Our Footsteps: The Man With the Withered Hand

Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Man With the Withered Hand - Part 2

"... 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. 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 3:3b-5

The Pharisees were trying to catch Jesus in a trap again. Was He going to break the Sabbath?! Jesus always confounded them with astonishing answers. He posed to them a rhetorical question: 'Well what do you guys think? Is it OK to do good on the Sabbath'. I guess they hadn't expected this kind of a question... if they had expected it, I imagine they would have responded. But they were silent. They weren't just 'outsmarted', they were caught in their own trap - by the One who already knew what they were thinking. He was grieved at the hardness of their heart.

It is both a comforting thing AND a scary thing... that, if Jesus knew these wicked Pharisees hard hearts and evil thoughts, then he certainly knows mine. Comforting, because He knows when I hurt, when I fear, when I lack faith... but also scary, because He knows those same wicked and evil thoughts that entertain my mind. This is incentive for me to seek purity of heart. It is incentive for me to take every thought captive. It is incentive for me to be on the lookout against the enemy who seeks to destroy me by using my own thoughts and imaginations. It is incentive for me to be vigilant to protect my mind from becoming dull and... withered.

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I Believe...

1). I believe that there is one God. I believe God consists of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2). I believe that God is holy, righteous, loving, and just.
3). I believe that mankind is separated from God by sin; that sin entered the world through Adam and death through sin.
4). I believe that, because of sin, man is condemned. Because of God’s utter hatred for sin, there is an eternal conscious punishment in hell for all those who do not come to God on His terms, dealing with their sin.
5). I believe that confessing our sins and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord is the only way to properly deal with the sin that has infected everyone. Jesus Christ paid our sin debt on the cross; reconciliation by substitution. There is nothing we can do to add to the finished work of Christ.
6). I believe in the security of the believer, that once he is truly born-again, there is nothing that would cause him to lose his salvation.
7). I believe that upon the death of a true believer in Christ, that he is ushered immediately into the presence of the Lord, where he will live in everlasting joy in Heaven, experiencing eternal fellowship with God.
8). I believe in believer’s baptism by immersion. I don’t believe baptism is necessary for salvation, but it is a beautiful outward profession of an inward possession.
9). I believe in a literal 6-day creation where God created the heavens and the earth and then rested on the seventh day.
10). I believe that the words written in the Bible are truth. I believe that the Bible is inerrant in its parts and in its whole. I believe that the 66 books that make up the canon of scripture make the Bible complete and that God inspired the words written therein. The things that were written down in the Bible are sufficient for every need we have. Not only is God’s Word sufficient, but it is far superior to any other method of handling the problems that man faces, since He has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness.