There was nothing they could say. The battlefield of exchanged ideas, they lost every time with him. He met their challenges. He even provoked their provocations. He provoked them, as he's doing here.
He was in the synagogue. He could see they're looking at the handicapped man. They know he's going to heal them. He sees this, and he says, I'll take this fight.
He was not intimidated by them like everyone else was. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Mark.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Mark Chapter 3 with a brand new study called Unintimidated Ministry. He entered the synagogue again. A man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched him closely whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, 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?
But they kept silent. And when he had looked around at them with anger being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out.
And his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea. And a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan and those from Tyre and Sidon. A great multitude when they heard how many things he was doing came to him. So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude lest they should crush him. For he healed many so that as many as had afflictions pressed about him to touch him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and cried out saying, you are the Son of God. But he sternly warned them that they should not make him known.
His ministry is unintimidated by the clerics of his day who held great sway and power over the culture, over the Jewish people and even with the Romans who of course were the occupying force, the world empire at that time. What we know about these clerics during the days of Christ is troubling because repeatedly we find them resistant to fact, resistant to truth, resistant to things that are right there in front of them that really they should have embraced and championed. But the opposite was the case. They were stubborn in their unbelief. Not only that, they were mean.
They were dishonest and they were deadly. All in the name of their religion. In other words, they justified it through their interpretation of what religion should be. Jesus, he did not contradict the scripture, but he did trample their traditions.
He did trample their man-made rules that oppressed the people because again he was not intimidated by them. He was focused on what he was supposed to do and he was not going to be moved off of that and there is a lesson for us to be focused on what our calling is also. Our Lord went so far as to provoke them publicly in order to expose them and give them an opportunity, but sin has a way of making us resistant to fact, to truth. It has a way of clouding out judgment and so the only way to deal with that is to take it to the Lord honestly, to honestly take it before the Lord. Facts refuse to go away and we who fear the Lord know that and that's why we try to obey. I think the most desired thing in a Christian heart is to be obedient to God.
I think we want that more than anything and I think God wants us to want that more than anything. Looking at the first verse, as we consider this unintimidated ministry of Christ, we read, and he entered the synagogue again and a man was there who had a withered hand. Now routinely we taught at the synagogue because people need to be instructed in righteousness. It does not come natural.
It has to be instructed. Jeremiah said this in the 10th chapter of his prophecies, O Yahweh, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
We think that because we can walk upright that we can therefore live upright. We cannot without God. And so to disentangle again what the rabbis had sown into the society, Christ was counter teaching by just teaching the truth. This of course caused him to lock horns with them repeatedly because he could not be controlled by them. All they had to do was to listen and watch and receive. And what he was teaching and what he was doing was worth listening to, was worth watching, was worth submitting to. It was now Messiah versus the clerics of Israel on behalf of the people of course. The apostles would have to follow this, especially the apostle Paul. He continued to disentangle Christianity from everything else that was wrong especially in these clerics.
Of course in the end, well throughout, it caused him much grief and he was persecuted, he was stoned, he was chased. He writes this to the Romans Paul does in this effort of his to spread the gospel without having his ministry intimidated by those who didn't care for it. He says in mighty signs and wonders by the power of the spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about, I like ream, that's the word.
I don't say that every day and neither do you. And he continues, I fully preach the gospel of Christ and so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel. Now if you're reading that, if you're in the church at Rome at the time that that letter was received and read aloud to the congregation, or if you've got a published copy of it and you're reading this, there was nothing they could say. The battlefield of exchanged ideas, they lost every time with him. He met their challenges. He even provoked their provocations. He provoked them as he's doing here.
He was in the synagogue. He can see they're looking at the handicapped man. They know he's going to heal them. He sees this and he says, I'll take this fight.
He was not intimidated by them like everyone else was. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Mark.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Mark chapter three with a brand new study called Unintimidated Ministry. He entered the synagogue again. A man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched him closely whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, 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?
But they kept each other silent. And when he had looked around at them with anger being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out.
And his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea. And a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan and those from Tyre and Sidon. A great multitude, when they heard how many things he was doing, came to him. So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude lest they should crush him. For he healed many so that as many as had afflictions pressed about him to touch him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and cried out, saying, you are the Son of God.
But he sternly warned them that they should not make him known. His ministry is unintimidated by the clerics of his day who held great sway and power over the culture, over the Jewish people and even with the Romans who, of course, were the occupying force, the world empire at that time. What we know about these clerics during the days of Christ is troubling because repeatedly we find them resistant to fact, resistant to truth, resistant to things that are right there in front of them that really they should have embraced and championed, but the opposite was the case.
