I love Luke verse 13. It says, "Immediately she straightened up and praised God." I don’t know what she said or sang; it just says she started praising God. If she were around today, maybe she would have sung, "Love lifted me, love lifted me! When nothing else could help, love lifted me."
Now, that leads us to your Life Lesson: When Jesus touches you, you’ll straighten up and praise God!
Maybe you feel the weight of the world has doubled you over. You feel bent out of shape because of the burdens you have to carry. Worry and anxiety can bend you over. Heartache, pain, frustration and suffering can bend you over. Some of you have lost your jobs; you’ve been hurt, abused or rejected; and it seems as if you can’t look up. You may be trapped in some sin or carrying around some deep, dark secret; and you feel bent out of shape. People say, "Just look up!" and your reply is, "I can’t!" They say, "Just shake it off!" You say, "I can’t!"
Jesus wants to do the same for you that He did for this woman. First, He sees you, and He knows your pain. You can hide your pain from others behind a smile, but Jesus sees you. Second, He calls you to Himself. "Come to me all you who labor and are bent over with care, and I’ll give you rest." Next, He speaks to you to let you know that you can be set free from your weakness.
Now, this poor woman was not the only crippled person there that day. We also see a man who was:
Bent Out of Shape by Religious Rules (Luke 13:14-16)
The poor woman who had been set free was praising the Lord, and all her friends were rejoicing and shouting, "Hallelujah, praise the Lord!" But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t stand it. This was out of the ordinary, and he didn’t like it one bit. He became indignant—bent all out of shape.
In the midst of the rejoicing, he jumped to his feet and ordered everyone to be quiet and stop rejoicing. Things were NOT going to get out of hand in HIS synagogue! He even quoted Exodus 20:9 to justify his action. There wasn’t going to be any healing in HIS synagogue on the Sabbath. No sir! It’s one thing to quote Scripture; it’s another thing to correctly apply it!
Apparently, the synagogue ruler had a few others who agreed with his action because Jesus addressed His words to a group. I like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The Message:
"You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?"
The Jews had made so many loopholes in the Sabbath laws, they had figured out a way to untie their livestock and lead them to water, even if the water was more than a Sabbath’s walk away. Jesus accused them of treating their animals better than they treated people!
Sadly, the descendants of this self-appointed religious expert are still with us today. These uptight folks are relying more on a set of strict religious rules than on a liberating, joyous relationship with God. They are often called legalists or religious traditionalists. You can usually spot them when other folks get happy in the Lord and start praising God. Like the man in our text, they are quick to complain. They still get upset when they see someone having a good time in the Lord. I guess it’s because they think religion ought to make you miserable; and if you are enjoying yourself, you can’t be very spiritual. Those who have been set free by Jesus are under the constant scrutiny of these legalists who are ready to condemn any unexpected exuberance.
It’s nothing new. It was happening 3,000 years ago. In 2 Samuel 6 there is an interesting story about King David. The Ark of God had been out of Jerusalem for a long time, and finally David arranged to have it brought back to the city of Jerusalem. As the priests were carrying the ark into the city, David got so excited that the Bible says he, "danced before the Lord with all his might!" I don’t know exactly what that means, except I suppose David was so full of joy he just got happy feet.
One of his wives, Michal, saw him and despised his behavior; she got all bent out of shape. She mocked him and, in words dripping with sarcasm, accused him of being "undignified." I love David’s reply. He didn’t let her rob his joy; he just said, "I will celebrate before the Lord and become even MORE undignified, because my dignity isn’t as important as celebrating the goodness of God" (2 Sam. 6:12-22).
Sam Jones was a Methodist Evangelist who lived and preached in the late 1800s. He was known to be extremely plain spoken. Once he was preaching about how some people refuse to get enthusiastic about God because they are afraid they might lose their "dignity." He said: "Dignity is the starch of the shroud. The more dignity a fellow has the nearer dead he is. I expect to be as dignified as some of you when they put me in my coffin."
Every church has what I call "the cold-water committee." Whenever the fire of God starts burning in the hearts of some folks, they rise up and pour cold water on it. Whenever there’s a new and creative way to do church, they pour cold water on that idea. The cold-water committee is not an elected committee; the members are self-appointed. They think it is their job to make sure things don’t get out of hand in their church. Their favorite phrases are, "We don’t do things like that around here," or, "We’ve never done it that way before." Like the ruler of the synagogue, these people may even quote a little Scripture; but they are more into rules than into the liberty Jesus gives.
Don’t become a part of that committee, and don’t pay any attention when someone on that committee corners you to complain about something he or she doesn’t like.
There are some religious traditions that are completely benign. But when you allow traditions to overshadow the Word of God, that’s when they become dangerous. Jesus said in Mark 7:8,13, "You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men ... thus, you nullify the Word of God by your tradition which you have handed down."
God is always at work in the now, and a tradition always anchors us to the past. Someone has written a clever definition of a religious tradition: "A clock that tells you what time it was." It’s sad to say that many churches and many Christians still want things to be the way they "used to be." When they sing about "the old-time religion" they aren’t talking about 2,000 years ago in the Book of Acts; they are talking about church in the south in the 1950s and 1960s!
