Please turn in your Bibles again this morning to the Gospel of Luke. I'm going to read two separate passages this morning that are close together here, and they're also very close in theme, very similar passages. So from chapter 13, this first occasion of Jesus healing on the Sabbath, followed by the beginning of chapter 14 as well. So, Luke 13, beginning in verse 10, please give careful and full attention to the reading of God's Holy Word now. And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who for 18 years had had a sickness caused by a spirit and she went, she was bent double and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, woman, you are freed from your sickness. He laid his hands on her and immediately she was made erect again, began glorifying God. But the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the crowd in response, There are six days in which work should be done, so come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered him and said, You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him? And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day? As he said this, all his opponents were being humiliated and the entire crowd was rejoicing over all the glorious things being done by him. And then down to chapter 14, verse 1, it happened when he went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread. They were watching him closely. And there in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they kept silent and he took hold of him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, which of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day? And they could make no reply to this. I want you to imagine this morning that you are at an ancient time of worship in a synagogue, an ancient synagogue, and you're sitting in your usual seat behind an elderly lady. We'll call her Miss Lois. You can remember when Miss Lois was healthy. And it's getting harder to remember, though, because it's been almost two decades. She's been bent over nearly to the ground and has been in great pain for all these years. But today, a visiting teacher has come and after preaching the Word of God like no one has heard before, he calls Ms. Lois forward and puts his hands on her and heals her. And she's able to stand, she's without pain immediately. Try to imagine the response, the gasps perhaps, amazement. Maybe a suggestion that we sing a doxology in praise to God in view of such an amazing thing like no one has ever seen that he's obviously done. Instead, immediately, although the leader of the synagogue stands up and says, we don't do that kind of thing here. Not today. And he angrily tells Miss Lois that she could have come another time, but the day and place of worship of God is not for receiving healing or grace from Him. Well, that's the sort of alarming and tense scene that we're met with once again in Luke's Gospel. Here, I'm referring of course to the account in chapter 13. Again and again, Luke has shown us responses to Jesus, whether His teaching or His miracles. We've seen conflicts before with Jesus and leaders of the Jews over the Sabbath. Back in chapter 6, there were two of them in that chapter, for example, and these are the last two that Luke shares with us. It's also interesting to note as we begin, this is the first healing that Luke has mentioned since chapter 11. That was just in passing. You have to go all the way back to chapter 9, which was maybe half a year ago for us, before we meet with another miracle that's described in any detail that Jesus has done. So it's been a while since Luke has brought in a miracle of Jesus. We've been reading much of his teaching recently. This morning, then, I want us to consider what we can learn from these confrontations and from this miracle that Jesus performs, what the Holy Spirit's communicating to us through Luke. And I want to look at that from two angles, two observations, as we see what we can learn from this scene. The first will be covered by the first two points in the outline in your bulletin. And it's really, I think, Luke's main point, his main reason for including this account of Jesus' healing on the Sabbath day. Remember that miracles, the miracles of Jesus were not given so much as ends in themselves. They didn't represent the full and final goal, the reason for Jesus' coming, but rather they were more to confirm His Word. to confirm His promises and His warnings and His authority, His mission from God the Father. And as such, they require a decision from the people who witness them. In chapter 12, Jesus rebuked some of the leaders for not rightly analyzing or interpreting the times or the signs of the times, that is, what's going on around them at that time. They weren't rightly seeing what God was doing through Jesus and then responding. In our class this morning, last hour, we saw in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 a description of there being an appropriate time for everything appointed by God. Well, these leaders once again are repeatedly showing themselves to be bad at or failing in or faithless in answering that great theological question, what time is it? What are the times? That'll be our main focus this morning. But then secondly, and secondarily in looking at this passage, we can learn something about Jesus' approach to the Sabbath in these confrontations. And so we'll consider what principles we can learn from that for the Lord's Day, for our own understanding of the Lord's Day. So the first point this morning is to see that Jesus' compassion and power, again, demand a decision. