Father, what an awesome weekend! A wonderful time of learning and inspiration with friends at a conference on Saturday. Then today, we were blessed with Your presence in our times of worship. May I clearly hear Your voice as we come together tonight. Amen.
Luke 6:6-11 (<<click to read the passage)
This may shock some, but I have never watched the 1983 classic movie A Christmas Story. I’m familiar with a lot of things associated with it, such as the desire for a Red Ryder air rifle, the infamous leg lamp, and Ralphie’s pink bunny suit. But, surprisingly enough, one scene that I remember popped into my head as I read today’s passage. First, the scene.
Ralphie and crew are on the school playground in the dead of winter. Two of the boys, Flick and Schwartz argue over what would happen should someone stick their tongue to the frozen flagpole. Flick says it won’t stick and Schwartz says it will. Then comes their bantering back and forth, as boys will do, of one daring the other. It starts off with a double dog dare, then would normally progress to a triple dare, but instead, Schwartz jumps right to the “coup de grace of all dares” – the triple dog dare! Flick, being the boy he is, has to comply and, of course, gets his tongue firmly frozen to the pole!
Back to our passage, verses 6-7 read,
On another Sabbath day, a man with a deformed right hand was in the synagogue while Jesus was teaching. The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees watched Jesus closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. (NLT)
And there we have the triple dog dare! If Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, He would be in their clutches and boy would He pay!
But Jesus was one step ahead of them, knowing their thoughts and quickly turned the tables on them. He had the man step forward then asked,
“Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” v.9
Now, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees were the ones in trouble! I love how the New Living Translation puts the next sentence.
He [Jesus] looked around at them one by one… (emphasis mine)
Talk about squirming! There was nowhere to run – they were stuck! Jesus went on to heal the man right before their very eyes! And boy, they were ticked! But…there wasn’t a single thing they could do about it!
We may think we are smart, but we cannot play games with God. He knows our every thought. He knows our motives. Many in this world today thumb their nose at God, in essence, sayings, “I’ll just do what I want and what are You going to do about it, huh?”
God grants us our free will but, believe you me, there will come a time when we will stand before Him and we will answer to Him and Him alone. We will have to answer for our actions. We will be responsible for the choices we have made. And payment will be due.
Will we be able to lay claim to the payment Jesus made for us in the giving of His life for us? Or will the penalty of eternal death in being separated from God be handed down to us because of our refusal to accept His payment on our behalf?
For each of us, the choice is ours.
Feb 2nd, 2020, Sun, 8:10 pm
