Luke 13:10-21 "The Freedom of the Sabbath" (Read 13:1-21) What do you think of when you hear the word "Sabbath"? Do you think of a legalistic enforcement of 'sabbath laws'? Or do you think of an opportunity for rest and refreshment? In our culture where everything runs 24/7, the idea of a "Sabbath"-- a period of rest and refreshment is very much needed. We need a day when we can turn everything off a day when the cares of the week can be put into their proper perspective a day when we see everything else in the light of the kingdom of God. It is true that we ought to live every day in the light of the kingdom of God. But God has given us one day which has been set apart for the specific purpose of helping us reorient ourselves for the rest of the week. 1. A Day for Release (13:10-17) Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. (13:10) It has been a while since we have heard of Jesus teaching in the synagogue. Luke reminds us that it was Jesus' habit to attend synagogue regularly. We need to keep in mind the distinction that the Jews made between the synagogue and the temple. The temple was the one (and only) place of worship because worship required sacrifice, and sacrifices could only be offered at the temple. Nonetheless, since not everyone could travel to the temple regularly, the synagogue was the place where Jews gathered every Sabbath in order to study the Word of God and pray. The synagogue was often referred to as a school, or as a place of prayer but in those days it was never called a place of worship. This is one of the great benefits we have in Christ that we may truly worship together every Lord's Day, because Jesus has provided that once-for-all sacrifice that transforms every assembly of the saints into a house of worship a temple. But the synagogue was also a useful thing for the Jews, because it provided times for regular study and prayer besides the official worship of the temple (You might say that the synagogue provides the model for Sunday school, and other gatherings of the church for study and prayer throughout the week) And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit (literally, a spirit causing weakness) for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. (13:11) 18 years is a long time to be hunched over. The word here is the word used to refer to someone whose back is bent the root word is frequently used in the Septuagint to refer to someone whose back is bent either in worship, or in subjugation to their enemies. Plainly, in this woman's case, her back is bent in subjugation to Israel's enemies. Why do I say Israel's enemies? For two reasons: 1) we have seen before that Jesus does not view Rome as the real enemy of God's people. The real enemy is the devil. And Jesus is casting out demons during his ministry, as a sign that his purpose is to do battle with the devil himself. Israel's enemies will not be fully overthrown until Satan is cast down. 2) and secondly, I say that her back is bent in subjugation to Israel's enemies because she has had this affliction for 18 years. Luke is the only one of the evangelists who records Jesus' age at different stages of his life. He tells us that Jesus was "about 30 years of age" when he began his ministry. (3:23) He also tells us that when Jesus was 12 he went to the temple for the Passover (2:42). He was 12 when he sat in the temple with the teachers, amazing them with his understanding and his answers. He was 12 when he told his mother and his father, Did you not know that I must be about my Father's things? So when Luke tells us that this woman had been afflicted for 18 years, Luke knows full well what this means. She had been afflicted since the time that Jesus had first declared his mission to his parents. In the providence of God her affliction her back being bent, in subjugation to the devil began when Jesus was revealed in the temple, and now would end as Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem as he has set his face toward the cross. For eighteen years this woman wondered why God had allowed this to happen to her. For eighteen years she doubtless prayed that God would relieve her from this bondage. For eighteen years she came to the synagogue faithfully, bowed down in bondage to the devil, but still in her heart bowing down before the LORD her God. For eighteen years. How long have you suffered? For some of you it is more than eighteen years. For others it is less it depends on the particular trial that God has sent you. You may be getting impatient. You may think that God's timing really stinks! God calls you to persevere in faith, in hope, and in love, awaiting your eschatological deliverance! And for this woman, it comes on the Sabbath. