He Wouldn't Wait a Day

Transcript

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[0:00] is from Luke 13, and it is about Sabbath keeping. A little word of introduction. You know, the law about keeping the Sabbath is in the top 10, right? By some counts or most counts, the third commandment is, remember the Sabbath, keep it holy, so it's pretty important. So for the Jews, then and still, it's very important.

[0:22] And not just the third commandment, but a whole host of interpretations of the third commandment have percolated through the years. One of them was that you couldn't go too far, you couldn't walk too far. You could take a good walk, but not too far.

[0:41] Yesterday, as we were driving around, George and I were driving around, we, just down here on Fremont Avenue, sometimes if you're here on a Saturday, there were Jewish families walking home from synagogue, so they won't drive.

[0:54] And there's a whole host of follow-on interpretations from the commandment not to work. And I'm going to read you a whole list, but one of them is to not make fire. So it depends on your car, your regular car with gas. There's a fire in there. You just don't see it. You can smell it, but you don't see it. But also, closing a circuit with electricity is considered by the Orthodox to be fire, too. So they have light switches. In some places in Israel, they have light switches that come on when you go near them. They have coffee makers that just come on. They have what's called a Sabbath, a Sabbath switch, and you switch it on for Sabbath mode. Before the Sabbath, you don't switch it on during the Sabbath. And there's elevators in larger buildings that basically run all day, and they stop at every floor and open the doors and wait a while.

[1:43] So that's the day where you better not be in a hurry. But you're not. I mean, that's the point. You're not in a hurry on the Sabbath day. You're taking it as a day of rest. Here's a list of 39 things that the Orthodox think you, not think, but think about. Say you should not do. These are all just single verbs, and I like this. Carry. There's 39 things. But I'll go through fast, OK? So just put on your turbo hat. Carrying. Burning. There's your fire. Extinguishing.

[2:11] You can't start a fire, and you can't put out a fire. Well, you can put out a fire if your house is on fire. All right, let's be clear about this, right? Because this is about life, right? But you can't extinguish the wick of the lamp that you've lit. Finishing. Writing. Writing. Or erasing. The opposite of writing is erasing. You can't undo letters. Cooking. Washing. Sewing. Tearing. Knotting. That is making knots out of rope, right?

[2:37] Untying knots. You can't make knots. You can't untie knots. Shaping. Plowing. So that would be farming, obviously. Planting. That's farming. Reaping. That's harvesting. Harvesting. That's farming. Threshing. That's farming. These are all farming things, OK?

[2:53] Plowing. Planting. Reaping. Harvesting. Threshing. Winnowing. Selecting. That probably has to do with livestock or grain. Sifting. Grinding. Kneading. Combing. Combing the cotton. Not your hair. I think you can comb your hair. Spinning. Dyeing. This has to do with fabrics and textiles, right? Chain stitching.

[3:15] That's knitting and crocheting. That's chain stitching. Warping and weaving. You can't run your loom on that day. Unraveling something that you've woven. You cannot do. Building or demolishing. You know, demolishing is fun though. It doesn't feel like work. It feels like undoing work. But anyways, you can't demolish. Trapping. Shearing. Slaughtering. Skinning. Anything having to do with livestock, animal trade. Smoothing. Or in the last few are sort of carpentry smoothing or marking.

[3:47] So that's the list. Don't do it. No, I'm kidding. But that was kind of the understanding was there's all sorts of things. Now, what do you do when you don't know exactly what does it mean to honor the Sabbath? Well, you make a list. And the list can get longer and longer and longer until the list is so long you can't even keep track of it. And this is where we're kind of going to understand this is that Jesus is challenging this sort of listification of the Sabbath. And he's kind of going to bring us back to what the Sabbath is really for. But he's also going to reveal something. He's going to reveal something about his nature. So there were exceptions, even for them, to things that you could do on the Sabbath. One was actually to put out a fire if your house is on fire, your neighbor's house on fire. You could save a life on the Sabbath, both an animal's life or a human's life, especially if it was livestock. I don't know if you could save the life of a wild animal.

