Restoration and Rejoicing Luke 13 Vs 10 17 1

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Come, Thou Flow 'r, sing to my heart, to sing

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Thy praises. Streams of mercy never ceasing, o 'er songs of loudest praise.

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Teach me some wealth of His song, and some my flaming tongues of God.

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Praise His name, I'm fixed upon it, name of God's redeeming love.

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Oh, to praise how great a debtor daily

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I'm constrained to be. When I could get sealing, sealing for Thy courts above.

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Praise to the Lord my soul, praise

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Him for He is the health and salvation.

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Point me in gladness.

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Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to be reading from Matthew chapter 12, verses 9 through 14.

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Excuse me. That's Matthew chapter 12, verses 9 through 14.

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Going on from that place, he went into the synagogue. A man with a shriveled hand was there looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus.

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They asked him, does it waffle and heel on a salmon? He said to them, if any of you has a sheep that falls into a pit on a salmon, would you not take hold of it and lift it out?

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How much more valuable is a person than a sheep? Therefore, it is waffle to do good on a salmon.

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Then he stretched out your hand, but he stretched it out and it was completely restored.

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Just as sad as the end. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill

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Jesus. And the Lord had the blessings of reading these words. Amen. Jesus, Lord, I pray for sinners.

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Jesus, Father of my soul.

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Friends may fail me, foes assail me.

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Be my Savior, makes me whole.

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Save me, help me, keep me.

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Thank you for great song choices and great playing and great singing.

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It's a blessing to worship with a church that you can let your guard down regarding the song choices.

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And you know that they're going to be biblical and uplifting and Christ exalting.

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Let us turn to Luke chapter 13 verses 10 through 17.

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Luke chapter 13 verses 10 through 17.

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Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years.

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And was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when

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Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.

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And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified

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God. But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the

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Sabbath. And he said to the crowd, there are six days on which men ought to work.

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Therefore come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then answered him and said,

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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?

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So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the

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Sabbath? And when he 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.

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This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we are thankful that Jesus' heart for those who are suffering, those who are oppressed, those who are entrapped, those who are enslaved, is that he wants to see them loosed immediately.

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That he cannot wait another day. And we are grateful that we get to worship this

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Savior this morning. Help us to approach him this morning for help.

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And help us to receive him. And receive what he has for us through his spirit.

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In Jesus' name. Amen. Now, last week we went over the book of Hebrews, so I would like to recap what happened in the last passage, which was two weeks ago.

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So the last passage emphasized the importance of Israel responding to God's salvation while there is still time.

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Remember the fig tree. The imagery that's used is just another year.

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Maybe it will bear fruit. If not, it will be thrown into the furnace. This week we'll show the test case for it.

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The question is, will God's people respond to God's salvation when they see it unfold?

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Before we go on, I do want to go over the importance of the Sabbath. And the reason being, we now live in a century and the culture where the

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Sabbath is rarely practiced. And for most of us, when you hear the word Sabbath, our main response is, ah, we can't go to Chick -fil -A on Sunday.

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But that's when we crave it the most. However, the importance of Sabbath is this.

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It starts all the way from Genesis 2. Right after God created everything in the first six days, he rests on the seventh.

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He rested on the seventh. Now the rest is completely whole and good.

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This rest is fulfilling. This rest lacks nothing.

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Now during this rest, it's not that God is doing nothing. This rest signifies that he's no longer creating new things.

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So you don't expect new species or new kinds of animals to pop out out of nothing.

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That happened the first six days. This rest is in which

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God holds all living things together. After all, if God stops sustaining the world even for a second, everything will cease to exist.

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The idea that God stops working completely is preposterous.

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Every atom in our body and in the whole universe is held together by God himself.

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Now, the Sabbath command is given to Israel when they arrive at Mount Sinai right after they're rescued from the enslavement, right?

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The context for Israel here is very important. These Israelite slaves, former slaves now, right, were actually slaves for centuries in Egypt.

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They didn't get their weekends off. They didn't get their New Year's Day off.

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They had to work because their primary identity was slave.

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That's what they did. And even right before they were freed, Pharaoh increased their demand, right?

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They were to work even harder than ever. So on top of Mount Sinai, their covenant

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God Yahweh, the Lord, shows up and commands them. And this command is quite rare.

