You will turn back with me now
to Luke chapter 13. The title of the message this morning
is, Loosed by the Lord. Our Lord often uses that word,
loosed. You remember when He called Lazarus
from the grave, He came forth bound, head to foot. And our
Lord said, loosen, and they loosened. Here in Luke chapter 13 is the
account of a woman who was in a bad shape. She was healed of a very restrictive,
painful infirmity which she bore 18 years. We're not given some of the details
which are often given in other instances of these miracles of
Christ. We're not told who she was. Her
name's never mentioned in the scriptures. Not told how old
she was, just how long she had the infirmity. We're not even
told exactly where she was healed. It just says one of the synagogues. Names and places are not really
all that important, are they? I remember the day the Lord spoke
peace to my heart. I was, without a doubt, the most
insignificant person in that building, in my own eyes. The important thing that day
was that the Lord Follow me. And the Lord called me. And the Lord touched me. And
the Lord loosened me. That is the important thing.
Our Lord's miracles are performed for three reasons. We are given
those reasons in the Scriptures. First of all, that the Scriptures
might be fulfilled. How often did our Lord go here,
go there, do this, do that, and it says that the Scriptures might
be fulfilled. His miracles, these miracles
that He performed, were a fulfilling of things written thousands of
years before He ever appeared. And not in some vague way, the
way man's mystical prophets do in some vague way, but to the
last detail. His name is Jehovah Rapha, the
Lord that healeth thee. He's the great physician. And
then secondly, his miracles were given to confirm who he was. This was the Christ. They've
been looking for the Christ for 2,000 years. The Christ was promised way back
yonder in the garden. The woman's seed. And all down
through time, they are talking about this seed. Boys, pay attention. They are talking about this woman's
seed, this seed that shall come. This promised Redeemer. And now
He is here. And when this Redeemer comes,
God is going to confirm Him as the Son of God. He is going to
confirm Him as the Christ, the Savior of sinners. How will He
do such a thing? He will do it through miracles
and wonders and signs. That is how He is going to do
it. Peter said, Ye men of Israel, hear these words. Acts 2 verse
22. Jesus of Nazareth. No doubt about
who they are talking about. They are talking about this man
born of Mary and Joseph. Here they are back here. You
men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved
of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God
did by Him in the midst of you all. His miracles were done to
fulfill the Word of God They were done to confirm His person,
and thirdly, to illustrate by figure how God saves sinners
by His mercy and grace. And that, by the grace of God,
is exactly what I hope to do with our text here in Luke chapter
14. Now, you can look at every one
of these miracles separately, and you can find the sinner And
you can find God showing mercy to that sinner through His Son.
You can go through these and you can view them one at a time.
Or you can put them all together. And when you do that, when you
see that, when they're put all together, then you see the sinner
as he really is, and you see God's mercy and grace as it really
is, healing that sinner. Now, I have several things I
want you to see this morning. First of all, I want you to see
her condition. Her condition. There was something
physically wrong with her spine. She was bowed together. In other words, she was bowed
down. She was about half the stature
that she should have been. Bowed over. She couldn't walk
right. She couldn't see right. She was
forced by her infirmity to be like she was. She was bound.
And as I told you on many occasions, disease and infirmities are a
picture of the result of sin. When questioned, I read it to
you a few moments ago by the ruler of the synagogue as to
the timing of our Lord's healing on the Sabbath day, our Lord
said of this woman and her condition, down in verse 16, whom Satan
hath bound. I find that interesting. Her
condition was brought about by Satan. And sin is the condition
of every child of Adam. Listen to the Scripture. By one
man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. For all, he
said, Romans 3.23, have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. And Paul tells us that the law
was spiritual, but he said, I am carnal, sold unto sin. This woman didn't know much.
She didn't know much. But she did know that she was
needy. She did know that she had an
infirmity. And I'm going to tell you something.
I'm talking to you this morning about your spiritual condition.
Sin has left every son of Adam bound. He's bound. He's not free. He's bound. He's
not walking upright. He's bowed down. He's bowed down. He's restricted. He can't walk
right. He can't see right. This woman knew that she had
an infirmity. She was helpless. She was hopeless.
She was bound by a spirit. of infirmity. I know I must sound
like a broken record, but this is the first work of God the
Holy Spirit in those He calls. He convinces us of sin. Now He will convince of righteousness,
God's righteousness in Christ, that imputed righteousness, and
He's going to convince us of judgment satisfied. And I'll
tell you this, if He ever convinces you of sin, He'll have to convince
you of imputed righteousness and judgment satisfied. He said when the Spirit of God
has come, He will convince of sin. Churches today are filled
with men and women who profess a revelation of righteousness
and judgment satisfied, but manifest no knowledge of sin. Sin is a
nature. Sin is what we are. Do we not listen to the news? You can't hardly help but hear
it. It's everywhere. Do we not listen to the news?
