Sermon transcription (may be edited for clarity)

This morning we’re joining Christ in progress as He journeys toward Jerusalem where he’s going to accomplish His death and resurrection. Now, as the story arc works, we start in the ninth chapter of Luke and we move all the way to the nineteenth. The ninth chapter of Luke is where Christ initially expresses his intention to go toward Jerusalem. The nineteenth chapter is where he actually enters the city and then there’s more of the story from there. So this morning we’re going to be, sort of, in the center at Luke 13, almost in the center of this particular journey to Jerusalem. And the question that Jesus asked is just a little bit complicated, it needs a little bit of context, so I’m going to provide you with some background.

Now, the thirteenth chapter of Luke is really in the form of a prophetic lament. It starts out with Christ calling for repentance, the Israelites in particular. He makes use of a current event where a tower fell on some people, the tower of Siloam, and He also makes use of a parable, which indicates that while they have some space to repent, that opportunity will not always be available. He then goes on to heal the woman in the synagogue, as you heard the Bible teaching this morning, and we’re going to examine that text for this sermon.

But just to get a bit more context, Christ lays his hands on this woman and frees her. She’d been bound by Satan for eighteen years, a long time. And then he encounters a religious hypocrite, who for some reason is displeased with this, and we’ll talk a little bit more about why. Later, Christ expands on some more parables about the Kingdom of God. After He shares those parables, He provides another, in which hypocrites, like the religious leader, are shut out of the Kingdom. And finally, the thirteenth chapter of Luke ends with a lament, where Christ weeps over Jerusalem, and then also a foreshadowing of His death, which is to come later.

So, when we look at actual text, those of you who’d like to read along, it’s Luke chapter 13:10-17. And I’m just going to walk through the text so we can get an idea of what’s going on and then we’ll talk about how to apply it to our everyday lives.

So it says in verse 10: “And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, and there was a woman who for 18 years had a sickness caused by a spirit and she was bent double and couldn’t straighten up at all.” Now I want you to think about that for a minute. This is someone who’s bent over. We’re not talking about a slight bend. We’re talking about someone who’s completely bent over (shows the motion) and cannot straighten up. Do you see that? It’s unusual. Now she’s at the synagogue, there’s no indication she was coming forward for a healing. She didn’t ask Christ for anything, but she was there. Then, Christ sees her. He calls her over. He says to her “Woman, you’re freed from your sickness.” He lays His hands on her and immediately she straightens up. She praises and glorifies God.  

This is one of the rare instances in which the person doesn’t ask Christ for anything. Often, in the New Testament when you read through the Gospels, people will come to Christ, right? Christ will ask them “What do you want?” Or people will come to Him and say: “My daughter is sick, or my son is falling down, or something is happening could you come and help us?” This woman doesn’t ask. Christ sees her, identifies her, called her over and takes care of her problem. Immediately, once He lays His hands on her, she is made straight. Now while you would think that this would be a situation where everyone will be happy, the synagogue leader has a problem with this. 

If we could look at the first slide, Deuteronomy 5:13 is what the religious leader is citing. He says specifically, “Six days in which work should be done or ought to be done, so come during them to get healed and not on the Sabbath day.” This is the verse he’s referring to: Deuteronomy 5:13 specifically says: “Six days you shall labor and do all of your work.” Now, he’s added a little something to it, though, if you compare the two. He says that there are six days, in which work ought to be done. This is interesting because the word he uses here “ought”, in the Greek, the word is dei. And what he means by that, is that it’s something fitting and proper that should be done. This matters because he’s not only citing the scripture in Deuteronomy 5:13, he’s also, by inserting this word, he’s indicating his authority to interpret Scripture.

So he’s not just saying “You know, Deuteronomy says six days we shall labor and do all our work and not on the Sabbath.” He’s saying “No, no. It’s also necessary and proper.” And he’s also adding a little snub, a little zinger at Christ because the root of that word that he used in the Greek, actually means to be obligated or bound. So, in essence, what he’s saying to Christ is, “While you’re here freeing this woman, aren’t we bound to keep the Sabbath?”

 This is why Christ responds with such strong language when He says hypocrite. And the word Christ is using for hypocrite, hypokrites, refers to a stage actor; an actor who is under an assumed part. It is a person who wears a mask. So he’s saying to this man “You are pretending.” And it’s a huge insult, but He goes on to show why. Christ says (if we can put the next verse up, I’m going to read what Christ said, then we’ll refer to this.) Christ says, “you hypocrites.” Now again, it wasn’t just a religious leader he was referring to. Remember, they’re in a synagogue on the Sabbath. So you’ve got a little bit of a showdown going on; you’ve got a synagogue leader and you’ve got Christ, right? And they’re battling over this particular text. So there are some people who are on the side of the synagogue later and there are some people who support Christ’s position. 

