invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6 and together this morning we're going to be reading verses 6 through 11 as we continue to see Christ's Galilean ministry. Luke 6 and verses 6 through 11. Jesus obviously has made, or I hope obviously at this point, has made Capernaum his base of operations on the Sea of Galilee. And while he visits the other cities around that particular lake, there is now a presence building up within Capernaum made up not only of people from Capernaum, but also from Jerusalem of Pharisees and scribes who are looking now for a way to bring him down. He's made it very clear that he does not hold to their traditions. He is a great reformer in the sense that he is once again sweeping away all of men's additions to scripture. When we add to God's word, we add nothing good. It has often been said, I'm probably going to get the paraphrase wrong, that The biblical principle is that it's God who knows best how to worship him, not us. And so what Christ is doing is he's restoring the beauty of those promises that God had made from time immemorial to be the deliverer of his people and the blessing to the nations, a promise that goes all the way back to the beginning, all the way back to the garden. In Genesis 3.15, the Lord had said that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And that, of course, is a reference to our Savior, Jesus Christ. Abraham had been promised that from his seed would come, or from his line would come, the blessing to the nations. Again, the seed, Jesus. And David was told that there would always be one to reign over his kingdom, a kingdom that would last forever. And that, of course, is a reference to Christ and the kingdom of God. And so we see all of those great promises pointing towards Christ. But in the meantime, the traditions of the Pharisees had encumbered the scripture. Instead of giving the people grace, they had given them works that would never lead them any closer. Christ has come to make it very clear how to be saved. And one of the things now that we're gonna see the Pharisees doing increasingly is trying to trip him up, trying to get him in trouble with the authorities and create some reason for which he could be tried and put to death. But before we turn to God's word, let's ask for his blessing. Sovereign Lord, before we read your words, we pray and confess we need your help. So often when the word is being read and preached, our minds wander to and fro throughout the earth. We think of things that we would never be interested in were it not for the fact that we're here. We know we're about to enter into spiritual warfare, so we pray, O Lord, that you would help us to concentrate. Drive away drowsiness, that supernatural sleep, Lord, that creeps in whenever your word is spoken. is being preached. We can stay awake easily for a ball game or a movie, and yet when it comes to the things that last forever, Lord, so often we just drift off. Let that not be the case. Help us, oh Lord, now to concentrate, and when the devil seeks to distract us, etch us in. We pray this in Jesus' holy name, amen. Luke chapter six, and verses six through 11, I do remind you, this is the word of God. Now it happened on another Sabbath also that he entered the synagogue and taught, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. So the scribes and Pharisees watched him closely, whether he would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts and said to the man who had the withered hand, arise and stand here. And he arose and stood. Then Jesus said to them, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy? And when he had looked around at them all, he said to the men, stretch out your hand. And he did so. And his hand was restored as whole as the other. They were filled with rage and disgust with one another, what they might do to Jesus. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our Lord will stand forever. This is an event that's recorded in all of the Synoptic Gospels, this healing in the synagogue on that particular day. It's interesting, though, that Luke, the physician, which always struck me as interesting, at least, that he's the only one of the Synoptic Gospelers who records that it was the man's right hand It's kind of detailed that a doctor would note. But also it's important to remember that if you're a righty and your right hand is withered, you're in worse condition than if it was your left hand and so on. But one of the things that we see immediately though in this confrontation is how sour the relationship between Christ and the Pharisees, who we need to remember in a local sense, were the men who were the religious conservatives, the religious authorities in these particular areas. They were the men who had the most weight when it came to religious affairs. Within Jerusalem, of course, it was a Sadducee party. In our thinking, as we try to determine what does Sadducee mean, what does Pharisee mean, the Sadducees were essentially theological liberals. They