In this sermon, Pastor Babij further explains how Jesus confronts the Pharisaic understanding of the Sabbath in the account of the man with the withered hand. Jesus’s exchange with the Pharisees shows us that, when we add to God’s commands and teach others to do the same, we miss the original intention of God’s laws and end becoming even worse transgressors.
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okay let’s take our bibles this morning and turn to mark chapter three mark chapter three and we’re going to be looking at today verses one through six mark chapter three verses one through six let me read that verse 1.
he entered again into a synagogue and a man was there whose hand was withered they were watching him to see if he would heal him on the sabbath so that they might accuse him verse 3 he said to the man with the withered hand get up and come forward and he said to them it is written it is lawful to do good or is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath to save life or to kill they kept silent 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 the pharisees went out immediately began to conspire with the herodians against him as to how they might destroy let’s pray lord this morning as we again look at your word i pray that you would show us what is in this text so lord you would teach us how we should respond and w what we are to understand about who you are and i pray lord jesus that as we do that we would become stronger in the faith and more and more able a more able vessel to be used in your hand and i just prayed this morning that that would be the case for us use us lord to be christians who are ready for action and i pray this in christ’s name amen all right so just to give you uh go back a bit and just remind you that remember the purpose of the gospel of mark was to encourage the gentile church in rome the gentile church in rome was under persecution john mark wanted the people to see christ they wanted to see christ as the suffering servant savior and so he arranged his material to show christ as the one who speaks as the one who acts as the one who delivers in the midst of crisis so the gospel of uh mark is known as the go gospel it’s the gospel of miracles it is the gospel of power it is the gospel of service and so that’s going to be the main theme throughout it and we see jesus christ serving in all kinds of ways uh that displays to us who he is and what his mission is so maybe that stuff could rub off on us as we study through it because there’s so many opportunities to serve within the body of christ matter of fact the opportunities are uh are pretty much overwhelming so we need to take advantage of that so as we move into our narrative on this lord’s day i hope that you have prepared for this day so that will turn out to be a blessing and not a burden and especially not a curse jesus did say i if you love me you will keep my commandments and he also said my commandments are not burdensome so it should never be a burden surely coming to this time of the week each week to gather together with other believers should never be a burden and just as the admonition was given to us in the book of hebrews where it says there let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds and how when and where do we do this well it says in hebrews not forsaking our own selves our assemblies ourselves are assembling together as a body as a habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as we see the day drawing near and so as we look at our narrative this morning we we see that this is what jesus is doing he’s doing the same thing and he says in verse number one of chapter 3 he entered again into a synagogue so we see that jesus is now entering the synagogue and of course remember the synagogue was a place of assembly it was a place where people came together to hear the teaching of the word of god to worship god to fellowship with one another and to stimulate one another to love and good deeds that was part of why they had the synagogue service but for jesus going to the synagogue was becoming increasingly dangerous in fact today in our text we will see the last of five conflict narratives the incident here in mark chapter three verse one through six forms really a climax to these accounts of growing and antagonism towards jesus so jesus on another sabbath day a different one from the one mentioned in the previous paragraph probably the next the following sabbath the next sabbath so jesus is still in capernaum capernaum that’s northern israel on the sea of galilee and so jesus enters the synagogue and there is someone there who’s given special attention and if you notice in verse number one it says a man was there whose hand was withered now of course that’s right there in the beginning so it’s setting up what we’re to see in the text some traditional records actually say that the man was a stone mason and could no longer make a living and was too ashamed to beg in fact in luke chapter 6 verse 6 which is the parallel passage this he had a it says that it mentioned there that he it was his right hand that was withered now this could mean that his dominant hand was his right hand and of course uh actually the greek term withered uh in the perfect tense means that it was dried up it was dried out his hand all right so that indicates that something happened to his hand most likely it was not a congenital defect but occurred by some accidental accidental injury or possibly by some disease so now this man is there he’s in the he’s in the synagogue jesus is there the scribes and pharisees are there the people are gathered there the disciples and those who have been following jesus christ they are there they are all there all right now i want to back up a bit because i want to try to get a sense on remember meeting together to worship god there’s a certain attitude that goes with that right now the attitude of these scribes and pharisees was an attitude we surely don’t want to have when we meet together in fact the attitude not to have when