Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church on this first Sunday of a new year.

Please take your Bibles and turn in them with me to Mark 3, Mark 3. After taking a break from this book for the Advent season, we’re going to be resuming our study of the book of Mark.

For some of those who may have missed or just to refresh all of our memories, lets look at where we’ve been.

Mark doesn’t waste time introducing his point to his Gospel.

He tells us of the messenger who would come before Christ in the person of John the Baptist.

We are given seats at court as Christ is crowned at His baptism and the Lord proclaims His love for His Son.

We then get to witness the demonstration of His kingship and power as He defeats temptation in the desert.

Then Christ comes preaching His first message

Jesus has some initial success in His ministry as we see Him call His first disciples on the Sea of Galilee and then He goes into the synagogue at Capernaum and teaches and heals a man with an unclean spirit.

There are some more healings later that evening and then He embarks on a speaking tour throughout Galilee.

But it is not all success.

Early in His speaking tour we see the healing of a leper that results in Christ not being able to enter into the towns.

Shortly after returning to Capernaum, Jesus troubles intensify as we see a series of conflicts begin with the religious authorities.

First we see the roots of the conflict as Christ puts Himself on the same level of God by pronouncing the sins of a paralyzed man forgiven and then, to prove that He has the power to forgive sins, He tells the man to pick up His mat and walk.

The face of the conflict emerges when calls the tax collector Levi to be one of His disciples and then is the guest of honor at a banquet at Levi’s home.

There is a clash of traditions and their bearing on our religious practice as Christ is accosted regarding His disciple’s fasting practices.

The He is challenged by the Pharisees regarding His allowing His disciples to eat grain on the Sabbath - and not so much in the eating but in the picking and rubbing the grain between their hands it was considered work according to Sabbath regulations that had been put in place by the Pharisees.

So now we come to this morning’s text and we’re going to see the continued conflict between Christ and the religious leaders of the day.

A significant difference in this conflict versus earlier conflicts is that Christ actually precipitates this conflict.

We must understand before we come to this text that His motives for initiating this conflict were not sinful as ours often are but instead motivated by His righteousness and desire for people to understand the true nature of God’s plan for their salvation rather than the perversion that the Jewish system had become.

So with all of that background in mind - let’s turn in our Bibles and look at what this text has to reveal to us about the character of Christ.

This morning we’re going to see the culmination of the conflict through the participation of three characters - the surprised subject, the sympathetic Savior and the sinister

Christ’s claims force us to make a decision - and we will either love Him or we will seek to kill Him.

The Surprised Subject

This passage starts out in the original Greek saying “and entering again into the synagogue” hinting that this conflict sequence that we’ve been looking at will now come full circle back at the synagogue in Capernaum.

Christ returns to the location where He had previously taught with such power and healed a man with an unclean spirit without the outrage and protest that His later actions had caused.

And to the location where the conflict had kicked off as a result of His pronouncing the sins of a paralyzed man forgiven - placing Himself in the role of God and offending the religious leaders.

This particular morning there was a man in the synagogue with a withered hand.

Just a simple statement about an anonymous man who woke up that morning to attend synagogue just like he had on so many mornings before.

But this one would be decidedly different.

The Greek word for shriveled here is ξηραινω and it was used to describe dead plants that have dried up and wasted away.

This suggests that his hand was neurologically lifeless or incapacitated in some manner.

Tradition tells us that this man was a stone mason and because of this malady was unable to work.

So most likely he was a beggar and at the end of his rope socially, financially, emotionally.

The only place he might have felt normal, the way that he once had, and where his injury wouldn’t have impaired him was at Synagogue.

So he had woken up that morning and headed off to the synagogue just for an opportunity to feel normal again.

Unlike the people who had crowded outside the door of Peter’s home or the leper that had fallen at His feet, this man did not come seeking to find Jesus.

Mark doesn’t tell us that he asks to be healed.

He doesn’t even speak at all in any of the narratives of this event.

Some commentaries intimate that he may have been a plant, sent in by the Pharisees to accomplish their own purposes but I don’t see any indication of that from our text.

In most other cases where the Pharisees send someone to challenge or to try and trap Jesus the Gospel writers let us know that tidbit of information, so I think it unlikely that this is the case here.

Whether he was just there as he normally would have been or he had been planted there he was about to have an encounter with Christ that he wasn’t expecting.