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It's odd. It's almost radical. You must rest.

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You must rest on the seventh day. The way I rested on the seventh day.

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Dare to rest. Not to be in a legalistic, restrictive sense. That's what we think when we can't get our

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Chick -fil -A. Or you can't go out and have fun on the Sabbath day. You know, na -na -na -na -na, right?

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That's not it at all. Rather, dare to rest as God did and enjoy

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His life -giving and sustaining work. The purpose of Sabbath is more than just ceasing from work.

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More than just stop working. But rather, there's a positive flip side to it, which is to enjoy

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God's restorative work. To enjoy

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God's life -giving, sustaining work. This is the reason for the commandment.

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God commands His previously enslaved people to rest because rest was not in their

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DNA. They were working for centuries. Working non -stop for Pharaoh.

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Now the Lord says, under My rule, you can rest.

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Under this king, they have life.

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It wasn't supposed to be restrictive, but restorative. That's an important concept that the

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Pharisees and the synagogue ruler in this passage missed. And I mention this because at no point did

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Jesus ever break the Sabbath law. Jesus perfectly obeyed the

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Sabbath law by healing on the Sabbath. Jesus not only perfectly obeyed it,

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He fulfilled it. He took the Sabbath to its intended end, which is to fully restore life.

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Sabbath was to be life -restoring. And Jesus takes that to give life to all who believe.

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Jesus is, in that regard, Lord of the

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Sabbath. There's no other person who can restore life like God does other than God Himself, and that's

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Christ. Now, the main point of this passage is, what is the proper response to God's act of restoration in Jesus Christ?

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What is the proper response to God's act of restoration in Jesus Christ? First, Jesus has the divine authority to compassionately restore those who are in bondage.

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Jesus has the divine authority to compassionately restore those who are in bondage.

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The first two verses set the context for this lesson. Verse 10 shows us that Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the

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Sabbath day. A synagogue was a Jewish gathering place of worship in which they listened to the teacher, they prayed, and they worshiped.

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It was their worship service. And this also means that the setting tells us there's a large audience gathered.

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It's not a private gathering, but a public worship setting.

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Now, the temporal setting, which is the Sabbath, will be the crucial part of this lesson.

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It happened all on the Sabbath day, the seventh day. In that sense, it would have been a

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Saturday, Sunday is the first day. In fact, this audience will soon receive a live demonstration of Jesus' teaching.

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It won't be just words. They will see a demo. Now, then, verse 11 narrows down to a specific woman.

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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.

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Here, her condition is severe. This woman has been oppressed physically and spiritually for eighteen years.

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She's completely unable to straighten herself. She's lived in her trapped, restricted posture for eighteen years, nearly two decades.

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And Luke stresses this point twice. In this passage, because it shows what an awful state this woman was in for the past eighteen years.

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This was not just a few days of the flu. This was a form of bondage.

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This was no sprained ankle. It was an ongoing oppression, a continual condition.

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Now, how does Jesus respond to this woman? Verse 12 shows Jesus' response.

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But when Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.

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Note the order of actions here. Jesus first sees the woman and he calls her and he takes initiative to heal.

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It did not take any pressure or begging to motivate Jesus to heal.

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It did not take any loud cries to interrupt Jesus' teaching for him to pause his teaching and restore her.

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She did not have to make any prior appointment weeks in advance just to see

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Jesus. Jesus saw and drew his full attention to the woman who needed him to restore.

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Jesus' compassionate heart magnetically is drawn to those who need him the most.

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The woman's terrible entrapped condition was not an obstacle for Jesus but the very prerequisite to receiving

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Jesus' compassionate care. Jesus does not dilly -dally here.

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He immediately restores her by speaking. Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.

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The verb choice loose is special because it's more than just healing. It's not woman, you're healed from your infirmity.

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The loose connotes being released from something. It's being freed.

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Now, what is the response to Jesus' command? He laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified

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God. After his command, Jesus lays his hands on her. What this shows is a couple of things.

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First, he's not repulsed by her condition. I think oftentimes we see someone who is disabled or who is sick and our natural instinct is we want to put some space.

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Not for Jesus. He was not repulsed by her condition but rather he drew near to her to heal.

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Also, this action will directly show a causal relationship between Jesus healing her.

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The fact that he touched her and she got well right after would show that it is

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Jesus who healed her. It was not by chance.

