The Man with the Withered Hand
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
We are giving a study in the Book of Mark which will carry some splendid suggestions for the student. Every Sunday morning we see a large group of people hurrying toward Sunday School and church. I wonder how many of us ever stop to consider the objectives of the various people who move on their way churchward.
In our study, in Mark 3:2, we read these words, "And they watched Him, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath Day; that they might accuse Him." It is not difficult to discover why these people entered the synagogue, but we do wonder why people today enter?
1. One group go to church with the mere outward show of Divine service. There is a verse in Ezekiel which says, "And they come unto Thee as the people cometh, and they sit before Thee as my people, and they hear Thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness."
This is a sad story, but it is still true. How many there are who go to church regularly, and yet there is no real faithfulness to God in their hearts. Outwardly they appear pious, but inwardly their hearts goeth after covetousness. They like the sermon and the singing. It is all to them as a lovely song, as one who has a pleasant voice. However, there is no real worship in their hearts. Formal Christianity means nothing to God; a worship of the lip, and an outward demonstration of piety is not acceptable to God.
2. A second group goes to church with the thought of honoring God, and yet they know nothing of real heart worship. This group is described in Matthew 15:8-9 "This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me." Such people worship God in vain. They are teaching the doctrines of men. They cannot please God. The Lord demands heart worship, and He Himself must be recognized as the Head of the Church, and given all authority and all power in the lives of His worshipers.
3. There is another group of worshipers who seek to go to church, but their lives are unclean. To such, God says: "When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand?" God goes on to say, "When ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood."
There is one thing that God demands of those who worship Him. They must have clean hands, they must cease to do evil, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fathers, plead for the widows. God pity those who have a churchianity, but know nothing of a clean life.
4. There is another group who say, "Lord, Lord, and yet they never do the things that their Lord demands of them. To such God says, "I never knew you." He who seeks to appear before Christ and calls Jesus "Lord," must serve Him faithfully. If He is Lord, they must be servants.
5. The fifth group is the group who go to church to find fault. These are described in this study. There were many Pharisees present, but they were not there for any good. They were there that they might discover something with which to accuse Christ. They were persecutors and haters of Christ.
No one could have convinced them that Jesus Christ was true, no matter how hard they tried. They were that kind who had sealed their hearts and minds against His Name.
6. Another group are those who go to church for what they can get out of it. They are the loaves and fishes. They follow with Christ when, it is advantageous to themselves. We fear that among professing Christians there are those who want to be in the church that will give them the best social standing. They want to go where they themselves will be advanced in their worldly ambitions. They are not after serving Christ. He is no more to them than an aid to their own advancement.
7. The seventh group are those who go with the spirit of self pride. They say, "We have increased in riches, and have need of nothing." They are the Laodiceans. To them God says ye "are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."
8. Our last group are those who go to church to worship with pure hearts. These are they who have turned from their sins to serve the Living, and the True God, and to await His Son from Heaven. Let those who study the various groups of church goers, place themselves where they rightfully belong in the above eight groups.
I. THE WITHERED HAND (Mark 3:1)
When we think of the man with the withered hand, as standing before Christ seeking His helping power, there are three things which come to us.
1. The fact of sin. Sin always impoverishes, weakens, and saps the strength. We have seen the grass withering away because of the hot sun; so it is, whenever sin sweeps down upon us, it tends to wither us, until it leaves us altogether without the power of action. Sin breaks down our resistance; it hinders our conquests. Did you ever fall down and collapse spiritually in your weakness? that is the effect of sin.
2. The picture of a fruitless life. A withered life, makes us think of the corn in the field, or the 'wheat, or the rye that never comes to harvest. It is the fruit tree whose fruit shrivels up, and never matures.
There are many young people, today, who are like the man with the withered hand. They are in that helpless state where nothing ripens for the harvest. There is work to do, yet there is no one who can be trusted by Christ to point the lost to the Saviour. Their tongues cleave to the roof of their mouth; their power is broken, and they wither away.
II. THE COMMAND, "STAND FORTH" (Mark 3:3)
1. God's call to separation. When Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, "Stand forth," He seemed to be saying, "Get out of the crowd, come away from, your former environment." This is always the call of God. If we want to serve Him, we must go forth unto Him without the camp. We cannot serve God and mammon, for either we will love the one, and hate the other; or else we will hold to the one, and despise the other.
Did you ever see a young man, or a young woman trying to be a Christian and at the same time, he or she was living the life of a sinner. This is utterly impossible. The Lord calls us to separation, these are His words: "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, * * and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you."
