FBC Sunday Evening Service

All right, very good.

Appreciate that nice music before the service began tonight. Hope you had a good afternoon, kept cool, got some rest, and hope you got some rest today.

Thinking about the couple little kids who are out running around all afternoon today in the heat.

Thinking, I'll bet their mom didn't get any rest today, but anyway. Let's begin tonight at number 38 in our supplement book.

We're going to use this tonight and the psalter. Number 38, I run to Christ.

So tonight we'll be looking at the fact that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath.

He is gentle and lowly. I run to Christ.

Let's stand, shall we, as we sing number 38 in the supplement. I run to Christ when chased by fear and find a refuge sure.

Believe in me, his voice I hear, his words and wounds secure.

I run to Christ when torn by grief and find abundant peace.

I too had tears, he gently speaks, thus joy and sorrow meet.

I run to Christ when worn by life and find my soul refreshed.

Come unto me, he calls through strife, fatigue gives way to rest.

I run to Christ when vexed by hell and find a mighty arm.

The devil flees, the scriptures tell, he roars but cannot harm.

I run to Christ when stalked by sin and find a sure escape.

Deliver me, I cry to him, temptation yields to grace.

I run to Christ when plagued by shame and find my one defense.

I bore God's wrath, he pleads my case, my advocate and friend.

Dave Whitmer, glad you guys could be here tonight. Would you lead us in prayer, please? Amen, thank you.

You may be seated. Psalm 99, I want to read together tonight,

Psalm 99. So Jesus is

Lord of the Sabbath and this Psalm begins asserting that the

Lord, notice that's all caps, that would be Yahweh, the Lord reigns.

So Psalm 99. It says, the Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble.

He dwells between the cherubim. Let the earth be moved. The Lord is great in Zion and he is high above all the peoples.

Let them praise your great and awesome name. He is holy. The king's strength also loves justice.

You have established equity. You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the

Lord our God and worship at his footstool. He is holy. Moses and Aaron were among his priests, and Samuel was among those who called upon his name.

They called upon the Lord and he answered them. He spoke to them in the cloudy pillar.

They kept his testimonies and the ordinance he gave them. You answered them,

O Lord our God. You were to them God who forgives, though you took vengeance on their deeds.

Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy hill. For the Lord our God is holy.

In our psalter, number 212, there's a song that goes with this.

Let me look at this again a moment. I'm not sure if this is a familiar tune.

Nope. Kelly says nope. So I didn't think so. I wanted to pick one out. We've got to do this from time to time.

This psalter, probably two -thirds of the tunes in here are from other hymns.

I mean, we use them in other hymns and so forth. The other third are new, are new to us. But you look down at the bottom and it says the music is by Pietro Jan in 1917.

So it's 100 years old. But I don't know that I've heard it. So, Kelly, let's hear it.

The Christmas tune. All right,

I'm glad it went down on that ending. I think the Christmas tune that comes to mind goes up on the ending.

All right, let's try it together. Jehovah Reigns in Majesty. Jehovah reigns in majesty

Between the cherubim The nations tremble at his voice

And shake in fear of him

The Lord is great in Zion's hill

And high above the earth

Let all the peoples praise your name

Of matchless holy worth The mighty king of justice loves

And fairness he ordains

He rules his people righteously And faithfulness maintains

O magnify the Lord our

God Exalt his name with me

In worship at his footstool bow

The holy one is he When priests and prophets call to God Their humble cries he heard

His cloudy pillar marked their way

And they obeyed his word

He sent his judgment for their sins

And pardon flowing free Exalt the

Lord and worship him The holy one is he

There it is, Jezu Bambino, on the right side.

You see that, the title of the tune? At the very bottom of the page? That's what those names are down at the bottom right hand side of a song or hymn.

They're the name of the tune. So, Jezu Bambino. And that is the

Christmas song I was thinking of. Well, I was able to communicate a little with Bob today and Jody is still at Swedish American.

I asked him if he had any idea when she would be getting out and he didn't answer that. So, I guess that means he doesn't know.

