This is a continuation message from last Sunday night as we began to look at this two-part narrative that I've called the Sabbath controversy. You remember at the end of the narrative last week that we looked at, Jesus declared Himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath. In other words, He occupied a place far above Moses.
He was the one who had authority to determine and to dictate what was appropriate for the Sabbath. His authority rose above Moses. His authority rose above the religious leaders of His day, and their hatred and animosity for Christ grew.
And it reaches its peak. It boils to the surface as we see the end of our narrative today that the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him how they might destroy Him. The greatest opposition Jesus faced when He walked on this earth, that is the God-man, the second person of the Godhead who came and took on flesh and walked among us, the greatest opposition He faced was from those who were religious, those who had received the oracles of God, those whose heritage the covenant was made with, those who had the promises of the Messiah. It was given to them and no other people. If anyone should have anticipated, expected, and received the Messiah when He came, it should have been them. And yet the text of Scripture says He came unto His own.
What? His own received Him not. They rejected Him. They not only rejected Him, they killed Him.
They killed Him. There's no greater hindrance in coming into a right relationship with God than self-righteousness. There is blindness and then there's blindness.
There's no greater blindness than to be blind and think you see. And that was the condition of the Pharisees. What I want to do for you and with you this morning is to take a look at this passage, Mark chapter 3 and verse 6, and identify four persons or individuals that are mentioned in the passage.
We'll take them as we encounter them in the narrative. Again, Mark chapter 3. And He, that is Jesus, entered the synagogue again. It was His custom to find Himself in the place of worship. There He was in the synagogue again. We don't know in what town, in a synagogue, in some Galilean city.
Luke tells us in his account, Luke 6, you don't need to turn there, I'll just draw your attention to this. He says, now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm reading the wrong, verse 6. Now it happened on another Sabbath also that He entered the synagogue and He taught. So Jesus wasn't there just as a worshiper.
He was there in a teaching realm, teaching. As you read through this passage, it's obvious that Jesus is in charge. He is setting the agenda. He is confronting the hypocrisy and the pride and the self-righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. Notice with me, verse 3, and He said to the man, verse 4, then He, that is Jesus, said to them. And I'm pointing this out to you that Jesus is the one in charge, Jesus is the one taking the initiative, Jesus is the one asking the questions, and Jesus is the one taking action. Luke tells us again, Luke chapter 6 and verse 8. But He, that is Jesus, knew their thoughts. He knew what the scribes and the Pharisees were thinking.
I don't know how that strikes you. If Jesus knew the thoughts of the scribes and Pharisees, do you think He knows your thoughts? That's either unsettling to you or a comfort to you. Unsettling because the things that are hidden from others are not hidden from Him. He knows your thoughts.
It's comforting in this regard that He knows your thoughts, all of them, the worst of them, and if you're in Christ, you're accepted in the Beloved. Sometimes the reason that we withdraw from people is because we think if they really knew who I was, they wouldn't like me. If they really knew who I was, they wouldn't have anything to do with me. If they really knew me as I know me, they would put some distance between me and them. But not so with our God.
He knows everything about us. There are people in this world who are striving for acceptance. They're living for that. I've had 60-year-old men in my office bawl their eyes out because in their mind, all they've wanted their entire life was the acceptance of their father, the approval of their father. And as cruel as it sounds, I think the father knew that and he withheld it.
That's the reality of a broken world, isn't it? That's the reality of people who are in sin and selfish. But the good news is God's not like that. He knows our need for acceptance, and in order for you and I to be accepted, Jesus had to come from the glories of heaven and go to a cross and die in our place in order for us to be accepted. So Jesus, we're going to come back to Jesus because he's the star of the narrative here, and I don't mean that in any disrespect, but... Notice with me, again, it says he entered the synagogue again, Jesus, and then it says, and a man, and a man was there, and this man had a withered hand. We don't know his name. We don't know what his worship habits were. We don't know if this is the first time he was in the synagogue. I suspect, I have really, I only suspect that he's a plant.
He's there because the scribes and the Pharisees brought him there because they saw him as an occasion to back Jesus in a corner and accuse him. The text doesn't tell us that. I'm just, there's some hints of that.
