but now it's so overrun with
homeless and drug users that the people just defecate right
there on the sidewalk. Not even just the street, but
just right there. And the city has tried to do things. They
put in bathrooms and facilities for these people to use, but
they choose to just go right there on the sidewalk in front
of businesses and in front of people with no shame, no regard.
And then the last couple of years, there's been these atmospheric
rivers, they call them, flowing in. And with so much rain and
so much precipitation, it flooded San Francisco. And it washed
those sidewalks away. It just washed away all the feces
and all the dung and took it all away. And then it dried up
in, what, a week or so? And they just went right back
to putting their feces on the sidewalk again. So it gets washed,
but it's still filthy. It's still dung, because that's
the heart of man. And so we need a savior. We need
a strong savior, one who is able to save us to the uttermost,
because we cannot save ourselves. We need the strength and power
of God, because my strength, my abilities, my righteousness
is withered. It's withered. like this man's
right hand here. The psalmist describes just such
a power, and it's the strength of God by whom we are saved.
It is the one whom He's provided and sent. Psalm 44, verse 3,
for they got not the land in possession by their own sword,
speaking of Israel, neither did their own arm save them, but
thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance,
because thou hast a favor unto them. So it's not this weak withered
strength of this man, it's the salvation of God. It's the strength
of our God that provides for us and gives to us and does everything
that we need. because we're the withered ones.
He says in Psalm 17, seven, show thy marvelous loving kindness.
O thou that save us by thy right hand, them which put their trust
in thee from those that rise up against them. And so it's
not our works. It's not our strength. It's not
our wisdom. It's not our decision. It's not
our free will that saves us. It's God's power. It's his grace
that has provided for us and saved us by his own right hand,
by his strength. Paul said to Timothy, 2 Timothy
1, 9, and 10, who hath saved us and called us within holy
calling, not according to our works, but according to his own
purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before
the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of
our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath
brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And that's why Christ preached
the gospel. That's why we preach the gospel,
because We're declaring the good news of God's salvation, not
in your strength, not in your withered works by your strength,
but in Christ, the right hand of God, the right arm of God,
the strength of God, the wisdom of God. Everything we needed
is provided in Christ. So he was sent to the Father
to save his people. He was spared not of the Father,
but delivered up for us all. Psalm 80, verse 7, let thy hand
be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom
thou made as strong for thyself. He's our strength, brethren.
That's Christ. That's Jesus Christ, the righteous.
He's our righteousness. Now, even the religious hypocrites
knew the power and grace of Christ. Look at verse 7, Luke 6, 7. And the scribes and Pharisees
watched him, whether he would heal on the Sabbath day, that
they might find an accusation against him. They knew that there
was a man in that synagogue with a withered hand. And they see
Christ come, and they think, we got him. You know what he's
going to do. He's a magnet for needy sinners. He's going to take that filthy,
vile, wretched sinner whom God cursed, withering his hand, and
he's going to have mercy on him. He's going to heal that man.
Just watch him. We got him, boys. We got him. And then we'll have
something to accuse him with and show that he can't be the
Christ. They're so blind with hatred that they can't even hear
their own thoughts. How that they're judging him
for healing a needy sinner. A man who could not heal himself,
could not provide for himself. He had mercy. They knew he loves
to heal the needy sinner. So sinner, do you doubt? Do you
doubt Christ's mercy? They didn't. They watched him.
They knew where this was going, and so they were watching to
see what he would do. Look to Christ. Look to Christ.
He is merciful and compassionate and gracious to all who need
him, to all who cry to him, to all who confess their sins and
say, Lord, save me. My hand is withered. I have no
strength. I have no righteousness to give
to you. Have mercy on me, Lord. Save me. Heal me, Lord. Christ said, Ask, and it shall
be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock,
and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth,
he that seeketh findeth. And they who knock, it shall
be opened unto them. It's given. Go to Christ. He
is the Savior of the needy sinner, the weak ones who cannot save
themselves. Now, we're told in verse 8, He
knew their thoughts. And he said to the man which
had the withered hand, Rise up and stand forth in the midst.
And he arose and stood forth. And so we see here, our Lord
went to this synagogue with purpose. He knew this man would be there
with the withered hand, and he knew that these Pharisees and
scribes would be there as well. Matthew, in Matthew 12, 9, tells
us that he went to their synagogue. He went to their synagogue. This
was their place of worship. He went there. He went there
to be gracious to the sinner. He went there to confront the
self-righteousness of these people. Our Lord is our champion. And
he confronts vain, dead, worthless religion that cannot save, that
blinds and confuses and darkens the hearts and minds of his people.
