Luke's Gospel

On your tables and turn to page 1 0 3 3. And we are in Luke chapter 6 and the first 11 verses. And Jackie is gonna come and read that to us. Page 1033, Luke 6. 1 seventh, Jesus was going through the cornfields, and his disciples began to pick some ears of corn, rub them in their hands and eat the grain.

Some of the pharisees asked, why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? Jesus answered them. Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the House of God and taking the concentrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat, and he also gave some to his companions. Then Jesus said to them, the son of man is lord of the Sabbath.

On another Sabbath, he went into the synagogue and was teaching. And a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to acc accuse Jesus. So they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with a shriveled hand, get up, and stand in front of everyone.

So he got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil, to save life, or to destroy it. He looked around at them all, and then said to the man stretch out your hand. He did so, and his hand was completely restored.

But the pharisees and the teachers of the law were urious and began to discuss with 1 another what they might do to Jesus. Thank you, Jackie, very much for that. Please keep that Bible passage open in front of you, because we're gonna be looking at it. But first of all, good evening. Let me add my welcome to you.

My name is Ben. I'm a member here at Cornerstone Church. I think officially now or almost officially a member since we've introduced memberships. That's great. We've been going through the book of Luke in these evening services, which has been brilliant.

And if you've missed any, encourage you to go online, to the church website, and have a look at those. They're on there. You can listen back to them. But let me just pray again before we start. Our father in heaven, we heard this morning how, you are speaking god and you've given us ears.

To hear. So I pray, please, by your spirit, you would speak to us and you would give us ears to hear what you have to say in Jesus' name, amen. Great. So we've been in Luke for a little while now, since before Christmas. So I think it's good to remind ourselves of Luke's intention of writing this gospel.

And also Luke's intention of writing this particular story that we've just, that we've just read. So keeping a finger in chapter 6 where you are, please flick back to chapter 1 verse 1. And we'll just read that again quickly. So it says this, chapter 1 verse 1. This is Luke's intention for writing this gospel.

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us. Just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you most excellent theophilus so that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught. So you can flick back to chapter 6 now. We'll be back there for the rest of the of the sermon.

So Jesus did a lot of things. I think in John's gospel, it says that there aren't enough books in the world to fill all the things that he did. But the things that are recorded like this incident and this story are specifically recorded for theophilus and for us as well that we would know with certainty the things that we have been taught. Namely that Jesus Christ is the son of god and that he came to die on the cross, for us since. And we've seen Luke do that a lot in the first sort of 5 chapters of of this gospel.

And I'll just skim through some of the examples. So in chapter 1, we see the angel Gabriel announces birth. It's not gonna be a normal birth. This is this is, this is god himself coming. In chapter 2, we see Jesus presented, at the temple, and he fulfills all these kind of prophecies about the Messiah.

In chapter 3, we see god the father himself, say, this is my son, whom I love. And in chapter 4, we see satan and the demons acknowledge that he is the son of god And he heals people with his authority, and he's got authority over nature. And then in chapter 5, as we saw last week, he he talks about being the the new wine, and Peter also in that chapter calls him lord and says, get away from me. I'm sinful, I'm a sinful man. So when you look at the book of Luke through that lens of that intention, it's really clear, isn't it?

What Luke's trying to do? The son of god. He's the son of god. He's the son of god. There's a picture here that Luke is is building up.

He's trying to show us something. And then when we get to these verses that we've just read in chapter 6, we see more of the same. So this sermon is not so much gonna be about the Sabbath. And I don't know if that disappoints you or if that relieves you. But there are plenty of amazing sermons out there on the Sabather too, in fact, on the Cornerstone website, so if you want to hear a sermon about what the Sabbath is and that kind of stuff, then then go and listen to those.

But what I'm going to do is focus on how these stories that we've read show us who Jesus is, what he came to do, and also the different reactions to him. Because there are only really 2, which we'll see. So reactions to Jesus, we've had a range, so far in the scriptures. First of all, we we've had a mob from his hometown who wanna kill him. So they take him to the top of a cliff and then just walk straight through them.

Absolutely amazing. We've had disciples fall on their face before him. We've had other people that have just seen his miracles and heard him speak and they're just amazed by him. And the pharisees for all of this have been a bit bewildered by him, to be honest. They've kind of noticed there's something unusual about this guy.

He's not behaving how everyone else behaves. He's not saying the same things or doing the same things. So they've started to ask him questions. And the questions have gotten more accusatory as they've gone on. So at first, they don't even speak to him.

