In Luke chapter 13, I want you to kind of follow along, starting in verse 10, and let's just read the story. And may God kind of help us to focus a little bit tonight and zero in on this particular passage. Luke chapter 13, verse 10. The Bible says, and he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. Behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity 18 years. And she was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day. And he said to the people, There are six days in which men ought to work, End them, therefore come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.' The Lord then answered him and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound low these eighteen years, be loose from this bond on the Sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed, and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. We come to a miracle that Jesus Christ performed, and it's surrounded by conflict. And it's kind of ironic that Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, who came to bring a kingdom of peace to this world, who came to bring peace to the souls of mankind, who came to bring eternal peace in heaven would be involved in conflict. But the truth of the matter is, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, created more conflict than anyone who's ever lived. Tremendous conflict. In fact, at his birth, there was such conflict that was so severe that it resulted in the massacre of baby boys. His disciples were hated. They were persecuted. They were martyred. The early church was tortured and executed. All throughout history, true Christians have been in conflict with about every power in the world. Even today, from what I understand, there are more Christians being martyred than there's ever been in the history of the world. And in our society, it's a refined society, right? We don't see people martyred for the cause of Jesus Christ in Coconut Creek much. But we see, in our own society, an increasing hostility toward Jesus Christ and toward the gospel. Very little tolerance for the gospel. So Jesus creates conflict. In fact, in the Bible, he said in Matthew chapter 10, verse 34, he said, think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a what? Sword. I came to bring some conflict. And that's what you see in this incident. Because whenever the truth comes, conflict results. error you find all over the place error in a church in fact if you want to find some of the greatest error in the world just visit some churches you'll find error all over the place and where you find error what you're going to find is the power of satan and when you find the power of satan you're going to find false religion and hypocrisy and when jesus comes into an atmosphere of error and demonic power and the gospel comes with him conflict begins right and let me say this to you this might surprise you But it takes conflict to get a lost loved one saved. It takes major conflict. It takes major confrontation. And I don't know about you, but I don't love confrontation. People say they love it until they get into one and your heart's racing. I've been in a lot of them. I've had a lot of conflict. I used to say to pastor, it appears as though you enjoy it. How do you enjoy it? And it stresses me out. He said, you'll, you'll come to it someday. I guess after enough of it, you don't worry about it as much, but I've had a lot of it. I remember one time I was facing this conflict with a businessman. I was working for the church and this man was trying to kind of leverage us into this business deal. And I had to call this man. I had to tell him we weren't going to get involved in it. I knew he was going to scream and yell and say a few things that were not so nice. And my dad said, you want me to make the call for you? I said, that would be great. And he made the call, he told the guy and the guy screamed and said everything I thought he was saying. My dad hung up and he said, you know, I was glad to do that for you, but you just missed a marvelous opportunity to mature. And I said, you know, if you're going to say that to me, you just told me ahead of time and I'd have made the call myself. So here's Jesus, and he definitely and deliberately confronts false religion at its very core. The Bible says in verse 10 here, he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. You see, the Jews believed that they could please God by being good. They could do certain works, they could maintain a certain level of morality. and they could find themselves in a right position before God. And the whole ministry of Jesus Christ was basically to confront that fallacy, to destroy that illusion they had that they were okay. And so Jesus came and said, you think you're rich, but you're actually poor. You think that you can see, but you're actually blind. You think you're spiritually free, but you're actually in bondage. And they despised him for his confrontation. They did not enjoy his confrontation. In fact, in his hometown, in the synagogue there in Nazareth, he preached his very first message there. One message. And they carried him outside the city and tried to throw him off the side of a cliff. So he understood conflict. And that was his extended family. We're not talking about people he didn't know. He grew up there. But Jesus was right. He understood. They could not obey God's law. They couldn't even obey the very first and the greatest commandment that said, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy soul, thy mind. Right? Someone might say, I do that. No, you don't. No one ever has. Or how about the second one? Love thy neighbor as thyself. I don't even love my neighbor as myself. I know him. I'm not sure I like him. I know I'm guilty of breaking that. He knew. You see, only the supernatural man that's been born again can keep God's law. Let me even go a step further. Only Jesus Christ can keep God's law. Him living in and through the Christian. And so they developed this system, the system in which they could kind of keep some selected commandments. They could kind of Convince themselves and and convince others that by keeping a certain portion of these commandments that they could they were actually right with the Lord they could actually Satisfy God and so they were looking for certain commandments that they could really latch on to and they found in the Sabbath day a commandment man They could really latch on to that one. And so they took this Sabbath day and they embellished the simplicity of it They added to it They made all sorts of rules and regulations that surrounded this day called the Sabbath day. And Jesus said, listen, I gave you the Sabbath day so you could enjoy it, so you could rest. And they turned it around and literally ruined the greatest day of the week that God created. It was filled with endless rules and regulations, and it became a defining point in their religious system. I mean, it was the center of their religiosity. And so Jesus knew if he's going to bring them to an understanding that that they needed God, they were going to bring them to a true spiritual understanding. He had to confront the hypocrisy on that Sabbath day. I mean, they live for that thing. And I want to tell you this, if somebody is going to embrace the truth, the first thing that has to happen is that they have to be confronted with a lie that they're holding on to. Listen to this. The Bible says in Ephesians 4, Talking about the unsaved world, having their understanding darkened. Right? Being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them. Because of the blindness of their heart. And see, what God's got to do, is God's got to come in, and He uses His servants to do this, and He uses His Holy Spirit, and He uses His Word, and He confronts, see? And when people that are blind are confronted, they get mad. But what happens when they get mad, they get angry, they get stirred up, and they begin to think, and then the Holy Spirit begins to work, and all of a sudden they begin to break down. That confrontation's necessary. It works. And so Jesus Christ is confronting. And he happens to be in the synagogue. You say, what's the synagogue? Well, the synagogue's not the temple. The temple was where their national ceremonies took place. It's where they perform sacrifices. That's not the synagogue. In fact, the synagogue, the Greek word means a meeting place or a gathering place. There was a lot of them. Most historians believe that in Galilee alone, which was smaller than Judea, which is in the southern part of Israel, and Galilee, which is in the north, there was somewhere between 240 and 250 synagogues. A lot of synagogues. It was a perfect place where somebody could actually go and teach. And they didn't celebrate the Passover or any of the other feasts in the synagogue. It was just a gathering place. And the synagogue didn't have a pastor. There was no preacher or reigning priest in the synagogue. In fact, there was a board of elders that kind of ran the synagogue. And then there was a head of that board that actually, or a chairman, if you will, that was in charge of the place. He was responsible to oversee it, and yet he was a layman. He was just a man in the community. And so it was a local gathering place to teach the Word of God. And the Word of God back then was considered the Old Testament. And so they would gather there, and they would learn from the Old Testament scriptures. And where do the synagogues come from? Well, they started during the Babylonian exile. And you remember, if you will, that Babylon destroyed or took over Jerusalem and took them captive there and took them back to Babylon. Many of them did. And Ezekiel was one of the prophets during that time. And so Ezekiel would gather together these Jews and he began to speak to them as to what was going on in their history so they could understand and interpret God's word based on what was happening in their lives. And so he began to gather them, and this idea of this gathering place, this meeting place where Ezekiel would speak to them started to kind of grow and build, and they began to establish meeting places all over. And so when Nehemiah's time came and they were able to go back to their homeland, they took the idea of the synagogue back home with them, and that thing just exploded with popularity. They say that there was over 500 synagogues in Jerusalem alone during this time. A lot of synagogues. And so here they are. They're gathered somewhere in a synagogue. They don't tell us exactly where. The city's unknown. But we know it's on the Sabbath day. We don't know exactly what Sabbath it is. And he's teaching in the synagogue. Now he's becoming, they're becoming less and less receptive to him. They love his miracles. They're blown away by his miracles. But they don't like what he says. They're really bothered by what he says. And so here's this leader of the synagogue, and he's got the authority to determine who it is that's going to teach and who's going to speak. And