2. God calls us to the negation of human aid. As long as the man, with the withered hand, stood in the crowd he would be tempted to trust in the crowd, to lean upon them, and to follow their suggestions. At Christ's call, he stepped forth, separating himself from them. He denied their power to help him. He had come to the place where he had no hope in man. Man had never been able to heal him, or even to help him. He had no power, himself, to better his condition; and they, likewise, had no power.
We have gone a long way toward victory when we are willing to utterly repudiate every human aid. So long as we think we can do it, or that some one else can do it, we will never find victory.
3. God's call to perfect trust. As Jesus said, "Stand forth," and the man stood forth, he found himself in the position of being thrown wholly upon the Lord. As he walked away from the world, and from man, he was prepared to follow with Jesus, God says, "Trust in the Lord * * and lean not unto thine own understanding." The sinner does not need any human trust.
III. THE LORD QUESTIONS HIS WOULD-BE ACCUSERS (Mark 3:4)
1. Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? As the Lord commanded the one with the withered hand to stand forth, Christ's would-be accusers immediately began to insinuate that He was about to break the Sabbath Day.
The Lord Jesus knowing this said, "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days?" The church of today is keeping the first day of the week. We are not under bondage to the Seventh Day. Yet, we often face the question as to what should be done, or should not be done on the Lord's Day. Should we do this, or should we do that? The question Christ asked His accusers should help us.
There is another thing the Lord said, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." That is, the Sabbath is for our good, and not for our harm. We think of Sunday as a day for rest, and that is a true conception. Is there, however, any rest to a man with a withered hand? If the day is the day of rest, should it not be used to give rest to anyone who is bound by a disease, or by sin?
When we hear our minister preach the Word of Life does he not seem to be saying, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest?"
Jesus is our Sabbath, because He is our rest. There is no better time than Sunday, for Christ to say, "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." There is no better time for Christ to say, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink."
2. Is it lawful to give life on the Sabbath Day? Certainly, the Sabbath stands for a day of rest, on the one hand, and for life on the other hand. There is, in the thought of the Sabbath, everything that gives and invigorates life, and nothing that tends to kill and destroy.
When we think of the Jewish Sabbath we think of its significance. First of all, we think of God's rest in creation. At that time He brought the world out of its chaotic condition. He said, "Let there be light: and there was light." He created physical life, as well as vegetable. The whole picture, therefore, of the first day of rest was the picture of life out of death.
Second: When we think of the Sabbath, we are reminded of the rest which the Children of Israel had from the Egyptians. We are reminded of their deliverance from their cruel taskmasters, who ground out their very life.
Third: There is another typical meaning of the Seventh Day. It looked on to the rest, which we commonly call the Millennial Rest, a rest which remaineth for the children of God. This will be another life, out of death. The terrific woes and judgments of the great tribulation will succumb to this Kingdom of Rest.
In the above three suggestions of rest, there is an answer to Christ's questions concerning the Sabbath Day: "Is it lawful * * to save life, or to kill?"
IV. THE LORD'S GRIEF AT THE PEOPLE'S HARDNESS (Mark 3:5)
1. Religious bigotry makes hearts impregnable to the Truth. These men who sought to accuse Christ in this Scripture had their consciences seared, as with a hot iron, Their hearts were hardened as steel. Their necks were stiffened against Christ.
Whenever you find people blinded by religious bigotry, you find them all together set against the Truth.
Let anyone appear in the midst who is ever so humble, and ever so faithful to God, they will immediately malign him, unless he runs with them.
They think that every one who does not fall in with their religious set-up, is altogether perverse. They imagine that he, who is not a member of their religious denomination, or clique, is altogether wrong.
They would more readily believe a lie from their own, than they would believe the truth from one of God's faithful servants.
2. The rejection of Truth hardens the heart. Whenever the Truth is kept down, refused, reviled, the heart is left more adamant than ever. If we would know the Truth, we must follow on to know it. The Word of God is a two-edged sword, it cuts unto life, or it cuts unto death.
3. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. We read that the Lord looked on them with anger. In the same moment we read that He was grieved in His heart. The anger which Christ manifested, was not anything akin to our anger. God is always angry with sin. Anger is an attribute of His nature. God does not get angry, but He is angry with the sinner every day. The accompanying phrase, That He was grieved in His heart, gives a wonderful insight to His anger. God's wrath must fall upon the wicked, but, even as it falls, it grieves Him. We have read these words, God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
V. THE UNION OF TWO ANTAGONISTIC SECTS (Mark 3:6)
1. The Pharisees were the orthodox Jews. They stood for everything written in the Law, and in the Prophets. They considered themselves the fountainhead of all truth. To be sure, they continually added many of their own laws and ceremonies to God's Word.