They just complain to his Cyples. And they say, why is eating with sinners and tax collectors? And they get an answer they don't like. Then they then they speak to Jesus and say, John's disciples are fasting. Why are yours eating and drinking?

And again, they get an answer they don't like. So now here in chapter 6, they hit him with the law for the first time. Why are you working on the Sabbath? It is unlawful. This is a day for resting.

And it is like the pharisees have been waiting for this moment. They've been waiting for Jesus to stick just a single toe out of line because either they or someone hired on their behalf must have been keeping a close eye on Jesus because Jesus is in the middle of a field at this point. And the pharisees know what the disciples are doing with their hands, right? So someone's keeping a close eye on them. Look at verse 1.

Once Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the colonels. So in verse 2, the pharisees ask, why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? And the pharisees must have thought that they'd got Jesus at this point because, the punishment for breaking the Sabbath was death. You can read about that in Exodus 31, among other places. So here, they finally have him cornered.

Finally, Jesus is gonna have to fall in line is gonna have to kind of, get on his knees and grovel and, approach them for forgiveness because, you know, that's how everyone else treated them. But Jesus responds again. And his response, reveals the ungodly deformity that this law had become. So in verse 3, take a look. Jesus says, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?

He entered the house of god and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat and he gave some to his companions. Now, David was this great king of Israel. And they looked up to him and they they, had great respect for him. So accepting that Jesus had fallen short here, and done something that was unlawful would also mean accepting that David had done something unlawful and fallen short. And, you know, were they prepared to say that?

And so Jesus, along with David reveals here that the necessity of eating trumps the ceremony and the interpretation of the pharisees law. You see, and and this is going back to to Pete's great sermon on the Sabbath of the Sabbath was given as a gift to the Israelites who would come out of slavery where they'd been forced to work 7 days a week. No rest at all. But here, god gives them a day of rest to remember who god is, that he made them and god also rested but it's also that god that saved them. And Jesus also says, in Mark that the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.

So taking those 2 things together, the Sabbath is a gift for man's good It's a gift for man's benefit. So to restrict good and in in fact to do evil by, neglecting good or preventing good completely disarms the Sabbath of its function, its primary function. It makes no sense to introduce a law for man's good. And then, to hold that law against him in chains as he starves. The strict enforcement of this law does the very thing that was designed to prevent.

So the Pharisees have turned this gift from god into a man made burden. They disarm the power of the Sabbath and, which is to be for the good of man. And I really you just have to love the way that Jesus does this as well. He's brilliant at this. Because he asked them in verse 3 if they've never read the passage.

Right? This is to the teachers of the law who have read and know everything. They can probably recite it. It's a little bit like asking your English teacher at school. Have you never read Shakespeare?

And I don't think it's sarcastic from Jesus, but it is, it's provocative, isn't it? Because of course, they've read it. But they've not really understood it. And that's the point that Jesus is making. Their understanding of the Sabbath is as if they've never read it.

So you can imagine that's quite a stinging response from Jesus in the first instance, but he actually goes even further with his next line. So he then says in verse 5, the son of man is lord of the Sabbath. And this is my first sort of main point tonight. This Jesus is the son of man, and he is the lord of the Sabba. So firstly, what what does the son of man mean and why is it significant?

What's going on there? But actually it's Jesus' favorite name for himself. I found out preparing this. He calls himself the son of man 80 times in all the gospels. And weirdly, no 1 else calls in that except Stephen in the book of acts.

So it's it's a name otherwise that Jesus kind of has for himself. And it comes from Daniel chapter 7, which is gonna pop up on the on the screen behind me. Which I'll read. So in my vision at night, I looked and there before me was 1 like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the ancient of days and was led into his presence.

He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away and his kingdom is 1 that will never be destroyed. So Jesus here in saying he's the son of man is saying that he is the 1 who has come from heaven. He has been given authority glory, sovereign power by the ancient of days himself. He is the 1 who's gonna establish an everlasting kingdom that will, not be destroyed, and all nations will worship him.

In other words, he's saying that he's god himself But what mere man, even the greatest man in the world can have a claim anywhere near anything like those things? Donald Trump is meant to be the most powerful man in the world right now, president of United States of America. But does he come close to any of those things He thinks he does. But he doesn't at all, does he? He doesn't come.

It's and it would be so it's utter blasphemy is to say that you are the son of man if you're not, unless you are god himself. And this explains the next bit, the lord of the Sabba. So if he is, If he is, if the son of man is god himself, then that means he's the author of the Sabbath. He's the 1 who made it. If he's god, he made the Sabbath.

