Luke 6:6-11 Compassion During Worship
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: July 15, 2018 Luke 6:6-11
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
(Understanding the Text / Revelation of God) It is not clear when this Sabbath was in relationship to the grain rubbing incident except that it is not on the same day. This incident shows that Jesus taught in synagogues. It also shows that Jesus was in the habit of healing. The scribes and Pharisees knew that if there was one area of weakness where they could catch Jesus it was in being unable to pass by a hurting human. Did the man with the withered hand come every Sabbath, or did he come because he knew that Jesus would be there? Had Jesus seen him before or was this the first time? What city were they in? Was this a town that Jesus knew well, or was He newly arrived and unfamiliar with the area?
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, so from commentaries that I have read, it meant that He was sitting on a chair in front of the people. The man with the withered hand was one of the listeners. When did Jesus notice him–as He came in, or as He sat teaching? I think as Jesus sat teaching, He looked at each of His students knowing them and their receptiveness to His message. In the process, He saw the man with the withered hand. He knew what the Pharisees and Scribes were thinking from His previous pass over of His students. He reached a stopping point in His lesson and called the man to come up to Him. The man obeyed. Was the man hoping for healing or simply obeying the Teacher while not thinking about the hand that had been part of his life for years?
Once the man was at the front, Jesus looked past him to the critics and challenged them with a question. It would not take a mind reader or special communication from the Holy Spirit to know the thoughts of the critics. Thus, Jesus took the offensive and challenged the critics with a question phrased so that the answer justified what He was doing before Jesus actually healed the man. When they did not respond, Jesus commanded the man to stretch out his hand, and the man automatically responded even though the command was actually impossible for him to do. It was his right hand that was withered, and the SDA commentary says that the Greek word here could either indicate the hand only or the hand and arm. When the man responded to Jesus’ command, his hand or hand/arm was healed. Jesus gave him the ability to respond to an impossible command with the Holy Spirit working within the man’s body.
The inability of the Pharisees and scribes to have mercy on their fellow humans demonstrates how far they were from the God that they claimed to serve. The Old Testament is full of how merciful God is, yet these men thought that they were serving God with hard hearts. They viewed following rules and regulations as serving God. They were as far from the heart of God as the Gentiles who served strange gods because that is essentially what the Pharisees were doing. Thus, the Pharisees and scribes were not filled with awe at the healing of the man, but instead were furious because Jesus had circumvented their accusations with His question about whether it was lawful to do good or evil. In speaking of another miracle on the Sabbath and the critics’ response, Sigve K. Tonstad says in The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day “Jesus’s critics lack the intuitive compassion that is the mark of genuine love” (p 216) and on the next page “Everything that Jesus affirms in His responses is an implicit corrective to misguided convictions and a rebuke to a defective moral intuition.” Unfortunately, Christians today and in the past have demonstrated this same defective moral intuition not looking at their fellow human beings in love, but in callousness. Rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to soften our hearts, we refuse to allow Him to lift the hard shell off of our hearts that while it may imperfectly protect us from hurt also bars us from sympathy with others’ hurts.
(Understanding the Text) The SDA commentary points out that the Sanhedrin had already determined to kill Jesus and that some of these Pharisees were spies. They were there on the Sabbath with malice in their hearts determined to find a way to kill Jesus. Their fury at being thwarted that day shows where their hearts really were. Thus, the Pharisees were breaking the Sabbath in their hearts and trying to break the command not to murder. How often do we perceive someone else’s wrong and allow that perception to cause us to sin more deeply than the original person? Do we allow the mote in our eye to grow to a log by focusing on other people’s issues?
(Application / Revelation of God / Prayer) My application for myself is that I need to understand that lawful means mercy and love while unlawful means hatred and hardheartedness. God does not grow callouses over His caring. Even though we have become a cancer growing on Him, God does not simply reject us. Instead, He is trying to rescue as much as He can. We are part of Him, and God loves us, and God thinks that losing us would somehow take away a part of Him that He refuses to lose. He has done everything in His power for us to survive as a species and to rescue as many of us as He can to be cleansed and made healthy. For God, wanting to heal us to make us as healthy as we can be is natural. For me, wanting to heal the hurts of others should be natural if I am like God, but since I am not, I shrink away from the hurts. This is natural since they might hurt me, but through the Holy Spirit living in me and trusting God, I can be like Him. Please make me like You.