Thank you very much, Pastor Kaji. It's really good to be with you and with the fellowship here again. It's our annual visit and one day we'll return maybe to England, God willing, permanently. But for now, the Lord has kept us and opened the door for us to be in China for another two years. so in God's timing and in God's providence we will return maybe to England. So thank you very much for your invitation to speak to you this morning and also we very much appreciate your prayers for us and your intercession for us on a weekly basis and we are grateful to God for that. This morning I want to look at this passage from Mark chapter 3, about the man who went into the synagogue, chapter 3, Mark 3 verse 1. The man who went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, sorry, he entered again into the synagogue and there was a man which had a withered hand. And it was the Sabbath day and the priests, the Pharisees were there also, looking at him, watching him. Is this man going to heal again? Not looking for a miracle from the Lord so that they could rejoice in him, but looking for a reason to accuse him. And what a reason, as we'll see in a minute, what a bad attitude to go into the house of God and to, with an intention to find some fault instead of to thank God for the wonderful and miraculous things that he is doing and is able to do. So we look at this man with his withered hand and see how his hand is a picture to us of our souls, that our souls are paralyzed as well. So verse one, this man with the withered hand was in the synagogue And my first point would be, well, that's the best place for him to be in the synagogue. It was a place where Jesus himself attended on a regular basis. It was his habit. The Son of God, every Sabbath day, without any shadow of a doubt, you didn't have to ask where would he be, but he would be in the Sabbath. He would be in the synagogue. He may be in different synagogues or he may have been in the temple on some occasions, but every Sabbath day it was his regular custom to be in the house of God. And this man also was there. And when I think of that, I'm just thinking of these things and think, well, looking back at England and just 50, 60 years ago, Regular attendance in the Lord's house. Everybody almost was going to the house of God. Everybody was going to hear the Word of God. Everybody was going to give thanks to the Lord, to worship Him, to hear what does the Lord have to say to me today. There was a little bit more of a spiritual awareness, a spiritual desire. But how sad isn't it that today very few churches are filled to the brim. Very few people on a Sunday want to go to God's house and hear his word. They want to go shopping. They want to go to the sports stadium. Or they want to watch TV. But there's no real desire as there was a long time ago in this country. But this man was there and Jesus was there as it was his habit to go. He was there before Jesus came in. He was, we could say, on time. And when Jesus went in, the man was there. And he went in, maybe he didn't expect anything going in. He never thought, Today's the day I'm going to be healed. He got an unexpected blessing. He got a real surprise from God. He got a surprise maybe that he never thought would ever happen to him in his whole life. And yet that was the day that the Lord brought him forth, caused him to stand in the midst and granted him the healing. An unexpected blessing in the house of God. He never in the least expected it, probably, but he graciously obtained from the Lord Jesus such a blessing. And it's the same for us, isn't it? We may come into God's house. You may have come here this morning and you may think, well, you know, I'll just go because it's my duty to go or I like to go. But we often find the Lord meeting you. the Lord reaching out to you in a special way and touching your life and speaking to you and a word comes home to your conscience and to your heart and you feel that was a word for me. I'm so glad I went to God's house. And this is the place to be, to really desire God's blessing on our life. I desire to obtain salvation from the Lord and to know His blessing, to know peace with Him, to know forgiveness of my sins, to know new life, to know Him. And this is the best place that a person can come. Some people think, well, I need to be good before I come to church. In one sense, that's not a bad thing, is it? Because they realise God is holy, and He is. God is righteous, and He is. God is special, God is different from us. We are sinners. And how can I come before Him? I have to clean myself up before I come to Him. When we were in China, as a young student, And before the Bible studies we used to have with the students, he would take a bath every time. And when he came, he used to tell me, I want to be clean before I hear God's word. Well, that's nice and that's good. But people are like that as well, even before they come to church. I can't go to church. I'm not righteous. I'm not holy. And that's not a bad thing. But the church is for sinners. The Church is for people like you and me who have broken God's law, who are not righteous, who