Transcript
Our text, once again, is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13. So will you turn with me this morning to Luke 13, Luke 13 and we want to begin reading at verse 10 of Luke 13, Luke 13, verse 10:
Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, ‘Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.’ And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, and he said to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.’
The Lord then answered him and said, ‘Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?’ And when He had said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame, and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.
The newspaper story started like this. It said, “Deandra Anrig was flying her kite when it suddenly started flying her.” And then it added, “It was just a short hop, but one the eight-year-old is not likely to forget.” No, indeed. I’m sure she will never forget it.
You see, on one Sunday in March of 1989, Deandra Anrig and her parents and some friends were having a picnic at Shoreline Park, which happens to be located about 30 miles south of San Francisco, and only about two miles from the Palo Alto Airport. Each of the members of the picnic party were taking turns flying a large glider-type kite which had a 12-foot wingspan. When Deandra was taking her turn, there was an airplane overhead flying in the direction of the airport. It happened to be a twin-engine Rockwell Turbo Commander.
It was flying at 800 feet, and it was doing about 140 knots, which is approximately 160 miles per hour. Suddenly the airplane snagged the line of the kite. Deandra was jerked off of her feet to a height of about 10 feet above the head of her father, and the airplane carried her about 100 feet in the direction of a tree. Now, Deandra’s parents had always tried to instruct her in the proper kite-flying technique, and one of the things they had always said to her was, “Hold on tight. Don’t let go, honey.”
But when Deandra saw that tree rushing in her direction, she made a very prudent decision. She let go of the string of the kite, and that involved a fall of about 15 or 16 feet to the ground, where she landed roughly. But after two days spent on an air mattress, surrounded by soothing ice packs, Deandra was in pretty good shape. In fact, she was in better shape than the airplane, which had been grounded, and according to an FAA official, it had sustained in one of its propellers a two-inch gash.
Now my hat is off to Deandra for the split-second timing of her decision that day, which led to a fall and not a crash. She decided that it was better to let go and fall than to hang on and crash. One of the troubles in American society today is that there are lots of men and women who are holding on to things, and they are headed rapidly for an enormous crash, and the problem is they can’t let go. They just simply can’t let go.
And there are millions of people like this, not only outside of the Christian church, but also there are plenty of people like that who are inside the Christian church, and who are attending meetings and services like this this very morning. And because that is true, this morning I would like to issue you a very important and solemn warning, and the warning is this: Beware of the burden of bondage. And that warning, by the way, happens to be the title of my message to you this morning: Beware of the burden of bondage.
Now, as many of you already know, in September your speaker will conclude 38 years of preaching and teaching the Word with this particular group of people. Of course, some of you were not around 38 years ago, but that’s how long we’ve been here. And I sincerely wish that from day one I had started keeping a notebook of all of the cute and clever and funny things that were said to me by children. If I had been doing that from the very start, I would have enough material now for a bestseller, maybe entitled, “Aren’t Children Cute?”
But, you know, there is one incident that I will never, never forget. I don’t need a notebook to recall it, and it just happened to concern Raymond Rodriguez, the younger brother of Chris and Lewis. Many years ago I was taking Raymond home from Sunday school with some other kids, and as we were driving along, Raymond was in the back seat, and he leaned forward and he said to me, “Zane, we are reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame in school.”
Now Raymond couldn’t have been much more than 10 years of age, and I was pretty impressed that he could remember a long title like that. So I decided to find out if he could also remember who wrote it. And so I said to Raymond, “Well, Raymond, that’s very nice, that’s fine. Who wrote it?” And I will never forget Raymond’s reply. Raymond said to me, “I don’t know, Zane. We haven’t got that far yet.”
Well, folks, this morning we are not reading about the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but we are reading about the hunchback of the synagogue. We are reading about the hunchback of the synagogue. And it wasn’t written for us by some novelist. It was written for us by Dr. Luke, the traveling companion of the Apostle Paul, and he is the only one of the four Gospel writers who tells us this very interesting story.
You see, on one occasion Jesus went into a synagogue somewhere. We are not told where the synagogue was located. And when He walked into the synagogue, He noticed a woman there who was all bent over, just like being in the posture of somebody who is carrying a heavy burden on their back. And, of course, because Jesus was the Son of God, He knew all about this woman. He knew that she had been in that condition for 18 years, and He also knew that she had a spirit. She had a spirit of infirmity, a spirit of weakness, and later on in the story He refers to her as a woman whom Satan has bound for these 18 years.