Do we not read the paper, murderers, thefts, adulterers, fornication,
child molesters, men lying with men and women with women? Do
you think these people got here from another planet? These are
children of Adam. They are children of Adam. And
we share the same nature as they do. Listen to what our Lord said
to those He preached to over here in Matthew chapter 15 verse
19. They were talking about wine
defiling the man and eaten with unwashing hands, defiling the
man. And our Lord told them, He said,
out of the heart. Whose heart? Your heart. My heart.
Out of the heart. In another place, in one of the
other Gospels, He said, out of the heart of man. Out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts and murders and adulteries and fornications and thefts false
witness and blasphemies. And these are the things that
defile the man. My friend, do not mistake God's
restraint for some personal goodness or quality in yourself. I don't
know how many times I've watched the news. I've been guilty of
saying this. You read some horrible thing like that of The only name
that comes to my mind right off the bat is Charlie Manson. But
you read some horrible event or you see some horrible crime
and you say, how could man do that? The only reason you and I are
not another Charlie Manson is God's restraining hand. Sin is
a nature. It reigns, the Scripture says,
unto death. It rules over the faculties.
It rules over the thoughts and reasoning. It rules over the
emotions and the will. The carnal mind, the natural
mind, is enmity against God. It's not subject to the law of
God. Neither indeed can it be. Man's
ignorant of his sin because it's all he's ever known. He examines
himself in the light of his depraved heart and his fallen reasoning,
and he finds only normal behavior. Just normal behavior. And it's
normal to him because it's all he's ever known or seen. Sin
is a nature. It leaves men and women subject
to the lies and deceit of Satan. He loves darkness. Our Lord said,
here's condemnation. Here's the condemnation. You
want to know what sin is? You want to know what this curse
is? Here it is. Light has come into the world, and men love
darkness rather than light. It cries, peace, peace, where
there is no peace. It gives men a false refuge,
a hiding place. It gives men a false sense of
security. It hides the truth. It puts like
blinders on a horse. It veils the truth for him. If
our gospel be hid, it is hid to the lost, in whom the God
of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not,
lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine
unto them. The Lord preached to the Jews
concerning their sins, and they said, Now wait a minute, we be
Abraham's seed. We were never in bondage to any
man. We are not bound. We are not bound. And he told them some more about
their sin. And they said, now wait a minute,
we've been not born of fornication. Is that what you're saying? God is our Father. They took refuge in the law.
They took refuge in their ancestry. And they took refuge in their
own righteousness. But the law offers no comfort
to the lawbreaker. Sin binds men by chains of darkness,
and they don't see it because they are by nature children of
wrath, even as others. And so they walk according to
the course of this world, and they walk according to the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit who now worketh in the
children of disobedience. She was bound by Satan's infirmity
18 years. So is the sinner bound not only
by his nature, but by the deceit and wickedness of anti-christ
religion. And secondly, I want you to see
a divine act of mercy and grace. There is nothing in our text
to indicate that she came to the synagogue seeking to be healed
or seeking the mercy of God. But she did come. She didn't
come. Tells us she was there. Doesn't
tell us why. But she was there. And there's
ever indication to me that she was settled in the fact that
her disease and she had accepted that. No cure was ever to be
found. And she went to the synagogue
for the same reason everybody else did. She wasn't seeking
mercy. She wasn't seeking salvation.
But whether or not that's true, it doesn't make any difference.
She was there this day, and Christ was there this day because God
purposed to save this woman at this time through these means. That's why she was there. And I tell you, I get excited
when I think about it. Our Lord's compassion was stirred
when He looked on this woman. Sometimes I think we make the
Lord Jesus Christ out to be the stiff, stern monarch who has
no feelings, who has no emotion, who has no compassion. But it
says His compassion was stirred. He was stirred in Himself when
He saw this woman. The Apostle Paul was another
man not seeking God. In fact, he was serving Satan. in the persecution of God's saints.
But he said, when it pleased God who separated me from my
mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in
me. The Lord Jesus Christ looked
upon this poor, contorted, twisted wretch, and for no other reason
than the glory of God's free grace, He called her to Himself. He didn't call her to a creed.
He didn't buttonhole her at the back of the church and start
questioning her until he found something he could disagree with.
That's not what he did. He did not call her to a creed. He did not call her to the front
of the church. He did not call her to a denomination. He called her to himself. To himself. Salvation is in a
person. It's in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He said, I am the way. They were
still hunting away. They were confused about what
He was saying. He's going away from them, going
to the Father and going to return and all these things. And He
said, you know the way. They said, we don't know the
way. And we don't know where you're going. He said, I am the
way. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. And no man cometh
unto the Father but by Me. I hear men talk about their calling
and they talk about feelings and sensations and visions and
voices. Beloved, when God calls a man,
He calls him to His Son. That's where He calls him. And
that's all He wants to talk about. Every question He has is concerning
the Son. Who is He? Who is this man? Why did he come? Where is he
now? What did he do? He calls him to His Son, and
if you've ever been called to His Son, you'll never be called
of God. God calls a man, He calls him
to His Son. In Him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him. Now watch
this. And He said unto her, Woman,
Thou art loosed from Thine infirmity." And He laid His hands on her,
and immediately she was made straight and glorified God. Let me tell you something. It's
one thing to know that Jesus Christ saved sinners, and it's
another thing altogether to know that He's done a work in me. Do you find that true, Richard? Totally different. Totally different.
