LIFE Group Point Leaders LIFE Group Point Leaders

Ben & Maris Deaver

Ricky & Amalie Greeve

Rudy & Keri Mills

Evan & Jenn Riordan

Ben & Kristin Duell

Tony & Carmen Classen

``

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. Luke 13:10-11

12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” 13 And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. Luke 13:12-13

14 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.” Luke 13:14

15 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 away to water it? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” Luke 13:15-16

“He (Jesus) compares the woman’s binding to the binding of farm animals who are not free to get a drink unless let loose by their masters. The difference is that the woman has been tethered for eighteen years and has not been set free even for one day during that time. He impales them on the horns of their own legal logic that ferrets out loopholes in applying the law. They understand that oxen and donkeys require and deserve proper care, and they interpret the law to permit it.”

“Is a person not as important as a beast of burden (see 12:7; see 1 Cor 9:8-10)? Animals are unbound on the Sabbath; this woman was unbound on the Sabbath. The difference is that she was unbound by God, and she was not set free from a stall but from the captivity of Satan.” From David Garland’s Luke commentary

What do we care more about than what Jesus cares about? Where is our agenda at odds with God’s agenda?

17 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. Luke 13:17

18 He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 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.” Luke 13:18-19

“The mustard plant is dangerous even when domesticated in the garden, and is deadly when growing wild in the grain fields. And those nesting birds, which may strike us as charming, represented to ancient farmers a permanent danger to the seed and to the grain. The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three, four, or five feet in height.”

“It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas, where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, is what the Kingdom of God was like. Like a pungent shrub with dangerous take-over properties.” John Domin Crossan, Jesus A Revolutionary Biography

20 And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.” Luke 13:20-21

“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” Revelation 5:9-10

“It is a very great folly to despise ‘the day of small things,’ for it is usually God’s way to begin His great works with small things. We see it every day, for the first dawn of light is but feeble and yet, by-and-by, it grows into the full noon-tide heat and glory. We know how the early spring comes with its buds of promise, but it takes some time before we get to the beauties of summer or the wealth of autumn. How tiny is the seed that is sown in the garden, yet out of it there comes the lovely flower!”

“How small is the acorn, but how great is the oak that grows up from it! The stream commences with but a gentle rivulet, but it flows on till it becomes a brook, and then a river—perhaps a mighty Amazon—before its course is run! God begins with men in ‘the day of small things’—He began so with us. How little and how feeble were we when first we came upon the scene of action! He that is now a giant was once so feeble that he could not move from place to place except as he was carried in his mother’s arms.”

“Let us, then, not despise ‘the day of small things,’ as we see that God begins with little things in Nature and among the sons and daughters of men. And I am sure that He does so in the great work of His Church.” Charles Spurgeon, Small Things Not to Be Despised

The day of small things…