We just started Luke chapter
6 last week, and we'll be continuing on there. Let's look to the Lord
in prayer, and then we'll begin. Lord Almighty, we're thankful
to be able to be here today. Thank you for your goodness and
graciousness to us. We just thank you for all your
great kindness to us and your mercies. pray you bless the word
that goes out today bless those that are attending virtually
and those that can't be here for other reasons that you watch
over them and our brothers and sisters across the country lord
each place for the Gospels being declared today that you'd bless
their according to your purpose and we have brothers the Lord
that are ill or Brother Calvin that's in the hospital Lord that
you'd watch over him bless him and comfort them Lord for we
ask in Jesus name Amen So we're in chapter 6 and in
in the beginning of this chapter I that it's brought to our attention
the Sabbath. I remember telling you last time
that the Sabbath is mentioned like 18 times in the book of
Luke, and they're always in the process of accusing the Lord
of doing something on the Sabbath day in violation of their Mosaic
law, and not recognizing the fact that He is the Sabbath,
He is the rest, and that's what the Sabbath represented was a
seizing from works and a resting in the finished work of Christ. that tells us what we need to
know about the Sabbath and the purpose of it. It wasn't just
another rule that needed to be obeyed, but it was a rule that
was in place to show the seriousness of the fact that the work was
finished in Christ. If you did any work of your own,
in spite of that, the penalty was death. That, spiritually
speaking, is what the truth is. And so in chapter six, beginning
in verse one, it came to pass on the second Sabbath. Remember,
this is regarding the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Firstfruits. There would be seven Sabbaths
in a row. And it said, so this was the
second Sabbath after the first that he went through the cornfields,
or the wheat fields, and his disciples were plucking off the
ears of corn. They were grabbing the grain
with their hands. reaping it off of the stocks,
which was according to the legalists, well that violates the law of
reaping on the Sabbath. And when they rubbed it between
their hands to get rid of the chaff, that's winnowing. And
that's against the law too. And certain of the Pharisees
said unto them, Why do you that which is not lawful to do on
the Sabbath days? And Jesus answering them said,
Have you not read so much as this what David did when himself
was in hunger, and they which were with him, and how he went
to the house of God, and did take and eat the showbread, and
gave also to them that were with him, which it is not lawful to
eat, but for the priests alone. And he said unto them, that the
Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. And I'm sure they didn't
like that. And it'd be the same as when
he stood up in the synagogue to read and he read from Isaiah
and he said, this day is a scripture fulfilled in your ears. And you
could just see the Pharisees and the legalists and the chief
priests going. There's another crime, another crime, another
crime. So in verse 6, where we begin today, we're going to be
going through verse 6 through 11. And it came to pass also
on another Sabbath that he entered into the synagogue, taught. Remember we read in one of our
previous lessons that, as was his custom, he always went to
the synagogues on the Sabbath day for to breathe. It was his
habit, his custom. But the scribes and the Pharisees
watched him. I left out here part of verse
6. He entered into the synagogue and taught, and there was a man
whose right hand was withered. And that's the name of our lesson
today, is the withered hand. So we find this man with a withered
hand. Then in verse 7, the scribes and the Pharisees watched him,
whether he would heal on the Sabbath day, that they might
find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts and
said unto the man which had the withered hand, rise up and stand
forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth,
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
destroy it? And looking about 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 they were filled
with madness and communed one with another what they might
do to Jesus. I just was thinking when I was
reading that that Wednesday night, it was comfortable words. It
was good words. And they didn't want to hear
it. They weren't interested in anything but how they could get
rid of this interloper that was usurping their power and was against them in their minds.
So here again we have another crime committed on the Sabbath
day. And as we said, this likely was part of the series of Sabbaths
that we discussed last time. The Feast of Weeks, the Feast
of First Fruits. And we recognize here that he
entered into the synagogue and taught. And we had a whole series
on things that he likely taught about himself because that's
what he tells us that beginning in Moses and the prophets and
all the scriptures, he expounded to them the things concerning
himself and search the scriptures for in them you think you have
eternal life and they are they that testify of me. So it's not
likely that he would have went into the synagogue and said,
well, here's a list of stuff not to do. And here's this list
of stuff to do. And as we move into this chapter
further, we're going to come on to the Sermon on the Mount. It takes up pretty much the rest
of this chapter. The next little bit he calls
the disciples and names the apostles out of them. But then he spends
the rest of it on this lengthy sermon that's probably the most
abused scriptures on the planet. So we're going to take a look
at the spiritual meaning of those and how they how they relate
to these things that they were always accusing him of violating
the law, when the law was about him, and our deliverance from
him, by him. So, in this scripture here where
we're at today in verse 6-11, and he's there in the Sabbath
days teaching about himself, the sovereign God Almighty, the
Lord God, And you know he'd done a lot of stuff. We've learned
in Luke that he was well known. He had healed a lot of people.
