The New Testament scripture reading for this morning is from Luke chapter 13, verses 10 through 17. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, woman, you are freed from your disability. And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and she glorified God. 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. Then the Lord answered him, 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? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him. Let's pray and ask God's blessing on the reading of his word. Father, we do pray that your spirit would be working through your word to transform our hearts, transform our lives. We pray, Father, that even through the word of God that was read within our hearing, that you would make us more like Christ, help us to receive this word as it is, in truth, the word of God. And we pray, Lord, that as your spirit does his work in us, may we be receptive that we would grow to be more like Christ, from grace to grace, from glory to glory. I pray, Father, that you would help me to accurately represent what the word of God teaches, and in all of this, Father, we give all glory to Christ. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I think sometimes in the looking back on history and looking back at how the church developed from its roots, just a few disciples of Jesus to massive crowds following him, to those crowds falling away Jesus ascending to heaven and in the church having to be established in light of his physical absence. I don't think that we always fully appreciate the earth-shaking conceptual shift that had to take place when these Gentiles receive the Jewish Messiah, the Jewish God. In a context, a historical context, where your religion dictated really who you were as a person, your religion dictated who you would associate with, your religion dictated how you would subsist, how you would care for yourself in many cases. I think sometimes we lose the awe of that massive conceptual shift, that mental shift and transformation that this would have been in the ancient world. that the God of these centrally located people, but kind of insignificant group of people, these Jews, that their God, for some reason, decided that he was going to die for me. And as a class, as a group of Gentiles, that he was going to die for us. I mean, it really reaches beyond the bounds of kind of the classical model of what these local gods would do. And as you are undergoing this fundamental transformation in that first century, something might begin to occur to you. You are being fundamentally transformed in your life, and there's no doubt about that. Your approach to life is changing. Your view of reality is being fundamentally altered. You don't view reality like you used to view it before. That while I have given my life to this Jewish Messiah, something kind of fishy is going on. And something just doesn't sit right. Because the primary opposition to this man as the Jewish Messiah isn't coming from jealous Romans. It's not coming from the Roman masses who are looking for some kind of peace if we can just squash down this messianic sect and get peace among the Jews, then maybe we can bring peace throughout the rest of the Roman Empire. It's not the Romans who are fundamentally opposed to Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. And it's not the uninformed masses of nominal Jews, those who were barely Jews. Yes, ethnically they were Jews, but they didn't really care about their Jewishness. They just were Jews just to get along. They weren't necessarily the primary ones opposed to Jesus being the Messiah. as you as a Gentile in the first century convert to this Jewish concept of Messiah and then to individually the Jewish Messiah being Jesus himself, what you start to unfold in your research and in your life is that the fundamental opposition to Jesus being the Jewish Messiah is coming from the Jewish clergy. It's their best. It's the best informed in all of Jewry. Jewry. That's a real word, by the way. I looked it up. These are the most knowledgeable among all of the Jews They're the scholarly ones. They're the ones in opposition to Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. And you've got to sit back as a first century believer and say, wait a minute, what's going on here? I'm converting to him, but all of those that are supposed to love him and accept him are converting away from him. It is, in fact, the Sanhedrin. It is, in fact, the synagogue rulers. It is, in fact, all of those who are charged with the protection of Israel's notion and concept of the Jewish Messiah that are the exact ones who have, almost to a man, declared he is not him. And with nearly unanimous voice, these Jews affirm that Jesus is not the Messiah. You cannot deny the fact that Jesus has fundamentally changed you and that you have a spiritual bond that has been tendered by the Holy Spirit himself that links you to this Jesus Messiah and Jesus links you to the Father and you've never had this before in your entire life And as you look out and you see just the masses of these Jewish scholars just turning their back on him one after another, and you have to know what is going on. And so you write to your spiritual leader. In this case, you write to a doctor named Luke. Luke is a companion of Paul. Paul is the primary proponent of this Jewish Messiah, Paul a Jew himself. You write to his companion Luke and say, Luke, what is going on here? What do you make of this? You ask him to give you some perspective on why it is that I as a Gentile would believe on him, but the Jewish leaders in mass have rejected him and said, no, absolutely not. He is not the Messiah. And you send off the Luke. Luke writes back. And this is where the book of Luke comes into play, because Luke writes back to someone who seems to have done exactly that, Theophilus. And he says to Theophilus, it seemed good to me, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly, maybe even chronological account for you, most excellent Theophilus. And listen