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, 'Woman, you are freed from your disability.' (Literally, from your weakness) And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. (13:12-13) She had come to the synagogue to pray and to hear God's word she had come to hear God's promise that someday everything would be made right. And now she hears that someday is today! That is the point of the Sabbath. Someday is today. Not fully this is the anticipation of the final judgment, not the full-blown final judgment. But Jesus is saying that everything that the Sabbath points to is coming true in himself. What was the Sabbath all about? And what is the Sabbath for us? You see clearly in our passage both the misunderstanding (in the synagogue ruler) and the true understanding (in Jesus). The Misunderstanding: But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, 'There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.' (13:14) The synagogue ruler has lost sight of the meaning of the Sabbath. Isaiah had spoken of the true meaning of the Sabbath in Isaiah 58. Some people focus on Isaiah 58:13-14, but ignore the context. Isaiah says that the Sabbath is a day for doing God's work. And in the first part of Isaiah 58 we hear what God's work is: to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover him... (Isaiah 58:7) If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noonday. (58:10) It is in that context that Isaiah says, If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your business on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own business, or speaking your own words; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. (58:13-14) The Sabbath is a day for doing God's business a day to focus on speaking God's words and walking in his ways. The synagogue ruler thinks that this means that the whole day is to be taken up in rest and sacred assembly. He sees Jesus' healing as a violation of the Sabbath, because he thinks of Jesus as an ordinary healer. And even Jesus would agree that an ordinary healer should not have office hours on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not a day for your "ordinary" work. But what Jesus is doing is not just ordinary healing: he is bringing that rest that the Sabbath points us to. You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? (13:15) Jesus remind them there are necessary actions that are not only permitted, but indeed required on the Sabbath. It would be cruel to leave your animal without water! Nobody would quarrel with Jesus about this! But then comes Jesus' more controversial point: And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? (13:16) The synagogue ruler has said, in effect, come back tomorrow! She has suffered for 18 years, why does one day matter? Jesus' answer makes it clear that it is necessary for this woman to be healed on this day. Jesus says that if you think of the Sabbath as a day simply for rest and worship, then you have not understood the Sabbath! Jesus says that the Sabbath is a day for release from bondage! It is not that this healing is merely tolerated on the Sabbath that this act of mercy is an "exception" to the rule. No, Jesus says that it is necessary that she be loosed from bondage on the Sabbath. Jesus does not view acts of mercy as exceptions to the law of the Sabbath; he views acts of mercy as requirements of the law of the Sabbath because the Sabbath is the day that celebrates redemption from Egypt. Deuteronomy 5, when it recounts the fourth commandment, says that you should keep the Sabbath holy because 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. (Dt 5:15) The Westminster Confession happens to have understood this point. This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe a holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up, the whole time, in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy. (21:8) in other words, "in giving rest to others." Sometimes people ask me, "when do pastors get their Sabbath?" And I respond, on Sunday, just like everyone else. My calling is to be God's agent in proclaiming the same release from bondage that Jesus proclaimed to this woman. And you do this for one another as well as you greet one another, as you teach Sunday school, as you serve one another, as you offer hospitality to one another and to strangers. But how do you think about the Lord's Day? What do you after church? Is it a day for doing your things? Or a day for doing the Lord's things? Jesus' response to the synagogue ruler is not to reject the validity of the Sabbath, but to challenge the synagogue ruler's misunderstanding of the Sabbath: the Sabbath is a day to set people free from bondage. Is that how you view the Lord's Day? This is the day that Jesus' was raised from the dead in order to set you free from the power of sin, death and the devil. Therefore, you are called to proclaim and enact that freedom in how you spend this day! What do I mean by "proclaim and enact"? Proclaim is easy you are speak of what God has done in Jesus Christ. Start with your family: talk about what they learned in the sermon and Sunday school. Talk about how you as a family can put these things into practice. But Sunday is not just a family day or rather, Sunday reminds us that the church is our family! So to practice the freedom of the children of God, spend time with each other on Sunday afternoons. Encourage each other, remind each other of what God has done in Christ. But we're pretty good at talking! And if all we do is talk, then we are hypocrites like the synagogue ruler. Sundays are not only for talking about the Lord's things. Sundays are for doing the Lord's things. Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? The Sabbath is a day of redemption a day of healing a day of showing mercy to those who are in bondage. It would be a good day for helping the homeless, for visiting prisoners, for visiting the elderly, in other words, for diaconal projects! You are all busy people. You have jobs that keep you hopping for five days and you need the sixth day for taking care of things around the house. But Sunday is the Lord's Day. It is a day for doing the Lord's things. Now, someone might say, but Pastor, aren't we supposed to be doing the Lord's things all the time? Of course! If you are living six days for your own selfish pleasure, and then you try to use the Sabbath for God, he will not be pleased. But the Sabbath is designed to help us orient all our time around the things of God. But part of God's calling for you is to devote six days to your things. The seventh day reminds you that all the work of the six days is supposed to be oriented around the Lord's work. 2. A Day for the Kingdom (13:18-21) You see this in Jesus' parables about the kingdom in verses 18-21. He said therefore, 'What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? Jesus has just said that the Sabbath is the proper indeed, the necessary time for him to set this woman free from bondage to the devil. He says this because the Sabbath is about the kingdom of God. Deuteronomy 5 said that the Sabbath was about redemption from Egypt. In other words, the sabbath-commandment is about release from bondage; it was about the kingdom of God back in Moses' day. Isaiah 58, and its comments about setting people free from bondage, is located in the middle of Isaiah's discussion of how God will bring Israel back from exile. Sabbath-keeping is all about the kingdom of God. The coming of the Kingdom of God is what Isaiah had promised the day when the Son of David would be restored to the throne the day when Israel would be vindicated, and the enemies of God's people destroyed. So when Jesus says that the Sabbath is the proper time for the release from bondage to the devil, he is saying that the coming of the kingdom of God is the point of the Sabbath. The point of the Sabbath is the coming of the kingdom of God. So what is the kingdom of God like? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches. I have just released this woman from bondage to Satan. This is just the seed. And this seed is going to grow. You may not see it yet. (After all, Jesus' activity is not what Israel expected they expected someone to overthrow the Romans) Children, does an acorn look like an oak tree? No. Does a woman's back being healed look like the deliverance of Israel? No. This does not look like the coming of the Kingdom! The Romans are still in charge. There is no Son of David on the throne. This is not what we were looking for! But Jesus says that this is the seed. And from this tiny seed will grow the tree that you have all been waiting for! And again he said, 'To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.' (13:20-21) Again, when you are looking at the dough, can you tell where the leaven is? Not at first! But give it time! The leaven will work its way through the whole dough and the whole lump will rise. Even so is the kingdom of God. And indeed, even so is the Sabbath. Because the Sabbath is a sign of the kingdom. When the Lord's Day is treated as a day of release from bondage, then the whole week is leavened with that joy! When the Lord's Day is devoted to the Lord's words, works, and thoughts, then the whole week grows and blossoms with fruitfulness in his service. Too often "sabbatarianism" has followed the attitude of the synagogue ruler. The Lord's Day becomes a day of rules and regulations. That is plainly not what Jesus is talking about. You may be thinking, "But that sounds like a lot of work!" Brothers and sisters, after fifteen years of trying to put this model into practice, I can assure you that there is nothing more refreshing than this. There have been times when I've fallen into old patterns being selfish and watching football. And I've noticed that when I'm in such a pattern, I do not find refreshment on the Lord's Day. So, even when I'm tempted to think about all that I have to do this week, I simply remind myself "that is not for today!" Today is the Lord's day. My only task today is to worship God and give rest to others. That is why I called this sermon "the Freedom of the Sabbath." Because when you view the Sabbath in this light, it is not a restrictive day. It is a liberating day. It is a day of great joy and gladness a day of rest and refreshment, because in giving rest and refreshment to others, we find our true rest in Christ, the one who has given rest to us.