He cleansed the lepers. He healed a lot of people. He
cast the demon out of the person. All these things. People were
bringing their people with ailments from miles around to come to
him to be healed. And yet they think, well, he can't
read our minds. He could do all this other stuff,
but he probably doesn't know what we're thinking, but it says
he knew their thoughts. And then this man with a withered
hand is brought to our attention by the Holy Spirit, and I maintain
this man was there not by accident or he was there according to
the purpose of God. Because he's written about in
three of the four Gospels, the same man, not given by name here
in these scriptures. But if it wasn't important for
us, it wouldn't be. It's written down three times
for our attention. And each one of us gives us essentially
the same story. They're a little bit different.
But the main part of it is, Pharisees knew he was there. The Lord knew
he was there. The Pharisees' goal was to accuse
Jesus of some crime so they could accuse him of something. And
the man was there, we don't know his motivation, but we'll look
at that a little bit, what it could have been. But not much
is really indicated regarding the circumstances surrounding
this mystery man, but we can make some inferences based on
what we've learned before, and most importantly, based on what
we know about our Lord. I must go here. I must go there. I must dwell at thy house tonight,
Zacchaeus." And so on. And I must be at that well in
Samaria. And we've seen that over and
over and over again. And we also know what the Scripture
does not say, and we know what the Scripture does say. And we
know the attitude and schemes of the religious folks, the Pharisees. It was on display here as recorded
here and in these other two Gospels. Their goal was to accuse the
Lord. It was not to hear comforting
words. It was not to be instructed by
Him in the Scriptures concerning Himself. It was not. to comfort
the people. So they watched him. They watched him. It was like, okay,
he's going to do it. He's going to heal that guy.
We're watching him. We're going to be witnesses to
him violating the law. It kind of reminded me when they
didn't want to pay any attention to what he said or what he did,
really. It was just an annoyance that
he was actually going to take care of this person's malady.
It kind of reminded me when I was in high school. One of my English instructors, he had a habit. About every 11 seconds. Us being kids, you know, we got
our pencils out and went chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, and we would,
all the way through the class we would count how many times
this nice fellow, smart, good teacher, We were just no good. We didn't pay attention to one
thing he said. We just said, eh, eh, eh. We didn't care what he said.
Well, how many did you come up with? Oh, 87 times. What a waste,
you know. And that's the way these Pharisees
were. They were just not interested in the gospel. And that was supposed
to be their mission. And so we can come to the conclusion
from reading these three Gospels and this one, they're all the
same pretty much. The Pharisees were aware that
the man was there with the withered hand and their goal, their aim
was to gain evidence whereby they might make a charge of a
crime against the Lord. And their activities and Other
occasions kind of give us a glimpse into their practices. Remember
in John chapter 8, they brought unto him a woman caught in the
very act of adultery. Well, how would they know that?
How would they know what was going on there? It was a no-knock
raid on this deal, and they brought that woman and said, well, this
woman was taken in the act of adultery, in the very act. And
the law says she should be stoned. What do you say? And he took
care of that problem right there. But their objective was not mercy
for that woman. Their objective was not to learn
spiritual things. Their objective was to make him
seemingly violate the law by not condemning her. And he said,
what about you? What law did you violate five
minutes ago, or even as we speak? And one by one, they kind of
just drifted off. He didn't say anything to him.