[4:47] Traveling to your father's funeral was okay because the family obligation was large, right? And every now and then there were some animals that actually had to be cared for daily. Like if you had to milk your cow, even just a little bit on one day, that was okay. That was actually okay. But you couldn't just full on work all day, like seven days all day long working. That was not what was envisioned.

[5:12] So that's an overview of kind of both the ancient and the more modern view of Sabbath keeping. But Jesus is going to bring it into perspective. So let's take a look. And our passage is Luke 13, 10 through 17.

[5:29] And remember, this is while Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for 18 years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, Dear woman, you are healed. Of your sickness. Then he touched her and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God.

[6:02] But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. There are six days of the week for working, he said to the crowd, come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.

[6:20] But the Lord replied, You hypocrites. Each of you work and you are not healed. works on the Sabbath day, don't you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for 18 years. Isn't it right that she be released even on the Sabbath?

[6:43] This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did." Let's pray. Father, thank You for this word. We ask that You would add Your blessing to it, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank You indeed to God for this word because it's a good word. It's a really good word about somebody.

[7:05] I think Victoria put it well. You know, you can imagine having a really debilitating physical condition for 18 years. This is a miracle. And then being able to stand up, and I don't know if this was a spine problem or maybe a spinal problem. It's a really severe scoliosis. You know, we're not told, but the inability to stand up straight and the difficulty that came with it erased in a moment, which is miraculous. But also this idea of how long this had been afflicting her. So I think there's a lot to notice in here if we slow down. So I'm going to kind of do that.

[7:44] One thing is that we're not sure how this is apparent. But the woman's disability, it says, is caused by an evil spirit. Later on, Jesus blames Satan for it, right? That Satan has kept her in bondage for all these 18 years. And I do want to pause there for a second because we don't talk like this much these days anymore. I think it was a common concept back then that an evil spirit was blamed for a physical problem. So there's a spiritual problem. There's a physical problem behind the physical problem. And I don't think that that wasn't true. I think that probably was true. I'm not saying it wasn't true in this case, too. I think it was true in this case because Jesus said it. He saw this. And you know, at the same time nowadays, if I meet somebody who has a physical disability, I don't assume that Satan is afflicting them. Do you see what I'm saying? Like I don't sometimes, and if somebody has cancer, and I've had cancer, you know, nobody came up to me. And said, oh, Satan has given you cancer. Well, no, I think a lot of things have, but not, probably not Satan. But I'm not going to, I wouldn't rule it out either. But it's not, that's not the first place I go. Okay. And because I don't want, if somebody has an illness, I don't want to blame them for

[9:05] it. I don't want to blame their spiritual life for it. I don't want to blame Satan for it when there could be some other very obvious explanation. Sometimes there's no explanation. Sometimes the world is broken. And it's a dangerous place. Both for our health. And for all sorts of other things. But that does bring up an interesting question is how is it that these spirits can extend their power into the physical realm? Right? You would think that they have sort of some sort of spiritual influence that they can exert around the world. I don't know exactly what that looks like. I guess they can, I've actually, I'm not going to say I guess, they can possess people. And I've been in the presence of somebody who was, it seemed to me, possessed by a demon. And it also seemed that after we prayed. In the name of Jesus, that the demon would go out. That the whole room seemed to lighten up, even though nobody had changed anything with the light switches or anything. And that fresh air had come into the room, even though nobody had opened any windows. So was this a mass psychosis? Yeah, I mean, you can decide. I won't tell you. But it really seemed like something lifted and left in that moment. So in my book, I think it was real.

[10:12] Was that a physical manifestation? You know, the person who it came out of? Definitely felt that way. They felt physically different afterwards. They weren't sick, but they were, they felt much better afterwards. So you know, that's the question. Does the power of Satan or the power of the evil extend into the physical realm? And in this case, it sounds like it did. And so, you know, other parts of the Bible, it does seem that way.