I speculate maybe that's what's going on. But we don't know who this man is, but we do know this about this man. He has a withered hand. We don't know how that developed, whether he was born that way, whether he was in an accident, but he has a withered hand. Luke, it's good to recognize these things as you get to know the human authors to the degree we can know them from their writing. Luke is a doctor, he's a physician, so he gives more detail to us. All Mark says is there, he says, and a man was there who had the withered hand. Luke tells us that it was his right hand that was withered. Now why would Luke feel compelled to tell us that?
Is that just an incidental thing? Well, I don't know what the percentage is. If somebody knows, tell me later, but I would guess probably 75% of the people in the world are right hand dominant.
I happen to be one of the exceptions. In my family, there were seven of us children. My twin sister and I are the only left handed ones. But this man was right handed.
So why would Luke tell us that? Well, that's his dominant hand. That would be his hand that he would rely upon for strength to work. Perhaps the man did work, used to work, if he came about this from an accident and he can no longer work. Do you shake hands with your left hand or your right hand?
You shake hands with your right hand. So this man is handicapped. He's a passive person in the narrative. He doesn't take any action. He responds to what Jesus tells him to do. Jesus says, step forward. I don't know how big a crowd it was, but he was in the synagogue. Jesus calls him forth and he receives mercy from the Lord Jesus. I'll say a few things more about him in a moment, but verse 2 then goes on to say, So they, they watched him, that is Jesus, closely, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. Again, Mark doesn't identify who the they are, but good old Luke tells us, so that you know we're talking about the same narrative, I'll read the verse previous. 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 the Pharisees watched him closely whether he would heal on the Sabbath that they might find an accusation against him. So the they in Mark's gospel are the scribes and the Pharisees.
The scribes and the Pharisees. Why were they there in the synagogue? Oh, they came to worship.
No. Oh, they're the religious people in the community. Yes, they were religious, but they weren't there to worship.
That wasn't on their mind. They were there to closely watch Jesus, to look for an occasion to accuse him and to denigrate him. I guess that's something else Jesus knows. He knows the motivations for why we come to the house of God, right? He knows whether we come to be seen of others.
He knows whether we come with a heart that's pure and a desire to worship Him. Most of you, I assume when you came in this morning, either walked up and got a bulletin off the ushers counter or were handed one by one of our ushers and greeted. But you remember back in the days of COVID? So why are you bringing that up?
For a reason, as an illustration. Remember back in the days of COVID that when you entered into a public place, that people would stop you and they had this device that they would hold up to your forehead and take your temperature? Remember that? That was new. That was weird. That was odd.
Airports, public places. What if our ushers had such a device that when you came in and they hand you a bulletin, then they held that device up to your forehead, not to tell what temperature was, but to determine what your motivation was to be in church? You say, boy, I'm thankful they don't have that device. Well, Jesus doesn't have the device, but He knows, right? He knows why we're here. He knows all the distracting thoughts. He knows how difficult it can be to listen to the preacher and stay focused. And I sit where you sit most Sunday mornings. And I'm following with my Bible open and I'm listening and all of a sudden I discover something's happened. There's been a two to three minute pause in my brain and we're over here talking about this and the last thing I remember was over here. Right? Isn't that the way your mind works sometimes?
You say, a lot of the times. Well, back to this man who becomes a focal point of this narrative. Again, very little is told to us about him. We do not know why he was in the place of worship on this day. But what a kind and gracious providence that he was on that day. Because Jesus was there, the God-man, the Lord of the Sabbath. He singled him out and ministered to his knee.
Isn't that wonderful? There are times when the saints gather and God singles out one, two, three, half a dozen people and we've all come together for the benefit of a few. I've been in those meetings where the Spirit of God has come upon me and I hear my name being called and I'm just captured by God and his attention of me and I talk later about something.
And people go, another worship service. And I come away thinking, where were they? Why weren't they perceiving what I was perceiving? Well, it was because what was being said was for me. When I was wrestling with a call to ministry many, many years ago, we were together with the saints of God and a man had been invited to speak. He was a missionary. I knew him on a personal level.
He'd stayed in my home, but we weren't long, long time friends. But I'm sitting there as he's teaching and he's teaching all about Peter. And again, the context is I'm wrestling with a call to ministry. He says, yes, it's like God called Peter to leave his fishing business.
It would be like God telling Mike Harnes to leave his auto glass business and follow him in ministry. God singled me out. I don't know who God has in his cross hairs this morning. I don't know.
I don't need to know. But you know, if he singled you out, he's got something. He's got something for you. He's dealing with you about something.