2. The Herodians were heterodox. They denied both the resurrection, and the existence of angels. They were what we might call, in our day the modernistic wing of the church. Between the Pharisees and the Herodians there was lasting antagonism, with no possibility of organic union. Two could not walk together, without being agreed.
3. Against the Truth, the two enemies joined. The Pharisees sought the aid of the Herodians, in fighting against God. One of the strangest things today, is the fact that the modernistic wing of the church, joins hands with denominational orthodoxy, in order to fight the men who go all the way with Christ.
Denominationalism contends against every truth which is not under their wing. There is so striking a similarity between the conditions described in Mark 3:6, and the conditions which we have in our present day among Churchmen, that we are amazed. Jesus Christ has been ruled out from the Headship of His own Church. Indeed He stands outside the door and knocks.
VI. SEEKING TO SLAY THE SAVIOUR (Mark 3:6)
1. The scribes and Herodians joined together to cast off their only hope of national and spiritual life. They joined together to overthrow the Lord Jesus, the rightful heir to David's throne, and the King of the Jews. As Christ left them that day, He left their house desolate, and desolate it shall be until they shall say, "Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord."
At this very moment, the Jews, after two thousand years, are still wandering among the Gentiles. They are without God, without Christ, without hope, without any national home, and their only hope still lies in the Second Coming of Christ.
2. In rejecting Christ they sought to kill the Author of Life. They, therefore, rejected their only national and spiritual hope, when they sought to kill the One who was both the Resurrection and the Life.
The Pharisees believed in the resurrection, yet, apart from Christ they could never have realized the resurrection. The Pharisees believed in the life to come, yet, without Christ, life to come was impossible.
3. They sought to slay their best Friend. He who had come with deliverance, they were ready to deliver to the Cross. Rejecters are even refusing everything vital to life and light. It is from God that every good and perfect gift proceeds; and he who would destroy Christ, destroys the only hope of his own good. Oh, Thou Friend of all friends, teach me to be friendly to Thee.
VII. THE WITHDRAWAL (Mark 3:7-8)
1. Christ will not force His grace upon His rejecters. When the Pharisees and the Herodians joined together to destroy Christ, He quietly withdrew Himself with His disciples to the sea. This is not the only time when our Lord withdrew. In the 4th chapter of Luke, the Nazarenes would have cast Him off the hill upon which the city was built, but Jesus quietly passed through the midst of them, and went His way.
The withdrawal of Christ, was not the withdrawal of a coward unwilling to face His enemies. It was simply His rejection of His rejecters. He could have overwhelmed them by His power, but the conquest of Christianity is not the conquest of the sword, God could drive men into subjection to His rule, but this He utterly refused to do. The Lord stands as one pleading all day long. He holds out His hands calling upon men to come into His arms of love. He is willing and able and ready to save, but He never saves until men come to Him believing and ready to be saved.
2. Some believed and some believed not. In our study we have seen why the Pharisees and Herodians rejected Christ. Yet, there were multitudes who went with Him. It is always so. There are some willing to follow Christ, but others follow Him not.
Christ went into the pool of Bethsaida, and healed one who had been sick thirty-eight years. However, a multitude of impotent folk, who needed Him, never said one word to Him about being healed.
3. The curiosity group. We have read the statement concerning the great multitude, that they followed Him because they had heard what great things He had done. We wonder if they were merely curiosity followers. The Lord have mercy on those who follow Christ merely from excitement.
AN ILLUSTRATION
"An observation balloon over the lines of the Allies was suddenly attacked by a German airplane firing 'tracer bullets,' which, if they pierced the balloon, would set it on fire. Watching from beneath we saw two black shapes drop like stones out of the car. They were observers. For two or three awful moments it looked as if they would be dashed to pieces. Suddenly a white cloud opened above their heads, and their fall stopped. It was their parachute, a frail thing of fine silk, but they cast their weight on it, the air filled it, and it sustained them. They floated gently and safely to the ground. I said to one of the officers, 'Isn't it rather awful, wondering if your parachute will open and hold you up?' 'Not a bit,' he replied, 'it always works; you know it will.' So faith is trusting yourself to God as completely as the observer trusts himself to the parachute. The parachute might fail. God cannot.