are deserving of punishment, who deserve to go to hell, who deserve because of our rebellion against our Maker to be far away from God, forever separated from Him. And yet, this is the place for us to come to find forgiveness and grace and healing and eternal life. It's like a hospital. The church is sometimes like a hospital. If you're sick, you run to the hospital. And when we realise that we're sinners, it's not to clean ourselves up first, but to run to Christ, to run to his house where we can hear his word and place ourselves in a position where the Lord can meet with him like this man was in that position. Also in the synagogue were the Pharisees. the religious leaders, a group of people who really had no spirituality at all. People who were concerned more about making money, concerned more about themselves and filling their pockets and concerned about their position in society and they didn't like Jesus and were envious of Christ because people were going to him instead of people were listening to Christ instead of listening to them and they didn't like that. So they were there in the synagogue closely watching the Lord Jesus Christ looking for something to accuse him of. They should have been looking for confirmation that this was the Christ. They should have been looking to see, is this the one, the promised one, whom God has sent? The Savior, who for ages and ages, God has said he was going to send. And they in a special way, as Jewish people, had the privilege, knowledge, that God was going to do these things. Is he the one? Is he the Messiah, the Son of God, whom God said he would send into the world to take away our sins? No. They were looking at him to accuse him, to find fault with him, to bring him down, to make people turn against him, to find fault with his words. And even here in the synagogue, we see them looking at Jesus, waiting to see whether he would heal this man with a withered hand on the Sabbath day. It should have softened. The miracles of Christ should have softened their hearts. Instead, it hardened their hearts and they refused to believe in Him. They were frequently in the synagogues. Every week they also were in the synagogues. But they obtained no blessing from God. And this also is a lesson for us. Coming to church is good. We should do that. Coming to church is necessary. If we are here present with the wrong attitude, if people come with a wrong attitude, find fault with the preaching or the preacher, only to hear the news about other people, then how can we obtain blessing from the Lord? We come because we want to hear what God is saying to us. If a person is only a pretender like these Pharisees, they were pretending to be religious. They were not sincere. Sincerity was vastly missing. It was not in their vocabulary, so to speak. They were insincere before God, insincere before people. But if we come with a sincere heart, Lord, I really want to know you. Lord, I want to know what your word is saying to me. Please teach me. Please speak to me. He hears that cry of your heart. He will speak to you. He will lead you. He will bless you. Well, this man with a withered hand, a paralysed hand, a hand that had lost the cells in it were dead, the nerves in it were dead. He couldn't move his hand, it's all paralysed, it's all dried up. And it's a picture to us of our withered souls. Our souls also are paralysed souls. A withered hand. restricts a person from fully functioning. His whole body was not affected, just this one part, only one of his members, his hand, he couldn't use. A part of his physical body is unusable, but he was still able to carry on life as others are doing who have all their arms and limbs. Sorry, he wasn't able to carry on life as others are who only have their arms and limbs. His arm was, we could say, perpetually by his side. His arm was there all the time, but he couldn't use it. It was no use to him. It was there from the time it had withered up till the present day, yet he couldn't make any use of it. And it's the same also for us. Before we come to Christ, we are like this. We are not fully functioning. We are using our bodies and we are using our minds, but our spirit lies dormant. Our spirit is idle. Our spiritual side is not in use. We are not living life to the full as God intended you to be, as God designed you to be. He didn't design you to be just body and mind, but you have a soul, you have a spirit that is meant to function, that is meant to be alive to God, that is meant to be in communion with God. All the attention of the natural man before we come to Christ is on our natural side, our earthly side. How can I make my life better in this world? How can I climb up the ladder? How can I see my family doing well in life? How can I take care of my health? These things are important, but we neglect the spiritual side, the heavenly side of us. It's unused. And because the soul is hidden away, we cannot see it. So we carry on life just neglecting it, thinking all that really matters is the body. just living for this life and this world, that's all that matters, just living content with this kind of condition and not