BENT

Luke 13.10-17

When Jesus moved around the towns of Israel, he taught in synagogues. He taught that God’s kingdom had come and they needed to personally receive it. Synagogues were buildings or chapels. They were meeting places where the local priests read and taught the Scriptures to the people of that town. On this occasion here - recorded by Luke - Jesus was the speaker of the day. He took the Scripture. He read it aloud and he explained how it tells about God's rule - God's kingdom. He explained how men and women must come under God's rule, willingly and happily. Because everything is actually under God's rule - but not everyone is under God's rule for their good - they are his enemies and he uses the force of circumstances to restrain them and direct them. Did you realise that if you are not a willing follower of Jesus Christ, God treats you like a stubborn horse - he uses the bit and bridle of circumstances and events in your life to both restrain you and give you the chance to wake up to your disobedience and respond willingly to him?

So, when Jesus taught in the synagogues, he used the Old Testament scriptures to explain how to repent and how to come to him in faith. He said things like, "You who are struggling, weary and overburdened in life, come to me! Come under my care and supervision because the life's work that I put on you will fit you perfectly and will not wear you down. I am meek and gentle and you can learn from me because I am ready to help you."

Every time, I or any one of us opens up the Bible, reads it and points out how to come willingly under God's rule, Jesus is calling you to bring your life and all its burdens to him so he can come to live in you - supervising, supporting and guiding your life.

On one occasion, as Jesus was bringing this good news to the people in a synagogue, there was a particular woman among the people. She was disabled. Disabled means to have some of your abilities broken or damaged in some way. In this woman's case, she was bent over. She could not straighten up her spine. Her back was bent - fused so she could not flex and reach and turn. She was bowed over so she was always looking towards the ground and could not look people - even her family - full in the face. No doubt there was pain that went with this stiffness and transferred pain into her neck and head and hips and limbs. Her internal organs, her digestive system were constricted. She could not get her lungs fully opened up to breathe, so tiredness and breathlessness must have been her daily discomfort. Her body was deeply stressed and disordered by this disability.

[Sickness and disabilities are part of the human experience because sin and death entered the world when the first humans were on probation in the garden. They had the chance to confirm their willing dependence on God, but they chose to try and assert their independence. Their disobedience lost for them and us the life of God - so we became a race of people with the imprint of God’s likeness on us, yet spiritually dead and unable to live up to it. Everyone is affected by this loss to some extent. Kids get sick. Swine flu attacks. Heart disease strikes. People get old. Everyone dies. All these are directly attributable to the disobedience of our first parents and the repeated and continuing disobedience that is passed on from one generation to another. We are sinful by nature. Yet God graciously allows us to live on in spite of our disobedient rebellion to allow us time and opportunity to come to repentance. However, even though we live on for a time, he does not cover up the seriousness of our spiritual deadness. Sickness and death remind us to seek God while he may be found – to call upon him while he is near – to give up our sinful way of life and our wrong thinking – to return to the Lord so that he can have compassion on us – because we have the promises here that he will fully and richly forgive us.

Sickness, accident and death are never good in themselves - diabetes is not good, an amputation is not good, headaches are not good - but God can even make the bad circumstances caused by human sin serve his good purposes. For example, an accident or sickness may finally get a person to pay attention to the word of life so that he meets Christ and secures eternal life in him.

However, while God uses the sickness and distress and death in the world to prompt, awaken and point us to repentance, forgiveness and life - Satan works hard to use sickness, accident and death to steal, kill and destroy people. He entices people to abuse their bodies so they will get diseases and die before their time. He tempts young people to behave recklessly so they are a danger to themselves and others. He soaks middle-aged people in anxieties and depression so that they give in to defeated lives. He also sends dark spirits (demons) into the lives of some, to bring specific sicknesses and disabilities. And because their spirits are dead and hollow, demons find those person's lives well-prepared for them to make their homes and cause all kinds of mayhem.

