The power of the "small" things in God's grand plan.
Notes
Transcript
Text - Luke 13:10-21
Subject - Kingdom
Theme - God’s Kingdom
Thesis - God is working in small and insignificant ways to build His Kingdom.
Principle -
Intro
Intro
I have mentioned before, one of the main themes in the book of Luke is the upside down - inside out nature of God’s kingdom.
That is one of the main things that we see in our passage this morning.
We see a significant contrast made between the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate.
Jesus uses this Sabbath day to perform a miracle.
A major thing in this woman’s life, but a very small miniscule thing in the grand scheme of things.
In performing this miracle though, Jesus highlights the dramatic contrast between the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of light, and the Kingdom of this world, a kingdom of darkness.
This passage helps us a Christians to see that God is working in seemingly small and insignificant ways to build His Kingdom.
10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” 13 And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. 14 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.” 15 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? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” 17 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. 18 He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” 20 And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”
I want to point us back for a moment to remember what is happening.
51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
Jesus eyes are set on Jerusalem, ultimately set on the cross.
He knows where he is heading.
If you read ahead a little
33 Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’
We must keep this in mind as we read these sections of text.
Jesus is progressing towards His destiny on Calvary.
It is on the way there that these encounters are taking place.
Jesus is teaching once again in a synagogue on the Sabbath as was his custom.
This goes all the way back to Lk 4.
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.
Jesus didn’t wake up each Sabbath morning and say I wonder if I should go to Synagogue today.
Like perhaps we do with our going to church on Sunday -
Jesus made it a point to go.
It was an important part of His schedule.
This Synagogue visit is a significant one though
This is Jesus final occasion teaching in a Synagogue on the Sabbath.
There is a reason for this, opposition to Jesus has been on the rise from the religious leaders.
And this here is the last time that we see Jesus welcomed into a Jewish synagogue to teach.
At the end of this section, we find the woman who has healed overjoyed,
the synagogue ruler and Jesus opponents completely humiliated,
and the the people rejoicing at the glorious things that Jesus was doing.
I would like to remind us as well this morning that while helpful at times, the titles and paragraph breaks are not inspired by God.
These breaks are judgments made by translators.
And depending on the translation you are reading, this is broken into two or even three paragraphs.
That does us a bit of disservice as we try to make sense of what this section is about.
The breaks can cause us to easily lose the theme running through.
It is not necessarily irrelevant or wrong to, for instance look at the parable of the Mustard Seed by itself, but we would lose something if we did.
The same is true if we only were to look at this incident that occured on the Sabbath and not the parables that Jesus told that followed.
Looking at one we say this is about the use and abuse of the Sabbath, if we look at just the parables we must ask, what is the point of these random sayings floating in the wind?
These sections are clearly connected.
Jesus is teaching in one of the synagogues.
Not a specific place.
There was a woman.
We don’t know her name, only that shed had had a disabling spirit for 18 years.
She was known locally, but likely did not travel outside of her town.
A small place, and insignificant woman.
It kind of feels like we have been here before - that’s because we have been in a similar place.
The miracle
The miracle
This woman had a severe condition that had been crippling to her for the past 18 years.
The language that is used to describe her physical condition is quite interesting.
A woman who had a disabling spirit.
And in verse 16, Jesus refers to her as a daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound for 18 years.
Luke as a doctor is describing the physical condition, but also noting that in this case there is satanic activity woven in as well.
Be this direct activity of Satan, or another result of this fallen world because of Satan’s temptation in the Garden, the point is not what Satan has done, but what Jesus is doing.
Jesus mission statement he gave back in chapter 4.
18 “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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
As Jesus said, this was being fulfilled in their hearing.
Who took initiative in this situation?
Jesus -
He sees this woman
He calls her over to Him.
He touches her.
Jesus takes initiative to straighten this women out.
While not the main point of this passage it is significant to note that Jesus does this for us.
He always sees us.
But he also calls us to himself, that is always the first step.
When we trust in Him - He touches our lives - and begins to make them straight.
Just as the woman was completely unable to help herself, so are we unable to help ourselves.
Without Jesus, our lives are as crooked as this woman’s back.
But His intervention causes us to stand upright.
