The Anatomy of a Dead Religion Text: Mark 3:1-6
Introduction: The Sabbath is for Man
We come now to another skirmish in what we might call the Sabbath Wars. In the previous chapter, the Pharisees challenged Jesus about His disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath, and He answered them by declaring that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Now, we are not to imagine that this settled the matter. When you are dealing with a deeply entrenched religious establishment, a single, devastatingly logical argument does not cause them to pack up their bags and go home. Rather, it causes them to double down. It makes them angrier. And so they lie in wait for another opportunity.
What we are witnessing here is not a simple disagreement over a fine point of the law. It is a fundamental clash of two entirely different religions. On the one hand, you have the religion of Jesus, which is the religion of God, a religion of life, restoration, mercy, and goodness. On the other hand, you have the religion of the Pharisees, which is the religion of man, a religion of death, decay, accusation, and murder. One religion uses the law as a guardrail to guide you to green pastures. The other uses the law as a club to beat you to death.
The Sabbath was given by God as a gift. It was a day of rest, a day of worship, a day of delight, a day to celebrate the goodness of God's creation and the greater goodness of His redemption. But the Pharisees, through their generations of traditions, had turned this gift into an intolerable burden. They had wrapped it in so many layers of their own regulations that they had suffocated the life out of it. It was no longer a day for celebrating life; it was a day for meticulously avoiding any activity that might, by some contorted definition, be construed as work. And so, when Jesus enters the synagogue, He is not just entering a building. He is entering the very heart of their dead system, and He is about to perform open heart surgery, right in front of everybody.
The Text
And He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there with a withered hand. And they were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man with the withered hand, "Get up and come forward!" And He said to them, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?" But they kept silent. And after looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. And the Pharisees went out and immediately began taking counsel together with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.
(Mark 3:1-6 LSB)
The Trap is Set (vv. 1-2)
The scene is set with a beautiful, tragic irony.
"And He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there with a withered hand. And they were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him." (Mark 3:1-2)
Jesus is in the synagogue, the place of worship, the place where the Scriptures were to be read and proclaimed. This should be a place of life, a spiritual hospital for sinners. But the religious leaders have turned it into a courtroom where they are the prosecutors, and a trap where they are the hunters. And notice the bait. The bait is a man with a withered hand. He is not, to them, a suffering human being made in the image of God. He is a prop. He is a pawn in their game to trap Jesus.
His withered hand is a perfect picture of their entire religious system. It was once alive, designed for work, for service, for blessing. But now it is shrunken, lifeless, useless. It is a symbol of the spiritual paralysis of Israel under the leadership of these men. Their religion could not bring life. All it could do was manage the decay.
And so they watch Him. The Greek word here implies a close, sinister, hostile observation. They are not watching in hopeful expectation. They are not watching to see a miracle and glorify God. They are watching "so that they might accuse Him." Their entire orientation to the world, to God's law, and to the Son of God Himself, is bent toward accusation. This is the native tongue of the devil, the great Accuser of the brethren. When your religion makes you a fault-finder, when it makes you eager to catch people in a transgression, you are not practicing the religion of Jesus. You are an agent of the enemy.
The Trap is Sprung (vv. 3-4)
Jesus knows their thoughts, He sees their hearts, and He refuses to play their game by their rules. He is not going to heal the man quietly in a corner to avoid a fuss.
"And He said to the man with the withered hand, 'Get up and come forward!' And He said to them, 'Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?' But they kept silent." (Mark 3:3-4)
Jesus takes control of the situation immediately. He calls the man into the middle of the assembly. He puts the man, and his need, and the central question, on public display. He will not allow this to be a matter of whispered accusations and backroom legal debates. This is a public proclamation of the nature of His kingdom and the nature of God's law.
Then He turns to His accusers and He asks them a question that utterly demolishes their entire framework. They were operating on the question, "What is forbidden on the Sabbath?" Jesus reframes the entire issue around the question, "What is good?" He presents them with a binary choice: doing good versus doing harm, saving a life versus killing. The Sabbath is not a neutral pause button on life. It is a day that must be filled with something, either good or evil. Inaction in the face of need is not neutrality; it is a decision to do harm. To refuse to save a life when you have the power to do so is, in fact, to kill.
