…and his hand was completely restored...

Series: …AND… | The Movement of God and His People through Mark
Title: …and his hand was completely restored...
Text: Mark 2:23 - 3:6

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you remember the other week, I mentioned that when I come across Pharisees or scribes or teachers of the law, I don't think rationally when I see them. I tend to not have good feelings. There are many things in my life that I am not rational about, and I do not have good feelings towards. One of them is the New England Patriots. I am a Colts fan. I want nothing good to happen to the Patriots. And so today, Go Hawks. I hope it is an embarrassing Sunday for the New England Patriots. Um music. Music from Nickelback. I can't stand them. They are the worst of that era. If you want to have a logical conversation with me about Nickelback, it's not happening. It's not happening. I said I'm not logical, right? So I don't have a logical defense on why their music is terrible, but it is. So, but the last thing, okay, it's the same thing with the Pharisees, right? I read the Pharisees, my eyes narrow, my fists go up, I am ready to be against them. There is no room for grace or understanding with the Pharisees. I don't, I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's right. And so, since they are not just a major player in today's story, but the New Testament overall, it's probably a good idea to understand just a little bit about them. So join me for this fun ride. Okay, who are the Pharisees? There are four religious groups at that time with Jesus. There were the Pharisees, there were the Sadducees, there were the Essenes, and there were the Zealots. Okay, we are going to leave the Essenes and the Zealots to the side today, not talking about them. The Pharisees, they were the experts in what was called the Tanakh. Okay, the Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible. So up on the screen, you are going to see three, three descriptions. So the Tanakh is actually the acronym T in K made into a word, Tanakh. All right, that is the Hebrew Bible. The T is for the Torah. That is the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Torah. Then there is the Neveim. Okay. The Neveim are the prophets. And then Ketuvim, that is the writings. All right. So the Hebrew Bible and what we know as the Old Testament, that is actually all the same books. It's all the same content. It's actually just rearranged. It goes in a different order, but it's all the same books. And the Pharisees said, this is the most important thing. The Sadducees, they said, the Torah, the written word of God, that's the most important thing. Anything that came after the Torah, so the writings and the prophets, they were good, they were helpful. They were not on the same plane as importance as the Torah. But the Pharisees, oh, they loved all of it. They were all about the Tanakh. In fact, they did stand apart from the Sadducees in another way because the Sadducees, they were the religious elite. All right. They had money, they had heritage, they had this bloodline that went back and they carried themselves as above all the others. The Pharisees, they were the people's religious leaders. All right. They were not about authority being passed down through blood. In fact, they said, if you know the text, if you believe it, and if you live by it, that is a true Israelite. These are the people that we want to see raised up. And so the Pharisees, well, they were really about God's word. That sounds pretty okay, right? Maybe even familiar. Okay. An important thing to know is that they were very, very, very concerned about people living by the Tanakh. Okay? Their motivation was this. If the people of Israel followed every bit of the law, they lived by the Tanakh, then they would be ritualistically pure, and the Messiah would come.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

If everybody did what they were supposed to, the Messiah would come. But there is a problem.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

