When Jesus Comes to Church (Part 1)

Well, let's take our Bibles this morning and open them, if you would, to Luke chapter 13.

And our text this morning will be verses 10 through 21. All right, so Luke 13, verses 10 through 21.

I want to go ahead and read that text for us this morning. Now he, of course, he is Jesus. He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.

Behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up.

And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight and glorified God.

But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. And he said to the crowd, There are six days on which men ought to work.

Therefore, come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then answered him and said, Hypocrite, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it away to water it?

So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?

And when he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Then he said, What is the kingdom of God like?

And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and put in his garden, and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.

And again he said, To what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.

All right, so what is going on here? I mean, what is Jesus doing? Well, he's teaching. We can say that, even without reading any of the rest of it, or trying to understand some of the meaning of this passage, we can clearly say that Jesus was teaching.

He was teaching. This was an occasion where Jesus had been given the opportunity to teach. We would even say preach. Now, we're not given the substance of his sermon until a little bit later, but he's teaching.

And where is he teaching? The Bible says here he's teaching in the synagogue. Synagogue. And we may know something about the synagogue, but I want to make sure we understand just what this place represented in this day.

Today, the synagogue served as the local place for worship and for Bible instruction for the Jews. And not only that, but also it was a place for what we could call judicial proceedings.

That's just kind of the technical term for taking care of some legal matters within the body of faith, within the body of Jews. Now, no sacrifices were offered in the synagogue.

This was not a substitute for the temple. Sacrifices could only be offered in the temple. And the temple was located in Jerusalem. Which, by the way, explains how the synagogue, this kind of place for the Jews, came into being.

Came into being after the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians back in 586 B.C. And so the temple was destroyed. And so these other places of worship and places of Bible instruction, and again, also judicial proceedings and so forth, were developed, kind of evolved among the Jews in that day.

Now, the temple, of course, later was rebuilt. But the need for the usage of a synagogue, the practicalities for a place like the synagogue, continued on from there.

And there were literally, I would say, thousands of them in Galilee and Judea, all throughout the land of Israel. And every community had a synagogue.

In fact, most of them had more than one. In fact, they say that the city of Jerusalem alone had upwards of 500 synagogues.

And so the synagogue was this kind of special place. Place of meeting, place of Bible instruction, place for worship, place for other meetings that the Jews would have.

Now, they didn't have any priest there. There was no priest over the synagogue. No pastor, per se, preacher or teacher in the sense of a full-time position in the synagogue.

Each synagogue was governed, rather, by what Luke calls a ruler, the ruler of the synagogue. And, in fact, in Acts, Luke also wrote the book of Acts, he calls this person the chief ruler of the synagogue.

Now, the ruler of the synagogue had a number of duties, of course. He was kind of over the synagogue and also over the elders. They had elders in the synagogue. But this ruler, among other duties, would also decide who would be permitted to preach and teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath day.

And they would have a different person teaching, perhaps, nearly every Sabbath. And if there was a visitor from Jerusalem or from some other part of Israel, perhaps a rabbi or a teacher of some notability, then he would be asked to teach on the Sabbath day.

And that happened quite often with Jesus. That's why Jesus had many opportunities to teach and preach in the synagogue. And that, I think, was what happened here. The ruler of the synagogue permitted Jesus to be the teacher for that day so they could hear what he had to say.

Now, many scholars see the synagogue, the Jewish synagogue, as a kind of precursor for what would one day become the place of assembly for the church.

Now, it's not that they just took over the synagogues and it became the church or the church building, but it was kind of a precursor for that type of place that the church would meet.

And really, this would be a very natural thing to conclude because after the resurrection, it was only natural for the church to assemble and the church then being exclusively Jewish.

And they were used to meeting on the Sabbath at the synagogue. And so it would be only natural for them to begin to meet also, this time not on the Sabbath, the last day of the week, but rather on Sunday, the first day of the week, which, of course, was Resurrection Day.

And so even the early church buildings, some archaeologists have noted and historians have noted, even some of the early church buildings, when they started meeting in buildings, were fashioned very similarly to the synagogue.

And not only that, but their function was very similar to the Jewish synagogue, Bible instruction, worship on a weekly basis, ministry to the needs of the people, governance also took place over certain issues that would arise within the body of faith and so forth.

So very much, very similar to the function of the synagogue was the church later. All right, now, Luke then tells us that this was the Sabbath day.