It's one thing to know that God has an elect people in Christ
and that He took them into union with Himself and lived for them
and died for them and raised them up together with Him and
seated them with Him in the heavenlies. And it's another thing altogether
to know my own election. My friend, you can learn the
facts of the doctrines of grace in a thousand books in the libraries
all over the world. But the only way you can know
your election of God is for God Himself to lay His hands upon
you and loose you from your infirmity. I'm sick to death about hearing
men talk about salvation by grace and deny the healing power behind
it. The cords that bound this daughter
of Abraham were loosed. Isn't that what it says? They
were loosed. When Lazarus came forth from
the grave, those grave clothes fell off him. He was loosed. The cords that bound her were
loosed, and like an ass or an ox tied in the barn, he must
be loosed, and then led away to the water. God's got a lot
of asses and oxes, don't He? And He sees them tied, and He
unlooses them. And how fitting that He do it
on the Sabbath, because He Himself is the Sabbath. He is the rest.
And led them off to the water of life. God doesn't save men and women
and leave them bound in their infirmities. He doesn't save
men and leave them in their ignorance and deceit. He calls them out
of darkness into His marvelous light. He makes them meet to
be partakers with the enlightened saints. He takes away the stony
heart and creates in us a heart of flesh, a tender, kind, forgiving
heart, a contide heart. I can't imagine this woman looking
back on her past and talking about the good old days. Can
you? I'll tell you in 18 years this
woman knew what infirmity was. Can you hear that leper who fell
down at the Lord's feet? His face rotting away. He rags over. He could barely
talk. It's called a living death. Leprosy. It was eating away at him. He
wasn't even permitted to be anywhere around normal people. And he
came to the Lord and threw himself on the ground and said, Lord,
if You will, You can make me clean. Can you even imagine that
leper having been cleansed, reminiscing about the old times back in the
leper colony? Can you even imagine that woman
who spent all of her living on useless positions laughing and
talking about the old days in the waiting room? And the paralyzed man who laid
at the pool 38 years, I dare say he never wished again. to
lay that way the rest of his whole life. Those whom Christ
looses from Satan's infirmities never again desire to have it
back. And I worry about men and women
who make professions of faith but continue on in their rebellion
and sin. I worry about men and women who
prefer the company of their ungodly relatives more than they do their
children of God. I worry about men and women who
say, I am delivered, and yet go back to the leper colony to
live. If these miracles illustrate
anything, they illustrate that grace delivers. Grace is effectual. Grace changes. Grace gives life
where we want death. Grace is effectual. Grace reigns
through righteousness unto eternal life. by Jesus Christ our Lord. And this woman glorified God
in her new condition. I dare say it was the first time
she ever came to a true worship service. She worshiped God. She glorified Him. All right, quickly, let me give
you one more thing. This woman being delivered from
her debilitating infirmity now faces a new conflict. The ruler
of the church where she had attended all her life now accused her
spiritual physician of committing a crime in her healing. Isn't
that something? The Lord does a miracle of grace
on a true believer. And those people where they once
attended all find it to be a crime. Isn't that something? Three things
came to pass. This man, here it is, a brand
new believer. She was touched by the Lord,
called by the Lord, affectionately loosed and let go, and she glorified
Him. And her heart entered into true
worship for the first time in her life. And here is the old
ruler of the synagogue. And he said, this whole thing
is a sham. The whole thing is a sham. Three
things happened. First of all, Jesus Christ Himself
answered in her stead. This is her advocate. And He takes His place between
her and her adversary. And He dresses him down. Secondly, Jesus Christ Himself
assured her of her acceptance with God. He called her a daughter
of Abraham. Now, a Jew might say that. It
might mean something else. But when the Lord Jesus Christ
said she was a daughter of Abraham, He knew what He was talking about.
And she was a true daughter. And then thirdly, her Savior
and Lord graciously used her to be an instrument of His mercy
and grace. Wouldn't it be something if God
used us? Our Father, we thank You. Oh, to have a knowledge of this blessed, blessed mystery. To have some understanding of
what grace does, and what grace is, and where it comes from,
and what its objects are. Oh, be pleased. Be pleased today
to open the hearts of some poor sinner here, someone here bound
with an infirmity most of their life. And call them to yourself and
loose them. Oh, our Lord, be gracious, we
pray, for Christ's sake. Amen.