People kept disobeying a lot. They were not following the Tanakh. And since they were not following, the Messiah wasn't coming. This is how they understood it to be. Okay, so imagine that my fist is the Tanakh. This is the thing that needs to be protected. This is the thing that needs to be followed. And so what the Pharisees said was if Israel follows the Tanakh, my fist, let's put a bubble around it. Let's put a bubble around it, and we will protect the inside, the fist, the law, the Tanakh, we'll put a bubble around it of extra rules and things that help provide clarity for what's inside with the fist. So as long as people are following our extra rules, then they are definitely following what's inside the law. Right? So their focus was on keeping the law. And if they made a whole bunch of extra rules, then the interior would be kept. That's a good thing. Except now, everybody is struggling not to just follow the law, but all of the man-made rules around it. That's a problem. That's a problem. Okay, so now do we understand a little bit about our people here, these Pharisees? Yes? No? Great. Doesn't matter. Okay, chapter two, verse 23. Scripture will be above me. If you need to pull it up on your phone, please do. Mark chapter two, starting in verse 23. One Sabbath. This is uh Mark language for it happened at one time and it was on the Sabbath when? Doesn't matter. One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields. Which grain field? It doesn't matter. We're moving along. Things are fast with Mark. They're moving through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some of the heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? Why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? Right? The disciples are walking and they're hungry. Like a child walking by a full apple tree. Grab an apple, have that, enjoy the sustenance, right? But here's the problem, according to the Pharisees, the disciples are making an effort to get food on the Sabbath, and the act of getting food that was not already prepared the day before was a no-no. That was considered work. And since the disciples now are doing work, they're tattling to Jesus. They're tattling to Jesus, those your people are screwing up. Now remember, it's more than just Jesus get your people in line. It's an accusation leveled at Jesus, their rabbi. Jesus, you are a contributing reason that these people are unclean. You aren't following our strict food laws, and in fact, Jesus, you are keeping the Messiah from coming. I heard the laughter. It's ironic. It is ironic. But do you ever get mad at Jesus for his people not doing what you want them to? Like, there's a certain image that you have in your mind that other followers of Jesus should look like. And when they don't, well then they become those people, and you just get angry. And you actually are asking somewhere deep inside, Jesus, why don't you care about this as much as I do? Come on, Jesus. Okay, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me. Let's go on. Verse 25. He answered, Have you never read what David did? Now, side note, when talking with experts who pride themselves in knowing all of the Tanakh, when you ask them if they haven't read a story in there, that's a sick burn. Okay. All right, he answered, Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abby Athar, the high priest, he entered the house of God and he ate the consecrated bread, which is only lawful for the priests to eat. He also gave some to his companions. Jesus uses the scriptures that they honor above all to point out their error. Have they actually lifted up David, admired him and his actions, and yet, for the exact same thing, looked at the people who were all around them and accused them of doing the unlawful thing? Are they interpretive hypocrites? Right? Like that's like that's like a level up from normal hypocrites for people who pride themselves in their interpretation. Verse 27, and he, Jesus, said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. All right, so we covered the Sabbath. We covered rest back in September. As a recap, this is God's gift to humanity. It was a day of rest. It was a blessing to all people so that they could rest and not work. And then they could know that God cared for them, that he is caring for them, and that he would care for them. This was the beauty of the Sabbath. It was always for us to grow in love with and gratitude to God. And the Pharisees had swapped it. They had made the Sabbath like this, it was like a thing that had an insatiable appetite. And that all of Israel had to do enough good, do enough right, follow it just so, so that the insatiable appetite of the Sabbath could be pleased. Now Sabbath was something that they were working for, not that was a blessing for them. The Pharisees thought: if we can impact the Israelites' behavior just enough, then the Sabbath is going to be followed, right? So they are going to work harder, they are going to shame people, they are going to manipulate the masses just so that the law can be fulfilled. We're going to do a bad thing so that a good thing happens. This is backwards. Jesus saw their desire for power. They'd practically put themselves in the seat of power and then looked at all of Israel as a means to continue to keep the power over the people. And to that power grab, Jesus said, quite simply, Sabbath is not about you. Sabbath is about me. I am Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus was the giver of all good things, and Sabbath was his to give as well, because he's Lord of the Sabbath, then all of the thanks and the gratitude that comes from the Sabbath is going back to Jesus. So he is the recipient of the good of the Sabbath, not the Pharisees, not the religious leaders. In Jesus' way, Sabbath remained a good to give and a grace to experience. The Sabbath was about Jesus. We'll come back to this later. Jesus was the Sabbath. Now, before we all point and laugh and judge the Pharisees too quickly, does anybody else have a tendency to cut God out of the process for our spiritual actions? All right, let me take this out of the land of the hypotheticals and make it real awkward. It is easy to see in the Bible that reading it and knowing God, that is a good thing. To this end, we've actually encouraged everybody to read the book of Mark, all 16 chapters every week during our Mark series, right? So we are pro-Bible here at West Village. However, have you ever heard something like this? Well, good Christians read the Bible twice a day. If you want to be a good Christian, you too should read the Bible two times a day. Right? So reading the Bible, a good thing. Reading a Bible so that you can know God more and deeper, that's a very good thing. Reading the Bible out of a constant sense of ought and should, and I need a box to check, and I've been told I have to do this to be a good Christian, and so I'm going to, and so now I'm reading the Bible because I have to? Is this getting close to anybody else's heart? Because I'm just letting you know I haven't read the book of Mark every week like I've encouraged everybody. And I feel terrible about it. And then I try to like wedge in time to read the Bible, not because I'm trying to meet Jesus, but because I don't want to tell you all that I failed. And so now I'm trying to hurry up and do the thing without actually meeting Jesus. Jesus invites us to know his word so we can know him. It's all about him. It's all about rest. It's all about Jesus. And if we have made a spiritual thing a thing without God, then we are lost.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

