Sermon Tone Analysis

BY PASTOR GLENN PEASE

Dr. Richard Selzer, the famous surgeon and author, in his book, Taking The World In For Repairs, tells about Interplast, which stands for International Plastic Surgeon, Incorporated.

Since its founding in 1969, this organization has performed over ten thousand free operations on poor people in undeveloped countries.

Dr. Salzer was part of a team of 20 surgeons and nurses who went to Peru for 2 weeks to patch up people who could never dream of affording a plastic surgeon.

This is indeed, a loving organization that meets the need that no one else is meeting in our world.

But as loving as it is, it does not yet reach the level of agape love, which is unconditional giving.

These surgeons give plenty, but their motive is still to get plenty in return.

Dr. Selzer writes very honestly about the motives.

"The surgical residents have come for the experience of operating on great numbers of these deformities.

Within two weeks they will have performed more of these operations than most surgeons will do in a lifetime.

For some, it is the opportunity for virtue that we are seeking.

Such opportunities are not without the element of self-aggrandizement.

For still others it is the exhilaration of the exotic that beckons, or the lovely sense of camaraderie that is to be found in working together for a purpose we think high.

Last, there is a need for human beings to challenge themselves.

In surgery it is best done by tackling the most difficult of clinical situations and prevailing."

I am sure the people who have their bodies restored do not care what the motive is.

They consider it an act of love.

The world can be grateful for love on any level, and Christians too should be grateful that even millions of non-Christians have an humanitarian heart that does loving things for others.

Maybe their motives are mixed, and maybe they do good for selfish reasons, but it is still better than doing evil.

Most all that any person does, is done with mixed motives.

Jesus alone illustrates pure agape love.

He heals with nothing to gain for Himself.

In fact, in the healing miracle of this man with the shriveled hand, Jesus really had to reverse the usual doctor-patient arrangement.

He had to pay to heal the man.

It cost Jesus His peace of mind, for He became very angry at the stubborn hearts of the Jews who resented His healing on the Sabbath.

He had to argue for His right to do good, and the end result was the Pharisees and the Herodians went out of the synagogue that day plotting how to kill Jesus.

Jesus gave up His reputation, and laid His life on the line just to heal a man's hand on the Sabbath.

This was not a life-threatening problem.

The man was not having a heart attack or choking on a piece of steak.

He could have waited until the Sabbath was over to be healed.

But Jesus was as stubbornly insistent that he be healed on the spot as the Pharisees were as stubbornly insistent that he not be healed on the Sabbath.

This healing incident reveals the moral issue in the world of healing, and it makes clear there is a right and wrong side.

This miracle thrusts us into the morality of healing, and establishes two basic principles: It is wrong to resist healing, and it is right to restore to health.

The Jewish leaders said, it is right to resist this man's healing.

They said it is right because it is wrong to work on the Sabbath.

They said the law was more important then this mans health, and that it should be respected and held sacred even if it means the man has to wait to be healed.

Jesus took the others side and said it is right to restore this man now, for love takes precedent over the law.

The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.

The law is to prevent evil, not good.

It is a perversion of the law to use it to prevent good from happening.

It is always right to do good on the Sabbath, or any other time, and to resist the doing of good, such as healing, is wrong.

Thus, the lines are drawn, and all the world is separated into two categories on this issue: The legalists and the lovers.

The man with the withered hand is not the issue.

Jesus could have put a robe on a cold child, or given a cup of cold water to a thirsty stranger, or anyone of a hundred acts of love, and the result would have been the same, for the issue is, which is to be the supreme loyalty of our lives, the law or love?

Which you chose determines if you are a winner or a loser in the eyes of Christ.

The legalist is a loser, and the lover is a winner.

The successful Christian life is achieved by avoiding one, and being the other.

Let's look at these two choices so we can learn to clearly identify them, and chose to be a winner.

I. THE LOSERS.

The legalist is a loser because he rejects love as the supreme virtue, and puts law there instead.

Paul says in I Cor. 13 that everything minus love equals nothing.

It is zip, zero, absolutely nothing.

The Pharisees would not buy this new math of grace.

They said the law minus love is no loss.

As long as the law is upheld, love is irrelevant.

Love has its place, but it can never replace the law.

Law is supreme.

The power of legalism to blind one to the light is nowhere more evident than with the Pharisees.

They saw Jesus do miracle after miracle, and people rejoicing and praising God, but they were plotting to kill him as an enemy of God.

How can this be?

How can anyone be so blind to love?

It is easy.

All you have to do is put any value above love, and you are a prisoner of that value.

They said it is evil to do good on the Sabbath.

No matter how loving and compassionate it is, it is evil to do it on the Sabbath.

So the love of Christ meant nothing, and neither did it mean anything that he could do miracles.

All it matters to a legalist is that the rules be kept.

They had to see the joy on peoples faces, and they had to hear their voices lifted in praise to God, but all this was mere background static.

All they could see and hear was a big no no.

Their rules were being broken.

Amos Wells has described how this man with a withered hand may have responded to his healing.

"Praise God! Praise God! Give me my tools again!

Oh, let me grasp a hammer and a saw

Bring me a nail, and any piece of wood,

Come, see me shut my hand and open it.

And watch my nimble fingers twirl a ring,

How good are solids!

Oak, and stone, and iron,

And rough and smooth and straight and curved and round!

Here, Rachel: For these long and weary years

My hand has ached to smooth your shining hair,

And to touch your dimpled cheek.

Come wife and see

I am a man again, a man for work,

A man for earning bread and clothes and home,

A man, no more a bandaged cumberer.

And did you hear them muttering at him?

And did you see them looking sour at me?

They'll cast me from the synagogue, perchance:

But let them: I've a hand, a hand, a hand!

And, ah, dear wife, to think he goes about

So quietly, and does such things as this,

Making poor half men whole.

The Legalist is not moved by this emotion of joy, for any joy gained at the expense of the law is illegitimate and not acceptable.

Thus, the legalist is a loser in the judgment of Christ.

All of us have some of the loser in us.

All the record of the Pharisees and their blindness is not recorded for all time so posterity can look back and laugh at these ecclesiastical dinosaurs.

This is recorded so men of all ages can see and identify the Pharisee in themselves.

To the degree that any of us care more about anything rather than people, is the degree to which we are losers.

The only way to stop being a loser is to become a lover.