for some reason, he chooses that Jesus Christ is going to speak, right? It'd be like if an old president walked in the door on a Wednesday night, I'd say, hey, greet us and say something. You're here, you might as well, right? And here Jesus is popular because he's performed miracles. And he walks in this little synagogue. They never had anyone this popular walk in before. Might as well have him speak. So this man enjoys Jesus here asking him to speak, but after he heard what he said and saw what he did, he didn't enjoy it anymore. Because he's saying, this can't be a godly man. No godly man would violate our Sabbath. No godly man would violate our law or violate our religion. Boy, he got angry. I remember while I was in college, really funny, and we had this Bible conference every year at Crown College, and there was this preacher that would come. Every single year at the Bible conference, real big, tall, like six foot six, weighed like maybe 320 pounds, big, strong man, real big, gigantic, big arms and everything, real tall, had a real raspy Southern accent. And he would preach, he was very funny, had a great sense of humor. He preached for an hour and 20 minutes and everyone would just sit there and listen to him spellbound because he was so interesting with his stories and everything. But he was a little crazy. You couldn't really control him. You'd ask him to preach to people like him, but you never knew what he was going to say. And so one day, Pastor Sexton was trying to control him a little bit and said, I want you to be careful what you say here. And, and, uh, and so the man got a little irritated that he tried to control him. He got up there and he started letting it rip, you know, and you could tell he was getting ready to bash the whole place and bash pastor and pastor. They're going to watch it now. Watch it, man. Watch it. Watch it. He just let it go. And that was the last time he ever came back. And I was sitting there with a big smile on my face like, boy, this is confrontational. I like it when it's not me, you know. And so, here Jesus is visiting, and boy, this guy's excited, but he's not going to be excited too awful long, because the Lord Jesus is going to bring some confrontation. This is the last recorded opportunity Jesus has to speak in the synagogue. He's headed to the cross. He's not worried about it. He's going to bring confrontation, because the time is at hand. It's time for him to die. Now, I want you to see, he confronts, first of all, he confronts error. Look at verse 10, and he was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. You see that? You say, where's the confrontation there? Notice the word teaching. See, the conflict came with his teaching. What did he teach? Well, the Bible says in Luke 4, 43, that Jesus said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I sin. He's preaching in Capernaum and he said, I'm going to take this message and I'm going to preach it all over through these cities. What was the message? It was the message of the kingdom of God. What was the message of the kingdom of God? What's his what's his kingdom? It's his kingdom is the realm over which God reigns. What's the realm over which God reigns? He reigns over the souls of men that belong to him. He reigns over the human beings that have given their heart to them. He's king over his own children. The Bible actually says about Christ who delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the what? Kingdom of his dear son. We're children of God. And yet the Bible says in John 8, 44, as he was talking to the Pharisees, he said, you're of your father, the devil. You ever told anyone that there are children of the devil before? It wouldn't go over too well, I promise you. Nobody would like to consider themselves a child of the devil, but that's what most people are. There's children of God and children of the devil. You're one of the other. There is no in-between. We're all children of God. No, we're not. Not at all. And so here, he's preaching the kingdom of God. Now, I want you to look at chapter 12 of Luke, just a minute. Look at this. You'll see what his message is, and I'll just kind of skim through it with you for a minute. What's his message? Well, he tells them in chapter 12 and verse 1, they're to turn from false religion. He says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. And then you come down to verse 4 and 5, and he says, you need to fear the true God. Don't fear man. Look what it says, I'll forewarn you whom you shall fear. Right? Don't fear him who could take and kill your body. Fear him that could take your soul and cast it into hell, right? Fear God. Then you come down to verse 8 and 9 and he says, you need to confess me as Lord. And by the way, it's necessary to be saved to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. And then he says, you need to yield yourself to the Holy Spirit. If you look at verse number 10, he said, whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it'll be forgiven him. But unto the blasphemy or him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it will not be offended. And he goes on to talk about the Holy Spirit. He's saying, yield yourselves to the Holy Spirit. Verse 15, he says, stop being materialistic. Take heed and beware of covetousness. You see that? This message is just building, right? You come to verse 29 and verse 31, and he says, stop pursuing the world and pursue my kingdom. He said, seek ye first the kingdom of what? And his righteousness, and it shall be added unto you, right? And then he gets down to verse 1 through 5 of chapter 13. He says, you better do it fast, because you don't know when I'm going to return, and you don't know how long you're going to live. So he's preaching the kingdom of God, right? He's going everywhere. 