One of the things that I want
to keep reminding myself and you as well is that one of the
tragedies of the fall in the garden is that we lost sight
of the character of God. We lost sight of the fact we
keep. And so many of us often want to think that God is harsh
and He needs his bounties to be extracted from him by severe
labours and other things, but our God is merciful and gracious.
He delights in mercy, brothers and sisters. For those who need
mercy, that's a delightful thing, isn't it? One of these miracles
then, I wanted us to look at this because for several reasons. One is that the miracles of the
apostles were just a continuation of the works of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Acts begins that these are the works that the Lord Jesus
began to do and he continues those works. They were of course
works that continued for a specific time. and they had a specific
purpose. But overall the miracles in the
scriptures are miracles that show us the picture of the character
of our God, that his faithfulness to his own, his power to deliver
his own, his coming purposefully on a mission. We are told at
the beginning of this parable we are to behold in verse 11
of Luke 13. Behold, that means we need to
observe, we need to consider this particular miracle. So the
miracles in the scriptures are miracles, we have several reasons
for the miracles, there are four that I want us to think about
this morning. The miracles are there that the
scripture might be fulfilled. the Scriptures might be fulfilled.
Again and again and again the Lord relates to the fact that
the Scriptures must be fulfilled. And also, as I said earlier,
to exalt the character of our God. In Exodus 15 He is called
Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that healeth thee, which presumes
of course that you need healing. The miracles are to confirm Confirm
who the Lord Jesus Christ was. Who the Lord Jesus Christ is
is healing the blind, shows that he is the one who is the light
of the world and in him people see light. His miracles picture,
as I said earlier, they picture the salvation of sinners. by
His grace and His mercy and love. And all of these miracles, as
you might note, are public miracles. They are there to display the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they are, in the context
of the Jews' religion and the other religions of the world,
they are there as pictures to show the emptiness and the hopelessness
of dealing with the real issue of people's sin and souls before
a holy God by anything that man does in his work's religion.
They just show the emptiness of work's religion, of all the
religion of man's devising is empty. So let's have a look at
this woman. I read that passage earlier.
It says, Behold, he was teaching in the synagogues. He was teaching
on a Sabbath. It was his habit to be in the synagogues on the
Sabbath day. And behold, there was a woman. A woman, and the women in Scripture
are pictures of the Church so often, aren't they? So let's
consider this woman as an exemplar of all the Church of God, and
if you can see yourself in this woman's picture, then you might
go away, as she did, rejoicing, and the result of that rejoicing
is that other people might rejoice with you. We trust happens. She was in a state of bondage,
this woman. This woman, she has no name, she has no place, don't
know where she is, and we have no age for her. But it says that
she had a spirit of infirmity. In verse 16, if you look down
there, it says that Satan, the Lord Jesus declared, whom Satan
has bound. She's the daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound. these 18 years. Back to verse 11. For 18 years
she was bowed together. Luke's a physician, of course,
and so when it comes to medical things he gives us details which
other of the evangelists may not give. But to be bowed together
means that all you do is you're completely bent over. She had
some infirmity, some infirmity that had a spiritual nature to
it and had a physical nature to it. She was bent over and
bowed down. And just imagine for 18 years
this lady had been in this particular situation. She was bowed together,
which means that she was almost doubled right over. So she was
doubled right over. The only way she could see where
she was going to look up, all she could see really with comfort
is what's in front of her and down at her feet. She could just
look at where she walked and look at what she was doing. She
could look at herself. And you know from John chapter
9 and other passages in the scriptures that the Jews of that day saw
and thought that she had done this because of some particular
sin that she had done. That's what they thought with
the blind man. Who sinned? Did his parents or did he sin?
Such is the nature of all of us. She was bowed down together. And seeing this was a spiritual
infirmity, her picture is a body of the binding of her soul, isn't
it? And verse 11 says, she could
in no wise lift herself up. In no way could she lift herself
up. There was nothing she could do
to straighten herself. Nothing she could do to walk
straight. Several things I want you to
notice about that. The first one is that her infirmity was
in her very being. And that's where the real infirmity
of all of us is, is in our very being. If all our infirmity is
just in the external things we do, then a reformation of someone's
life would be all they need. But if your problem is in your
being, if your problem is what you are, then you need a saviour. If you're bowed down like she
is and you can lift yourself up, you don't need a saviour. If you can take the first step
in salvation, you don't need a saviour, because you can take
the rest of them. All you need is a bit of assistance.
