This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. We're in the Gospel of Luke chapter 6. We'll be picking up in verse 6. This is the reading of God's word, Luke chapter six, picking up in verse six. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts. And he said to the man with the withered hand, come and stand here. And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm? To save life or to destroy it? And after looking around at them, at them all, he said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so. And his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. This is the reading of God's word. Please have a seat. Let's begin in prayer. Heavenly Father, we can hardly imagine the glory that awaits. We are so delighted to be your people and to have these glorious promises. We are so blessed to see you at work in our lives. at work in the good times and at work even when we are failing. We are so blessed by such a faithful God. We ask you this afternoon to be faithful to our sister Madeline. Help her through this most recent bout. Please, Lord, encourage her and heal her. We pray you'd restore her to our company soon. And we pray that you would be faithful to us in the word now. Let only your words be those that are spoken today. We pray this in Jesus's name. Amen. So it's another Sabbath. We begin on another Sabbath and you could reasonably ask, why are we talking about the Sabbath this much? Right? I think it's only one part of it to say that it's clarifying a doctrinal issue. I think the other side of it is that the Sabbath is a battleground in these times. In our last passage, Jesus proclaimed by the end that he was Lord over the Sabbath. And we talked about, that's a bold claim. Who gets to be Lord over a divine institution? Only God. Only God, and as Jesus makes this claim for himself, he's also brushing aside the pretenders. You can almost picture it like the invading king coming in, and so all the minor little warlords rise up to try and fight back. Well, here he is, the Lord of the Sabbath, and he is now going to weigh in once more. And he is fine dealing with the challengers. There was a man with a withered right hand. And the way Jesus is going, you know exactly what to expect then, right? We're talking Jesus, we talk a man with a withered right hand, what's gonna happen? Healing, right? We're all looking forward to healing because Jesus has actually made this normal. While he is in this part of his ministry, it is normal, almost daily, that he is out there exercising divine authority, even over disease and broken bodies. Now, what's different about this passage is the complication that comes in from the start. Scribes and Pharisees were watching him. They were watching him not to learn from him, They were watching him so that they might accuse him. They were watching so that they might accuse him. You say accuse him of what? Healing a guy? Well, that's a little too simple, right? What are they doing here? Important background that you have to have from the start is what tradition held was allowable on the Sabbath. That's what we dealt with last time, wasn't it? They want to call Jesus out about whether he's being lawful, he and his disciples, because you're breaking our traditions, Jesus. This is the Sabbath command and this is traditionally how we've always kept it. Well, here again, we have a tradition and the tradition held that unless you had the most urgent of need on the Sabbath, you're expected to just wait. Right? So, you know, like your hand is chopped off, get some help. You break your finger, just tough it out. Okay. Tough it out until the next day. Then we will deal with you. This is essentially the tradition. If it's really serious, we'll help you. Otherwise, wait, this is how you do justice to the Sabbath. That's what they said. And so they're watching him. It's the Sabbath. You don't heal people. We're going to see if you're going to break our tradition. We are watching you. Well, verse 8, you come in and Jesus welcomes the fight. Again, that's why I have this picture of the invading king and the minor little warlords. He's not worried about them. He's not scared of a fight. He will absolutely fight the fights that have to be fought. More than willing to put down a few pretenders. He welcomes the fight. And in fact, He provokes the fight. Look at verse eight with me. But he knew their thoughts. And he said to the man with the withered hand, come, come and stand here. And he rose and he stood there. Jesus is provoking the thoughts. He knows their thoughts, or he's provoking the fight. He knows their thoughts. He knows they're trying to trap him. He knows they're going after him for these traditional things again. And so you could picture, knowing their thoughts, he could well say, hey, those guys are kind of watching me. Come over here real quick. I'll just heal you on the side. Right? No one has to know. You go on your way, you're healed. I did a work of God. We're good. Knowing their thoughts, he could have dodged this very easily, couldn't he? What does he do? Hey you, come up here. Come up here. I want everyone to see what I am about to do. He doesn't hide it for a moment. He's not scared for a moment. He calls the man to stand in front of everyone. The scribes and the Pharisees, there's this kind of skulking