The Man with the Withered Hand - Luke 6:6-11

Themes: Sabbath, Healing, Pharisees.

Introduction - The Story So Far…

1. Come Follow Me - Be Apprentices with Jesus

John the Baptist - who prepared the way for Jesus.

Andrew - who left behind his family and livelihood to follow Jesus.

Philip and Nathanael - two brothers who came to follow Jesus. Philip showed Nathanael the way.

Matthew - who turned away from his sinful life, leaving behind money, wealth and a comfortable life to follow Jesus.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus to come and 4 ordinary men who answered the call to follow Jesus to learn the way of Jesus.

2. Be With Jesus

Our passage today comes quite quickly after the calling of Matthew who we looked at last week. The passage we are thinking about is part of a wider text focussing on the Sabbath day.

What is the Sabbath Day? - The Sabbath day is the day that God rests in Genesis 2:1–3 “1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Although we don’t see it mentioned again until Exodus where God reminds Moses of that sacred day (Exodus 16:22-23) and then makes it one of the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20:8-11.

Question - What does it mean for you to rest? Have a think about that, chat with your neighbour.

What I think you will find is that we all rest differently. I know I am rubbish at resting, I just can’t sit still for very long. Resting will look different for a 5 year old child than it will for a 45 year old mum of 2 as it will for an 85 year old after a long day. God doesn’t tell us specifically how to rest but tells us that it is important. The 10th Commandment says Exodus 20:8–11 “8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Do not do any work. That is God’s main command for resting. Clearly the sabbath day is important to God because He included it in the 10 commandments and it is also important to Jesus. It is a commandment for everybody too, not just the rich or the powerful, for everyone.

For Jewish people and some groups in the Bible the sabbath day is a time of literally doing nothing, that includes making a meal, driving a car, using a mobile phone, preparing the land, sowing seeds. Any actions you can think of, they would class it as work. That is the context of this passage, the pharisees idea of the sabbath is to do nothing.

I don’t think that this passage is telling us whether or not we need to keep the sabbath day because I think that it is clear in the Bible that we do, although how we do that is a sermon for another day! Instead I think this passage is telling us who Jesus really is. This is so important for us to understand on this journey of practicing the way. If we are going be like Jesus and do as he does, we need to know what He is like.

This passage tells us exactly what Jesus is like, he is caring, he is compassionate, he is not driven by other people’s opinions of Him, only the mandate given to Him by the Father - to come and love the world.

Let’s explore how Jesus shows us who He is. In our passage today we meet a new character who this time doesn’t have a name, we only him as ‘a man’ (Luke 6:6). This man is living with a disability, a withered hand or deformed hand (Luke 6:6) depending on which version of the Bible you are reading.

Illustration - on your chairs when you came in was a string. I’d like you to pick up that string and start to tie it together in a simple knot. Can you do that for me? Now, we’re going to think what it would have been like for the man with the shrivelled hand - find your dominant hand and close it up for me like a fist. Now, tie the string into a knot again and think how much more difficult that was.

This man with the withered hand would have lived for quite some time with his hand like that, can you imagine what life would be like with a hand like that? Pretty difficult right? Well it gets a little more difficult when we realise that it was likely his dominant hand that was withered making things even harder for him. It would have been difficult for him to get a job or earn his bread week by week. He would have lived a very difficult life.

Jesus knew exactly what was going on in the hearts of the pharisees (Luke 6:8), they were looking for a way to catch Jesus out. Jesus does not let their cunning get in the way and does something special. Physically Jesus does nothing but through His awesome power He changes like of the man with the withered hand forever. Jesus simply asks the man to stretch out his hand (Luke 6:10) and immediately it is healed. Jesus did nothing but speak and the man merely opened his hand. A miracle has been completed.

Jesus was clever because he did no works and neither did the man and this made the pharisees angry, so angry they went off to begin plotting about how they would deal with Jesus - if you want to find out more about how they do this please join us for our services in April to see their plan unfold.

Call to action - The world can make us get distracted from what God is calling us to do. Like the Pharisees in this passage, in their hearts and actions they wanted to cause issues around Jesus and the sabbath which could have ended in an argument. Instead Jesus focussed on what He knew he called to do which is to heal the sick, find the lost and bring salvation to the world. In our lives as we go deeper into practicing the way, let’s not get distracted by difficult questions or other people’s expectations of us and focus on what Jesus calls us all to do - to love God and to love our neighbours (Matthew 22:34-40).

3. What does this have to do with communion?

The man with the withered hand was struck with a disability that would have made it hard for him to work and live his life day to day. Jesus brought freedom to his life by opening his hand. Communion is a reminder of the freedom that Jesus brings to our lives by reminding us of the amazing life, death and resurrection of Jesus. By sharing this meal together we join together with Christians all over the world who share this meal but also connecting all the way through history with people who have shared this meal in the memory Christ and his incredible sacrifice on the cross. This is an act of faith that is so incredibly important to our heritage as Christians and how we live our lives today.