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I know we're going through Mark and Larry appreciates you leading that study.

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It's been good.

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But we started Mark as well in our men's group.

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I think I mentioned that this morning with the ramble.

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And I had to felt him made to fill in for our normal leader this past Friday.

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So I've been in Mark chapter 2 in some detail.

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I want to just read two little sections there with us for a minute and make some observations.

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We're here to remember the Lord tonight, right?

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And this does a lot to reveal his heart of compassion for people.

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So Mark chapter 2 beginning in verse 23 is our first section to the end of the chapter.

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And then chapter 3 verses 1 through 6.

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Mark 2, 23.

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One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples

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began to pluck heads of grain.

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And the Pharisees were saying to him, Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the

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Sabbath?

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And he said to them, Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry?

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He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God at the time of Abathar, the

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high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest

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to eat.

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And also gave it to those who were with him.

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And he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

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So the Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

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In these sections here, the Pharisees feature prominently in chapter 2 and on into chapter

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3.

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As those who are giving kind of apparently some of the earlier verses, the earlier stories

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here in chapter 2, they're paired with the scribes.

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And my thinking is that the scribes we know were based in Jerusalem, right?

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They were part of that heartbeat of the Judaistic system there.

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They were the professionals in knowing the Scriptures.

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And I think there was a delegation sent from Jerusalem that checked him out.

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And something else was interesting too in the lead up to this is that he, beginning

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of chapter 2 says he returned to Capernaum and it was reported that he was at home.

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Well we know that his home, his hometown was not Capernaum.

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It was...

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Nazareth.

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Nazareth, right?

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But if you go back in the Gospels a little bit, you lay out the timeline.

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John McCrothers' book, you know, is very helpful.

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It's a perfect life.

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You find out that actually he couldn't go back to Nazareth because by this point he'd

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already been kicked out.

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So Capernaum was his base of operations and he struggled with being able to meet in the

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towns because he was so popular.

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Like you said, the people were just flocking to him and the crowds were such that it forced

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him out to the wilderness to read that very end of chapter 1.

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But the point is that the word was spreading and they heard about him in Jerusalem and

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they sent the experts to come up and check him out.

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And the Pharisees are just watching him like crazy.

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You know, I've said a few times in Sunday school that the Pharisees actually listened

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more intently many times than his own disciples because they wanted to catch him in some kind

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of error.

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I think it's Chuck Misler that says that whenever we miss the point of what Jesus is saying,

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the Holy Spirit brings the Pharisees to the rescue to protest, you know, and to help us

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make sure we don't miss the point.

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Right?

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Yeah, but so this particular, these two sections here are two stories that, it marks a very

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quick account, right?

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There are two Sabbaths, apparently, back to back, maybe not back to back, but they're

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pretty close to one another.

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And this first Sabbath, he's going through the grain fields and somehow the Pharisees

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see that and his disciples are plucking the heads of the grain, which they weren't supposed

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to do anyway.

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And then you're probably rubbing it together to get the husk off, you know, and then blow

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it to blow the chaff away and eat the grain.

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And that was a violation of their Sabbath.

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The thing that may be a question here is, well, you know, they don't own that field,

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so are they stealing the grain?

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And both Deuteronomy and Leviticus, though, make provision for this, right?

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Where you were allowed to go into somebody else's field, I think in Leviticus it uses

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the illustration of grapes and go into somebody's vineyard.

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If you're hungry, you can eat the grapes, but you're not to just take extra, you just

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take as much as you need to fill your need.

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And then you know that there's provision for gleaning so that you didn't like harvest

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every single grain, you know, head of grain out of your field.

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You were to leave some on the corners and edges for the poor people.

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So again, the Lord is showing his heart here for people, right?

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But they missed that point completely.

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So when they say, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

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It's not the act of taking the grain, but it's when they were doing it.

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That is the problem for them.

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And then he points to an illustration in Scripture, and he's very pointed here when

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he says to them, have you never read, right?

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Had they read that?

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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They were the professionals.

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At least they considered themselves to be the professionals.

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They knew all the facts, and yet the knowledge of Scripture, the deep knowledge of Scripture

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they had hadn't made, hadn't penetrated their hearts.

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And you see that in chapter three, there where he gets mad at them at the hardness of their

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hearts, what it says.

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Okay?

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The Scripture is not supposed to harden your heart.

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It's supposed to soften it, really, right?

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If it is hardening your heart, you have a real problem.

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There's a real problem there.

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So anyway, David's violation of the protocol of what he was supposed to do there, the Lord

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actually holds that up as something complimentary, right?

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Because David was looking after his own hunger and that of his men.

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He was providing for them.

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And then this last verse there, I really liked that, verse 27, the Sabbath was made for man,

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a not man, for the Sabbath.

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The word Sabbath comes from, it's basically a transliteration of a Hebrew word for rest,

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okay?

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And they had turned it into this big, huge thing when in fact it was supposed to be a

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blessing, right?

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But it actually turned out to be more work to try to keep all their laws than the Sabbath

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stop being a day of rest and become a day of stress, right?

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Because they got down to such a minutia, a level of minutia that it was so stressful,

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right?

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Am I violating the Sabbath?

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Have I traveled too far?

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Have I eaten something I shouldn't eat?

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I was sharing with the men too, this interesting little fact.

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We've been looking at the stoves and we're going to eventually replace our range.

