And, going away from thence, he came into their synagogue.
The Lord has just defended His hungry disciples in the grainfields. Now He moves on and walks into a synagogue where His critics are waiting for a second clash over the sabbath.
In the grainfield the Lord answered on behalf of others. Here He takes the initiative.
But on the very next sabbath the Lord Himself acts; it is not merely that He defends His disciples. He goes into the synagogue, and in front of the whole congregation singles out a man with a withered hand. There He heals the man in front of them all. This convicted the hypocrites who would have condemned Him once more, hating Him for the grace that always flowed out to the miserable. And He went further. He told the man to do an act which could have been left undone, had there not been a divine purpose in view.
Matthew does not write "the synagogue" but "their synagogue." The same wording follows Him wherever He preached.
He "went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues"; there His ministry began. This drew Him into conflict with Satan, and His power showed in casting out demons. Notice that it is always "their synagogues." He went among a people He was separate from, and that was their state. He was a Servant, but in His own power among them.
Going to the synagogue was His regular habit. The building itself was not a place of worship.
It was the Sabbath day; and, as His custom was, our Lord went to the synagogue. Synagogues were not places of worship. Israel had only one such place — God's temple in Jerusalem. They were simply buildings that held copies of the Scriptures, in the care of an official. His duty was to let the people read them and explain them to one another.
Commentators read the man He met inside as a picture of the whole nation standing around Him.
In a word, by this second case He shows that Israel was a guilty people toward the true Beloved. And He shows more. If they knew their own condition, they would admit they were like the man with the withered hand, in need of His mighty power. He was there in grace to do all the healing that was needed. The Lord pressed their dismal condition on them. Before God the whole nation was as morally withered as that man's hand was withered in body. Sadly, unlike him, they were not willing to be healed... In the grainfield the Lord proves Israel's guilt against the holiness of the sabbath; here He declares that He is present to work restoration even on the sabbath. This account matters, because the Lord is, as it were, tearing up the outward letter of the bond between Him and Israel, and the sabbath day was a special sign of that bond.
The one difference between the man and the nation was the response to the command.
Faith answers to His Word, and he stretches it out, and it was restored sound as the other... The man with the withered hand is a type of poor, withered Israel, withered spiritually and nationally. He had come to restore, but, unlike the man, Israel had no faith. Yet the day is coming when Israel will answer in faith and healing will follow.
Entering that synagogue was a choice, and a quieter route was open to Him.
The scribes and Pharisees were zealous for their own laws. They watched for an occasion to accuse the Lord, above all because the man was there with a withered hand. Knowing their thoughts, He made an issue of this serious matter. He could have avoided a confrontation by meeting the man in private and healing him there. But He had to face the callous religious prejudice of the Pharisees in the open.
The healing settled nothing for His opponents. It hardened them, and it drove enemies into partnership.
They kept silent, but with malice to the utmost. He looked round at them with anger, distressed at the hardening of their heart. What right had selfish, murderous men against God's grace? That is what they showed themselves to be. They went out of the synagogue to plot against the Son of God — Pharisees and Herodians together, deadly enemies of each other.
The same withered condition still fits people today.
Many of us suffer from withered hands at this hour. Sin has so paralysed us that we can do nothing for God. But there is salvation in what Christ has done. His precious atoning sacrifice is enough for all our need... One result of His blessing is this: the hand that was withered can now do something for Him in a burdened and suffering creation.
- He goes. The Lord walks into the meeting place where His critics watch Him, instead of healing the man in private.
- Their place. The words "their synagogue" mark a Servant among a people He is separate from, while the sabbath tie between Him and Israel comes apart.
- Their state. The withered hand pictures a nation with no power to act for God — needing the very thing He came to give.
- His word. His word calls for faith; the man stretches out his hand and it comes back sound as the other.
- Their answer. The man stretched out his hand; the leaders went out and plotted — the same grace that heals one hardens the other.
And behold, there was a man having his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath? that they might accuse him.
The scene is a synagogue on a Sabbath day, and a man is standing there who cannot use his hand. The men watching Him ask a question about healing on that day. They do not say why they are asking.
The words "that they might accuse him" tell us what the Pharisees wanted. But the question gives them away in another way. They had no doubt that Jesus could heal.