And if the God of glory has taken time to take notice of you and is speaking to you about something, I think that demands your serious attention. We've speculated about the motive of this man being there. We don't know why he's there. We don't know if he just happened to be there that day or whether that's his habit to go to that synagogue or whether the scribes and Pharisees saw to it that he was there that day so that they might take advantage of his presence.
We do not know. But we do know the motive of the scribes and the Pharisees. They are not there to worship God, but to watch Jesus closely whether he would heal on the Sabbath. Heal on the Sabbath.
They might find an accusation against him. As I've already said, how absolutely sad that is. I've tried to get in my mind what was going on in the minds of these religious leaders when they were looking into the very eyes of God in the flesh and were absolutely blind to who he was.
The search of blindness is a damning thing. They weren't there to worship, but to look for any opportunity to accuse Jesus. Jesus employs a technique that is known as an a priori argument. And an a priori argument can go one of two ways. It can argue from the lesser to the greater or from the greater to the lesser. Jesus is going to argue from the lesser to the greater in this passage.
But let me give you an example of arguing from the greater to the lesser. Paul's talking in Romans and he's talking about the Lord Jesus. And he says about God, God who spared not his own son, the greater.
God who spared not his own son, how shall he not freely give us all things? So he's arguing from the greater to the lesser. We are the lesser. But here he's arguing from the lesser to the greater.
And what's the argument? Jesus says to the man who had the withered hand, step forward. Then he said to them, that is the religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? And what was their response to his question?
Crickets, as we say, they were silent. I don't know why at times there's significant differences in the gospel accounts among the three synoptics. But I found this interesting over in Matthew's account. This is, again, Matthew 12 beginning at verse 9. Now when he had departed from there, he went into their synagogue and behold there was a man who had a withered hand and they asked him saying, that is the scribes and the Pharisees, according to Matthew, are asking Jesus a question.
Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And why were they asking the question? They didn't want to know the truth, that they might accuse him. Jesus wasn't silent, he gave an answer to their question. Then he said to them, what man is there among you who has one sheep, and if he falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?
Or how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. You see Jesus' argument? Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. He says over in Luke, Luke 14 I think it is, the same Sabbath controversy issued a different context. Luke 14 verse 1, now it happened as he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath that they watched him closely and behold there was a certain man before him who had dropsy and Jesus answering spoke to the lawyers and the Pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Now Jesus is asking the question, they kept silent and he took him, that is the man with dropsy, and healed him and let him go. Then Jesus answered them saying, which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? And they could not answer him regarding these things.
Why? Because the law made provision. You're donkeys in the ditch, get your donkey out of the ditch, don't wait till the next day, and in so doing you're not violating the Sabbath. That's why they couldn't answer. Just because we are commanded to, excuse me, rest on the Sabbath does not mean we are commanded to rest from doing good.
That's the point. So what they were trying to accuse Jesus of was not the law of Moses, but their own laws that they'd added and layered on top of regulations and rules and burdened the people. Listen to what Jesus said to them, Matthew 23. Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples saying, the scribes and the Pharisees, they sit in Moses' seat.
What does that mean? They assume the posture of authority over the law. That's the position they've taken to themselves. Verse 3, therefore, whatever they tell you to do, observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works, for they say and they do not do. In other words, they're a bunch of hypocrites. Then he goes on to say, for they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their own fingers.
All of their works they do to be seen by men, they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. The Sabbath day was the pinnacle for a Pharisee and a scribe. It was the opportunity, the occasion where they would put their self-righteousness on display.
Jesus says they're just a bunch of hypocrites. You remember I told you one of the laws that they've added to the law of Moses was that a Jew was not allowed to travel more than 300 feet, a short distance from their homes on the Sabbath, and yet we find them following Jesus through the grain fields. I think they were a little further away from their houses than what their law, but somehow they justified that because what? I don't know. Kind of like, laws for thee, but not for me.
I think we've heard about that in our country. They had laws that they imposed on the people, but they didn't abide by them. They didn't live by them. They were self-righteous.
They could not see the problem with that hypocrisy. So, back to Mark. Yeah, we've been moving around. That's okay, as long as you follow me.
Now, what time I have left? Well, I've got one thing I haven't done. I told you we were going to identify the various people in this narrative. We've looked at the man. We've looked at the scribes and the Pharisees.
We've looked at Jesus, and we're coming back to him. But there's a group mentioned in verse 6, and it is the Herodians. The Herodians. And typically the Pharisees and Herodians did not get along together. The Herodians are not a religious group.