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Surely it's not by the synagogue itself. Ironically, this action of putting his hand on her is the very thing the synagogue leader will accuse

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Jesus of. That he broke the Sabbath regulation.

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Laying his hand on this woman was Jesus working.

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After this, she is immediately made well. She was made straight. Her posture straightened. She straightened up.

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A couple of important remarks here regarding the nature of this healing. First, note the passive verb.

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Made straight. This is a passive verb.

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Passive verb means that the subject is not doing the action.

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The action is being done on the subject. As in, the woman didn't straighten up. That would be an active verb.

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The woman was made straight. That's a passive verb. She, being made straight, was done to her.

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And when there's no agent of a passive verb and the context allows for it, the one who has done this verb is assumed to be

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God. And hence, it is often called the divine passive. This means the one who made her straight is none other than God himself.

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Second, this speaks greatly of Jesus' authority. He has the authority to reverse both physical and spiritual bondage just by speaking.

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His Word has the divine power to restore. When either any of us go out and then speak and command anyone to be healed of anything, there's really no guarantee it will not happen.

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It's not going to happen. That's because our words don't have authority. We can make well -hoped wishes.

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We can pray for them. But really, there's no guarantee. But when Jesus says it, He has the divine authority to heal.

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It works. Because that's the difference between God's speech and human speech.

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Human speech, no matter how much you wish for it, doesn't really work.

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It's not 100 % effective. God's speech is always true.

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It always bears fruit. Now after this, we see the woman's response.

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Upon experiencing such great freedom, the woman glorifies God. She praises

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God. She attributes glory to God. This is important because the woman had no problem seeing that Jesus is working with God.

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The woman had no problem believing that what Jesus has done by healing her on the

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Sabbath day was none other than the very act of God. And now the passive verb actually makes sense.

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It is a divine passive. It is God who made her straighten up. Now, this is significant.

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Because that's how Jesus deals with the broken and the enslaved. We often think that this may be an isolated event.

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But what Jesus does, how he interacts with the broken -hearted and enslaved, people who feel entrapped, he does so because that's what flows out of his heart.

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It's the mercy that outflows from who he is. That's his character and nature.

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And what that means is this morning, if you feel too broken for Jesus, you have the wrong view of Jesus.

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Your brokenness, whatever your past is, and however messed up you are, will not stop

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Jesus from restoring your life. Jesus' compassion compelled him to stop teaching in the synagogue to address the need, both physical and spiritual need, of this woman who has been entrapped and enslaved for 18 years.

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Would he not also receive you with the same compassion? After all, his compassion never changes.

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His mercy is renewed every day. Can your condition dry out his mercy?

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This morning, if you feel trapped in your sin, too trapped in your sin for Jesus, that there's no way out, that you can't go to Jesus because it's been years that this sin has been part of your life, you have the wrong view of Jesus and too high view of your sin.

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Your sin can never be too wicked for his deep mercy. You will have those days when you feel

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Jesus cannot forgive you, and that's specifically a lie from the pit of hell.

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That's too low view of Jesus' compassion and his capabilities. It's actually not a humble view but an insufficient view of Christ's mercy.

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After all, his compassion is what led him to the cross so that you would be freed from your sin and no longer be enslaved by it.

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He could have removed himself from the cross at any moment. He could have called his angel armies to rescue him from the cross, from the hands of the

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Gentiles. He stayed on the cross precisely because he is merciful to those whom he came to save.

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He stayed the whole course experiencing God's wrath on your behalf so that you would be free from the enslavement of sin.

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Would he shun you now when he is not experiencing any pain because he is no longer nailed on the cross?

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What this means is it is for freedom's sake that Christ set us free.

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Not the freedom to do whatever you want. That's our cultural view of freedom. I get to do whatever

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I want. I get to be whatever I want. You have to call me by how I define myself. That's some perverse freedom right there.

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But the very freedom that Jesus died so that you'd be set free for is the freedom from the bondage of sin.

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So that you may finally live without the taunting and the daunting sin in your life that has plagued you for all your life, decades.

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If you belong to Jesus, you have a fighting chance against sin. Sin no longer owns you because you're owned by another master,

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Jesus Christ. And if you don't belong to Jesus, you can always approach

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Jesus in faith. Believe that he died for your sin and rose from the dead.

