Kingdom Come
Luke 13:10-21 ·January 28, 2024· Joel Passmore
Part of: Luke
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This passage, the good news of this passage just leaps off the page. I'm really excited about what God has for us today in this particular text. As we start, I want to bring up the word expectations. Expectations has a really profound influence on how we experience life.
And here's just a couple examples. Do you remember when things would take a week, maybe two weeks to be delivered? You would order something and you'd be, you know, I mean, I remember being a kid and ordering something from a magazine or something, some toy, and it would be like six to eight weeks delivery. And you'd be like, okay, well, buckle in for six to eight weeks. Now, if Amazon says, you know, your delivery has been delayed, instead of tomorrow it's going to be the next day, you're like, what?
What is wrong with these people? Um, websites used to take up, up to a minute to load. That's crazy to think of now. If they're, if they're not there in like five seconds, you start tapping your phone angrily, you know? Um, your, our, our expectations, when, when, when things get faster, the expectations for everything else in our life goes up. We start expecting that everywhere. On the other side, too much disappointment leaves us cynical. We start saying, well, things aren't going to change.
Nothing's going to happen. We start, we stop looking for things to happen. We stop hoping. It's incredibly difficult to be both hopeful and patient at the same time. Incredibly difficult to be both hopeful and patient. And the same, the same could be said about our spiritual life. That's why today's passage is such good news for us. It's so helpful. Ministry of Jesus through the Spirit is so clear in this passage for us. The things that Jesus says and does here, they've got a common thread, and that is the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God. As the word goes forth today, I, my prayer for me and for you is that the Spirit would help us to be both more hopeful and more patient about the coming of God's kingdom in us and around us. So with that being said, let's go to God's word. Let's be attentive to it. Let's receive it as it is, God's holy, infallible, perfect word, capable of piercing down to the very bones that we have, opening us up, changing us, and working on us.
So let's receive the ministry of the Spirit through the word. This is Luke 13, starting in verse 10. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for 18 years. She was bent over, could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, woman, you are freed from your disability. And he laid his hands on her. And immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.
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. 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 a way to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?
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. He said, therefore, what is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? 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. And again he said, to what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.
Pray with me. Lord God, change us by your word. Open our eyes to see you more clearly today. Jesus, show us the nature of the kingdom. Give us hope. Give us patience as we seek to be people of the kingdom. Lord, do great works in us and through us, and we know that you will because you've promised to do that. Jesus, we pray this in your name.
Kingdom come. God's redeeming work has small beginnings, but great endings. Now, I want to be sure we know what the kingdom is as we get started. There's a couple things I want to say to start here, and the first is that don't think of the kingdom as an institution. The kingdom is manifested primarily through the people of God. In all the earth, in all history, that is the primary manifestation of the kingdom of God, is the people that God has called to himself, and is working in and redeeming.
The other thing I want to say is, that being said, this passage and this text and this sermon has a lot of hope to offer you, a lot to teach you about the kingdom, if you are a person of the kingdom, if you're a person who's here and you're still on the outside of the kingdom, you're like, I'm hearing about this, I'm hearing about Jesus, I'm intrigued a little bit, but I'm just not sure that I really want to be a part of that. I'm not sure that Jesus really is who he said he was.
I just want to offer you an invitation to listen. Does anything here in this passage, in this sermon, does it tug on the deep longings that you have? Just consider it. Consider this to be an invitation into the kingdom of God, through repentance and faith in Jesus. So let's dive in here. The first thing about the kingdom is kingdom power. Jesus went to the synagogue, as he usually did. He went to the synagogue and he had a purpose. He had a purpose in mind.
There would have been anywhere from 100 to 300 people in a synagogue, depending on the size of the town. Synagogue meeting would have been a lot like our church meetings, actually. There would have been singing, there would have been readings from the scripture, there would have been teachings from the scripture. People gathering, just like we do, to hear from the Lord. But Jesus was thinking about one woman in particular. Now to grasp how significant this healing is, we need to focus on the woman for just a few minutes.