So Jesus is teaching, he's teaching in the synagogue, and it is on the Sabbath day. And Jesus was present there in the synagogue and that he was permitted to teach.

And so at first glance, this just kind of seems like a normal kind of thing. And we find examples of this in a number of other places in the Gospels concerning Jesus teaching in the synagogue.

So very normal. But normal, of course, never has described what happens when Jesus comes to church. It's never normal.

When Jesus comes to church, and I'm kind of likening the synagogue to church, okay, kind of bringing it into our contemporary times. When Jesus comes to church, he comes to change some things, which is not always agreeable to people.

When Jesus comes to church, he also comes to confront some things, some things that are wrong, some error, and so forth.

That's what Jesus comes to do, and people, of course, don't really like that, not always. They certainly didn't in Jesus' day. When Jesus comes to church, he comes to correct some things.

And that's a good thing. And yet it's not always received very well by people, and that certainly was the case here. And we're going to see all of this and more in this passage for this morning.

And so let's look at it. I want you to notice three things, three glorious realities that I believe Luke reveals in this passage, again, when Jesus came to church.

And this morning I want to look at two of them. I tried to get all three of them in here, but there's just a lot here, and a lot that we need to understand, and especially with the third one.

So I'm going to reserve that for next week. But I want you ultimately, from this passage, to see three realities, three glorious realities.

The first one is this, what I would call the pursuit of grace. The pursuit of grace.

I mean, that's the first thing that I see when I read and meditate upon this passage, and when I read it over and over, and I consider the various elements of this passage, what's going on in the passage, what's being described, when I see this woman and what happened to her, and what Jesus did for her, I see here the pursuit of grace.

And listen, dear people, I believe this with all my heart. if you are a believer here this morning, a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have received His forgiveness for sin, if you're here this morning and you have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, saved, born again, whatever term you want to use.

The Bible uses many terms. If you're here this morning and that's true of you, I want you to know that it is because of the unrelenting, unrelenting, persistent pursuit of God's saving grace.

I believe that with all my heart and I think we see that here in this passage with this woman. I think it's very clear. And so what can we discover about this woman and about what happened to her in the synagogue on this Sabbath day when Jesus was invited to preach when Jesus came to church.

And I would say that even the scant details that we have, and really they are scant. I mean, there's not really told a lot about the details here.

But even with what is described, we can see a lot here. And so first of all, I think we could see this about this woman. We could surely see the substance of her need was severe.

Wouldn't you agree? I mean, when you read how it's described here, even though it takes, you know, just one sentence, really less than a sentence to describe what this woman was suffering.

I think even from this, this very brief, very concise, certainly not detailed, not in depth at all, I think we can see that the substance of her need was severe.

It was severe. Now, can you imagine a severe, crippling kind of disease or malady or whatever it was, apparently with her spine, possibly, certainly in her back.

And the word here in the Greek is asthenia, and it's a very general word. I mean, it really doesn't say anything very specific. It is just simply a word that means weakness or frailty.

Probably would be a better way to translate it. A frailty about this woman. A severe frailty that had come upon this woman. Perhaps it is some form of muscular dystrophy.

Perhaps. Perhaps it was some kind of defect or some disease that attacked her spine so that, you know, she was doubled over.

We don't know exactly. We only know that she was, as it's described here, that she was bent completely over. Some versions of the Bible word it doubled over.

And we can kind of visualize that. I mean, we even use that expression in our day. A person's doubled over. That is, she could not straighten up her back. She could not stand and walk erect.

And, no doubt, she labored to even walk anywhere, to even go anywhere. Possibly with a cane. We don't know, but the wording here, the description of it, suggests that she was so doubled over that possibly she even had to crawl where she went.

Creep along, kind of shuffle along. And she had suffered from this crippling condition for how long? 18 years.

That's a long time. And by the way, the word for woman here is gune, and it's a very general word. It doesn't describe any age. There's no adjective attached to say that she was an elderly woman.

She may have been a young woman. And so perhaps had been in this condition for most of her life. 18 long years. Now think of it.

Always shuffling around wherever she went. Creeping along, maybe even perhaps crawling. Enduring the extreme difficulty of going anywhere, of walking if she could walk.

And suffering the humiliation of it. You know, we have laws today in our culture, in our society, you know, for the handicapped, and I applaud all of that.

And we have perhaps a different outlook on those who are suffering handicaps, but that was not the case in this day. It was a humiliation.