So, continue to pray for her. She's allowed only one person to visit,

I guess at a time. So, I think Chris and I are going to be going up there tomorrow late afternoon to see her.

So, pray that we can be an encouragement. Chris will probably go in and visit with her.

So, pray for that. So, let's take a few moments and pray, shall we? Our Father and our

God, we do thank you tonight for the fact that you do reign. We thank you for your majesty, that you reign in majesty.

And we're thankful, Father, that you have so ordained us a great high priest who is in all points, tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

And therefore, we can run to him. And so we do, we run to Christ. We run to him every day. We need to.

And I pray that as we get overwhelmed, as we are defeated, and too often times we fall into sin, we yield to temptation, may we run to Christ, our redeemer, our savior, our friend, our priest.

We do pray tonight for Jodi. Lord, we just ask that you would encourage her, encourage

Bob. Lord, these are trying times for them, for that family. And I pray that you'd meet their needs at this time.

Think of others this week and the things they'll be facing. Pray for Kyle and the procedure he has on Wednesday and the sand geogram.

I pray that it would reveal no problems and things would have been cleared up by now.

And just pray that you would meet that need. And again, we also pray for Karen Meyer. She'd get the relief for her back that she needs.

And just pray that you'd meet that condition. Father, we thank you that we can trust you for the needs of our lives every day and our responsibilities as we go about them.

And each one here in this room tonight has some different facet of responsibility.

And you called us to be faithful in those things. I pray that as we learn from your word, we learn about you, learn what you like, what you are like, and we learn how to express

Christ's likeness even in the carrying out of mundane, everyday routines and responsibilities.

Help us to be faithful, we pray. So, bless the remainder of our service tonight, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, before the message tonight, we want to just get right to that because we have this business meeting at the conclusion of the service.

Number 51 in your supplement, your blue book. This is a song of the

Trinity. Oh, breath of God, come fill this place.

Oh, breath of God, come fill this place.

Revive our hearts to know your grace.

And from our slumber make us rise that we may know the risen

Christ. Oh, word of God, so clear and true.

Renew our minds to trust in you.

And give to us the bread of life that we may know the risen

Christ. Oh, love of God, so unrestrained.

Refresh our souls in Jesus' name.

Let us reflect your sacrifice that we may know the risen

Christ. May God the Father, God the

Son, and God the Spirit make us one.

In holiness let us unite that we may know the risen

Christ. Very good. Thank you, ladies.

Appreciate your help tonight. So one of the interesting disputes throughout church history, and probably more in the last 150 years, would have to do with the

Fourth Commandment. So let's turn in our Bibles to Exodus chapter 20 and look at that Fourth Commandment.

I want us to get it in our minds. I want us to get in mind what God said in this

Fourth Commandment. I want to remind you that the Ten Commandments, it's also called the

Decalogue, deca meaning ten, log meaning words, the ten words.

The Decalogue reflects God's moral law. It's timeless. It is not to be altered in any way, shape, or form.

This is different from the ceremonial law, the laws regarding sacrifices and so forth, and the civil law that guided the

Jewish nation and their government, if you will.

This is a moral law. It transcends that. The Fourth Commandment is in verses 8 through 11.

It says, remember this Sabbath day to keep it holy. I want you to notice the parameters that are put on this command.

Remember this Sabbath day to keep it holy. Set it apart. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the

Sabbath of the Lord your God. By the way, what does the word Sabbath mean? Close?

Close? It doesn't mean seven. Sabbath means to cease, and there is rest associated with that, and you'll see that in just a minute.

But the word itself literally means to cease, and you'll see why it's called the

Sabbath here in just a minute. The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, nor you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your strangers within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested, or literally ceased.

He ceased the seventh day. It's not that he was tired and worn out and he needed to rest, but he ceased.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. So that's the fourth commandment.