Okay? Think about her. Picture her in your mind. Luke says she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. She had been afflicted like this for 18 years. That is a long, that is a long time. If you've ever had back issues, you know, every little movement reminds you that your back is not working right. Even ordinary movements around the house, getting in and out of the car. Everything depends on your back. So she probably shuffles around.
She can't lift anything. She can't eat or drink properly. Imagine me trying to drink this water. This is turning out to be a good illustration. Imagine trying to drink your whole life. Well, not your whole life, but 18 years. Hunched over. It's longer than some people's lives here, that's true. Hunched over. You can't eat or drink properly. You can't do any ordinary thing without being reminded that you are afflicted with this. Her joints are under constant stress.
If you're not walking properly, if you're not standing straight up, it puts stress on your hips, on your knees, on other parts of your body. It has radiated to other parts of her body now. 18 years of this. But think about her social life. There's people around her. She probably can't even look them in the eye most of the time. She's looking at the ground.
She can't always see who's talking to her. She feels isolated, probably. Ashamed, probably. That she looks this way. That she acts this way. That she's different. Visibly different than everyone around her all the time.
I'm sure when this first struck her, her neighbors were sympathetic. But 18 years is a long time. Are they still sympathetic towards her? Has anyone ever said that thing to her? Are you still dealing with that? If you have something chronic and you've had something for a while, you know that sometimes that comment comes. And that comment hurts. Are you still dealing with that? Sympathy can run out. The physical toll, the social toll, it leads to an emotional toll.
Loneliness. The confusion. Will this ever get better? Is this ever going to change? The question. Why is this happening to me? Why is it happening to me, God?
She might not know, but we do. Right? Because Luke tells us. She had a disabling spirit. Now he's not just being colorful. Jesus himself said, Satan has bound her. For 18 years. There is a spiritual affliction happening here. She's a victim of spiritual oppression. An evil spirit has seized her body. And has afflicted her for 18 years. And yet, this wonderful woman has endured.
She managed to get to the synagogue that day. Isn't that amazing? She got there. I don't know how long it took her. What it took for her to get there. Maybe she had to be led by the hands. I don't know. But she made it there that day. That's amazing. That she is persisting with this affliction. Maybe she did it every week. Maybe she came because Jesus was there. But regardless, this is where her story takes a turn. Because Jesus is there and he sees her.
Now let's take our attention to Jesus now and see what he does. The first thing that he does is he sees her. Her affliction catches his attention. She might not have even been able to lift her head. To look at him. But he's looking at her. His eyes are trained on her. I see you. I see you, daughter. Then he calls her forward. Maybe she was in the back. Maybe she was trying to stay hidden. Come up front. I want to talk to you today.
He takes the initiative. She didn't ask him to do anything. He says, come up front. I've got something for you. He calls her over to him and then he sets her free. He sets her free. I love the way Luke phrases this. The way Jesus says it. You are freed. You're set free. Somehow that word is even more impactful than you are healed. You're free. First he pronounces it. Woman, you are freed from your disability and then he enacts it with touch. It would have been somewhat socially taboo for an unmarried man to touch a woman who he was not married to.
But he does it anyway. And immediately, she straightens up and is made straight. This is more than a healing. This is healing plus. Because he is liberating her body from an evil force that has been afflicting her. It's like healing with a special sauce on it or something. It is more than just a healing. It is spiritual liberation. He has set her free from whatever demon has been afflicting her. Now listen, deep inside of us there is a longing for a hero.
Look at all, I mean you could lose count of all the hero movies that have been made. All the action movies where there is a hero. We're all looking for someone who sees our distress, who has real power, and who uses it to set us free. Think of all the movies that have been made where that's the central premise. Jesus is saying, I'm the one you've been looking for. All these stories that you write, you're looking for me. I'm the hero. I'm the one that has the power that sees your distress and that moves towards you, calls you over, and sets you free.
So I want to pause. We're going to do an application for each section here. Here's the application for this section. Remember, that God's power is greater than your bentness. God's power is greater than your bentness. Everyone is bent in some way. Everyone. Me, you, people out there.
