Have you ever lived under a cloud of suspicion, where every word you speak is scrutinized, every good deed questioned, every motive assumed to be evil? It's an uneasy way to live, sometimes unbearable, and it's exactly where Jesus found himself one Sabbath in a Galilean synagogue, watched by narrow, suspicious eyes, waiting for him to slip up. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll presents a study in courage, compassion, and doing what's right when the world is watching. Teaching from Mark chapter three, Chuck titled his message, "Mercy Under Suspicious Eyes." If you have brought a Bible with you, please locate the second. Book of the New Testament.
It's the Gospel by Mark. We're working our way through these chapters and verses, and we've come to the third chapter. A brief section today in Mark chapter three, verses one to six. Mark three, beginning at verse one, he entered again into a synagogue, and a man was there whose hand was withered. They were watching him to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.
He said to the man with the withered hand, "Get up and come forward." And he said to them, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath? To save a life or to kill?" But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against him, as to how they might destroy him. Thing we love about the Bible is its realism.
That is a study in contrast, if I've ever seen it. You're listening to Inside for Living. To dig deeper into the Gospel according to Mark, be sure to purchase a copy of our *Searching the Scriptures* Bible study workbooks by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message "Mercy under Suspicious Eyes." Living under a cloud of suspicion is at best an uneasy experience.
Sometimes it becomes unbearable. Every word you utter is scrutinized by the critical ear of the one who is suspicious of you. Every deed you do is questioned, and even the good deeds are tainted with the suspicion of an evil motive. Try as hard as you like, you finally reach the realization that you cannot win. You're you're not going to change the opinion of the one who is suspicious of you.
It's at that point the clouds of of suspicion are likely to burst into a thunderstorm of of disastrous proportions that can lead ultimately to a serious set of consequences. An example from history pops into my mind: Martin Luther. By about 1520, Doctor Luther, teaching theology in Wittenberg, came to realize that there were wrongs going on in the established church of which he was a part, with which he took issue. The selling of indulgences, to name one of them. And so he could remain silent no longer, and decided he would speak against it.
He began in the classroom, and his students listened to him and became convinced he was right. They became a part of his following. His fellow theology faculty members listened and also realized that what he was saying made sense. As did the members of his congregation. As he would preach from here to there, and ultimately, the general public began to move more in his direction.
And this incensed the church in Rome. And so the Pope sent what was called a bull, which is a document, an official document that carries with it strong words. The document stated that he was to recant and burn his works, because he was not only teaching and preaching, he was now writing against the wrongs, and he was told to stop it. Luther denounced the document, and there was now an increasingly larger following that also did so. In fact, by the tenth of December, fifteen twenty, that bull was burned rather than Luther's works, and this, of course, brought the Pope's patience to an end.
He decided there would be a showdown, and in fifteen twenty-one, there was. The declaration to be made by Luther was to be made public, and it was to be called. It was called in those days a Diet, and it was it occurred in Worms, Germany, and before the general public, Luther was to come and to recant, or he would be deprived of his civil rights, and ultimately would lose the protection from execution. Those are strong words. It was a life and death issue.
He finally stood before the suspicious emperor and and princes and rulers and other magistrates of the times, and they heard his words as he spoke defiantly against those authorities. In fact, his closing words are now famous. My conscience is captive to the word of God. Here I stand. I can do no other.
God help me, Amen. At that point, he left for home, and there was an arranged kidnapping where he was secreted away in a castle at Wartburg, and there he immediately began the translating work of the New Testament. From the Latin into superbly simple, idiomatic German for the for the popular people of the day, so that everyone could read the Word of God. That did not change the opinion of those who were suspicious of him. In fact, it only intensified their suspicions.
And by now, there was the castigation of his character. Luther was seen. As a stubborn swine, he was called a boar in God's vineyard. Isn't it amazing, looking back, that a papal bull would be published against a man who today would be seen as a hero? Time has a remarkable way of clarifying issues, doesn't it?