we meet together for worship is to gather together to scrutinize to accuse and to do harm this is the attitude that their religious leaders had as they entered into the synagogue that day the scribes and pharisees continually eyeballed jesus and if you notice what it says in verse 2 they were watching him to see if he would heal him on the sabbath so they came there not to learn not to worship god but they came there specifically to watch jesus in fact this word watch means to watch very closely to watch observe very carefully and of course it includes a malicious kind of waiting to get him type of watching see they were not concerned with man’s need they were concerned concerned with their legalistic prescriptions about their own law and remember when when you have a legalistic spirit you become critical uh always on the prowl for what’s wrong hardly ever on the prowl for what’s right and they were eyeballing jesus and if you notice at the end of verse 2 what it says this is why they were eyeballing him that they might accuse him so already their attitude for worship is out the window this is no attitude to have at all to worship together of course remember that the scribes and the pharisees were there and the question does come up at this point as to whether this man who with the withered hand was a plant was planted in the middle of uh in in the in that synagogue service by this pharisees now in his massive work on the life and times of jesus the messiah alfred ettersheim wrote this i quote he says whether or not the pharisees had brought the man with the withered hand on purpose or placed him in a conspicuous position or otherwise raised the question certain it is that their secret object was to commit christ to some word or deed which would lay him open to the capital charge of breaking the sabbath law and he said this it doesn’t really appear whether the man with the withered hand was consciously or unconsciously aware of he was a tool of the pharisees he could have been there because he heard about jesus he has a withered hand and possibly he would get help but one things that the pharisees and scribes did get judge rightly was this that christ would not witness disease without removing it or as we might express it that disease could not continue in the presence of him who was life jesus read their inner thoughts which were evil but he proceeded to do something good and that was his purpose so the very fact that this man with the withered hand was not in a life-threatening position that according to pharisaical law did not qualify him as an exception to the sabbath rule so it raises the likelihood that this man was planted in the synagogue that day by the religious leaders now what the jews view about healing on the sabbath i think is important to bring up at this point kind of trying to get into their heads like what they were thinking about this whole situation all right now sabbath what what do they view on healing on the sabbath well it’s not really clear what they believed it’s it’s definitely not consistent to what they’re trying to do here and it’s very complicated for example in their view the view of the scribes and pharisees actual danger to life warranted a breach in the sabbath law that’s it now how that falls out a little bit for example a woman in childbirth might be helped on the sabbath all right she’s starting to give birth and you know it’d be good hey you know remember no working on the sabbath right so if that’s considered work she’s in big trouble right but so they allowed for that boy they’re so kind some said that it could be for the disease of an of an ear infection that can be very painful and debilitating some uh also believe it could be for a throat infection that you can receive some kind of treatment now while according to others a disease of angina involved possible danger and so superseded the sabbath law so things like this if a person fell into a ditch or or let’s say a building fell on a group of people you can clear out the error to see if anyone is still alive and get them out but if anyone is dead in that rubble you you have to leave them until the next day until the sabbat’s over in fact if someone had a wall fall on them and they fractured their ankle according to the law of the scribes and pharisees um they could not do anything about that matter of fact they couldn’t even pour cold water on a sprained foot so all applications to the outside of the body were forbidden on the sabbath and so that becomes a problem because this man with a withered hand right it was not life-threatening you could wait till monday i mean excuse me to sunday to do it right you can wait the next day to do it i forgot this is the sabbath so this is a saturday so as regarding the internal remedies uh for example a person suffering from a toothache might gargle with vinegar this is this is in their with what’s called the gemara and and this was a set of hebrew uh actually the mark gemara was a an aramaic uh commentary on what you could and could not do on the sabbath it was connected with another group of books called the mishnah which was a book that explained or gave teaching containing the collection of jewish traditions on and the oral law and what to do and what not to do on as as a jew and especially on the sabbath now uh so the gemara adds that listen if you have a tooth toothache you can gargle but you can’t spit it out you have to swallow it so see you can see how ridiculous it got and it got very complicated to follow these things external lesions also might be attended to if they involve danger to life so the bottom line here is the man with the wither hand could not be classed as having a dangerous illness so therefore to be healed on the sabbath was not in their rules and their law all right so that’s what’s going on here in their minds and that’s what they’re seeing so clearly their principle implied that it was lawful on the sabbath to do that which you had to do to save life and prevent death and to have otherwise said that would be virtually to