didn't believe the Bible and all of its supernatural things. They didn't believe in the soul. They did not believe in the resurrection. They didn't even believe in anything except the Torah. And they were all ceremonialists. They were very much like today the high church people, the high church Roman Catholics, the high church Anglicans and so on, who were all smells and bells and vestments and ceremonies and so on. Ceremony for its own sake, not pointing to anything. but tradition to be held and to be observed on a regular basis. And of course, they were the ones who ran the temple. And within Jerusalem, they had the most clout. But we need to remember that when you got outside of Jerusalem, especially into the country areas, the group that was really dominant amongst the people were the Pharisees. These were the, as I said, the religious conservatives, the men who would have been in the synagogue, about the synagogue, and teaching the people the things of God, but not teaching them well. One of the things that Christ has exposed amongst the scribes and Pharisees is their inability to break with their own biblical human traditions. But why is that? He comes and he's dealing with traditions that have been established for, in some cases, 400, 500 years. They did it. Their grandparents did it. Their grandparents' grandparents did it. You go back as far as anybody can remember, they've been doing these things and observing them as though they were traditions given by God instead of things made by men. Why won't they give these things up now that Christ has come doing miracles, the light to the Gentiles, the light of his people, the deliverer, the Messiah, the one who's come to ransom them, and yet they won't get rid of the things that he is condemning as not just traditions with no authority, no power, but things that get in the way of God. Why wouldn't they do that? Well, partly it was pride, partly it was spiritual blindness, and part of it, I'm sure, was fear. simply a fear of change that comes in. Jesus is showing in his teaching that it's impossible for any man to keep God's law. And he is pointing out that the traditions of the Pharisees, far from being faithful to God's word, actually run counter to it. Now, if you are confident that you will be saved via strict adherence to a system of rules, imagine the effect of having someone tell you that the system of rules that you live by has no power to save. And worse than that, it'll actually lead eventually to your damnation. I remember many, many years ago, whenever the doorbell rings on, it's a sad fact, rings on a Saturday morning near a religious holiday, who is it likely to be? It's the Jehovah's Witnesses coming around. And I remember one morning I woke up, groggy as groggy could be. I throw on some sweatpants. I've got a t-shirt on. And I greet them at the door and it's the two Jehovah's Witnesses. And I set up an arrow prayer. God help me here. and invited them in, and we sat down at the table. They refused the offer of water, but we sat down at the table and we talked about things. And it was interesting. As I was talking to them, there was two, there were two there. There was an older woman and a younger woman. And the younger woman is, I was going through Hebrews, starting with Hebrews chapter one, trying to point out that Jesus was not the Archangel Michael. that he was, in fact, very God of very God, the second person of the Trinity. The younger woman was like, oh, oh. And the older woman, though, I could see at one point this veil of fear came over her eyes. Because I asked her a question, and she could not give me an answer. And the other woman, her eyes get big, and they begin to light up. The older woman says, we need to go now, grabs her, and they go. Fear. dominated her at that point in time, this fear of the truth, of the gospel. Because it would mean that everything that she had been told up to that point was a lie. And it would be a break with her entire group. It would be a break probably with her family and so on. That's something that creates fear and often anger and hatred. There's many ways in which that happens. One of the ways, I mean, there aren't that many Jehovah's Witnesses out there, but I'll give you another example of that. That kind of fear when your way of life, your entire philosophy begins to be exposed. And that would be communism. Communism tells us or Marxism tells us that the objective is by following Marxist principles, we will create a utopian worker's paradise. Properly understood, Marxism is actually, it's a counterfeit gospel. It's a materialist gospel that says we can create the kingdom of heaven here on earth. and our messiah will be the government, and so on. And yet, whenever Marxism has been implemented anywhere, it becomes exactly the opposite. Instead of creating a utopia, it creates a dystopia. Instead of creating life, it creates death, and so on. It inevitably, instead of producing paradise, produces a nightmarish system where the only equality is