realizing, well, God didn't intend you and I to live in this kind of way. The Lord intended us to have a better life, a higher life, which is our spiritual life. And like this man who had his arm by his side, his withered hand by his side all the time. So our souls also are in us. Our spiritual side is in us but we don't realise it because we can't see it. So you think, well that's it, this is all there is to me, what I can see. But within you, you carry about with you every day from the day of your birth to the day of your death, you carry with you that spiritual side of you. Is it alive or is it dead, as it were? He tried, I'm sure, to get this man, I'm sure he tried his best to get his hand healed. He tried to get it, I'm sure he went to see many doctors to get it restored, but nothing worked. Nothing availed for him and he was still lumbered, as it were, stuck with this withered hand. But for us, how strange, maybe because it's hidden away, but we don't do anything for our soul. Our soul is withered, our soul is inactive, and we don't take any time, we don't take any trouble to worry about it, to be concerned about it, to find, to pray, Lord, please revive my soul. But we just live with it, without any concern for restoring it. Her hand was no longer functioning as it should have done. The life had gone from it. It was paralyzed and so are our souls also. It no longer functions as it should do. It no longer communicates with God. It was designed to communicate with God, to lean on your maker, to depend on him, to trust in him, to believe him, to love him, to hear him speaking to you, to speak with him. It's not entirely dead, but it seems as if almost as good as dead. the soul, the withered soul. He was, this man, I'm sure he was aware of his withered hand as he had to live with it. But we are so unaware of our deficiency. We are spiritually paralyzed, but we don't realize it. I'm wonderful. I'm good. We don't say that out loud, but maybe in our hearts we might say, I'm a great businessman. I'm a great student, I'm an excellent student, or I'm excellent at this, and you may be and you may well be and that's good and it's a blessing to have gifts and abilities in this life, but we fail to realise spiritually we are paralysed. We're not restored to the Lord, we're functioning on just half, at half a level at where we really should be. And then I'm sure this man also, this with a withered hand, he must have felt some pity for himself. He must have felt sorry for himself to a certain degree, like we all do if you're sick or you're got some terrible sickness, you would to a certain degree, it's quite human, quite natural, to feel a little bit of pity for yourself that you've ended up in such a condition. And I'm sure this man also, he felt some pity for himself. But we, with our souls, our spiritual souls, we have no pity on ourselves. We don't worry, we don't feel sorry for ourselves that, oh, my soul is not functioning. My life, my spiritual life is not there and we just carry on life. But thank God there is somebody who takes pity on us. There is the Lord Jesus Christ who, like he met this man in the temple, he meets with us and he feels for us. He feels for us in our lost state. He feels for us, and you and me, that our souls are not alive. And he desires to have mercy on us and to bring us back to that place where we can commune with him and be with him. he takes pity upon us. In the Gospel of Luke we have this same account recorded for us and he gives us an extra detail about this man's hand. He says it was his right hand his right hand, his strong hand, his stronger hand, his working hand. This right hand was the one that had become withered. Maybe his writing hand also, as well as his working hand. He couldn't use it to lift anything or push anything or do anything with it. It was just there, dry, withered by his side. If he was a builder, as some people think, he wouldn't have been able to build anymore. If he was a soldier, he couldn't fight anymore. If he was a farmer, he couldn't use his tools anymore. So he was reduced to this somewhat pitiful state where he had he was restricted in what he could do. And of course, the loss of his job would mean the loss of income, which would have an impact on his wife, on his children, on his family. He couldn't support them as he desired. What a great personal loss for this man. What a great personal loss he must have felt just because of this one terrible incident in his life. And what a great loss comes to us when the soul, the better part of us, the stronger part of us is not functioning. How can we carry on life, friends, without it? It's the better part, the stronger part of you and me. It's our spirit, it's our soul when it's revived and active and in communion with God. We are weaker men, we are weaker women, we are weaker boys and girls because our soul is not functioning as it should. We are spiritually disabled. We lose the help of God, blessings from God. We lose God's guidance for our lives. We lose strength in times of trouble. We lose protection from the Lord. We lose answers to prayer. We lose protection from evil if