He wrote in the dirt. I think he wrote some things
that they probably read. And they left. And he says, where
are your accusers? And it just reminded me of Romans
8. There are no accusers. There's no condemnation. He says,
you're with me. There's no condemnation. And so they were watching to
see if he would heal on the Sabbath day so they could accuse him
and And they directly reference this man, pointing him out to
Christ to see if he would violate the Sabbath and heal him. And
we can say that this man, his presence was, at least we could
say it's conspicuous. He wasn't just another person
in the synagogue on that day in a big crowd of people that
no one paid any attention to. He was being conspicuous by their
interest in him. And again, they weren't interested
in good words or comforting words. Their intent was evil. Now take a look at this man himself
with the crippling issue, and none of the scriptures really
record anything this man said. He didn't go there and plea for
mercy. He didn't go there and say, if
I could just touch the hem of his garment, I'd be made whole. Lord, have mercy on me. Lord,
if thou wilt, thou could make me clean. As we've seen in other
cases where he dealt with the leper and the woman. He didn't say, he's not recorded
saying anything. He's just there. no word that
he was seeking the Lord for anything. And you know the scripture says,
I was found of them that sought me not. He was there, even if it may
have been a malicious intent that he was there, he was there
by divine decree. He was there by divine appointment. Paul quotes that and says, Eusebius
is very bold and saith, I was found of them that sought me
not. I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me.
So we don't know that these Pharisees or the scribes and the priests
and all of them said, hey, why don't you drop by the Sabbath
next time? And we're pretty sure Jesus is
going to be there and just show up. We'll see what he does. He might have been there just
because he went every, like many people do, they go to church
every Sunday, and then they can check off their box and say,
okay, I've observed the Sabbath, or I've observed church, or I've
done this, I've done that. doesn't really say, but we do
know that he was there for the purposes of God. And many times
in religion, they say, oh, his hand's ruined. I wonder what
he did, like the blind person. Who did sin? This man or this
woman? parents that he was born blind. And they said, neither
this man sinned nor his parents. He's this way that the purposes
of God might be manifest and that he might make his power
known and show it. He's there for the purposes of
God. And it's an important thing for us to realize that sometimes
we have stuff we suffer maladies and whatnot. And it's not that
God is punishing us for evil doing, but it's somehow it's
for the furtherance of the gospel and according to his purpose.
Maybe to keep us from doing something, or maybe to put us in contact
with someone else, or who knows what that is. But in this case,
we have a sheep that's in need of being brought in. And even
though he was, perhaps he was there by the Pharisees for an
evil purpose, who knows, maybe they paid him to show up with
his withered hand because it's hard to make a living with a
hand like that. In that time, probably more so than today,
it's pretty tough to make a living. in a society where you either
made something or you were a farmer or a merchant or something. I know when I had my elbow operated
on and I had to eat left-handed, I nearly starved. I couldn't do nothing with my
left hand. It could barely hit my face. In the bigger scheme of things,
we know that one of the purposes of God for this man was that
he would be there, that he would need healing on this day that
typified the finished work of Christ. A ceasing from your own
works. This man had been, his work had
been ceased for him by this injury. And part of this is that the
Lord's crime against religion were mounting. And this would
just be another check in the evidence box for those legalists
that were in charge that would eventually cause him to be brought
before the Romans and sentenced to die by crucifixion. And these would build until the
time appointed when he must be taken and crucified and slain
and raised again the third day. And he said that all the time
in the scriptures. The son of man must go as it
is written of him. And they weren't going to crucify
him if he was one of them. If he went to the synagogue and
said, well, everybody is doing everything right. You're keeping
the law. I'm pleased with your activities,
which, no. He says, here's the true meaning
of these scriptures. Here's the true meaning of the
Sabbath. And you know, the scriptures say in Acts, against thy holy
child, Jesus, whom thou has anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate,
and the Gentiles, the people of Israel, were gathered together
for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before
to be done." And as we mentioned, this withered
hand would have been a severe handicap in one's ability to
earn a living in the world at that time and even now, but spiritually
it causes us to come to grips with one's inability in the matter
of salvation. I was reading in Matthew Henry's
commentary on chapter 12 of Matthew, which is the other gospel account
of this. He mentioned that he had read
some ancient Nazarene and Ebionite texts that the name of this man
with the withered hand was came in Tarius, and he was a bricklayer
by trade, or had been. It would be pretty tough to do
that with your right hand withered. And this word withered It comes from a Greek word that
has to do with fire and heat, and the application of it to
make a vessel for cooking or boiling in, and something that's
made smooth by burning or heat, and shrunken. Kind of all those thoughts put
together. It kind of gives us the idea
that his hand had been burned pretty bad, and puckered up,
and and useless. When something is
not used for a long time, that portion of it atrophies, and
even if it's made well, you you don't have the full use of it.