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And some of the ranges actually come with a Sabbath day setting.

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I don't know if you know that or not.

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So what it does is you can turn it on to the temperature you need on Friday before the

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sun goes down.

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So most of the modern ranges have a timer after so many hours they'll turn themselves

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off, right?

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But this overrides that and turns that setting off, apparently.

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Yeah, that was pretty amazing.

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You can actually get stoves, believe it or not, that have that setting.

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So that's still with us, right?

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The Jewish-owned stove company.

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Well, they're just trying to appeal, you know, manufacturers trying to appeal to a broad

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audience.

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But what's funny to me, not funny, but just was surprised to see that is that this is

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still with us, right, that many of the Jewish people still feel bound to these little rituals

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that they're doing, forgetting that really the whole point of it was to do no customary

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work.

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It wasn't just to be another business day.

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That's all.

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You know, just close down for the day and worship the Lord, be with your family and rest.

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It was supposed to be a blessing.

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And you see that in the Lord's response that it was made for man.

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It was intended to be a blessing.

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One of the guys there shared, I thought was interesting, said, you know, he knows a Jewish

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man who was a skeptic and an agnostic, but one of the things that spoke to him in Scripture

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was the fact that the Lord had instituted the Sabbath.

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He said, that says to me that this is not man-made, right?

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Because if it were man-made, we would be working seven days a week, right?

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Yeah.

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And today's economy people do work so easily.

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And they do.

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They do.

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Yeah.

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We've lost, our culture sadly has lost it.

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Some of the men talked about Chick-fil-A and all that.

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But let's move on.

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Then, so first six verses of chapter three, again, he entered the synagogue and noticed

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that again.

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Okay.

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And a man, probably the synagogue in Capernaum, most likely, and a man was there with a withered

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hand.

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And they watched him to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might

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accuse him.

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Some of the other parallel texts say that they kept asking him, is it lawful to heal

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on the Sabbath?

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All right.

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That was another one of their laws was that you could not...

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Do good on the Sabbath.

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No, not do good on the Sabbath, but you could not help somebody who was wounded or injured.

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You could help somebody whose life was in danger, right?

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Lest you by inaction violate the command to not kill, right?

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Really weird twisted thinking.

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But there it is.

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And they're asking him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?

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And they got this man with a withered hand there and they know they're watching him to

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see if he will do this, right?

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And he said to the man with a withered hand, come here.

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And he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or

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kill?

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But they were silent.

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And then Mark gives us one of the times in Scripture where Jesus' anger is visible.

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And he looked at them with anger.

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He didn't say he said angry words, just the look was an angry look.

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Imagine the Lord of Glory looking at you with anger.

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That's not a good place.

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No, it's not a good place.

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And why is he angry at them?

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He's grieved at their hardness of heart, right?

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He said to the man, stretch out your hand.

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He stretched it out and the hand was restored.

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Which is a work of God, right?

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Which means that it's not just me doing some work to wipe blood off a wound on a leg or

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something, right?

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But this is a miracle.

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It's a miracle.

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And like the healing in John 9 where they were man born blind, like Nicodemus said to

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him at the beginning of the Gospel of John, we know you're from God because no one can

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do these miracles.

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So what, you know, but look at the very end there.

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The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians who they normally

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would be at great odds together, right?

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The Herodians were in favor of Rome and the Pharisees, generally speaking, were very much

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not in favor of Roman rule.

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And so these groups don't normally get along, but here they are getting along to take counsel

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against him, how to destroy him.

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All because he's violating their Sabbath rules and they're missing the main point.

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And I was just going through that in detail for this study and so on.

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What really struck me again was the heart of compassion that the Lord has for people.

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And even the rules that he gives and the Sabbath keeping and all of that was supposed to be

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a blessing, right?

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Like you said this morning, you know, the things that God gives us, those shackles or

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those, you know, they say, let's take the binders off.

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But what we don't realize is that the rules and regulations, the morals that God gives

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us are for our blessings, for our good, right?

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It's religion and hard hearts that take it and turn it into a big burden.

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But just as we're thinking about the Word of God, I just want to share that.

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Well, and also they were thinking, which is interesting, that they were blaming him for

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violating the Sabbath, but the violation was clearly the act of God.

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Yes.

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Right.

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Very clearly the act of God.

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That's right.

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Because they blame God for violating the Sabbath.

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Right.

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And it really doesn't show any work done there.

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No, it doesn't.

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I mean, it doesn't say that Jesus doesn't need to work.

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And back up in...

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Did it do any physical therapy or anything like that?

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Yeah, back up at the beginning, I think in verse two, they plainly accused him.

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They were not there to worship.

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They have the Sabbath anyway.

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Why?

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They came for the purpose of accusing Jesus because he was there.

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That's right.

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They knew it was not the Sabbath.

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There's a lot of holes in that in their thinking.

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You can see it was on one side, so to speak, that already had their minds made up and determined

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what they were going to do if something happened.

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You know, it's no different today than it was in that day.

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People today just look for reasons to discredit Jesus.

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Yeah, they do.

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That's right.

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Even when it flies in the face of what is clear, what is true, their logic is valuable,

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logic, but they stick to it, no matter what.

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But then there again, their hearts were hardened, their eyes were blind, all that, they just...

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They didn't get it, understandably.

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But they're still without excuse.

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Yes, they are.

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It points out how hard the heart can be.