Another Sabbath Encounter: Man with Withered Hand

In this part of the sermon: This section details the context of the encounter: it occurred on the Sabbath day in a synagogue, following Jesus' usual pattern of teaching. The key people involved are Jesus…

Martin contrasts casual 'bird watching' with the intense, scrutinizing, continuous watching of the Pharisees, emphasizing their malicious intent to find fault with Jesus.

Now again, this word for watching him, both as to its meaning and its tense, does not mean they were simply there watching. Like you might sit in the backyard bird watching. You know, just sort of enjoying the birds and looking around. But they were continually watching.

16:11 - 16:32 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But this is the only place where orge the anger that is the anger of Almighty God in judgment is ever attributed to our Lord.

Martin compares Jesus' 'looking round about' at the Pharisees to a preacher trying to maintain eye contact with the congregation, to help the audience visualize Jesus' direct and intense gaze.

Like I try to do when I'm preaching. Establish and keep eye contact with all of you. Preach to your eyeballs. Jesus asked the question, Is it right?

31:06 - 31:17 Read in full sermon

The point: Fear a hardened heart more than anything else in life, recognizing its capacity to become insensitive to sin and God's truth.

He uses the analogy of a newborn baby's sensitive flesh, which twitches at the slightest touch, to describe a once-tender conscience. This contrasts with the hardened heart of a stone mason.

we can't find fault with this character he hasn't even broken our silly little laws but he exposes us let's get rid of him that's why any holy man or woman the scripture says will suffer with Christ am I speaking to someone today who has all kinds of so called intellectual objections to the gospel all kinds of so called objections no no my friend you're just like the Pharisees your sense of morality is all twisted you can be shocked that a man is healed on the Sabbath day without the putting forth of a hand without the picking up of a bed or the speaking of a word and yet you can plot murder o...

61:51 - 63:19 Read in full sermon

The point: For young people, reflect on how your conscience may have become hardened to sin, and consider the frightening trajectory of a hardening heart.

Martin uses the image of a stone mason's callused hand, so thick that it wouldn't twitch even with a white-hot nail, to illustrate the extreme insensitivity and lack of feeling in a hardened heart and conscience.

the nerve ending so sensitive in that baby flesh some of you once had a heart and a conscience like that the slightest stroke of wrong and you felt the nerve endings of conscience twitching do you know what's happened to your heart it's like the hand of a man who's been a stone mason for 50 years it's developed one layer of callus after another until there are people living today with calluses so thick that you could take a white hot nail and put it in a gas stove and place it on a callus and they wouldn't twitch all feeling is gone and I tell you dear people the thing you ought to fear more t...

63:19 - 64:48 Read in full sermon