[10:45] I'm not trying to scare anybody or anything. I'm just saying this is. This is kind of an interesting landscape that we have here about Satan and evil, and it can cause some suffering. And one of the things that I think people thought back then was, if you are being sort of afflicted by this way, it might be your fault. You might have opened yourself up to it. So if Satan is afflicting you, it's God's punishment on you. In a way, God, he's, and in a way, then Satan is working for God, which I'm not sure actually Satan would want to do that. So.

[11:18] I actually think the people, this is my view, the people most likely to be afflicted by Satan are the ones who love God the most and are doing the most for God's kingdom because Satan wants to get those people out of play. Does that make sense? Like, say, they're like, so I could see people that Satan really trying to take Billy Graham and and compromised him. And evidently people did try to compromise Billy Graham, and he was smarter than them all, evidently. Because he. He. He didn't fall for any of it. Now I'm not so I'm not I'm not going to say the same about a lot of other famous Christian leaders because a lot of them have come have come under some kind of suspicion or cloud. So I think I think actually if Satan were to target anyone, it's somebody who is on the cusp of or is doing something great for God. And he's going to put a lot of temptation in their way. But I don't think you could say that Satan made them do it. Whatever it is, I think it's still them. So there's a lot. There's a lot to think about here. But what I would say. And I mean, this is how we're going to end just this section, because I think it's it's worth noting. Satan really is the enemy of life and of flourishing and of things that God created, like our human

[12:26] body. So all there's all these things that God made that are beautiful and all these things that God wants for us that are beautiful. And Satan hates those things. And so he wants to destroy them. And in this case, somehow he was able to give this woman a bent over body for 18 years. There's dark spiritual forces at work in the world. And so he wants to destroy them.

[12:53] Right. There are six other days in the week if healing is working. And healing kind of is working because healing was a profession, right? So if that was something you want to do as your job, then healing was working.

[13:26] There really are six other days in the week. He wasn't wrong. Like, this is logically, he's like basically telling everybody there, and maybe people had followed Jesus into the synagogue hoping to be healed. And in fact, he did heal one person. He said to the crowd, in essence, come back tomorrow. Tomorrow. Wait 24 hours. Wait a day. Wait a day and come back. You know, whatever it is, it can wait. That was his view, right? Whatever it is, it can wait.

[13:56] But Jesus, and Jesus, for his part, he could have been like, you know, you're right. I'll just stay an extra day. I'll just stay an extra day. You guys all come back tomorrow, same time, same place, same bat time, same bat channel. All the same bat healings will happen here. What's one more? And also to this woman. She's been this way for 18 years. I didn't multiply 18 by 365 on my calculator. It would have been kind of exciting, but not that exciting. And you could come up with a really long number, and you could say, what's one more day? What's one more day to this woman? But the reality is, and this is getting into the character of Jesus, is Jesus can't, or won't, but probably can't wait a day. He can't wait a day, right? He's on his way. One of the reasons. There's three reasons, actually, I see. One is that he's on his way to Jerusalem to fight, actually to fight with Satan. He has an appointment with Satan in Jerusalem to fight him once and for all, and he has to keep that appointment, in a way, of speaking. He's like, nope, I've got to. It's like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Thank you. I'm just getting my phone started ringing. Why? And then the rabbit's like, oh, I've got to be somewhere. And Jesus is like, I've got to be somewhere.

[15:11] I've got to be in Jerusalem. I can't wait here tomorrow for this to happen. Or because for him, one day of her life was important. One more day was, you know, that was important. One more day of her being whole was more important to him than keeping the law about the Sabbath.