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He will receive you no matter what sins you've committed. His mercy outshines your deepest darkness.

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His compassion completely overpowers your sin. If you're plagued by your sin this morning, don't just stay here.

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Go to Jesus. If you're hesitant to go to Jesus because you have a hard time believing that he would even receive you, go to any of the biblical texts that speak of his compassionate heart and read it out loud until you start to believe it.

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Hear it out loud in your own voice that his mercy is so great that he will forgive you.

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Don't seek other people who will cosign on your sin. No, you don't need that.

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That only continues your sin. Go to Jesus who will deal with sin completely.

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Now, what are the possible responses to Jesus' compassionate restoration? When Jesus frees those who are bound by Satan, those who oppose him are put to shame, and those who receive his compassionate restoration rejoice.

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When Jesus frees those who are bound by Satan, those who oppose him are put to shame, and those who receive his compassionate restoration rejoice.

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After witnessing such a great miracle on the Sabbath day, we get an immediate response from the synagogue ruler.

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But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the

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Sabbath. Note this. Rather than rejoicing with a woman who has just been freed after 18 years, the ruler of the synagogue here is enraged by Jesus' act of restoration.

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What we first need to know is that anger is a secondary emotion. Anger does not exist itself.

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No one just gets angry for nothing. There's always a cause. And the reason is anger's main purpose is to defend.

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Anger is a defensive emotion. Anger is to defend something that is precious to you.

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The synagogue leader here is defending his authority.

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The synagogue leader is fearing that he's losing control.

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He needs to defend his reputation and authority right after what just happened. And we can see this by whom he addresses right after Jesus' healing.

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Rather than confronting Jesus directly, right, if he has a question of what

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Jesus has done, hey, wait a second, is that breaking the

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Sabbath? He would have gone to Jesus directly. And Jesus would have gladly told him, no, the

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Sabbath's main purpose is to restore. It's to give life. I gave life. That's God's purpose of the

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Sabbath. I actually obeyed the Sabbath, fulfilled it. No, that's not what the synagogue leader does.

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Rather than going to Jesus directly, he attempts to do damage control by lecturing the crowd.

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And he said to the crowd, there are six days on which men ought to work.

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Therefore, come and be healed on them. And not on the

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Sabbath day. He has to set the record straight regarding the

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Sabbath. Lest he lose his status. He has to set the record straight regarding the

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Sabbath tradition that the Jews have held. Because he would lose his face.

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He would lose face. His authority. How he's viewed. Jesus' healing on the

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Sabbath has become a public threat to his tradition and authority. And that's why he is furious at this miracle.

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Please come to be healed on the first six days of the week. Stay home on the Sabbath day, please.

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If you need healing, don't come on the Sabbath day, please. Come on. What's more astounding than his self -preservation is the synagogue leader's complete apathy toward the woman who has been delivered.

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Who has been oppressed for 18 years and now restored. The leader is unable to rejoice at God's restoration because he doesn't really regard this woman as highly as he ought.

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His complete disregard for someone who belongs to God, who is made in God's image, is quite appalling.

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After witnessing God's compassionate miracle, the direct teaching lesson for the crowd from this synagogue ruler is today perhaps was the wrong day for healing.

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Yikes. To this Jesus also responds in anger. The Lord answered him and said, hypocrite, does not each one of you on the

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Sabbath lose his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it away to water it?

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I have to make sure anger is not a sinful emotion by itself. There's a sinful way of responding in anger, but there's also a righteous way of responding in anger.

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Because as I've said, anger is a defensive emotion. It seeks to defend what's truly precious.

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The sinful way of using anger is to defend self.

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It's self -centered, self -preservation. The righteous way of using anger is often seen in Jesus.

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It's to protect others and God's honor. And that's precisely what we see here.

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Unlike the synagogue leader's sinful, selfish anger that sought to defend his own authority,

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Jesus' anger selflessly protects the woman and God's restorative act.

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After all, if Jesus healed on the Sabbath and it was God who did it, as the woman praises and glorifies

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God, by saying this was wrong is more than just affecting the woman and Jesus, it's affecting

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God's honor. He's the one who healed too. You're blaspheming against God.

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So, what Jesus does in anger by calling him hypocrite is completely selfless and perfectly appropriate.