to this, this is chapter one, verse four. That you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught. Now folks, it's important for us as we look through the book of Luke, as we study the book of Luke, to not stray very far from that central truth that acts as an anchor, a mooring in the center of Luke's writing, everything has to come back to this idea. Luke is writing to this Gentile named Theophilus, so Theophilus will understand that the things that he heard and believed are actually true. And really, Luke 1.4 becomes a passage that governs the rest of Luke's treatise. So, when we come to Luke chapter 13, we have to ask the question, what is Luke doing here? He's giving Theophilus certainty concerning the things that Theophilus has already been taught. And by extension, because Theophilus seems to be some kind of Roman dignitary, by extension he's giving Gentiles certainty concerning the things that they have been taught about this Jewish Messiah. Particularly in this passage, it seems the reason that he lays this down, and Luke is the only one who records this specific event, and it seems the reason that Luke brings this specific event to mind is because Luke is emphasizing to Theophilus that this is the kind of opposition that Jesus was facing. Now folks, sometimes you look at an issue and you say, all of the experts believe this, but I know this to be true. Whatever reason you may have for knowing this to be true. And there comes a time, and we've all done it, we've all defied the experts at one time or another in our life and said, you know what? I'm gonna have to go with what I know to be true. And certainly all the experts, there was a expert consensus that Jesus was not the Messiah, and Luke is saying, hold on, this might be the minority opinion, but let me tell you why those Jews came to the conclusion that they came to. Why do they not believe when we believe? It's almost as if Luke here is exposing a conspiracy theory. Jesus says then of the religious leaders that the reason they don't get it is because they're not actually true guardians of the truth. They're not genuine men of faith. And they're not truly principled. Now folks, it's important in our experts that they be principled, right? Proposition A is true, and in all of my expertise, Proposition A is true. Oh, you're gonna give me $10 million? Proposition B is true, and in all of my expertise, Proposition B is true. If you ever get the chance to go on YouTube and watch Rap Replinger, everybody know who Rap Replinger is? Rapp Replinger was a comedian from Hawaii in the 1980s. And he did a skit. He did a bunch of skits. He's hilarious. Just not now, not during church. When you go back home sometime and the doctor says it's OK for a belly laugh, and you also want to understand Hawaii's culture, go look up a video called Raps Hawaii. One of the skits that Rap Repplinger does in that is where he is a old Japanese man with a hat, a primo beer hat, if you remember what that is, and his name is Mr. Okada. And Mr. Okada is walking to the store and they do a soda taste test for him. Anybody recalling that yet now? Okay. My kids are raising their hand because I watch it all the time. skip, this guy is trying to get him to choose soda A over soda X. And he even says it like that. Mr. Okada, do you prefer soda A or soda X? And at first, Mr. Okada, he takes a cracker to cleanse his palate. And he drinks and goes, oh, I like soda X. And he's like, oh, Mr. Okada, let's try that again. Do you prefer soda A or soda X? And ultimately, Mr. Okada's conclusion is, oh, I like the cracker. You got to watch it. My point is that sometimes our expert opinions can be swayed by a number of reasons, right? While everyone else is saying this is true, this has to be true. Somebody gives you money, and all of a sudden, Proposition B starts to look pretty good. What Jesus is saying about these religious leaders who were supposed to be the guardians of truth is that they were not guardians of truth, they were not true men of faith, and they were not men who were truly principled. In fact, Jesus charges them with something that he's charged them with twice before, and this is the last time we'll hear him refer to the religious leaders this way in this book. He says it once in chapter six, verse 42. He says it once in chapter 12, verse 56. And then the third time, he says it here in chapter 13, verse 15. Well, what is he saying about them? He says this, they are not real men of faith. They just play one on stage. They are not real watchers for the Messiah, they just act like real watchers for the Messiah. They're not principled men, they're just play acting like principled men. They go through all the motions that you would see from principled men, but in reality they are not it. One of my favorite actors is a guy named John Lithgow. Have you ever heard of John Lithgow? John Lithgow throughout his career has played several different Christians. He is the worst actor to play a Christian. He himself is not a Christian and has absolutely no connection with what Christianity is all about. And he always plays these caricatures of what he thinks a Christian must be, because he has no idea how to do it. And so it is here that these Pharisees, that these rulers in the synagogues, are just like that. They're people who are looking out going, I'm supposed to be a guy who's watching out for the Messiah. Well, I don't know how to do that, but I can act like I know how to do that. What is the charge that Jesus levels against them this for the third time? He says, hypocrites. Hypocrites. Remember that the word hypocrite means to be a stage actor. He says, Hippocrates, you're stage acting. You're playing a part here. And you don't even know what the reality is. What Jesus proves then in this passage, once again, is that he's the Messiah. When he goes into the synagogue, he does what the Messiah does. And every time we read Jesus going into a synagogue, there are three things that he engages in. And I want us to look at those three things