have involved in harming or even murder but if that’s true and you go through to its logical conclusions it would imply a far wider principle that it must be lawful to do good on the sabbath no matter what’s going on for eventually the omission of such good would have involved in doing evil in other words if you were on in the in the sabbath day according to the lord according to the word of god and you were able to do good that day and you did not do it that would be evil so they’re in quite a predicament here with jesus and jesus is in control of this whole situation here he is leading everything in fact if you take your bibles and go back to matthew chapter 12 because in matthew uh matthew includes another thing in the same uh parallel narrative that was not in the gospel of mark i thought i’d just give it to you to show you what christ says to them and as in addition in matthew chapter 12 in verse number nine it says this it says departing well verse number nine is just sets up the same thing and they were departing went to the synagogue and there was a man was with withered hand there and in verse number uh 11 it says this and he said to them what man is there among you who has a sheep and if it falls into a pit on the sabbath will he not take hold of it and lift it out right so that’s what the lord adds to or matthew adds to this in this narrative to just fill it in but as you think about that the rabbinic law said that if your sheep fell into a ditch you could feed the sheep food and drink and it could be lowered to the sheep so they could have some nourishment but you had to leave it there the talmud discussed cases in which it was lawful to lift an animal out of the pit on the sabbath a man would have found some device by which he could recover the solitary sheep which constituted his possession in other words it was lawful to retrieve a sheep that fell into a pit on the sabbath now all kinds of scenarios are listed in the mishnah the gemara the mishnah and other books and so to sift through all these things it was tense to go to the day of uh place of worship on the sabbath and have a nice peaceful time because you were frantic oh no did i break this did i not do this was i was like clean was i unclean and crazy stuff was going on so there’s a lot of tension going on so according to jesus if you’re right there in matthew again look at matthew 12 verse number 12 it says and how much more valuable than jesus says right is man than a sheep so then it is lawful to do good on the sabbath so see that’s what matthew adds uh in his narrative on this particular subway subject so surely then the bottom line would be on the sabbath day it was lawful to do good according to jesus and yes to do good and to neglect it would have been to do evil so then the attitude that we ought to have when we gather together on the lord’s day is not to gather to scrutinize to accuse or to do harm noah our attitude uh to have on the sabbath is to worship to learn and to do good so the christian christians are exhorted in scripture to have a proper concern for others and are really continuously to be attentive to the welfare of other believers whether it be spiritual whether it be moral whether it be physical whether it be some wants or infirmities some temptation some temptations they’re going through are dangers and then to administer some kind of assistance some advice some caution some administration some help some consolation so the the love is always the driving motive for doing what is good as a believer and good deeds are the practice of love doing good deeds adorn the gospel and glorifies the father in heaven and good deeds also does something else it exposes evil it shows what doesn’t look right and good to do as a christian it’s like it says in titus so that those who have believed god will be careful to engage in good deeds these things are good and profitable for men so so then so we’re free to do anything for christ but we’re not free to do anything we please nor to act any way we want however we are free to do anything that is needful that is helpful and while we are doing any service to christ one thing that is definitely important is to do what is right and to do what is good now that is setting up back in the gospel of mark let’s turn back there in verse number three because what we do what we see here is jesus shows what is the good and right thing to do and he shows us four actions we see it in four actions that jesus performs and here’s the first action in verse number three and it says this and the action is this it is the action of compassion anytime we’re going to do good as a christian it must be motivated i said by love but love also has this understanding of compassion compassion is this thing that drives you and so look what it says in verse number three it says that jesus said he said to the man with the withered hand get up and come forward now jesus intent is to make this situation a theological confrontation and he it’s evidenced by this very command here come forward get up and come forward now i’m sure this man with the withered hand didn’t want to be centered stage of attention especially with having a a handicap i’m sure this is not what he wanted maybe he didn’t view this at this point as compassion but just imagine the scene in the synagogue it’s crowded the tension is as at a fever pitch christ probably occupies a prominent position where he can see and he can be seen by all in the synagogue the pharisees are ready to measure every word and action with malice and cunning everyone is now looking at the man with the withered hand and also they’re looking at jesus and under their breath the pharisees whisper is he going to heal on this sabbath day will he do it if he does we got him if jesus healed the man they could accuse him of breaking the sabbath and that offense was punishable according to exodus of course exodus is what it says in the law of death matter of fact this is what it says in exes therefore you are to observe the sabbath for it is holy to you everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death and then it goes on in exodus chapter 31 whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death so in the mind of the scribes and the pharisees this particular man with the withered hand had no cause to be healed on the sabbath it could have waited to the next day it was not life-threatening and if jesus does anything the penalty is death that’s in their mind so the lord takes up the challenge and the lord wants maximum publicities maximum exposure the man with the withered hands standing in fuel of full view of the assembled congregation but before before jesus does anything he actually accomplishes another action he puts forth a clarifying question specifically addressed at the religious leaders a clarifying question so he has compassion and now he’s clarifying things why does he clarify things because the jewish rules and regulations has so convoluted and confused things nobody knew what to do so jesus of course clarifies things now before we look at verse number four okay we all know that the rabbinical laws were burdensome were unclear and have made things unnecessarily complicated so jesus said i have one simple question and it requires one answer and here’s the question look at verse four and he said to them here’s the question is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath to save life or to kill that’s a simple question right jesus counter question actually elevated the matter from the level of being legal status to the level of a moral and a theological problem of course the religious leaders were not ready to do that they were not ready to do things on jesus terms however what jesus does and what is so interesting about asking the right questions at the right time is that jesus puts the ball in their court and he just stops and waits he’s waiting for a response so jesus knew all they wanted to know is whether it is lawful to heal on the sabbath and when the man’s physical problem was not life-threatening and couldn’t could be done on another day what he would do right that’s what he knew they were up to that day however they had a a one-track law driven mindset and usually judgmental people do never for a moment did they ask is it merciful to do good and to heal on the sabbath what is consistent with the mosaic law to which they acknowledged obedience was this the contents of jesus question was it was the content that could be searched out in the old testament and it could be said yes this is what we ought to do but if you notice the question in verse number four it actually has two parts to it the first part refers to the man with the withered hand it says is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath that has to do with the man with the withered hand of course failure to do good on the sabbath was to do harm but there’s another part it refers to someone else and the second part of the question is it lawful to save life or to kill now failure to save life is to destroy life and to kill now who would this be referring to this is referring to jesus himself so one of them he’s he’s digging out their heart he’s he’s bringing to light the wickedness that is in there he’s bringing he’s bringing it before them and he’s putting the ball in their court and he’s saying listen i want an answer now in mark chapter three and verse number four what’s the answer silence there’s no answer it says in verse number four look at the last part but they kept silent wait a minute this is your opportunity this is the time you can defend yourself you can lay out why you’re doing this you can explain to everybody what’s going on this is your opportunity and silence you know why because jesus has is exposing them and they know it see they say nothing and they keep silent and why do they keep silent well clearly it was not lawful to do it was not lawful to do evil and to do good would be to heal the man also it would be it is good to receive the truth of the gospel of the kingdom and the truth concerning the nature of who jesus really was and they were flat out by their silence denying both they were not committing to anything but remember silence has a way of speaking doesn’t it silence has a way of condemning so their unwillingness to answer actually expose their heart and revealed a tragic flaw in their theology concerning the nature of god now what was the nature of god remember we’re still talking about the fourth commandment i remember the fourth commandment was worship and rest one day at a seventh the sabbath day was for the jews and of course christians when we meet on sunday the lord’s day it’s a day of rest it’s the day of worship we’re setting aside one day from the regular work so we can focus our attention on god but in their minds in the minds of the pharisees they thought they knew who jesus was they planned all this so do the demons but neither understood the real truth of the matter they saw jesus as only a destroyer they saw him as a blasphemer they saw him as a sabbath breaker they saw him as a fast breaker they saw him as one who defiled himself with the contact with contact with unclean things and unclean people that’s who they saw him they saw him as a destroyer of their way of life and their religious system that’s what they saw matt ruker in his work on the ten commandments wrote which should not be lost in the fourth commandment is this the gracious and kind god who established the law in other words he said we worship a god who does not desire that we have a yoke too heavy to bear we are in need of reflection and rest we have that need sometimes we don’t recognize we have that we need because we work and work and work and work and work and never take the time to actually focus on the lord and give ourselves over to worship all right and so we get in this vicious cycle and it just does all kinds of bad things to us but see we’re to break away we are to worship god and that shows us that god is gracious to us see it’s god who built it into the system not us and it’s he built it in there