He created it. He owns it. It belongs to him. And on top of that, he's given all glory and authority and sovereign power. So whatever way you look at Jesus, he truly is the lord of the Sabbath.

He's not under it that it can be held against him. In fact, Jesus said that he came to fulfill the law, and he fulfilled the Sabbath and its purpose ultimately on the cross. Where he becomes our true rest. So without the cross, we have to work tirelessly to, follow the sacrificial law system, which is over and over again, repetitive, repetitive to make peace with god. And then after we've done all of that stuff, we're only at peace with god so long as we don't sin again.

And then we need to go back to the start. And then even when we've sort of tried and cleared our sins, we then need to work really hard at not sinning again. It's just an endless cycle. It goes on and on and on. But because of the cross, We no longer have to work to earn our salvation.

It is given to us freely by grace. Jesus says, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Not just 1 day a week, but a lasting and eternal rest. So the son of man is the author, the lord, and the fulfillment of the Sabbath. And and that is just an if if the whole, telling your teacher Shakespeare thing was bad, this is just next level earth shattering claim that Jesus makes.

And and the pharisees were probably just reeling like utter blasphemy. What on earth is go? It's just off of the scale blasphemy. Unless it's true. So we don't see the immediate fallout of these claims.

They decide pharisees are probably fainted, at this. Because this interaction ends with Jesus' words, and there's nothing else said here. But we do see what these words caused the pharisees to do next And there's a change, huge change in their approach to Jesus now. They understand what Jesus just said about himself. He's the son of man, he's the lord of Sabbath.

They get what that means. Because what happens is they go from curious perplexed bewildered onlookers to accusers and schemas. So my second point is this. The accusers accuse. And you can see that in verses 6 and 7.

So have a look down at that. On another sabbath, he went into the synagogue and was teaching and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus. So they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. So you can see this has moved way beyond asking Jesus questions, you know, perhaps even genuinely to find out an answer from him.

This has now moved into trapping territory. They are actively looking for Jesus to do something wrong in order to be able to convict him, to put him to death. They've made up their mind about him now. You know, he might have gotten away with the whole eating on the sabbath thing. That's fine.

He can get away with that, but he's not getting away with this. He won't this time. So, you know, it's it is plausible that they planted this man with the shriveled hand in the synagogue. Kind of as bait, is he gonna do it? But equally, they could have just spotted him there and just taken the opportunity.

But either way, they're using the attendance of this man with the shrivelled hand as the means by which they're going to accuse Jesus. And perhaps they thought Jesus was gonna do it on the sly as well because it says they were in in verse 7 that they were watching him closely. So maybe they had people strategically dotted around the synagogue you know, just in case Jesus was gonna do it in a corner quietly, not to draw attention to himself or the fact that he's doing it on the sabbath. But you just have you just have to love Jesus. Don't you.

He's got no shame at all. Take a look at verse 8. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shrivelled hand, get up and stand up in front of everyone. So he got up and he stood there. The lord of the Sabbath is not afraid of the pharisees.

He even knows their thoughts, did you notice, and he addresses them directly. And I think this must have come as a bit of a surprise to the pharisees. Because, you know, they didn't actually need to watch him closely in the end. Their whole strategy of planting people around, it was not really Seri because Jesus stops his teaching. All eyes are on him, and he asks the man to stand up in front of everyone.

It'd be like me asking Chris to stand up in front of everyone now. It'd be there's no subtlety to that. Is there at all? You can you can imagine the glee, can't you in the from the pharisees. They're rubbing their hands together.

They're like, oh, we thought we were gonna have to drag Jesus out into into the public to reveal this sin, but here he is. He's gonna do it in front of the whole town anyway. But here's the sovereignty and the wisdom of the son of man. This man with the crippled hand, who was the means by which the pharisees intended to accuse Jesus Now, it becomes the very means by which their own sin is exposed. The very finger that they set up to point at Jesus is the very same finger that turns round and accuses them, points right back at them.

And it's done front and center for all to see. They wanted Jesus' downfall to be public, but in doing so, they've made their own downfall public. And so with the man standing in the middle of the synagogue, with everyone's attention, Jesus then asked the pharisees in verse 9. Take a look at that. I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil to save a life or to destroy it.

I remember who he's talking to here. He's talking to the teachers of the law. These are the people who interpret the word of god and teach it to the people. So they should know this. A child could tell you the answer to this question.

