Day 2834 – The Defiant Messiah – Luke 6:1-11

Putnam Church Message – 03/08/2026

Last week, we continued our study of the ministry of Jesus Christ with a message titled “Is It Okay to Party with Sinners?”  In other words, “Are we willing to carry the presence of Christ into places where grace is needed most?”

Today, we continue with the fifteenth message in Luke’s narrative of the Good News of Jesus Christ in a message titled “The Defiant Messiah.”  Our Core verses for this week are Luke 6:1-11, found on page 1599 of your Pew Bibles. Follow along as I read.

A wise mentor once told me, “Choose your battles carefully.”

That is good advice in life and in ministry. Not every disagreement is worth a fight. Not every irritation deserves a confrontation. Not every preference needs to become a principle.

But sometimes a battle must be chosen. Sometimes the issue is too important to ignore. Sometimes the truth of God is being distorted. Sometimes people are being crushed in the name of religion. And when that happens, silence is not wisdom. Silence is surrender.

That is what we see in Luke 6.

Jesus did not look for unnecessary fights. He was not quarrelsome. Most quarrels stem from insecurity on the part of one or both parties. Jesus was not insecure. But when the Pharisees used God’s law in ways that burdened people and obscured the heart of God, Jesus did not back down.

He chose that battle. And that is why I’m calling this message “The Defiant Messiah.”

He was not defiant against the Father. He was defiant against distortion. He was not defiant against Scripture. He was defiant against those who twisted Scripture into something God never intended.

By Luke 6, the tension has been building for some time. Jesus has taught with authority, cast out demons, healed the sick, forgiven sins, called unlikely disciples, and eaten with tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees have already been irritated by Him. But now He touches the one thing they considered theirs to police and control: the Sabbath.

And when He does, He draws a line in the sand.

 

Luke 6:1–5 Luke begins with a Sabbath scene in a grainfield:

“One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples broke off heads of grain, rubbed off the husks in their hands, and ate the grain. But some Pharisees said, ‘Why are you breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?’”

At first, this sounds like a small matter. The disciples are hungry. They pick grain. They eat.

But to the Pharisees, this was not a snack. It was a violation. In their interpretation, plucking grain was reaping, rubbing it was threshing, and separating it was winnowing. In other words, they had taken ordinary hunger and turned it into Sabbath labor.

Now we must be clear: according to the actual Law of Moses, the disciples were doing nothing wrong. Deuteronomy 23 allowed a hungry traveler to pluck grain by hand from a field. So, the issue was not God’s law. The issue was the Pharisees’ interpretation of it.

That is always where legalism lives. Legalism confuses human rules with divine commands. It elevates tradition until people can no longer tell the difference between what God actually said and what someone religious has added.

Jesus answers them by going to Scripture. He says, in effect, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?” (3)

He points them to 1 Samuel 21, where David, fleeing for his life, received consecrated bread from the priest.  4 He went into the house of God and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests can eat. He also gave some to his companions.” Bread normally reserved for priests>was shared because human need mattered. God never intended holy bread to sit untouched while hungry men starved.

Jesus’ point is simple and profound: God’s law was never meant to work against mercy. Then Jesus says the line that changes everything: “The Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath.” (5)

That is not merely a clever reply. It is a claim of authority.

The Sabbath belongs to God. Jesus says He is Lord over it. In other words, He is not simply giving an opinion about Sabbath practice. He is reclaiming divine authority over the very gift God gave.

Hold up a wrapped gift and say, “Here is a gift for each of you, ‘Don’t enjoy it, don’t touch it wrongly, don’t use it incorrectly, just be anxious around it.’ At some point, the gift stops feeling like a gift and starts feeling like a burden.”

That’s what had happened to the Sabbath. God intended the Sabbath to be rest, trust, delight, and covenant blessing. The Pharisees had turned it into a form of fear management.

Luke 6:6–11 Luke moves from the grainfield to the synagogue:

This scene is even more revealing. There is a suffering man in the room. There is the Lord of mercy in the room. And there are religious leaders in the room.

But the leaders are not asking, “Will this man be helped?”  They are asking, “Can we catch Jesus doing something we can use against Him?”

That tells you everything.

Luke specifies that the man’s right hand was deformed. In that world, the right hand represented strength, skill, work, and livelihood. This man’s condition was not cosmetic. It affected his dignity, his income, and his place in society.

And in the thinking of many people at the time, such a deformity might even be viewed as some kind of divine judgment.

So Jesus does something shocking. He calls the man forward:

Jesus will not let this man stay invisible. He will not let him remain a background figure in someone else’s theological debate.

Then Jesus asks the Pharisees:

That question leaves no neutral ground. Jesus is saying that when we have the opportunity to do good and refuse it, we are not morally neutral. We are siding with harm.

Then Luke says Jesus looked around at them one by one. Mark tells us He was angry at their hardness of heart and deeply grieved. So, this is not calm detachment. This is a holy confrontation.

Then Jesus says to the man, “Hold out your hand.”

And the man does. And in the very act of obedience, the hand is restored. That is beautiful.

The man could not heal himself. But when Jesus commanded what seemed impossible, grace met obedience. The man stretched out what had been withered, and Jesus restored it.

And what was the response of the Pharisees? At this, the enemies of Jesus were wild with rage and began to discuss what to do with him.

They were angry… at mercy.

That is the tragedy of hardened religion. It can become so committed to maintaining control that it grows furious when people are healed.

A simple illustration here is a closed fist and an open hand. A closed fist cannot receive well, cannot help well, cannot bless well. It protects, resists, and clenches.

An open hand receives, helps, and gives. The Pharisees had clenched hearts. / The man had a withered hand. / Jesus opens what religion had closed.

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