that everyone except for the party heads, the oligarchs at the top, are equally miserable. But when you point that out to communists, dyed-in-the-wool communists, what happens is that they either despise you if you are criticizing the system from without, or they dispose of you if you are criticizing the system from within. What they generally will not do, however, is accept your criticism and realize that the system that they have bought into so wholeheartedly is a sham. It is amazing how we can hold on to things that don't work and continue to follow them. And when people tell us and show us instead of accepting, yes, you're right, this is all a fraud, what do we do? We become angry. And we do the same thing over and over again, which is insane. If it didn't work the first 1,000 times, 1,001 is not going to be the sweet spot. But unfortunately, the Pharisees are in a similar situation. Their system does not, it never will work. They've branched off from the teaching of scripture and they are only getting further and further away from the promises of God, from the covenant, from the gospel. We don't actually need to go as far afield as dyed-in-the-wool Marxists to get the idea of you become angry when somebody's pointing out your failures to you. I don't know about you, gentlemen, but there have been times when I have wanted to go one way in the car. My wife has suggested another way. And my way has not worked. Let's put it that way. And she makes gentle suggestions that we return to the way that she suggested. And what's my response? I become angry at her. The woman you gave me! It's foolishness. But part of the reason that we're angry is we know that they're right. It's one of the reasons why the line of Cain, the line that knows not the Lord, hates the line of Seth so much. It's one of the reasons why Cain hated Abel in the first place. He had favor with God. Clearly he was doing the right thing. Cain's response was this visceral anger, I hate you. because you are beloved of God. And the anger of the Pharisees is a reflection of that same anger that Cain had towards Abel, his brother. And it's beginning to boil again and again. Jesus is showing the fatal defects in their system, and he has proved them wrong, not, you know, through the opinions of rabbis and so on, but through scripture. Instead of humble repentance, though, they are getting homicidally, blindly angry. And that's what Jesus does. Please note this, because if you're his follower, this is a truth you're going to have to come to grips with. Jesus makes all man-made religions and systems of salvation angry, always. He exposes their falsehood. And he leaves no room but to recognize the truth and join him or to destroy him. They'll never do it, of course, but they'll attempt it. R. Allen Cole puts it very well. He says, if we do not believe in Jesus, then we must finally crucify him. You're on one side or the other. You have one worldview or a myriad of false worldviews. And it always intrigues me that so many who want to follow Jesus do not seem to understand what his attitude towards the Lord's Day, the Sabbath, was. And yet, ironically, we see in these verses that the Pharisees, who despised Christ, they know exactly what his attitude towards the Lord's Day is. The Pharisees, you'll see, are looking to trap Jesus. We read in verse seven that they're watching him to find something they can use to either discredit him with the people, or better yet, they want a clear violation of the law so that they can put him in front of the Sanhedrin, the governing Jewish body. Now, how do they know where Jesus is going to be on the seventh day of the week? Well, he's operating out of Capernaum, so he's gonna be in Capernaum. And where in Capernaum is he gonna be in the Sabbath? The answer is he's going to be in the synagogue. He's going there to worship. And that's the first thing I want you to learn about what Jesus did on the Sabbath. He spent it in acts of private and corporate worship. If then you would follow Jesus, it needs to be your practice to spend that one day in seven in acts of private and corporate worship, delighting in him. This worship, note this, it's not merely commanded, it's a huge blessing to you. The Lord himself derives no benefit from our worship. We can't add anything to him, we don't change him by it. He's not like the Greek gods, the worshipers thought, you know, when they made a sacrifice, they were actually giving something to the gods that was useful to them. No, the blessing of the Lord's day comes to us. That's the amazing thing, and we obtain untold blessings on this day of worship. The Pharisees know what Jesus does on the day of worship. They know he spends it doing good and doing works of mercy whenever possible, and so they know exactly where to set the trap. On the Sabbath, Jesus is not gonna forsake the assembling together of God's people. And he's not going to miss that opportunity to worship his father. So he goes to the synagogue, even though it's their synagogue. They clearly control it. This is a synagogue frequented by Pharisees, and they set up this trap. Either this man would attend on a regular basis, or they had planted this man with a shriveled hand on that day. After all, I don't know where there was a plan, but he had been in that synagogue on the Sabbath before, and he hadn't noticed him and healed him before this point. But on this day, there he is, regardless of how he came to be there, a man with a withered right hand, atrophied, shriveled up, useless. And so therefore a man whose life as a result would have been filled with suffering. He would not have been able to work in a trade in a fishing village. It would have been almost impossible. But Jesus intends to release that man from his bondage, to heal him of his withered arm. And he knows only too well, obviously, that the Capernaum congregation is packed with Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem. And he knows they haven't come to hear him preach the gospel. Jesus is God the Son. That's how he knows their thoughts. And yet, note this, Jesus is unafraid. And he calls this man who is afflicted with a withered arm up and he asks the Pharisees a very pointed question in verse nine, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy? Now, who is it who's seeking to do good here, to save life, both temporally through healing and eternally through the preaching of the life-giving gospel? Who is seeking to do that? Jesus. And on the other hand, Who in this congregation has the evil intent? Who is seeking to destroy life? The Pharisees. Jesus points out the supreme irony of the situation. The Pharisees are the ones who are actively violating the Sabbath. These are the ones who are profaning this particular day, seeking to kill, irony of ironies, the Lord of the Sabbath for keeping the Sabbath the way God intended for it to be kept. And instead, wanting to keep their traditions by which they obscure and destroy the Word of God. That's the second thing you need to learn about what Jesus did on the Sabbath. He spent it doing good. He spent it in acts of mercy in part. If then you are a follower of Christ, don't neglect acts of mercy on the Sabbath day. Sunday is indeed kept holy when it includes acts of mercy or kindness to a person who is sick or distressed or hungry or in need. That would include ministering to someone who is injured, feeding somebody who is hungry, consoling those who mourn. One of the ways that you can also be spreading mercy on the Sabbath, for instance, is going to those who are downcast, those who are afflicted with melancholy, those who are just friendless and going and listening to them. What an encouragement it is when somebody feels alone in the world, when somebody has spent their entire week perhaps discussing nothing with the people about them, that rises higher than work. Suddenly to have somebody who is honestly interested in their spiritual well-being and who wants to talk about the things of faith and life What a blessing that is. What an encouragement. What an act of mercy. I pray that that's something that you would seek to do. Now it's difficult because it means often going out of our comfort zone and speaking to the people who we would not naturally speak to. Our instinct is immediately to go to our friends, to go to the people who we have a natural affinity with. But I would pray that you would break out of that particular way of doing things and that you would go to those who have the most need. clearly, or the people you simply don't know and seek to enlarge your communion. Well, in any event, Jesus performs this great act of mercy. He heals this man with a withered arm. And what's the response of the Pharisees? They say, hallelujah, praise God for a mighty miracle has been done in our midst. Well, no, that's not it. It doesn't say that in my version of the Bible either. What is it? They fly into a rage. They were waiting for this. They were waiting. Have you ever met somebody who's waiting to get angry? It's one of the dumbest conditions that you can be in. I can't wait till he gets home so I can be really angry. I'm kind of fuming now, but then I'm going to vent and die. Oh my word. They were waiting to be angry and now they are. It was not necessary to heal this man. He wasn't going to die of withered arm on that particular day. His life was not in danger. And a blind fury, as I've already made clear. What did the Pharisees miss entirely? They missed the fact that a mighty miracle was done in their midst. Something that no man could do. Something that indicated the power of God was dwelling amongst them. Tabernacling amongst them. The fact that Emmanuel, God with us, actually had come to pass. No mere man can with a word restore a palsied or atrophied hand to health. Today, one of the saddest things on the face of the planet is we are stuffed full of these people who claim that they can do miracle faith healing. They hit people with their coats, they bonk them on the head, they always fall in