But this question is is is brilliant because it unravels the pharisees warped understanding of god's laws for everyone to see. Because do you notice they haven't got an answer? But I don't think this is a rhetorical question Jesus is asking, because he looks around at them all. In verse 10, it says he looked around at them all. He looked at each of them in the eye.

Have you got an answer? Have you got an answer? Have you got an answer? But it kind of was rhetorical because the answer should be so obvious, but none of them say anything. Because if they'd said, oh, obviously, you should do good on the Sabbath, then that would actually force them to admit that what Jesus is about to do is lawful and therefore they're wrong for trying to accuse him by it.

But if on the other hand, they said it is unlawful to do good and it is lawful instead, therefore, to neglect those or ignore those who are sick or in need, in other words, to do evil, then that everyone there knew that wasn't right either. So Jesus has them pinned between 2 answers that they just can't give, like in chess, checkmate where the king can't move in any direction without being exposed. But even their silence exposes them because they are unable to answer even the most basic question about god's law. Is it lawful to do good or evil? So Jesus asked this question.

He looks around at them all, and I wonder whether he took his time doing this as well. I I hope he did. Because there there are these small details in the bible sometimes, aren't there that just draw you right into a scene that take you there, paint a really vivid picture of what's going on. Time kind of like slows down, you zoom in. And when I read this, he looks he looks round at the mall.

And there's no answer. Point made checkmate. So in verse 10, after a period of complete silence where you could hear a pin drop, he turns back to the man and he says simply stretch out your hand, which he does, and he's completely restored. Without even needing to touch the man, Jesus heals him with just 4 words, stretch out your hand, what an amazing moment to have seen, to have been part of. So what is Jesus doing here?

Is is he just rebelling against the pharisees for fun? Is he showing his power that he's able to heal? What what is he demonstrating here? I think there are 2 important things that he is demonstrating. First of all, it shows us who he is, what he's like, and what he came to do.

So it confirms he's the son of man from Daniel. He is the 1 with authority with glory and sovereign power. He is the author of life himself He's the 1 who can control sickness, who can control disease, and by his word, he brings healing, and he brings life. The pharisees asked in chapter in chapter 5, who can forgive sins but god alone when they heard Jesus say, your sins are forgiven? And they should also ask themselves now.

Who can expose and unravel even the most wicked, well thought through plan? But god alone. Who can heal and make broken people whole again, but god alone. Those are the questions they should have asked themselves right now because this is god almighty standing before them. And they should be on the floor with their faces in the ground in front of him.

Just as the leper did, who knew he was unclean, and just as Peter did on the lake, who knew he was a sinful man before god himself, So this is this is god almighty before them. What is this god like? Now he's shown himself, now he's here. How does he use his power and authority and glory the world. This is a god who heals.

He restores. He takes what is deformed, what is broken, what is shriveled, what is pathetic, what is vile, even, and he makes it whole. He makes it new. He brings life back into it. Is by the power of of his word that this man's crippled hand was stretched out.

And as he said, stretch out your hand and he did, the sinews and the muscles and the bones and the skin that were out of place or were twisted or were missing, have new life breathed into them. Hardness kind of gives way to softness. Blood runs back into the veins, the the skin, pinks up again and is supple. Where there was pain, there's now, relief and life has come back into this man's hand. The thing is though Jesus did care about this man's physical hand, and his well-being, there is something much deeper going on here.

Just like, the cleansing of the leper, the dead man walking, this, healing of this hand, is just a picture of the greater healing that Jesus will do on the cross. Cause we, in this room, haven't all got shriveled hands, or have leprosy, I hope. If you have, I'll give you a bell and you can shout unclean and clean later. We haven't got shriveled hands and shriveled hearts, but we, sorry, hands, but we do have shriveled hearts. And decaying hearts.

That's where our sickness lies. That's where our problem is. Jesus said is what comes out of a person's heart that makes them unclean. Not the condition of your skin or your hands. And God sees right through us.

He sees our hearts. You know, we have this pretense about ourselves. We project an image of ourselves. He sees right through that. He sees the condition of our hearts.

He sees our sexual immorality, our theft, our murder, our adultery, our greed, our malice, our deceit, our lewdness, our slander, our envy, our arrogance, and our folly. Those are the things that make us unclean. And who here in this room right now can count themselves clean of any of those things? But here is the glory of the cross. Though we are those things, we are dead in our sin, like this man's shriveled, twisted decaying hand.