You were the lowest of the low. especially if you were handicapped in this way. The humiliation of it, the difficulty of it, for 18 long, hard years.

So, clearly, we can say without any doubt, without any speculation, the substance of her need was severe. Severe.

But, I want you to notice that it's even worse than that. Even worse than what I've described. And so, second notice, this is what we can say about this woman, the source of her need was spiritual, not physical.

Though it manifested itself physically, I mean, clearly, it was observable, she was doubled over, she had a serious problem physically, and it was manifested that way, but we understand from the text that the source of it was not physical, but spiritual.

And we're just, you know, we're just looking at how Luke describes it, and just taking its description at face value, not trying to overanalyze it, as some scholars have tried to, tried to explain away this part, but clearly, Jesus says that, or Luke mentions that she had a, what?

A spirit of infirmity. And so, her infirmity, her weakness, her illness, her handicap, her crippling disease, whatever it was, was caused by a demon.

That's just clearly what Luke says, just the plain fact of it. It was caused by a demon. And Jesus would even later say in verse 16, Satan has bound her.

Who bound her? Satan did. And so, this is some form of demon affliction, demon oppression. I don't know if it was a demon possession, but she was afflicted by a demon, and Jesus said, think of it for 18 years.

18 years. Now, why did this happen? I mean, this is pretty sad. It's terrible. Why would that happen? I don't know. We have other examples in the New Testament of it.

people who were afflicted by a demon. Not everyone Jesus healed was, you know, possessed by a demon or afflicted by a demon. We don't have that every single time, but we do have many examples of it, and here's an example of it.

Why did this happen? How did it happen? Did this woman make some kind of sinful decision, direction in her life that made her susceptible or open to this particular attack of Satan?

or, you know, I don't have any idea. I don't have any idea. But I think I can say this, though, that this woman is representative of all lost people in the world.

She represents those who are sinners, unbelieving, lost, unredeemed, those in the bondage of sin.

She's tormented by Satan under the sway of satanic influence in her life, crippled by the bondage of sin and condemned to a fruitless life, a vain life, a worthless life.

And she's representative, I think, of all unbelievers, all sinners. So the substance of her need is severe, clearly.

And I think equally as clear, the source of her need was spiritual. Spiritual. A third thing that we can say about this woman very clearly, the solution to her need was the Savior.

He was the solution to her need. Now, the Greek text in verse 11, in the Greek text, verse 11, begins with these three words in the Greek text, kai, edu, gunei.

I've already said gunei is the word for woman, kai is just and, and, and edu is a word that is usually translated literally, behold.

And that's how it's translated here in the New King James and also in the King James. Now, you know, regrettably, not all English versions bring this out in their translation of the Greek text.

And I say regrettably because the word is very important, very key to our understanding about the situation here, what happened and how this all kind of was unfolding. And it gives us, I think, a clue to some of what was going on and what Jesus ultimately did for this woman.

It begins with edu and edu meaning behold. And it is interesting because it's a verb and it's an imperative.

That is, a command. And yet, this construction grammatically, ka edu, at the beginning of a sentence in the Greek language, and it happens quite often in the New Testament, by the way, because you'll see in the King James, New King James, quite often a sentence beginning, behold, or look.

And so it's a certain kind of grammatical technique that is specifically designed to convey the idea of suddenness or even surprise.

A sudden thing has happened here. We could even, as I've already said, we could translate this, look, and look, a woman. Jesus is teaching, and look, a woman.

It's a suddenness, it's a surprise, and so this is the idea. The woman apparently entered the synagogue while Jesus was teaching. He had already started his teaching, and look, this woman comes in, this crippled woman.

She had not been there before, I think is the idea, and her presence there was somewhat unusual. Perhaps she had never, ever come into the synagogue before.

That this was something unusual, something different. She had never been there before, and she wasn't there before Jesus began, and he started teaching, and behold, there she is.

It's unusual, it's surprising, and why was she there? Well, because Jesus was there. I mean, that's the only conclusion we can come to.

She was there at that particular time because Jesus was there. Jesus was there, and he was the only solution to her suffering. And so, did she go to the synagogue that day looking for Jesus?

Perhaps. Perhaps she did. I would be willing to say that there were more attendance on that particular Sabbath than was usual for this synagogue.

That was the case every time Jesus appeared, not only in the synagogue, but everywhere. He just attracted people. They were curious, and so maybe she was just simply curious. Or, and this was the case with a lot of people in this day, she may have come because she was desperate.