exactly the direction that they're supposed to. Incidentally, if you've ever seen anybody pass out, they go like this, not like this. But, that's the shtick, they do this. But, one of the saddest things, Justin Peters has shared it many a time. When Justin Peters had, it's either cerebral palsy, CP, or MS. I think it's cerebral palsy. He's not able to walk. His feet, his legs are essentially useless. So he can only walk with crutches. His parents brought him to Faith Healing Crusade after Faith Healing Crusade. And he noticed something very quickly. That the people who had diseases that couldn't immediately be seen, those were the ones who were brought up on stage. You are healed! But the people who had obvious things, missing limbs, withered arms, that kind of thing, they were put in a separate section and never brought up on stage because the faith healer couldn't fake unwithering an arm. Jesus, on the other hand, can actually do that because he is the Son of God. And it should have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jesus is who he says he is. But the Pharisees are just concentrating on the violation of their tradition and how that will shake their entire world. Now, the Messiah, understand this, is standing before them, he's offering the mercy and grace of God, and yet they are so locked into their system that they are not going to go to him. All of their efforts therefore are going to be spent seeking to take the life of Christ instead. Now we can look at the Pharisees and we can say, what fools you are. Salvation came near and instead you stayed in a way of life that led only ultimately to death. And yet how many people do that? They come to church on Sunday. They hear the gospel message. Jesus says, follow me and you'll be saved. And they say, I'm going to follow the world instead, and their system. There is no way I'm going to miss out on drunkenness, drugs, promiscuous sex, all of those things that I've been waiting for high school for. I'm going to do that, or college, or the army, or whatever next step there is. And perhaps they'll say to themselves, maybe someday I'll come to you, Jesus, but only after I have run the course of human options to the very bottom. Only after I have drunk sin down to the very dregs, then I'll come. And they never do. That's the problem. So it's not just the Pharisees and their hardness of heart. It's us, our natural hardness of heart that stops us from coming to Christ. Let me give you then just a few applications. First, we see the proper use of the Sabbath. We've seen the example of the Pharisees on the Sabbath and how they had abused this particular day under the pretense of sanctifying it. But you see from Christ's example how Christians should be keeping the Lord's day holy. In a nutshell, we see there are a few things that should occupy our attention. on this one day in seven that we have, this day of delight first, worship and acts of piety. Those are the works that have to be done in order for God to be worshipped. Christ tells us in verse 3 of Matthew 12 that the priest who worked in the temple on the Sabbath day They were not guilty of breaking the Sabbath. I have said before, this is the busiest day of my week. I don't get much rest on this particular day, but I'm not violating the Sabbath by doing so. In the same way, those who receive payment for working on this particular day in the ministry, they are not violating the Sabbath. Secondly, we have deeds of mercy. I've been talking about that. Jesus spent this day doing acts of mercy. If then you're a follower of Christ, you need to be doing those acts of mercy as well. You need to be, as I said before, going to those who are sick, those who are distressed, those who are hungry. If somebody comes to you and you have the ability to relieve their distress on this particular day, do it. And there are things that we should be doing. If there's a shut-in, read the Bible to them. Bring the gospel to a neighbor or to a relative who doesn't know it. Is your neighbor sick? Ask them whether you can cook for them. If somebody is visiting, perhaps they've come here on TDY, they don't have friends and family, invite them to your home for a meal. This is not just fellowship, but a great act of mercy. One of the, I mentioned it before, I'm sorry, one of the saddest things that often would happen to us when we traveled to, I would guest preach in churches far, far from here, is when we wouldn't get invited to somebody's house. It's almost as bad as being invited to their house and then having them serve you okra. No, it's actually far worse. I'll endure the okra. It's so lonely when you see everybody just goes out There's an okra story, I can tell it to you later, but we do not have time. Thirdly, We have works of necessity. And Jesus says in Matthew 12, 11, what man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? And those are the works that are lawful, because they cannot be delayed without harm to life or property. That would include rescuing