If anybody that's been sick for a long time and hasn't been laid
up, and they get up, they don't have any stamina, they can't
walk very well, and their strength is not there. A lot of times,
if they have an injury, they have to learn to walk again,
because of muscles atrophy from lack of use. So this man probably
had a little bit of that issue with that hand. Not only was
it crippled in that way, but it was crippled from not being
able to be used. In Matthew Henry's commentary
about this, he uses this Latin motto, kind of a quotation that
I thought was, he used it in a little bit different
sense, but it brought to my mind spiritual picture. What he wrote was, Manimus Victum
Coritans, living by my labor. Kind of a loose translation of
that. We have this man who got his
living, his life, by his hand and it reminded me of Genesis,
just what Cain said, you know, here's my labor, here's the work
of my hand, that should be good enough. And this withered hand
shows us that It's not. It's just a picture of our sense
of things in an unregenerate state. Life by my own hand, I
have the ability to do what's necessary. And when this injury
shows us that that's spiritually taken away from us, we don't
have that ability. We don't have that power. So we have a picture spiritually
of a man who's been stripped of his physical means of life. A man who by divine circumstances
has been brought here to meet with the Lord at this particular
time. I'm always fascinated by the intersection the Lord makes. He's going to intersect his people
with the gospel. He's going to bring them to a
place or he's going to bring the gospel to them at a place.
And they're going to meet. And the gospel is going to have
its effect on his people. Sheep hear my voice. And they
follow me. So he's there by divine circumstances. He's there by grace. No man can
come to me except the Father which sent me draw him. And he
might have been there for nefarious purposes. He might have been
there just for his own motivations, none
of which were spiritual, but we find that the Lord overrules
all of those things. He's there for the furtherance
of the gospel. And Jesus is running up the score on those religious
violations all the time. He taught and fulfilled the Scriptures
in the synagogue. He healed the man with the unclean
spirit. He cleansed the leper. He forgave sins in Luke 5.18.
He ate with sinners. He reaped on the Sabbath day,
healed on the Sabbath day here and all in violation of the unredeemed
as viewed as, they don't view that as legitimate. It's for
the redeemed that we're just saying, oh, look at all the things
that he did. Look at all the mercy he He bestowed. Look at all the grace that He
exhibited in the unredeemer's hand. I hate that man. I hate that man. I hate that
man. I hate that he did that. He did it. There's no denying
it, but I hate it. I don't see any comfort in that
for me. I hate him. I hate it. And they didn't really bring
this crippled man to Christ because they knew that Christ desired
mercy and not sacrifice. They brought him there if they
did bring him, for whatever reason he was there. Their purpose was
not to love grace. It's another amazing thing that
we run into in religion. Well, I know what it says, but
I hate that. I know what it says about predestination, but I hate
that. You're not even allowed to read that out loud. Some wonderful scriptures that
we find out about after the Lord redeems us, we look at that and
say, he loved me from before the foundation of the world and
sent his son to die for me. My name was written in the Lamb's
Book of Life from before the foundation of the world. Don't read that. Take your knife
and cut that page out, or those pages, nearly every page. All
you'd be left with is the covers if you took grace out of the
Bible. So their purpose was not to love the gospel, but to find
fault, to make an accusation, to entrap the Lord. No healing on the Sabbath day.
And I read an article on Howtelling there about the Jewish religionist
view of the law of the Sabbath day. You weren't allowed to do
anything on the Sabbath day. And the spiritual picture of
that is very clear because it says that you're supposed to
be trusting in the finished work of Christ. You're supposed to
rest. those that have entered into his rest have ceased from
their own works. And that's the, that picture
of the Sabbath that we talk about from Hebrews chapter four. And,
and yet these viewed it as just, okay, you can't do this. You
can't do this on the Sabbath day. You can't do that on the
Sabbath day. No, no doing this. And yet in the same breath, they're
saying, but didn't say, you can't do this, kind of like the snake
in the garden. Yea, hath not God said? Well,
he didn't exactly elaborate on this point. So that gives us
some legal latitude here that we can enlarge upon. So you're not allowed to do anything
by hand. You weren't able to carry anything
by hand. But if you had something small,
you could carry it on the top back part of your hand. That didn't violate the letter
of the law. Or you couldn't tie anything.