secret manner to them, isn't there? Like, I'm watching you, right? I'm watching you. Jesus, okay, you're watching me. I want everyone to see what I am about to do. You and the whole lot of you. I want you to see plain as day what I am about to do. Let's show everyone. He welcomes, He provokes the fight. Now, really, this passage I mentioned, that healing has become irregular at this point. And so, you have to ask yourself, what is distinctive about this passage? Why does Luke want to include this? What does he want us to understand about Jesus now, or Jesus' situation now? This passage puts the spotlight on the opposition. You're going to find in this passage not a whole lot about the man with the with the right hand. We don't hear that he got up and praise God and went off and told everyone like we've maybe heard in other accounts. We actually know nothing of the man except he stood up and got healed. But we hear a whole lot about those who oppose Jesus. Here, all they want to do, all they want to do is find a reason to accuse him. There is no openness about them. I want to check out this Jesus guy, see what he's doing, see if he's the real deal. None of that. There's no humility as if, well, Jesus could throw a wrench into my traditional understandings and I might be willing to give them up. No humility, no openness, no humility. They're there simply to accuse. Stating the obvious, maybe, but you are in a very bad place if all you are looking to do is accuse. If all you are looking to do is criticize. If all you are looking to do is object. See, if that's you, if you are the perpetual critic, then your bread and butter is going around and pointing out what's wrong with people. and you're good at it, you can always find something wrong with anyone. What you should know is that being a perpetual critic actually means there's a whole lot of unhealthy stuff about you. This isn't just your skill, your calling in life. There is something very unhealthy about you if you are the perpetual critic, and you probably have no idea. More on that to come. Verses nine and 10, Jesus puts the whole situation in its proper light and really in its polarizing light. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it? And he pauses. And he looks around, and after looking around at them, at them all, he said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. This is the situation as Jesus estimates. Christ is doing good, and their approach would do harm. He even makes it so stark that it feels like to not do good here would be to do wrong. To do nothing is not an option in this situation. To choose to do nothing, it's something I've said before, to choose to do nothing is in fact still a choice. This situation calls for either good or harm. no other way around it. So he asks them, he looks at them, what will it be? What will it be? Good or harm? Save or destroy? What will it be? When God puts forward the right way, any other way is sin. When God puts forward the right way, any other way is sin. Jesus gives them a chance to come around here. He does. He gives them the chance to admit it. That good must be permitted here. He gives them that pause. And they absolutely refuse to budge. They're not entertaining any discussions here. They are convinced of themselves and they are convinced of their opinions and they are not going to engage. He raises the question and the question's met by silence. Luke actually moves rather quickly through this account. Mark gives us just a little bit of detail on how Jesus reacted here. Mark 3.5 says that Jesus looked around at them with anger. grieved at their hardness of heart. And if you've ever experienced any of that kind of frustration, you know just what it is to have both anger and grief in the very same moment. He is angry and he is grieving that they can be so hard hearted. Jesus had posed the question, is it lawful? Is it lawful? Well, God is the ultimate authority on what is lawful. And when this man is healed, there's God's answer. This is the divine answer. Is it lawful? Well, that man's hand works now. God was pleased to answer, yes. Yes, it is absolutely lawful. And what you find out of that is that Jesus is vindicated and the opposition is shot down. It was bad enough that they wouldn't engage on the conversation, but then they are absolutely shot down. I point out to you again that what stands out in this passage is not the healing. Jesus is doing a lot of healing. What's really stands out is the response, the response of the opposition. Look at verse 11. This is how they respond to a mighty act of God, but they were filled with fury. and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. They're filled with fury over a miraculous healing of a man who was crippled in one hand. They're filled with fury over a healing. What sense does that make? Well, you see, when we say what sense does it make, we're assuming they care about the healing. And we're assuming that they care about the man, and the truth is they are showing right now they don't care about either. They didn't care about a healing. They didn't care about the man. They care that Jesus broke their rules. He got away with it, and they just look bad in the whole process. That's what bothers them. So here you find the opposition to Jesus is taking shape. We're like a