Here’s the Life Lesson: God’s laws aren’t to tie you down but to set you free! The law of God was never intended to restrict you but to set you free. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In Galatians 3:24 Paul is writing to a group of Christians who have forfeited their liberty under grace and have slipped back into the straight jacket of the law. He says, "The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."
Legalists don’t enjoy their faith—and they don’t want anyone else to enjoy it either. A legalist is someone whose list of rules is longer than God’s, and they want to impose their list of rules and regulations on others. Max Lucado wrote: "Legalism has no pity on people. Legalism makes my opinion your burden, makes my opinion your boundary, makes my opinion your obligation. Nothing will keep a Christian more immature than trying to keep a long list of rules" (Up Words, May 1993).
One of the best definitions of the Kingdom of God is found in Romans 14:17, "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking [religious rules], but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." You are enjoying the Kingdom when the Holy Ghost of God is filling your life and you have right standing before the Father. In addition, you have inner peace and a joy that can’t be contained.
1). His Kingdom starts out small but grows large.
This brings you to my small Ministry that I am just forming and trying to take hold. My Ministry is a mustard seed that is tiny, but it has something in it that a grain of sand doesn’t: life. The mustard plant in Galilee has brilliant yellow flowers and can grow to be over nine feet tall. Tiny birds can build nests in its branches. Like that seed, the Kingdom is alive and although it starts small, it grows. That’s true of the Body of Christ, the church. Jesus started with only 12 men, and one of them was a fake. Jesus told them to change the world—that’s from a pretty small seed. On the Day of Pentecost, there were only 120 people in the Upper Room; and today there are more than 2 billion Christians. It started small; but it has certainly grown.
This is also true personally. When you first enter the Kingdom of God, you don’t fully understand the impact it has on you. It’s a small part of your life, like a mustard seed. But if you are truly growing as a Christian, the older you get, the influence and impact of God in your life grows and grows until knowing and serving God becomes the single-most-important goal in your life.
Sadly, some people receive the seed of God’s Word, but for a variety of reasons the seed doesn’t take root, and they soon drop out and are never heard from again, except maybe on Easter or Christmas. Can you testify today that God’s influence is growing larger and larger in your life? If you can, the seed has taken firm root in your heart.
2. His Kingdom changes every part of your life.
If you are going to bake good bread, you can take a pinch of yeast and put it in the bread dough. Like a mustard seed, yeast is "alive." I didn’t realize this until I accessed the Fleischmann’s Yeast Web site. It says, "In yeast, there are thousands of living, plant-like micro-organisms. When activated by warm liquid, and fed by sugar or starch, the yeast releases tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas. This gas is what makes the dough rise and achieve its light texture after baking."
Yeast acts as a catalyst to change the nature of the bread dough. Just a tiny bit of yeast can affect an entire lump of dough. That’s the point Jesus is making. The Kingdom of God is a living catalyst that changes every part of your life. You cannot have an encounter with God and stay the same.
Yeast also works invisibly on the inside of the dough. Religion attempts to change people from the outside in; it’s very interested in appearances. However, the Kingdom of God works invisibly on the inside of your life, and—like yeast—God changes you from the inside out. The Kingdom of God is not outward appearance or behavior; it is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Are you allowing the Kingdom of God to change your life?
Whatever is broken in your life, Jesus can fix it. If you are bent out of shape by suffering, Jesus sees you and calls you. He came to set you free from Satan’s bondage; and when He touches you, you will never be the same again! You may be bent out of shape by religious rules, a miserable legalist. Jesus came to set you free from the chains and weights of the law. Will you let Him?
He wants you to be delighted in what He is doing right now, and that can only happen when you allow His Kingdom to be real in your life.We are all like the old Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King’s horses and all the
King’s men;
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Some of you know the problem: you’ve fallen, and you can’t get up. We live in a world of broken people. Life is fragile; it should be handled with care because people break easily. All the self-help programs and the religious rules can’t fix the broken hearts, broken hopes and broken homes of people around us. My Master, Jesus Christ was the only person who ever claimed to be able to heal broken hearts. Here is the last stanza to Humpty Dumpty. It goes this way:
Jesus Christ came to your wall;
And on the Cross, He died for your fall;
Regardless of death and in spite of your sin;
Through grace, He can put you together again!
In Conclusion:
If you understood what was written, then know that "Indignity" runs rampant through my veins for my Master. Such Joy and happiness I feel. I wish to share that with you. Enter with me the Kingdom of our Lord as mustard seeds and let us grow together.
Now I am sure your asking if there are rules. Of course there are, just not so stringent that you do not nurture that seed you carry inside of you.
Yes there is sacrifice and obedience as well as mortification (Fasting). But there is so much more and one of the Main things that Jesus tells us to have is, "Love for him and Love for one another."
Are most capable of this from the start? No! But in time you will know what it means to be free and with Jesus our Lord, God in your hearts and then you will see and feel "True Love." Then the second part of that true love falls into place as you treat one another with this wonderful gift that awaits you.
From what you have read, you can see that Traditionalist are conservative. Jesus was not and he made it clear he wasn't a traditionalist or conservative. Love should never be corralled.
I Give You a SEED of Truth, nurture it and Grow!
God Bless,
Rev. Dr. Gale Candice Revilla D.D.
www.galerevilla.com/morningstarministry
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