They want to find some new ground of accusation against Him. Their first attempt had failed. He had read their evil thoughts. By His answer He had already shown that He saw the question coming: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" An awful motive stands beside that question, showing the depths of Satan — "that they might accuse Him." The question also shows that they believed in His healing power.
Jesus did not dodge. He pointed to what any of them would do for his own sheep fallen into a pit.
The Lord accepted the challenge... Of course they would deliver the poor sheep out of the pit, because it was their own sheep. They had no conscience about doing what was to their own advantage because it was the Sabbath day. And the Lord does not blame them. But He presses this most pointed conclusion on them — "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."
Behind the argument lies a larger claim about what God is like on His own day.
Grace had come, God Himself was present in grace; and this grace was free to do good on the Sabbath. The Lord's true rest is the exercise of His love in the middle of evil. The Pharisees thought nothing of doing evil, as long as they kept their traditions. God held Himself free to do good. That is why the Lord heals the withered hand, and He draws the Jews' attention to this great principle in a formal way.
Kelly asks why Matthew records this healing on that particular day.
Why is this recorded here as happening on the Sabbath — especially in connection with the incident in the cornfield?... It is an account of the greatest importance, because the Lord is, as it were, tearing in pieces the outward letter of the bond between Him and Israel, and the Sabbath day was its special sign.
The men objecting to a healing on that day used the same day to arrange a death. Fereday calls this the mark of religion that never reached the heart.
The natural heart loves formality... Religious people have always been ready to fight hard for religious rules as they themselves understand them. They will fight even at the risk of hindering God's work of grace... Nothing deceives the heart like religion without a conversion of the heart to God. Nothing else leads people into such glaring inconsistency. The men who quibbled about our Lord healing on the Sabbath day saw no wrong in plotting on that day to murder Him.
Commentators read the man as a mirror of Israel. He stood in their synagogue, on their holy day, unable to work — and so did they.
By this second case He shows that Israel was a guilty people toward the true Beloved. He shows more than that. If they knew their own condition, they would own that they were like the man with the withered hand, in need of His mighty power. He was there in grace to do all the healing that was needed. The Lord pressed their dismal condition on them. Before God the whole nation was as withered in soul as that man's hand was in body. But sadly they would not let Him heal them as He healed the man.
Gaebelein adds that the refusal is not the last word.
A type of poor, withered Israel, withered in spirit and as a nation... Yet the day is coming when Israel will answer in faith and healing will follow.
Kelly turns the withered hand into a diagnosis for the reader.
Is not your case still more deplorable than his of the withered hand? Is not your heart withered towards God?... Yet for you Jesus, the Son of God, came; for you He died. And He died not for any imaginary good in you, but for your sins, too many and too real. Do not be afraid, then, to commit yourself, just as you are, to the Saviour.
- Withered. The man's useless hand pictures a condition. A nation kept the forms of religion but had no power to act for God. A reader's heart can be just as dry towards Him.
- Watched. They did not ask about the law to learn from Him. They asked in order to build a charge. Yet the question admitted He had power to heal.
- Answered. Jesus pointed to their own habit with a trapped sheep. If they may lift out a sheep, they may surely heal a man.
- Free. God does not stop doing good on His day of rest. His rest is love at work in the middle of evil. No rule can fence it off.
- Restored. What the law could not mend, grace mended at a word. The same grace meets anyone who comes just as he is.
But he said to them, What man shall there be of you who has one sheep, and if this fall into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and raise [it] up?
The Pharisees had just asked whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus answers with a question of His own about a sheep in a pit, and that simple picture shows what a suffering man is worth to God.
The Pharisees were not asking in good faith. They had a man with a withered hand in front of them and a plan already formed.
They wanted to find some new ground of accusation against Him. Their first try had failed. He had read their evil thoughts. His answer showed that He already knew the question they now put to Him: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" A terrible motive stands beside that question and shows the depths of Satan — "so that they might accuse Him." The question also reveals that they believed in His healing power.
Their quarrel was not really about God's day.
They were contesting God's right to show mercy. Having the man stand forth, He asked them a simple question that was fully to the point. Did the law allow a person to do good on the Sabbath days or to do evil? — to save life or to kill? As far as they were concerned, they would rather see someone die on the Sabbath than see him healed.
The sheep in His question belongs to the man himself. That detail is where the argument bites.