quarter of the way through the gospel, right? But you're seeing this opposition taking shape. The religious authorities, those minor warlords who have just been swatted down. And they do not like that one bit. They're not in it for God's glory or God's truth. They were in it for themselves. And they are going to oppose Jesus for that very reason. So the opposition takes form and Jesus had presented the situation as a choice between saving life on the one hand or destroying life on the other. One that kind of turns out in one of these just, I guess, divine ironies. Jesus came to save life and it'd be those enemies who would seek to destroy his. Jesus purposefully polarized this whole situation. He purposely polarized it. It was an either or decision that he gave his critics. You remember, good or harm, save or destroy. These are your two choices, either or. And either or, as it turns out, is bound up in our understanding of God and of the salvation that he offers. God says either you humble yourself and trust him for your salvation or you go to your judgment. There's nothing in the middle. There's nothing in the middle. There is no neutral position. And Jesus Christ ever since then has been presenting an either or challenge to every person that lives. Will you trust and follow him or not? Will you humble yourself and receive mercy or not? Will you find forgiveness in his death on the cross or not? Will you devote your heart and your life to him or not. Either Jesus Christ is the son of God or he is not. Either Jesus Christ rose from the dead or he did not. Either Jesus Christ is coming again to rescue his people and judge all of humanity or he is not. Either Jesus Christ is your savior or he is not. So where do you stand? Where do you stand on the either or challenge from Jesus Christ himself? Where do you stand? In our passage today, the scribes and Pharisees are presented with an either or decision. God's truth or their tradition God's way or their hard-heartedness. They chose their hard-heartedness. They chose their hard-heartedness. The hard-heartedness of these scribes and these Pharisees, it should be a fearful warning to us. It should be a fearful warning to us because we can be a whole lot more like them than we would ever imagine. They don't care about this man's healing because they are hard-hearted. They don't care about God's truth versus their tradition because they are hard-hearted. They want to harm the one who heals with God's own power because they are hard-hearted. And so we want to look at ourselves and we want to excuse ourselves. We could never be so vile. We can never be so evil, right? This is behavior that's reserved for biblical villains. But never us, never, please, never us. Just think about it. How do we know when we are being hard hearted? How do we know when we are being hard hearted? Let's see what we have in common with these scribes and Pharisees. Let's see how much we actually do, in fact, have in common with them. What were the scribes and Pharisees like in this passage? I hold out to you three categories. This might not be comprehensive, but it's most of it. The scribes and the Pharisees lacked humility. The scribes and the Pharisees were far from God's word. The scribes and the Pharisees had no fear of God. Start with humility. They lacked humility. The scribes and Pharisees, again, they did this last passage and they're doing it again. They again showed that they thought that their tradition was more important than the word of God. They showed no sensitivity at all to being corrected by God. They showed no sensitivity at all to seeking God's truth. They were assured that they had arrived and they had no need of a teacher. Does that sound like anyone? That's actually a lot more common than we would like to think, isn't it? Don't we often care more about going our own way than drawing close to God? Don't we also find that so often we would rather be right than know what the truth of God is? doesn't our lack of trust and submission to God's word reflect a pretty hard state of our hearts? I mean, related to that, it's that second point that the scribes and the Pharisees had grown distant from the word of God, which is weird because on the one hand, they almost undoubtedly were immersed in the word of God. They did their devotionals. I have no doubt about it. They read their scriptures all the time. I just have no doubt about it. But they had lost the heart of God's word. Namely, they had lost the God behind the word. God's word for these people had become more of a tool to be wielded than a means to know God and draw close to him. They were very close on the outside, but they were far removed in their hearts. Unfortunately, again, it turns out to be a fairly common problem, doesn't it? You take us, instead of seeking our creator through his word, we allow the word to settle into something cold and distant and frankly unimportant. The living and active Word of God is not living and active in our lives. We do not seek it. We do not hunger for it. We do not live by it. The Word is far from us because our hard hearts are far from God. Third point, the scribes and the Pharisees, they also totally lacked the fear of God. Where is the fear of God in a people who witness an act that could only be performed by someone with God's power? Where