He goes there and he confronts it. And he deals with it, and
he destroys it, and tears it down. Brings it to nothing. Shows
that our strength is dried up. We're withered. Our righteousness
cannot save ourselves. And he does this. And you would
ask, you would think, why? Why does he go there and provoke
these self-righteous Pharisees? Why would he stir this trouble
up? Why would he do this? Why would he do this? Well, because
the vain idolatry and self-righteousness that is in those Pharisees and
scribes is in this heart. And it's in the heart of every
one of us who are born of Adam's seed. We're all by nature self-righteous,
arrogant, hypocrites, sinners. wretched, vile, dead in trespasses
and sins, and we cannot save ourselves. And we don't see it.
And so our Lord confronts them to pull back the curtain and
to show us what we are by nature. That's why he went there and
confronted them and had mercy on his people and continues to
have mercy on his people. It's to deliver his people. They
wouldn't hear him, but his people hear him. His people hear him.
And he teaches us what he's done for us, how that he's accomplished
our salvation. Through this gospel, through
the preaching of the gospel, Paul said, we are casting down
imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against
the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ. And so when he healed this man
of his withered hand, he exposed the hardness of man's heart.
He made a public spectacle of them. He showed us what this
heart is, the wickedness and the evil in this heart by healing
this man of his withered hand. It says in verse 9 and 10, Then
said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful
on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil, to save life or
to destroy it? And looking round upon them all,
he said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so,
and his hand was restored whole as the other. And we saw at the
beginning of this message that this man's withered hand is symbolical
of our spiritual death, of our inability to save ourselves by
our righteousness. And Christ is making known to
his people that he's the Savior. He's saying, look to me. I'm
the Savior. I'm the one whom the Father sent
to save you. to deliver you that are sinners
who cannot save themselves. Look to Christ. Believe Him. He's the one who puts away the
sin of His people. He's the one who gives eternal
life to His people. Now, let me read one more thing
about the right hand. This is from Psalm 138, verses
7 and 8. And the writer, the psalmist
here, seems to have had this moment in view. When Christ saved
this man, when Christ healed this man, I believe the psalmist
was writing of this very occasion. Psalm 138 verse 7 says, though
I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt
stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and
thy right hand shall save me. Our God, by His darling Son,
Jesus Christ, has stretched forth His hand, and He has saved us. He has delivered us from our
enemies. He is the right hand of our strength.
It's not our strength, brethren. He is our strength. The Lord
will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth
forever. Forsake not the works of thine
hands. My hand is withered. I cannot
save myself, but you can, Lord. Stretch forth thine hand. Save
me, Lord. Display your power. Provide your
power, your grace to save me and deliver me because I can. I'm with her. I'm in trouble. This he gives you. This is what
the Lord gives us. He deals with the enemies within
and the enemies without. If Christ stretches his arm,
his hand against our enemies, they'll be destroyed. He's the
one who teaches us and shows us the truth of this gospel and
shows us just how glorious, how magnificent, how wonderful his
salvation is. He does it. And then he says,
thy right hand shall save me. He is the arm of strength for
his people. Ephesians 2 10 says for we are
his workmanship created in Christ Jesus Unto good works which the Lord
hath ordained before the world began Christ has done this for
his workmanship He were the the works of were the product of
his right hand to the glory praise and honor of his name not our
not our own honor and not our glory of what we've done. Our
glory is Christ. He is our glory. He is our inheritance. He is our all. Now their response
follows in verse 11. And they were filled with madness
and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus. And so whenever Christ saves
a sinner as he did here, whenever he saves his child, the Lord
exposes the hardness of man's heart. He's making known just
how hard, how impossible it is for us to save ourselves, and
how impossible it is for us to do works and come in our own
righteousness. He must do it. Even unto this
day, Paul said, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their
heart. The Jews were very religious,
but the veil was upon the heart, and it proves to the children
of God once more. It proves to us once more that
without Christ. without Christ doing the work,
without his right hand, without him stretching forth his hand,
we cannot be saved. We're not going to save ourselves.
We're not going to do works to save ourselves and to please
God and for God to push Christ aside and say, you did it. He
did it. Well done. No, we come in the person and
work of Jesus Christ. And that's what he's making known
here in the healing of this man's withered hand. The Spirit turns
our hearts to the Lord, and the veil is taken away. He removes
that veil, that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended
of Christ. That's what he does. And that
we may wonder at his grace. So it's to the glory of God and
it's of his goodness that he is gracious to whom he will be
gracious and merciful to whom he will be merciful and to have
compassion on whom he will have compassion. It's God's glory
to do it. That's what Moses asked him.
Show me thy glory, Lord. And the Lord said, I will have
I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious." In Exodus 33, there. Our God is gracious. So in Romans
9, 22 through 24, Paul asks, what if God, willing to show
his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? and that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,
which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he hath
called not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. And
so he's showing us there that he went there for our good, for
our teaching, for our learning, that we cannot save ourselves,
that we, by nature, have a hard, blind heart that is self-righteous,
And by His strength and power, by His grace, He delivers us
from death and gives us life in Himself. He's our right arm. He's our strength, our salvation,
our all. Amen.