Of course they would rescue the poor sheep out of the pit, because it was their own sheep. They had no conscience about doing what was to their own advantage, even on the Sabbath day. And the Lord does not blame them. But He presses this piercing conclusion on them — "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."
Their instinct condemned them twice. They knew better, and they moved only where they stood to gain. The same pit also pictures the gospel.
A man knows by instinct that leaving a poor animal to suffer would not be of God. But their selfishness also comes out — it is their own sheep. Both counts condemn them. What a beautiful subject this is for preaching the gospel! We were in the pit, and the Lord went down into a horrible pit to rescue us.
The argument turns on what the day already allowed them to do.
For them to rescue a sheep out of a pit was certainly harder physical work than for Him to heal, yet they would do this on a Sabbath day. If they treat a sheep with such care, how much more should they treat a man, who is worth far more! He finishes with the firm statement, "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." What honest man could dare to object to this?
The Sabbath was never a fence around God's compassion.
It is useless for His people to plead the Sabbath against Him who is Lord of it. It is even more useless to forbid His active goodness toward needy, suffering people on that day. The Sabbath did not stop the poorest Jew from getting his sheep out of the pit. God had compassion, if they had none, for their brother who had fallen into a worse trouble. And here was the One anointed by the Lord to bind up the broken-hearted, no matter how the Pharisees raged and plotted.
Later, in a similar scene, the reply is sharpened for a more urgent case.
This is a little different from His reply to the ruler of the synagogue in the chapter before. There it was more the need of the animal, the ordinary supply of his wants. But here it is a more urgent case. It was not simply that the animal needed watering and must be led to it.
The sheep in the pit and the withered hand belong together. Both show a helplessness only Christ can cure.
The man with the withered hand was like Israel, powerless to do anything rightly. What value was there in outwardly keeping the Sabbath when there was no power for God? Surely, if it is right to pull a fallen sheep out of the pit, it is better to heal a fallen man.
Yet the mercy they witnessed hardened them further.
Who were they, then, to object to His showing mercy to a man on the Sabbath? The Lord showed that mercy at once. Yet their hearts were so hard that His mercy only stirred up thoughts of murder in them. From that moment they decided on His death.
- Motive — The question about healing was a trap. They asked it to accuse Him, and it showed they already believed He could heal.
- Mirror — He points at their own habits. They would lift their own sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath. Their instinct and their self-interest both speak against them.
- Measure — A man outweighs a sheep. They allowed the heavier work for an animal, so they could not forbid mercy to a person.
- Mercy — No day and no rule can block God's goodness toward suffering people. The withered hand shows the need; the pit shows the rescue.
- Malice — They watched Him show mercy and answered with a plot to kill Him. The argument was never really about the Sabbath.
How much better then is a man than a sheep! So that it is lawful to do well on the sabbath.
A man with a withered hand stands in the synagogue. The religious leaders ask Jesus whether the law allows healing on the Sabbath. He answers with a question about a sheep that has fallen into a pit. That comparison raises two questions. What is a man worth in God's sight? And was a day of rest ever meant to block an act of mercy?
Their challenge sounds like a plain legal question. But Matthew tells us why they asked it. One writer says their question gave away more than they meant.
They wanted to find some new ground of accusation against Him. Their first attempt had failed... "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" Beside that question stood a terrible motive: "that they might accuse Him." It showed the depths of Satan. The question also shows that they believed He could heal.
Jesus points to what they themselves would do. Their own answer exposes both their instinct and their self-interest.
Instinctively a man would know that it would not be of God to leave a poor animal suffering. But their selfishness also comes out: it is their own sheep. On both counts they are condemned... In preaching the gospel, what a beautiful subject this is! We were in the pit, and the Lord went down into a horrible pit to rescue us.
Their objection was that healing counted as work on the Sabbath.
Pulling a sheep out of a pit was certainly harder physical work than healing. Yet they would do that on a Sabbath day.
The heart of the verse is a comparison of values, and no one in that synagogue could answer it.
There was no answer; of course none could stand up and declare he would not deliver his one sheep out of the pit. "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." What divine logic! How unanswerable this statement!
They had turned the scale of values upside down. One writer shows how far that went.
To condemn doing good that relieves suffering marks out a class whom the Lord compares to vipers. Their moral sense was so deadened that they put the animal before a fellow man... Could hatred go further than to try to tie the hand of God down to a rule, and then seek to kill God's Son for doing good?
