Sunday Delight

Luke 13:10-17, Proper 16, Year C

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Will peace be with you? Let's pray. Father, may your will be done. Jesus, may your word be proclaimed. And Spirit, may your work be accomplished in us, we pray. Amen. Well, this is, I don't know why Bill told me to good luck on my sermon today. I don't know if it's because we come to a hard gospel lesson or what, or if he was just saying, hey, good luck. But it is a good lesson that we get to learn today because the whole subject is around Sabbath and places of worship. But to better understand what is taking place here and what Luke would like for you to figure out is that there are four occasions in his gospel, in Luke's gospel, that he references Jesus specifically teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. There are only four of them. And the last one is our gospel lesson for today. And the last one here with the woman bent double over, this is the only one that Luke records. The other gospels leave that out. So Luke, I'm going to go through a survey of these four episodes in his gospel so that we might understand what it is that Jesus is doing here and what we are to learn about Sabbath and even these places of worship known as the synagogue. The first encounter we get is fresh and hot right when Jesus begins his ministry. He's found in the synagogue. They hand him a scroll of Isaiah and he reads this scroll of Isaiah. And this is what he reads according to the gospel of Luke. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and free freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn. Then Jesus takes this scroll, hands it back over to the president of the synagogue, and he sits down, and people were amazed. And it's this first instance that Luke gives us, I think, that tells us what all the other episodes are going to be about. The second episode of Jesus being in the synagogue on the Sabbath teaching is when he encounters an unclean spirit in a man. And he calls to the man, and he frees the man from the unclean spirit, and the man is set free, and he ends up glorifying God. The third episode is a man with a withered hand. Again, Jesus is in the synagogue on the Sabbath teaching, and there is a man with a withered hand. And we're told that the Pharisees are looking at him as an opportunity. Will he heal on the Sabbath? Because they want to entrap him. They want to catch him doing something that he should not be doing so that they can minimize his ministry and his impact on the people. But Jesus, knowing that they were looking for him, the occasion of him healing, he heals the man with the withered hand. The man glorifies and worships God. Now we come to the fourth episode. This woman, for 18 years... has been bent over. She's been made weak by this evil spirit that's been in her. So that is the cause of her being doubled over. She is not able to stand erect for 18 years. Nothing in the synagogue, nothing in their practices of worship has been able to heal her or cause her to stand like all the rest of them. So Jesus calls to her, lays his hand on her, And she immediately stands erect and begins to glorify and worship God. And so end all the episodes of Jesus being in the synagogue, on the Sabbath, teaching. And I think if we were to survey all four of those, we learn in the first situation of what Jesus has come to do. To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. but not just to proclaim it, but to also demonstrate how it is the power of the kingdom of God, which he says he is bringing in his hands, brings power of healing and is able to make people fully experience Sabbath rest and for them to be able to delight by worshiping God. And that's what we learn. And that's the whole instance of where our gospel lesson is today. For 18 years, the synagogues, the places of worship, were restraining something that they have been entrusted with. They were restraining Sabbath rest from people who could not experience full rest. And we're given this in this whole gospel account when Jesus heals her on the Sabbath so that she can actually find rest from being enslaved to the evil spirit, that she could finally stand tall and worship and glorify God instead of he does this so that she can experience that because she hasn't been able to, though she continues to come to the synagogue to find this hope from being set free from her affliction. And we can see why she hasn't been able to find it in the synagogue. It's because this president of the synagogue, this official, he's chastising Jesus from working on the Sabbath. Because the Pharisees and the whole Jewish religion has made up restrictions and boundaries that are misguided and misplaced. Out of all the commandments, we're told don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't, don't, don't. Except for one time, you're told do. Do Sabbath. And it's just not you taking Sabbath, which you ought to do. But it's also making sure that you are loving your neighbor in such a way that you are loving your neighbor as yourself and you will do something to help them Sabbath along with you. But because of all the restrictions that the Pharisees