this morning. First of all, he teaches. Jesus always goes into the synagogue and teaches. The second thing he does is he heals. Several of the miracles that are recorded in the Gospels are Jesus literally healing in synagogues. And third, he rebukes the religious leaders. I don't think there is a passage in the Gospels where Jesus goes into the synagogue that does not result in him somehow rebuking the religious leaders of the day. So first of all, we see here in verse 10, it says, now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. This was his pattern. This is what he did. And it's one of the reasons that when Luke records it, he just says one of the synagogues. He doesn't specify because there were so many. He would just go and teach at synagogue after synagogue after synagogue. Now Luke doesn't say what he did there, but we assume that what he did was what he always did. We don't have a record of what he says here, because Luke's the only one who records this actual event, but we do know that he taught, and we have other places in the scripture, even in the book of Luke, that talk about what Jesus did when he taught in the synagogue. Let's turn back there and look at that for a second. Look at chapter four. Turn to Luke chapter four. Luke chapter 4 says, in verse 18, well, let's go all the way back to verse 16. It says, he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogues on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. Now, it was the pattern within the synagogues at that time that most synagogues did not have a professional leader in them. because they were very community-oriented. There were rulers within the synagogue, but nobody was charged with teaching. I think, if I'm not mistaken, having a single rabbi or a professional rabbi within the synagogues doesn't arise until the church first establishes a pattern of having a few central teachers within the churches, and the synagogues kind of follow suit. But at this time, during the time of Christ, they don't have an established teacher in any one synagogue, and anyone who was approved of by the rulers of the synagogue could stand up and read. and expound on the scripture. So Jesus does exactly that. For the reading portion, what they would do is read no more than, I think, seven verses at a time. And then when they were done with that, they would take the scroll that they had opened, they would give it back to the person who was in charge. of handling the scroll the person who would take that scroll then and put it where it belonged in a safe place and then the person who read could start to teach and this is what happens. Verse 17 says, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him he unrolled it the scroll unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He essentially reads three verses, two from Isaiah 61 and the third from Isaiah 58. Verse 20 tells us then that he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. Now at this point, many people are mistaken in understanding what's going on here, because when he sat down, that was the posture of teaching in the synagogues. Everyone would stand, and the teacher would sit down. I haven't yet tried to do that here. but it has crossed my, I take that back. I did sit down when I ruptured my Achilles. I don't know if you remember that. I tried to stand, I had a pirate leg thing, and I tried to stand on that, it wasn't working, so I sat down on a stool. They would sit in a very big, comfortable chair and then expound. So Jesus sits down so that he can teach. Now here's the substance of his teaching. Jesus says in verse 21, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. What was it? The Spirit is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of Jubilee or the year of the Lord's favor. How is this concluded? How is this accomplished and fulfilled? Here's how it's fulfilled. For the first time in the history of the Bible, when somebody reads that passage from Isaiah 61, or somebody reads that passage from Isaiah 58, and he says me, he means me. For the first time in the history of that passage being read over and over again for hundreds of years in synagogues, when Jesus says the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he's not reading in place of some future Messiah. He's literally saying, this is me. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year, the favorable year of the Lord. So what is the message that Jesus brings? What does he preach? What does he teach? He teaches probably here in Luke chapter 13 exactly what he taught back in Luke chapter four, and that is this. I am he. Second thing he does, the messianic thing he does is he heals. He heals. Now notice, this is where the disease, notice that the disease here is well established. It says, and behold, there was a woman who had a disabling spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. Now think, folks, think with the pathos that comes through in this passage of this woman who is bent over for 18 years. We can picture it in our mind, but think about how her life has been altered because of this. She's bent over and can never stand up. She can never have a conversation where she looks somebody in the face. She can never go anywhere where people are not looking at her going, look at that woman. All bent over. Her disease has been established. And I don't think we should understate the level of discomfort that 18 years doubled over would bring to this woman. Her disease then was established. Secondly though, her disease was spiritual. Her disease was spiritual. Notice how this is stated. It said that she had a disabling spirit for 18 years. A disabling spirit for 18 years. And then if you look down, Look down at verse 16, it says, and ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, listen to this, whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loose from this bond on the Sabbath day? Now we've pointed out before, and if you want to go back and listen to an explanation of this, go back and find my message on