[15:33] Or, finally, because healing is the right thing to do on the Sabbath. And actually, all of those make sense. They can all be true. But we expand on, Jesus expands on his teaching about the Sabbath somewhere else in Scripture, elsewhere in Scripture. The best guidance is when he says that the Sabbath, he says the Sabbath is made for man. Let's make it a little more inclusive. The Sabbath is made for humans or for people. The Sabbath is not, sorry, man is not made or people are not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for them. And this is an important distinction, right? Is that? The goal of Sabbath is to give life to people, not for the people to continue to build up a set of 39 or more long lists of things they can and can't do. The Sabbath wasn't designed to structure it so much that you kind of spend all your time structuring it and actually not and thinking about it and creating all these Rube Goldberg devices to service your needs. It's about life. It's about life. It's not about getting stuck on these minutiae, really.

[16:41] So that's what happens when my phone rings. Then it makes all these different, it makes like three or four follow-on noises if somebody leaves me a voicemail. I should have silenced my phone. I should follow my own advice. I don't know. Nobody ever calls me this time. All right. There we have it. So anyways, so the goal of Sabbath is to give life to the people, right? The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And so in this case, healing a woman under satanic oppression is completely in line with the Sabbath. And I would think actually Jesus facing a woman, anyone in his face who's ill on the Sabbath, not healing them would be breaking God's law in a way because even the Sabbath says if your animal falls down into a well, you're supposed to pull it out. Aren't people more important than animals? Absolutely. Yes. You know?

[17:34] So Jesus does the right thing, but he's always redefining things. He's redefining the law and in this case, he's redefining the law of the Sabbath. law of the Sabbath and saying that this is about life. Healing is the most natural thing to do on the Sabbath. Healing is the most beautiful thing to do on the Sabbath. And healing is actually maybe commanded to be done on the Sabbath because the Sabbath is about life. And what could be more about life than actually returning somebody's life to them that had been taken away, part of her life at least, right? A lifetime of crippled living as opposed to just this wholeness that she received. So what about us? You know, we're like, what do we do? You know, I don't think we, I'm going to give up crocheting on Sundays, you know. What do I, what do you give up? Keeping Sabbath is good for us. Keeping Sabbath is good for us. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but I, and we can spend another time on it. Giving your body and your mind rest is good, but just take it. Taking a walk, taking a deep breath of air. You know, instead of it, so theoretically we should have a day without electricity. Don't do that. That's okay. How about a day without electronics?

[18:53] Do you want to try that? You want to take a day without, but you're like, no, I can't do that. You know, it's like the wicked witch of the West who melts when the water hits her. She's like, no, I can't, I can't live without my, my endless doom scrolling. It keeps me anxious. I need this. I don't know. Would you like a day without that? I mean, that's up to you. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna come to your house and go, all right, check, check this 39 things here.

[19:19] We don't do that. And that's Jesus. That's Jesus saying, what gives you life? So actually there are some things that to you might look like work, but to me are life-giving. And so that could be fixing something. It could be building something. It says don't build or demolish. But for me, that's actually relaxing. It makes my mind happy. I feel this great joy when I build something that I enjoy building. So for you, Sabbath keeping could look like a good hobby. Not crocheting, though. Not crocheting. A good hobby that doesn't involve any of the, no, I'm kidding. Candle making, whatever you want. I'm kidding. But like, listen, it's where you take yourself out of your normal daily activity and you put yourself in a place where God can speak to you and you can be attentive to what God is doing. You pay attention to your own self. You pay attention to the relationships around you. You don't isolate yourself by work or by media or electronics, things like that. It's very hard to do, though, because Sunday is such a great day for the 49ers, you know, and all the rest. So what are you going to do? Well, I don't know. Record it, watch it the next day, have a Sabbath on another day. It's up to you. I'm not going to

[20:37] We don't get legalistic about it. And that's part of the point here, okay? So, but that's the minor takeaway. Sabbath keeping, I think, will always be with us. And it's always going to be a challenge for us. The bigger takeaway is learning more about Jesus and his character, okay?