And as I said, it's interesting how this commandment has created some disputes in the

Christian church. So on the one hand, there are many who will argue that this commandment has no bearing upon the

New Testament Christian at all. There's no such thing as a Christian Sabbath, they argue.

And they say that the reasoning for that is that Jesus never established it.

Jesus never reaffirmed the fourth commandment. The New Testament epistles don't reaffirm the fourth commandment.

So therefore, this fourth commandment is completely to be done away with.

Well, I think one of the problems with that interpretation, that understanding, is that the principle of the

Sabbath predates the giving of the moral law. The Jewish people, the

Israelite people, the Hebrew people, they practiced Sabbath before the

Decalogue was given. And we're not gonna take the time to go through all of that, but nevertheless. And the fact that this is

God's pattern in creation that establishes something. So I don't accept that conclusion that there's no such thing as a

Christian Sabbath. So on the other hand, contrary to that, on the other hand, the majority of Christians throughout the church age, throughout church history, have recognized the necessity of obeying this particular commandment.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, to set it apart. And in that larger majority, what's further interesting is that there are differences of opinion about how to do that.

How do you keep the Sabbath day to make it holy?

How do we do that? Well, without using the term Sabbath, our church's statement of faith, which

I found rather interesting because the statement of faith in our church constitution and so forth is the revised

New Hampshire Confession of Faith. And here's what it says as it appears in our document.

It says, we believe that the first day of the week is the Lord's day and is a Christian institution.

Now what's interesting is that the original New Hampshire Confession of Faith, which was a

Baptist confession of faith, said it is a Christian Sabbath. So they changed that wording.

I think that reflects an idea maybe a hundred years ago when this New Hampshire Confession was revised a little bit for this kind of a purpose that we shouldn't say there's a

Christian Sabbath. Well, anyway, it goes on to say, nevertheless, call it a

Christian institution or a Christian Sabbath, whatever you wanna call it. The confession goes on to say, it is to be kept sacred to religious purposes by abstaining from all unnecessary secular labor and recreation for it commemorates the resurrection from the dead by the devout observance of all the means of grace, both private and public and by preparation for that rest that remains for the people of God.

So this confession of faith was written in the 1800s. Earlier than that is the

London Baptist Confession. It was 1689 confession of faith.

That was a second Baptist confession. And it's even more extensive.

Here's what it says. And the English is a little more out of date for us.

Because it is, after all, 350 years old. They say, the confession says this.

As it is the law of nature that in general a proportion of time by God's appointment be set apart for the worship of God, so by his word in a positive moral and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a

Sabbath to be kept holy unto him which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week and from the resurrection of Christ was changed unto the first day of the week which is called the

Lord's day and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished.

The Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering their common affairs aforehand do not only observe in holy rest all day from their works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employment and recreations but are also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

So those are two outstanding Baptist confessions of faith that affirm the establishment of a

Christian Sabbath. Now, as I kind of indicated a minute ago where the rubber meets the road is how to do that.

You see, questions about what is and isn't allowable whereas the

London Baptist Confession says what qualifies as duties of necessity and mercy.

What are those duties of necessity and mercy? What are allowable, in other words?

Well, all that being said, I don't propose to answer those questions tonight. I don't because of the situation that we run into in the end of Mark chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3.

And what's interesting about these encounters that Jesus has on Sabbath days is that he is confronted and challenged because it seems that he has violated what is allowable on the

Sabbath. And so I want us to look at this passage tonight, this section tonight, because what

Jesus ends up doing here is demonstrating that he is the Lord of the

Sabbath. So not the Pharisees, not some religious leaders in the 1600s, the 1800s, or the 21st century, but Jesus is the

Lord of the Sabbath. So he establishes that fact in these two different episodes.

Episode 1 is at the end of chapter 2, verses 23 through 28. So let's read that passage and then we'll talk about it.

It says, now it happened that he went, Jesus, went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. And as they went with his disciples, began to pluck the heads of grain.

And the Pharisees said to him, look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? But he said to them, have you never read what

David did when he was in need and hungry? He and those with him, how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him.