They were stubborn in their unbelief. Not only that, they were mean, they were dishonest, and they were deadly, all in the name of their religion. In other words, they justified it through their interpretation of what religion should be. Jesus, he did not contradict the scripture, but he did trample their traditions.
He did trample their man-made rules that oppressed the people because, again, he was not intimidated by them. He was focused on what he was supposed to do, and he was not going to be moved off of that, and there is a lesson for us to be focused on what our calling is also. Our Lord went so far as to provoke them publicly in order to expose them and give them an opportunity, but sin has a way of making us resistant to fact or truth. It has a way of clouding our judgment, and so the only way to deal with that is to take it to the Lord honestly, to honestly take it before the Lord. Facts refuse to go away, and we who fear the Lord know that, and that's why we try to obey. I think the most desired thing in a Christian heart is to be obedient to God.
I think we want that more than anything, and I think God wants us to want that more than anything. Looking at the first verse, as we consider this unintimidated ministry of Christ, we read, And he entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. Now, routinely, we taught at the synagogue, because people need to be instructed in righteousness. It does not come natural.
It has to be instructed. Jeremiah said this in the 10th chapter of his prophecies, O Yahweh, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
We think that because we can walk upright, we can therefore live upright, but we cannot without God. And so to disentangle again what the rabbis had sown into the society, Christ was counter teaching by just teaching the truth. This, of course, caused him to lock horns with them repeatedly, because he could not be controlled by them. All they had to do was to listen and watch and receive, and what he was teaching and what he was doing was worth listening to. It was worth watching.
It was worth submitting to. It was now Messiah versus the clerics of Israel, on behalf of the people, of course. The apostles would have to follow this, especially the apostle Paul. He continued to disentangle Christianity from everything else that was wrong, especially in these clerics.
Of course, in the end, well throughout, it caused him much grief and he was persecuted, he was stoned, he was chased. He writes this to the Romans, Paul does, in this effort of his to spread the gospel without having his ministry intimidated by those who didn't care for it. He says in mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about, that's the word.
I don't say that every day, and neither do you. And he continues, I fully preach the gospel of Christ, and so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel. Now, if you're reading that, if you're in the church at Rome at the time, that letter was received and read aloud to the congregation, or if you got a published copy of it, and you're reading this, you're saying, this is from the hand of Paul, who followed the life of Jesus Christ. And wherever he could, he would go and he would teach the word of God, and he was unintimidated in his ministry, because he was focused on the value of what he had to minister to people.
It was worth getting beat up for. It was worth not being liked, because there would be those who would be saved by it. And so it was Christ against the clerics, but then it was the apostles versus the Antichrist. And they suffered for the faith, and they weren't the only ones.
It became part of church history. Christians suffering to uphold what the scripture says against what men say. The Christian faith is exclusive in its character.
It's exclusive. It does not make deals. It will not accept another faith. It will not accept another religion as being equal or superior.
But it condemns them as being inferior, and for that we are hated. But if that is the truth, then we must decide, are we running a popularity contest, or are we being obedient to our directive from the Lord, the commandments from the Lord, the commission from the Lord to go out and preach the gospel? He doesn't say, go out and preach the gospel and some other stuff. He says, preach the gospel, which is the word of God found in the scripture. Truth, it does not have feelings, and therefore it's not interested in feelings.
It is what it is, and we are ready to receive it. Truth presses forward, regardless of the human response to it. And again, this can get one killed. Here again in verse 1, he says, a man was there who had a withered hand. And there we find here a handicapped man in church, but this was the church where Jesus was present. Of course, Christ does not work this way as a rule today.
Today he often leaves the handicapped handicapped physically, but still uses them spiritually. Because we are in the age of faith, New Testament, where it is the truth, it is the message that changes lives, and not the signs and the wonders, but what God has said. It is about faith. Do you trust that or not? Or do you need to see something spectacular?
And if you do, how many times do you need to see that? So whenever you're in trouble, do you need to see a sign and wonder to believe that God is there, that he loves you, that he says, I will never leave you nor forsake you? You know, the apostles heard him say, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And when they were being persecuted to death, they knew Jesus was with them. That's why Stephen stood up and said, Lord, forgive them.
They don't know what they're doing, following his Lord's example. Because it wasn't necessary that God rescue Stephen from the stones. What was necessary that Stephen die obediently. And he went out of this world, preaching the word of God. And that's, that's our faith. That's Christianity. That's how much truth is bundled into what we believe. When we watch their example, when we said these men, they saw the risen Christ, they saw the crucified Christ, they saw the risen Christ, they weren't dying for nothing. Men don't die for such, for fantasies. They die for truth. Sometimes they die for truth that is wrong, but they believe it's the truth. But in this case, they were witnesses.