The power of suspicion. Hit the historical rewind key on your keyboard, and you'll find yourself not at a public hearing in Worms, but at a small synagogue in Galilee. And the person operating under suspicious eyes is not a man named Luther, but none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Who is present on this Sabbath day, which understand is Saturday, the holy day among the Jews in that era, and among some to this day? And sitting in the congregation, if we could call it such, were the squint-eyed, narrow-thinking, self-righteous Pharisees, who had come for the single purpose of seeing if he would not break the Sabbath again.
And their suspicion was wearing them to an end, as their patience was finally turning to thoughts of murder. Think about it. He knew that pressure was mounting. Their tolerance is is turned into impatience, and the impatience. Has has now reached that thunderstorm level, so that by verse six of chapter three we read, they went out immediately and conspired with people they would normally spend any time with, the people who were friends of Herod, whom they hated.
But if it took that, they would go with them, and they conspired together on how they might destroy him. Remember that. Understand when you see the scene that we're going to see before us in Mark chapter three one to five that it climaxes with the plan for murder. As it gets underway, and this shadow will follow him all the way to Golgotha, where he will be crucified.
Now, back to the synagogue. There is a serious need in the synagogue. That had been overlooked by most of the people, perhaps all of them except one. There was a man there whose hand was withered. The language of the original Greek leaves us with an inability to say for sure whether this withered hand was the result of an accident that came in his adult life.
Tradition tells us that, not the Scriptures, or whether it is a congenital paralyzed hand. No one can say for sure. No matter. The point is, he's not able to use the hand. Luke tells us it was his right hand.
So, sitting in the congregation is a man with this serious need. He has a hand he cannot use. Tradition tells us he was a brick mason, so he could no longer do his trade. The point is, all of us need both hands, and the man is what we would call disabled. We read.
That Jesus entered into the synagogue, and a man was there whose hand was withered. The they of verse two, thanks to Matthew and Luke, we know refers to the Pharisees.
So the Pharisees were watching him, and that, by the way, is in the tense that suggests continued past action. They continued to watch him. We would say things were hanging in suspense. They watched him from the moment he stood to teach, all the way to the end of his act of healing. They were watching him.
They were watching him. It's a suspicious eye. And I go back to my earlier comment: when you operate under that kind of that cloud of suspicion, you know that things are moving in a in a direction that's not going to be pleasant. They couldn't care one whit about the withered hand of the man. He was simply a point of reference for them to use to see if Jesus would break their rules regarding the Sabbath.
In fact, it says so that they might accuse him. What does all of that mean? In the Word of God, clearly in the books of the Torah, the writings of Moses, there is the teaching regarding the Sabbath. It begins clearly in the book of Exodus and takes us through the rest of the Old Testament, wherein the inspired Word Moses laid down under the direction of God. That they were to keep the Sabbath day, they were to keep it holy.
Sabbath, meaning the Saturday of their week, the seventh, was to be a holy day. That is the law. Jesus certainly kept the law; never once broke it.
However, adding to the inspired law of God were these writings that came from men. One of them is known as the Mishnah. The Mishnah would be the compilation of oral interpretations of the inspired Torah, and in the Mishnah there are those traditional teachings regarding the Shabbat, the Sabbath. And if we will, in actuality, the Pharisees had drawn up a catalog of thirty-nine principal. Guidelines on how to keep the Sabbath holy.
The guidelines are not inspired; they are not from God. They are from authorities in Judaism. Thirty-nine principal categories that they broke down into six minor areas. Each of the thirty-nine was forbidden to do on the Sabbath, according to the Pharisees, but not according to God.
However, if you lived in the first century and you were under the intimidating presence of Pharisees, you understood that they placed just as much emphasis on their own man-made laws and regulations and ritual as they did on the Torah. They were the ancient legalists, as we pointed out last week. The various schools of Judaism were agreed: the Sabbath must be fully upheld.
