Mark 3:1-6 — Stretch Out Your Hand

Photo by Phil Goodwin on Unsplash

Mark 3:1-6

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.

Jesus continued to be assaulted by the religious leaders in the area of ceremonial and legal righteousness. What the Pharisees didn't understand was that God was more concerned with the hearts, souls, and even bodies of his people than he was with the Pharisees' interpretation of the Sabbath. If the Sabbath was a day unto God as the Pharisees asserted, then one must be about the things of God. The Lord God wants to heal, deliver, and forgive. It is a time for doing good. Not doing good for someone, when it is in your power to do so, is evil. Shocked into silence, they wouldn't even answer Jesus' easy question.

Jesus was angry with the Pharisees for their stinky attitude. He manifested the heart of God and all its emotions as well as its reason. He was also grieved at their hardness of heart. He healed the man knowing that the Pharisees would be angry but also knowing that the man's need for healing was more important than his own personal popularity among the Pharisees.

He asked the Pharisees to be honest with him..."but they were silent."

Ironically, Jesus asked if it was right to save a life or to kill on the Sabbath and then after He touched a man's hand in compassion and healing, the Pharisees plotted with their archenemies the Herodians (representatives of a godless and brutal regime) to kill Jesus.

Both the outwardly righteous and the outwardly wicked joined forces to develop a plan to destroy Jesus. I look at the cultural landscape today and see just such strange bedfellows joining forces against the followers of Jesus around the world.

The Pharisees had forgotten the words of the prophet in Micah 6:8, what amounts to a kind of Four Spiritual laws of the Old Testament,

"He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?"

God extends his hand to us in invitational mercy, and as we respond to his love by coming to him in faith, he further asks us to stretch out our "withered hand" and he makes us whole in the process.

Are we stretching out our hands to him? He is gently, persistently, calling to us...