Liberation (vv. 10–13). If I had been crippled for eighteen years, I wonder if I would be faithful to worship God week after week in the synagogue. Surely this woman had prayed and asked God for help, and yet she was not delivered. However, God’s seeming unconcern did not cause her to become bitter or resentful. There she was in the synagogue.
Ever sensitive to the needs of others, Jesus saw the woman and called her to come forward. It may have seemed heartless to the congregation for Him to do this and expose her handicap publicly (see Matt. 12:13), but He knew what He was doing. For one thing, Satan was in the synagogue and He wanted to expose him and defeat him. But He also wanted the woman to help Him teach the people an important lesson about freedom.
Not only does Satan bow people down, but so do sin (Ps. 38:6), sorrow (Ps. 42:5), and suffering (Ps. 44:25). Jesus Christ is the only one who can set the prisoner free. He spoke the word, laid His hands on her, and she was healed and gave glory to God! That was a synagogue service the people never forgot.
Indignation (v. 14). Instead of rejoicing and giving God the glory, the ruler of the synagogue (see Luke 8:41) became very angry. He did not have the courage to express his anger to Jesus, so he scolded the congregation! But the more you ponder his tirade, the more laughable it becomes. Suppose they did bring their sick to be healed; who would heal them? Did he have that kind of power, and, if he did, why had he not used it to help people before? What a cowardly hypocrite!
The bondage of the ruler of the synagogue was worse than that of the woman. Her bondage affected only her body, but his bondage shackled his mind and heart. He was so bound and blinded by tradition that he ended up opposing the Son of God! Elbert Hubbard called tradition “a clock that tells us what time it was.” The ruler of the synagogue could not “discern this time” (Luke 13:12:56) and he stood condemned.
Vindication (vv. 15–17). Jesus could have healed this woman on any other day of the week. After all, she had been bound for eighteen painful years, and one more day would have made little difference. But He deliberately chose the Sabbath day because He wanted to teach a lesson about freedom. Note the repetition of the word loose (Luke 13:12, 15–16).
First, the Lord defended the woman and rebuked the ruler of the synagogue. Jesus reminded him that he treated his animals far better than he treated this poor woman. This indictment included the people in the congregation as well. Our Lord was arguing from the lesser to the greater: if God permits people to help their thirsty animals on the Sabbath, would He not want us to care for needy people made in the image of God? Any tradition that keeps us from helping others is not from God. In fact, it is easy to use tradition as an excuse for not caring for others.
Jesus said that the woman was a “daughter of Abraham,” referring to her spiritual condition and not her physical birth (Luke 19:9; Gal. 3:7). All the Jewish women present would have been “daughters of Abraham.” Does this mean that she was a converted person before the Lord healed her? If so, then she is the only believer in the New Testament who was physically afflicted because of demonic attack. (We are not sure what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was or exactly how Satan used it to buffet Paul. See 2 Cor. 12.)
Perhaps it is a matter of semantics, but I prefer to speak of demonic work in believers as “demon oppression” rather than “demon possession.” In fact, the Greek word is “demonized,” so we need not think of “possession” in spatial terms. Certainly Satan can and does attack the bodies and minds of God’s people. Some satanic oppression could last for many years until someone detects that Satan is at work. Not all sickness is caused by demons (Luke 6:17–19), so we must not blame everything on Satan.
There were people in the congregation who hoped to use this Sabbath violation to accuse Jesus, but He left them so ashamed that they said nothing. The lesson that He taught was clear: Satan puts people into bondage, but true freedom comes from trusting Christ. The Sabbath that God wants to give us is a “heart rest” that comes through His grace and not from obeying traditions (Matt. 11:28–30).
The parables in Luke 13:18–21 were probably spoken to the congregation just before Jesus and the Twelve departed from the synagogue. He had used these parables before and the disciples understood them (Matt. 13:31–33, 51). Some see in them a picture of the visible outward growth of the kingdom (the mustard seed) and the invisible inward influence of the kingdom (the leaven). By using these parables, Jesus was saying, “You Jewish religious leaders may hold to your dead traditions and oppose the truth, but God’s living kingdom will still increase. Satan will be defeated!”
But, we must keep two other considerations in mind. First, Jesus had already used leaven as a picture of evil (Luke 12:1), and He was not likely to contradict Himself. Second, the context of Matthew 13 indicates opposition and seeming defeat for God’s kingdom, not worldwide conquest. Yes, there will be ultimate victory; but meanwhile, much of the seed sown will bear no fruit, Satan will sow counterfeits, and the net will catch all kinds of fish, good and bad. I cannot find either in church history or in contemporary reports any proof that the kingdom of God has “permeated the whole world.” In view of the population increase, we are losing ground!
The Jews knew their Scriptures and recognized the images that Jesus used. Leaven represented evil (Ex. 12:14–20), and a mighty tree pictured a great world kingdom (Ezek. 17:22–24; 31:3–9; Dan. 4:20–22). A mustard seed produces a shrub, not a great tree. The kingdom would be infected with false teaching (Gal. 5:1–9), and the small seed (“little flock,” Luke 12:32) would grow into an organization that would be a home for Satan. (The birds represent the evil one, Matt. 13:19.) The professing church today fits both descriptions.