18 years, this lady turned up at
church. Turned up at church. She came,
bowed down. She came in bondage to Satan,
but she came. She came week after week. The other thing, of course, is
that her 18 years of coming and her still being bowed down is
a sign, as I said earlier, that the religion of the Jews could
do absolutely nothing for her. being. But she was where the
Lord was and she was needy. She was needy. We are not told
but you just wonder how often this lady had prayed for deliverance
and there was no answer. Prayed to be set free. Most likely
she couldn't have married her despair. Lord save me, Lord
heal me. She was bound. Every son of Adam
is bound. We are born into this world bound. We're not free. We don't have
free wills. Our wills are captive to our
natures. They're not free at all. We are
bound as we walk through this world into looking down. We are
bound in this world because we have no ability to lift ourselves
up in any way at all. We are bound because we spend
our time looking at ourselves. We are bound by the nature that
we are in Adam. and only the miracle of grace
in the Lord Jesus Christ can set us free. As Jeremiah says,
can the lip and change his spots? Can the Ethiopian change the
color of his skin? Can you change yourself? Can
you lift yourself up? That's what Jeremiah 13.23 is
saying. You can't do it. You cannot walk
uprightly. You're bound and bowed down. This is a picture of what it
is to be captive to Satan in this world, isn't it? To be bound
by him. As the Lord says, Satan has bound
this lady for 18 years, and he alone will lose her. Will lose her. So let's look
at her salvation briefly. I want to say again that all
the miracles in the scriptures are miracles of us telling one
story, and they tell the same story repeatedly in the same
fashion, with the same elements to it all the time. Her binding
is a picture of her captivity of Satan. Her binding is a picture
of the fact that she, as Adam's child, is a sinner. a sinner. And the first work of God, the
Holy Spirit, is to convince us of sin. When he comes, John 18,
just over a few pages into John 16, verse 8, says that when he
comes, he says, I'll go away. It's expedient
for you that I go away. If I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send
him unto you. And when he has come, He will reprove the world
of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin? What's the sin that the Holy
Spirit will reprove the world of? Unbelief. Unbelief. Because you believed
not on me. The first activity of God the
Holy Spirit is to reprove the world of sin, to convince us
of sin. And once that work of exposing
us to what we are, as captive, as bowed down, as unable to do
anything to help ourselves, if we're convinced of God's confirmation
that we are sinners and sin is what we are and sin is therefore
what we do because of what we are, then there will be no problem
about the Lord convincing us of righteousness, that our righteousness
is entirely in the Lord Jesus Christ and that judgment has
been satisfied. The judgment of God has fallen
on the Lord Jesus Christ and God is satisfied. Our Saviour
says that He didn't come to call the righteous. but sinners to
repentance. The natural mind, the carnal
mind, is enmity against God. And when the Son comes, if the
Son makes you free, you'll be free indeed. And that's exactly
what happens in our salvation. The first point of our salvation
is that the Lord Jesus came. And He came from heaven to earth,
and He came to seek and to save the lost. You'll call his name
Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. And it's good
to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ came as a preacher. He
came as a preacher. He came as a preacher of the
gospel. He came as a preacher of the kingdom of God, that God
reigns as a king, supreme and sovereign over all things and
all people and all events, including Satan and including diseases
and including all infirmities. It's good to remember that the
Lord Jesus Christ is a preacher and where the Lord Jesus Christ
is exalting, the preaching of the Word of God will be exalted.