we don't have the Lord. But a believer, somebody who has come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and trusted in Him and depends on Him. His soul is active again. He has the help of God to overcome his anger, his pride, his jealousy, the evil that he feels within him. God gives him help to overcome these things. The soul, that life of communion with the Lord by His Spirit helps them to overcome He has helped to love others as he never has done before. Before it was all me, me, me. Now the soul is active and he thinks about, what can I do for that person? Let me take some time to go and visit that person. Let me say a word here for this person. Why is he doing that? Why is he so changed? Because the Lord has worked in his heart. He's come to know God's love for him, given him strength and power in his soul to love other people. He never did that before. She never did that before. But they do it now because God's love is active and working within him, moving him, stirring him to not live for himself but for other people as well. But the unbeliever is on his own. He has only his own strength to depend on. He doesn't have the help of the Lord. And so how he struggles, Surely, people don't realise, I think, the power of anger. People say, I lost my temper, don't they? They say, I can't control it, I lost it. Again and again these things are showing to you and me that the forces or the sin that is within us is strong, it's powerful, it's not neutral, it's not controllable without the Lord's help. We need the Lord's help. We need to be spiritual men and spiritual women before we can overcome those sins. Impatience, pride, all these things are too strong for us. And you will fail if you fight them in your own strength. Again, in China, I often hear people saying to me, when we talk to them about believing in the Lord, I believe in myself, they say. Well, what they mean is, I trusted myself, as you know, to succeed in life and to get my way in life and I will be successful. Well, they're very young and it's when they go on in life you realise that life doesn't always work out the way that you want it to. But if we are those who believe in ourselves, then It never leads to a true victory. We cannot get victory over our anger and pride and envy. These really are too strong for us without the Lord's help. Well, the Pharisees were watching Jesus to see if he would heal on the Sabbath day in verses three and four. And Jesus said unto the man which had the withered hand, stand forth. And he said unto them, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day or to do evil? to save life or to kill, but they held their peace. So Jesus asked them this question and he was emphasizing to them and to us the need of doing good on the Sabbath day, the Lord's day as we have it now, of saving life. But the Pharisees, they were doing the exact opposite at this time. They were there trying to kill, looking for reason to trap and trap Christ and then to kill him in the synagogue, in the house of God. They were doing these things. The exact opposite. Jesus in a way points out their sin. They were plotting to get evil, plotting evil, plotting to get rid of Jesus, plotting to kill him. But he is saying it's the Sabbath principle. On the Sabbath day we should do good. and not evil. And it's a good principle also for us, how are we to spend the Lord's day? How do we spend the time, this day, one day that he's given us, we spend it for him and for his glory and helping and doing things, doing good, especially spiritual good for other people. Well, Jesus said to this man, we read in verse five, step forward. And we read, when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, stretch forth thine hand, and he stretched it out, and his hand was restored, whole as the other. The Lord Jesus in Arethesis, it's like his two emotions are inside of him. On one he is angry with the Pharisees because of their sin, And at the same time, we read that he is grieved with them because of the hardness of their heart. Even for the Pharisees, even for these who are out and intent on killing them. He's angry with them because they're not receiving him, believing him, and acting in such a way. But at the same time, he's grieved and feels, even for them, because they cannot see, they cannot perceive who he is. and what he came and intended to do. How insensible these men had become to compassion for other people and instead were only concerned with themselves. And here we see Jesus commanding this man with a withered hand, stretch out your hand, do something. This was something that It's impossible. Maybe he thought, how can I stretch out my hand? But the Lord was telling him, stretch out your hand. And as he put forth the effort, God did the rest. I'm sure he must have thought, well, many times, Lord, I've done this. I've done this. Try to stretch out my hand. It's never worked. I've tried a hundred times, maybe two hundred, three hundred times to do it, but it's never worked. It's always still been paralyzed. But now, at the Lord's word, he stretches out his hand. It was his duty to obey, and he did so, and he