SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/17/2022 11:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“The Illustration”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 12:9-13
Message of the verses: “9 And departing
from there, He went into their synagogue. 10 And behold, there was a man
with a withered hand. And they questioned Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on
the Sabbath?"—in order that they might accuse Him. 11 And He said to them,
"What man shall there be among you, who shall have one sheep, and if it
falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it, and lift it out? 12
“Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do
good on the Sabbath." 13 Then He said to the man, "Stretch out your
hand!" And he stretched it out, and it was restored to normal, like the
other.”
Jesus
did not wait for a response from the Pharisees, but went right into their
synagogue in order to give an illustration of the true meaning of Sabbath observance
and of His authority over both man and the Sabbath; after all it was our Lord
who was the One who set up the Sabbath.
The
Pharisees thought that they would trap Jesus once they got into the synagogue
as they say a man with a withered hand, but what they did not know is that it
was Jesus who set this whole situation up as He certainly knew the man would be
there. It seems that the Pharisees
forgot about what Jesus had taught them that God’s desire on the Sabbath was
for compassion.
The
Pharisees proposed as question to Jesus “Is it lawful to heal on the
Sabbath?" As mentioned this was to
trap Jesus, as this was always their purpose in asking questions to Jesus: “in order that they might accuse Him.” We can see from this that the Pharisees were
not looking for the truth but to trap Jesus in order to accuse Him of blaspheme
God with His claims.
One
thing is clear, and it makes me upset, and that is that these Pharisees knew
that Jesus could heal as He had healed many people by now, and if they would
have known the Scriptures as well as they thought they knew them they would
have known that the Messiah would bring healing to those who were in need of it
when He came.
As
mentioned the Pharisees chose a man with a withered hand in order to test Jesus
because the man’s healing was not a life-or-death situation, something we
talked about in an earlier SD when we went over what the Pharisees had made up
about the Sabbath regulations.
Now
we see an illustration of the sheep, that “falls into a pit on the Sabbath” and
this dealt with an economic justification for breaking the Sabbath that was
probably provided for in the traditions.
MacArthur quotes commentator William Hendriksen who said “It is safe to
infer, perhaps, that the question asked by Jesus at the moment indicates to us
that there was a particular legislation permitting this.’ “In any case, Jesus’
question was rhetorical, and the answer was obvious and assumed: Any Jew, including a Pharisee, would find
some way to rescue his sheep in such a situation. If there were a regulation permitting him to
do such a thing, he would certainly take advantage of it. If there were not, he
would find some way of circumventing or bending the law in order to save his
sheep. Either within the tradition or in
spite of it, he would find a way to ‘take hold of’ the sheep ‘and lift it out.’ The Pharisees did not argue the point with
Jesus, proving the assumed answer was correct.”
Jesus
then declared “Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep!” I believe that the Pharisees thought that the
sheep was of greater value than the man with the withered hand, unless it was
one of them who were in need of healing on the Sabbath.
MacArthur
then brings up the tragedies of Hinduism, things like don’t eat a cow when
people are starving, or don’t kill of fly as it might be the incarnation of
someone. The reason for this is to
compare the way the Pharisees despised other human beings, showing more
compassion for sheep than people. The
problem with our world today, in similar situations, is that there are people
today who have no problem in having millions of people die from something that
they invented to cause this to happen.
Jesus
answered their question by saying “it is lawful to do good on the
Sabbath." One of the things that I
have been learning about from the book of Ephesians as I am going over my study
of that book and putting it on my other blog, and then last night in our
evening service one of our Pastors was preaching from Ephesians. The point is that in the 4th
chapter of Ephesians it talks about “righteous anger” and not letting the sun
go down on your anger. I believe at this
point in our story that Jesus was righteously angered, and of course He had a
right to be. At this point He heals the
man with the withered hand as “He said to the man, "Stretch out your
hand!" And he stretched it out, and it was restored to normal, like the
other.” MacArthur concludes “As Lord of
the Sabbath He demonstrated that, if anything, the Sabbath was the supreme day
for doing good.”
1/17/2022 12:00 PM
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