Luke 14:6

‘And they could not answer again to these things.'

They had no answer to give. How do you accuse a man of blasphemy when He heals successfully in the name of God? So they had nothing to say. But they had plenty in their thoughts, and it was probably not very pleasant. For their silence did not mean that they were satisfied. Only that they were biding their time. How often this happens when men's prejudices are being laid bare and they are not willing to admit it. Instead of admitting that they might be wrong they simmer and determine how they can justify themselves by getting their revenge.

Sometimes what Jesus did on the Sabbath aroused great anger (Luke 3:6). At other times, as here, less so. But it all had a cumulative effect. And the cumulative effect in the hearts and minds of those who failed to enter into His own position that it was right to do good on the Sabbath, was that He was seen as a person with little regard for the Sabbath. They might have accepted that occasionally He might possibly have had some justification, if only it had been occasionally, but the point was not that. The point was that He kept on doing good on the Sabbath, and showing compassion, in spite of what people thought. He did not seem to know where to stop or to have any regard for how they thought. And it was that aspect of things that took hold of their minds, and it was the only aspect that was passed on when they spoke of it to others. Jesus, they would say, may claim to be a prophet, but really He was a Sabbath-breaker. Their minds had become so tunnel-visioned that they completely overlooked the fact that every example of ‘work' that they criticised was connected with, and was the result of, a remarkable miracle (Luke 4:38; Luke 6:6; Luke 13:14; Mark 1:21; John 5:9; John 9:14), and was an act of God's mercy..

This then brought them to a place where they had to make a decision. Was He really to be seen as the Son of Man Who was Lord of the Sabbath and therefore as having the right to make binding decisions about it, something which the clear evidence of God's working through Him pointed to (they never once denied that a miracle had been done. The whole point was that it had), or was He simply someone who stretched things beyond the limit, thereby revealing His casual attitude towards God? The majority of them decided on the latter, and therefore sought to condemn Him as One Who led astray of the people. So they closed their minds to all else. But at the heart of the matter lay a crucial question. Which mattered most to God? Did He prefer them to fulfil all His ritual requirements as interpreted by their own teachers to the utmost extent, regardless of human need, or did He prefer them to relax them when they might result in a failure to do positive good, and to reveal compassion, something which might be seen in God's eyes as an even greater requirement, especially when what resulted was so obviously of God. They chose the former. Jesus chose the latter. (Many today have sadly overthrown both attitudes. They have made the Sabbath a day for doing whatever they want. They are therefore wrong on all counts and are despising God even more).