But there was a group of people there who were very anxious to see what Christ would do.

How unlike the four men who brought the cripple to Jesus and ripped open the roof of a house so that they could get him in front of Jesus, these looked on with a more sinister motive.

They were just lying in wait for Jesus to act.

Mark tells us that they were watching Him closely to see whether He would heal the man.

Luke tells us more about their motives

After all they had probably been witnesses to what Christ did on that first day of teaching in the synagogue when He cast out an unclean spirit.

And these were not light matters that they were seeking to charge Him with.

When He pronounced the man’s sins forgiven in Mark 2:5 they charged Him with blasphemy.

Now they are seeking to find Him desecrating the Sabbath observation.

Both of these were capital offenses in ancient Israel.

When a man is found gathering sticks on the Sabbath day

So these men were lying in wait to catch Jesus and be able to have enough to accuse Him.

They are like the wicked ones spoken of in Psalm 37:32 and Jeremiah 20:10.

Those who should have been the first to recognize the Messiah and should have been leading the people to Him instead are at least laying in wait for Him or at worst laying a trap for Him so they can condemn Him.

Even though He knows their hearts and the reasons behind their actions, Christ initiates the confrontation.

The Sympathetic Savior

Jewish synagogues were set up with benched around the walls and mats on the floor for people to sit on.

So when Jesus says to this man “Stand before us” He is literally making him the center of attention.

Imagine how uncomfortable it would have been for this man with this disability to be pulled up in front of everyone - he just wanted to come to the synagogue to feel normal and fit it for a while and he’s being singled out for his disability.

This is a good demonstration of how Christ will sometimes put us in uncomfortable situations to make a point - and that point may not even have anything to do with us but instead it may only be to reach another person.

And we may not even know who it is.

Christ could have healed this man after synagogue or He could have just sat down next to Him and healed him quietly.

But Christ chose not to do that.

This story is not about this man.

His benefits are ancillary, his healing supports the primary action to challenge and expose the false views and system put in place by the Pharisees.

They, as much as the Romans, held the nation of Israel captive.

The held them captive to a rigid system of religious practices that required strict obedience to measure up to their self-imposed standards.

That was oppressive in nature and was designed to guarantee the continued power of the Pharisees because they maintained the rules and set the standards.

In fact they were worse than Rome because this was a captivity of a spiritual nature.

They focused on the outward actions and appearances rather than the heart.

This was completely contrary to the way God looks at man

It was a standard that they couldn’t even maintain or bear

And it wasn’t enough to provide for ultimate justification and satisfaction

And so here is the moment they have been waiting for.

Jesus has set this man out in the middle and appears ready to heal him.

He stands him out in the middle for everyone to see.

They couldn’t have planned it any better.

He was going to give them everything they wanted.

But instead of healing him, Jesus turns His gaze on them.

It must have been incredibly frustrating to try and trap someone who was always one step ahead of them.

Christ knew their hearts and knew what they were trying to do so He turns it back on them.

Matthew’s rendition of this story has the Pharisees asking Jesus the question

Jesus responds with a stellar argument.

When I was young I spent many days on my uncle and aunt’s farm in rural Ohio.

They raised cows - and there was very little that wouldn’t be done to help a sick cow.

And here Christ asks the Pharisees whether they wouldn’t do the same for a sheep.

And the thing was that their standards for the Sabbath allowed for a person to help their livestock out of a pit even if it were not a life threatening situation but they would not allow one to raise a finger to help a sick or destitute person unless they were in mortal danger.

And assistance rendered to a person would be considered work.

Jesus exposes that in the Pharisee’s view the treatment of livestock was more important than the treatment of a person.

Mark has Jesus posing the question to the Pharisees and having done so He throws them on the horns of a dilemma.

He asks “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save a life or to kill?”

The Pharisees knew the law of the Old Testament very well and they knew that it was never lawful to do evil or to kill.

But is it evil to know the good that you should do and withhold it because of a manmade tradition on a certain day?

James would later clarify this principle in his epistle

By the Pharisee’s definition and traditions it would be sin to know the good thing and do it.

They would actually be guilty of transgressing the Old Testament law by knowing the good thing and failing to do it.

Jesus taught, and James later clarified, that love, compassion and sympathy for neighbor should compel one to act in spite of manmade tradition.