And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the

Sabbath. Therefore the son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath.

So this begins in verses 23 and 24 with a serious complaint that is provoked by the offensive behavior of Jesus' disciples.

They are working on the Sabbath day. Now, you might not think so. I mean, after all, they just plucked some handfuls of grain and the way that the process works, they pluck this grain and it has hull on it, you know, like husky stuff.

And so they take a handful of that stuff and then they rub it in their hands and get rid of the husk and then they eat it.

Well, that's work to the Pharisee. To the Pharisee. Because what they're doing is harvesting grain.

And then they are winnowing grain and in doing that, they're preparing a meal.

All of that is work. And that is, to the Pharisee, taboo.

But what they're doing in verse 24 by raising this objection is actually revealing a very shallow religion.

Well, they cry out, you know, why are they doing what is not lawful on the

Sabbath? Because remember, when we read the

Fourth Commandment back in Exodus chapter 20, the

Lord said, you know, don't do any ordinary work. Your ordinary Sunday for them,

Old Testament saints, Sunday through Friday work. Don't do that ordinary work. Well, what would be the ordinary work?

It would be going out with your sickle and going through the grain fields and harvesting your grain and getting it all, you know, bundled together in sheaves and all that kind of stuff.

That would be your normal ordinary work for a husbandman, for a farmer.

Well, this isn't ordinary work by any stretch of the imagination. This is not what people do every day.

And in the preparing of the meal, what's the ordinary work of preparing a meal? Well, it's a whole lot more than right?

So what's going on here is not ordinary, but the Pharisees in their shallow religion, they have so dictated in detail what is allowable and what is not allowable even on the

Sabbath. J .C. Ryle in commenting on this, he says what extravagant importance is attached to trifles by those who are mere formalists in religion.

And that's certainly the case for these Pharisees. They are formalists in their religion.

And this is very typical of religious formalists.

They will have very meticulous lists of things that you can and cannot do.

And these kind of religionists are in all kinds of churches, you know, good, bad, and otherwise.

Ryle goes on to say, a man's soul is in a bad state when he begins to regard man -made rites and ceremonies and rules as things of superior importance and exalts them above the preaching of the gospel.

It is a symptom of a spiritual disease. Ah, and indeed it is.

So they raise this serious complaint which Jesus answers with a scriptural response.

We read it in verses 25 and 26. Have you not read this thing about David, what David did? And in bringing up this response and this example, he brings up a well -respected character, individual from their history.

I mean, there is no more respected leader in Israel's history than David was.

And I mean, through David is coming the Messiah. Of course, there he is standing right in front of them, but this is what they knew.

So what better Old Testament character to appeal to than David?

Have you never read what David did? What did David do? Do you remember that incident? David is fleeing from Saul for his life, and he goes to Abiathar the priest.

He and his men are with him. They're hungry. They haven't had anything to eat. They've left in a hurry. They don't even have any weapons with them.

And he goes to Abiathar and says, man, can you give us something to eat? And Abiathar says, well,

I don't have anything I can give you. The only thing I have to give you is the bread that's on the table of showbread.

And Abiathar says, I can give you that if the men have behaved themselves recently.

And David says, well, we have. We have. And Abiathar the priest gives him this bread.

And the thing of it is, the stipulation about that bread in the ceremonial law and in the civil law related to how

Israel is to function, that bread is set apart for the priests. Only the priests are supposed to eat that bread.

But Abiathar gives it to David. And why did he do that? Well, Jesus indicates here.

He gave it to them because they were hungry. David and his men were in need, and they were hungry.

They appealed to Abiathar for help. And Abiathar set aside the normal guidelines for the showbread and shared it with David and his men.

So he reviewed this well -known story where the act of Abiathar was technically wrong, was technically wrong.

But here's the thing, and this is what Jesus is pointing out, wanting them to remember. No one ever attributed wrongdoing to either

David for eating the bread or Abiathar for sharing the bread.

And the point would be that the normal requirements for the non -moral law may be relaxed out of necessity.