Many flocked to Jesus who were sick and had handicaps and severe problems in their lives. They flocked to Jesus because they had heard about his miracles and his healing and perhaps he would heal them and so they were desperate and this woman perhaps came because she was desperate.

I don't think there's any doubt about that. But I would add this, was she there because Jesus drew her there?

And I believe so, most definitely. She came into the synagogue on that Sabbath because she didn't know it but Jesus was actually drawing her there.

And you know, notice who took the initiative here. This gives us a kind of a clue as to who is moving things here.

Who took the initiative? Well, verse 12, look at it again. But when Jesus saw her, so he's teaching and suddenly, look, this woman, this crippled woman comes walking in or shuffling in or however she made her way.

And Jesus saw her. And what did he do? He called her to him. That seemed like a very simple phrase.

You know, just on the face of it. Anything profound there? I think so. She didn't call to him.

She didn't go to him. He called her to him. He took the initiative. And he said to her, woman, you're loosed from your infirmity.

Did she ask him to do that? Well, there's nothing in the text that says she did. perhaps she kind of shuffled in or crawled in and found some corner of the room there and Jesus observes her.

You know, she's been living a life of humility, probably ridiculed by the Jews because they thought all physical, long-term physical maladies were because that person was a great sinner.

So she didn't come walking up proudly or crawling up desperately. She perhaps hid back there in the corner somewhere. Jesus called her to himself and Jesus said, woman, you are loosed from your infirmity and he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified God.

Wow. See, listen, clearly, do you see it? The pursuit of grace in this poor woman's life.

But it was not physical healing she needed most. The pursuit of God's grace there that day, Jesus pursuing her and drawing her to himself that day, was not just so that he could heal her physically.

Now, he did that and there was a reason for that. That was not his prime purpose. And so I want you to notice a fourth thing we could say about this woman.

The satisfaction of her need was salvation. I'm talking about the full satisfaction of her need. The full satisfaction of her desperate condition and need was not physical.

It was spiritual. It was salvation. Her salvation. And I'll explain this in just a moment because this plays into the second thing that I want us to see in the passage.

But suffice it to say at this point that Jesus not only healed this woman of her physical infirmity or physical suffering, but Jesus also healed her spiritually. I believe Jesus saved her that day.

He saved her. So here's a woman. She's weak. She's feeble. She's crippled. She's helpless. She's hopeless.

And she's bound by Satan. And here is Jesus and he calls her to himself, heals her, and saves her.

Beautiful. Wonderful. The pursuit of grace. I mean this dear woman, think of it, came to church that day suffering and left glorifying God.

Came a sinner crippled by her sin and left that day a worshiper glorifying God.

The pursuit of grace. There's a second reality in this passage that really goes with this. It's part of this. It's not two separate things.

These things go together. And it is what I would call the power of God. Not only the pursuit of grace. That reality is very clear I think to me in this passage.

But even clearer still is the power of God. The power of God. Everything in this story reveals the purpose of God to display his power.

His great power. In fact, I would maintain that Jesus orchestrated this entire thing in order to manifest his glorious power and his grace.

He orchestrated the whole thing. Now, not orchestrated in the way that some of the faith healers of our day will kind of orchestrate things and they will kind of pay someone or somehow work so that there are some ringers in the crowd who come up and are supposedly healed.

And so the faith healer is glorified. And I'm not talking about that kind of orchestration. Jesus worked in the hearts and lives and in the day-by-day movement of all of creation to bring about the things that he desired so that he could reveal something.

And that's the case going on with this story, I believe clearly. Jesus revealed his power in at least three ways.

He revealed his power to restore the suffering in healing this woman. He revealed his power in redeeming the sinner.

And thirdly, he revealed his power to rebuke the satanic, rebuke Satan.

and we see all of this in the story. First of all, the power of God to restore the suffering. Listen, Jesus instantaneously, no delay, no gradual healing, instantaneously and completely healed this woman.

healed. She was completely healed. And at that very moment, she had been doubled over for 18 long years and Jesus instantly made her straight, erect.

There was no need for any physical therapy, you know, for her to tone up the muscles that no doubt had atrophied over 18 years of being bent over and crippled.

There was no gradual need to recondition some of those muscles in her body so that she, there was no need for any kind of professional rehab in order to help train her in how to walk again because she'd been, you know, in that condition for 18 years and you would think, well, maybe she would need a little bit of help to learn how to walk.

