Matthew 12:9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue. 10 A man there had a shriveled hand. Looking for a reason to accuse him of something, they asked him, “Is healing permitted on Shabbat?” 11 But he answered, “If you have a sheep that falls in a pit on Shabbat, which of you won’t take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore, what is permitted on Shabbat is to do good.” 13 Then to the man he said, “Hold out your hand.” As he held it out, it became restored, as sound as the other one. 14 But the P’rushim went out and began plotting how they might do away with Yeshua.
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Mark 3:1 Yeshua went again into a synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Looking for a reason to accuse him of something, people watched him carefully to see if he would heal him on Shabbat. 3 He said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Come up where we can see you!” 4 Then to them he said, “What is permitted on Shabbat? Doing good or doing evil? Saving life or killing?” But they said nothing. 5 Then, looking them over and feeling both anger with them and sympathy for them at the stoniness of their hearts, he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” As he held it out, it became restored. 6 The P’rushim went out and immediately began plotting with some members of Herod’s party how to do away with him.
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Luke 6:6 On another Shabbat, when Yeshua had gone into the synagogue and was teaching, a man was there who had a shriveled hand. 7 The Torah-teachers and P’rushim watched Yeshua carefully to see if he would heal on Shabbat, so that they could accuse him of something. 8 But he knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Come up and stand where we can see you!” He got up and stood there. 9 Then Yeshua said to them, “I ask you now: what is permitted on Shabbat? Doing good or doing evil? Saving life or destroying it?” 10 Then, after looking around at all of them, he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” As he held it out, his hand was restored. 11 But the others were filled with fury and began discussing with each other what they could do to Yeshua.
Mistake #1: Healing on the Sabbath. If you do something like that, you deserve to die. Well, we’ll get to that.
Now Yeshua is getting quizzed. They’ve heard of (or seen) people getting healed so instead of saying something like “How did you do that?” or “Praise God! People are being made whole. It has to be God behind all of this”, these guys instantly went into their rules.
Arrogance does amazing things to people. Especially when you get into the spiritual arena.
“My life has absolutely zero power but you know what, I’ve been around the block. Let me tell you about God.”
“Wait, no, you can’t do that! God hasn’t told me you were allowed to do it. And well, you know how important I am, right? I am your spiritual leader and God runs everything through me before you lowly peons can do anything. Now go sit down.”
Yet here is someone that seems to operate in a rebellious spirit. But only “rebellious” to those that are rebellious to His Father.
It’s easy to hold tight to rules when it’s other people violating them. But when it’s us, we know the “real” reason we had to violate it.
We have a tendency to compartmentalize other people’s struggles as simple and sometimes silly. If they’d just repent, right? It’s easy to talk about faith and how we need to walk in it when you have a steady paycheck. We are the wisest and most trusting people alive when we see others struggle. Our sage advice to someone that is in a dip of some kind is that they just need to have faith and trust that Abba will see them through.
In a public debate leading up to the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan said:
“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.”
How true this is.
Here you have people in church with (likely) no ailments suggesting you can be made better on a different day. So why not wait?
To see the ridiculousness of the rules, imagine for a moment you had a deathly sick child that was within hours of death -- and it’s Shabbat. The hospital had been waiting on a miracle drug to arrive in order to save your child and it made its way in at noon. Do you let them die? Will letting your child die when they could be saved, just to “not work on Shabbat”, be a noble act or an evil act?
What would Abba want?
Let’s see what happened on the 7th day:
Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, along with everything in them. 2 On the seventh day God was finished with his work which he had made, so he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 God blessed the seventh day and separated it as holy; because on that day God rested from all his work which he had created, so that it itself could produce.
A small detail here is that He stopped working but He did do something else: He Blessed.
And what does it mean to “bless”? According to Deuteronomy 28, blessing is life, cursing is death. Bless means you impart life, curse means you impart death.
Life. Life is what’s always the issue. Yeshua even uses the sheep analogy to help them see. And I think they knew this but were looking for a violation of Torah, a sin, to condemn Him.
Is it really the day they have an issue with anyway?
If you remember, these guys were sickened when Yeshua healed the paralytic. And it wasn’t Shabbat. At this point, they were just looking for a reason to take this Man down. And it’s still early on. He’s going to stir the pot quite a bit more and force them to commit to either their traditions and rules, or the truth.
And as we know, tradition wins. Why is that? Well, let’s look at our own lives to find out.
Think right now about all the changes you should be making in your life because you know Abba wants you to change them. Why don’t you? (let the hand waving begin)
We love our lives -- even if we hate them. All of those familiar spirits bring such fantastic artificial peace that we fight tooth and nail to keep them. You know, that peace that is 100% dependent on other people changing and repenting to us. And we know they never will because there’s no chance we would start the process. So if we can stay in that odd tension, we have a peace that could come but because we are a victim, it won’t. And we then need to self-medicate with familiar spirits (or addictions) to make it through the day. Tuesday complete? Check.
Now, that’s us when we know we need healing. What if you think you’re just fine and there is nothing to heal? This is where these religious leaders are. All of that BS we believe that’s outlined above but cloaked in zero knowledge of their own pain. Now, here we have people’s comfortable lives getting disrupted by a rogue, self-taught “Rabbi” that is pulling out some kind of sorcery to deceive the masses.
This cannot last long.
One thing I know to be 100% true: do NOT mess with people’s paychecks. If you want to see a show, withhold their paycheck for a few days. If you want to see the absolute worst in someone, withhold it for a week. A month? Now they are murderous. And these guys’ paychecks and power are getting completely messed up if this guy keeps going so they need to stop it before it begins.
In summary, when you mess with someone’s comfort, money, or power, you must die. That “someone” includes believers. That “someone” includes you.
Want to know why you can’t facilitate healing like Yeshua said you should?
Well…