32. Who is Jesus?
April 10th, 2010
Illegal Healing
Jesus is not looking for fans, He is looking for followers. It is very difficult to follow someone if you don’t pay attention to where they are going. Jesus shares His life with us, living among us so that we can learn how to live by following His example. Jesus comes to earth ultimately to suffer and die on the cross for our sins so that we can be brought back to a right relationship with God. Jesus dies so we can have life. Jesus focuses His life on doing the work of the kingdom of God. We all have misconceptions about Jesus. No matter how smart or how well studied we are following Jesus will require us to step out of our comfort zones. Jesus spends a lot of His ministry in conflict with people who are opposing the kingdom of God.
There is this growing trend of people who try to be non-confrontational. This is a fancy way of saying we are cowards. I’m not talking people being non-aggressive but about people who avoid conflict. Some of us are compulsive about this. We just run away and refuse to directly deal with confrontation which is not a good thing. That doesn’t mean you have to pick fights or battle every problem in your life, there are issues you shouldn’t get involved in but there are things you need to fight for. There are areas where we should not back down. Being non-confrontational is a nice way of saying: you don’t care. Our relationship with God will cause conflict. Either you care enough to fight for Jesus and to take a stand for Him, or you don’t care about Him at all.
When Jesus faces a problem He doesn’t hide. He doesn’t shy away from it. He doesn’t try to dance around it like a politician. He faces it head on. Jesus deals directly with the conflict in His ministry. Following Jesus means that we are going to have to deal with conflict directly. To do that you cannot be afraid to stand up for what you believe. You cannot be afraid to hurt people’s feelings if what you have to say is right, and loving. I wrestled with this for years. I would do counseling and I would negotiate with people. I would try to reason with them to lead them to the conclusion they should make. It was a huge waste of time and it rarely worked.
Then I tried something new: I still remember having a conversation and telling the person: “I don’t care how you feel. This is what is right, this is what Jesus wants you to do and either you are going to follow Jesus or you are going to do what you want. That is the choice you are making.” So many people are afraid to actually say something that is true, to take a stand for what is right so when it happens people find it refreshing. Sooner or later we are going to have to stop telling people what they want to hear and start telling them the truth.
Here is the issue: conflict happens. Some people man up and face it. Some people hide from it. They still deal with the conflict, they just do it indirectly. They passive-aggressively go around behind people’s back’s bad mouthing, gossiping and complaining. Instead of dealing with and resolving the issue they find cheerleaders in their lives who they can vent their frustrations too. The issue doesn’t get resolved, just swept under the rug to cause problems later. We are not actually avoiding controversy, we are too scared to face it directly.
We are in Luke 13:10. Jesus is on the road from Galilee to Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish empire where ultimately His mission will be completed. Along the way Jesus stops to heal people, to teach, and perform various miracles. One of the things I love about Jesus is that He doesn’t ever shy away from difficult subjects. In fact, sometimes you have to wonder if Jesus just enjoys controversy. Once again we are going to see conflict between Jesus and the religious people.
It is the Sabbath, so Saturday, and Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. A woman is there who has a physical need and Jesus, nice guy that He is, meets that need. The crazy thing about Jesus is that He likes to mix talking with doing. He doesn’t just speak of the love of God, He shows it.
Lk 13:10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, Lk 13:11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. Lk 13:12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Lk 13:13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
Jesus is doing some guest speaking in a small town outside of Jerusalem at the synagogue, which is like the Jewish version of a church. Jesus is a popular guy so the local church pastor asked Him to come in and preach. While He is preaching Jesus notices a woman in the audience is crippled. This lady is not drawing attention to herself, she is not a beggar who has come to Jesus to get something out of Him. She wants to worship God and Jesus notices her. He sees her struggle, He sees her pain, and He cares enough to do something about it.