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Now, hypocrite here means that there's inconsistency in the synagogue leader's life.

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There's a double standard going here. Here, the double standard is in their application of the

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Sabbath regulation for the woman and their cattle. While the leader is furious that this woman is loosed, she is freed on the

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Sabbath day after 18 years of oppression, the synagogue leader is perfectly okay untying his animal, his livestock, and leading them to a water source on the

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Sabbath day. That's hypocrisy.

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You're okay with one form of untying, but you're not okay with the another one, the other one that Jesus has just done.

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If you're going to call loosening the bonds of oppression that plagued the woman for 18 years, and you're going to call that work, well, then stop untying the cords of your cattle to give them water on the

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Sabbath day. That's the hypocrisy. And this is a very valid argument because according to the

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Jewish tradition, it was considered not work on the

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Sabbath to untie your farm animals to lead it to drink because it was a compassionate act of restoration.

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Why? Because that was the purpose of the Sabbath. God rests in giving and sustaining life on the

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Sabbath day. It would be inappropriate to let your animals to thirst and die of thirst, rather.

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And that's why even current nation of Israel, they do take the

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Sabbath really seriously. Every elevator in order to stop fire ignition, because when you press a button, it creates a spark, right, and that's working.

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Every elevator, starting Friday evening, every elevator will stop on every floor lest a

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Jewish follower, right, ignites, makes a fire.

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That's how seriously they take it. Now, the question is, does no one work on the

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Sabbath? Actually, firefighters work on the Sabbath. Emergency room doctors work on the

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Sabbath. And in ancient Israel, temple guards worked on the

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Sabbath. And what's their reasoning? Priests did sacrifices on the

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Sabbath. Circumcision happened on the Sabbath. What's the reasoning for all of that?

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Because the greater purpose of the Sabbath is not just doing nothing, it's restoration.

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All of those works are restorative work. And that's the very purpose of the

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Sabbath. It's the rest in order to restore.

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It's not just complete ceasing. It's not complete doing nothing. And that's what the synagogue leader did not understand.

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So, Jesus drives the point home in verse 16. So, ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom

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Satan has bound, think of it, for 18 years, be loose from this bond on the

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Sabbath? What Jesus does is He takes an accepted minor example to show how much more it is necessary for the major example.

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What do I mean? It's going from if this is so true in a little case, how much more is it more significant for the bigger case?

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So, back in ancient Israel, human beings, they were considered far superior to oxen or donkeys.

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And I have to remind us of this because our culture has such low view of humans that we consider animals more important than humans.

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But back then, that was not the case. They didn't reverse the created order.

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After all, only humans are made in God's image, not donkeys. So, humans were more valuable than donkeys or ox.

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Now, Jesus goes further. This woman is not only made in God's image, but she is the daughter, she is the daughter of Abraham.

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She's a child of promise. She belongs to God.

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She is much greater in value, in worth than an ox or a donkey.

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Now, if you guys, the synagogue leaders, you're fine loosening the cords that's tied around a donkey's neck or the ox so that the animal could have some water on the

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Sabbath. After all, you want to sustain life, not kill it. You're perfectly fine with that.

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You have no qualms about that. How much more necessary was it for God to loosen the cords that Satan held on this woman for the past 18 years?

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That's the argument. Jesus rebukes the attitude of just wait another day because it is a perverse attitude when you consider who is bound.

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She is not just like a donkey or an ox. Even a donkey or an ox is treated better than her, according to you guys, you synagogue leaders.

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She is far greater in worth than a donkey or an ox. For Jesus, restoration a day later is a restoration a day too late.

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Now, how does this audience react? And when he 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.

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Upon Jesus' live demonstration on the Sabbath, there is an immediate division.

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Notice all, all those who oppose him are put to shame. All those who receive his teaching greatly rejoice.

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Luke emphasizes this comprehensive division that exists in the crowd's response to Jesus.

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All the enemies of Christ are put to shame when they refuse to respond in faith to Jesus' teaching, while all who trust

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Christ rejoice. There's really no middle ground here.

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There's no, yet some remained agnostic. It's either or.

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You can't have a middle ground response to Jesus. All who oppose him will be put to shame.

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And that was true in that local setting, but it's also true in the eschatological setting on the last day of judgment.

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And all who receive Jesus will greatly rejoice.

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There's no shame there. Ultimately, when we look at the

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Sabbath miracle that Christ does, it points to and it will be fulfilled by his work on the cross.

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Here the woman has been bound by Satan for 18 years and she is freed by Jesus.

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But the reality is this bondage doesn't just affect this woman.

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This bondage affects everyone. Everyone is trapped by Satan.

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You may not have a crooked posture like this woman, but your everything inside you is crooked.

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Your desires are wicked. Your intentions are twisted. Your goals are self -centered.

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And this is not to say that all Satan did it. Oftentimes we want to shift blame.

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No, the bondage is, the bondage to Satan is not because Satan is causing you to sin every single time.

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It's that when you do sin, Satan is the one who accuses you of all of this.

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And you are in that perpetual position of shame. So when you do sin, sometimes you do

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Satan's job for you. You accuse yourself. Oh, you're so disgusting. I'm so selfish.

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I'm so evil. There is no hope for me. I'm unlovable.

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I'm not worthy. We make these judgments. We make these remarks of shame on ourselves.

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Even things like shame on me, right? We say this so flippantly. But we're doing

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Satan's job for him. We're putting ourselves back into bondage. Now, how can you be freed from such a bondage?

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You got to go to the same person who freed the woman in bondage, and that's

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Jesus. Now, what does Jesus do against us? Colossians 2 .14 tells us that Jesus has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us.

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He has taken it away by nailing to the cross. What does Jesus do? He takes the certificate of indebtedness.

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What does that mean? Just a fancy way of saying the record of your sins. Everything you have done against God, there's a whole record of it.

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Books are written of it. What does Jesus do when he goes to the cross? He nails all of that on the cross.

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When Jesus died on the cross, he took all of the record of your sin and eliminated it by nailing on the cross.

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All your past mistakes, all your perverse acts and thoughts, all your intentional sins, all your record of rebellion, all the unkind words, nailed to the cross with him.

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Now, how does that free you from the bondage? Well, Satan has no ammunition against you anymore.

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If God removed your record, Satan has nothing to hold against you. He has nothing to accuse you.

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If you trust that Jesus died for you on the cross for your sin, well, so has your record been killed.

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Your record has been expunged to use a court language. There's no rap sheet against you.

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There's no felony misdemeanor in the court of the Lord against you if you trust

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Jesus. And what that means, you have no business resurrecting that. You have no power to do that.

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So you have no business telling yourself, I'm such a bad person. I'm such a failure.

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I can't do this anymore. There's no hope for me. I'm going to be just struggling with this sin for the rest of my life.

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We have no business of doing that when God has nailed it to him on the cross with Christ.

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And only one came back alive, and that's Jesus. And next time, the next time the accusatory thought pops up, rears its ugly head, you can confidently respond, yes, that was true of my old self, but that's been nailed on the cross with Christ.

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Satan cannot enslave you any longer when he has nothing to accuse you with.

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The accuser is silenced by the blood of Christ. That's the only thing that silences the accuser.

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Only through Jesus' death

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Satan is silenced, and you are rescued from your former bondage.

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Don't go back into it. And this morning, there exists two choices, just as there were two choices in verse 17.

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If you refuse Christ, just like the enemies of Christ, you will be put to shame.

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Not only will you be living in shame until the end, but you will be put to shame on the judgment day.

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There's no way out of your shame until your guilt is dealt with. And the only person who can deal with guilt completely in a compassionate manner is

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Jesus Christ himself. And if you choose to trust Jesus as the only hope of salvation, your guilt is taken from you, and you have a great reason to rejoice.

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Because you're freed in the truest sense. You're freed from the bondage of sin.

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You have a fighting chance against sin. Sin no longer defines you. Sin no longer holds you down.

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Because you belong to a greater master. He cut the cord loose.

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And he has taken you out once and for all. Let us pray.

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Father, we are thankful that we worship Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus Christ, who fulfills the

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Sabbath through his death in providing the ultimate freedom from work and the ultimate restoration from bondage.

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Help us to live as those who have been freed by Christ.

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And help us to not rely on our own self. And help us in the hours of darkness when we catch ourselves accusing ourselves.

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Help us to always go to Christ, who mercifully and compassionately draws near to us.

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Because that's who he is. In Jesus' name. Amen.