Lord of the Sabbath : Part 2
His Argument from Human Predicament
The second incident recorded in our text occurs on another Sabbath day, here at the beginning of chapter three. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. Nothing new with that, it was something He did regularly.
In the congregation that day was a man with a withered or shrunken hand. The same word is used to describe the fig tree that Jesus cursed in Matthew chapter twenty-one. So, his hand was useless. Luke records that it was the man’s right hand. For most people, the right hand is the predominant one, the one that enables them to work and earn a living. Marvin Vincent writes: “The [Greek] participle indicates that the withering was not congenital, but the result of accident or disease.” So, this man was not born with a deformity.
Now, notice verse two. The scribes and the Pharisees were watching Jesus to see whether or not He would heal someone on the Sabbath day. They are watching Him, not just out of curiosity or interest, now there’s animosity. They are watching to see what he will do so they can accuse Him of breaking the Law. That would tarnish His reputation in the eyes of the people and give them an excuse to bring Him before the Sanhedrin. But because of His deity, Jesus always had the upper hand. All along He knew what they were thinking!
Again, Jesus seems to intentionally raise the tension level in the situation. He commands the man with the withered hand to stand up and move into the middle of the room! Now Jesus has everyone’s attention. As everyone is looking at Him, He asks the question; “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days or to do evil; to save life, or to kill?” In my mind, this is a rhetorical question; the answer is self-evident. I’m fairly certain Jesus intended it to be so.
After asking the question, Jesus paused to give them time to reflect on His question. As they’re thinking about what He said, He takes time to look over the entire audience slowly and deliberately. Mark says He looked around about Him with anger because he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts. The original grammar of the sentence tells us that His anger was momentary and fleeting, but the grief was continuing.
The heart and attitude of these religious men were in a state of moral ossification like hardened hands or feet. Poros was used to describe a particular kind of stone, marble, and also of the callus on fractured bones. The Pharisees were hardened against this new truth by their previous conceptions of how it should be applied.
Then He says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” The man obeyed and immediately his hand was restored to wholeness like his uninjured one.
How would you have responded if you’d been there? Would you have been glad for the man who was healed? For myself, I would quickly say, “Yes, I would be glad for him.” But what if that healing made me look foolish in the eyes of my peers? After all, what if the roles had been reversed? What if I were the one with the withered hand?
Think of what this meant to him, not only physically, but also spiritually and emotionally! If he were a day laborer, he would be much more likely to be hired now because he was a whole man. He could once again provide for himself and his fami...
