HEALING OF THE DROPSY MAN
Lk. 14:1-6
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: COLLATERAL
1. An Amish man wanted a loan for $500. He approached his local banker. The banker looked at the head teller & winked!
2. "What have you got for collateral?" queried the banker. "What is collateral?" "Something of value that would guarantee the loan.”
3. “Do you have you any vehicles?" "Yes, I have a 1949 Chevy pickup." "How about livestock?" "Yes, I have an old horse." Finally the banker decided to make the $500 loan.
4. Several weeks later the Amish man was back in the bank. He pulled out a roll of bills, "Here's the money to pay the loan," he said, handing the entire amount including interest.
5. "What are you going to do with the rest of that money?"
"Keep it in my pocket." "Why don't you deposit it in my bank?" he asked. “What does ‘deposit’ mean?" said the Amish.
6. "Well, you put the money in our bank and we take care of it for you. When you want to use it you can withdraw it."
7. The Amish man looked at the head teller and winked, and said, "What do you have for collateral?"
B. TEXT
14 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 2 There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body [KJV – dropsy]. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” 4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. 5 Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child[some mss, “donkey”] or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” 6 And they had nothing to say.
C. THESIS
1. The healing of this man is mentioned only here and is almost universally overlooked by expositors because on the surface it doesn’t seem to have anything noteworthy about it.
2. But a careful examination shows it to be one of the most interesting events and unusual healings in the Bible.
3. So let’s take a look at the “Healing of the Dropsy Man.”
I. SITUATION AT THE PHARISEES HOUSE
A. THE MAN’S ILLNESS
1. DROPSY: An old term for the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water. The causes of the swelling could be:
a. EDEMA is often more prominent in the lower legs and feet toward the end of the day as a result of pooling of fluid from the upright position. (Some of us have swelled middles!)
b. CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE – when the heart is laboring under strain, the body surrounds it with a sack of fluid.
c. KIDNEY, LIVER, or other organ FAILURE – when the internal organs can’t process the bodily fluids, they back up and cause swelling.
2. So whatever this man had, it wasn’t something new; he’d had it for a while. He was a seriously ill man. He was a man who was very swollen and obviously sick.
B. THE PLOT
1. Several things about this incident point to the fact that this was a plot to entrap Jesus. It was…
a. AT A PHARISEE’S HOUSE JESUS WAS INVITED.
b. IT WAS A SABBATH.
c. A VERY ILL MAN WAS PLACED IN FRONT OF JESUS.
1). He was not there by accident; this was not a public place. The proximity of the man to Jesus at this meal indicates that he was deliberately placed opposite or near Jesus at the table.
2). The illness was so serious that Jesus couldn’t have failed to notice it. It was obviously a set up. Either Jesus was going to have to wrongfully ignore the man or He was going to have to “break the Sabbath” by healing him.
d. JESUS WAS BEING CAREFULLY WATCHED.
2. These 4 facts prove that there was a plot afoot here to entrap Jesus into committing an infraction against the Jewish laws so that they could accuse Him. Jesus fearlessly took the bait.
II. JESUS DEFENDS SABBATH HEALING/ACTIONS
A. INSTANCES OF SABBATH VIOLATION
1. Disciples PICKING GRAIN on the Sabbath, Mt. 12:1-8; Mk. 2:23-28; Lk. 6:1-5.
2. MAN with SHRIVELED HAND healed, Mt. 12:9-14; Mk. 3:1-4; Lk. 6:6-11.
3. BOWED WOMAN HEALED, Lk. 13:10-17.
4. MAN with DROPSY HEALED, Lk. 14:1-6.
B. JESUS’ TWO LINES OF DEFENSE
1. THE NATURE OF THE SABBATH
a. Matthew 12:5, “Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent?”
b. Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
c. “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” Mk. 3:4.
2. COMPARISON TO ACCEPTABLE RESCUES
a. “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” Lk. 14:5.
b. “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:11-12 (Man with the shriveled hand).
c. Luke 13:15, “The Lord answered him, ‘You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?’” [bowed woman healing]
C. OUTCOME
1. At the conclusion of each argument, the Pharisees could think of nothing to say in answer.
2. Their position was exposed and they couldn’t deny Jesus’ argument. But they still needed some trumped up charges, so they said nothing.