They're a political group. They have aligned themselves with Herod. And they want to see a descendant of Herod on the throne ruling over the country. The Pharisees, what do they want? They want a descendant of David sitting on the throne. So, there's no commonality between them in that regard. They were opposed to one another. However, they found common ground in that they both disliked Jesus.
And it says, then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him that they might destroy him. Now, I want to go back to the occasion of this man with the withered hand. He's in a synagogue.
Most people with a deformity, whether it's by birth or by accident, are very self-conscious. I know a man back home. He recently died. But he lost his hand in a corn picker. He'd been a farmer his whole life. Not an unusual accident. Many farmers got their hands in a corn picker. I've never witnessed it.
But you can see what happens. The instrument that's being pulled by the tractor is cutting up corn. And the corn stalks get caught and lodged in the piece of equipment. And the farmer in his haste to keep on doing, he gets off his tractor.
He does not disengage the PTO. But he grabs hold of these corn stalks and gets them loose and his hand's in the corn picker. And this man lost, I guess he only had a, lost his hand right there. Had a thumb.
That's it. And every time I was around him, I was just, I mean, the man's lived like that for 35, 40 years. So he kind of got used to it. But I'd noticed him that he would keep his hand behind his back. He didn't want to draw attention to it. I wonder if that's not, I don't think that that's not untypical.
I think that's rather typical. So here is this man in the synagogue with a withered hand. Do you think it would be a little rude to ask a man to step forward? This man's trying to be inconspicuous, kind of get lost in the crowd. I don't want anybody to see my hand. And Jesus says, verse 3, he said to the man who had the withered hand, step forward.
Oh my goodness. The man did step forward. Then he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? They kept silent because they knew they were caught on the horns of a dilemma. And when he had looked around at them with anger, only place in the Gospels where Jesus is said to be angry. Now we know there are times that it appeared he was angry when he upset the tables in the temple. Here it says Jesus was, and when he had looked around at them with anger, what was Jesus angry about? He was angry about their self-righteousness, their roadblocks that they put in the place of people to come to God in a right way. He was angry with them. And at the same time, he was grieved by the hardness of their heart. That's interesting, anger and grieved. Sometimes we wonder how the same emotion can be present in the same person in relationship to the same people, but here it is. He was grieved by the hardness of their hearts and he said to the man, stretch out your hand. I think what we have before us is a beautiful, beautiful illustration of the doctrine of regeneration.
You say, what? Let me explain. The doctrine of regeneration is the new birth. It's when God imparts spiritual life to a dead sinner. That dead sinner is passive.
That dead sinner has no contribution to make. He can't regenerate himself. He can't bring forth spiritual life on his own. God must do it for him.
Okay? We believe in the doctrine of regeneration, the new birth. We believe that man is incapable in and of himself to do anything to contribute to being born again.
He cannot do anything. You say, well, that's just your opinion. No, that's not just my opinion. Listen to what Paul says in Romans. Paul says this. He's talking about, he's drawing a contrast between the spiritual man and the natural man. And he calls the natural man a carnal man.
He says, for to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. It's not that he will not. It's that he cannot. He has no ability to. So, Jesus comes to this man with a withered hand and he says to the man, hold forth your hand.
Well, in a natural realm, what are you expecting to happen? The man's going to hold forth his withered hand. And it's going to be an embarrassment. It's going to draw traction to him. But as the man holds forth his hand, what's the result?
What's it say? He stretched out his hand and his hand was restored as whole as the other. I have a question. At what point did this man's withered hand become whole? At what point? I hear someone saying immediately, that's true.
At what point? Think with me about this. I don't want to confuse you. I've talked about the doctrine of regeneration.
I'm going to come back to it. But I want to talk to you about the false doctrine of decisional regeneration, which teaches that a man is born again, that a man is regenerated because of a decision that he makes. That's why churches have altar calls. That's why preachers plead with people to do something.
Raise your hand, pray a prayer, whatever. That a man or woman is regenerated because of a decision they make. Now to be fair, let's put that decision in biblical terms. The decision is faith and repentance.
But here's the question. Is faith and repentance the cause of regeneration or is it the result of regeneration? It's the result of.
Because this man has a withered hand. And my point is, for that man to hold forth his hand in it for to be whole, it had to be made whole before he stuck out his hand. Now, those things happen pretty simultaneously, right? I'm just trying to, what is the correct order?
