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Welcome back to our Bible study on the Gospel of Mark. We're at chapter three in the Gospel of Mark, where we find Jesus once again in a synagogue on the Sabbath. And we're going to see this growing conflict between Jesus and the leadership of Israel, the Pharisees. And here we have Jesus as he enters the synagogue. We're told that there was a man there who had a withered hand, and they watched him to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And remember the idea of accusing. That's exactly what the Satan is. The devil is the accuser, right? So now they're looking eager to accuse him. And we're going to see here in chapter three that the conflict with Jesus and the Pharisees and the leadership of Israel is going to start to reach a boiling point. And in chapter three, we're going to be basically where we would have been in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 12. So Mark is a little shorter. He skips the Sermon on the Mount, and he doesn't have time for discourses about the lilies of the field and all those kinds of fineries. It's action, action, action. So Mark boils things down to the narrative drama. And here we have a drama reaching a deep conflict. And so that's the scene. And we're in a synagogue, and then Jesus said to them, and he knows that they're looking to do this, and he asks a question. Is it lawful on the Shabbat on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? Now you could think, wait a minute, that's kind of an odd question to ask rhetorically in the middle of the synagogue. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or harm, to save life or to kill life? But Jesus is referring to something in Israel's history going back to 1 Maccabees, chapter 2, verse 29, and following. And that context in 1st Maccabees, chapter two, where what happens, the Maccabees learn as they're being persecuted for being Jewish by the Greeks, and they're being hunted down, and there's a lot of conflict and fighting, that there's a group of pious Jews that hide in a cave, and it's the Sabbath and the Gentiles. These Greeks discover where this whole group with families are hiding out in the cave, and they come and attack him, attack them on the Shabbat. And then those pious Jews who are there, and they're already resisting, risking their lives because of their great zeal and Love for the Torah, for the law of God. And they question themselves and their zeal. Returning to the Torah and studying it intimately, they ask themselves, is it lawful for to fight on the Sabbath? And out of piety, this remarkable group of Jews decide that they are going to go non resistance. They are going to be pacifists on the Sabbath, and they don't fight. And then horrifically, the Greeks not only seize them, not only capture them, but they slaughter them. They slaughter all the men and the women and the children, all of them killed and murdered with no resistance at the hands of these pious Jews. And so when the Maccabees hear about this, they say, look, we got a real plight here. Because if we don't fight on the Sabbath, there's going to be only one day a week the Gentiles are going to fight us and we'll all be wiped out. And so they take counsel. Is it lawful to fight on the Sabbath if it's for defense, if it's to save life? And they decide that it is lawful and faithful to God's law and the Sabbath laws to fight on the Sabbath if it's for defense, if it's to defend life. And then the Maccabees fight and resist. Now that actually has an interesting reoccurrence 2000 years later with the start of the State of Israel in 1948. And then in 67, Israel knows they're about to be invaded and that Syria, Jordan and Egypt are in a secret alliance and they're going to surprise attack Israel. And so the Israeli intelligence has gathered this information and they have to decide what to do, because if they get attacked by all three at one time, it could overwhelm Israel at that time. So they go to the lead rabbi, Jerusalem, and they say, we know that it's okay to defend on the Sabbath, but could we attack on the Sabbath in order to save life, knowing that the best defense is a good offense? Right? That was the Israeli philosophy. It still is. And so the Chief Rabbi said, yes, if the offense is for the sake of defense and for the sake of life, then you can do that. Now here Jesus is in the synagogue and they're all, all these Pharisees, all these great scribes who are trained in the Torah, and they're looking at Jesus as a rabbi and they are spying on him and they're wondering, is he going to heal this man who has a withered hand on the Sabbath so that they could plot to go against him, to work against him? And so Jesus sees their hearts and he's astonished that they could think that the healing of a man with a withered arm, to think that that is wrong and that that is breaking God's law when it's already been in the Jewish tradition, approved, as we see in Maccabees, to defend in order to preserve life. In other words, one