is the fear of God when they see that and then they want to harm the one who wielded God's power? There is no fear of God there. The right reaction, there was still time. There was still time when he healed them to say, I had it all wrong. I had it all wrong, I repent. No, no, they didn't repent. There was no repentance here. Instead, they doubled down and they now seek a way to harm Jesus. They are furious that God has worked through Jesus. Where's the fear of God? Where is the fear of God? Proverbs 28, 14, it says, The fear of the Lord, it is meant to be continually present in our lives. And we always have to be clear what we mean by that. We don't mean fear of the Lord like someone who fears a cruel master. No, we fear God in reverence. We recognize at all times that he is the almighty one. And we're just his little creations. There should be a reverence of the creation recognizing its creator. pride, self-assurance, arrogance, none of these things can survive in the presence of the fear of the Lord. It is impossible to hold on to a hard heart when the fear of the Lord has you flat on your face in front of the almighty one. Is that reverence in our lives? Is the fear of God alive and well in our lives? Always a temptation, nasty, nasty scribes and Pharisees without looking in the mirror at our own heart, at our own lives. We could discuss this subject for a long, long time because hard-heartedness is a sneaky, soul-numbing sin, and it shows itself in all types of ways. I haven't even scratched the surface. It shows itself in people who only criticize sermons. It shows itself in people who lack any sensitivity to their sin. You ever have that where you keep sinning and it starts worrying you less? It's not because the sin has gotten any better. It's because your heart is getting harder. That lack of sensitivity toward perpetual sin should be a warning that your heart is getting hard. Hard-heartedness shows itself in people who don't want counsel from anyone. I've got this. I've arrived. I have no need of a teacher. Hard-heartedness shows itself in people who prioritize everything in the world. You can't ever seem to find time to seek the Lord. Can't find the time, can't find the heart. If any of this describes you, If any of this describes you, then recognize that you are on a path toward calamity. God promised it. If you have a hard heart, you are on a path toward calamity. And if in this moment, you've somehow come to recognize that you have a hard heart, praise the Lord right now, because that is his grace. That is His grace that a hard-hearted person should ever recognize their own hard-heartedness. If you see your heart as a hard, just barren thing, then confess it to God. Father, forgive me, I have a hard heart. I don't know when this happened, or maybe you do. Maybe it's been a long time coming. But Father, forgive me because I have a hard heart toward your things. I have a hard heart toward your heart. I have a hard heart towards your word and I have a hard heart towards your people. Confess it to God right now. The Lord's table's coming. Don't come to the Lord's table with a hard heart if you can help it. If God in his grace has shown you that your heart is hard, Then pray to the one now who can give you a new heart. Pray to the one now who can soften that hard heart. Our God is a God who renews hearts. Our God is a God who transforms hearts. Our God is a God who can outright replace hearts. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, it transforms hearts. No matter how broken, no matter how rebellious, you look at yourself and you think, I've sunk so far down. How can you possibly reach me? Believe me, he can. Our God is pleased to transform hearts and his mercy and his grace. They are so immense. They are so overwhelming that any hardhearted sinner who comes to him in faith will never be turned away. Confess that hard heart and come to the one who will make you whole. God is pleased, delighted to rescue the hard hearted. But if the hard hearted will not be rescued, then they are on a frightful path. They are on the path to calamity. So take stock of your heart. Look at your heart, pay close attention to the health of your heart. But more important than that, and the Lord's table is gonna assure this, more important than that, take heed of the Savior who would save you from yourself. Let's pray. Our God, we confess that we have hard hearts sometimes. Maybe not in every way, but Lord, in far too many ways, no matter how many we do have. We confess we don't want to love one another. We confess we don't want to submit to your word. We confess that we don't want to value the things you've told us, obvious things you have told us to value. Father, forgive us. Father, give us that right heart. For some of us, we've known that right heart before. Lord, take us back to those days that we remember. Take us back to the state of that heart that we once remember having. And for those who have never had a right heart, Father, we pray that you would give them a new heart right now. We pray that you would pierce that hard exterior, that you would plant your word deep in their hearts, and that you would be gracious to save one more hard-hearted sinner. We praise you, our God who rescues the hard-hearted. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.