daily java

Daily Java:

One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did. (Luke 13:10-17)

Some people would rather you not do anything good at all than to do good in the way they do not want it done.

A few days ago, I invited my neighbor to Easter services. He has been talking about going. He asked me if we worshiped Ishtar, the Canaanite fertility goddess. I answered no. He then asked if we had the Easter bunny and Easter eggs. I said we had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. He then proudly proclaimed No, he didn’t go to churches that used pagan imagery. So Easter morning, he sat at home and watched TV.

Another was a man at a church at which I preached a few years ago. He had been a member of another denomination that viewed itself as exclusive. He also hadn’t been to church there for a long time. When he started coming to the church where I met him, his old church got worried and visited him. They were more willing for him not to go to church at all then to go to a church they didn’t like.

A few years ago in some of the Muslim countries there were several natural calamities. Among the groups that rushed to aid them were Christian groups. Those in charge became mad that Christian groups were helping to feed and doctor their hungry and sick and demanded that they leave. They would rather their people die than to have a Christian organization help them.

The people in the passage above were more concerned with keeping their theology like they wanted it than they were with helping people. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. The Sabbath had been instituted by God in the Old Testament to make the people relax on one day and not let employers work them to death.

However, as things go, the Sabbath soon reached holy status and a whole body of literature was written by religious bureaucrats on what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. Like in any government, as far as the religious bureaucrats were concerned, those traditions became as binding as any of God’s laws.

And you can add to that the fact that they were looking for something to charge Jesus with. They followed him around and listened to him and pored over his words with a fine tooth comb to see what they could find wrong with him. They thought they could find it here. Healing was technically work, so he had broken the Sabbath by working.

Jesus, of course, brought up the fact that people had to take care of their animals on the Sabbath day. The animals couldn’t be expected to stand around hungry and thirsty simply because God’s people were resting.

Jesus then pointed out that this woman had been released so that she could participate in the water of life by being healed. He also called them hypocrites in front of everybody.

They were mad again and caught in their own argument. But everybody else thought it was great.

Any time religious bondage is released, it does two things. One is that those people who were bound are happy to be released. They have gotten freedom. And two, those people – the religious bureaucrats – who are doing the binding are mad. They have lost power.

It is almost always better to do something than to sit around doing nothing.