could fight in war and battle and kill for the sake of defending and preserving life. Well, if you can kill, how much more, Jesus reasoning, how much more? If it's lawful to kill, to save life, is it lawful to heal, to preserve and save life on the Sabbath? That question in the midst of the synagogue all of a sudden makes much more sense in light of that context, doesn't it? Now, they don't respond, they don't answer, because they have a trap they want to spring on Jesus. And they are silent. And he looked around them. And of course, this is in the context of the synagogue where all the seats are along the walls. And so the teacher would be in the middle in a synagogue, because there wasn't any microphones. And so you'd have all the people gathered around. And so Jesus looks around the circle, he looks around and he sees all these people in the synagogue spying on him, waiting to jump, waiting to entrap him. He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. And here we have that key term that we've been seeing over the last couple chapters, hardness of heart. Just like in the first Exodus, God's mighty deeds, the outbreaking of his grace and goodness and redemption, was met with a hardness of heart from Pharaoh. Now the new Exodus is met with another resistance and with hardness of heart. But ironically and tragically this time it's the leadership of Israel, the Pharisees and the scribes who have a problem of hardness of heart. So then Jesus commands the man and he tells him to come forward in the midst. They're literally in the middle, where everybody can see Jesus isn't going to try to hide this healing. And then he says to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. And what's the response of the Pharisees and scribes? The Pharisees went out and immediately held council with the Herodians against him on how to destroy him. And the hypocrisy here is astonishing because the word to take counsel literally, to call for a solemn meeting on the Shabbat, would break the Sabbath law of not doing work. So here Jesus heals on the Sabbath, and they go and take counsel. With the Herodians, the Herodians who are non religious for the most part, the Herodians and the people of Herod's court to go conspire and plot with them while Jesus is healing a man of a withered hand. The hypocrisy couldn't be starker in its contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees. I think there's another symbolism here to the withered hand that's striking to me, and that is this idea that he has a hand that is withered, right, and then Jesus heals him. Reminds me of a story in the early part of the time of the kingdom, right at the time when Israel was divided, right at the dividing point of Israel's kingdom, when there was a civil war between the north and the south. I'm not talking about the American civil war, but Israel civil war between the 10 tribes in the north and the two tribes in the south. And this happens. This is recorded in First Kings, chapter 12. When there is a revolt against the son of Solomon, who is a descendant of David, and his son Rehoboam, gives everybody a heavy yoke and a hard burden, and they rebel against him. And then that Rebellion in Chapter 12 leads. Rehoboam is led by a man named jeroboam, who builds two shrines. And he builds these two shrines, and he erects two golden calves for the 10 tribes in the north. And we hear about the first one at the end of chapter 12. And then when we get to chapter 13 of First Kings, we're told that a man of God, a prophet from Judah, goes to Bethel, one of the shrine villages where Jeroboam sets up a golden calf. And as Jeroboam was standing at the altar to burn incense, the man cried out by the altar the word of the Lord and said, o altar, O altar. Thus says the Lord. Behold, a son shall be born of the house of David, Josiah by name, who will destroy this altar and. And overturn all that. And then Jeroboam reaches out his hand and he says, seize that man. And as soon as Jeroboam lifts his arm out and points at the prophet of God to seize him, his arm stiffens and he can't retract it. His arm shrivels up, cursed by God because he used his arm to contradict the word of God. And then we get that in verse four. And Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, lay hold of him. And his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up so that he could not draw it back to himself. Wow. Now, the fact of that story of Jeroboam, who leads the division of the kingdom of Israel and works against the Lord's anointed in the Davidic dynasty, the fact that Jeroboam's arm withers is something that is made note of later in the Jewish tradition in the story of Israel. And here I want to take us to one of the Psalms in the midst of the Psalms of Ascent, and we'll see where this event of Jeroboam's arm withering up is remembered. And so, turning now to Psalm 137, and if you look at Psalm 137, this is a psalm sung in the midst of Babylonian captivity by the Jews who are captured in Babylon. And they sing this song that