Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.—Mark 3:1–6

Introduction

We have looked at a series of five controversies featuring Jesus and the religious leaders of his day in Mark 2:1–3:6. The same pattern is present in each one: (1) something surprising, (2) challenge, (3) Jesus responds (silence).

Mark 3:1–6 is the climax of the conflicts. One can feel the conflicts intensify because they began with unspoken challenge (i.e., Jesus asks them why they are thinking that way in their hearts), then it becomes spoken, then premeditated (3:1–2). We have reached the climax of the conflicts because now Jesus brings the challenge to the religious leaders.

Sometimes we become so familiar with reading the Gospels that we miss the audacity of what is really happening. One almost feels sorry for the scribes and Pharisees at this point. Imagine the audacity of trying to ambush God incarnate. It is mission impossible.

Outline

1. The Situation (would he heal on the Sabbath)? (3:1–2)
2. The Challenge (Is it lawful to do good or harm, save life or kill) (3:3–4)
3. The Response (Jesus and the Opponents) (3:4–6)

Let’s walk through the text together and let it unfold before us before coming to the main point. We begin with point #1: The Situation. Look at verses 1–2.

1. The Situation (vv. 1–2)

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.

He is in the synagogue and the Pharisees spot a man with a withered hand. They have a principle they use to judge whether healing “work” should be done on the Sabbath. Their principle was minimal: “Any danger to life takes precedence over the Sabbath.” The scribes determined precisely when (the circumstance) it was proper to give aid (even determining the extent of aid one could give) for immediate danger to life.

They looked at this man and saw that his life was not in danger. They know that Jesus is a healer and so they watch him closely like a hawk to see if he will heal the man (thus working on the Sabbath) so that they can accuse him. Jesus is never caught off guard. This time he brings the challenge directly to them.

2. The Challenge (vv. 3–4)

And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.

Jesus commands the man with the withered hand to stand in full view of everyone by asking him to come to Jesus. He then poses a piercing question about whether or not it is “legal” to “do good” on the Sabbath. What a question! The Law restrains evil and promotes good. Why would it not be legal to do good on the Sabbath?

Jesus frames the discussion in terms of what Moses preaches in the Law in Deuteronomy 30:15. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” 

This is not a hard question—unless their hearts are hard: life and good or death and evil. Moses continues in verses 19–20:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days.

Jesus is bringing this challenge to them with heaven’s authority. He is God incarnate standing before them and calling upon them to choose life, not death. Their response is shocking.

3. Response (vv. 4b–6)

A. The People’s Response (v. 4)

But they were silent.

They said nothing. They were silent (v. 4b). Jesus exposed them for the frauds that they are. They don’t care about people. They don’t look with eyes of compassion. They don’t have hearts that are set on “doing good” or “saving life.” Their motive for following the rules is not love. It is self-centered pride; it is the “look-how-righteous-I-am” motivation. They have turned it into a competition. Who can come up with the most rigorous, strenuous version of inactivity? Who can do nothing the best? The Sabbath loses all meaning when it is disconnected from God’s heart to bless his people.

B. Jesus’ Response (v. 5)

And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Jesus looked at the people in anger. He was grieved at their hardness of heart. This whole narrative is a fulfillment of what Moses preached against. In their hardness of heart, these experts in the Law have totally missed the Law and the Lawgiver. In doing good and saving life, Jesus is embodying the law and the heart of God in his own person – he is its fulfillment. We also see the fulfillment of both Deuteronomy (29:4) and Deuteronomy 29:19 in the hard-heartedness of the people.

One commentator said it just right:

The Torah, which offered life and good, is perverted to keep a man crippled, to turn the synagogue into a house of bondage, and so it makes them mortal foes of the one who himself gives the life and does the good that the Torah promised. This hard-heartedness is exactly what Deuteronomy 29:19 warned against.” ¹

Jesus embodies the life found in the Law. To reject Jesus is to reject the very heartbeat of God in the Law and thus reject all that the Law embodied and envisioned for life and blessing. To reject him is to reject life and choose death. And the Pharisees show the hardness of their hearts when life or death is offered them—they choose death (literally, they think they are choosing death for Jesus, but they show they have chosen death for themselves).

C. The Pharisees Response (v. 6)

The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

The Pharisees had no political power to carry out capital punishment and so they had to make an unlikely alliance with the Herodians. The irony here is almost too much. The Pharisees were a renewal group within Israel. They were a purity group—they must keep the people pure by making sure that they are abiding by all the laws (and adding a few more heavy burdens on the people’s backs without lifting a finger to help). They were the purity police.

Everyone had different ideas when it came to the problem of the Romans (foreign occupation). The Pharisees believed in the Messiah. The Messiah will come. If we can make ourselves pure enough, then he will come. They earn his coming.