Men will exalt all sorts of other things in worship services as
they call them these days. But we come because our God is
a preacher and he promises that through the preaching of the
Word he will reveal himself and he will cause his people to be
born again. The other thing, of course, to remember is that
she came. She came to where he was, 18 years of coming. Why
was she there that day? Why was she there that particular
day? She may well have heard of the Lord Jesus Christ. One
of the things that is remarkable in the New Testament is that
people like Blind Bartimaeus were in Jericho for three years
or plus three years, and no one had taken him to the Lord Jesus
Christ. There shouldn't have been a sick
person in Israel if people had just believed and taken their
sick ones to the Lord Jesus. Many did. The ones that did were
ones in need. And she came. She came faithfully
every Sabbath day. He came to her and she came to
him, drawn by the cords of omnipotent sovereignty and drawn by the
cords of love. And I love what and when Jesus saw her, when
Jesus saw her. It's a good thing to ponder,
isn't it, brothers and sisters in Christ, that the Lord God,
our glorious saviour, our glorious redeemer, our friend, our The Holy One of Israel sees us. He sees us. When did he first
see her? When did he first see this particular
woman, this certain woman? He saw her in the eternal councils
of the council of the Godhead before the world began. She was
a gift. She was that bride espoused to
him from before the foundation of the world. He saw her and
he delighted in her. He saw her. He saw her as in
union with him before the foundation of the world. He saw her in Adam. when she sinned in the garden
and said to God, get out of my life and I'll have Satan's poison. I'll have Satan's promises for
my comfort and my walk through this world. The glorious thing,
the glorious thing about salvation is that before we ever sinned,
there was a saviour. Before we ever sinned, we were
saved. God had provided the Saviour.
Don't you love that verse from Revelation 13 where the Lord
Jesus Christ is declared as the Lamb slain. The Lamb that was
slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation 13 verse
8. It's a glorious thing to contemplate.
She was in Adam as a sinner. She was in the Ark with Moses. And the wrath of God fell upon
her as it did upon Noah and all the others in the Ark. And that
Ark represents the Lord Jesus Christ. And that Ark was raised
up above those waters which David Houston killed all others. And
she was kept alive because she was in the Lord Jesus Christ.
She was shielded by that pitch, that propitiation that sealed
the Ark on the inside and the outside. Levi was in the loins of Abraham.
She was in the loins of Abraham. She was one of Abraham's faith
children. She was one of his natural children, but she was
much more than that. She was one of the faith children of
Abraham. He saw her. He saw her in the
Passover. He saw her when the Lord said,
when I see the blood, Passover view. So she'd been preserved
all through history, hadn't she, this lady, and preserved these
last 18 years that she might be here before us today as a
testimony to the grace of God. And most of all, he saw her in
him. He saw her as one with him, one
with him in eternity, one with him when he came to this world,
she was circumcised with him. She was one with him when he
obeyed the law of God before men and before God perfectly. She was one with him in the garden
when he himself was bowed down. And the enormity of that cup
that Norm was reading to us about out of Isaiah 51, he looked into
that cup. and her sins. And God the Father
gave him that cup. He was one with her and he saw
her in him on the cross. That's what Paul says, I'm crucified
with Christ. She was crucified with Christ. She was one with him in the tomb,
she was one with him when he was resurrected. According to
Ephesians, heavenly places as are all of
God's pearls. She's one with Him and she's
one with Him in the new creation. I love what Isaiah 46.10 says. It says that God declares the
end from the beginning. What's the end? What's the end? What's the terminus of all of
this creation? What's the reason for this creation
still to roll on? that it was still to come and
maybe, maybe one day soon we'll see the last of these bowed down
women that can't lift themselves up and they'll be made straight
and made to walk upright and made to glorify God. And that'll
be the end. What will be the end? The end
will be where all of these people like this lady and all of the
children of Abraham, all of the faith children of Abraham will
be in the new creation. And we'll see him, as he is,
will be called the sons of God, the daughters of God. Beloved,
now we are the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we
shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be
like him, for we shall see him as he is. Do you long for that
day? Do you long to see him? We see him through the eyes of
faith now. He saw her. He saw her. He saw her, and what did he look? What was his look when he saw
her? It wasn't a look of pity, was
it? It's a look of love and compassion
and understanding. See, everlasting love, according
to Jeremiah 31.3, drew her to him. an everlasting love through him
to her. Our God delights in mercy, delights
in being merciful to his children, and for 18 years no one in that