What a wonder it is that we have an initiative-taking God!
Were that not the fact, where would we be?
Where would I be if Jesus didn’t love me?
Where would I be if Jesus didn’t care?
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The miracle is the transformation of a woman’s life.
A miracle that can happen for you as well if it has not already.
Jesus can transform your life.
All He asks is that you place your faith and trust in Him!
The rub
The rub
That’s all well and good but there is a rub.
The ruler of the synagogue becomes indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.
He says 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. (14)
Jesus has repeatedly assaulted their Sabbath sensibilities.
He knew that if He was going to bring them to understand their true spiritual condition,
He had to unmask the hypocrisy of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath was a sign between the Lord and the nation of Israel—the sign of the Old Covenant (the Law)—
that they might know He is the Lord Who sanctifies them, sets them apart.
Israel was to observe the Sabbath because it was holy, set apart, for them.
The one who profaned the Sabbath, did not treat it as holy, was put to death.
The Sabbath, the seventh day, was to be a day of complete rest.
Israel was to keep it throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.
After the people returned from captivity, the school of the Pharisees arose.
And through them a legalistic practice of Sabbatical observances took root.
In place of the joy, they imposed upon the people the yoke of slavish sabbatarianism which made the Sabbath an END instead of a MEANS.
The Sabbath was the goal, not a reminder of God’s intervention in their lives.
This directly affected their worship of God.
Placing greater stress upon a ceremonial obedience to mere human regulations rather than upon God's commands in the Law.
Some of their ridiculous Sabbath prohibitions included: walking in the grass on the Sabbath because its bruising effect would constitute a kind of threshing;
wearing nailed shoes because they would be viewed as carrying a burden.
Jesus kept the Sabbath in the highest sense of the term but fought against the absurdity of what the Pharisees were imposing on the people.
He taught us that acts of necessity and mercy are to be performed always (as in this story in Lk 13:10-17), even on the Sabbath,
But also that worldly occupations were to be put as far as possible out of our thoughts.
In the church today we gather on the first day of the week, not as a Sabbath, but as a commemoration of the resurrection of Christ.
As Christ followers today, we do what we are instructed in the NT.
Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial, sacrificial part of the Old Testament law when He died on the cross (Hebrews 10:7-10).
He told Peter that the dietary laws no longer applied to the church (Acts 10).
True believers keep the moral part of God’s laws as they live by His Spirit.
For us, keeping a Sabbath is a matter of principle, not of command.
God rested on the seventh day of creation and as well ought to work an intentional time of rest into our schedules.
This religious leader, rather than seeking to bring this woman to God, was instead employing rules to segregate her from the very help she truly needed.
Religion does that, apart from Jesus.
Legalism gives a bunch of rules you have to follow when what God is wanting from us is a relationship.
The Pharisees created and followed rules for rules sake, thinking they would get closer to God if they kept them.
When what God wants is a relationship built on trust.
God has graciously made a way for us to have this relationship through Jesus.
What He calls us to do is to be trustworthy people.
Loving Him, and loving those around us.
Jesus though wanted this religious leader, and the others there to know that even on the Sabbath day, it is the right day for the redemptive purpose of God.
Jesus is going about Kingdom business.
Showing us our hopeless and helpless state.
The Good Shepherd reaches down to the sheep that are clearly unable to help themselves.
That is why there are some sitting in churches that are not Christians.
Because although they have a veneer of religious belief, like this synagogue ruler, they have not recognized their hopelessness and helplessness.
Jesus comes in order to reach down and touch those who recognize their helplessness and their hopelessness.
That’s why as well so often it takes true brokenness to truly come into a relationship with Jesus.
Everything is life has been put together, in order, on point so that you guard against every being hopeless or helpless.
You may hear solid preaching, some might affect you, other parts annoy you, maybe sleeping through some bits.
Change does not occur.
Like this synagogue ruler, so many in churches are self-experts.
Helping themselves.
When what is really required is bowing down and admitting hopelessness and helplessness.
So many people are simply caught up in the idea of Jesus.
I like Christian ethics.
I like the idea of getting our country back to where it needs to be.
That’s not the message of the kingdom though.