This lady has a curvature of the spine which prevented her from standing upright. When I was in high school I injured my back playing full contact basketball. It was awful because when your back hurts, everything you do hurts. The curvature in this lady’s back would cause pain all-throughout her body as the muscles would attempt to compensate for the abnormal bone growth. She has chronic pain. Moving would hurt, sleeping would hurt, breathing would hurt and could even be labored; if her condition is severe enough than it could cause heart and lung problems. She cannot dance, she can’t stand upright, she wouldn’t be able to play with her kids or her grandkids. They couldn’t be able to sit on her lap. She wouldn’t be able to look people in the eyes unless they were very short, so children and leprechauns. This lady who was living in constant pain for eighteen years, troopers her way to the church to worship God. We complain about getting up early, this lady walked to church in severe pain. This lady is a stud. She’s like a female Jack Bauer, no amount of pain is going to keep her from the presence of God.
What is interesting here is that this woman’s condition is caused by an evil spirit; and it is Luke, the doctor, who tells us about it. The man who makes this diagnosis is a man who promotes medicine, reason, and physical treatment for physical problems. Yet he realizes that spiritual forces can cause physical conditions. Sometimes the condition is a symptom not the cause.
This is not an exorcism but a healing. Biblically we see that physical problems can be the work of evil spirits. Just because you sneeze doesn’t mean a demon is attacking you, you might just have allergies. When you get up in the middle of the night to realize that the reason God gives us toes if for finding furniture in the dark sometimes it’s because it is dark not the devil attacking you with your chair. Not all physical problems are caused by evil spirits. This particular case is.
So this lady has been doing the Quasimodo for eighteen years. In the middle of the church service Jesus stops to heal her; which technically He wasn’t supposed to do. According to the oral tradition of the Jews healing was not allowed on Sabbath. Jesus already knows this. He has fought this battle before. So when Jesus heals this woman He knows He is going to have to put up with the religious people. Jesus does it anyway.
Immediately this lady stands straight up and praises God. Her pain is gone, her suffering has ended. She has been set free from a condition she struggled with for eighteen years. This lady is really excited. You better turn up the music because Stella got her groove back. She’s going to make some noise and you better watch out she’s going to start the mosh-pit for Jesus.
Lk 13:14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” Lk 13:15 The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Lk 13:16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” Lk 13:17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.
The pastor gets all bent out of shape: no pun intended. He’s a non-confrontational coward. He did not have the courage to speak directly to Jesus, instead he tries to undermine Jesus to the crowd. This is his church and he doesn’t like what Jesus is doing. So he argues with Jesus, if you want to be wrong, this is a good way to do it.
Jews were coo-coo for Sabbath. The had rules about how far you could walk, what you could do, it just crazy. You know how you can tell its Sabbath? On Friday night you pull out a grey hair and a black hair and you hold them up. When you can no longer tell the difference, Sabbath had begun. This special day does not cater well to bald people.
Preacher dude blames the woman for coming to church. Jesus healed you on the Sabbath because you were here, how dare you show up in your condition. How dare you have an illness, how dare you suffer in the church, you can suffer six days a week, but don’t bring your suffering in here. So you have a back problem, why don’t you try thinking about how that makes the rest of us feel. We have feel guilty every time we look at you because our backs are good and yours isn’t, so why don’t you try being more thoughtful in the future? The guy is their pastor, it is his job to love them and he is mad she got healed. This guy is a dufus.
This woman did not ask Jesus for a healing. She just wanted to be in the presence of Go and with His. She doesn’t approach Jesus, Jesus approaches her. This preacher is a nice wet blanket. This woman has been healed, this is cause for celebration and he turns it into a battle. Jesus heals one of God’s beloved children and this guy is upset because the rules of the church were broken. When religious rules get in the way of divine activity than the rules need to change.
Exodus 20: do not work on the Sabbath. That is God’s law. Man’s law said you could not take action to heal on the Sabbath unless it was required to save someone’s life. So if you fell down the stairs onto a knife then you could pull out the knife and stop the bleeding but you could not set the broken bones until after the sun had set. The law cares just enough to not let people die, but not so much as to offer help to people in need. Religion loves its rules, but God loves His people. Jesus could have easily waited to heal this lady until the next day, but He decides not to. Jesus will not submit Himself to the interpretations and reasoning of man. Jesus doesn’t play by our rules, He never has and He never will. Jesus is not going to sit by and do nothing while this lady suffers.