town and no one in that synagogue and no one in her family and
none of her acquaintances would have thought that she was going
to be an object of mercy. What hope we have, brothers and
sisters. We've been bowed down over people
that we love and care for for just such a short time. Keep
praying, never give up. He saw her, verse 12, this is
a glorious picture of salvation. He saw her, he called her to
him. Out of that crowd in the synagogue,
his eyes were just on one that day, he called her to him. Salvation is personal. It's always
personal. It's always about you and him
personally. So he called her to himself. He didn't call her to a religious
system of theology. He didn't call her to a denomination. He didn't call her to a system
of works or anything. He called her to himself. When
he calls you, if he calls you, he'll call you to himself, personally. Salvation is 100% in a person. Why did she come? Why did she
come when he called? When he calls, when our Lord
Jesus Christ calls, there's power in his call, isn't there? He
says in John chapter six, he says, no man, 644, no man can,
that's the ability of man, isn't it? No man can come to me. No man can come to me, except
the Father which has sent me draw him, to draw him. All the power is in the one who
does the drawing. No man can come to me except
the Father which has sent me draw him, and I will raise him
up at the last day. It is written in the prophets,
and they shall all be taught of God. So you come, you'll be
drawn by the Father, and you'll come, and you'll be taught of
God. And every man therefore that has heard me. They come. They come. She came. She came because the Lord Jesus
called with the voice of omnipotent power. Verse 65 of that same chapter
in John's Gospel says, Therefore I said unto you that no man can
come to me except it were given unto him by my Father. She came. She came because he And look what he says, I love
the order of this. Verse 12, And said unto her,
Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. Isn't it extraordinary and isn't
it glorious to contemplate that he spoke her salvation and
he spoke her deliverance. He says, woman thou art loosed.
And then he goes to her and lays his hands on her and immediately
she was made straight. There's something very glorious
in that, isn't it? When were we saved? When were
we saved? Let's just remember and read
what God says about the salvation of his people. When were we saved? We read these verses often, and
I love them. I preached them at Owen's wife
Helen's funeral some years ago, and it was just lovely to contemplate. Verse 9 of 2 Timothy chapter
1, has saved us. This is our God, the gospel according
to the power of our God, who has saved us and called us with
a holy calling, not according to our works. not according to
our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. What's
the order? He saved us and He called us. As Romans 8 says, you know that
verse in Romans 8, 8.28, it's glorious, isn't it? The
order of God's activities. He says in verse 28, and we know
that all things work together for good, to them that love God,
to them who are thee called according to his purpose. For whom he did
foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. Whom he
called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he
also glorified. He spoke our salvation in the
eternal covenant of the Godhead before the world began. We're saved. We're saved and
we are called. And I love what he then does. Verse 13, and he laid his hands on her he laid his hands on her
and immediately she was made straight and glorified god he
laid his hands on touches his people. Such is the
intimacy and the person of our God that he touched her. He laid his hands on her. Now there's no question about
it, the laying on of hands, as we'll see as we come to Acts
28, is always in the Scriptures a picture of the fact that the
laying on of hands is a transfer. This laying on of hands, the
priests in Exodus and Leviticus laid their hands on the head
of the scapegoat. They laid their hands on them.
And that particular goat took the sins and it became the sin
of those people and it took those sins away. When the Lord Jesus
Christ lays his hands on people, he's signifying it as a great
high priest. He takes upon himself all of
her sin, he takes upon himself all of the consequences of her
sin. He takes upon himself everything,
and he takes upon himself and he takes it away. He laid his
hands on her as the great high priest, and her sin which was always
his sin in the covenant of grace. And all of the consequences of
her sin became him. That's what the cross is about,
isn't it? That's what Isaiah 53 is saying. It's saying to
this lady, how much Isaiah 53 must have meant to someone who
was bowed down and unable to lift themselves up. How often
she must have heard this and wondered, is this man Sorrows
coming here? He was despised and rejected
of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we
hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed
him not. Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, and we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions,
and he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him. and by his stripes we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone
astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. That's what the laying
on of hands is, isn't it? It's a complete and utter transfer.