Well, Jesus' response here indicates, his whole response here indicates that we are not to be controlled by extra -biblical, extra -biblical rules that somebody else establishes and be controlled by them.

And yet this is what the Pharisees are doing. They're wanting to control Jesus and his disciples by their extra -biblical rules.

So the summary principle that Jesus establishes is in verse 27. And this is an important one to keep in mind, especially as you think about the rubber meets the road on the observing of the

Sabbath. Jesus says, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the

Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man, the point being that the

Sabbath is supposed to be a blessing. It's supposed to be a blessing. It was made for man's benefit.

It was made for the benefit of our well -being, our happiness, physical, spiritual, for our joy.

It was not created to be a burden. It was not something to be loathed.

It was made for the good of our body, our mind, and our soul.

As I reflected on that, I thought about the multitude of articles and books that I've seen in the last few years on the whole subject of rest and how our culture is weighed down by people who don't know what rest is.

They don't know how to rest. When I thought of that, I said, I want to see if I can come up with some things.

So, here's what I did. What did I do? Yeah, I did. It's probably going to disappear on me here.

No, here it is. Here's the first page that came up when I just put in Google Need for Rest.

Need for Rest. First article, Seven Types of Rest You Need to Actually Feel Recharged.

I didn't read any of these articles. I just wanted to see what titles came up. Next one, The Benefits of Resting and How to Unplug in a

Busy World. Now, when you listen to these things, I want you to think about, wait a minute, did

God have an answer for this? The lost practice, none of these are from Christian organizations.

This one is on a website called Becoming Minimalist, and it's titled, The Lost Practice of Resting One Day Each Week.

Next one, Why Rest is So Important and Why You're Not Getting Enough. Next one, Twelve Amazing Benefits of the

Importance of Rest and Sleep. Seven Types of Rest that Every Person Needs. Seven Types of Rest You Actually Need in Your Life.

Rest, Relaxation and Exercise, Mental Health America. Five Reasons Why We Need to Rest.

Seven Types of Rest and How to Get the Kind You Need, etc., etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

And those are just articles. There's also bunches of books on this subject. Why? Why all these articles?

Why all these books on the need for rest? Because we don't know how to do it. Why don't we know how to do it? Because we've ignored this gift that God has given to us.

And Jesus asserts that it's a gift. The Sabbath was made for man.

It's made for our benefit. It's intended to be a blessing. But the second part of his statement asserts that the

Sabbath, while it is a blessing, is not a master. The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the

Sabbath. As if the Sabbath is supposed to be some kind of slave driver that will injure our health, that will be harmful to us.

The whole idea of it is not to interfere with the necessities of life.

That's not the idea of the Sabbath. It's not to be our master. It's to be a blessing.

And all of this leads to Jesus making a stunning conclusion. Not so stunning to us because we know it.

We've heard it. We've been in church. We have the New Testament. But to those disciples who are standing there listening to Jesus to respond to these

Pharisees and to the Pharisees themselves, this was stunning. Jesus says,

Therefore, the Son of Man, which is a code word, a code name for the

Messiah, the Son of Man is also Lord of the

Sabbath. Now the reason that's so stunning is that it is on Mount Sinai that God declared,

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. And he went on to describe the parameters and the guidelines for that.

God did that. Yahweh met Moses on Mount Sinai. And now what is

Jesus saying? He's basically saying, I am the Lord of the

Sabbath. You see what he's saying? I'm God is what he's saying.

This was a not so subtle assertion on Jesus' part of his deity. God set apart the

Sabbath and made it holy. And he's asserting that he is the Lord of the

Sabbath. So on the one hand here in this stunning conclusion, Jesus is declaring that he has the authority to overturn all of these man -made rules that are extra biblical that have gotten people all bound up needlessly.

He has the authority to overturn that. But he's also declaring or showing that he has the compassion to restore the

Sabbath to its original purpose. And what is that purpose? To be a benefit and a blessing to people, to God's people.