So Christ says “you hypocrites,” and used the plural form; He’s referring to more than one person. He says “Does not each of you, on the Sabbath, untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him?” In other words, you will untie an animal, but it’s a problem for a woman to be freed? You will untie an animal that hasn’t had water for a few hours. This woman has been bound for 18 years. Is this really a problem? And what else is Christ saying? Don’t forget to read the next verse, he says to the religious leader. Because you talk about the six days, but what about the fact that you’re not supposed to do any work with your oxen or your donkeys, right? So now the religious leader probably wishes he hadn’t said anything. But the interesting thing about that also, is that he directed his remarks not at Jesus, but at the congregation. Isn’t that terrible? He says to people, remember when the woman was healed, he says to the congregation, he says to the crowd, there are six days. 

So he wants to get at Jesus, but he’s talking to the people, and of course, he’s not even being accurate. If there were six days in which people could come and be healed, why was this woman bound by Satan for 18 years? There weren’t six days in which someone could be healed; he was misusing the text. Now, after Christ says these things, referring to the ox and donkey, this is the question that Jesus asked, “this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for 18 long long years. Should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath? Or shouldn’t she?” Jesus used the same word that the synagogue leader used.

That word that I told you was ought, which in the Greek is dei, and so Christ is now also asserting His authority to interpret scripture, to which Luke assents, by calling Him Lord. You notice it starts out in the narrative that Luke refers to Jesus as Jesus, but as soon as the synagogue leader tries to assert his authority, immediately Luke starts referring to Christ as Lord. And so then Jesus says “shouldn’t this woman…isn’t it necessary and fitting and proper that this woman should be released from her bond on the Sabbath?” And that’s the question we’re going to answer—the answer is found in Deuteronomy 5:15. 

The verse says: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. And the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” In other words, the purpose of the Sabbath was to commemorate the time when the Israelites were freed from bondage. So it makes perfect sense that the woman should be healed (freed) on the Sabbath because that’s what the purpose of the Sabbath was.

There are other vantage points from which to understand this. For example, “God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh; therefore you keep the Sabbath.” But in this particular context, where the religious leader is talking about this woman being healed, he looks for some reason at verse 5:13 in Deuteronomy and he doesn’t bother to read the next two verses. He doesn’t bother to look at his own conduct and now we see that the purpose of the Sabbath is to celebrate being freed from bondage. Why wouldn’t a woman who was bound by Satan 18 years be freed on the Sabbath? Of course it’s perfect that she should be healed on that day, isn’t it? It makes all the sense in the world. You wonder, in some sense, how the religious leader got it wrong.

Now remember I was talking to you earlier about the prophetic tradition, the prophetic lament of Luke 13. And so one of the things we start to see in this chapter is this idea of reversals and judgment. Remember Christ starts out by calling the Israelites to repentance, and by the end of Luke 13, they’re in a situation where Christ is lamenting that Israel has failed to repent. And so in the middle of that, here were looking at the middle of a situation where judgment has come, and there’s this woman who has bent over, who is ostracized from society. I mean, she’s in the synagogue on the Sabbath, but you can understand she would be on the periphery of the community. I mean, you can go to the Middle East today and see how women are treated to understand that she would’ve been treated as a second-class citizen in ancient times. And let’s be honest, when people are sick or ill or infirm, isn’t it our tendency as human beings to decide that they did something to deserve what happened to them? How often do we look at people in difficult circumstances and think that they must’ve done something wrong?

But it’s interesting, because when Christ refers to this tower that fell at the beginning of Luke 13, He talks about the people who were killed by it…18 men I believe He said. And He said “Do you think that those people were sinners above everyone else?” He said ‘no’, but unless you repent, you’ll likewise perish. The point He was making there was the tragedy happened to them, but it had nothing to do with them being any worse than anyone else. And so when we find this woman’s story so close to that, it gives us a sense that she was no worse than anyone else. And there we see the number 18 again, right? This time it was 18 years. So the idea is that this is someone who ostracized, marginalized in the community, kept out. Not viewed as someone, you know, anyone would want necessarily to be great friends with. 

But by the end of this narrative, what do we have? This woman’s not only standing up straight and praising God, but now she’s a central part of the community. This is someone who Christ has laid His hands on. Now she’s somewhat of a celebrity, almost, a mini-celebrity, people wanted to talk to her and say, well what happened? And what happened? How did it feel when He laid His hands on you? And what did He say to you? And why do you think He called you over and all this kind of thing. So Christ has not only healed the woman, or freed her I should say, but He also restored her to the community. 

And what of the religious leader? We have a religious leader who was standing around with much pomp, and he’s important, and everyone in the community respects him. Now he’s humiliated and embarrassed publicly, right? So goes the judgment of God in the middle of this prophetic lament that I was describing so that we have a reversal. 

Later in the chapter, Christ refers to His phrase, that we all are aware of, which is that “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Now, in the larger context of Luke 13, it’s important to think about, you know again I was talking about how there was a lament going on here, that you have the call to repentance and a failure to repent, but in the middle we have this joy from this woman, right? Who Christ identifies as a daughter of Abraham. So there’s some hope here. That Abraham’s true descendants, who not only are after the flesh, but after the spirit, those who believe will find joy and comfort in God. And we have here the woman praising g God, right? Not that she fell down and worshipped Jesus, but that she acknowledged openly that God was behind the work that Jesus was doing. 