It's a picture. It's a picture of him touching
her and allowing her to touch him. It's a picture of the fact
that he did that because he was in union with her. And He can
be in communion with you and be in communion with me because
He's in union with us. He can come untouched. And immediately, and immediately,
she was made straight. As verse 16 says, she was loosed
from this bond. She was loosed from this bond. That loosens, the same word that's
used when the Lord said to them, you go and get that colt that's
tied up at this particular house, this particular colt that's been
there by the ordination of God from all eternity, that particular
colt, and you go and loose him. The Lord has many asses and colts
that are tied, aren't they, bound to all sorts of things. And when
the Lord lays his hands upon you and he shows you what he
has done and who he is, you in the perfect righteousness
of his own weaving, then you are loosed, you are loosed, and
she was made straight. She was loosed and she was made
straight. She was made to stand upright. She was made to stand as she
was in creation. She was made to stand work of God. So that's what happens
doesn't it in salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ comes and
he draws his people to himself and he reveals that he sees his
people and he has a look of love and compassion and he calls them
to himself and he speaks salvation to the hearts of his people and
he lays his hands upon his people and he makes them straight. salts of Satan. This is how the
Lord Jesus Christ makes his people straight. And what do newly minted
believers do? What do newly minted believers,
what do fresh believers do? It bothers me sometimes, as you
go on, it's so easy to grow cold like the Laodiceans. and forget
the depths of our need before our God. Or to have, as another
church the Lord spoke of, to have a name that we live and
yet be our dead. Christians glorify God. They
glorify Him. They give all the glory to Him. They don't give any glory to
anything that they do. What could she brag about that
day? All the glory is his. What about her history? It doesn't
matter. What about all of the religion that she's been involved
in? You will know because of the
personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ and all of the attributes
of God are seen most clearly in the Lord Jesus Christ and
Him crucified, in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him saving sinners. She glorified God. She glorified
His works and His person and His activity. And He did it on the Sabbath. on that particular day. Why did
he do it on the Sabbath? Why did he do so much on the
Sabbath? He is the Sabbath. He is the
one. He is the one perfectly on a Sabbath day. He's
the only one who ever glorified God in that rest, and all of
his people find Him their Sabbath rest. See, that's what loosing
is, isn't it? Being loosed is to be able to
be loosed from all of your activities and to rest in He who is the
Sabbath. To be loosed from darkness, to
be loosed from ignorance, to be loosed from unbelief, to be
loosed from religious lies. He calls his people out of darkness,
he calls them out of bondage, he calls them to himself. Like the calf let loose from
a stall, he calls them. And the thing that is one of
the reasons for the Lord Jesus Christ to do this on the Sabbath
day is that they were in that synagogue at that moment when
he loosed her, there were two people, weren't there, that stood
straight. She stood straight as the Lord
made her to stand straight. She stood straight loosed. She
stood straight with the assurance from God Almighty that she was
a faith child of Abraham. Someone else did straight that
day, didn't he? And he really thought he was a child of Abraham,
and he was a flesh child of Abraham. And what's he say? How, how poignant
it is Christ. We have witnessed it
ourselves, brothers and sisters, and it will be an ongoing witness
until the Lord returns in glory. The Ruler of the Synagogue The ruler of the synagogue answered
with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day,
and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought
work. In them therefore come and be healed, but not on the
Sabbath day. Then the Lord answered him, Thou
hypocrite! Doth not each one of you, on
the Sabbath, loose his ox or his ass from the store, and lead
him away to watering? Ought not this woman, being a
daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bowed low these eighteen
years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? She had. like many of the Jews
in her day, had thought probably very highly of this religious
leader. He would have been esteemed for
his position in society. He would have been esteemed for
the extraordinary knowledge he had of the scriptures. He would
have been esteemed and honoured for his obedience to the law
of God. when this religious man meets
the Lord Jesus Christ and is given a witness to the grace
of God in saving a sinner. See, what was their accusation?