But Jesus died for us. He took the punishment of god's righteous and his just and his good wrath that we deserve that should have been on our shoulders But instead, this is the great news of the gospel that by his wounds, we are healed. By his death, we are made alive. God's wrath is satisfied fully in Christ on the cross. Every wretched sin, all those things I said, All those things that I didn't say, but we still do in our, all of those things are paid for by Christ on the cross, and we're sanctified by his blood.

See, when Jesus said stretch out your hand to this man, life flooded back into his dead hand. And when Jesus on the cross said it is finished, life floods back into dead hearts who hear him and obey him. And that is what it means to be born again. By the Holy Spirit, you have this new life. You are born again into god's kingdom and his family.

See, this is not a story, not just a story about how Jesus defied the pharisees and fixed the broken hand. This is a story so that theophilus and for us here tonight may know the certainty of what we have been taught about who Jesus is and about what he's like and what he came to do. That's the first thing that Jesus demonstrates. The second thing is is this. Jesus demonstrates that the way we come to hear and trust in him is through the exposing of our sin.

So when Jesus talks about sending the Holy Spirit in John 16, he says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin. And I think we need to calibrate our understanding of what that means because it doesn't sound quite right, does it? God's gonna send the spirit to convict us of our sin. Hasn't god come to remove my sins, not to point them out and draw more attention to them, but there's a big difference between conviction and accusation. And I'll just quickly lay lay that difference out because it's a big difference.

So Satan is the accuser. Satan is the accuser. He points out our sin and wants to accuse us of our guilt. He wants us to know it so that we're under the heavyweight of god's wrath and judgment to be honest, it says a lot about the pharisees that hear in the story. That's what they wanted to do to Jesus.

They wanted to, bring the law over him that he would be punished by it. You know, that's ungodly. That's demonic, even. The spirit, however, does not accuse us of our sin, but instead he convicts us He he reveals the state of our hearts and persuades us of its reality. Not not so he can burden us with the weight of it, and and make us feel guilty, but it is to get us to see the necessity we have for the cross.

It's to get us to see our desperate need a healer for a savior because god desperately desperately wants to heal us. But we will never go to a doctor unless we know we're sick. And if you're anything like me, then even when I am sick and and lying on my bed and writhing in pain, I still carry nose. I still don't want to call the doctor. Still, take some persuading.

So look, in the same way, if we don't see our utterly hopeless position before the the throne of god, then we're never gonna cast ourselves on Jesus. So here in this story, when Jesus reveals a sin in the pharisees, he does so not to embarrass them or to shame them or accuse them, but he's doing it to expose their sin to themselves that they would see it. You know, there was a man there with a shriveled hand and that was really obvious, but there's a greater sickness in that room in that synagogue, and they couldn't see it. And that was, they're shriveled and twisted hearts. And look, god's methods haven't changed.

I said this yesterday at football I was talking about how managers come and go in the world of football. There have been over 40 managerial sackings just this year alone. This world is a world of constant change, but god is the same yesterday, today and forever. His plan has been in place since before time began. And it's he's gonna see it through to completion, which means that the spirit as he was in this story He's still in the business of convicting people today of their sin, that we would see our sin and that we would repent and come back to the healer.

So the big question for us then, the question really for us is how do we react to this? How do we react to Jesus? How do we react to the spirit doing this, revealing the state of our hearts? You know, what is what is your gut reaction when you open the scriptures? And you see yourself in the mirror of its pages.

And ultimately, there are only really 2 responses you know, you might think there are lots, but in the end, they're going to fall in 1 of 2 buckets. And they're demonstrated to hear in this story. 1 by the man with the struggled hand, and the other 1 by the pharisees and the story. So the question is which 1 are you? Are you like the pharisees?

Because look, the pharisees were laid bare in front of Jesus. They absolutely were. They'd made their plans. They'd laid their bait. They'd seen Jesus heal on the Sab everything had happened exactly as they wanted, but instead of exposing his sins, their sins were laid out for everyone to see.

And what was their reaction? They were furious. Look at verse 11. But the pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious. And began to discuss with another with 1 another what they might do to Jesus.

And in Mark's gospel, it says, discuss with 1 another how they might kill Jesus. They started to plot how they might kill jesus. So that's what that means here. It's not what we're gonna do with him now. Should we try something else?

No. It is absolutely How can we get rid of him permanently? How can we kill him so he stops doing this to us? So instead of being horrified by their sin when they saw it and falling on their faces like Peter saying away from me, lord, I'm a sinful man. They harden their hearts further.