a sheep from a pit, feeding livestock, putting out a fire, stopping a crime, defending a nation, saving a patient, keeping the power plant running, and so on. But the basic meaning of the word Sabbath, as you probably know, is cessation. So ceasing is also something that we need to be doing. What do we cease from doing on the Sabbath? We cease from doing our own will. We cease from doing our own work. We don't cease from performing our work so we continue our recreations unencumbered, but rather it means we rest from the things that engross us on all the other days of the week. It's not merely Saturday too. It's a special day. It's the holy day. And in that day, we seek to do not our will, but God's will. You see that everything that Jesus did was according to the will of the Father. Not my will be done, but thine. And so this is a day upon which we should say to God, not my will be done, but thine. And we set them aside, we set aside our works this day and we devote them exclusively to him, his worship, the reading of his work, and the doing of the deeds that his son, the kind of things his son did when he was here. And finally, in these verses, we see the amazing power of Jesus, especially to save. He says to this man, stretch out your hand, and that's impossible. He couldn't do it, not in his own power, of course, and yet he does, and why? Because whenever Christ calls us to do something, he gives us the power we don't have to answer that call, to do what he commands. In John 11, Jesus stands at Lazarus' tomb. He's been dead for four days, decomposing, and he says, come forth. Lazarus had no power at all to do that. No dead man does. You and I could have stood at Lazarus's tomb literally till the eschaton, the last day, saying, Lazarus, come forth, Lazarus, come forth. Work with me, Lazarus. Come on, Lazarus, you can do it. And Lazarus could not come forth. He simply did not have the power to do so. But when God calls you, It's accompanied with the power of the Holy Spirit enabling you to do so. Christopher Ness said it very well. He said, when God giveth command to spiritual acts, he grants power to obey the same. So it was when Christ bade the man to stretch out the withered hand and Lazarus to come forth out of the grave. The call and the command of God is the conduit pipe of strength and ability. When a preacher on the radio by the name of Chuck Swindoll called me to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I did not have the power within me to take out my heart of stone and remove all of those sins that I had labored with for so very long. I did not have any power to honestly answer that. But in a moment, Everything in my life was changed, because what happened? The Holy Spirit came accompanying that call. And I did have the power to answer that call. And so I did so. It's like when Matthew was told, follow me, he just got up, left everything, and followed Christ. Today, Jesus is calling you once again to do something that is impossible with men. He calls you to faith. He calls you to believe in him. to leave the way of life that you've been living, that way of life that leads to death. Every other way, aside from his way, leads that way. It's like you're in a burning building. This is, you know, every analogy fails at various points, but you're in a burning building. Every other way is blocked except the way that the rescuer is telling you to go. What fool says, no, I think I'll try to find my own way out. There is no other way. There is no name under heaven by which men are to be saved except that of the Lord Jesus Christ. His is the only religion of done. All the others are due. They set you on a treadmill. And I don't know if you've ever walked on a treadmill. I hope, well, some of you clearly don't need to. But a treadmill gets you nowhere, really. You just stand in the same place walking. No matter how fast you run on a treadmill, you ain't getting anywhere. If you are, it's usually flying backwards. In the Christian faith, though, we take up our cross, which is not easy, and we follow Christ. And we do get somewhere. We get to heaven. Brothers, sisters, I implore you on Christ's behalf, if you have not yet closed with Him, be reconciled to God. I tell you plainly, if you will but believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved from your sins. You will be saved. Believe on him who calls you. Stretch out your hand today and take hold of Christ. Let's go before him now. God, our gracious Father, we thank you, Lord, that you are the one who gives us the power to obey your life-giving commands. And so I pray, Lord, that anyone who has heard my voice this day, who has not yet come to you, that they would be given that great, that amazing gift of faith. Their hearts would be changed. Take away their heart of stone, Lord. Give them a heart of flesh. Let them say, Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief and trust in you for everything necessary for salvation. May this be the day of new life. And we pray this.