Their accusation? It seems that there was one,
but in the text you'll see that there are plurals there. Their
accusation against her Deliverer, her Redeemer, her Loosener, The
one who made her to stand upright, the one who no longer had her
bowed down. Their accusation is that this
man has committed a crime against God in healing her. Who was most bound in the synagogue
that day? Was the woman bound? Who was
the most bound? See now there's a real bondage
revealed and a real enmity, isn't it? There was a bondage in this
man, that this man had. He had a bondage, he was blinded
and he couldn't see the Saviour. He was deaf and he couldn't hear
the voice of the Saviour. He couldn't hear the voice of
love. He couldn't hear the voice of compassion. He couldn't see. He couldn't see
the Lord Jesus Christ revealed as glorious. worship God. He couldn't worship God. There is a bondage. There is
a bondage in this world. And it's a far greater bondage
than all the other infirmities you can possibly imagine. And
it's the bondage that Satan uses most. in which he binds people,
isn't it? It's a bondage of being involved
in religion, where it's a religion about what you do and what you
have to do and what you have done, a religion of works. The children of God are free. The children of God are free. The children of God are loosed.
And that is not a loosening to live a wicked, lascivious life. How did that lady go home that
day? She went home that day rejoicing in who God is. She didn't have
anything to boast in, anything of hers whatsoever. He was in bondage. There are
several things that I'd like us to think about as we close,
and the first one is that as in all of the scriptures, the
Lord Jesus Christ stands peace to the heart of his people. You see what he says in verse
16? She's a daughter of Abraham.
She really is a daughter of Abraham. Which means that she's one of
Abraham's faithful. us to declare righteous by the
faithfulness of another. And the Lord Jesus Christ takes
his place always as an advocate and an intercessor between his
people and his enemies. We don't fight, brothers and
sisters, with carnal weapons. Our weapons are spiritual. And
we have one weapon, don't we? We have one message. We just
preach the Gospel. We preach the Gospel and we leave
the Lord Jesus Christ to The other thing is, of course,
that Lord Jesus Christ is the one and the one alone that will
speak peace to the hearts of his people. So often in conversations
with people, I find that they want me in some way or another
to give them assurance of salvation. There is one person that you'll
get assurance from, and you'll get it from him, and if you get
it from him, no one will ever take it away from you. If you
get assurance from men and satisfaction from what men say, another man
can come and take it away from you in a heartbeat. God will
speak peace to the hearts of his people. And remarkably, remarkably,
he uses bowed down people who are able to help themselves,
people who are trapped in an infirmity and bound by Satan
for 18 years to give glory to himself in the salvation of sinners. May God bless his word to your
hearts and may you find yourselves faith children had two children, didn't he?
The Sibling God ruler represents Ishmael, doesn't he? And this
woman represents the two children of God, the faith children of
Abraham. They're children born by a promise. They're children
born when there's an absolute impossibility of any work of
man. They're children born of faith.
the children who inherit. They're not the children of fleshly
activities. Ishmael is the child of fleshly
activities. Let's give God a hand to make
this thing that he's promised happen is what Ishmael's all
about. And that's just works religion and it's all over this
world. If you leave church thinking
about what you have to do and not thinking about what the Lord
Jesus Christ has to heard another message of works. Abraham's children are the children
of fire. They're not natural born children,
they're children of promise. Turn with me to John chapter
8 as we close. I want us to remember as well
as we contemplate these things that these miracles and these
pictures in the Scriptures of the Lord Jesus Christ coming
in salvation and delivering his people from their sins are but
pictures of the essential stories of the books of the Bible. They
are pictures of what Galatians and Romans and Philippians and
Colossians and all of the rest of the Bible from Genesis to
Revelation are teaching about salvation being by grace and
not by works. In John chapter 8 we have some
people in verse 31. Many believed on him. You think
this is starting very well. There are many that believed
on him. The Lord Jesus Christ had come and preached and done
some remarkable things you can read in the preceding chapters. They believed on him. And then
Jesus said to those Jews, which believed on him, if you continue
in my word, then you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free. He's the truth. You'll
be loosed. You'll be set free. And they
answered him, we be Abraham's seed. We can trace our lineage. The genealogical records are
just down here in the temple, and I can trace my genealogy
all the way back to Abraham, and back to Noah, and back to
Adam, and back to God. I'm a child of God. I'm a child
of Abraham. We the Abraham seed are never
in bondage to any man. It's just a problem of Abraham's
natural seed, aren't they? They're in bondage to the Romans,
they've been in bondage to the Egyptians, they've been in bondage
to the Babylonians. They have absolutely no notion
that at this moment they're in bondage to Satan. Jesus answered them, and verily,
verily, I say unto you, whosoever commit a sin is a servant of
sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever, but
the Son abideth for ever. If the Son therefore shall make
you free, shall loose you, shall set you, and set you upright,
you shall be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham.