We don’t know what the direct cause of many people’s illnesses and disabilities are. There is often nothing to suggest that it was related to some particular sin that they are holding onto – it may well have been that many are just further examples of the collateral damage that sin has brought into the world – just like miscarriages, drownings, mental disability, blindness and the host of other disappointments that afflict humanity. Nevertheless, SIN lies behind them all, even when it is not that person’s specific sin.

ON this occasion, Jesus immediately perceived that this was not just a disability or sickness caused by the general sinful condition of humanity. This disability had a specific cause. An evil spirit was at work in this woman's life, so that she no longer had control of her back muscles, spine and nervous system. Though she worked her brain to send a signal to her back to straighten up, her back could not obey. Satan had her in the grip of a disabling spirit that held her bent over. Jesus resolved to do something about this.

He was announcing and explaining God’s kingdom and he wanted to confirm that this kingdom had arrived among them, by breaking the dominion of Satan over this woman. By straightening her up, he gave a powerful physical example of his spiritual power to release people from the oppression of evil - undo the damage done by sin - and put joy where there had been defeat.

So Jesus over-ruled and countermanded the damage that Satan had sent that the spirit to vent upon that woman. He simply told the woman that she was freed from her disability. He put his hands on her and immediately she unfolded and stood up straight. He did not shout, or rant, or make a show of this healing. He simply said what was going to happen and it happened. [Just remember this – God speaks in a still, small voice – directly to you. Get quiet. Listen. Be still and learn that HE is God.]

The woman must have suddenly seemed very tall to all who knew her. People that she had always looked up to sideways - now turned out to be shorter than her. Many of them she now looked down towards. Just get a picture in your mind of how dramatic the change was; her distorted body now standing confidently tall and straight! The body that children had mocked and adults had stared at, was now supple, graceful and free. Evidence of Christ’s good life acting upon her’s.

That evil spirit was quietly, almost matter-of-factly disposed of by Jesus [rather like disposing of a dead rat by its tail] - the loudest thing that occurred was the voice of the woman glorifying God …(and no doubt the gasps of the people in the synagogue). She knew exactly what had happened. The depression caused by that oppressive spirit which had cruelly bent her over, was gone and she was suddenly free of pain, free of disappointment, free of shame - she had a clear mind. Immediately, on the spot, with this new clear thinking - she chose faith in Christ. No hesitation, no second thoughts: She gave credit where she knew it lay - with God. She glorified God. To glorify God is to speak up that this is God's work - and it is good – very good.

Isn't it time you glorified God? Hasn't God done some remarkable things for you? I'd say that for almost all of you, no disabling spirit or any other kind of spirit has made its home in you - to bend you over or damage you. Are you waiting until such evil to come against you, before you will glorify God? Shouldn't you glorify God that you have never been troubled by such a spirit? Shouldn't you glorify God that your life and your mind are intact and you have the opportunity to come under Christ's good care and supervision? Shouldn’t you glorify God when your children are safe and healthy? Why would you test God?

Or worse, Why would you go on using up his good gifts without surrendering up your life to his Son? Why would you go on grabbing credit for yourself and soaking up others' flattery and praise when it is God who has given you the time and space to live relatively free of distress to this point?

Take a lead from the disabled woman. The moment she had a lucid, clear thought, free of oppression and distress, she immediately turned herself over to God. You have had many such times, why the delay?

Now, what happened next, is most interesting and instructive. Religion poked its ugly face in where it wasn't needed! You don’t need religion where Jesus is present. Satan is tricky. When he saw that a direct physical attack on this individual woman was not enough to rob God of his glory, he quickly shifted his strategy to stir up the religious feelings of men in the synagogue. The synagogue leader then got up and rebuked Jesus. He was gutless - not bold enough to confront Jesus directly, so he made a "general announcement"! He spoke to the people – but really he was contradicting Jesus.