Luke chapter 4, verse 31 through 37. I have what I think is a plausible explanation of what goes on around the time of Christ, but it seems very clear that there was an elevated sense of spiritual warfare that existed when Jesus, the Messiah, is walking around on earth. It seems that the limited number of demons that exist in the ether all concentrate themselves right there at Palestine at the time of Christ as if they are trying to stop what he is trying to do. And so we have this elevation of spiritual activity around the coming Messiah. Her disease, it says, was spiritual, and third, Her healing, her healing was complete. Look at verse 12. Verse 12 says, when Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, woman, you are freed from your disability. He laid his hands on her and it says, immediately she, listen to this, was made straight. Now the tense of the verb there, the verb that talks about being made straight, is a verb that indicates, and all the commentators point this out, that the action was complete and done. Her healing in that moment was accomplished and finished. And so here, her healing was complete. Her disease was established, her disease was spiritual, her healing was complete, and then fourthly, her healing caused her to glorify God. It caused her to glorify God, and this is a very interesting juxtaposition here because it says at the end that she glorified God, and isn't it ironic that while the disease was spiritual, so was the healing? The healing brought spiritual fervor to her soul, and spiritually then she glorified God. Jesus then did the Messiah things. He taught, he healed. And third, he rebuked the religious leaders. Verse 15 says, then the Lord answered him, you hypocrites. We've already mentioned what hypocrite means. You actors, you're playing a role. Do not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the manger and lead it away to water. Now, when Jesus rebukes them, we have to ask the question, why is he rebuking them for having this opinion? Because if you look back at verse 14, it says the ruler of the synagogue but the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, there are those six days in which work ought to be done, come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath. So the point is that this religious leader, when Jesus heals this woman, isn't relieved, he's not happy, he's indignant. And folks, it's like that even to this day, by the way, in Israel. I heard a man just this past week telling a story about going and visiting Israel, and that his flight got in on a Friday, early on a Friday. There was some kind of accident in the street or something like that, and their bus got delayed, and their bus pulled into the hotel after sundown. Now, if you remember, The Jewish Shabbat or Sabbath begins at sundown, which meant that this driver had taken and transported all of these people on the Sabbath, which meant he was violating their Sabbatarian code. And one of the people in the bus relayed this back to other people that said they were standing there at the desk when the bus driver came into the hotel to check the people in and that an Orthodox Jewish man came running in from the outside, absolutely indignant. and angry and furious and threatened the bus driver and says, if you ever drive a bus in here after sundown on Shabbat, we will turn your bus over and burn it. This kind of zeal for the Sabbath continues to this very day. The fact is that in the tractate, in the Mishnah, that talks about Sabbatarian rules, they literally have 39 different categories of Sabbatarian rules, okay? But it's not just 39 rules, it's 39 categories of rules, and those 39 categories of rules cover 1,500 specific rules that they have to follow relating to Sabbath. By the way, when Jesus established the Sabbath day, how did he establish it? Let me give you 1,500 rules to follow. He didn't do that. He said, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. End of sentence. Now it's fascinating when you start to look at these 1500 rules, they literally have rules about when you are allowed to tie something up and when you are not allowed to tie something up. If you tie something that is intended to be permanent, in other words, if you're weaving and you need to tie off the end of your yarn in whatever it is that you're weaving, that's a permanent knot and that kind of knot may not be tied on Sabbath. Temporary knots, for example, if you are putting a tent in and the tent needs to be tied down, that knot is intended to be taken up, so it's not to be considered actual work. And so you can tie a knot to tie down your tent, but you cannot tie a knot to tie off the yarn. One of the most interesting tying and untying rules that was made Because if you think about it, you have this yarn that comes frayed and comes undone in a tapestry, perhaps, that is supposed to be ornate, and you notice it on Shabbat, and the king is coming into town. This is what they write about. If there's a king coming into town, and you would tie a knot for a king coming into town, then you may also tie the knot when the king is not coming into town. So, if you see a tapestry and there is a yarn that is sticking out from that tapestry and all that needs to happen is that yarn needs to be tied down, if a king was coming through and you would say, you know what, I need to tie that yarn down because we can't have this ugly tapestry as the king walks by, then you're allowed by this Sabbatarian law to tie that knot anyway. One of the things they were allowed to tie and untie were livestock. You were allowed to take your livestock from the threshing floor where they were eating and bring it to a water source and tie it up there. Now, if you think about that, you tie up that animal. Why? You tie it there so that the animal, after it's done drinking, doesn't just go and wander off and become someone else's animal. And you would do that. You would untie your livestock and tie it up again to give a drink. And that's what makes this rebuke stunning. If you would