I want to take you on a trip. This is not a trip to an exotic location or a place of tourism; it is a journey through time. I want to take you to the beginning. Close your eyes and imagine nothing. There is no noise, there is no smells, there is no light, and all of your senses sense nothing. Right at the moment when you are about to burst with the feeling of claustrophobia, your senses are brought to life with a spoken sentence that echoes through the air. “Let there be light”. As you hear this, light bursts forth from the source of the sound. Suddenly, this light surrounds you. Even though it is just light, all of your senses seem to be able to take it in. Not only can you see it, you smell it. It is the sweetest smell you have experienced filling you with an aroma that penetrates deep within you. You can feel the light; it feels like a warm comforter on a cold winter evening, surrounding you in its warmth. You can taste it; it is like smooth honey on your tongue, yet not too sweet. As the light swirls around you a melody sweeter than a children’s choir fills your ear. All this happens instantly and you realize that you are witnessing something far greater than a glorious sunrise; you are in the presence of God Himself. Never had you imagined the great sense of comfort and safety you are experiencing, never had you dreamt of the great joy that fills your soul at the sound of His voice and the warmth of His eyes.
As you watch the earth take form and day by day each event of creation take place, you see it in a light that you have never seen before. It is not just an act of creating a world. Every single bird, plant and animal is created with such love and care. It is as if each thing is a gift from the Creator. You watch with anticipation as the climax of the week approaches and Jesus Himself prepares to create the crown of creation. He stoops down to the ground near the bank of a rolling river and begins His task. As the sound of the water bubbling over the rocks fills your ears, your eyes are met with a mound of dirt that is beginning to resemble a man. With great care the Master molds and forms the clay into the first man. He stands up and takes a step back to admire his craft, and then with one smooth motion, He kneels at the head of the man and breathes into His body the breath of life. Jesus takes Adam by the hand and rises up with Him to introduce to him all that He has created.
The act of creation was tiring to God, it was a good kind of tired, the kind that you feel after a long day of work, and you come home to your wife, or family. God had just come home from a long day of work to His new family. Because this was such a special moment to God, He wanted to make it special. So He took this day that He was resting on, and set it apart from the other days of the week, He made it a holy day. This is what the Sabbath is all about. It shows us how special we are to God, that He would not only make a memorial to the act of our creation, but He knew that we would need a rest from our own work.
As man fell from God, he lost sense of the true meaning of the Sabbath, and the true meaning of fellowship with God. By the time Jesus came into the world, Sabbath had become such an empty source of rituals and rules. Jesus came to bring to man, the true message of the gospel. True messages of God’s care and love for man.
(Mark 3:1-6 NIV) Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. {2} 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. {3} Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone." {4} Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent. {5} He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. {6} Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” Jesus uses this opportunity to reveal secrets of His fathers’ kingdom to man.
One of these secrets is to have the right attitude. In this section, the Pharisees are attempting to trap Jesus. The issue is not whether or not the Sabbath should be observed, but how it should be observed. This passage is the climax of an opposition that has been growing more and more between the Pharisees and Jesus. The Pharisees were out to discredit Jesus. If they could catch Jesus breaking the Sabbath, it would be enough evidence to discredit him as a prophet. They already know that He has the power to heal; the only question is would He heal on the Sabbath?
We see the attitude of this man with the crippled hand in contrast to that of the Pharisees. A man who had a problem, his problem was that his hand was un-functional. The Pharisees didn’t know it, but they had a problem too, their problem was that they didn’t know they had a problem. Their attitude was that of little need. They didn’t believe they needed Jesus or what He taught. In contrast the man with the withered hand who knew that He needed Jesus. The man knew that he had a problem and that Jesus could fix it. This is the mentality that we need to have today. We have a problem, and Jesus is the only one who can fix it. Our problem is sin; Jesus is the only doctor who can perform the heart transplant surgery. Jesus did heal on the Sabbath; He met the Pharisees challenge with a response that silenced them. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” This revealed the true attitude of the Pharisees; it was one of selfishness and pride.
Jesus mission, just as in the creation of the world, is to give us the most life has to offer. He sees, when we far too often can’t see, what is the best for us. We need to trust and obey Him. God can’t help but help people, it’s His nature, and He wants for it to be our nature too.
William Gladstone, in announcing the death of Princess Alice to the House of Commons, told a touching story. The little daughter of the Princess was seriously ill with diphtheria. The doctors told the princess not to kiss her little daughter and endanger her life by breathing the child’s breath. Once when the child was struggling to breathe, the mother, forgetting herself entirely, took the little one into her arms to keep her from choking to death. Rasping and struggling for her life, the child said, “Momma, kiss me!” Without thinking of herself the mother tenderly kissed her daughter. She got diphtheria and some days thereafter she too passed away. Real love forgets self. Real love knows no danger. Real love doesn’t count the cost. God has that same heart, when He saw we were in danger He spared nothing to save us, not even His own precious Son.
Another secret is faith. Jesus already knowing what the Pharisees had in mind, beckoned for the man to come to Him. The geek uses the word egeire, which literally means “get up into the middle”. In other words Jesus had absolutely nothing to hide. As the man stood there, his hand withered, Jesus commands the man to stretch forth his hand. This man could have doubted and said to Jesus, “but my hand is paralyzed” but that would not have healed him. It was the mans faith in the power of Jesus to heal that made this mans hand whole again. Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of faith is to see what we believe. This mans faith was rewarded.
The third secret revealed is to keep your heart open to new truths. There aren’t a lot of things that make Jesus angry, but this apparently is one thing that angers Jesus, hardness of heart. In Jewish thinking, the heart was the seat of understanding rather than of emotion. This phrase refers to intellectual blindness or obtuseness. Throughout the gospel of Mark this phrase is used to describe those who fail to understand Jesus or refuse to respond to Him. The Pharisees could not and would not put their pride aside and open their hearts to this new teaching. At the end of chapter 3, Jesus talks about an eternal sin, it is the sin of blaspheming, or hardening the heart against the Holy Spirit.
This passage also contains an irony that bears mention. The Pharisees plot was to catch Jesus breaking the Sabbath, but as it turns out, they were the ones who ended up breaking the Sabbath. “The Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.” There are two things that are significant about this passage. One, the Pharisees and the Herodians didn’t get along; they were two very different groups that were always at odds. The strength and hostility of Jesus was so great that it brought these two groups together to fight a common cause. The second thing to notice is the fact that they went immediately, in other words it was still Sabbath. The irony is the fact that they are the ones breaking the Sabbath by plotting Jesus death and thus doing evil on the Sabbath.
It is easy for us to quickly jump on the case of the Pharisees and question how they could so brazenly harden their hearts to Jesus, and let their pride win the best of them. The fact is that we fall right into the footsteps of the Pharisees. We too let our pride get in our way. Our sins are the reason that Jesus had to come and die, so when we continue living in sin when we know we are sinning, we are hardening our hearts to Jesus and thus, “planning how to destroy Jesus” It is my appeal that we not let this happen, that we keep our hearts open to the new truths that God has for us each and every day.
Jesus doesn’t want our lives to be hindered by the oppression of sin. While we do have to contend daily with temptation and sin, Jesus came to deliver a message of hope. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (Jn 10:10) The gospel places a high value upon humanity as the purchase of the blood of Christ. This is the message of the gospel, God wants us to have the best life.
“O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its
Flow may richer, fuller be.
“O Joy that seekest me through pain
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