All right, so that's one episode on the Sabbath where Jesus asserts his Lordship. The other episode in the first six verses of chapter three also occurred on the

Sabbath. It says, verse one, he entered the synagogue again and a man was there who had a withered hand.

So they watched him closely whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.

And he said to the man who had the withered hand, step forward. Then he said to them, is it lawful on the

Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? But they kept silent.

And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand.

And he stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the

Herodians against him how they might destroy him. All right, now, here, the first episode, the setting was on the

Sabbath day but it was out in a grain field. This setting on the Sabbath day is in church.

It's in the synagogue, all right? And in this setting, there's a man that has a pitiful malady.

His hand is withered, verse one tells us. I'm not sure if you've ever had exposure to someone in this kind of a condition.

I remember as a kid, I can't remember what grade it was, one of the kids in my class had this very condition.

He had one arm that was just, it was like 15%, 20 % of the size of his other arm as normal hand and it was unusable.

He couldn't really use it. It just like stuck there. It was a very pitiable situation and this is the plight of this guy, all right?

But this pitiful malady then brings out in church, okay, in the synagogue, it brings out a perverse malice on the part of these

Pharisees. Look at their malicious observation, malicious observation.

Beginning of verse two says, they watched him closely. They watched him closely.

Speaking of Jesus, why were they watching him? Were they watching him to learn?

Learn something from him? No. Were they watching him to grow in their faith, in their understanding of God and what

God is like? No. Were they watching him so that they might mature in their faith?

Were they watching him so that they might, even so that they might get to enjoy a miracle? No. No, they were watching him maliciously.

Maliciously. Then you see, as the statement continues, they watched him closely.

Whether he would heal on the Sabbath. And this, this expresses their malicious rejection.

Here's what I mean by that. They were watching him to see if he would heal. Here's the deal.

They knew he could. They knew he could. They knew that this man, this one before them, here,

Jesus, they knew that he had the ability to heal this man.

And yet they rejected him. They rejected his identity. They rejected his authority.

They just flat out rejected him. This was a malicious rejection. And then comes their malicious intention.

The whole purpose for their observation, to see if he would heal, so that they might have something to accuse him of.

That's it. Malicious intention. Again, J .C. Ryle on this passage, he says, the very men, get this, the very men who pretended to such strictness and sanctity.

Oh, we are very concerned about strictly being obedient to the law because we want to be holy.

This is these guys. The very men who pretended to such strictness and sanctity in little things were full of maliciousness and angry thoughts in the midst of the congregation.

See, okay, this is, okay, so I've been in the ministry for 41 years. And I know,

I know of many occasions in church on Sunday morning,

I'm preaching on Sunday morning, and here in church on Sunday morning, when we're supposed to be concerned about loving

God and loving one another and learning about God and learning about Christ and growing in grace and knowledge of Christ and all the rest of that stuff.

I know that there have been in the last 41 years, people sitting in pews, looking at other people sitting in other pews with this kind of malice.

And at the same time, those individuals were just, they were just very meticulous about dotting the

I's and crossing the T's to make sure that they were also very, very holy.

Do you get the problem there? All the behavior, the outward behavior is meticulously guarded, but down in the heart, there is malice and anger and hatred toward a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ sitting across the aisle.

This is incongruous. This is the Pharisees, right? This is exactly what they're doing.

A perverse malice. Well then, Jesus knows this, and that leads him to make a provocative move in verses 3 and 4.

And he presents this afflicted man almost as like a public spectacle.

He calls the man to step forward. So it'd be like, you know, here in this room, guys maybe in the back, because he's feeling unworthy.

He's a little bit to be kind of avoided because he's so different. He's kind of shrinking back.

And Jesus wants to bring him front and center, making a public spectacle, not ridiculing, not belittling him at all.

But he wants everybody to be able to see what happens to this man. So he presents this afflicted man, and in so doing, he confronts the perverted men, the perverted men, and gives a public scolding to them in verse 4.

He said to them, these Pharisees who were watching to see if he's going to heal.

