Jesus Restores: The Withered-Hand Man

He went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. (Matthew 12:9-13)

I am in a season right now that feels like daily throwbacks to 2011 and 2012. Certainly not physically. If I knew then what I know about working out and health, I would have had a very different 20’s. My 20’s would have been throwing around a few 100’s. Let’s not go there right now. LOL. But even then, the Lord is restoring even my body in some ways… now I’m getting ahead of myself.

Back in 2011 when I lived with Jeff and Widdy, I was 19-20, didn’t have a job, wrote a bunch of songs, got hit by a bus, learned how to actually play guitar, blogged like a madman, sat in my underwear and pondered the mysteries of life (according to Dale), was spending time recovering from a former dependency to pornography, was discovering the gospel of grace through Tullian Tchividjian’s sermon series on Ecclesiastes back in his Coral Ridge days — and oh yes, I was very single.

Shane and Shane’s album “Pages” and “The One You Need” were regularly on repeat. Dale and I would revel in the wonder of the next world through Switchfoot’s “Where I Belong,” “Meant to Live,” and “Shadow Proves The Sunshine.” It was in this season that the Lord first taught me that knowing Him is sweeter than having everything or anything at all other than Him. I remember sitting in Starbucks at the U of M campus on Washington Avenue after my shift valeting cars, reading Exodus 33, listening to “Without You” in the Fall of 2012, and weeping over the goodness of God and how I didn’t want Him to leave me because He was all I felt like I had.

This is when the Lord turned on the lights for the first time. I had nothing close to the Biblical vocabulary that I have now, but it was the first time I tasted the sweetness of the promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” It was the first time I felt deeply in my bones the Lord give me the words in my spirit, “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear.”

This meant something to me. I had thought that I had met my wife. I had never met another girl like her who I got along with, who I loved doing anything and nothing with, and she even thought I was funny. I couldn’t keep the relationship because of my own immaturity and my need to keep growing up. Then she met her fiance 90 days after we broke up, and they got engaged 90 days after that, and they got married 90 days after that. On the one hand, I could have reached out to her before they got together to put the relationship back on track. But on the other hand, it wasn’t right and I needed to grow. What happened was clearly the Lord’s plan. I feel like that now, and I have a fear that the same thing will happen in this situation too.

However, I am confident that this season is right. I feel the washing of a renewed mind in Christ and a renewed spirit every day. I can see the new habits that are forming. I open the Word and the words jump off the page. I am more disciplined than I’ve maybe ever been in my life. I am undistracted. I am eating well, exercising, spending time with the Lord, spending time with the brothren (ode to you, Pastor Michael Fix of Bismarck, ND). While all this is great and I really would not trade it for anything, I’m still 34 and it feels quite sad to lose a friend and someone who I thought could be or could have been my wife. Are we equally yoked? Could things still work out? I really don’t know.

I am going through the Gospel of Matthew right now. Sometimes seeing what Jesus has done and what He can do is the best reminder to stay near to Him, even when He doesn’t do the same miracles in my life, at least in the same way.

I look at this guy with a withered hand. From the text in Matthew, we don’t know if he was born with some sort of muscular dystrophy or palsy or if he had been crushed from some traumatic event. Either way, he was in the temple when Jesus showed up which kind of sounds like a setup. He’s there, Jesus walks in, and the Pharisees immediately jump on him like flies jumping on a load of poo. The “load of poo” in this context is their belief that they’re going to catch Jesus somehow. LOL again. The withered-hand man is just along for the ride. He was probably brought there as the circus act. I can imagine that perhaps he’s hoping that this Jesus guy is actually able to heal him.

Think about what is going through his mind when Jesus shows up. He probably can’t say a whole lot, or anything at all. We don’t even know if he can talk. Maybe he can. But I can see him quietly hoping that Jesus is who everyone has been saying that He is as the Pharisees try to use him to paint Jesus into a theological corner.

Then Jesus, yet again, makes child’s play with the proposed entrapment. Think about what the man heard when Jesus said, “Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!”

Perhaps he thought to himself: “Can this actually be happening? Am I going to be able to use my hand? I’ve tried everything, and it’s only getting worse. God, please do something.”

Now the Pharisees are looking at Jesus, waiting to see what He is going to do. Jesus looks at the man and gives him a simple command, “Stretch out your hand.”

This is hard for me to write, because I can imagine the man may have had the same reaction to this command as my reaction when I consider His command to cast my cares on Him, my anxieties on Him, or to pray without ceasing. I often have a hard time praying because I’m scared that if He doesn’t answer me then I will be left looking like a fool and still lost and helpless without an answer to my sad situation. If this man stretches out his hand and nothing happens, not only will Jesus and he be mocked, but so disappears his only hope to actually being healed.

But he stretches out his hand anyway. And it was restored, healthy like the other.

This is who Jesus is. He is in the restoration business. That gives me hope. Or I should say, at least enough hope to keep going today. He either exists, is who He says He is, can heal and restore me and my romantic relational lunar rover ride, or he doesn’t exist and none of that stuff ever happened.

I do believe that He existed, exists, and will continue exist. I also believe that He will reward those who seek Him. The best reward He can give is the reward of His presence. He will never leave nor forsake us. He also gives us the ability to share His holiness, at least to those who have been trained by His Fatherly discipline. Lord, help my unbelief.

THE LESSON FOR ME

Don’t forget. He restores. He is making all things new. Even when I can’t see how or when.