do this for a donkey to get a drink, then why not for a daughter of Abraham to be able to stand after 18 years. Now I want you to notice the parallels in all of this because he gives her the regal title of a daughter of Abraham, but what is he comparing the daughter of Abraham to? He's essentially comparing the daughter of Abraham to an ox or a donkey. And the comparison is supposed to be ridiculous. Of course a daughter of Abraham is more important than a donkey. Of course she is. And notice that the donkey or the ox is untied for a drink of water. That drink of water then is compared to this woman being healed from 18 years of painful and embarrassing disability. You would loose a donkey from a stake, but you wouldn't loose this woman from bondage to Satan. This is why Luke records this, to demonstrate that the unhinged, irrational rejection of Jesus, that the rejection of Jesus is unhinged and irrational. And if the rejection of Jesus was unhinged and irrational back then, Luke is writing to Theophilus and saying, then what would that rejection of the Messiah by the Jews now be as well? I mentioned the story so many times, I hate to repeat it, but it illustrates this point so well, especially in the context of what we're doing, that when I was going through the book of Daniel and listening to some lectures by some rabbinic teachers at Yeshiva University's website, and these teachers came up to the prophecy of Daniel that says that the Messiah is going to come into the temple after 400 something, how many years was it? 449 years was it? Six sevens, whatever, 420 years. Is that right? I think so. So after 420 years, Messiah's going to come before the seventh seven. And it was astonishing to me that they would read that, and when people ask the question, Rabbi, When was this accomplished? And one of the rabbis said, I don't know, sometime in the middle of the Roman occupation. Another rabbi said, and this was a wonderful trick, I want to use it sometime. He said, oh, I'll talk about that later. Which meant that I had to listen to about 12 hours of his lectures to find out that he never addressed it again. This kind of irrational rejection of the Messiah, it's as if Luke is bringing this before Theophilus and saying, look, Theophilus, they might be the experts. They might be considered the experts, but really they're hypocrites. They're actors playing the part of experts. By the way, in verse 12, it says, Jesus saw her. He called her over and said to her, woman, you are freed from your disability. And if you skip down, to verse 19, it says, the Lord answered, you hypocrites, does not each one of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey? The word that is translated earlier as freed, when he says that the woman is freed, comes from the same root as the word that is translated as untie. In fact, the old King James, even the new King James version, both translate it the same way. Woman, you are loosed. And then it comes and says, you are, which one of you on the Sabbath would not loose his donkey? This woman needed to be loosed from her ailment. She needed to be loosed from the bonds of Satan. Verse 16 even says that, loosed from the bonds of Satan. Listen. You can use glowing language to say anything. You can speak with the most indignant tone to say anything. But when you start to peel back what is really being said, the arguments here fall flat. For Luke, it's an examination of the rejection. It's in the examination of this rejection of Jesus that his messiahship and Theophilus' faith is actually confirmed. Folks, if these people, these religious leaders, can look beyond what is really rational, if they can look and be completely unhinged in their response to Jesus, not, listen to this, not because he went out and hurt a child, But because he healed an old woman from this 18 years of debilitating disease, if they can be unhinged about that, then it demonstrates that their rejection of the Messiah isn't because they looked at the evidence from the Old Testament. It demonstrates that there is an incredibly powerful spiritual component that underlies the entire story. She may have been bound by Satan physically, but these hypocrites were bound by Satan spiritually. And folks, you tell me who was in a worse state. The religious leaders who had everything or this hunched over woman who had to live for 18 years so that when she faced Jesus, she could bring glory to him. Who was in a better place? And folks, that's how it always is with Christ. Jesus himself says, you are either for me or you are against me. There is no middle ground. There are no neutral religious leaders who are just examining the evidence. Listen, folks, you're not neutral. You may have come to the conclusion here that following Jesus isn't all that important. that following Jesus and living for Him doesn't mean anything to you. And I want you to understand this. You have to understand this. The reason you feel that way is because you are spiritually bound by Satan. It's not because of your superior intellect. It's not because you've thought it all through. is because Satan has found something in your life with which he can bind you. My charge to you today, woman, man, be loosed. Let's pray. Father in heaven, it grieves our hearts It grieves us to the core when we see people turning their back on you. That with all that we see in your word, with all that we see in the world around us, that makes it so clear that we need you more than we need anything else in this world. And when all of that is so clear, Father, to see someone just simply walk away and call down upon themselves the judgment and wrath of God, it breaks our hearts. But Father, more than that, we understand that as the one who gave up his son That people might be redeemed. It breaks your heart as well. And we grieve for them. And we grieve for you. But we pray, Father. That you would send your spirit to convict them and convince them of their need. May they turn to Christ. With passion. In his name we ask these things. Amen.