Welcome back to our Bible study on the Gospel of Mark. We're at Chapter 3 in the Gospel of Mark

where we find Jesus once again in a synagogue on the Sabbath. And we're going to see this

growing conflict between Jesus and the leadership of Israel, the Pharisees. And here we have Jesus. As he

enters the synagogue, we're told that there was a man there who had a withered hand. And they

watched him to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.

And remember the idea of accusing. That's exactly what the satan is. The devil is

the accuser, right? So now they're looking, eager to accuse him. And we're going to see here in

chapter three that the conflict with Jesus and the Pharisees and the leadership of Israel is going to

start to reach a boiling point. And in chapter three, we're

going to be basically where we would have been in the gospel of Matthew in chapter 12. So Mark

is a little shorter. He skips the sermon on the Mount. And he doesn't have time for discourses

about the lilies of the field and all those kinds of fineries, it's action, action, action.

So Mark boils things down to the narrative drama, and here we have a drama reaching a deep

conflict. And so that's the scene, and we're in a synagogue, and then Jesus said to them,

and he knows that they're looking to do this, and he asks a question, is it lawful on the Shavat, on the Sabbath,

to do good or to do harm, to save life, or to kill? Now you can think, wait a minute,

that's kind of an odd question to ask rhetorically in the middle of the synagogue. Is it lawful

on the Sabbath to do good or harm,

to save life, or to kill life?

But Jesus is referring to something in Israel's history,

going back to First Maccabees, chapter 2, verse 29 in following,

and that context in First Maccabees, chapter 2, where what context in 1 Maccabees chapter 2, where what happens,

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