31 times in the book of Luke, we have the kingdom of God mentioned. Even after his resurrection, the Bible says he spoke to them concerning the things of the kingdom of God. And so he's preaching the kingdom of God. It's always the kingdom of God, right? They had to first believe that they were in the devil's kingdom, then they could believe that the kingdom of God was available to them. And man, this set up major conflict. He's telling them, here's the kingdom of God I'm presenting to you, and this is how you could be a part of it. And what you're part of is demonic power and satanic power. And you're part of the devil's children. Boy, that offended, didn't it? He confronts their error. He brings conflict. He brings the truth. And the truth came in, and it brought tremendous confrontation. See? Because the synagogue was a place of error. And in came the truth. And I'll tell you this, you start teaching and moving the truth around and proclaiming the truth, and you're going to find great conflict. People don't like the truth. I was speaking to a man in our church a little while ago who brought a visitor on Easter Sunday. I preached that message on Easter Sunday on Believe Thou This, and his visitor got up and got out as fast as they could go. Why? Because of the conflict of the truth. But praise God, the truth doesn't ever return void, right? Give it out, it brings conflict. It might be a little bit uncomfortable, but I'll tell you something, it works. So he confronts them. Now this confrontation intensifies in verse 11. And I want you to see, not only confronts error, but he confronts Satan. I want you to see this. Look what it says. And behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years and was bowed together and could in no wise lift herself up. Jesus is the master of the moment He's the master of it. He knows exactly how to bring power and authority to the moment And he's going to use this woman to intensify and magnify the truth. She's an outcast from a Jewish Theological viewpoint sickness was the result of sin and this woman must be guilty of gross sin 18 years of She's been looked at and she's been scorned and she's in a terrible position physically. A terrible position socially. She's in an actual terrible position spiritually. And if that's not enough, she's a woman. And where do women belong? In the back of the synagogue in obscurity. Out of the way. And here Jesus all of a sudden makes her the centerpiece of the entire moment. The centerpiece of the entire day. He's confronting, right? He's completely indifferent to their system of rank and status. He's completely indifferent to their perception of privilege or their sense of achievement. He didn't care about their honor system. He honors this outcast woman and he humiliates this ruler. He doesn't care about the perverted Sabbath day that they loved. He superseded his authority to their authority. He elevates this one woman they want to get rid of and he comes into a direct confrontation with Satan. See there's demon powers involved here. And demon powers love to sit off in the distance in obscurity and hide themselves. They don't like to bring themselves out. They like to control and they like to hide and like to keep themselves under the surface. But demons love to go to church. Man, they love church. You'll find more demonic forces in churches across our nation than anywhere else in the world. They love it. Especially in the time of Jesus. And they like to say they're hidden. Now here's this woman, she's sick. The word actually means illness or weakness or disease. And it doesn't tell us specifically what she had, but I'll tell you this, she's bent over and she can't get up. She can't straighten up. And the Bible tells us it's caused by a demon. In fact, the Bible said Satan had bound her for 18 years. Why did Satan choose her? We don't know. The Bible doesn't say. How did he select her and how did he get the chance to enter into her? We have no idea. But look at verse 12. The Bible says, when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and he said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. Didn't cast the demon out. Without even confronting the demon, he dispelled that demon and totally cured her illness. Didn't even have to confront the demon. He picks her out of the crowd and he initiates it. He doesn't say anything about her faith. He doesn't say anything about whether she believed in him or didn't believe in him. He just said, Come here, and he addressed her and he healed her. We don't know if she was saved as a result of it or not. She just comes in, she just shuffles herself into the synagogue and here the Lord Jesus meets her need. Sometimes he heals those that believe him and sometimes he healed those that didn't believe him. Sometimes he healed those that asked for it and sometimes they didn't ask for it. Sometimes he healed those that were in front of him and sometimes he healed those that were at a distance from him. But he had power over physical illness and he had power over demonic forces. And he said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed. That's in the perfect tense, which means it's a permanent thing. She was