The message of the Kingdom is that Jesus comes to the broken.
He comes at unexpected times to unexpected people, and he does unexpected things.
In this passage we find a wide variety of priorities and attitudes in people that are found in our own lives today.
A sick woman,
a sensitive Savior,
the synagogue's ruler,
and a smiling crowd
all reveal their priorities by their attitudes, actions, and articulation as a crooked woman was straightened out by Jesus.
From all these different personalities, we learn what is truly important and what to avoid.
Your priorities will determine the decisions you make each day.
They will influence your behavior and how you treat other people.
What is important to the Lord is what He shows through the two parable He shares in connection to this event.
The mustard seed and the Leaven.
We know it is connected because what word is at the beginning of verse 18 - therefore!
What is it there for?
These parables are there to express Jesus intention.
There is a direct connection between what has happened here and the questions Jesus asks next.
Jesus uses the event to gain focused attention and asks -
What is the kingdom of God like?
What shall I compare it to?
19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
Mustard was the tiniest seed that farmers sowed in ancient Israel, with a diameter of barely one millimeter.
This parable draws an implied contrast between the small size of the seed and the large size of the plant that it produces.
At first the mustard plant of the Middle East looks more or less like a bush, but it grows to a height of anywhere between eight and twelve feet tall.
This is hardly what anyone would expect simply from looking at the seed.
Nevertheless, mustard has branches big enough for birds to come and make their nests.
As small as it is, the seed grows up to become a significant tree.
Mustard Tree
The second parable comes from the daily routine of baking bread, such as Jesus undoubtedly had observed in Mary’s kitchen. He asked
20 And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”
Like the mustard seed, the parable of the leaven starts with something that seems insignificant.
All the woman adds to her dough is a little bit of yeast, or a lump of leaven from an old batch of bread.
As it gets mixed in, the leaven quickly becomes totally invisible.
Yet it will still have its effect: overnight, the dough will grow.
On this occasion, the woman was making a very large amount of bread; three measures is about fifty pounds of flour—enough to feed one hundred fifty people.
But even a small amount of active yeast culture will cause that much dough to rise, leavening many loaves of bread
Jesus asks these rhetorical questions and gives pictures that the people could visualize in their minds.
The smallest kind of seed sown by farmers, yet a seed which in a very short time would grow to be the biggest of all plants grown from seed.
The picture of the birds finding a place to perch in it is probably an Old Testament allusion to the universal appeal of the gospel and the nature of God’s kingdom.
If you go back in the Old Testament
22 Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23 On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest.
The picture of the yeast:
not only externally will the kingdom embrace all nations, but internally, it will transform the whole of human life.
She mixed this yeast “into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
Jesus is teaching here that the kingdom of God will, outwardly and inwardly, be brought to a glorious conclusion,
even though its beginning was insignificant,
and even though the opposition to it was severe—
even in the experience of the moment in which Jesus was teaching.
This is the opposite of what we would expect to hear about with the coming kingdom of God.
When someone is starting a business, trying to get investors, they don’t use small miniscule things.
They make it big, they make it grand, to entice the investors to buy in.
We often like to think about the church this way as well.
Do things big, make a grand show.
But -
God’s kingdom is made known in seemingly small and insignificant acts.
Like the restoration of this disabled woman.
Until we really understand that we are tempted to run around and establish kingdoms in our own strength, in our own ingenuity.
That is why as well, our little church here in Drummond Mt is such a big deal.
God can make such a great impact through us, here, in this place.
An impact greater than we will ever know.
A little leaven penetrates the whole loaf!
The kind of intervention which took place in this woman’s life is the kind of intervention that many of us this morning need:
that we need to come to Christ at his call,
that he may lay his powerful hand upon us, straighten us up, and make us those who praise God.
We need to learn as well as those who follow Jesus, and particularly those of us who are directly involved in the work of the church -
That God really does work in ways that are small and apparently inconsequential.
For the purpose of establishing His kingdom.
God is at work in this small community.
It may feel at times as though there is nothing happening.
God chooses to use some of the most unlikely places and the most unlikely people
in a most unlikely way in order that everybody, including the people used, will know,
‘This has to be God and his kingdom, because it surely isn’t us.