They assumed the choice lay between working and doing nothing. One writer says the real choice was quite different.
The question was not, as they supposed, one between acting and not acting. It was between doing good and doing harm. It was between saving a life and destroying a life by refusing to save it. The law of God was given to hold back evil, not to hold back good... Indeed, to hold back from doing good when the opportunity is there is to show unlikeness to God.
One writer goes further back, to what the Sabbath stood for in the first place.
The Sabbath was the sign of the rest of creation. But sin had entered the world. And man had rejected Jesus, who had come into its sorrow. So there could be no rest of creation in connection with the first Adam... He answers with a moving revelation of grace. That grace could not find its rest where sin and misery were. But it could begin to work where everything lay in ruins: "My Father is working until now, and I am working." We can rest neither in sin nor in sorrow. But we can work in grace where both are.
The man Jesus chose to heal was a living picture of the people watching Him.
The man with the withered hand was like Israel, powerless to do anything right. What was the value of outwardly keeping the Sabbath when there was no power for God? If it is right to pull a fallen sheep out of the pit, it is surely better to heal a fallen man. And by implication, to heal the fallen people, if only they had been ready for it.
- The trap. They framed their question as law and aimed it at accusation. It also admitted they believed He could heal.
- The sheep. They would lift out an animal on the Sabbath because it was theirs. Self-interest moved them where mercy did not.
- The value. If an animal is worth rescuing, a man is worth far more — the logic none of them would stand up and deny.
- The verdict. God gave His law to restrain evil, not to restrain good. Refusing to do good when you can is unlikeness to God.
- The reason. With sin in the world there is no rest to guard. So grace works where rest is impossible, and the withered hand showed the nation what it had become.
Then he says to the man, Stretch out thy hand. And he stretched [it] out, and it was restored sound as the other.
Christ commands a man to stretch out a withered hand — the one thing he cannot do — and the hand comes back whole. The scene raises two questions: how does a helpless man obey Christ, and what does this healing say about Israel and about God's rest?
Christ tells the man to do the one thing his withered hand cannot do. One writer asks how such a command can be obeyed at all.
"Stretch out your hand." How could a man with a dead hand stretch it out? The living One who spoke the word gave the power. In front of the furious Pharisees, the man's hand became whole.
Why give a command to a man who cannot carry it out? One writer answers from the side of responsibility.
The Lord asked the man to stretch out his hand. That request would have been pointless if the man had no responsibility to listen to His words and act on them. He could and should do it. In himself he did not have the ability to do so, but that is not the point. The point is that he was to obey the Lord's command.
The same writer weighs the exact wording, and finds both God's work and the man's faith in the healing.
Read these verses carefully, along with the parallel accounts in Matthew 12 and Luke 6. You will notice that it never says the Lord (or God) made this hand well. Each time it says the same thing: "and it was restored." Was this restoration the result of God's work? Yes, without question, for only God can heal in such a miraculous way. Does that mean it was not the result of the man's faith? No, it was also the result of his faith, because God uses the faith of men to do His will.
The healing was not only for one man. It exposed the state of the people watching.
By this second case He shows two things. Israel was a guilty people about the true Beloved. And if they knew their own condition, they would admit they were like the man with the withered hand, in need of His mighty power. He was there in grace to do all the healing needed. The Lord pressed their dismal condition on them. Before God the whole nation was as withered in heart as that man's hand was in body. Sadly, unlike him, they did not want healing.
Another writer looks at what that hand was made for.
The hand stands for fresh, living power to serve God. This man pictures an Israel that had lost that power and become withered and decayed.
The Sabbath question stands behind the whole scene. One writer explains what the Lord's true rest is.
Grace had come, God Himself was present in grace; and this grace was free to do good on the sabbath. The Lord's true rest is His love at work while evil is all around. The Pharisees thought nothing of doing evil, as long as they kept their traditions. God held Himself free to do good. That is why the Lord heals the withered hand. He calls the Jews' attention to this great principle in a formal way.
Caution would have avoided any offence. One writer notes that grace does not work that way.
Simple caution would have avoided giving them the smallest excuse. But grace does not mind giving people something to seize on, if they are looking for it. Grace is bent on pleasing God, whether people like it or not.
The same writer asks how a man came to have a withered hand at all.