loosed forever. Look at verse 13. And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and she glorified God. He put his hands on her. He often did that. He touched blind eyes, touched deaf ears. Touch mouths that couldn't speak. Touch limbs that were crippled. Just touch them. Why? He's compassionate. And he touches her, and she's made straight. Immediately. This is more than just a casting out of a demon. See? You would think that even if the demon leaves, that after she's been over like this for 18 years, that it would take some form of therapy to get her right again. But when Jesus heals someone, they don't need any therapy. She just straightened right up. Muscles straightened right up. Spine straightened right up. Demon gone. Thing was perfect. Totally healed her. I want you to think about what happened here. Here this woman shows up. She's in the back. Totally obscure. Out of sight. And Jesus sees her. He always seems to see perfectly, doesn't he? He sees her. He brings her up front. I'm sure she's embarrassed. Ears red. Neck red. Burning. embarrassed and afraid and a little bit wondering what's going to happen and she's been in bondage for 18 years and all of a sudden he speaks and he touches her and she stands straight up and the whole thing's immediately healed and she begins to glorify God. What an amazing scene here. Who was she? We don't know. And how did she know who he was? She really didn't. But she knew he was from God. Did she know he was God? I'm not sure she did, but she knew one thing. God acted through him. And she began to glorify God. She thanked God as anyone should and would. And so he confronts error, and he confronts Satan. Now he confronts this hypocrite. Look at it. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. And he said unto the people, there are six days in which men ought to work, and in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. Now, see, Satan reacts, and so does this leader. Satan actually reacts through the leader. This man has the responsibility of overseeing this whole operation. He's a typical legalist. He's absolutely brutal, no compassion for people at all. And let me say to you that most false religion, if not all false religion, can be absolutely brutal. That's what happened with the Roman Catholic Church and Martin Luther. How could Martin Luther pull off a reformation like he pulled off that God used him to accomplish? How could he do it? because the people were so fed up with all the abuse. And the thing that drew the final straw is when they began to literally sell poor people privileges from purgatory. They'd spend less time there. They would literally sell them this time off purgatory for their friends and their relatives and themselves and just literally steal from these poor poverty stricken people and they got so sick of it they finally said enough's enough and Martin Luther came up and led one of the greatest reformation in the history of the world such an abusive thing false religion even the Pharisees had done the same thing it says they laid on heavy burdens grievous to be born, and they laid them on men's shoulders, and they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." In other words, they just laid those heavy burdens on. Aren't you glad Jesus doesn't do that? Don't you know people are blind and are confused about what Jesus Christ wants to do? He doesn't want to lay a burden. He wants to take the burden off. Jesus Christ and His salvation doesn't lay responsibility on, it takes it off. Serving Him is not a burden, it's a joy. And when you find a burden, it's not his yoke on you, it's somebody else's or your own, but it's not his. His yoke is what? Easy. His burden is what? That's not false religion. That's not Satan. That's not humanity. That's Christ. And here's a woman that needs compassion and mercy and love and kindness. You would have thought the synagogue official would have came right with her and began to glorify God, but the Bible says he was indignant. What does that mean? He was filled with intense displeasure. Excuse me. That's a man that has no heart. That's a man whose heart has never been changed by God, because that's not a godly reaction. God is a God filled with compassion. Do you ever wonder why the miracles God performed were always miracles of healing? He could have performed any miracle he wanted to to prove his deity. He could have taken all the water out of the sea or stopped the sun from shining or made the moon disappear. Why did he choose healing? He's compassionate. He wanted to meet mankind at their point of need. So that's what he's doing here. He's meeting them at their point of need. And this man gets mad. And why is he so mad? Because this miracle takes place on the Sabbath day. And the Sabbath was the totality of their religion. And so, here this man wants to confront the Lord, but he won't speak directly to Him. Notice what it said. He said unto the people. He doesn't speak to the Lord. He stands up in front of the whole people. He says, hang on here. This is what he says. There are six days in the week that aren't the Sabbath. If you want to be healed, come on one of the other six days. That's like me saying, if you want to get saved, come any other day but Monday, because that's my day off. If you're sick and you're ready to head into eternity, call Plantation Baptist Church. Call Grace Baptist Church of Pompano. Any other day but that day. That's not a good day for you to get born again and go to heaven. That's a bad