This is something that not even the religious leaders of Christ’s day were willing to do. The other thing we find is religious leaders actually preventing people from coming to Christ. So we find a situation where, while God is calling for repentance, we see that those who are charged with being stewards of the mysteries of God, those who are supposed to be the teachers and the preachers of the law are instead hampering people, right? When a woman gets healed on the Sabbath, the religious leader turns to the crowd and tells them not to come forward and try to get healing. No one was there for that, remember? People were there for Sabbath learning, which is something they had done their whole lives. But here we have someone in the way. 

And then finally we find anger and resentment, right? Anger and resentment which happens when God doesn’t act as expected. Of course, as we could imagine, the religious leader would’ve been very upset because here he is, expounding on the Scriptures, only to be undercut by someone who knows them better than he does. So, how do we apply this to our lives today? And there are probably a lot of different applications, but I think some of them are fairly straightforward.

The first is that God doesn’t see as men sees. The Scripture says that man looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart. How often, again, are there people who are marginalized or in some way outside of whatever our norms are? And how do we treat them? And are we sure God agrees with us? Because see, God is looking for people in the margins and people on the outside, and people who are not the center of attention, and the prettiest, and the most popular. Yes, there’s a place for those people, too. But God has a love that we see quite a bit in Scripture for those who are despised and rejected, much like Christ eventually was. 

So we have to think about how we are treating other people who are on the margins of any particular group or culture. Some of us may feel bound by the Sabbath, I don’t know if you…you may know some people that are Christians who insist on celebrating the Sabbath and/or not doing certain activities on a particular day of the week, and people are feeling bound, but as we see in the lesson today, the point of the Sabbath was never that people should be restricted, but that they should celebrate freedom. And in Christ we shouldn’t be focused on what happens on a particular day of the week, as all days we glorify God. It’s not any about any particular day or non-day, or whatever people are celebrating.

Some people say they celebrate holidays, other people say they don’t. These things are not of consequence. What matters, under our covenant, is faith in God. Remember, Christ came to fulfill the Law, and he did fulfill it. And then He said a new commandment I give unto you, right? That you love one another as I have loved you. So we don’t want to get caught up in some of these things about days and weeks and months and celebrations, and all this sort of thing. We already know, and as I had mentioned earlier, that people in authority can prevent others from coming to God, right? And it’s not just ministers. What about parents? What about any group of people who has authority over other human beings: children who maybe want to read the Bible, no one has time to read it with them, right? 

Are there any ways in which we are hampering other people from coming to Christ when it’s in our power to help them? And of course the obvious, never us just one verse of Scripture, right? Because you see what happened to the religious leader just yanking out a verse and thinking he was right about it. And you will find that today, across a whole range of different topics. In life you will find people among Christians, who will pull one verse and insist that is the only way to view an issue. But when we look more broadly at the whole counsel of God, we see that there are other ways to view these things. 

Now finally, in the final message, and I think really one of the most important ones for us, is to recognize that God wants all of us to be free. Now we may not be bent over double as that woman was who couldn’t stand up, isn’t that sad? Couldn’t stand up for all the burdens she was carrying, but in her case, she was bound by Satan. But for us, we carry these things emotionally. We carry these things spiritually. We have problems with our relationships or family or friends or false friends, right? Or people at work who are getting on our nerves or mistreating us, or whether we’re struggling with health issues or conditions Or any sorts of emotional challenges, we may find ourselves doubled up like this woman. Again, she was bound by Satan so her condition was different.

But in our case, we’d all be doubled over in the same way, such that we feel we can’t stand up because of the pressures and the challenges we‘re dealing with in life. And so the message, I think one of the broader messages for us, is that God is willing to see us free. And that if we are… this is without our asking, right? And it’s not as if God’s waiting for us saying “I won’t do anything for you until you ask Me.” He’s perfectly willing to come to us and free us without our making a request.

As a practical matter, it’s useful to go to God in prayer about these things and to explain the challenges you’re facing to unburden yourself, so to speak, to Him and to look for Him to free you from all of those challenges. We’ll close in a word of prayer. If you’ll bow your heads with me, we’ll go before God and ask for the freedom that He so ably and comfortably gives us in Jesus Christ. 

Closing Prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you through the precious blood of Christ, not through any righteousness of our own, but only in accordance of Your will. We ask, God, that you look upon all of us today. God that You look for the burdens for people who feel that they can no longer carry these challenges. For people who are worrying about small things needlessly.

For those of us, God, who are getting through life and don’t even realize we’re carrying burdens or more than we can bear. God look upon those of us who may be taking out some of our frustrations on others who love us or other people just because we’re dealing with difficult situations and can’t really see the challenges where we are. And we ask, God, that by Your divine power, that you deliver us from these burdens and that you free us, God, so that we might better serve You and walk in Your grace, God, and in Your truth.

We thank You that You’ve demonstrated that You have power to do this in Your Word. You have shown us through Christ that You are perfectly willing; that all of us should be free, God, that none of us should be bound by the circumstances that we’re confronting in life even if we’ve been dealing with these things for a long, long time. God we come and ask these things of You, this morning, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.