obtained healing from the Lord. It's it's also for us the Lord gives us commands even and commands us to do things and we shouldn't say well I have no strength. I can't do it. He will give you the strength. I can't repent. I can't believe he will give you the faith to believe. He will give you the strength to believe as you go towards Him, as you pray and seek Him. How can your soul become active again? How can it become alive again to God? Do as the Lord Jesus tells you to do. Seek Him Pray to him, ask him for forgiveness. Ask him to give you a new life. Ask him, Lord, come and activate my soul again. So long I've lived without you. So long I've been in this world, just living for this world, without God, without your spirit and his influences, and all that I've thought about is just what I can see. Come Lord, come and activate my soul again. Come and bring it alive again. Read his word. As we heard even earlier, read his word where he reveals himself. Come and place yourself in the church where you can hear his word. You can hear the gospel here every week. Come and hear. Place yourself in the position where the Lord can reach out to you and speak to you, where you can hear preaching that will be directed to you and be of help to you. If you seek Him here with a humble and a right attitude, you will find Him. You will find Him and He by His Spirit will bring alive your soul again. It's so vital even that we read his word and place ourselves in that position where the Lord can speak to us. When you read this passage also we can see that it was costly for Christ to heal this man. He knew that if he healed this man, the Pharisees would rise up even more in their hatred against him. He knew that they would go out and intend to kill him. What should he do? Should he withhold himself? Should he protect himself? Should he keep back from healing this man and preserve his own life? No. He still, because he feels for the man, He feels compassion, he wants to help this man with a withered hand, he wants to heal him, he wants to restore him and bless him and he feels for him in his situation and he reaches out and he touches him. He was not deterred because he knew he was going to get in trouble for it. He knew that his life from then on would be in danger. And it was so. The Pharisees, for some reason, they had their rules about the Sabbath and they really disliked Jesus breaking their rules. It wasn't God's rules. It was their rules they had for the Sabbath day. And they hated him because he did that. But Jesus put himself in a position of danger so that he could reach out to this man. And can't we say the same thing about the cross? When we say, well, the Lord Jesus out of pity and compassion for you, for me, he put himself in the place of danger, he put himself in the position of the cross where he was mocked, where he was ashamed, where he was humiliated, where he was considered as a worm and no man and he was exposed to vitriol and he was exposed to abuse from people. Hold yourself back, would people say. Or like Peter said, Lord it will never happen to you. No, it's going to happen to me. I want to go through this because I have a people I've set my heart on. people who I feel for, whose souls are dead in trespasses and sins, and unless I go through the cross, unless I shed my blood for them, they will never be restored. They will never have eternal life. They will all perish if I don't go to the cross. I must go to the cross." And so he did, at great cost to himself to make a way for us who are undeserving rebels. He didn't go for his best friends. He went for his enemies to the cross. He went for us who rebelled against his word, against his law, who didn't pay attention to his laws. who disregarded Him, who wanted to live without Him, He went to the cross for such people like that, that's you and me, that we may be pardoned. And on that cross, as you know, He took upon Himself the punishment for our sins. And God laid upon Him the punishment of all His people, that whoever believes in this Savior and only in this God-appointed Savior, The only appointed Savior, the only one sent from heaven, the only one whom God has sent into this world. The only whoever believes in him will be saved and will have eternal life. Well, this man stretched out his hand because he had faith also in Christ. He had faith in the goodwill of God towards him. He believed the Lord would do him good. He believed that the Lord would restore to use that withered hand of his. And friends, so that you would know in your heart of hearts so that you know in your minds, the Lord intends to do you good. He doesn't intend to do you evil. If only people would realize this, they will come to Him. If you come to Him, His intention is to bless you, to make your life not worse, but better, to improve your life. He said, Jesus said, I've come that you may have life and have it more abundantly. He's not a spoil sport, as people think. He makes your life much more interesting. He makes your life much more useful. He makes your life happier. It's our duty to come to the Lord. He is our Creator. He is our God. He is our Maker. We