But it was allowed for women to tie their girdles. If you wanted your woman to run
down to the well and get you a bucket of cold water in the
morning on the Sabbath day, you could say, hey honey, tie that
girdle around the handle of that bucket run down to the well and
lower it in, get some water and pull it up because you're allowed
to tie your girdle and you're not tying a knot in a string
or a rope or whatever. And if you carry it back by your
girdle, you're not actually carrying it with your hand. So legally,
that's allowed. It's not the spirit of the law. It's not exemplifying what the
spiritual nature of law and what it's trying to tell us. It's
just the typical lawyer thing. Well, it just, the more explicit
it gets, the more loopholes there are. It doesn't say this, it
doesn't say that. So those things are somehow legitimate. So legally you can do things
to skirt the letter of the law and not really comply with the
Spirit. And that's what the Lord's always
showing them, the spiritual end of things. Here's what that means
spiritually. not just a bunch of more rules
that you can't never keep. And how telling is that of the
effects of the fall? That men would spend all that
energy trying to skirt the letter of the law and pretend like they're
keeping it. Well, I never violated the law
as it is written in the book of Moses. But I did everything
I could around the edges of it All the efforts and thinking
that go into the circumvention of what God has said is the only
thing that's What he has said is the only
thing that satisfies his righteousness is justice, the death, burial,
and resurrection of his own son. They're just workarounds. I remember as my dad got older
and he couldn't do certain things, he would figure out workarounds,
we called them. Well, we can't do this anymore,
so I figure out some way around that to achieve the same end
but not the way that he used to do it, but some other way. That's the way man views things. Well, I have my other way. I have my some other way that
I can achieve righteousness. Surely God will view my works
and He'll understand. That'll be enough. It's just
been the same ever since the garden. I've gotten the victory,
my life, my living, by my hand. Manibus, victim, Coretans. What do the scriptures say? Well,
in one of our previous lessons, in Isaiah 57, 12 says, I'll declare
thy righteousness and thy works, they shall not profit thee. That's
pretty plain. That Latin motto can only rightly
be said to apply to the Lord Jesus Christ. Life is by His
hand. My life by His hand. Life only
by grace. And grace only comes to us by
Christ. It's a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast. So let's note the outcome of
this whole thing. We've saved the good part for
the last. We've gone around all the scurrilous deeds of the Pharisees
and various motivations for things. But when we get right down to
the bottom of it, we note the outcome and consider that what
God demands, He supplies. He would have been Let's back up and read this one
part of this one verse here. Jesus said unto them in verse
9, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath days
to do good or to do evil, to save life or destroy it? You
know, he would have been within his rights to just burn them
all to the ground right there on the spot. He said he knew
their thoughts. He knew that they were up to
no good. He knew there was not one righteous
person in there. He would have been within his
sovereign right to just destroy them all. We note the command that he said.
Rise up out of the middle of that. Come out of that religious
junk. Stand up. When the Lord calls his people,
he says, I call my sheep by name and they hear me. I know them
by name. And they follow me. Rise up.
And then he says, stretch forth thine hand. And that man was
able to do that. Now we mentioned before that Normally, he wouldn't have been
able to do that. But as he stretched forth his
hand, it was made whole as the other. And so he supplied the
necessary things to happen. And the issue was obvious. He could have destroyed them
all. None deserve grace. But there was a man there that
he had in the covenant of grace. He said, that man's name is written
in my lamb's book of life. He's with me. And so it says he looked around
at them. And I think that look was withering. We talk about withering. I think
that look would have been withering and would have no doubt illuminated
their horrendous hypocrisy in what they were doing. He issued
a sovereign command, and it says, my people shall be willing in
the day of thy power. A man thought, my hand's ruined
for life. I'll never be able to use it
again. And when we're brought to our knowledge of our condition,
we say, oh, my life is, that's where my life is. And then he
says, I'm going to give them the oil of gladness. for their
sorrow. They're going to see that I saved
them from that. Their sins have been paid double.
There's no condemnation to them now. They're going to view themselves. I'm always fascinated with the
old writers that say, few and evil have been the days of the
years of my life. And I'm a man of unclean lips. And Paul The thing that I do, I don't
seem to do. And so on it goes. Lord, depart from me. I'm an
unclean man. And he says, peace. I've loved you with an everlasting
love. There's no condemnation. You're with me. The man stretched
forth his hand, and his hand was restored whole as the other."
In verse 10, that result was immediate and complete. It didn't
take a while for it to heal up. It was just made right in that
instant that the Lord spoke. What he could not do for himself
was done for him. And so, we're about out of time. We're going to stop there. Next
time, we're just going to take a brief look In the next part
of the chapter, he calls and names his 12 apostles. And then we move on into the
Beatitudes or Sermon on the Mount there. I don't know how long
it'll take us to get through that. I expect it's going to
take a spell. So in the meantime, thanks for
your attention. And as always, my friends, be
free.