They might have something to accuse him. He says to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?

Is it lawful to save life or to kill? Jesus is essentially saying here is, here's this guy, his hands all crippled up.

Is it lawful for me to do good to this man on the Sabbath day?

Or is it lawful for me instead to do evil and let him be when

I could heal him, when I could help him? Which is a lawful thing for me to do. What they were trying to say is that the law demands that you do evil by not healing this man, you see.

So Jesus is confronting them. Again, Ryle asked the question, was it more sinful to restore a person to health on the

Sabbath than to plot murder and nourish hatred against an innocent person as they were doing?

That's the second part of his question. Jesus knew their heart. He knew what they wanted to do.

He knew that they wanted to get rid of Jesus. Jesus knew this. They'd love to kill him on the

Sabbath day, in church. Seriously, is this lawful?

Jesus is asking. So this is a provocative move and then it leads him in verse five to this profound miracle as a result of it all.

He looked around on them with anger, being grieved. You have the mixed emotions on the part of Jesus.

He is both righteously angry and deeply grieved. He's rightly angered over the callousness of their heart and their distortion of, the distortion of God's law.

This rightly angers him. But he's also deeply grieved over the hardness of their hearts that they wouldn't have enough compassion for this guy that knowing

Jesus is there and can heal him that they don't want him to do it. What hardness of heart.

And this is the impetus behind what he does. And look at the method he employs in healing the man.

He tells him to do something that's absolutely impossible. All his life his arm has been crippled up and Jesus tells him to do something impossible.

Stretch out your hand and he does.

And this is the effect of the miracle. It's a complete restoration. He stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other.

Can you imagine this man looking at his hands and looking at Jesus and looking at his hands and what about Jesus' disciples?

They've seen him do miracles before so this wasn't so startling to them but it was still startling.

All of a sudden the man's hand is completely restored. And what about the Pharisees? How about the Pharisees?

How are they responding to this thing? The man does something that's absolutely impossible to do by the power of the one who told him to do it,

Jesus. How do they respond to this? They see the very same thing and instead of looking at his hands and looking at Jesus in awe and wonder verse 6, the

Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him.

It leads to their pernicious mischief. Their pernicious mischief.

They're enemies. Enemies of Jesus. And these two disparate groups the

Pharisees and the Herodians do you realize that's like oil and water mixing oil and water.

The Pharisees meticulously concerned about all these extra biblical rules and regs to make sure they don't defile themselves in any way and the

Herodians are the worldly ones. They're the worldly ones but they find a common bond.

They want to get rid of Jesus. Why? Why? Because he exercised his lordship over the

Sabbath. Jesus is Lord. And when it comes to the

Sabbath what he clearly communicates here is that the

Sabbath is made to be a blessing for us, his people. And works of necessity works of mercy are more than allowable.

They should be done on the Sabbath. The Lord of the Sabbath said so even by his own example.

So our Father and our God we thank you that our Lord Jesus has reaffirmed the value and the importance of this special day.

We're thankful that he disavowed the religionists that would make a day that's supposed to be a blessing nothing but a burden and a blight.

We're thankful for the release from that. And I pray Father that we as your people

New Testament believers followers of Jesus that we would appreciate the gift of this

Lord's Day that you have given to us. May we grow to love it more and more grow to appreciate the benefit and the blessing that it is to us physically spiritually in every way.

And this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. So there's a song in our hymnal.

I just want to sing one stanza of it just as asserting that Jesus is

Lord. Let's see the number is number 191.

191. I'll sing it first and the last.

Let's stand together and sing this and then we'll have our quarterly business meeting.

Jesus is Lord. Jesus is

Lord. Let angels bow before him.

Jesus is Lord. Heaven and earth adore him.

Kings and their kingdoms quickly pass away.

But Jesus is Lord. Let all the earth obey.

And the last. Jesus shall reign. He is the

King of Heaven. Jesus. You shall see him.

Hear his blessed voice. For Jesus shall reign.