However, among their rules, not inspired, listen to this: first aid was deemed permissible to prevent an injury from worsening, but efforts toward a cure were regarded as work. Says who? Says the authorities of Judaism, not God. I'm overworking it, so you will understand the contrast between the two. They said, "If you made an effort toward curing, as in this case, a withered hand, it's work, and that must wait until the passing of the Sabbath.
You were not to do that on the Sabbath. You may, and it went on to say, 'You may not straighten a deformed body or set a broken limb on the Shabbat. You cannot do it,' says the Pharisees." Jesus on this Sabbath willfully defies the rules of the legalists, and we have already declared what happened as a result. But let's look at the process. Watch Jesus' response.
By the way, to Jesus, human need poses a moral imperative always. It trumps all things. If there's a human need, it must be addressed. And don't think he wasn't being watched. My, was he ever?
They were watching him so that they might accuse him. Isn't it interesting the irony of all this? Uh. The authorities are denying Jesus the right to do good on the Sabbath, while they and their hearts are conspiring evil. That is called hypocrisy.
It's a classic example. Oh, you can't break the rules, but inside their hearts, we're going to kill him if he does.
Now then, you got the picture. Let's stop and consider some of the options.
Okay. Jesus could have, in seeing the withered hand, decided to delay until the next day. That way, we don't offend anybody. We please the people. We make the Pharisees like us more.
After all, we can heal. I can heal the man any time, and he's lasted this long without it being that great an issue.
So, one more day wouldn't matter. He could delay it. And if you want to please people, that's what you would do. And there are a lot of folks who would do that. It's called not making waves.
Let's don't ruffle the feathers. Let's not make the Pharisees more angry. They're angry enough.
So that's one possibility. Second, he could have whispered to the man, "Meet me by the seashore this afternoon when we're alone." And and I'll do this in secret. It'll be between you and me. You'll still get healed, and the synagogue won't be disrupted. It'll be fine.
That's called a compromise. And there are many who would have done that. He could have healed by the seashore that afternoon. No one would have seen, and it would have been done in secret. The third option is the one he chose.
There is an issue at stake, and to quote Luther, "Here I stand; I can do no other." And the issue is more than a withered hand. It is that, but it is more. There is everything right about this healing. I refuse to give in to those who were suspicious of me and my motives. I will do what is right.
Do you have any idea how rare those kind of people are? We are trained from earliest years to be politically correct, to do what is acceptable, and so we learn to play it safe and not offend. We learn to be popular rather than right. And we also learn to leave the defenseless without an advocate. Two timeless principles at work here.
If I may take the time for that, the first is this: a litmus test of true versus false religion is its response to injustice. A litmus test of true or false religion is its response to injustice. In the face of the disabled person's need, the official authorities remain silent. Into verse four tells us. Here's the second: the primary test of all theology and morality is either passed or failed by one's response to the weakest and most defenseless member of society.
Maybe that went by a little too quickly. Let me repeat it: the primary test of all theology and morality is either passed or failed by one's response to the weakest and most defenseless member of society. In a former church that I served, we discovered that an elder was molesting children. It's one of the lowest times of my ministry life. I did not know how we would survive the time.
It had all the makings of a lawsuit. If it's exposed, the simplest thing would simply be handling it behind the scenes, saying nothing, and simply asking the man the man to leave. He would have left and done the same thing elsewhere. As a good friend of mine said to me later, "People will molest even from a wheelchair." I remember a long meeting with our elders. It was not a pleasant meeting.
They were as quiet as you are right now. In fact, one of our members was an attorney. He said, "You realize, Pastor Swindall, that the this has all the makings of a lawsuit." And I said, "We're not going to let that stop us from doing what's right, are we?" They were as quiet as you are right now. As they sort of blinked and stared, and thankfully they said to a man, "No, we're not." We exposed the man. We dealt with the wrong.
