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Read Luke 6:6-11.
Toyota ran a commercial a few years ago that showed an SUV driving through town on a Tuesday loaded with ski equipment.
An onlooker is dumbfounded that the guy could be heading for the slopes on a workday.
Then the last line appears on screen – “Make your own rules.”
Don’t want to work on Tuesday?
Then, make your own rules!”
Well, that’s just what mankind has been doing ever since Adam and Eve decided they wanted to be like God.
We make our own rules.
And we have the audacity to think that it can work.
There is no stronger indicator of the depravity of mankind than the thought that his own mind can compete with the Creator in deciding what’s best.
Man has the audacity to make his own rules, declare 60% to be passing and insisting that God will accept him as good enough.
Like playing baseball and calling your own balls and strikes.
That’s what Luke deals with today.
Who makes the rules?
Who’s in charge?
In Luke 6:5, Jesus makes an audacious claim, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
His last word justifying His disciples’ Sabbath eating habits was – I am Lord!
Now, on another Sabbath, Luke uses Jesus’ claim as a perfect lead-in to an account where the issue is, who gets to make the rules?
Who is in charge?
Jesus is about to demonstrate verbally and actively that He is.
This was always an issue in His encounters with the Pharisees who were looked up to as the ultimate rule-makers of their day.
Those contests often revolved around the Sabbath because their rules were so clear-cut and Jesus violated them so blatantly.
7 times He purposely healed people on the Sabbath to the consternation of these men.
He was demonstrating his lordship, which they categorically rejected.
Today we see this play out through the healing of this man.
Who is in charge?
Who makes life’s rules?
*I.
The Plant*
6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered.
7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him.”
We’re not told that the man is a plant.
But it is strongly suggested by the word “watched” in v. 7. It means “to spy on out of the corner of one’s eye” and has sinister overtones.
These Pharisees were fact-finding in the previous account, but this time, they intend evil.
They are looking for an excuse to accuse him of violating the law (their law, that is), and it is likely that they made sure the man with the withered hand was clearly visible – a plant, an entrapment.
They had no interest in the message.
They were hoping He would heal someone so they could bring an accusation.
Why?
Because they couldn’t stand the popularity He was enjoying.
He threatened their privileged position in the eyes of the people, and they needed to discredit Him.
Their cold hearts are shown by the fact that they expected to make their case by catching Jesus in the act of healing a disabled man.
What kind of religious belief would object to restoring health?
The answer is man-made religion.
The kind that is about the rules, all the rules and nothing but the rules.
People be damned, for them it was about their rules and everyone else could go to hell for all they cared.
The rules were all that mattered, and they had some doozies.
They were avid early adopters of Toyota’s philosophy – “Make your own rules”.
In the process the obliterated the spirit of the law.
Now, as to healing, they allowed you could do whatever was required to save a life on the Sabbath, but absolutely nothing more.
Save a child from drowning but ignore a sprain.
Pull an ox from a ditch if it were in danger of dying, but God help you if you pulled one out without threat to life.
So that’s the setup.
They know of the guy with a withered arm – non-life-threatening. We’re not sure, but tradition says he was a stonemason who was injured and whose muscles had atrophied.
They were sure Jesus would take the bait allowing them to accuse Him of Sabbath-violation and discredit Him.
Amazingly they counted on His compassion and power as the attributes by which they hoped to destroy Him.
Why would you ever want to destroy someone like that?
How about because He doesn’t play by your rules.
It all comes down to who makes the rules?
Who is in charge?
And in their fallen minds, they preferred their cruelty over His compassion.
They preferred law over grace.
They preferred to be God rather than submit to God.
And so have men from time immemorial sought to bring charges against God, to sit in judgment over Him to avoid accountability to Him.
They accuse Him of injustice for all the ills of the world, ignoring the culpability of man’s sinful nature – a nature which is the product of the cherished free will granted by God which allows them to bring the accusation.
And they hostilely reject the forgiveness for which He paid with His own life.
You know what is the biggest accusation of all against God?
It is that He can do miracles.
Just like they proposed to reject Jesus for supernaturally healing man, so they reject God and declare Him a non-person for the fact that He claims to have created it all.
It is His claim to the supernatural that makes Him unacceptable.
Is that warped or what?
The humanists position seems to be “If we can’t do it, nobody can!
No miracles!”
Listen to this quotation from geneticist Richard Lewontin: “. . .
materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. . . .
To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”
In other words, God doesn’t play by our rules, so He is out!
God has been accused, tried and executed on the basis that He performs miracles.
By their rules, that’s not allowed – just like the Pharisees.
Do you see where this all leads?
This is why salvation means accepting Jesus not just as Savior, but as Lord – as the one in charge, as the one who makes the rules.
The Pharisees are desperate to be in charge!
*II.
The Predicament *
The Pharisees have their plant and things at first go according to plan.
In fact better than planned.
V. 8, “But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here (literally, arise and stand in the middle – front and center).
And he rose and stood there.”
It’s working.
Jesus has bit.
They’re going to win.
What they can’t know, of course, is that He knows their thoughts.
They’re still new enough at this not to realize that Jesus is always one step ahead.
He has a question for them, and it snatches victory right out of their hands – creates a predicament they cannot answer.
It’s a simple question.
V. 9, “And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?”
That’s one they never found in their oral traditions.
To them it was cut and dried – to save life, do anything needed.
For anything less, wait a day.
But this puts the whole thing in a completely different light.
Jesus’ question suggests that to fail to help when you can is to do harm, even if nobody dies!
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