We live in a fallen world. Other people hurt us. Nature itself goes haywire. Satan and his legions attack us spiritually. And of course, there is our old self still in us, being slowly killed by the spirit, but still rising up occasionally. Our natural disposition away from God rises up and does things. The impact of all of these things inside us and outside us is a bentness. Things about us that are out of shape that don't align with God's intent for us.
The work of Jesus is to make straight that which is bent. I'm going to say it again. The work of Jesus is to make straight that which is bent. And hallelujah. That is good news. Sometimes Jesus walked up to people and he said, what do you want me to do for you?
Now listen, if Jesus walked in that door today and took you aside in the hallway and said, child, what do you want me to do for you? What would you say to him?
Now the truth is is that all of us ought to have a quick answer to that question. I'm not trying to shame you. I'm trying to encourage you now. I'm trying to encourage you to think about it. Think about what you would say to Jesus because those should be your prayers. Because you can go to Jesus every day and say, Lord, this is the way that I'm bent. I'm asking for you to make me straight.
If Jesus called you out into the hallway and said, what do you want me to do for you? I hope you'd be quick to say, Jesus, my knee has been bothering me for years ever since I got injured playing football when I was a kid. I hope you'd say, I get these terrible migraines, Jesus. I want it to stop. But I hope you wouldn't stop there. I hope you would say, Jesus, I've got real anger issues.
I hope you'd say, Jesus, I'm struggling with anxiety and depression. I hope you'd say, Jesus, I've got this addiction. I need freedom from that addiction.
Now, Jesus is not Santa Claus. But He is a healer and a deliverer. That's who He is. He's a healer and a deliverer and His intent is to heal and deliver people.
If you belong to Him by repentance and faith, that good word is for you. And He's told us to ask. He's told us to ask. He's called us to hope, to know and believe that He has healing and deliverance for us. We don't know when, but it's His purpose for us. There is nothing among His people and in creation that is bent that He will not straighten someday.
If Jesus is your Savior, one sentence you should banish from your mind and from your mouth is, I'll never change. Don't think it. Kick it out of your mind. That's the evil one lying to you. Don't believe that.
You will change because God is working in you. It is going to happen. You might not know when, but you don't have to wonder about the if. So don't lie to yourself that you'll never change.
Take those things. Make a list. Go to God often and say, God, here are the things I'm praying for release for. These are the ways that I'm bent. And I'm asking you to straighten me out. Please. Here it is. I'm coming to you. I'm trying to be faithful and ask you. Because I believe that you're the same savior and healer and deliverer that walked into that synagogue that day and straightened that woman out after 18 years. You're my savior too. Okay, let's go on to the second thing.
Kingdom priorities. Kingdom priorities. A woman who is held captive and disabled for 18 years has just been set free. It's amazing, right? The whole synagogue should have just been whooping and hollering. But the ruler of the synagogue is indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. Now listen, God rested from his work on the seventh day. After creation, he told his people to rest from their work. Be like me, God says. I rested on the seventh day.
You rest on the seventh day. Rest from your work. There were only a few things that he told them explicitly not to do. Healing was not one of them that he told them not to do. Okay? But now this guy is lecturing the people. There are six days in which work ought to be done. those days and be healed and not on the Sabbath day. He doesn't have the humility or the courage to bring his confusion, his objection to Jesus. He turns to the people. Lectures them.
He chastises them. The woman, remember, she didn't come to the synagogue and ask for healing. Jesus did it on his own. But he's just lecturing them. The bigger problem is that this is a ruler of the synagogue, a teacher of the people, and he has no idea what the Sabbath is really for. He doesn't have a clue. So Jesus takes him to school. Verse 15, Jesus says, look, you take care of your animals, don't you? You're perfectly fine untying your ox or your donkey on the Sabbath leading them to the water.
And here is a person made in the image of God. She is bound to, and you say, wait until tomorrow. Religion, untethered from the heart of God, always turns cruel and callous. Religion, untethered from the heart of God, will always turn cruel and callous. And that's what's happened here. The great irony is that the Sabbath was intended to remind people that God had lifted their burdens, and here was this guy putting more burdens on people on the Sabbath.