owe Him our lives. Our souls come from Him. They don't belong to us. We owe our souls to God. We owe our lives to Him. But at the same time, It's also a great privilege for us. It's a benefit for us to give our lives to Christ. This man's life was changed for the better after his encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. He went out of that synagogue a different man to the one who came in. He could once again take up work. He could once again support his family and much, much more. He is restored to a better position, no doubt, in life. The quality of his life was raised to a higher level, and so will yours and mine when we believe in the Lord. Am I saying you have no problems, no troubles? No, no, no. You still have those, but you have the Lord with you. Oh, young people, know that the Lord, the world, we cannot escape from trouble. We cannot escape from problems. Problems will come. Surely as rain comes in the summer in England, troubles will come. But if you have the Lord with you, he will give you grace, he will give you strength for those troubles. No matter what they be, no matter how painful they may be and how troubling they may be, he will never leave you nor forsake you. This man's hand was restored. Life came back into that withered hand. The nerves and the blood cells activated again. It began to move again and feel again. It was made whole again, just like the other hand. And this is what Christ does for our souls. He restores our souls. As the psalmist says, the Lord restores my soul. He brings it back to life by his power. It comes alive again in our fellowship and our communion with God is restored. Or just finally, in verse six, we read, the Pharisees went forth and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him. How they might destroy him. Again, they didn't go out. They should go to a quiet place to repent and pray and ask for forgiveness. Instead they went to collaborate with others, how to eliminate Jesus, how to kill Jesus, how to get him out of their way. They continued to harden their hearts against him. A poor and pitiful man is healed. His withered hand is restored. It should be a cause of great joy, isn't it? Such a wonderful thing the Lord has done in their midst. But instead the Pharisees are angry with Jesus. He's done a good work. But they're furious with him. And it's often like that even today. Jesus takes a young man. He's been an out and out sinner. He's been in the world. He's played around. And Jesus takes a young man or a young woman and changes him and converts him and makes him a good man, we could say, or a good girl, good woman. And what happens? People, the mother and father said, Oh, Johnny, can you go back to the way you were before? Can you go back to the old ways? We don't like you being like a Christian. So often you hear that. But the Lord has changed this person's life and we should rejoice. Here is going to be a better person in the world. One who is going to live for the Lord. One who is going to help, be of help to other people. But instead some people disapprove when changes take place and they want people to return to that pre-converted place. Well finally friends, how about us? These Pharisees went out from the synagogue and they went forth to plot. How about us? How do we go out? When you go out from this place this morning and you say, well I'm a better man, I'm a better woman for being here. Do we allow the things that we have heard, the message of the Lord to work in us? to remain in us or are we forgetful hearers? We're so careful, isn't it, over our mobile phone and so careful of our wallets that we don't lose them. Yesterday I lost my, very carelessly I lost my jacket. In my jacket was my glasses, so I had to go to get some reading glasses. But very careless, I lost it. We take more care, if it was my wallet, I'd make sure I didn't lose my wallet or my mobile phone. But are we so careful over those things? How about the words that we hear from God? Are we careful? What did the pastor preach on last Sunday? And the Sunday before that? What was the midweek message? We have to keep asking ourselves, reminding ourselves these things so that they remain in us. It doesn't happen automatically. When we go out from this place, Can we say, Lord, I'm a better man. I feel I've been helped, spoken to today. Thank you for that message. Help me not to forget it. Help me to remember it. And if there are any here who maybe you don't know the Lord, maybe you haven't yet come to him, today is the day. Today is the day of his salvation. This is the place he can, if you come to him even by faith this morning, know that he intends your good, know that he intends to bless your life, to raise it to a high level and he will bless you as you come to him, trust in him and yield yourself to him. He has never disappointed any. So you ask the other believers who are here, are you disappointed to become a Christian? No one will say, I'm disappointed, the Lord has let me down. He will not disappoint you. But we need him more than he needs us. We need him to make us spiritually alive again. The Lord bless you this morning.