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, we're told again. He's done this a number of times, we've read in Luke's Gospel back in chapter 4. It says he was teaching in the synagogue as was his custom. So this was something that he did regularly, apparently. He's facing opposition increasingly in the Gospel of Luke. It's sharpening. But the Pharisees and the leaders are still checking him out. They're not arresting him to kill him just yet. They're still observing him. He's still apparently receiving invitations to speak at the synagogue, for example. Although, It's not an outrageous suggestion to consider that this may have been a trap. Maybe the invitation came because they were observing him, because they wanted to trap him in his words. I think that's a good possibility for the Sabbath scene in chapter 14 that we read of. We read that Jesus went to a Pharisee's house for a meal, and then all of a sudden, in front of him, there's a man suffering from dropsy. Just briefly, dropsy is technically a medical symptom. It's not a disease, but it comes from other diseases. It's swelling in your limbs or in your tissue from other diseases, severe swelling. But the question is, why was this man there? Because of what we know of the Pharisees, these other high officials that sometimes invited Jesus for a meal, why was this man suffering from dropsy there? This wasn't the first invitation that Jesus had to eat with the Pharisees, and the last time he was invited It ended, there was of course again a confrontation, a conflict, and then we read at the end of chapter 11, at the end of that scene, that they were plotting to trap him, or to catch him. So here's the next invitation, perhaps this man with dropsy was a plant, what is he going to do on the Sabbath? So that's a possibility, I think, for his invitation to the synagogue. But again, we have this woman here who for 18 years has been suffering bent over double, we're told. The common guess or explanation is that she's suffering some kind of spondylitis where the vertebrae are fused together. It would have been a very painful thing for her all this time. We're also told in verse 11 that it was caused by a spirit. So her suffering isn't simply physical, but it's somehow related to demonic influence. And we shouldn't read that as Luke being superstitious or medically ignorant, considering that all diseases were caused by demons or something. Luke was a physician, he knew the difference between demonic influence and simple physical problems, and he makes those distinctions elsewhere. And so it's clear there's some particular demonic influence as well here. Jesus calls her over. He notices her, He calls her to Himself in the middle of their time at the synagogue, and He lays His hands on her. And even if Jesus hadn't gone on to perform this miracle, just those acts in and of themselves were significant. For Jesus to speak to a woman, to call her to Himself in such a public setting, and then to lay His hands on her. in a culture in which women were publicly shunned. Once again, we're to see the compassion that the God-man Jesus had and has. Jesus sees your needs and He cares. But He goes on to display His power. Verse 12, Woman, you are freed from your sickness. Verse 13, immediately she was made erect again and began glorifying God. So everyone who sees this miracle is again confronted with the compassion and the power and the authority of Jesus as the Son of God. And it demands a decision about who He is. Is Jesus who He says He is? How is He doing these things? Does He have the authority? that he claims? Is he bringing judgment? Can he forgive sins? Those questions demand an answer, especially when he does a miracle like this. Well, secondly on your outline, we see again, at least from some in response, stubborn unbelief. Stubborn unbelief. In verse 14, the synagogue official, this would be the man in charge of the service and the goings-on in the synagogue, he stands and rather than responding in faith, he's indignant, Luke tells us. He's angry. And he rebukes Jesus, although he does it indirectly. He does it through rebuking the woman. You should have come on a different day. It's an ironic rebuke. She couldn't have been healed by this synagogue official if she had come on Sunday or Wednesday as she was by Jesus. According to the Pharisees and other rabbinic traditions, they had many rules that they had written around the Sabbath to, in their minds, protect the Sabbath. For example, there are at least 39 types of labor that they laid out that were forbidden on the Sabbath, and they're applying that to this, to the act of healing. So, he's saying that this wasn't appropriate. Well, Jesus offers a counter-rebuke. In verse 15, he says, you hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water? It's similar to his response in chapter 14, verse 5. Which of you will not have a son or an ox fall into a well and immediately pull him out? Even on the Sabbath day, he's saying you automatically, by assumption, labor to take care of your animals on the Sabbath. Now, there rightly would have been an understanding about using their animals for work. That was something that should have been set aside for the Sabbath. But Jesus is saying everyone rightly takes care of their animals. They labor to feed them and give them water. And so His point is, is it not more important and compassionate to help a woman bound by not only her physical suffering, but Satan's power for all these 18 years? than just to give water to a thirsty ox? Which is more significant? Why is it that perhaps your animals are getting along better on the Sabbath than some of your brothers and sisters? That was Jesus' point. Now, the official's point, at least, he had other motives that were not right, but at least what he was saying is this could have waited till tomorrow. This could have waited till Sunday. And part of sanctifying the Sabbath was putting aside certain things that could have been done on Friday or could wait until Sunday. But repeatedly in the Gospels we see a self-centered or a man-centered approach to the Sabbath among the leaders of the Jews. It was all about their rules, their performance. It's all about my individual following rules for myself. So Jesus' actions and words are not a loosening or a changing of what the Sabbath was, but a