The order salutis. It's kind of like Jesus going to the tomb of Lazarus and saying to Lazarus, who's been dead for four days, Lazarus, come forth. And the question is, how does a dead man, in parentheses, dead for four days, obey the command to live? How does he do that?
You say, well, it's impossible. Dead men don't respond, right? How does a dead man obey the command to live?
What had to happen to Lazarus in that tomb? First, before he did a thing, he had to be made alive. Again, this is another illustration of the doctrine of regeneration. Augustine famously said of God, to God, oh God, command what you will, but give what you command. Now, here's a fallacy of Armenian theology. The fallacy is this, that God would never command a man to do something that he had no natural ability to do.
False assumption number two. God would be unjust to judge a man for failing to do something that he had no ability to do. Now, I understand the logic of that, but it's unbiblical. Because God commands a lot of things from us that you and I have no natural ability to do. He's commanded us to love him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And our neighbor as ourself, we can't do that. He's commanded us to obey the word of God. He's commanded us to repent. God commands men everywhere to repent. And the false assumption is if God commands it, man has the ability to do it. No, he doesn't. He's dead.
He's dead in his trespasses and sins, and he cannot do anything until he's first made alive. And that's what's being illustrated here. For Jesus to come to a man with a withered hand and say, hold forth your hand, his hand had to be made whole before he held forth his hand.
Do you see that? I think it's an absolutely beautiful picture of the doctrine of regeneration. When I was wrestling with these things years ago, I came to this conclusion.
I'm an analytical thinker. And I'm thinking, okay, God has designed to save men in such a way that no man can take any credit. There'll be nobody in heaven saying, Lord, I'm here because I did this, I did that.
I'm better than... No, no. You're here for no other reason than God had mercy on your hell-deserving soul. God's not going to share his glory with anybody. And God's glory is most manifested in salvation.
And we get things all twisted around. We think the end game for salvation was the salvation of sinners. No, the end game of salvation is the glory of God. God designed to save sinners that that might be to the praise of his grace.
That's what we sang this morning. I'm born again. I'm God's own chosen child of mercy, born again.
You're not born again because of anything you've done. You know that. But a lot of people don't know that. Why is it a big deal? Well, it's a big deal because God is jealous for his own glory. He does not want you robbing him of his glory. You have no right to his glory.
It's dishonoring to take from God in this way. You say, well, I made a decision. Yes, you did. What did we just sing before I stepped in here to preach? We sang this. I sought the Lord and afterward I knew. He moved my soul to seek him seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior true. No, I was found of thee. Thou didst reach forth thy hand.
I like that. Reach forth thy hand and mine enfold. I walked and sank not on the storm vexed sea. It was not so much that I on thee laid hold as thou, O Lord, on me. I find I walk, I love, but, O, the whole of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee. For thou were long beforehand with my soul. Always thou lovest me. God set his love on you and me if we're in Christ before we were ever born, before the foundations of the world.
God set his affections on you. Well, he must have known something good. No, he didn't know something good about you.
I hear people say that no merit. God didn't save me on the basis of merit. Oh, yes, he did. He saved you on the basis of merit, but it wasn't your merit.
It was Jesus' merit. You remember years ago I told you about the man I ran into across the roof of my house? It was the strangest thing. Some of you have heard it. Some of you haven't, so I'll tell it because it relates here.
My typical day off is Saturday, but I changed my day off to Thursday, and I took a walk across the roof of my house to check on a deer stand that my son was going to be hunting out of on Saturday, and I wanted to be sure it was safe, so I walked into the woods, did my business, decided rather than walk through the woods, I'm just going to cut straight out to the road. So I'm walking out toward the road, and I get within 20 yards of the road, and I see a piece of tarp, and I look, and there's a man laying on a soiled mattress in this pine forest. And I thought, what in the world is this? I walked up to him, and I startled him. Finally, I said, hey, hey, hey, and he had a set of headphones on, and he was listening to something. And he says, oh, hey, hey, if I'm on your property, I don't mean any harm.
Just relax, relax. What are you doing here? He says, God being my witness, I'm running from God.
He's running from God. I said, what were you listening to when I walked up? Oh, it was nothing.
No, what were you listening to? A sermon. A sermon?
Yeah. About what? It doesn't matter.