day. Isn't that funny? If you want to get healed from your 18 years of misery, choose any other six days but this. It's so foolish, so ridiculous. And the truth of the matter is what God did was not even a breach of the law. God's law provided for acts of mercy on the Sabbath day. And if you want to know the truth about it, even the Mishnah provided for acts of mercy on the Sabbath day. It was total hypocrisy. The man's problem was jealousy, pride. He's trying to make a rule that they couldn't heal on the Sabbath day, which was a ridiculous rule because the only one in Israel that could heal was Jesus Christ. No sense in making the rule. Notice what he says in verse 15. The Lord answered him and said, Thou hypocrite, dost not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to watering? In other words, you take your animal and you carry your animal without any load on his back over here and he drinks and you carry him over here and make sure he stays alive and eats and that's okay. But here's a woman. Look at verse 16. Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, This woman who's one of your own. She's one of your own people. She's had this problem 18 years. She can't even stand up. And yet she's not more important than one of your beasts. See, she's not more important than a cow, a donkey. She's suffering, you don't care. Hypocrite. Oh, man. Where was the work, by the way? Was it when he spoke to her and said, be loose? Was that work? I don't think so. Was it work when he put his hands on her? Didn't seem like it. Was it work when she kind of straightened up? Where was the work? There wasn't any work. Couldn't say a word, right? Look at verse 17. And when he had said these things, all of his adversaries were ashamed, right? The people knew what could be done on the Sabbath day. They knew he didn't break it. They knew it very well. They knew they watered and fell. They fed those animals. They were trying to find any act of work in this thing, and they couldn't find it. And the Bible says they're totally unmasked. They look like fools. They were put to shame. And the verb compound here is they were fully shamed, totally embarrassed. But there's another response. Look what it says in verse 17 again. And all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. See? They were embarrassed. Did they repent? No. Here's another group that rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Did they repent? Not most. It was superficial. Some did. Even some of the Pharisees, you'll find in verse 31, had turned toward Christ. Most did not. And so here you find his enemies indignant with him and this big crowd that's fascinated. And in the midst of this whole thing, here's this precious woman that Satan has bound and God miraculously delivers her from his power. Boy, that gives you hope. Because that's the problem with the people we're praying for. Satan has them bound. How long? A long time. There's a stronghold there. A long time. But that's no match for him. All he has to do is speak. All he has to do is put his touch on them. But confrontation is necessary. He must be willing to go through the conflict. Most people would rather love and go to hell than go through conflict. That's terrible, isn't it? But boy, we're selfish people. But I want you to see the last thing here and we're done. I'm finished. Almost right on time, about a minute late. Notice the wonderful picture of salvation here. Here's this woman is an absolutely symbol, an absolute picture of God's saving grace. What a marvelous picture she is. He passes right by the religious. He passes by this Self-righteous he passes by these religious leaders and he goes to the lowest of the low and He goes to this woman and she's enslaved and she's oppressed and she's got a burden and she's totally bound by the devil and She's one hiding in the shadows, totally aware of her weakness, totally aware of her sickness. She's totally weighed down, and that's like sinful man. They're weighed down. They're burdened with a load of sin. They're robbed of dignity. They're literally bent over like animals, and they're totally defaced and defamed from the image God intended for them to have when He created them. Totally lost. And just like this lady, an old sinner will shuffle into the presence of God and hear the Word of God, And God will reach out in his love and all of his sovereignty and he'll deliver them and straighten them up and make them a true, genuine, genuine worshiper of Jesus Christ. That's what he does. He saves the lowly. He saves the sin sick. Amen. God offers salvation to the outcasts and to the humble and those bent over with the weight of their sin. What a picture of his grace. Oh, isn't God good? God's a savior, isn't he? I'll tell you this, I know many of you trusting God for loved ones. Don't despair. He is able. He is able. Can he save somebody against their will? No, he refuses to do that. I'll tell you what, he'll change their will. He'll bring conviction. He'll work. You say, well, I think God will do everything but that. That's the only thing he cares to do. That's the real need. We read down these lists of all these sick people. You know what the real need is? Spiritual. The real need is always spiritual. Do I want to pray for someone who's got cancer? Sure I do. Do I want to see God heal? Yes. First and foremost though, where are they at spiritually? Let God really meet their need. Amen? He's capable. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this night, God.