Chapter # 3 Paragraph # 1 Study # 3
September 17, 2019
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(106)
1901 ASV
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful on the sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? to save a life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he stretched it forth; and his hand was restored.
6 And the Pharisees went out, and straightway with the Herodians took counsel against him, how they might destroy him.
- I. "But They Were Remaining Silent...".
- A. Jesus' "questions" had self-evident "answers" within the "Pharisaical Culture" in which they lived.
- 1. The Pharisees had no difficulty with "pulling a son or an ox from a well" (Luke 14:5; NASB) on the Sabbath..."doing good", or untying their farm animals and leading them to water (Luke 13:15) on the Sabbath.
- 2. Nor did the Pharisees seek to subvert the decision of the Maccabees to "fight and kill" on the Sabbath when they were attacked by the armies of Antiochus.
- 3. Thus, Jesus' "questions" put them in the unenviable position of being "hypocrites" (Luke 13:15) and totally demolished their "sabbath-loyalty claims".
- a. To whom were they "being loyal"? Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath; and they hated Him with murderous passion.
- b. Though they "felt" the deep burn of humiliation, it did not turn them from their stupid hatefulness.
- B. They were active in their refusal to respond to His "doing good on the sabbath" and deliberately would not answer Him.
- II. "When He Had Looked Round About On Them With Anger...".
- A. His "looking around upon them" is expressed by Mark with an intensive verb that he used in six texts and that Luke alone, of all of the authors of the New Testament, used only once (in a parallel record of this same event: Luke 6:10).
- 1. Mark's uses indicate a searching sweep of the eyes to "discover" something (5:32).
- 2. The implication is very strong that He looked into the eyes of every Pharisee present and saw their evident antagonism (and they saw His contempt so that they hated Him even more).
- a. The composite word, periblepo, in harmony with the composite word, sullupeo, indicates an intensification of the unintensified form and, thus, we conclude that He looked into the eyes of each Pharisee in turn.
- b. By the time He had looked into the eyes of each Pharisee, His "grief" was "combined together", grief upon grief.
- B. His "look" was attended with "anger" (Authorized Version's translation of orge).
- 1. This is the term used by John in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to indicate God's "settled determination to exact Justice" (not the spontaneous flash of hot anger that occurs when a sudden event calls it forth) during the days of the Tribulation to come.
- 2. It is the term that Paul used widely in Romans to indicate the outpouring of a long-building intention to execute vengeance (2:5 and 12:19). The "classic" examples are the Noahic flood; the destruction of Israel by Assyria; the Babylonian destruction of Judah; and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
- 3. Jesus was not, here, going to show any mercy whatsoever.
- a. The reason: He perceived clearly (having been exposed to it all of His life) the commitment of the leaders of the synagogue to install and enforce the doctrines of demons without hesitation.
- b. At issue: the perverted "T"heology of Lucifer had willing human "believers" in the face of the leper's lack of expectation of compassion in 1:40. The underlying question of "faith" is always "What is God actually like?". Is there a "smiling face" behind "frowning Providence"?
- III. "Being Grieved For The Hardness Of Their Hearts...".
- A. The verb, sullupeo, is used only this one time in the entire New Testament, being an intensive form of a verb used in 21 places by New Testament authors. It signals an emotional reaction when one sees (experiences) something that simply should not be (exist).
- 1. Mark 10:22 describes the emotional reaction of the wealthy man whom Jesus instructed to divest himself of all his wealth in order to "have" treasure in heaven: he "was grieved" and walked away.
- 2. Mark 14:19 describes the emotional reaction of the disciples when Jesus told them that one of them was to betray Him (and then, each one went to Him to ask "am I the one?").
- 3. Mark's addition of the prefix intensifier in our text indicates something more than mere "grief". It is a grievous recognition of the degree to which their hearts have been hardened; but, it is not attended by "tears" or "compassion", but "determined retribution".
- B. The "hardness" issue is theologically significant. It is the "hardness of heart" that lies at the root of the concept of "total depravity" in theological discussions. However, "total" depravity does not mean "fully developed" depravity. "Fully developed" depravity is something like the condition of those who charge Jesus with doing His works by the power of Beelzebub, whom Jesus called "Satan". These, Jesus says, "hath never forgiveness" (3:29) so that we conclude that, in their innate "depravity", they pursued rebellion until they were beyond redemption. This emphatically suggests that "total" depravity simply means "totally affected" (as in "every aspect of their being"), not "fully developed" depravity. Paul, likewise, taught that sinfulness was progressively developed from one degree to another with forgiveness "possible" up to a "point of no return" in his comments about God's "discipline unto death" of His own to keep them from being condemned with the world (1 Corinthians 11:32). Thus, "total depravity" does not mean that it cannot be overcome; rather, that comprehensive overcoming is required for complete sanctification. And, this, obviously, raises the question of the impact that "under-developed" depravity has upon the mind and the heart in terms of the abilities of those aspects of our being that involve "understanding", "faith", "love", and "volitional capacities".
- C. The "domain" of the hardness is crucial: the "heart".
- 1. The heart is the repository of "Love" as the "value system" of the person by which every issue coming into the mind is established as "valuable" or dismissed as "of no value".
- 2. If the heart is "hardened to the point of no return", there will be no "return". This is what Jesus was ferreting out as He looked at each Pharisee present. God, alone, knows whether any given "heart" is yet redeemable, or not.
- 3. If the heart is not yet "hardened to the point of no return", God, alone, determines whether to confront it with "merciful truth", or to simply let it continue on its path. In and of himself, not every man is "unredeemable" from birth, though every aspect of his being is corrupted and "depraved", but the development of that "depravity" to the point of no return is inevitable unless God inserts "grace and truth" into the picture. Being "redeemable" does not, in any sense, mean that man can "do" something to redeem himself, but it does mean that his case is not yet hopeless if God chooses to address it.