And their response is deafening: "But they kept silent." Why? Because the question has trapped them. If they say, "It is lawful to do good," they authorize the very miracle they want to condemn. If they say, "It is lawful to do harm," they expose the wicked, murderous rot in their own hearts for all to see. Their silence is not a sign of thoughtful contemplation. It is the sullen, stubborn silence of men who have been checkmated and refuse to admit it. Their mouths are shut, but their hearts are hardened.
The Divine Response (v. 5)
This next verse gives us a stunning insight into the holy heart of our Lord.
"And after looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored." (Mark 3:5)
First, Jesus looks around at them with anger. Let us not be sentimentalists who try to airbrush the anger of Jesus out of the Bible. This is not a petty tantrum or a loss of temper. This is the divine and holy wrath of God against sin, against hypocrisy, against a religion that uses God's name to crush the people He loves. If you do not get angry at the things that make God angry, you do not have the heart of God.
But His anger is immediately coupled with grief. He is angry at their sin, but He is grieved for them as sinners. He is heartbroken at their "hardness of heart," their spiritual sclerosis. This is the tragedy of a heart that has become impenetrable to grace, to reason, to goodness. It is a state of willful, stubborn rebellion that grieves the heart of God.
And in the face of this opposition, what does Jesus do? He acts. He speaks a word of power to the man. "Stretch out your hand." This is a command that, from a human perspective, is impossible. The man's hand is withered; the muscles are atrophied. He cannot stretch it out. But the commands of God always come with the power to obey them. The man's responsibility was to will the action, to make the effort in faith. As he did, Christ supplied the power. And in that act of obedient faith, "his hand was restored." The word means to be restored to its original, created state. Jesus is in the business of re-creation. He is undoing the effects of the fall, one withered hand at a time.
The Unholy Alliance (v. 6)
The response of the Pharisees to this undeniable display of goodness and power is immediate and telling.
"And the Pharisees went out and immediately began taking counsel together with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him." (Mark 3:6)
They have just been silenced by a question about saving life versus killing. Their response to seeing a life wonderfully restored is to immediately go out and plot to kill. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking in its scope. They would condemn a man for healing a hand, but they have no problem plotting a murder on the Sabbath.
And look who they conspire with. The Herodians. The Pharisees were the arch-conservatives, the religious separatists who prided themselves on their purity from pagan and political influences. The Herodians were the ultimate compromisers, the secular political party that supported the Roman puppet-king Herod. These two groups despised one another. They had nothing in common, except for one thing: they both saw Jesus as a mortal threat to their power. The Pharisees saw Him as a threat to their religious authority, and the Herodians saw Him as a threat to their political stability.
And so, here we see the great unifying principle of a fallen world. Hatred for Christ will make allies of the bitterest of enemies. The secularist and the false religionist will always find common ground when it comes to getting rid of the true King. The left and the right of the world's political spectrum will curve around to meet on the backside, united in their rebellion against the throne of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion: A Religion of Life or Death
This account forces a question upon all of us. What kind of religion are we practicing? Is it a religion that results in life, healing, and restoration? Or is it a religion that results in accusation, hardness of heart, and murder?
It is entirely possible to be fastidious about all the external rules of Christianity and yet have a heart full of the same murderous hypocrisy as these Pharisees. It is possible to be "sound" on every jot and tittle of doctrine and yet be watching your brother, not to help him, but to accuse him. It is possible to honor the Lord's Day with your inactivity, while your heart is actively plotting evil against your neighbor.
Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath, which means He is the Lord of our rest, our worship, and our lives. And His lordship is always a lordship that brings life. He came to un-wither the hands, to un-stop the ears, to open the blind eyes, and to raise the dead. The question He put to the Pharisees in that synagogue echoes down to us today. On this day, the Lord's Day, and every day, what is it lawful to do? To do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?
The Pharisees chose to do harm, and to kill. Their choice revealed that their religion was a sham, a hollowed-out corpse. Our choice, every day, reveals the same thing about us. May God grant us the grace to see the withered hands all around us, and to be agents of His restorative goodness, not the accusatory malice of the Pharisees.