How did this man with a withered hand come to be in Israel? It was through sin somewhere, and it was a clear sign of misery. Could God rest where either of these ruled?
The healing did not soften His critics. They answered it with a plot.
They held a council to destroy Him, but the Lord went on with His works of mercy. They were on the line of murder, He in the way of mercy.
One writer names the root of that inconsistency.
Nothing deceives the heart like religion without a heart turned to God. Nothing else leads men into such open inconsistency. The men who quibbled about our Lord healing on the Sabbath day saw no wrong in plotting on that day to murder Him.
- Withered — the hand stands for living power to serve God, and this man had lost it. Writers see the whole nation in him: withered before God, and unwilling to be healed.
- Word — Christ commands the impossible. The living One who spoke gave the power to obey.
- Faith — the man must still stretch it out. His responsibility and God's power stand side by side, and the text says only that the hand "was restored."
- Whole — the healing is complete, the hand as sound as the other. Grace heals in full view, because the Sabbath never stopped God from doing good.
- Two ways — one miracle produced two responses: He went on in mercy, they went out to plot murder. Religion without a converted heart can object to a healing and plan a killing on the same day.
But the Pharisees, having gone out, took counsel against him, how they might destroy him.
Healing a man's shrivelled hand should have ended in worship. Instead it ended in a meeting about murder. Here opposition to Jesus stops being argument and becomes a plan.
The council had one narrow item on its agenda.
The verse does not say they were bent on destroying Him, but what they took counsel about was how to bring it about. They would rather cling to their own thoughts about the sabbath than listen to His teaching.
What made them murderous was not a crime but a kindness.
To condemn doing good that relieves suffering shows what kind of men these were. The Lord likens them to vipers. Their moral senses were so deadened that they put an animal before a fellow man… Could hatred go further than this — to tie the hand of God down to a rule, and to seek to kill God's Son for doing good?
Mark's account adds that they left the synagogue to plan it. It also names their unlikely partners.
Mark presents the scene even more vividly… They kept silent, but their malice was complete. He looked round at them with anger, distressed at the hardening of their heart. What right had selfish murderous men against God's grace? And that is what they showed themselves to be. Pharisees and Herodians, deadly enemies of each other, went out of the synagogue to plot against the Son of God.
This council settles more than a local quarrel. It marks the nation's verdict on its King. It also marks the point where God starts working in a new way.
Matthew 12 records that "the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him" (ver. 14), and they accuse Him of being in league with Satan. At this point the nation rejected their Messiah outright, and so He rejects them. This is pictured as He got into a boat, pushed off from the shore, and taught the wonderful lessons of Matthew 13… Under law, God had been trying to get something out of man. Now God was going to put something into man — "A sower went out to sow."
He knew about the plot and moved away. That was a choice, not fear.
We now, for the first time, hear of a council held to put Jesus to death. He knows of it, so He withdraws. But He cannot withdraw from the need that keeps appealing to Him. Still the stream of mercy flows. But He gives them strict orders not to make Him known. He accepts rejection. He will not draw the crowds after Him by the fame of His many miracles, and He will not raise up anyone against His enemies.
The council decided to destroy Him; it did not decide when. That was never in their hands.
"He healed them all." What a fullness of grace and power! There is no persecution so bitter as religious persecution. "He withdrew Himself" — they could not touch Him until His hour had come. They took up stones, but they were never allowed to touch Him. That waited until He gave His back to those who struck Him — until He could say, "This is your hour." The Lord never took a doubtful step, or a step in the dark. He never sought popularity.
The same day sent the two parties in opposite directions.
They held a council to destroy Him, but the Lord went on with His works of mercy. They were on the line of murder, He in the way of mercy. They were mad, He was sad.
- Counsel — the meeting was not about whether to destroy Jesus, but how. Their minds were made up. They preferred their own view of the sabbath to His teaching.
- Cause — a healed hand triggered it. Hatred reached its limit when men tried to tie God's hand down to a rule and kill His Son for doing good.
- Coalition — Pharisees and Herodians were enemies of each other. They joined hands against Him. Opposition to Christ unites people nothing else could.
- Withdrawal — He knew the plot, so He moved away. He would not gather crowds or raise anyone against His enemies. He kept healing. Mercy flowed on while they planned murder.
- Control — they could not touch Him until His hour came. The council fixed a purpose; God fixed the timing.