No, it was absolutely instantaneously. Her weakness was completely gone. Her body was made erect, straight, and she was totally completely instantly healed to the glory of God.

Yes. Now, does God always do that? There are those who would look at this and say, well, this is what God wants to do all the time.

So, if He wants always to heal in this way, even today, then if He doesn't, there must be something wrong on our side.

You know, they have a whole kind of theology about that that I think is fraudulent. It's unbiblical.

So, I'd have to say that Jesus does not always heal this way. Does He? No. He doesn't do that. In fact, if you will be honest and analyze the Gospels, the Scriptures, where, you know, the Gospel writers have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to detail for us the life of Jesus and also to describe His many miracles and so forth, I think you'll discover that Jesus primarily performed miracles in order to validate His true identity.

And not only that, but to validate His message, that it is from God. That's why, in fact, the word miracle that we use so prevalently and usually use incorrectly is from the Greek word semeon and it means sign.

It means a sign. It's a sign of what? Every time Jesus performed a sign, a miracle, it was a sign for something.

It pointed to something. And in His case, it pointed to His Messiahship, that He had come and He's the Messiah and His miracles were proofs of that. And not only that, but what He was preaching needed validation and His signs, His miracles, His wonders, were all to point people to the message and reveal the validity of it.

That it indeed is the truth. But I would also add a third reason why Jesus performed miracles. And that was the case here. He did so to draw Satan out.

To draw him out. To unmask him. And to do so publicly. And not only to unmask Satan, to draw him out, but to draw those who were followers of Satan's lies, to draw them out.

And to expose them, to unmask them. And that's certainly what Jesus did here in this passage. But before we get to that, I want you to notice there's a second display of His power here.

And that is not only to restore the suffering, but to redeem the sinner. To redeem the sinner. sinner. That was Jesus' primary purpose with this woman, to redeem her.

That's why He pursued her. That's why He brought her to Himself. To save her. To save the sinner. And I said that we would get back to this. And I want you to notice something Jesus said about this woman in verse 16.

He's talking to the ruler of the synagogue. God. And Jesus refers to this woman as what? A daughter of Abraham. There's been a lot of debate about that.

About what He meant by that. And many scholars, even those I would call good ones, believe that it was just simply a reference to her nationality.

She was a daughter of Abraham. That means she was a Jewess. And so it's just simply nothing more than this. You know that they ought to have compassion on her. She's one of your own.

She's a Jew. And I don't think so. I believe Jesus is referring to her faith. Her faith.

Her faith in Christ. Jesus is talking about her salvation. Because Jesus saved her that day. Not only did He heal her physically, but He saved her spiritually.

He saved her. Now Jesus said something similar of Zacchaeus. You remember the story of Zacchaeus? Wee little man. You know the song, don't you? And in Luke 19 verses 9 and 10, this is what Jesus said of Zacchaeus.

He said, Today salvation has come to this house. So He's talking about Zacchaeus' salvation. Zacchaeus' Because, because what? Because this man also is a son of Abraham.

And then He goes on to say, For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. So the context is salvation. And Jesus said, Today salvation has come to your house, Zacchaeus, because you're a son of Abraham.

Not just that you're a Jew. It's something more than that. You see, the idea is that sons and daughters of Abraham are those who have come to faith.

Just as Abraham had come to faith. They had come to faith in Jesus. And that applied to Jews and Gentiles. In fact, according to Paul, and he's speaking of Gentiles in Romans chapter 4 verse 11, he said this of Abraham, he said Abraham was the father of all those who believe.

all those who believe. Abraham's the father of faith, of the faithful. And so, that's what happened to this woman.

Jesus saved her. She came to faith in Jesus Christ. And she was saved. She's a daughter of Abraham. Like Zacchaeus was a son of Abraham.

Like you are sons and daughters of Abraham. more significantly than the fact that you are sons and daughters of Adam. You're sons and daughters of Abraham because you have come to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

See, a clear display of the power of God to restore the suffering and to redeem the sinner. But we aren't through here because he also displays his power to rebuke the satanic.

Those who have bought into the lies of Satan. Not just them, but also Satan himself. I mean, after all, this woman had this infirmity. It was caused by a spirit.

And so, even though the Bible doesn't describe Jesus saying or doesn't say that Jesus said, you know, Satan or demon, get out of her. You know, he doesn't cast out a demon, but that's implied because her infirmity was caused by a spirit, by a demon.