In verse two, he continues, so they watched him closely whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. How do you feel when a police car is driving in back of you? Yes. Oh, great.
I pull over, let him go. I try to get this, I am not having you follow me. I think it was someone I don't care for, a figure.
I won't say his name, because I don't like him. But what he did say, he said, you know, if a, if a policeman follows you for 500 miles, for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. And that's, it's truth.
You're going to make a mistake. Anyway, they were watching him. These boys were malicious ministers. Here they are, staking out a good man, waiting for him to just mess up so they can pin their law on him.
Matthew chapter 9 verse 35, there we read, Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. Why would you want to stalk a man like this? Wouldn't you want to learn from him?
Submit? Find out what, what's going on with this? No, they were trying to vilify him. In just the first three chapters of Mark, we see the Lord dealing with offending the clerics, those who had religious power. And he did this by helping people. He had performed an exorcism. Here it is a handicapped man in church.
Earlier it was a paralyzed man. He set them free from what enslaved them. They didn't see that. What they saw is they couldn't control him and the world sees us the same way. They can't control us. They can't get us to sin the way they want us to sin.
They are offended by that, many of them, but we should not lose courage because many get saved that way by us just preaching the gospel and sticking to our faith. And these men set free because that's what Christ does. And again, he was vilified for it because it was on the Sabbath. They hijacked the Sabbath day.
They stole it from what it was supposed to be and turned it into something else. It was supposed to be a day of rest. It became a day of paranoia for the Jew.
I hope I'm not breaking the law by doing this. It says here in verse 2, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath. Again, Jesus did not profane the Sabbath. He did profane their interpretation of the Sabbath. The Jews remained as a distinct people from everybody else because of three distinctives that separated the Jew from the Gentile to this day. The first one was a rite of circumcision.
The second is their dietary law. And the third is the Sabbath. All three distinctives have been abolished in Christ. We do not have to do any of these to approach God. We have to come to him by faith. We come to the cross of Christ by faith. By faith you are saved and that not of yourself. It is a gift of God. And this is what they weren't willing to receive.
We'll get to the fairness of this in a moment. But this is how the Jews fended off assimilation into the Gentile world. But as Christians, the way we fend off assimilation into the world is we adhere to Christ. We abide. As I started out in the beginning, obedience is everything to us. To please God.
To hear him say, well done. So it says here in verse 2, so that they might accuse him. Determined to trap a good man.
Determined to remove someone that convicted them simply by the way he lived and what he preached and what he did. He put them in their place. And they had no comeback for him. When he went to the scripture to refute their charges, they had no comeback for him.
There was nothing they could say. The battlefield of exchanged ideas, they lost every time with him. He met their challenges. He even provoked their provocations. He provoked them as he's doing here.
He's in the synagogue. He can see they're looking at the handicapped man. They know he's going to heal them. He sees this and he says, I'll take this fight.
He was not intimidated by them like everyone else was. Ever come across a hostile unbeliever that is just waiting for you to preach Christ so they can snarl at you, so they can pounce on you? Maybe it's a family member who has not accepted Christ.
Maybe it's a coworker or it doesn't matter. There are out there those unbelievers that are hoping you're going to bring up Jesus so they can attack you. This is the same situation we have here. These clerics, they could do nothing to help this man. And they didn't want anybody else to help him either. Stealing their thunder is what Jesus was doing, again, because he would not be one of them because he is Lord.
And they, again, did not care for it. And so upholding their self-made traditions, which was more meaningful to them than relieving a man of ministry. Religion will do that if you let it get away from you. If your faith turns into that kind of religion that hijacks truth, you will be an oppressor of others.
You will go around as a critic, not as a Christ-like individual. Verse 3, and he said to the man who had the withered hand step forward. He, again, he's not bothered by their snarls. He doesn't really care what they think. He would love to see them submit, but they refuse. He's giving them opportunity to submit, but they, again, are determined to not give in to him the battle of the will. We also know of that, maybe in our own lives, maybe in some other life, he could have said to this man, okay, look, it's the Sabbath. I can heal this. How about you meet me at Peter's house after the synagogue? Or come back tomorrow? Well, of course he does a dude, does no such thing, because, again, he is not intimidated in ministry. He tells the man, instead, step forward, where everyone can get a good look at what's going on.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-12-03 18:59:11 / 2023-12-03 19:08:15 / 9