placed on Sabbath and all their don'ts about Sabbath, they forget that they ought to be doing Sabbath and allowing others to do Sabbath as well. And this is exactly Jesus's point that lead the whole entire crowd to glorify God. Is that Jesus comes into these places of worship to teach what is right. but not only to teach what is right, but to do also what is right. And this isn't just for Jesus to do, but it continues on. His ministry, his declarations, and his demonstrations continue on through his church, his bride. That's what we've been commissioned to do. And what's really interesting and what's more informative is that this lady, this old woman who has been oppressed and afflicted for 18 years, is sandwiched in between two parables that speak to the reality of the places of worship in Jesus' day and what he is seeking to do in them and through them. This part of the sandwich is a parable about a tree, a fig tree that's in the midst of a vineyard. And the man who owns the vineyard comes and he looks at the fig tree and it sees that it's not producing any fruit. Matter of fact, he goes so far as to say, vineyard keeper, come here. I don't even know why this tree is even here. It bears no fruit. It's taking up wasted space. I want you to cut it down, get rid of it. And the vineyard keeper says, let me dig around it. Let me fertilize it. And let's see if it'll produce fruit over the next year. And if it doesn't, then let's remove it. And the man says, fine. And that parable, is the beginning of what you're about to see with the woman. Is that the synagogue offered nothing. It actually restrained her from being able to experience Sabbath rest and delighting in God because of her affliction. It had no power. It was fruitless to do anything for her. And then Jesus comes and he digs around it and he fertilizes it with his word in his hand. And she sprouts up stands erect, and the fruit of her mouth is glorifying God in true, delightful worship. So Jesus is saying, I'm transforming these places of worship to be more fruitful, and it will be so fruitful. He goes into the other parables. He says, it'll be so fruitful that it'll be like this, that the kingdom of God will be like this, That it will be like a mustard seed. It's just thrown out onto the ground. The smallest of all seeds. And it will grow up into a massive tree for birds to come and find their place in it. More than that, it'll be like leaven that you cast into measures of flour. And that leaven will work in through all the flour till all the flour is leavened. He says the kingdom of God will be like that. The woman that he heals, the woman that stands erect glorifying God is but one woman. And yet she stands glorifying God, delighting and offering her worship for the first time, being freed from Christ. And all the rest of the crowd is moved by it. That even the naysayers of the president of the synagogue who is trying to chastise Jesus Christ for healing on the Sabbath recognizes that they are humiliated and that Jesus is, they marvel at Jesus and the great things that he is doing. He goes, it's like that. From one being set free to fully experience Sabbath rest and to experience Sabbath rest by delighting and worshiping in God for the first time, that will be the most contagious thing in all the world. It'll be so contagious. It'll be stronger than COVID. spreading from one person to the other. The kingdom is like that. The kingdom is so contagious that when authentic and genuine believers in Jesus who are truly delighting and Sabbathing in Jesus, it'll be contagious. And people want that. And it'll grow massively. And birds will come and find their home there. This teaches us about Sabbath. What is Sabbath? But in delighting in God. That's what Sabbath rest means. See, God Sabbaths. So it's just not about resting from work because we're tired and we're weary. That just can't be Sabbath because God Sabbaths and God never gets tired and weary. So what is it that God is doing when he Sabbaths but delighting in what he made? that informs us on how we Sabbath, which is to delight in who made us, God. And how can we show him our delight? We show him by gathering together to worship him rightly with a pure heart. And so as we gather here for this hour and a half, when we come into this place of worship, this should be our Sabbath. This should be the day, the Lord's day, where we proclaim the favorable year of the Lord amongst us and in our world, where we come here together and say, you know what? I'm going to cease from everything else I'm connected to in this life and demonstrate for one day that I ultimately delight in God. Everything else pales in comparison, and I find my rest in my delight and my joy only in one thing, and that's God. And I demonstrate this by presenting myself in worship, where I lift up my voice like this woman does, having experienced the power of the kingdom through Jesus Christ and declare his excellencies and to give him glory. Do we believe this? Do we honestly, genuinely find that this is the place where we can most Sabbath and rest? Or do we find other things that we can't cease from doing because we think they afford us more rest and joy