because we need it but we don’t always take what we need and we end up destroying ourselves when we don’t see we think that if we don’t work another hour another day we’ll never get done all the things that we have to get done i say you put god first and he’ll allow you to do everything you have to do and give you more time that’s what he do does when you put him first see jesus shows us that the father in heaven is a god of grace of mercy of love of compassion but he is also a god who does not turn a blind eye to sin and is angered and grieved when it’s there so the answer to the question that they did not give is yes it is right and good to do these things on the sabbath according to scripture it would be right to heal the man with the withered hand it would be right to do that now at that point there’s another action that jesus takes up and it’s this when there’s a misunderstanding of the nature and character of god something has to be said about it something has to be said about it in other words we need to when we hear people talk about god often we have to correct them if we know the word of god that their understanding of the character of god is not right it’s just like somebody who says well god loves you and that’s all they say or somebody says well god’s wrath is on you and that’s all they say no god does love he demonstrates his love especially from the cross but he also is a god of wrath and there’s many other things it says about the lord so balancing out the the character of god is very important so the action of correcting a misunderstanding about the character of god is what happens next in verse number five jesus as jesus accomplished this miracle that he’s about to accomplish he is filled with anger and grief and sadness now we don’t see the pharisees eyeballing jesus now jesus is eyeballing the pharisees look what it says in verse number five it says after looking around at them with anger now i don’t know about you but this is describing a swift piercing and searching glance of jesus upon his friends and enemies that jesus is looking at the sin in their heart that the incarnate christ revealed the holy character of god by his display of righteous anger and holy indignation against evil and sin notice what it says and he says looking around at them with anger grieved at the hardness of their heart see remember don’t ever forget this dad god is always angered by sin always angered by sin he is always angered by sin and along with being angered in our text it says that he also felt sorrow and grief with people because of their willful stubbornness to the truth which of course denoted the process of their heart even hardening more if you reject the truth your heart gets harder and it it becomes unmoldable especially when somebody’s indifferent to divine love and grace see jesus was showing compassion here he was displaying the mercy and grace of god here so jesus was outraged by the religious leaders care more for their tradition than for the welfare of a suffering human being and for their shoving aside of what is really true from from there not reading and studying the word of god like they ought to have been instead of messing and making up more rules and laws they should have been studying god’s word so what does jesus do well then jesus makes a command to the man with the withered hand and notice what it says in verse number five it says it says he said to the man stretch out your hand and then of course he stretched out his hand and the bible says in matthew in mark and in luke it says all the same thing it says he stretched out his hand and it was restored now that’s very interesting how that is placed in the scripture because what it’s doing it’s laying the focus on jesus right in other words jesus didn’t did not break sabbath law or any of their man-made rules or laws he didn’t break anything the man opened himself up to the word of jesus and that’s of course his faith and in exposing himself to jesus he is healed faith is not a private wager but a public risk that jesus is worthy of trust when no other hope can be trusted jesus is worthy of trust this man had nowhere else to go now unless stretching out one’s hand was work then he was in trouble but the healing is performed by a simple word of command he didn’t say be healed he did not touch him he just said stretch out your hand now this time it was not a touch the healing did not have the appearance of work jesus did nothing to violate their trivial sabbath regulations here jesus merely commands the man to extend his arm whereupon the man’s hand is completely totally restored now what’s going on here this is what’s going on jesus is acting like the creator and what does the creator do he speaks and he comes into existence second thing that’s going on here is that jesus had compassion like the god of the old testament and that jesus also displayed the holiness of god by judging sin just like the old testament so here was an act of supernatural power giving overwhelming proof that jesus was more than a man he exercises authority and will as god that’s a slap in the the face of these scribes and pharisees and jesus displayed before them who he really was so the religion of jesus was service it was love to god and love of men and it’s it’s like kind of ironic that jesus is the one who not only saved the life but he came to give his life a ransom for many and so these actions led into a last action but this last action is almost by default it’s a default action that transfer transpired by the by everything jesus did on that particular day that his doing what was right and good exposed evil it brought evil to the head to the to the forefront it brought the evil in their heart right up to the surface and so look what it says in verse number six it says this the pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the herodians against him now let me just stop there for a minute jesus really had been continually undermining the religious rulers as to their traditions their religious rules their status as the