The preacher is totally missing the point. Sabbath was given as a day of rest. It was a gift from God, a day off from work. Some of us have no idea what that means because we are way too busy, but God instructs us to take some time every week to rest, to recover, to take care of ourselves. We are not built to run 24/7. Stop trying. The whole point of Sabbath is to set people free from their bondage to work. It only makes sense that this woman who has been bound by illness for eighteen years be set free on the Sabbath. Jesus isn’t breaking the Sabbath, He is fulfilling it. What the religious people have done is turned the gift into an obligation.
Religion enslaves people. It replaces slavery to sin with slavery to law. What religion likes to do is to focus on the restrictions. Welcome to the church: here is a list of things you can no longer do. God focuses not on the restrictions but on the freedoms. Like in the beginning with Adam and Eve God creates this entire garden paradise for them to enjoy and the serpent comes along with a nice religious attitude adding rules to God’s law and what does he do? He focuses on the one restriction. Sure God gave you this whole paradise to enjoy but what a bummer that you cant eat from one whole tree. Even now God blesses us with so many freedoms and liberties in our relationship with Jesus.
God’s laws are like a fence. They are designed to keep God’s children from getting hurt. The purpose of the law is to protect us from harming ourselves or others with sin. The way we use the law in our religious practices turns it from a fence which is made to protect us and keep us safe into a prison which is meant to keep us in. In the prison of religious rules and laws God’s children don’t have the freedom to run around and enjoy God’s creation. They just wake up, eat, and sleep when the prison guards tell them to. If they get out of line, they get beaten. If they don’t do what they are told they get beaten. If they ask questions or why following Jesus isn’t any fun anymore they get beaten. God says: don’t have sex until you are married because He knows that will hurt us. Religion says if you are dancing and your clothes fall off and you fall over you are having sex so no dancing unless you’re married. What was once a fence to keep us face becomes an 8x10 cell.
God gives us so many gifts that we can enjoy and what religion does, is steal away that joy by focuses on the restrictions. It’s like we win the $100 million lottery and go: “Oh this is terrible, can you imagine the amount of taxes I’m going to have to pay.” God gives us liberty, and religion focuses on the restrictions. There are few things more detrimental to the life of a Christian than focusing on the rules. Jesus came to give us life not laws. Focus on what really matters.
Can you imagine how far from the heart of God you have to fall to get upset that a person in pain was healed? Even with the Sabbath, there is no wrong time to do the right thing. Some of us like this woman have been enslaved by a heartless religious mindset. Our lives have been about obligation and requirements. As a result we don’t really enjoy life. God gave us this world so that we could run and play. God wants us to enjoy ourselves, within the boundaries of His kingdom. God’s restrictions are there not to hold us back but to keep us safe. God wants you to have fun. God wants you to enjoy your life. God cares. Even when religion doesn’t.
Jesus says Satan kept this woman bound. We like to blame God for all the problems in our lives. God doesn’t make us suffer. We suffer because we gave our enemy power by listening to him in the garden. Jesus doesn’t make us suffer. He sets us free. Jesus sees this woman and He heals her because He cares. Jesus cares about us. He loves us, and like this woman Jesus sees you. When everyone else ignores you Jesus sees you. When no one else will talk to you, Jesus calls you by name. When no one else cares about the pain you are suffering through Jesus desires to heal you. Jesus doesn’t heal because He has to He heals because He wants to. The God who spoke the universe into existence cares about you. He sees you, He knows your struggles, and He wants to help. Who we are in the story can be seen by how we react to the gift of Jesus. Do we rejoice like the woman who is healed and celebrate the love of God or do we get bent out of shape by our own critical minds and religious behaviors? You have to decide whether your relationship with God is a playground to be enjoyed or a prison sentence to suffer through. Religion is the prison we build for ourselves. Jesus came to set us free. So enjoy the freedom that only He can give.
