Luke 14:1-6

CHAPTER 11

THE DROPSICAL MAN HEALED

Luke 14:1-6. “ And it came to pass that He entered into the house of a certain one of the rulers of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, and they were watching Him;” i.e., hawk-eyes were on Him every minute, with diabolical vigilance, watching every word and act, if possible to implicate Him. If you do not stir the devil enough to concentrate on you demoniacal eyes, to watch and criticize you night and day, remember you are not much like Jesus. Satan is no fool. He always shoots at something. If he does not shoot at you, go back to the mourner's-bench, and stay till the Lord makes something out of you, which Diabolus will count worth firing on. While these preachers and official laymen were hounding Jesus, incessantly charging Him with violating the Sabbath, you see here that one of the rulers of the Pharisees actually had a big festival at his house on the Sabbath, thus overtly desecrating the holy day a thing which Jesus never did. N.B. He is still in Perea, east of the Jordan.

“ Behold, there was a certain dropsical man before Him. And Jesus, responding, said to the theologians and Pharisees, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day or not? And they were silent. And taking him, He healed him, and sent him away. Responding to them, He said, Of which one of you shall the son or the ox fall into a pit, will he not lift him up on the Sabbath day? And they were unable to respond to these things.” That rugged limestone country abounds in caves, precipices, chasms, and pits. Hence the liability of their livestock, and actually little children, falling in. All knew they would rally at once in that case, and extricate the sufferer, even on the Sabbath. Consequently those theologians, so shrewd in their exposition of the Scriptures, and those Pharisees, the official laymen of the Church, were all dumbfounded, and utterly unable to gainsay this plain, practical statement of Jesus. Nomikos, “lawyer,” E. V., is from nomos, “law,” and means a man cultured and skilled in the law of Moses, and an exegete of the O. T. Scriptures. Though here for the avowed purpose of lassoing Him by some vulnerable utterance which might drop from His lips, they are all utterly disconcerted.