return to its true purpose as a God-centered day. It's a day of rest from some things in order to do other things in a God-centered way. And what better day, Jesus is saying, for a woman to receive the mercy and grace of God, the freeing of her from the oppression of Satan and of suffering, than the day that's given especially to worship the God who frees us from sin and from Satan and promises eternal life, free from suffering. Doing good and kindness and service is never to be set aside. Jesus says, it is in fact, especially for the Sabbath, he's saying. What was the response then to Jesus' response, Jesus' rebuke? We're told that many were rejoicing, but in verse 17, his opponents were humiliated. If you look at the account in chapter 14, the end of that is verse 6, and they could make no reply to this. So again, we see this stubborn refusal to believe on Jesus Christ. And that's not only here in the face of seeing the compassion of God worked out right in front of them. It's not only in the face of seeing this powerful miracle, this divine healing worked right in front of them. It's also in the face of their own inability to give any kind of response. They could make no reply. They were being humiliated in their inconsistency. And yet they stubbornly refused to believe. And in that, we see their need for what Jesus brings. Again, Jesus' miracles illustrate and confirm His Word, His spiritual power to save, to forgive. And we're to understand that Just as helpless as this woman was, just as helpless as this man was with dropsy to heal themselves, as much as the power of God in Christ was the only way they could have been cured that day, so we are helpless and powerless in our sins. She could not straighten her back. He could not heal his swollen arms and legs. You cannot pay for or forgive your sins. Our inability is parallel. You can't even, in fact, the Bible teaches us clearly, you cannot and will not willfully turn to God for help at all, without the work of the Holy Spirit to change your heart. And the synagogue leaders demonstrate that. What other evidence could there have been if it's simply evidence and our own reasoning that bring us to the point of faith in Christ? Even though they were humiliated in their inconsistency and selfishness, even with the evidence continuing to stare them in the face of Jesus' miracles, they refused to believe. And they would not believe until God graciously granted them faith and repentance. That remains true today. For all of those who continue in disbelief of the Lord Jesus Christ, whether in the face of the evidence of His creation, or in the face of just the lack of purpose and meaning in life, as we've been discussing in our class on Ecclesiastes, men and women still refuse to submit to their gracious Creator, aside from His working that in their hearts. Another of the evidences that ought to point us to the truth of God is the evil and suffering that we see in the world. That's often pointed to, of course, as a reason not to believe in God. But how perfectly and rightly do the Scriptures explain that to us, explain the existence of evil and suffering and a fallen world and God's remedy and salvation for that. You know, last week as we worshiped, last Lord's Day, you've all heard of the horror that was unfolding in Texas. And as awful as that is, we could find something like that going on each week, somewhere in the world as we worship, or worse. And yet in the face of such evil and suffering, many still refuse to believe what God says about the problem of the root of sin in our hearts and the remedy for it found in the life and death of Jesus alone. If you have not in your life acknowledged who Jesus is and believed His promises and His warnings, repented of your sins and trusted Him as your Savior, Then do that. Pray to Him. Pray to Him now that He would give you a heart to believe, to repent, to hope and trust in Christ, to follow Him. And He will save you. He will not fail to change your heart as radically as He changed this woman's health, this man's health. Let's look thirdly and finally then at lessons for the Lord's Day. Jesus also here, again, is correcting, once again, the Pharisees' and others' understanding of the Sabbath day. Now, we no longer, in the New Testament, observe a seventh-day Sabbath on Saturday, when Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, that creation principle of setting aside one day in rest and worship of God, in imitation of Him, was transferred to the first day of the week in imitation and celebration of Christ and his rising on that first day. And we call it the Lord's Day or the Christian Sabbath. The question of how to observe The Lord's Day is a tricky one. There are many different views. I'm not going to make any attempt this morning to explore all the dimensions of those questions. I simply want to draw parallels between what Jesus particularly taught the synagogue official here and what we can learn for the Lord's Day. This official, along with the Pharisees and others in chapter 14, again, in a very man-centered view of the Sabbath. not so much concerned for the work and the majesty of the grace of God, but rather, again, for their own practice, their own righteousness, at least outwardly. And more particularly, this holy day did not seem to incline them towards helping other people and serving other people around them. But Jesus explains, here's the key lesson, is that this is part of the purpose of the day. Back in Matthew chapter 12, there was a conflict between Jesus and the leaders over the Sabbath. This is where He healed the man with the withered hand. And His conclusion, Jesus' conclusion there in verse 12 is, so it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. I think that Jesus is not simply saying, though, that doing good, that acts of mercy and kindness towards other people on the Sabbath day were simply allowed. He wasn't saying, OK, we'll make an allowance for that if you