go-to religious guys of their day and so that he violated sabbath of regulations he fraternized with sinners he presumed to forgive sin according to them and as the enemies of jesus saw the miracle that day they were not filled with awe that they were looking at the messiah who was promised in the old testament they were filled with madness and rage because they did not recognize jesus for who he was displaying himself to be isn’t that what happens all time it happens in the world all around us in fact the pharisees and the herodians getting together on something they hated each other but it’s interesting that religious and political parties unite against jesus because they have a common reason to that the herodians were not primarily a religious sect they were a political sect instead they were men who were politically devoted to the herodian family consequently they had no real affinity to the pharisees and they both probably zealously hated one another but a common opponent can make enemies strange bedfellows and that’s what’s going on here and they come into a strange partnership and what’s the partnership and here’s where the evil rises to the surface verse number six these two unlikely parties plotted not to stop jesus or to slow him down but if you notice in verse number six it says as to how they might destroy him so in other words immediately they went out from this synagogue service and what did they do they began on the sabbath to plot murder boy does jesus know how to bring sin to the surface see they wanted to assassinate jesus and that is they wanted to annihilate him get rid of him once and for all so it is not surprising when you look at other passages of scripture that describes the scribes and pharisees where jesus said write out to them like for example in matthew chapter 23 he said to them woe to you scribes and pharisees hypocrites for you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful but on the inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness and then he says to them so you too outwardly appear righteous to men but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness and not only that but when you go out to make disciples and you travel over sea and land to make a proselyte to the jewish faith you make that person twice as much a son of hell as yourselves see that’s how jesus sees these people so the religious leaders had no qualms plotting murder on the sabbath and that’s the second part of the question see the second part of the question if you remember had to do with jesus right is it lawful to save life or to kill he was exposing their heart their motive was to kill and to do it yet on the sabbath with a group of unclean people the herodians they were not supposed to be with even other than the sabbath day see hypocrisy all over the place here and so this is what happens so we see the action of jesus now of course there’s another group of people that i didn’t mention here that’s a silent group and it’s the disciples the disciples looked on this amazing sabbath day the sabbath day of worship and learn something that doing good on any day including the sabbath is required by god in fact when you go out there and you go out among the highways and byways when you’re commissioned by me when you understand what’s really going on when you get why i really came to give my life a ransom for many when you get that then when you go out there you have to have the action of compassion towards men secondly you have to have you have to be clear theologically so you can ask the right questions and you can see what’s really going on and then also you have to have the action of correcting any misunderstanding people have about god and what god requires especially about what the gospel is and how a person must come in repentance and faith and believe by faith in the gospel turn from their sin and embrace and live and follow jesus is the only way into the kingdom of god and of course those actions often expose sin in someone’s life but remember when sin is exposed in someone’s life it’s not for us to condemn them but it’s for us to apply the remedy and the remedy is is jesus is the god who’s done the greatest good to all humanity humanity by serving and giving his life a ransom for many jesus is the remedy and so these actions are things we’re going to see all through this gospel and other gospels and actions that we also should take up in our own life are we able to do these things are we looking at people with compassion are we growing theologically that we can ask questions and identify situations are we correctly understanding ourselves the character of god and who he is do we believe who jesus says he is ourselves and can we apply to someone’s sin the remedy for that sin and that’s jesus christ himself can we do that so those are the things that were being observed by the disciples when they were seeing this vent go down now i think you can get a sense how how mark writes his gospel that it pulls you into the narrative it feels like you were there and that you sensed all these things going on and you specifically walked away saying as a true disciple of jesus christ wow i now am seeing who christ is i am now seeing what i need to do now i’m seeing how i need to serve see that’s where it should take us let’s pray lord i thank you again today for the word of god what an amazing gospel this is and lord you have done in this gospel something quite unique you have displayed your compassion you have exposed hypocrisy you have applied the principle of doing good and right on the sabbath you have corrected the character of god and lord you have at the in the end exposed and brought to light sin and i pray lord that we as your disciples we as your children we as those who follow you would be able to grow to the place that we do the same make a servants lord make us people who are ready to do your work make us people who are ready to do right and good no matter when we’re called upon enable us to do as a body as a church and i pray this in christ’s name amen