Back in Exodus, God said this, above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, listen to this, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. That's what it's for, that you may know that I have done something for you. I've called you out, I've set you apart, I've made you clean. The message of the Sabbath was you don't provide for yourself, God provides for you. Take a break from your work.
Rest and remember what God has done for you. Remember your core identity, that you are not a self-sufficient individual. You are called to be a God-reliant person that's a member of a community.
For that reason, healing is not just permitted on the Sabbath, it's the perfect day for it. It's the perfect day for it. Jesus says in verse 16, ought not this woman, ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? What better way to rest in your relationship with God than to receive healing from Him?
So here's the application for this section. Align your Sabbath practices with God's purposes. The Sabbath is made for us. The Sabbath day is for us. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That means God put together the Sabbath to give to us. He didn't contort us to fit into His Sabbath. He gives it to us. It was made for us. He put it together. It's a gift. But listen, it's not a gift like cash. It's more like being given a catalog and being told, pick out a few items for yourself.
Go ahead, pick out a few things. Let me explain the difference. On Sundays, we tend to think and I feel like this is probably pretty accurate to say because I think this too, we tend to think finally a day to myself. I can do whatever I want. That's the cash mentality. God's given us a wad of cash and we can just spend it however we want. That's not the best way to think of it. Instead, the best way to think of it is a day to celebrate how good it is to belong to Him.
That's thinking of it like it's a catalog that He's given you. And He says, pick a few things out. Anything you want. Pick some things out for yourself. There are so many ways each Sunday to acknowledge that God is our provider and our redeemer. So many ways to rest in that truth. Sunday is a day to stop your work and get creative. How can I celebrate today that I belong to God? That He provides for me, that He redeems me. There are so many ways to do that.
And ministering healing to someone is just one example. Okay. Third section. Last section. Kingdom progress. So we learned about kingdom power, kingdom priorities, and now kingdom progress. Everyone is now paying attention to Jesus. Right? He's just put this synagogue ruler in His place. He's healed this woman. Everyone is focused on Jesus and He tells the people two parables to help explain the kingdom of God. The first compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed sowed in a garden.
A mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds around. Here's a picture of it. Pretty small, huh? Tiny. Not much bigger than a grain of sand. Sitting on the end of your finger. It looks pretty small. It looks insignificant. And imagine for a second that you didn't know anything about horticulture or biology or how a plant grows. You're looking at that. There is nothing in that picture that makes you think it's going to become a tree, right? It doesn't look like a miniature tree.
It's just a little round, wrinkled little ball. What? A tree's going to come from that? But when it's sowed in the ground, look at what it becomes. That's a mustard tree. It doesn't just grow, it transforms. From this little round object to this big tree. 10 to 12 feet high. So big, you can see there's shade, there's places for birds to make their nests in, they can take a break from flying around in the desert, they can get some shade, they can make a home.
Jesus is saying that the things of the kingdom, they often start small. They look strange. They look insignificant. They look, they bear little to no resemblance to what they're going to become. Right?
And yet, kingdom seeds turn into kingdom places that are big and strong. A place to be home. A place to be rest. The second parable of the yeast worked into flour. If you've made bread, you know that a little bit of yeast goes a long way. It does not take much yeast. In fact, you don't want to overproof your dough, right? That's a problem, right, Russell? You've got to have the right amount, but it does not take much. It's tiny. It's tiny. Just one percent of the weight of the flour is all it takes.
And once it's worked in, you can't see it, right? Once it's worked in, immediately when you finish working it through the dough, you can't see it in the dough. It looks like it's gone. It doesn't color the flour or the dough. It doesn't immediately change it. In fact, it doesn't look like it's doing much of anything. That lazy yeast.
Get to work. You're just staring at it. It's no different. If you've never done it before, you might think that you've done it wrong, right? You work it in and you're like, okay. It still just looks the same.
And yet it is different. The dough is now leavened. It looks like this, which means later it's going to rise. You don't have to do anything else to it. It just does it.