But be careful. We should not probably conclude that this woman was demon-possessed. I don’t think she was. You see, when Jesus met cases of demon possession, it was his normal practice to directly address the demon and to command the demon to come out of the body in which the demon was living. And that’s not the way He handles this case at all. He does not address the satanic spirit who has afflicted this woman. Instead, He addresses the woman herself, and He says to her, “Woman, you are loosed. Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.”
And I want to suggest something to you this morning. Here is a woman all bowed over, in the posture of somebody who is carrying a heavy burden. Here is a woman whom Jesus Himself says was bound by Satan, and therefore this woman is a perfect picture, she is a perfect illustration, she is a perfect example, of all those who bear the burden of bondage. Do I need to tell you that there are millions of Americans today who are in bondage? We don’t usually call it that, do we? We have a word for their condition which doesn’t acknowledge the part that Satan may have played in creating that addiction. We have a word for their condition, which is addiction itself, addiction.
And all over the country, in and out of the church, Americans are addicted to all sorts of things. Just about two months ago I happened to bump into a 21-year-old man whom I happen to have known ever since he was born, and I was in his home many times as he was growing up. We’ve lost contact with each other in recent years. One of the very first things he told me in our very first conversation was this. He said, “Zane,” he said, “I’m an alcoholic. I’m an alcoholic.”
Then he told me how drinking had seriously messed up his life, and how he finally decided that he had to get rid of it, and he had joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and he was determined to get rid of this addiction that was in his life. For about three weeks he was doing fine. And then one Monday night I received a phone call from him, and he sounded terribly, terribly depressed, terribly discouraged, and he had told me that he fell off the wagon. He was drinking again. He lost his job, and at the moment he didn’t know where to go.
So I went across town and picked him up and brought him over to the apartment. He spent the night on my couch. But before we settled down for the night, and while we were coming over in the car, he explained what had happened on the previous Saturday afternoon. After all of these days, three weeks I think, off of drinking, some of his friends were getting ready to watch the basketball game, and they were drinking, and this young man said to himself, I’ve been off the liquor for all this time. It won’t hurt me to take a beer.
So he took a beer, and it hurt him. And he continued to drink on Saturday, and on Sunday, and on Monday. And as he sat there on the couch, and I want you to understand that this is a very masculine-type young man, as he sat there on the couch, big tears started coming out of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks, and he was wondering whether he could handle this, or whether he was defeated once and for all.
I talked to him, and of course talked to him about the role that the Lord had to play in this. In the next few days he went back to Alcoholics Anonymous, and they told him many of the same things, and he got back on the wagon. And I saw him just shortly before I went to California, and at that point he was doing fine. But addiction. Do you have any idea how many men and women and young people in this country have an addiction to alcohol or to drugs? The numbers are legion.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it? I was watching television one night, and it was one of these specials or news magazines, and there was a woman on television whose story was being told very much in her own words. She had borne a child, I think it was a daughter, her first child, but she said that every time the child would cry it would annoy her. It would exasperate her. She would scream at the child, and she would shake it and try to quiet it down.
And after one of these incidents she felt enormously guilty. The next time the child would cry, she’d do it again. And she did it again and again, and one day she killed her little girl. And now she was a devastated woman, to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that she had killed her own baby daughter. Addiction. But who can doubt the hand of Satan in addiction like that?
And there are men all over the country who, when they are frustrated and angered by something that their wives have done, blow up, and they attack their wives, and they beat them. And oftentimes they leave their wives bloody and bruised, and sometimes with broken bones. And I have read that after one of these incidents it is very common for the husband to feel an immense amount of remorse. He may lean over the battered body of his wife, and he may cradle her head in his arms, and he’ll beg for forgiveness. He’ll say how sorry he is for what he did, promise never to do it again, and then the next time he gets ticked off, the cycle repeats itself. And over and over and over it happens. Addiction. Can anyone doubt the hand of Satan in that?
I can almost hear someone saying to me this morning, “Well, Zane, I’m kind of relieved. I was afraid you were going to preach at me this morning. I don’t have any of those addictions, so I guess I’m going to get off scot-free this morning.” Well, folks, let me tell you something. I’ve been around this church long enough to know that I’m not speaking to a congregation of angels, just as you know you’re not listening to an angel speak to you, right?
And I know that some of you still drink, and I can almost hear someone saying, “Well, wait a minute. That’s different. I’m not an alcoholic. I can stop anytime I want to.” Of course, that’s what all alcoholics say, right? But tell me, when you feel down, when something has depressed you and discouraged you, is your way of getting a pickup to turn to a bottle of beer, or to have a glass of wine? Is that the way you cope with your problems? That’s addiction.