and delight than being here? Do you echo what the psalmist writes when he says, better is one day in his courts than thousands elsewhere. Can we be honest and say probably not as much as we should? I'll confess that to you. Maybe you're better than me. I have been trying to work this idea of Sabbath in my own life and in my own home, and I don't do a great job of it, but I am trying to make this moment where you guys gather, where we, the true family, gather together and we worship together, as the example of how much I delight in what Jesus has done for me. I don't like to miss being with you because I'm trying to place my faith in the belief that if I'm with you and we're together worshiping, that that is going to bring more joy and delight and rest in my life than sitting on my couch, zoning out and watching a movie. Some days I just want to do that. When it really... Just need to open those doors, call you guys up and say, I got a Sabbath in the Lord because I'm tempted to Sabbath over here. But God calls me to cease from this and to come and delight in him. And I have to believe that he is the most delightful thing, that in delighting and worshiping him does something to me, does something for me and draws me near to him. So we have to learn these lessons about Sabbath. We have to really grasp what Sabbath truly is. And if I want that for myself, then I want that for you. It's not that I'm trying to force you to do something you don't want to do, but I am trying to force you to do something that Christ says is the best for us. And I want to do it together. And I don't want to fake our way from it or through it. I want to teach my son that there's going to be a lot of cool things in life that he will get to experience. He will get to experience football games on Friday night where you eat pork nachos from the concession stand and yell at the top of your lungs for the Aggies. Oh, it's so much fun. I want him to experience going to Neyland Stadium and rooting and singing Rocky Top to the top of his lungs. I want him to experience that. It's a lot of fun. I want him to experience just the complete and utter delight it is for a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie to be dunked in cold raw whole milk and it just like light up your life when you eat it. I want him to enjoy these things. I want him to appreciate just the smoked meat, a pulled pork or brisket or all those things that I delight in. I want to pass it on to my son. But more importantly than all of that, and I need you all to help me do this for my little beau and every little child here, is that can we communicate that all that stuff, which is so good that we kind of spend all our six and seven days doing, that the one thing that matters the most and is the most delightful thing is being together with his people on the Lord's day and worshiping. That's what I really want. And I'm imperfect at doing it. But nonetheless, I feel that we all need to be doing that. It's figuring out our own lives and orienting our whole schedules and lives around believing that that is true because that is what is being declared by the scriptures. that there is no better place than being with God's people on his day and worshiping him, not in how you think you need to worship, but how he tells you to come and approach him in right ways. Matter of fact, I think this promise, even though it's in the Old Testament, still rings true in Jesus Christ. So listen to these words. This is our Old Testament reading. Listen to him carefully. If because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable and actually honor it, desisting from all your ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own words, then you will take delight in the Lord. And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. If you do that, You do that. Jesus says, I promise you, I'll make you ride upon the heights of the earth and you will find a light in me. If you do Sabbath and you commit yourself to seeing to it that your neighbor gets to do Sabbath, it'll work. Because the Lord said so. So would you guys join me in trying to create patterns in our own lives to where we can, because of Sabbath, ride on the heights of the earth and truly find delicious delight in the Lord. To where he becomes your prize and your treasure that you're willing to sell all that you have in order just to buy him. Can we hear a fair view? Just be that small mustard seed. I don't care if it's just a couple of you. I'm not worried about that because I really believe that it just can take one person to authentically and genuinely delight in the Lord and it'll become contagious. But if we all can do that here together, together, not alone, but together, that we might see here in Fairview the place of worship where people could come in and flock to and find their home, where they can find the delight and the joy and the rest they've all been looking for but in all the wrong places. But we can't get others to do that if we're not doing it ourselves. So may you truly come to Sabbath for yourself and may you truly desire to have others Sabbath along with you so that we all together get to delight in the Lord. Let's pray.