Stretching For The Impossible

Scripture: Luke 6:6-12; Psalm 27

Theme: Stretching for the Impossible

This sermon focuses on the 1. The man who had the withered hand 2. His encounter with Jesus and 3. His healing.

INTRO:

Grace and peace this morning!

Have you ever heard the phrase - “you are too close to the forest to see the trees”?

At times, we can suffer from a type of tunnel vision and only be able see a small part of what going on around us.

That is what was happening in the passage of Scripture that we read this morning.

+The Pharisees were so laser focused on keeping the traditions of the Sabbath day that they couldn’t see what was going on around them.

They believed that one of the main reason that the Jewish People were under the bondage of the Romans was their lack of attention to Sabbath rules and regulations. They believed that one of best ways they could get God to free them was to make sure they were doing everything they could to keep the Sabbath day holy.

This caused them to create all kinds of extra Sabbath day rules. It also made it nearly impossible for them to be able to help anyone on the Sabbath. Any type of so-called assistance was labeled “work” and therefore unlawful/unholy.

Some have theorized that the only reason why Luke along with Mark and Matthew recorded this story was so that anyone reading it could see that Jesus was trying to teach a new way of looking at the Sabbath day.

The Sabbath day was to be more than a day of absence. The Sabbath was to be a day where we would bring God praise with our minds, hearts, souls, and bodies. It was to be a day where we would take some time to pause, reflect and rest. And it was to be a day that we would invest our lives in one another and in creation.

As I read and reread this story, I found myself going back to the man in the story with the withered hand.

Was he just a means to an end?

Was he just a man used to make a point about what to do and not do on the Sabbath?

I don’t think so.

I think there is more here than just meets the eye about a message surrounding the Sabbath day. I think we find a macro and micro story. Both are important.

I want us to spend some time looking at what many call the Micro Story – the Story about the Man with the Withered Hand. I believe we can discover something that will help us today.

I. We witness - The Man

The man was real. He was real flesh and bone.

This is not a parable. This was history. This really happened.

This man had a family and friends,

He was dealing with a serious health issue.

Church tradition tells us that he was a stone mason. He had made his living by laying bricks and stones and working in the construction business.

We know from the Gospels that not long after Jesus started his ministry he moved to the town of Capernaum where this story takes place. It was there that Matthew along with James, John, Peter and Andrew lived.

It is highly possible that Jesus knew this man with the withered hand and that they had even worked together. Carpenters in Jesus’ time not only worked with wood they would often work with bricks and stones as well.

So, while we have this macro story of how to deal with the Sabbath day, we have this micro story of a man being healed. A man whose ability to provide for his family was restored. A man who was made whole. We have a story of newness and celebration.

We know something had caused this man to be in this condition. He wasn’t born with a withered hand. Over the years there have been a lot of different notions:

+He harmed his hand at work. There had been an accident and some rocks or bricks had fallen on the man’s hand which caused severe nerve damage. As a result his hand withered up.

+The man contracted a form of polio that was known to have existed around Capernaum at that time and that is what damaged his hand.

+The man suffered from of a type of rheumatoid arthritis that caused what some today call a “Claw hand”.

The truth is we really don’t know.

And to tell you the truth, it really doesn’t matter whether his hand was damaged by an accident or a disease.

The fact of the matter is that this man was suffering. He was suffering physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The reality was he needed help.