The newspapers were there. The all kinds of media were ready to have their story. We handled it with I hope bold wisdom. We had rooms available for people who could take their daughters there, if they were afraid that perhaps they were one of them. We had other rooms available if they knew for sure that there had been molestation in their lives, and they would have.
We had authorities there to help them. We carried it out with compassion, and we exposed by name the one who was the guilty party, and we disciplined him from the church, having met with him earlier. It never made the news and never made the media. As one newspaper reporter said to me later, "What's there to report? You did what's right." How interesting.
I don't say that for my sake. I had those individuals around me that were just as courageous, but it was time to do what's right. I titled my message that day in defense of the helpless. Who else would speak on behalf of those who had no advocate? It was time to stand.
For Jesus, it's time to do something about this. It's time to deal with this. In the process, it's time to teach these who sit there in their self-righteous robes to learn something beyond. People will do more than just obey your rules. I love what he does.
Here we see a merciful heart at work. By the way, the difference between him and them is in one word: compassion. We read this. He said to the man with the withered hand, "Get up and come forward." Now, I want to make a point here that I think is worth mentioning and worth noting. First of all, will you notice that he brought the the man, the disabled man, out in the open?
It is our great habit and tendency to look around people with disabilities. We look above them, we look through them, we talk to others who are alongside them. I know of a church where the wife is coming in with a husband. Husband happens to be in a wheelchair, and the usher says to the wife, "Does he want a bulletin?" And she said, "Why don't you ask him?" Yes, I would like a bullet.
Now, I don't think the usher meant anything wrong. It just it just brings out the habits we form. I was at a grocery store line, and in front of me was a woman in a wheelchair, and she had a basket. She put her things on the on the counter for them to be checked out, and I noticed something interesting. Not only did the two people behind me sort of grouse because it took her a while to get all the things out.
Of the basket, but I noticed no one looked at her. Jesus looked at the man. Come, come up here, he said. Come up here. It was an honoring of the man, wasn't it?
An exposé. It was. I want all to see the real factor of this disability, what you live with, and perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to bring a little compassion from those. Who had not shown it toward the one with disabilities? In a room full of people who looked past him, around him, through him, Jesus looked at the man and honored him.
What a beautiful picture of mercy from the one who sees the overlooked, who dignifies the disregarded. And meets our needs with compassion. Chuck titled his study in Mark chapter three, "Mercy Under Suspicious Eyes," and there's more teaching ahead here on insight for living. You know, there's a difference between hearing about Jesus and meeting Him for yourself. And meeting Him is exactly what happens when you stop skimming the Gospel of Mark and start searching it, one verse, one scene, one encounter at a time.
That's why we'd love to place a three-volume set of *Searching the Scriptures* Bible study workbooks in your hands. These spiral-bound guides walk you straight into the action, alongside Chuck, the demons who obey, the storms that go still, and the lepers who walk away whole. And they slow you down long enough to ask what it all means for you. Use them on your own, or gather a few friends around the table. To order all three, call eight hundred seven seven two eighty eight eighty eight, or go to insight dot org slash offer.
And here is a companion for that journey, because if Mark shows you what Jesus can do with a fisherman or tax collector, Chuck's brand new memoir shows you what he can do with a nervous kid from a small Texas town who was sure he had nothing to offer. In Awakened by Grace, Chuck retraces the surprising route that God mapped out for him, one unlikely turn after another, and he's quick to say none of it was his own doing. That's the hope in it for you: the very things you've counted as strikes against you, maybe the very things that God is preparing to use. Read Awakened by Grace and see. Chuck's memoir would also make a thoughtful Christmas gift.
Go to insight.org/memoir or call us at eight hundred seven seven two eighty eight eighty eight. Do you ever feel invisible, like no one really sees you? I'm Bill Meyer. Don't miss Chuck Swindoll's encouraging message tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, "Mercy Under Suspicious Eyes," was copyrighted in 2010 and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R.
Swindoll Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