I know that you have a genealogy that traces your lineage all
the way back to Abraham. But you seek to kill me because
my word has no place in you. I speak that which I have seen
with my father, and you do that which you have seen of your father.'
And they answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus
said unto them, If you were Abraham's children, what would you do? You would do the works of Abraham. The works of Abraham is to believe. But now you seek to kill me,
a man that has told you the truth which I have heard You do the deeds of your father.'
Then they said unto him, We be not born of fornication." I have
no doubt that the fornication they're speaking of is all the
rumours that went around Nazareth and Galilee and elsewhere when
they tried to dig up as much dirt on the Lord Jesus Christ
as possible and there would have been people still there saying
that Joseph and Mary had some illicit relationship before marriage
or someone else with her. We're not be born for, we have
one father, even God. Look what they claim to themselves.
They're Abraham's children, they have one father, even God. Jesus
said unto them, if God were your father, if you were Abraham's
children, God were your father, you would love me. I'm sure this
woman went away loving him. Loving him. Not just liking him,
not just esteeming him. For I proceeded forth and came
from God, neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do you not
understand my speech? Even because you cannot hear
my word. You are of your father the devil. You will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there
is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh
of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And because
I tell you the truth, you believe me not." Why did this synagogue
gorilla not believe? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
had told the truth. What a shocking indictment of
the bondage of Satan. When you hear that, I don't know
how you respond. But we ought to just call out
to God. Don't leave me like that. Don't leave me. Don't leave me
like one of them. And which of you convinces me
of sin? He that is of God. heareth God's
words. Therefore you hear them not because
you are not of God. For what a time we might just
skip down to Verse 51, and read some of these promises. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never
see death. Then the Jews said unto him,
now we know that you have a devil. We don't have a devil, but you
have a devil. Look at the judgment they make on God. And they're
still doing it today in this religious world. Abraham is dead,
and the prophets, and thou sayest, if a man keep my saying, he shall
never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father
Abraham, which is dead, and the prophets which are dead, and
thou makest whom thou makest thou thyself? Jesus answered,
If I honour myself, my honour is nothing. It is my Father that
honoureth me, of whom you say that he is your God. Yet you
have not known him. But I know him. This is salvation,
is knowing God. I know him. And if I should say
I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you. But I know him
and keep his saying. Your father Abraham rejoiced
to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. I have no doubt in the world
that that's speaking of what happened on Mount Moriah in Genesis
chapter 22. When Abraham saw that the Lord
Jesus Christ, that lamb that was caught in the thicket, that
ram that was caught in the thicket, is a substitute, is a perfect
substitute. And God, I love what God said
to Abraham, said, God will provide himself a lamb for the sacrifice. provide himself a land for the
sake of Abraham. Then the Jews said unto him,
Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, I am. this world is the bondage of
being in religion, and claiming that God is your father, that
Abraham is your father, that you're a descendant of him, and
you do the things of Abraham in your mind, and yet, and yet,
when the Lord Jesus Christ is really revealed in the scriptures,
you find him repulsive. See, these people in verse 30
had believed in some sense, The devils believe and tremble. They do a heck of a lot better
than most people in religion these days. There's very little
trembling these days. In verse 59, they took up stones
to cast at him. Salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ
revealing himself so that you can know him. Revealing himself
in his true character, revealing himself in the salvation of sinners,
revealing himself in the cross, revealing himself to his people
so that they glorify him. And like this woman, others glorify
him with her. Jesus hid himself. What a bondage. in any way to lift yourself up. This good news in the Gospel
will be proclaimed, brothers and sisters. May the Lord bless
these words to your heart and mind. Have a great day.