really want to do it. He's saying that is part of the purpose of the day. Just taking Jesus' own example, his repeated example, and understanding what the Sabbath day was. He's saying that is what is appropriate for this day. Many people today continue to have a man-centered view of the Lord's Day rather than a God-centered view. Some seem to focus almost exclusively on rules and limits. What are we not to do or what can I get away with? as the primary focus. Most American Christians neglect the day as special altogether, except maybe for an hour in the morning when we gather for worship. Many set the Lord's Day apart as a family day, and family time is the supreme guide and purpose that determines what our mindset, what our activities are on this day. Others, for others, it's rest or relaxation. That's the guiding principle of the day. And some of these things are good and not at all necessarily wrong. But what is the Lord's Day? What guides our understanding of what it's for? It's the day that Jesus rose from the dead. It's the day that we worship our Lord and Savior, who rested from his accomplished work of conquering sin and death, of freeing us from the power of Satan, when he rose from the dead on that first day. It's the day that we anticipate our own resurrection, our own full freedom from the diseases and pains and sin of this life, and rest fully in that sense one day. And so, as the Sabbath was for the Jews, the Lord's Day significantly is to be God-centered but also others-oriented. A day with certainly great benefits for ourselves spiritually. a day probably with family time, perhaps with some rest and so on. But the goal, the guiding principle of the day is celebrating the mercy and compassion of God in Christ and Jesus' teaching, extending that mercy and kindness to others as well. It's a particularly appropriate day for that. What better day is there to reach out to people in need and to serve and to do good? on the Lord's Day. Our church, and many other Reformed churches, have as their confession the Westminster Confession and their catechisms. One of the documents we don't officially subscribe to, but that Westminster also produced and is helpful, is their directory for public worship of God. And in that, there's one paragraph, one chapter, I should say, of the sanctification of the Lord's Day. And the way that ends is another thing that's instructed for the Lord's Day is visiting the sick, relieving the poor, and such like duties of piety, charity, and mercy. They're summarizing the teaching example of Jesus on the Sabbath day. I confess this is an aspect of the Lord's Day I've not often thought carefully or broadly about or looked for opportunities to do. And so this morning, I'm simply encouraging you to think with me. How can you or how can you and your family honor the Lord's Day, celebrate the resurrection of Christ and His ministry of compassion by extending grace and kindness to others? Perhaps, you know, I can't answer that for each of you. As I said, I need to think about it more myself as well. But perhaps it's a visit to someone that needs a visit or who is shut in or needs encouragement or a phone call. Things that in the rest of the week when our minds are on many other things and busy with work and so on. It's an especially appropriate day to bring the Lord's Day, in that sense, to someone in need. Or maybe it's helping a neighbor in need in your neighborhood. Maybe it's an opportunity for evangelism. One simple way that we can, I think, do this within the church is through hospitality. through hospitality on the Lord's Day. It is very difficult. We all know, I think, to make time for something these days like a meal, a formal meal with another family during the week on a weekday. It's very hard to make schedules line up, but the Lord's Day remains one of the best times just in terms of schedules culturally, but also one of the best times spiritually, I think, to share your home with other believers. The Heidelberg Catechism, which is a Dutch catechism, calls the Sabbath day, the Lord's day, a festive day of rest. A festive day of rest. God has only given us, in the New Testament, one holy day. One feast day, as they were in the Old Testament. Days of feasting and worshiping God. I think it's appropriate to understand the Lord's Day as a feast day. A celebration day of fellowship and worship. And so as we gather, not only to worship, to study together, to pray together on this day, but also as we gather to eat. We gather to eat, we're living out God's design for this day. I'm thankful, for example, for the example of my own parents, particularly, who have all of my life, virtually every Lord's Day, all of my life, invited people into their home for a feast after worship, after morning worship. Sometimes that was with good friends or relatives, people we knew well. Often it was with strangers or visitors who had come to church Often is with people who were more needy or people who didn't have those relationships or who were, for various reasons, harder to love or that we didn't know as well. But in that way, so many were shown the compassion and the kindness of Christ. on the Lord's Day. So, I just encourage you to think about what faithful use of the gift and blessing of the Lord's Day, what that might look like, an imitation of an obedience to Jesus. Let's pray together. Our Triune God, we thank You for revealing Yourself and Your will for us and Your Word Thank you for these examples again of the compassion, the power, and the authority of Christ. I pray that you would work in each of our hearts increasingly a right response, a response of humility, and love and trust and obedience to that Jesus. I also pray that you would help us to consider our use of the Lord's Day, this great blessing and privilege that you've given to us, that it would be an imitation of Christ and celebration of Him, that it would bring honor to Him. We pray all of this in His name. Amen.