And I stand before you as somebody who has been lost. Mark moves on to another story.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Again, the when, the where, not as important. Verse 1 Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Now some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. The setup that Mark gives us immediately, it does make me sad. Before Jesus or the Pharisees have even said a thing, we can see three things. One, the Pharisees' aim was to catch Jesus unawares in a trap. Two, Jesus, he had this known problem of caring for broken and needy people. Three, the Pharisees eagerly prowled around the broken and the needy individual, like hunters trapping their game. The people who were in need were just a means to an end. My sadness is not because this is like a cat and mouse situation. We're talking about real people who are really suffering and are treated by like pawns for these religious, self-righteous le r leaders.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Makes me sad. Makes me mad a little bit too.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Let's keep reading. Jesus said, verse 3. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, stand up in front of everybody. Jesus stands with the man. Jesus stands with the man underneath the proverbial box that Wiley Coyote has set. Right? And Jesus sees the trap. He sees the pole cord and he walks right under it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Verse 4. And then Jesus asked them, which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

But they remained silent. So the Sabbath is still the focus, like our last story, but the angle is different. Okay. They had already defined what work was. Right? I forgot to mention this earlier. One of the things that the Pharisees did is they knew that the center of the law said, You can't work on the Sabbath. Well, what's work? If we don't know what work is, how can we know if we're working on the Sabbath? And so they made a lot of new laws about what work was, about how much weight you could lift on the Sabbath, about where, how far you could walk, how many steps was normal, and how much was effort that could be considered work. All right. The Pharisees had that bubble around, had tried to define a lot of things that were not in Scripture. And so one of those things was healing somebody. Making somebody better was performing a miracle, and that fell into work.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

And that was a no-no on the Sabbath. Jesus highlights their hypocrisy.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Pharisees, do you want people to experience the goodness of God or to stay separate from it?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Do you want to model God or do you want to model death?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Is this desire to be law-abiding people so great? Is this so important that you would rather see somebody else who is made in God's image continue in hurt and suffering?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Is that more important to you than someone else? Verse 5. He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

When you read this, do you share Jesus' anger? Can you understand why Jesus was so frustrated by these men? They were willing to treat somebody however they needed to to get what they wanted to in the end. They're going to use anybody however they wanted. It's gross, it's ridiculous, and frankly, it's not as foreign as I would like for it to be.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

I have more in common with the Pharisees right now than I would ever like to admit.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

I can honestly tell you, in the history of me being in ministry, that I have needed spots filled for ministry events. And I have reached out to people that I know are suffering and that are in a bad way, emotionally or spiritually. And I I've reached out to them anyway and said, hey, I need this done. Can you do it? I've been willing to use people to meet my perceived ends. I've done this. And by the way, I want to feel really good about myself and think that's something I haven't done yet at West Village. I bet I have. And if you are listening to this and going, yeah, you have, with me, I I will be right there. Come talk to me so I can own up to it and apologize. But it's not just that. I have interacted with people who are outside, either outside of the faith or living in a way that is outside what God's best is for them. And I have manipulated the conversation so that they know they're in the wrong. Right? It wasn't just good enough to give them the good news. I'm going to invite them towards Jesus. I want to make sure that they know they're wrong and that I had a hand in making sure they knew they were wrong. Trying to manipulate a good end. Yo, I can feel my face getting red up here. Telling you that when I read about the Pharisees, and I, again, it's almost like I had that stone ready in my hand. It's that stone starts getting real heavy. Because I'm realizing that there's a lot more of me and them that I would like.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Do you catch a glimpse of the Pharisees when you look in a mirror?

