Stand Up!

Luke 6:7-8 “the pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal oh the sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand. “Get up and stand in front of everyone, so he got up and stood there.”

  Standing up in front of others takes courage, but what about standing up for Jesus when everyone in the room wants to take him out? This must have made this man with the shriveled hand uncomfortable when Jesus called him out in front of these pharisees.  Now it’s possible the man was brought into the temple by these exact men who were looking to trap Jesus into breaking the sabbath law. This we know because the text states that they were watching Jesus Closely. With this in mind we can see that we can watch Jesus, but still be far from our hearts from Him.  

I can imagine the awkwardness as the man is there standing and all eyes are on him. What should he do?  These men didn’t care that he had a disability all they wanted was to prove Jesus wrong. So, Jesus asked the man to stretch out his shriveled hand. While it’s one thing to stand in public, what do you do when you are asked to do something that was impossible to do, especially in his condition? If we can imagine this story, we must also understand that Jesus gave both the command and the ability to fulfill it, and the man put forth the effort and was healed. 

The amazing part of this story is not just the obedience of this man to stand up for Jesus in the middle of opposition, and limitations, but the fact that it was really Jesus standing up for him in front of a crowd of men who didn’t really care about him at all.  

Jesus wasn’t trying to reform the Sabbath. He tried to show that in their understanding of the Sabbath, they missed the whole point. A legalist wants to debate the rules, but the point wasn’t which rules were the correct rules; the point was the basic way to approach God. The emphasis here is based not on what we do for Him, but it is based on what He has done for us in Jesus Christ. God stands up for us!   

Prayer:  Lord I pray that we will be encouraged in this teaching today to know that Christ always has our best interest in mind. That no matter the circumstance, or religious tradition, it will never separate us from the Love he has for us, and that he knows all of our needs. God, I pray for healing over someone’s heart, mind and situation right now in Jesus’ name. Amen.