And so, the power of Jesus was to rebuke the demon that had brought this infirmity into her life. That's secondary to Jesus' purpose.

And so, Luke doesn't even mention that. His purpose is to draw out those who were believing the lies of Satan. Satan. You know, and I pointed this out before, Jesus loved to heal on the Sabbath day.

You know, you just read that over and over in the Gospels. It seems like, you know, it'll begin, the Gospel account will begin with, you know, here's this man who's lame or this blind man or this, you know, and been lame for all these years and it's the Sabbath.

And you know that's coming. You know, it's the Sabbath. Because over and over Jesus did that. Healed on the Sabbath. And why did he do that? Because he knew how the Jewish people, Jewish leaders would react to that.

And he wanted them to react to it. Because he was always wanting an occasion to reveal their hypocrisy. And their false doctrine. Their false religion.

And he could always count on their full cooperation. You know, they just always stepped into it every single time. You know. It was so predictable.

And so after Jesus healed this woman, verse 14, and here's the predictable. The ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.

And he said to the crowd, doesn't even say it to Jesus. He says to the crowd, there are six days on which men ought to work. That's kind of a quotation, a half quotation of the fourth commandment.

And, you know, it says, therefore, come and be healed on them. Healed on the six days, but not on the Sabbath day. No healing on the Sabbath day.

Why not? That seems to me to be a pretty perfect day for it. I mean, everybody's gathered. And what an encouragement that would be to the people.

And what a show of outward show of compassion, the compassion of God. I mean, why not on the Sabbath? Well, in the first place, there was no law.

No law from God that prohibited healing on the Sabbath. No law at all about that. And why would there be?

Nobody had the power to heal anyway. There was no law governing that. Not from God. And there certainly was no, in a more general sense, there was no law from God that, you know, that outlawed doing good things for people on the Sabbath.

Or doing good works on the Sabbath. No law at all that prohibited that. Whatsoever. were. I mean, the Sabbath, remember the Bible says, Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

But the Pharisees, you see, they had devised this complicated, convoluted, complex battery of laws around the Sabbath.

I mean, they loved the Sabbath. And they just had all these hundreds and hundreds of laws. And minutiae of laws, you know, presumably to help people to obey the Sabbath law.

To keep it holy. But in actuality, these other laws, this myriad of laws, they were all designed to promote self-righteousness. That's what Jesus is revealing here and unmasking before the people.

It's just simply a way for self-righteousness. And so all of these Pharisaical laws dealing with the Sabbath, and they had laws that dealt with other issues, other commandments of God, but primarily it was the Sabbath.

That was the big thing for them. All of these man-made laws and rules regarding the Sabbath were an assault upon the grace of God. assault upon the gospel.

Because they represented a religion of human achievement, which is of the devil. Rather than representing the true religion, which is based solely upon what?

Divine accomplishment. The cross. The grace of God. And so Jesus reveals his power, his authority, by rebuking not only rebuking Satan who had held, had bound this woman, and instantly she was loosed from Satan's grip, but instantly she was also healed.

And so he reveals his power, not only in that way, his power over Satan and the satanic, but also he revealed it in his rebuking of satanic religion, the satanic religion of works, of human achievement.

And so he says to the ruler of the synagogue, verse 15, is one of his favorite words, hypocrite, you hypocrite, what's he doing?

What's he about to do? He's about to draw him out, about to expose him for what he really is. And he masterfully does it.

He masterfully, as he always did, reveals the hypocrisy of this ruler of the synagogue and others there who were with him on this thing.

Look at it. Jesus says, does not, by the way, there's a kind of sense, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox and his donkey from the stall and lead it away to water it?

Don't you do that? And they would have to say, well, yes, we do. We do. We take care of our oxen and our donkeys on the Sabbath.

That's okay, because according to the law, we can do that. And it was true. That is, according to their own laws, they could do that on the Sabbath.

According to their man-made laws, that was permissible. And they're just playing into Jesus' hands.

Because in a sense, Jesus says, exactly my point. You hypocrites. You phonies.

You frauds. That's what he's saying. Because you see, they're man-made religion of works. All those man-made religion of works, those laws of works were designed to make themselves holy in their own eyes.

God's. I mean, they convinced themselves. I mean, they were fully convinced that these do's and don'ts, this set of do's and don'ts that they had devised, that they made, somehow would make them right with God in spite of the sin and wickedness in their own hearts, which they never dealt with.