they're not going to forget Jerusalem, even though they've been taken far from the holy city of Jerusalem and the Temple. And then they sing in verse 4 of Psalm 137, how shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand wither. May my right hand wither right. So in other words, what they're saying is that even though we've been taken into a far country in Babylon, we will not forget Jerusalem. We will not forget the city that holds the Temple of the Lord, unlike Jeroboam and the ten tribes who, when they broke from the Davidic dynasty, no longer wanted to go to Jerusalem. And Jeroboam's plan was to set up two sanctuaries, one of those sanctuaries being in Bethel that we just read about, so that people would go to Bethel and the sanctuary in Dan and worship these golden calves and forget about Jerusalem and no longer worship in Jerusalem. And so the psalmist remembers the curse of Jeroboam. So what they're saying in Psalm 137 is, if I forget you, O Jerusalem, and if I forget the temple and the God of Jerusalem to go after other gods in a foreign land, may my right hand wither. And so here we have a man in Galilee in the synagogue with a withered hand, and Jesus is going to restore his hand. What do you think that symbolically means? We know that Galilee is in the region of the ten tribes in the north, and that the region of Capharnaum, Capernaum, as we say in English. I always like to use the Israeli pronunciation, Capharnaum. But Capernaum, where Peter is, is the land of zebulun and naphtali, two of the tribes that are the northernmost of the 10 tribes. So here in the heart of the northern part of Israel, Jesus of the line of David goes up and he heals the man with the withered hand. Because Jesus is trying to restore all 12 tribes to himself. Jesus is healing the wound that Jeroboam had made long ago in creating a division between the people of God. That division between the ten tribes of Israel and Judah, which is the two tribes in the south, was a lot like the Protestant Reformation that broke in half Christendom between the north and the south. And those in the north no longer wanted to go to Rome. And so here we have Jesus, who is coming as a king, meek and saying he is symbolically restoring Israel by restoring this man with the withered hand. So I think there's a lot more going on in the story of the withered man with the withered hand. And there's a lot more connections in this synagogue story with the story of Maccabees and with the story of first Kings. And that when we know that, all of a sudden these simple actions of Jesus are filled with a much deeper meaning than oftentimes we get at the surface. And the key to understanding this is that the story of Jesus is the story of Israel reaching its long awaited climax. If you don't know Israel's story, you're not going to understand the story of Jesus. That's why the great patron saint of biblical studies, St. Jerome, observed in his commentary and in the prologue to his commentary on the Book of Isaiah, and he said, ignorance of Scripture and he's thinking of the Old Testament is ignorance of Christ, Right? And we begin to see that as we walk through the story of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, that there's all these deep illusions now after that, as they're plotting to kill Jesus. Verse 7 says, he withdrew from there with his disciples by the sea. A great multitude follows. He's going to cast out more demons. They cry. They recognize that he's the Son of God even. And then he silences them again in verse 12. And then in verse 13, something significant in terms of our discipleship happens that I want to really just reflect on briefly. And that is this. He went up into the hills and called to himself those whom he desired, and they came to him. And now the Greek is a little even stronger. And sometimes I'm using the RSV Catholic edition, but oftentimes I will translate from the Greek. And here the Greek uses a phrase that Jesus calls them to himself, which is a little bit more direct, which I like. But also, these are those whom Jesus called to be with him. And here I think we get the best definition of discipleship. The fundamental definition of a disciple is someone who is with Jesus to be with him. So he went up into the hills, he called to himself those whom he desired, and they came to be with him. Right, that's how he translates that. And he appointed 12. And of course, that's very symbolic. He appoints 12 just after we had the man with the withered hand being healed, which signifies the civil war, the break between the ten tribes and the two tribes. The next thing Jesus does is he calls twelve to be with him. And of course, the twelve apostles then signify the twelve tribes that were scattered and divided even before they were scattered. And Jesus is restoring, just like that man's hand, he's restoring the 12 tribes around himself. He's restoring Israel as their true king. And so then he appointed 12. And again, notice, he appointed the 12 to do what? To be with him. That is the