III. JESUS’ PRIORITY OF HEALING
A. WHY THE RISK? TO EMPHASIZE HEALING
1. I believe that Jesus entered this den of snakes on purpose to emphasize how important divine healing is to God.
2. WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN THE MOTIVE OF JESUS GOING TO THE PHARISEE’S HOUSE? I can think of 4:
a. He wasn’t expecting a trap. I think he WAS expecting a trap, for we shall see that He was reading their thoughts.
b. He was trying to win these Pharisees over to accept His deity. I don’t think so. They never acknowledged or accepted the miracle when it happened or His deity.
c. He was championing His authority over the Sabbath. He had already done that 3 times. All three times His doing so was a BYPRODUCT of a situation, not the main goal.
d. Finally, because there was a man who needed healing. This is the only motive He could have had for going to the Pharisee’s house.
3. Knowing his host, the Pharisee, would be offended if He healed the man, Jesus might have forborne. But Jesus never let opposition keep Him from meeting genuine human need when He found it.
4. Jesus believed that healing someone was a superior calling even than keeping the peace.
5. Peter talked about “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing ALL that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him” Acts 10:38. Jesus always did good, when it was within His power to do so, even if there was opposition.
B. THE MANNER OF THE HEALING
1. Luke 14:4 says Jesus “took him,” that is, he laid hands on him, to heal him. Luke used the Greek word epilabomenos, which Matthew Henry says indicated that Jesus “embraced him, took him in his arms, big and unwieldy as he was (for so dropsical people generally are), and reduced him to shape.” The description is consistent with the idea of squeezing the man.
2. The cure of a very swollen person, one would think, would have to be gradual, but Luke describes it as taking place in a moment. Many pounds of fluid instantly disappeared, and not only were the symptoms cured, but so was the cause of the symptoms.
3. Interestingly, Jesus never spoke to the man or asked him about his faith. Jesus, who had earlier read the thought of the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” and answered their thought, undoubtedly also read this man’s mind and knew he was hoping Jesus would heal him.
4. It may have been that Jesus didn’t question the man because he knew the man himself would be persecuted for participating in a healing on the Sabbath. So Jesus protected him by keeping him completely passive.
5. After healing him, Jesus sent him away from that house, further insulating him from interrogation.
6. Jesus summed up by charging that if rescuing the man was violating the Sabbath, then the Pharisees were also guilty of violating the Sabbath by similar things they did.
7. So their attacks on Him weren’t really out of any real regard for the Sabbath, but only because they felt threatened and were jealous of His popularity with the people.
C. JESUS IS THE GREAT PHYSICIAN!
1. HE ATONED FOR OUR HEALING. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” Isa. 53:5. This wasn’t just ‘spiritual’ but ‘physical’ – see Mt. 8:17 in context, quoting Isa. 53:4!
2. IT’S HIS NATURE TO HEAL. Ex. 15:26, “I am Jehovah-Rapha” – “the Lord that heals you.” The devil afflicts, but our God heals (Jn. 10:10). That’s why Christ’s virtue automatically healed the woman with the issue of blood. All that was needed was her faith to contact the provision (Mk. 5:30).
3. JESUS HEALED EVERYONE WHO CAME TO HIM.
a. “Jesus went…healing EVERY disease and sickness among the people….ALL who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them” Mt. 4:23-24.
b. “…healing EVERY disease and sickness” Matt. 9:35. “He healed ALL who were ill” Matt. 12:15. Jesus “saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick” Matt. 14:14. And Matt. 8:16-17, “and healed ALL the sick.”
c. “People brought ALL their sick to him…and ALL who touched [His cloak] were healed” Matt. 14:34-36. “…power was coming from Him and healing them ALL” Luke 6:17-19.
4. He’s the same, yesterday, today, and forever. You can come to Him with confidence today and claim your healing by faith!
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. The service was started and the congregation was singing and Joe arose with his baby in his arms and walked up to me. I leaned over and he said, “Pastor my baby is burning with a fever. I stopped the singing and called the elders to the front and we anointed the child and as I was praying with the elders and my hand was on the child’s forehead his skin cooled to the touch. Praise God we had church then!!
2. Her name was Marie, she came forward on a Sunday night and asked to be prayed for as her doctors had told her of a dread disease in her body, and we anointed her and prayed. Something unusual happened, I suddenly had the insight that the healing was done and I said as much out loud. Many by their own admission later, did not think much of my saying this.
3. The following Wednesday night she stood with trembling, tears and shouts of glory and related how the doctors could not find the disease. She lived disease free for a number of years before she went to be with her Lord. (Answer2Prayer.org web site) James Avery
B. THE CALL
1. If Jesus healed everyone who came to Him, and He’s the same today, we can come with expectation that we too will be healed.
2. I want to invite all those who have a physical need to come.
3. Prayer for the sick in Jesus’ Name.