The work of the kingdom is often unnoticeable. It's often hidden. You can't always look with your eyes and see it. And yet it is pervasive. It spreads to everything. It influences everything. Like, just like the yeast, it doesn't take much of the kingdom to have a profound influence. I've read, sadly, that a lot of young people now when they're asked, what do you want to be when you grow up, the number one answer is an influencer. Well, I'm going to, you know what, I'm going to hang my hat on that for a second here.
Great, be an influencer. Be a follower of Christ. That's how you be an influencer. Because Jesus says it doesn't take much to have a pervasive, profound influence on everything around you. That yeast works through that dough and it's all leavened. It's not that this part is leavened and this part isn't. It's all leavened. It's all been changed. A little bit of God's work changes things dramatically.
So here's the application for this section. We have to receive the small beginnings of God's kingdom. Don't despise the small beginnings. Jesus tells these parables because he knows that we're impatient. He knows it. Sometimes when it comes to seeking the things of God, we're like the judges on one of those shows like America's Got Talent. We pay attention to the things of God. We seek them for a solid 20 or 30 seconds. If our socks aren't knocked off, we're like, meh, next.
I've tried reading the Bible. I've tried praying. I've tried sacrificially loving my spouse and my kids. It just didn't seem to make any difference. That's another sentence that the people of God should banish from their minds. It just didn't seem to make any difference. So I stopped.
The works of the kingdom always have small beginnings. They always look strange. They always look insignificant and small. They don't seem to match what we read in the Bible. Jesus, you said it was going to be like this, but this is what I've got? This is what you've done?
Jesus wants to give people a heads up. Yes, that's how the kingdom works. You can't recognize it right away. It looks small. At first glance, you might think nothing's happening and I might as well just throw this away. Jesus is saying, don't do it. Don't give up. Don't despise the small beginnings. It seems foolish to invest much time or energy when the results seem so meager, doesn't it? We're such a results-driven culture.
Jesus is urging us not to measure with our eyes, but to walk by faith, to keep seeking Him and His kingdom no matter how it appears. The small beginnings of faithful obedience, of abiding in Him should be received with joy because, friends, the endings of God's kingdom are great. The endings are great. That's what we look forward to. When Jesus died, it was alongside two criminals in an obscure city in a small little province of the Roman Empire.
Israel was nothing to speak of. They were an occupied nation, a tiny little fragment of the Roman Empire. Nobody was paying attention to them. Nobody outside of Jerusalem even knew that Jesus had died. Even when He was resurrected, the disciples were timid, few in number, huddled in a room, didn't know what to do. But the power of the kingdom had been unleashed in Jesus' death and resurrection. The good news of salvation began to spread first to Jerusalem and then to the surrounding areas and then to the whole world.
And yet even now, it can feel weak and foolish to follow Christ, right? You can go ahead and agree with that. I feel the same way. Sometimes it feels weak and foolish to follow Jesus, to seek Him instead of all of the things that the world seems to offer us. all the comforts, all the securities that seem to be there. To die to self and to live for Him, it doesn't make much sense unless you're convinced of what Paul says. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.
For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Church, someday there will be a visible kingdom where Jesus reigns and God is present, where all that was bent is made straight, where we worship and enjoy Him forever. Small beginnings will have great endings. It's the promise we have from God. Let's pray.
Lord, we walk by faith, not by sight. That is you know how hard that is for us, God. Sometimes we get really impatient and we are tempted to give up and other times, God, we just don't have much hope at all. There are places where we haven't been looking for your fruit and for your work in a while. We need to remember that you're the one that walked into that synagogue and made that woman straight again. Would you please help us, Lord, to walk by faith with hope and with patience.
Lord, we love you. Continue changing us. Remind us of the gospel hope, the power of the kingdom that is manifested through your death and resurrection, a power that is working in us right now that we can't see it and sometimes we can't feel it. Thank you, God, for these promises, for this good word, and we look forward to all of our bentness being made straight someday and we pray that in faith in your name, Jesus.