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Is there a little bit of this that you are realizing in your heart that you too are approaching others as a means to an end? That you are unintentionally, but kind of intentionally, willing to put somebody else under you, beside you, or beneath you to get where you think you need to go.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

What do you see in that mirror?

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Okay, verse 5, we jump back again. He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts and said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. I can't remember what version it was that I read. One of the older versions, it said that he he stretched his hand out and it was completely healed, just like the other one. Wholeness was restored. Verse 6, then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. I'm not going to spend time about the fact that the Pharisees were so frustrated at Jesus that they went to the Roman party to try to get to what they wanted another day.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

We have been walking on a dangerous tightrope through this message.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

All right. These are the bad guys. Right? And if you've seen yourself a little bit in this, it's like these are the antagonists, the antithesis to Jesus. I don't want to be them. I don't want to look like them. And yet I have seen myself in this.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Have you seen bits of yourself too? I also want to show you the other people that are in this story.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

The disciples of Jesus, they were hungry and in need of sustenance, and they received the goodness of the Sabbath. They were in need. God met their need. There was a broken man with a shriveled hand. He listened to Jesus. He obeyed and he found healing in him. Everybody today, all parties in the story, save Jesus, everybody was in need. Everybody. But only some turned to see Jesus who he was. He was the good news. He was the Messiah. He was the promised king who came to make all things new. He was the Sabbath that they had all been yearning for.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

The Sabbath wasn't to be earned, it was given. And the Messiah came. Because he was the Sabbath. The kingdom was near.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

See, here's the beautiful thing. Jesus knows my need, Jesus knows your need, he knows all of our need. And he sees the need and the brokenness, and he still invites us to come to him. To come to him in our brokenness and find healing, to find wholeness.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Jesus is the Messiah that has been long promised. He has brought the kingdom. Our King is here. And the question is, will we go to Him? So I have two questions.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Where have you felt that you have seen more of the Pharisees in your communication, in your actions, or your belief? Where do you need to confess those things to Jesus and repent? Okay, so confession is I am doing, I have done the bad thing. Repentance is I am turning away from the bad thing and I am walking towards you, Jesus. Good actions moving forward, okay? Confession and repentance. Where do you need to confess and repent of these ways that you see yourself like the Pharisees? And for others of you, I have spent a lot of time talking about the Pharisees, and you are very confidently saying, that's not me.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Good. But my guess is you've also probably seen there's some need.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

And there's some brokenness in you. Jesus is the Sabbath, the rest that we all need. Healing is only available in him. So what where is brokenness and need in you? Where do you need to turn from your sin towards Jesus? Where do you what do you need to confess? What do you need to repent to come to him as Lord and Savior?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

And as a community, I want to encourage you.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Jesus has called us to himself. He's asked us to chase after him. And if you have called him Lord, if you have said, Yes, Jesus, I need you. You are God. I want to repent of my sin and come to you for wholeness. God is actually working out this kingdom goodness through you. And a way that we can do that is through prayer. By praying for people who don't yet know Jesus. We talked about this the other week, about finding people where you live, learn, work, and play who don't yet know Jesus and just asking them, how can I pray for you? And maybe you're uncomfortable praying for that person right then. But maybe you would be bolstered praying for them with others. Every Tuesday from noon to one at our church offices, we pray together. We pray for people who don't yet know Jesus. I want to challenge you. Come and be a part of that time. But you can't act on that one right now. So here's what we're going to do we're going to take a moment to reflect. Those two questions that are on the screen above me, hopefully still. Where have you seen an area in your life that you need to confess and repent that looks like kind of how our Pharisees have? Where's an area in your life where you need to confess and repent and turn to Him for healing for your brokenness?