The Herodians wanted to keep things the way they were. They were the original supporters of Herod the Great and now in Galilee they are supporting Herod Antipas. They wanted to keep the peace because they were given power by the Romans to self-rule to a certain extent. If there was too much political unrest, then the Romans might come and destroy them. The Herodians were living for the here and now. They were enjoying the benefits of being in power.

The Pharisees did not believe the Herodians were authorized to rule; they waited for the Messiah to take care of them and the Romans. The Herodians didn’t want the Messiah (they were like Herod trying to kill baby Jesus). What a strange alliance. The only thing they could agree on was the need to get rid of Jesus.

They will come together again in Mark 12:13 as they are constantly trying to trap Jesus:

And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk.

The other irony is how they are answering Jesus’ question. Is it lawful to do harm and kill? You would think the answer is “of course not!” But that is exactly what they are doing. They are plotting harm and killing, even on the Sabbath. They may refuse to answer, but the secret thoughts and plots of their hearts give them away again (just like the first story).

Don’t miss what has happened. This took place in the synagogue. People were gathered to hear the word of God and worship God, and God shows up in their midst and they plot to murder God.

The Pharisees will make another unlikely alliance with Pontius Pilate and the Romans to try to get rid of Jesus near the end of Mark’s story. This is foreshadowing—their hearts are bent on blood-thirsty murder. The cross casts its shadow over these stories in the early chapters of Mark.

Application: The Gospel vs. the Ditches of Libertinism and Legalism

I feel the need to keep us on the straight and narrow when it comes to two dangers that this text raises. I am talking about the ditches of legalism and libertinism. The ditch of legalism or moralism says that life is found in keeping the rules (more rules = more life). The ditch of libertinism says that life is found in freedom from the rules (freedom to do whatever you want, free from all rules). The middle road says that life is found in Christ alone. True freedom is found in doing what we were made to do and be on the other side of salvation.

I call libertinism “Set It and Forget It Christianity.” Some have seen the old infomercial for the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Grill.  It advertised that you could put your meat in the grill and then "set it and forget it." We received one for Christmas one year. I read the instructions and was surprised to see it say: "Do not take ‘Set it and forget it’ literally.” Stay with your meat at all times while it is cooking." I said to myself: "That is false advertising." In the same way, it is false advertising to say that there is a "set it and forget it" kind of Christianity that prays a prayer, walks an aisle, or signs a card, but then does not produce a changed life of faith and obedience.

Snake Stories

I grew up deathly afraid of snakes.  My fear was actually irrational because I sometimes would imagine that there was a rattlesnake coiled up on my waterbed. I would wake up from a deep sleep and be half in and half out. I would pretend to look the other way like I didn't see it and then I would slam my hand down on the imaginary snake (not a smart thing to do to a real snake). I would hear the loud splash of the waterbed and I would wake up all the way and I realize how dumb I was!

So I always was fascinated by snake stories. Author Donald Whitney put two stories together in a very instructive way. The first story involved a man with a pet python. If you have a pet python, you would think that someone would be smart enough to have a small one. Not this guy. He had one of the large ones.  And you would think if you had a snake that big you would keep it in a cage (or a safe!)  Not this guy. He let is slither around his house. Now you would think at least if you had a snake that big, there would be some kind of divider between your bedroom and the snake. Not this guy. He actually let the snake sleep with him in his bed. Do I have to tell you that he was single? You all know where this story is going! He was found in his bed crushed to death by the snake. I like the next story even better.

A guy was out backpacking in the Amazon with one of those packs that takes up your whole back that has everything you could ever need. An anaconda snuck up on him, coiled around him, and began to constrict.  Of course at this point he can’t reach the machete in his backpack, so he reached in his shirt pocket and found a little fingernail clipper.  He pulled it out, turned it into a weapon with the little filing part, and began to gouge its eyes out.  And as a result the snake releases its grip and slithers away.

The moral of the story should be clear. You don’t make peace with things that can kill you. Sin is the same way. Sin's desire is your death. Every time you see sin in your life, it is kill or be killed. Paul says if you make peace with sin, it will kill you. But if by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.  In other words, we’ve got something a lot better than a fingernail clipper to wage war against sin.

Of the two ditches, legalism/moralism is actually a more deadly danger than libertinism. Take the example of a position we could take on alcohol. We should be quick to acknowledge that the Bible addresses this topic head on: Drunkenness is a sin—drinking to drunkenness is clearly prohibited. Another example would be drinking with someone whose conscience is wounded. You drinking would tempt him or draw him into something that maybe he spent years of his life trying to break free from (Teen Challenge or something). Now you are trying to draw them into something that killed them. Alcoholism kills marriages, jobs, and many people in our culture. It is not a game; it is a deadly danger.