I said, yeah, it matters. A sermon about what? And he began to tell me about the doctrines of grace. He says, I don't know anybody that believes this stuff anymore. This guy's dead and gone, and I'm holding my cards close to my vest.
He doesn't know who I am and who he's encountered. And my mind is racing. I'm thinking to myself, now, Lord, you and your providence brought my path across this man's path.
What do I do with this? You've been in that situation where you're racing through your mind trying to make the best of this. What is God doing?
So this came to my mind. I said, well, let me tell you about a man who was running from God. So I told him about Jonah.
And I said, this was the prophet of God. And I said, here's the bottom line with Jonah. Jonah is the one who told the soldiers to throw him overboard. It wasn't the soldiers' idea. They didn't want to do it.
They were reluctant to do it. They only did it out of Jonah's insistence. And I said to this man, I said, Jonah, as a prophet of God, would rather die than obey God. He could have said to the sailors, just give me a couple of minutes alone.
I think this storm will go away. Oh no, throw me overboard. So I said to him, what are you running from? I said, there's a mission in town. He says, I left there three days ago. Well, he didn't know as I was talking to him. I'm the director of the mission.
I know exactly all about that mission. I said, why did you leave? He said, I got so sick and tired of every service that they would hold in the meetings.
There was always a plea for someone to come forward and make a decision. And this is what he said to me. I've never heard anybody put it like this. He says, I believe that salvation is all of God minus man. Minus man. He was negating man out of the equation. And I thought to myself, well, I've never heard anybody put it quite like that. But dude, your theology is spot on.
Right? So I said to him, how'd you get here? He says, I got a motorcycle up here in the woods. I said, let's go look at it.
Walked up, here's a bright red shiny motorcycle with about 300 miles on it. I said, where'd you get this? He could tell I was a little suspicious. My mother gave it to me. I said, your mother gave it to you? Oh, yeah. After you've been in the mission for 30 days, they'll allow you out on work release.
And I couldn't drive, so she bought it for me so I could get back and forth to work. I thought, okay. Later on, I checked with Tony. Tony, you know a guy by the name of, yep. Was he at the mission recently? Yup. Did his mother buy him a red motorcycle?
Yup. So he was telling me the truth. I said to the man, I said, well, hey, let's get down on our knees here and let's have prayer. So I got down on my knees with him in the pine needles and we prayed together.
And then I finally put my cards on the table. I said, let me tell you something, Fran. I live right across the street from here. I'm a preacher at Beacon Baptist Church.
And there's a whole bunch of folks that worship there that believe what you were listening to. He was dumbfounded. So I told my son when he came in, I said, you need to understand there's a guy laying over there in a pine thick at about 100 yards from where you're going to be hunting Saturday morning.
And I told the man, I said, if you're here Saturday morning, there's going to be a 30-06 probably go off and it'll be the loudest alarm clock you've ever heard. So Gabe come in and, yeah, he saw him over there. So Sunday morning, I'm getting ready to leave and I drove by and I see him out there.
So I stopped along the road and I waited for him to come out. And it's cold. It's like 25 degrees.
He has no heat. And I said, Fran, why don't you come to church with me? He says, eh, I don't think so. I went to town, went to McDonald's, got two cups of hot coffee, a couple of sandwiches, came back. Also stopped at the church and got some cassette tapes. That was back when we had cassette tapes and some fresh batteries. I gave him coffee and a sandwich. I said, here's some fresh batteries for your cassette player and here's some messages that are the same as what you were listening to. Now, honey, I'm still dumbfounded as I tell you that story. I did not embellish it one bit.
I told you exactly what happened. I have no idea what ever happened to that man. But we know what happened to this man. This man went home rejoicing because Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lord of the Sabbath, healed him. And didn't violate the Sabbath, by the way. And didn't violate the fact that, is it sad? Shouldn't that have been a cause for rejoicing among the religious scribes and Pharisees?
A man who had a withered hand now is whole. No. They went out, immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him. How sad. Folks, I know I'm speaking to the vast majority of you who are born again. Don't ever get over that.
Don't ever get over that. God saved you not because of anything he saw in you. No merit in you. He did it to the praise of his own honor and glory and grace. So he who died for you ought you not live for him. That's why he saved you. Live for him. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you for this time this morning. For the richness of this biblical narrative. For the demonstration of the compassion of our Savior. We ask you to bless us, Father, and draw near to us and meet us at our point of need. And send us away rejoicing in the goodness of God, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