They block up their ears and their response to hearing about their sin is actually to kill the 1 who's revealing it. You know, that's how they're gonna deal with it. It's like the bills are coming in the post, you know, for the bank statements and the debt collections, are warning about this this debt that's that's piling up. But the pharisees are just tearing up these letters. They're not listening to them, not reading them.

And the way that they deal with their problem of debt is to kill the postman who's trying to deliver it. That's how they're gonna do with it or it's like NHS letters from the GP. You know, this GP writes to them and it's saying, look, you are you are really sick and he's sending them scans and he's sending them reports and he's trying to persuade them and say, look, you are sick, you're ill. You need to come and see the doctor. Their response is to kill the doctor.

They don't wanna hear about their illness. And look, we can behave the same way when our sin is revealed to us. Know, it sounds strong, isn't it? We wanna we wanna kill god. It sounds really strong, actually.

But if we get a glimpse of our sin and we sit back and disengage, And, we say it's not relevant, or if if we if we get up offended and we're furious, like the pharisees and we say, God, are you trying to insinuate that I am not a good, upstanding, upright person? Then effectively we're saying, god, you are wrong. And, don't want you to be here anymore. I think you should go. So we condemn himself to justify condem him to justify ourselves.

We hold a court case in our mind. We we judge him. We convince ourselves he's not real. It might be, and if that isn't killing him, then I don't know what is. And we throw him out of our lives.

Or maybe there are just certain parts of our lives that we keep you know, we come to church like you're here now. You're listening to sermons and things like that. But actually, there are some parts of your heart that are cornered off. That God is not allowed to touch or send letters to. You know, he's not allowed to comment on them.

We just tear up those letters whenever we hear those are in the post. So can you see yourself in any of those things? Is there any part of your life that you're touchy about? That you don't want god to reveal. You tear up letters from him about that part.

Because be warned, ask yourself What is that saying about how you view god? Do you want the god almighty that is there? Or do you want a slightly different god who doesn't talk about certain things? So if that is you and to an extent, to be honest, that is kind of all of us in a sense. Then I want to urge us to react like the man with the shriveled hand in this story, which is the other response that you can have to Jesus.

So the man in this story with the shrivelled hand, heard Jesus say get up and stand up in front of everyone. And he had a choice at that point. He he didn't know what Jesus was gonna do or say. He was actually probably shunned and judged because of his of his hand. So so actually standing up in front of everyone was probably incredibly uncomfortable.

It was It was revealing. It's potentially embarrassing for him, but he heard Jesus and he trusted him and he and he stood up. And then Jesus asked him to stretch out his hand. Now that must have been an unimaginable thing for this man to hear. Because stretching out his hand would have meant revealing his deformity, being open and vulnerable.

And he probably gotten really good over the years of hiding his hand away from people, you know, especially in public and especially in the synagogue when the teachers of the law and and the holy people are around. Who probably thought he was a sinful man because he because he had it. But here in this story, Jesus commands him to acknowledge his deformity. To lay it out before him, to stretch out his hand. And again, in the face of uncertainty, This man didn't really know what was gonna happen when he did this, was he gonna get laughed at?

What was gonna happen was Jesus gonna look at it and go, that's disgusting. Go away. He heard Jesus He trusted Jesus. And in his trust and obedience, he stretched out his hand, and it was made new. And as it was with this man, so it is with us.

Jesus says to us, right now, repent and believe the good news of the cross. So are we gonna stand up in front of the world in front of god himself, admit our sin, our infirmities, our deformities, that we're gonna ask him for forgiveness. We're gonna hear his command and trust in the sufficient work of the cross. And obey him? Or are we gonna keep tearing up these letters?

We're gonna put our head in the sand and wish the postman would go away or worse that he died. It all really comes down to 2 simple things. And then this has come up quite a lot in the last few sermons. It all really comes down to 2 simple things. Firstly, do you see yourself as sick?

And secondly, do you see Jesus as the healer? I want to encourage you. Just look at the story and look what god can do to sick people. Let me pray. Further, we thank you so much for the story in Luke's Gospel, that shows us who Jesus is.

That he's the son of man. He's the 1 who's been given all authority or glory and sovereign power. We thank you that he is a healer, that he makes broken people whole again. And he's brought us into an eternal rest through sacrifice on the cross. Please help us not to be like the pharisees, furious, hard hearted, refusing to listen or believe, please help us to be trusting and obedient like the man with the shrivelled hand.

Understanding by your spirit who convicts us that we're sick and we desperately desperately need to be healed. Thank you father for your great love and your patience with us. Please heal us. And make us more like Christ, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.