Pastor John bravely put his young pastoral ministry on the line in 1982 to argue against having a clause about being a teetotaler in our church constitution. He did not believe that the Bible prohibits all drinking (the selling or drinking of alcohol). He warned the church about the other danger – one that is perhaps even more deadly. A drunkard is not going to be as likely to believe that his behavior will commend them to God, but a legalist is tempted to think that keeping the rules commends him to God.

I want to hate what God hates and love what God loves.

And this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism.

If any of you still wonders why I go on supporting this amendment after hearing all the tragic stories about lives ruined through alcohol, the reason is that when I go home at night and close my eyes and let eternity rise in my mind, I see ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism. And I think that is a literal understatement...

Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn’t look like one.

Alcoholism makes men fail; legalism helps them succeed in the world.

Alcoholism makes men depend on the bottle; legalism makes them self-sufficient, depending on no one.

Alcoholism destroys moral resolve; legalism gives it strength.

Alcoholics don’t feel welcome in church; legalists love to hear their morality extolled in church.

The enemy is sending against us every day the Sherman tank of the flesh with its cannons of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. If we try to defend ourselves or our church with peashooter regulations, we will be defeated, even in our apparent success.

(Read more at the The Gospel Coalition Blog.) 

We have to say the same thing about many other issues, including whether one keeps a Sunday Sabbath or not. It becomes an issue of moralism and how we look in the sight of others. Some were raised in communities where that was the issue.

A cartoon sums up the situation that I saw growing up in a Dutch Reformed town where Sabbath-keeping was important.

An anxious father, worried about what the neighbors may say, tells his little girl she mustn’t play with her hoop in the street on Sunday. She should go into the back garden. “Isn’t it Sunday in the back garden?” asks the girl.²

We do not have hope based on our conformity to rules and standards in order to be accepted by God. We do not obey to be accepted. We obey because we are accepted.

Conclusion: The Good Samaritan

Another picture of a Pharisee/scribe and this mindset would be Luke 10:25-27. The lawyer discovers that one must love God and people in order to have life. He knows that he is in trouble so he tries to get off the hook by watering down the Law. Who is my neighbor? That is, who do I not have to do this with?

Jesus tells the story about the Good Samaritan. He forces the issue by asking the question: Who was the neighbor? (not like the lawyer’s question—who is my neighbor). This brings us face to face with our inability to obey perfectly. When Jesus says “do this and live,” we all know that we are in trouble. We have not loved God enough or loved people enough. We all have failed to have compassion toward people in need. This story inspires us, but then it depresses us because we see that we can’t live up to this standard all the time. But then we see that Jesus is the one who has compassion (Luke 10:33). In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is the one who has compassion on those who are like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus is the one that goes and heals and casts out demons and restores a man with a withered hand. He gives all of himself to save us when we were in the worst possible need of eternal misery.

Now we can move with mercy when we see it. We can be filled with compassion when we see those in need. We don’t ask limiting questions—like who do I not have to love. We want to do all that we can in the strength that he supplies—because that Jesus—the Jesus who is the Ultimate Good Samaritan not only saved us, but lives in us. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20). That life of Jesus will come out in ministries of mercy—we love because he first loved us. We will choose life for others because he lives in us.

_____________________
1. G.K. Beale, D.A. Carson, “Mark,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Baker Academic, 2007), p.144.

2. N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), p. 29.

Sermon Discussion Questions

Outline

1. The Situation (vv. 1–2; would he heal on the Sabbath?)
2. The Challenge (vv. 3-4; is it lawful to do good or harm, save life or kill?)
3. The Response (vv. 4–6; Jesus and the opponents)

Main Point: Life is found in Jesus. To reject him is to reject life and choose death. Jesus embodies the life offered in the law perfectly. To receive him is to receive life; to reject him brings death. 

Discussion Questions

• The interaction in Mark 3:1–6 is the last of the five controversies in this section. How is this one different than the previous four?
• Why did the Pharisees choose the man with a withered hand as a potential trap? How would healing him constitute “work”?
• What section of Scripture does Jesus use to frame his question from the Law? Why is this context important?
• How does Jesus embody the Law in his own person? Why does Jesus respond with such anger at the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees?

Application Questions

• Are there any aspects of moralism that are a struggle for you? Do you subtly start to trust in what you do (or don’t do) to commend you to God? Do you have an appropriate anger for moralism and its tendency to seek self-justification?
• Are there areas in your life over which Jesus would be angry? Consider sharing these areas with the group. Ask for prayer and accountability. Ask Jesus to search your heart and respond to him personally.
• In this message, what truths landed on you that you need to share with others in your life? How can you share these truths? Devote it to prayer! 

Prayer Focus 

Pray for a grace to find life in Jesus and to rest in his fulfillment of the Law. Then pray for a grace to follow him in being like the Good Samaritan.