first vocation and duty of a disciple, to be with Jesus. And so that's why it's so important for us to pray, to set aside time every day to listen to God and His Word and to pray to him to be with him. Because to be a disciple, the first baby step is to be with him. And if we're not with him, we're not doing his will. No matter all the good things we might be able to do, we have to be rooted in Christ, right? And so the first call is to be with him. And then he sent them out after they're with him, then he sends them out to go do things, to preach and to have authority and to cast out demons. And Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, which means rock, is the first named. And in every list of the 12 apostles, Peter is always listed first. And of course, Mark's not going to get that wrong, right? Because Mark is a good friend of Peter. He surnamed Peter and then James, the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, whom he surnamed or nicknamed Boanerges, Sons of Thunder, right? And so Mark's the only gospel that gives us that nickname, right? Which again gives you the flavor of eyewitness testimony. Peter knew James and John. They were all living in Caphernaum, and they were partners in their fishing business. And so Mark's Gospel from Peter's preaching remembers that detail of the nickname that Jesus gave James and John, Sons of Thunder. And then we get the rest of the 12. And at the last of the list is Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him at the end of verse 19. That's already a bad foreshadowing of things to come. And the word for betray is to hand over, which is what we saw would happen to John the Baptist. Sometimes it's used as betrayed, sometimes it's translated as arrested. But literally, paradidomai means to hand over. And then he went home, which of course is Peter's house. So Jesus has made himself at home at Peter's house. And the crowds came together again so that they could not even eat. And now we're going to get the intensity around what is going on with Jesus. Some who know Jesus think that he's besides himself. And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem in verse 22 said, and notice they came down from Jerusalem. Word is getting out about Jesus and they're sinning. And they're deputizing scribes to come from Jerusalem to spy out and keep a sharp eye on Jesus. And the ones from Jerusalem, the experts, these are the great theologians from Jerusalem. And what do these great theologians say about Jesus, the Son of God and the work he's doing? They say he is possessed by Beelzebul, who is the prince of demons. And by the prince of demons, he casts out demons. So they see the wonderful signs and healings, and they're saying he's doing this by being in league with the demonic powers. Right? And then what does Jesus do? He called to them. He called them to him and said to them in parables, how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And of course, Jesus is quoting Abraham Lincoln, or maybe it was Abraham Lincoln that quoted Jesus. Right? But when Jesus talks about a house divided and a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, what is he referring to? First Kings, chapter 12 and 13, the story of Israel, when Jeroboam broke with the ten tribes against the kingdom of Judah in the south, the two tribes. And so what Jesus is saying is this. Look, people of God, Israel, who's foolish enough to divide against each other and fight in, have an in house fighting. The devil's not that stupid. Only my people are that stupid. The devils work in concert. It's an amazing thing. The mystery of iniquity and of evil and of satanic influence. The devil doesn't work against the devil. It's only God's people. It's good people who fight good people and end up with division within the house of God. And so notice again, this story started with the man with the. Withered hand, which I thought goes back to the time of the division of the 12 tribes, going back to first kings, chapter, chapter 12 and 13. And then we see that Jesus is calling 12 at that moment, not earlier, but now he calls the 12 to himself. And now he's accused of working with Beelzebul and demons and Satan. And then he says, look, that's illogical argument because Satan doesn't cast out Satan. Devils don't work against each other. Only my people do that. Right? And then he goes on. If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. Now you know why Abraham Lincoln quoted these lines in his inaugural speech. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand and he is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strongman, then indeed he may plunder his house. So now Jesus uses a different parable now, a different image that if you're going to plunder someone's possessions, and the point here is that the demons are possessing these people, that Jesus is freeing these people, that Jesus is casting out demons from and freeing, they are literally possessed and they have become possessions. Plunder of the devil. This is strongman. And so who can take these people and free them from the devil? Other demons don't do this. Someone has to be stronger than the devil. So Jesus is saying, you can't plunder a man's house and take his goods unless you're stronger than that man. And Jesus is the one who is stronger. And then you may indeed plunder his house. Now I think there might be an illusion to Isaiah 49 in these words of Jesus. And again, we keep finding Isaiah in the backdrop. Remember, Mark began the whole gospel by saying in verse two, the Gospel of Jesus Christ as foretold by the prophet Isaiah. In other words, Mark thinks that Jesus story is so parallel and found so embedded that it is captured by the entirety of Isaiah that Isaiah's Gospel is already foretelling everything about Jesus. Now in Isaiah 49, the people who are being promised that they're going to be taken out of Babylonian captivity and out of exile, they begin to lament and they say, how? How are we who are slaves to the Babylonians? We've been dispossessed of any weapons, of any wealth, of any power, of any influence, and we're scattered. How are we going to get free from Babylon, so to go back home Remember, because God said he would soon agoge. He would regather his people and bring them back home. And they say, how can we go back? And at the end of Isaiah 49:24, God says that he will bind. He will be the strong man, stronger than the pagan kings, and he will rescue the prey from the predator. He will bring them out of captivity in his new Exodus. And so here Jesus, I think, is alluding to the fact that there's a power at work that can bind those who are bound. But what was worse than Nebuchadnezzar or Pharaoh or any of the kings that had bound and held Israel in captivity and under occupation was the real occupation, the occupation of Israel's hearts by sin and by the devil. And Jesus is the one who can liberate us from sin and from the demons that possess our own hearts within. And Jesus will be the strong man to free us. And this is illustrated well in another story that I want to just make a quick allusion to. And that's one we already talked about in Mark, chapter five, where there's a man who's so strong that no one could bind him. So there's the idea. Remember, Jesus says, unless you bind the strong man, you can't plunder his house. So in chapter five, verse three, there is this man with an unclean spirit who lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore even with a chain, for he had often been bound with fetters and chains. But the chains he wrenched apart and the fetters he broke in pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him. And of course, Jesus will. And this is the man who will say he's many and that the name is Legion, and Jesus will cast out the demons from this man, right? And then they say, don't send us away from here. Let us go into that herd of swine. So then Jesus will send him into the herd of swine, and then the swine, then the demons possessing the swine, you could call that deviled ham run off the cliff, right? They run off the cliff. And now why do the demons do that? Jesus doesn't probably drive them off the cliff. So you're kind of. You ever wonder why did. Why did Jesus puts them in the pigs, they want to be in the pigs, and then they run off the cliff. Why do they do that? Because they thought they had tricked Jesus. Because what happens next is the herdsmen come in verse 14, and the herdsmen fled and told it to the city. And everyone in the country came to see what had happened. And. And they came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there clothed, and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion. And they were afraid. And those who had seen it told what happened to the demons and to the swine. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their neighborhood. Why? Because there was over 2000 swine that went off the cliff. That was their economy. So the demons thought they had tricked Jesus by entering the swine and then having the swine off the cliff. They thought they had sabotaged Jesus relationship with that village by ruining the village's economy. And then they asked Jesus to leave. So it looks like Jesus had failed, right? No. Later on in the Gospel of Mark, we're going to find Jesus coming back to this region and everyone believing and everyone coming. So the question is, why does a Jewish village have swine to begin with? It's an unclean animal, unclean food. So Jesus is taking what was their economy and what was economic and a source of money was illegal and illicit. And Jesus destroyed their illegal economy so that they could have room in their hearts for the truth and for God, because they had put that over God. And so Jesus had to remove that. So we'll see that later on in the Gospel of Mark, that event. But. But here I just want to say that to summarize chapter three. Jesus conflict with the demons and this idea of a house divided. Jesus is the one who's the true strongman, and he's come to bind our true enemy and to set us free.