Someone has titled this passage, “The withered hand, and the withered heart.” Apropos. It summarises this episode perfectly. This is a very rich passage, where the Lord of the Sabbath instructs his disciples about the heart of the Sabbath, as well as the heart on
The lordship of Jesus Christ, for the believer, changes everything. In their excellent book, Reformation Worship, Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey observe: In sixteenth-century Europe, when the Reformation gospel began to take up residence in the hearts and minds of believers, the biblical truth that
What comes to your mind when you hear the word “Pharisee”? It’s probably not a happy picture. We usually think of them as solemn, joyless, stern, and, well, perhaps a little grumpy. Theoretically, the professed doctrinal statement of the Pharisees had much that should have
Introduction As we saw previously, 2:1–3:6 contains five pericopes (narrative sections) in which controversy looms large. Conflict is a predominate theme in these verses. Though there remains at this point a sense of secretiveness to those who do not grasp the story line (unbelievers), nevertheless,
