Christ’s Public Scandal (Luke 13:1-10)

Jesus continually overturns people’s expectations.  Christ does not fail to disappoint when we continue in Luke 13 when He heals a woman on the Sabbath. This woman had been suffering for 18 years—bent over, unable to stand up straight.  Christ heals this woman, but the leaders are outraged.  Why such a reaction? Because their rigid view of the Sabbath had blinded them to the true intention of Sabbath rest that God ordained. They saw rules, but Jesus saw a broken and burdened person needing rest.  Jesus is not just addressing an outward issue, but an internal issue.  The leaders missed the Lord’s Sabbath intention. They were so focused on controlling religion that they completely missed the manifestation of Religion.  Christ the Messiah is the embodiment of what the prophets promised.

Jesus then turns the tables on them with a simple but devastating argument: If you’d untie your ox or donkey to give it water on the Sabbath, how much more should this woman—a daughter of Abraham—be freed from her suffering? He is saying “You show compassion for your animals, but you could care less about a daughter of Abraham.” Jesus is exposing the Lord’s intention for his kingdom. The kingdom of God is not about outward rule-keeping but inward renewal. And this is unsettling, because it means that even deeply religious people can be far from God. It’s not just bad people who are lost, but the Lord’s covenant people can also miss the substance of God’s grace even as they profess to walk in it.

Then Jesus gives two mini-parables about the kingdom: the mustard seed and the leaven. Both seem small, insignificant—just like Jesus’ movement at the time—but they grow into something unstoppable. That’s how God works. His kingdom doesn’t come through power and dominance but through quiet, transformation. Our challenge is to wait upon the Lord, it is wanting the Lord to transform us from the inside out.  The gospel is not about avoiding or managing sin, but it’s about pursuing our God.  And until we see that pursuing and loving our God above all things, we’ll either be self-deceived by thinking we keep our legalism or crushed by the unbearable weight when we realize we cannot heal ourselves. But as we pursue our Lord we recognize that he progressively heals us, and as we grow in our union with him we see that our sin is less satisfying in comparison to our basking in his glory.  May we have a humble spirit, may we be a people who tremble at his word, and may we pursue our Lord because by his grace he has secured and pursued us.