Can you stop? Oh yes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can stop. I can stop anytime I want to.” Okay. Stop this morning for 12 months. That’s all I ask, for 12 months. Don’t drink a drop. Prove it. And if you get to the end of the 12 months, I’m betting you won’t start back again, and otherwise you’re going to start a lot sooner than that, because you’re addicted.
What about temper? When something goes wrong at the office, somebody does something in the family that just annoys me, do I blow up? Do I let loose with a tirade of anger and annoyance? Is that the way I cope? That’s addiction. How about language? Don’t kid me, folks. Your language is almost perfect around the church, but when you get ticked off at the office, or when you get ticked off around the household, your dirty words and vulgar expressions come naturally flowing out of your mouth, do they?
You know, years ago when I was hanging around City Park and trying to get to know the Hispanic teenagers, they were almost always very careful to watch their language. They knew I was a preacher, and when they spoke to me in English, or spoke to each other in English, they would clean up their conversation. But when they were speaking in Spanish, they had at it. It wasn’t very long before I knew what some of the major Spanish cusswords were.
But there was one guy over there at the park, and I’m not going to mention his name because some of you in this audience may know him, and he didn’t clean up his conversation in English or Spanish. I don’t think he could. I remember one night I gave him a lift from the park to his house, and he talked to me very friendly, no disrespect, but I don’t think he said two sentences in a row without a cussword. His entire conversation was sprinkled, and smothered, I would have said, in bad language. He was addicted. That’s the only way he knew how to talk. That’s the only way he could talk.
And listen, if these things just come tumbling out of your mouth when you’re annoyed or frustrated or angry, you may be further down the pathway to addiction to language like that than you’re willing to admit. You see, the Bible says that whoever commits sin is a slave, a slave, a slave of sin. And let’s make no mistake about it. It is very, very much in the devil’s interest to sponsor addictions of all kinds, not only in our country as a whole, but also within the church, because the more addicted you are, the easier you are for him to manipulate, the easier it is for him to use you to further his own designs and his own wicked plans.
So what do we need? We need what this woman needed. We need Jesus. More specifically, we need the power of His Word, and we need the strength that His hands alone can impart. And I want you to observe closely that the miracle that Jesus performs in our passage is performed in an unusual way. It is a two-step miracle, because first Jesus speaks a word in which he announces the freedom of this woman. He says, “Woman, you’re loosed from your infirmity.”
But that isn’t all that he does. Remember that this woman has been in this posture for 18 years. Even though she is now free by our Lord’s own word, muscles are undoubtedly very weak. She probably doesn’t have the capacity to straighten up. And so Jesus puts His hands on her. We are certainly to understand that He is imparting to her the physical strength that she needs, and it is immediately after He does this that she straightens up and stands erect. Her mouth is filled with praise to God. She glorifies Him.
But alas, folks, not everybody in that synagogue glorified God when this wonderful deliverance took place. And the ruler of the synagogue, the man who was in charge of the synagogue service, was sitting there, and he was seething with anger because the way he looked at it, in his foolish and unbiblical point of view, was that Jesus had broken the rules. He had healed on the Sabbath day. But he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions. He doesn’t dare to stand up and look Jesus in the eye and say, “Rabbi, You shouldn’t have done that.”
But like so many people, he tries to criticize Jesus in a roundabout way, and he stands up in front of the crowd and he says, “Look, there are six days on which people ought to work. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Point of pity, what a horrible distortion of religion. He was making up a rule that the Old Testament didn’t have. Since when is healing a woman work? Not for Jesus, certainly. And instead of rejoicing in the deliverance that God had given, he doesn’t have an ounce of pity for this woman. He doesn’t have even a small fragment of gratitude for the deliverance that Jesus has given.
So don’t be surprised when Jesus turns to him and speaks sharply and directly, and He says, “Hypocrite! Is there anybody in this synagogue who would not go to the stall where they have their ox or their donkey tied on the Sabbath day, and untie the ass or untie the ox and lead them off to water? Anybody would do that on the Sabbath day. And ought not this woman, who is a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for 18 years, ought she not to be loosed from her bonds on the Sabbath day? You have more pity for your animal,” says Jesus to this hypocrite, “than you have for this woman.”
But hey, please remember that this is Dr. Luke telling us this story, the traveling companion of Paul, and his mind is filled with the ideas of the Apostle Paul. And when he reports to us that Jesus called this woman a daughter of Abraham, I don’t think he understood Jesus as meaning simply that she was Jewish. No doubt she was. But in Paul’s mind the true sons and daughters of Abraham were people who shared Abraham’s faith and who were justified by faith, like Abraham was, apart from works.