[20:54] And I really think that he thought that even though this woman had been disabled for 18 years, he thought one more day actually does matter. Like, one more day does matter. I'm not going to tell her to come back tomorrow. Like, one day matters to him. Like, he had to heal her now. He can't, even though it's been 18 years, one more day does matter to him. It can't ask her to come back. He wanted to free her immediately from her oppression. And I think that's what he thinks about us. I think we're like, oh, I'll take care of this tomorrow. I'll pay attention to this tomorrow. I have these sort of oppressive thoughts. I think I'll deal with them tomorrow. But God wants us to, I think God wants to free us now. I'm not saying that being free to them is some lack of desire on any of our parts or anything like that. But I feel like that's just God's character. He wants to save us and free us right away. He doesn't want us to wait even a day. And one thing he says about it at the end, this is the part that I think kind of gets lost. He says, this dear woman, a daughter of Abraham.

[22:04] Pay attention to that. A daughter of Abraham has been held in bondage by Satan for 18 years. Isn't it right that she be released even on the Sabbath? And he says, she's a daughter of Abraham. And that's, if you don't know what that means, that's code for she's part of the covenant promise that God made with Abraham and all of Abraham's descendants. And so she's an inheritor of a promise that God made. Now, the promise was about many things. But in a lot of ways, the promise was about life and hope. Okay? It was about life and hope. God wanted to give Abraham's descendants all sorts of things that would make life beautiful and shalom, peaceful for them, and full of hope and full of flourishing, actually, on a human level. That's what God wanted. And so on a fundamental level, it's a covenant that God had to keep. It's like it's a promise that God made.

[22:59] So how can we even entertain the notion that a person who has that promise wait a day? Okay? For the promise to be honored. If I have a contract with you that we signed two decades ago, and I say, well, let's get around to enforcing the contract tomorrow. You'd be like, what? You know, hasn't it been in effect all this time? It should be in effect all the time ever since then. So there's this promise. Jesus is kind of pulling on that history that the covenant is a promise that God made to his people for their life, their health, and their well-being.

[23:32] So I'm not sure what it looks like for us exactly. Because we have our health problems. We have other problems. And like I say, I'm not quick to blame Satan for things like this. I think we should just say we have a promise from God that he wants us to have life. And we have a Savior who went to the cross to give us that life. And he doesn't want us to wait one more day to sort of claim into that promise. And be made whole of any spiritual. Any spiritual darkness that we may be experiencing. He wants to liberate us, right? So I don't know. You know, it's getting a little spiritual here. But you may be under spiritual oppression. I don't know if you are. We want to talk to you. Absolutely can help, I think. But I have an idea of the spiritual depression. I just said depression. That's exactly what it is. Spiritual oppression I'm under is sometimes depression. Not clinical depression. Not chronic depression. But just when I kind of feel the weight of the world. And I feel like darkness is winning. And maybe that's just me being clear-eyed. But it still bothers me. And it makes me pessimistic about all sorts of things like that. And I do forget the character of God in those moments. I do forget what Jesus is like.

[24:51] I do forget the promises that God made me. And when I go back to those and I remember the character of Jesus. That he loves somebody so much he wouldn't even wait a day to make them whole. Right? You know? Then it helps. It helps. It kind of lifts me out of that. So this is what Hebrews 12 puts. And I think I'll end it pretty much there. The beginning of Hebrews 12 says, Hebrews 12 says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. This is the part that I want us to do. Looking to Jesus. Look at him. Look at him and his character. Looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken a seat at the right hand of the throne of God. So this promise means so much to God that he sent his son to the cross to redeem us and to pull us out of bondage to darkness and sin.

[25:57] And even the oppression of sin and darkness. And so we pray that that can happen for us. So that's the promise that we're the children of. And he doesn't want to wait a whole day to deliver us. He's ready to do it now. Let's pray.

[26:11] Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for the character of Jesus, who is not content to wait, but acts immediately to deliver his children from darkness. And we pray you do that for us today too.