In case anyone else like this woman thought that they should bring their troubles directly to Jesus without following the synagogue rules, and in case Jesus thought he could bring his unacceptable methods into his synagogue, the leader said:

"If you think you need to be healed – then come to the synagogue during the week - but this is a holy day of worship, the Sabbath, so don't disturb our worship on this day." In other words, he was putting his synagogue programme ahead of Jesus' work. He was preserving the religious routines ahead of having compassion on people who needed help.

Whenever people are not confident that God is present in the church, they will bring out their own programmes to fill the void. The leader should have said: “What you have seen here today is evidence that God is among us. He has sent his Messiah to teach us and deliver us from the evil that infiltrates our lives, like our sister, here. I urge you all to pay attention to him, to receive his word and to receive him as your true leader and saviour.” That’s what he should have said! Instead, he was thinking of his status as synagogue ruler and he didn’t want anything or anyone (even the Son of God!) to rob him of that. Be very wary of slick, big production value, Christian events. The more religious programming there is, the more likely it is that Christ himself is not there.

Jesus had a powerful answer to the synagogue leader, in case any of the needy were deceived into thinking that they had to keep religious rules and duties before God would help them. He called the synagogue leaders HYPOCRITES - that is people who make a fuss about the need to keep a certain rule, while all the time they were happy to break it when it suited their own desires. He gave them an example of their hypocrisy and just how far away they were from the love and the will of God. He said to them, "You are quite willing, on the Sabbath, to make sure your donkey or ox doesn't die of thirst and you untie them and lead them off to the water trough. So why are you unwilling to lead this poor woman - one of your own people, a descendant of Abraham - to be untied from her bondage to Satan on the Sabbath?"

They had nothing to say - they were shamed out, totally. But all the people felt a great load lifted off them. The load of religious duty that they thought they must keep if God was going to accept them, was untied and lifted from their shoulders. There was joy in the synagogue. People were delighted in Jesus and all the glorious things that he was doing for them.

So what are we to take from this as individuals and as a church?

First, you personally. Know this,

- Satan works through people and circumstances that attack you. As with this woman, he wants to bend you down. He does not want you at your full height and stature in Jesus Christ. Satan aims to keep you discouraged and defeated by your fears and anxieties - by your sins and by your doubts. That is his strategy concerning you. You will see him working on this in YOUR life every day.

- He wants you to be so bent down by your circumstances and weaknesses that this becomes your habitual and permanent condition - he wants you disabled and locked in the bent, defeated position. He wants your life to de-glorify Christ. He hopes to get you into a position where you are definitely known as a Christian (whether that be true or not) and then he wants you to portray as miserable, defeated, ungodly, weak ‘christian’ life as he possibly can. In this way, he wins two ways: he succeeds in ruining YOUR life and he succeeds in giving Christ a bad name. GOD FORBID! God forbid that your life, or mine, should serve Satan's strategy. You must fight the good fight. You must resist the devil. Resist him firm in your faith and he will flee from you. Fight for faith. Put on the whole armour of God and when you have fought to a standstill - stand right where you are - stand still and see the salvation of God. Get your helmet of salvation - know how God forgives you and get your thinking straight. Get your breastplate of righteousness - keep trusting in Christ to be your right standing with God. Get the belt of truth - strengthen your backbone by living a godly upright life. Put on the shoes that will get you attacking and running with the good news everywhere and in all circumstances. Take up the shield of faith - deflect all the flaming arrows Satan sends by holding up the promises of God. Grip and swing the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God - know it, think it, speak it.

And what shall we take from the account of the bent woman as a church family?

Care for each other. These religious men had no interest in their people. Jesus walked in and he immediately noticed the woman in distress.

We should expect, welcome and notice the presence of Jesus amongst us. You will see him in your brother and sister Christian’s lives. You will recognize him in the word that is spoken. You should be able to sense his encouragement and love in the praise.

The synagogue incident shows the importance of joyful worship and turning our personal experiences of Christ’s help into praise. Each of us have a part to play in this.

Finally, we need to have determination to get our individual lives so transparent and clean of sins that Jesus can freely and powerfully work amongst us as a people.