I’ll tell you what I think. I think Luke is trying to tell us that this woman was a believer, that she was justified as Abraham was justified, and yet she was in bondage, and she needed Jesus to deliver her. Years ago I was standing on a plot of ground not very far from the city of Jerusalem, and I was with a bunch of people who were on a Bible lands tour, and our guide was telling us that it was right here, according to tradition, that the miracle of the raising of Lazarus had taken place.
You remember that story. Lazarus had been dead for three days. Jesus went to the cave where he was buried. He told somebody to roll away the stone. Then He said, “Lazarus, come forth.” And Lazarus came out of that cave looking a lot like a mummy, because the Bible says he was bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and he had a cloth over his mouth. And the first thing that Jesus said to the people around him was, “Loose him. Untie him, and let him go.”
I was kind of shocked when I saw the place that they were calling the grave of Lazarus, because I always thought of it as a big old cave in the side of a mountain, haven’t you? Is that where you thought of it? You know what it was? It was a hole in the ground, not very big at that, and the entranceway into the hole was another hole on the surface of the grass. It was covered by some kind of edifice. In Jesus’ day, apparently, if this was indeed the place, it was covered by a stone.
And I was amazed by that, but I was also kind of amused as I thought of Lazarus trying to get out of that hole when Jesus said, “Come forth,” all tied up, hands and foot, face covered. He must have wiggled his way up, up, up. I suspect he looked a lot like a worm, a big old worm climbing out of the ground. But somehow he managed to get out. But there’s one thing he couldn’t do for himself. He couldn’t untie the grave clothes. So Jesus said, “Untie him and let him go.”
Now listen to me, folks. Listen closely. When we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we are justified by faith apart from works. When we trust Him for the free gift of everlasting life, He gives us that free gift. And sometimes believers who are newly saved immediately manage to crawl their way out of their dark cavity and find their way into the church. But lots of times they’re all tied up with addictions, all tied up with bad habits, all tied up, as it were, with the grave clothes of their past life.
And let’s also say this. There are Christians who were saved as little children who, in the process of growing to manhood or womanhood, have developed addictions, and they’re tied up too. And the Christian church needs to be the place where we untie people, when we introduce them to the delivering power of Jesus Christ, to the power that His Word can have in their lives, to the strength that His hands can impart.
And there’s no place in the Christian church for people who don’t care about this, who are unkind and unmerciful, who can’t stand it when the church has to work with this addicted person or that addicted person. So, you see, at Victor Street Bible Chapel it’s not enough for us to just play the game of church. It isn’t enough for us to come here on Sunday mornings and then to go back to our daily lives and be exactly the same kind of addicted people that we were before we came, because if you and I are addicted to anything that is contrary to the will of God, we’re not going to be able to help untie the new converts that God brings into our midst.
Beware of the burden of bondage, but rejoice in the relief of divine release. Believe that God can set you free, and anyone else who comes through those doors. In March of 1989 there were a couple of prisoners in the Dorchester County Jail, which is located either in or outside of Cambridge, Maryland. One of these was a man named Kenneth McCrae, 27 years of age, and he was awaiting trial for burglary or robbing a convenience store.
The other guy was a 21-year-old fellow named Donald Gross, who was charged with breaking and entering. Now, this is a 106-year-old jail, and it was very crowded, and these two men were being held with others in a special facility to ease the overcrowding. And somewhere over in that facility where they were being held they found a Bible. Now this story is not going to turn out the way you think it’s going to turn out. You know what they used the Bible for? They used it to jimmy the lock on a malfunctioning fire exit door, and they escaped.
Well, that was on Saturday night. Their freedom was short-lived, however. They were rearrested on Sunday and brought back to jail, and Sheriff Philip McKelvey made this interesting comment. He said, “The Bible is the key of all keys. It unlocks lots of doors, even jail doors, apparently.” Hey, right on, Sheriff McKelvey. Right on. Now, the Bible does unlock jail doors. It can unlock your jail door, because it can introduce you to the power of the Word of Christ and to the strength that His hands can impart, and you can be free, and you can lead others to be free.
Oh yes, it’s true that Jesus said, “Whoever commits sin is the servant of sin,” but He also said this. He said, “If you remain in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” And then He added this: “If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed.”
Shall we pray.
Father, we acknowledge Thee and Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as not only our Savior from an eternal hell, but the One who is fully powerful and competent to deliver us from whatever bondage there might be in our hearts and lives. Help us to take this seriously, and help us to allow Him to free us. We ask it in Christ’s name, amen.