And so they thought they were okay with God because they had meticulously kept all of these man-made laws of the Sabbath. And so they're okay with God.

And it was all all bogus. and worse, it was of the devil, satanic. And listen, you can turn, you and I, we can turn any and all Christian activity into works of the flesh, essentially into a works religion.

your faithful attendance in church on Sunday, and I'm glad you're here, by the way, just faithfully attending church can be of the devil if your heart is not right with God.

And you think somehow that your presence here on Sunday on a regular basis and your commitment to the church in that way, whether it's attendance or tithing or whatever it is, if you have even a measure of thought in your heart that this is going to keep you in with God.

And that somehow this is going to help and contribute to your holiness and righteousness. Because you are meticulously doing religious things, sacred things, even those things that are good, and even those things that are prescribed by Scripture.

I mean, the Bible does say that we're not to forsake the assembly of ourselves. people. But if you think somehow obedience to that is going to make you holy, or obedience to that is going to keep you right with God, while all the time your heart is not right with Him, then you are living a lie.

And it's of the devil. If your heart is not right with God, nothing you do externally in the name of God is worth anything. In fact, it's worse than worthless.

It's sin. Maybe even worse, it's an abomination to you. Remember one time Jesus, or God said to Abraham, or God said to the Jews, I'm sick and tired of your sacrifices.

I mean, you have a form of God, like it is. Remember the Bible says, form of God, everything about you, all the form in your life, the things you do, your devotions, they are worth, you have a form of it, but your heart, far from me.

It's a satanic lie that many believe. But by the power of God, Jesus says what? He draws that out. He draws the satanic religion out.

And He unmasks it and He reveals it for what it really is. He says, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox and donkey from the stall and lead it to where it can have water?

Well, yes, of course we do. So, Jesus says, ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound.

Think of it! For 18 years, shouldn't she be loosed? That's the very same word, isn't it? Shouldn't she be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?

Sabbath? How could you say no to that? How could anybody say no to that? In fact, and when He said these things, Luke goes on record, that is, when Jesus put it in these terms, when He put it that way, well, what?

All His adversaries, they had nothing they could say. All His adversaries weren't unmasked for the hypocrites as they really were. That's not the way Luke puts it, but He puts it this way.

all His adversaries were put to shame. Put to shame. They were humiliated because they were unmasked and their pretense of spirituality had been exposed.

And they hated Jesus for that. They hated Him for it. That's why they crucified Him. because they were humiliated publicly.

Well, what about the crowd? Verse 17 says, And all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him. You see, the contrast here is stark.

The self-righteous were humiliated. They were humiliated. And they hated Jesus even more than before. And that's why the self-righteous in our world today hate us.

They hate the true gospel. That's why there is such resistance to the gospel of grace. That's why they hate those who live it and those who preach it.

in this world. But the multitude, what about them? They rejoiced. Rejoiced. It's interesting. I think it means that some believed.

Some were there who were already believers, I think. There were also, I think, some who believed. Because what? Their eyes had been opened to the hypocrisy of their satanic religion of the Jews.

Their self-righteous religion that can only be of Satan. The pursuit of grace. The power of God.

Listen, what a picture this is of the sovereign, gracious work of God in salvation. salvation. You put all this together.

He passes over the proud, the self-righteous, and he chooses the humble. This woman, lowest of the low, an enslaved, oppressed sinner, under the bondage of her lostness, under the bondage of Satan, suffering, hopeless, bent over like some kind of animal.

That is, a picture of the distorted image of God, which every sinner is. And God draws her to himself.

It's a beautiful picture. He draws her to himself. And so she shuffles into the presence of God, creeps in, crawls in, comes to hear the word of God.

That's why you go to the synagogue. Comes to hear God, and she met Jesus there. Well, Jesus met her, and he graciously saves her.

What a picture of the glorious work of God in salvation. God offers salvation to the humble, not the self-righteous.

He offers salvation to those who are bent over by the weight of sin. Those who are in bondage to their sin, lostness.

He transforms them. From sinners to worshipers. And such is the case of many of you.

Maybe most of you. Perhaps all of you. I don't know. Gracious work of God in your life to transform you from a sinner to a worshiper.

Praise his name. it also can be the case for others of you. Who even now, you realize, bent over by bondage of sin.

And Jesus is your only answer. Jesus is your only Savior. Trust him. Take care. Thank you.