She Keeps Her First Sabbath In Eighteen Years

She Keeps her first Sabbath in Eighteen Years

Luke 13:10-17

Notice that the LORD not only states keeping the Sabbath, but He also provides the rationale for keeping it. The LORD Himself rested from His work on the Seventh Day after creating the heavens and the earth. We don’t know exactly how He observed the Sabbath, but one could think of a Ancient Near East monarch resting in the garden outside the palace. We should perhaps think of Eden as being God’s garden next to His palace in which He could enjoy it in the cool of the day. He took the time to enjoy the beauty of the garden. He set Adam and Eve to maintain the garden and would commune with them in the evenings, both for fellowship and to give them instruction as needed. Adam and Eve participated in the glory of this garden of rest and also needed time to reflect on the improvements to this garden.

When Adam and Eve fell, all of creation was cursed. The earth was cursed. Man was sentenced to hard labor. this labor also fell upon man’s domesticated animals such as oxen and donkeys. The toil of the labor necessitated the Sabbath so that man and animal could regain their strength from the hard week.

Despite the strict commandment, Israel failed to observe the Sabbath scrupulously. Their failure led to the seventy-year captivity of Judah mentioned in Jeremiah 29:10 and other places. Israel had failed to properly observe the Sabbath from the time of Saul some 490 years earlier. So the land would be granted a 70 year rest from harvest.

After some of the Jews returned from Babylon, they were determined not to anger God and more by desecrating the Sabbath as well as breaking any of the commandments of the Torah. Part of what a group called the Pharisees did was to try to put a hedge around the Law. If they observed these traditions, then they could not break God’s Law. This became quite a burden. One only need read one of their disputations called “Berakoth” to realize what a burden was imposed upon the keeping of the Sabbath. In this tractate, a discussion emerged how a man in his house could give bread to a beggar outside without either of them breaking the Sabbath. This discussion takes up many pages of small print, but finally they figured a way how to do it. They did a lot of mental labor to come up with a solution. But methinks it would have been easier to simply open the door and give the man a loaf of bread.

These Sabbath rules were in full force on this day when Jesus came to the synagogue. Jesus had a reputation as a “Sabbath-breaker.” He had healed others on the Sabbath. In this incident, there was a woman who had been bent over so severely that she could not get up. Jesus later added that this bondage came from Satan. She had spent eighteen years in this condition. But somehow, she was able to come to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. How did she get there? One has the idea that she would have needed help which would have required these people to do work on the Sabbath. Or did they drop her off before Sunset the day before so that they could keep the Sabbath and let her lay there all night?

A person so crippled and bound would find it hard to enjoy rest, even on the Sabbath. So Jesus saw here and called her to come to Him. Now this woman was crippled, so either some had to help her, or she had to struggle to get there as Jesus had not yet healed her. In either case, work was done. Then Jesus proclaimed her free from her infirmity. Immediately she straightened up and glorified God, She finally had rest after eighteen long years.

Of course, the ruler of the synagogue found no rest in what happened. It was his job to maintain order in the synagogue. In his mind the Sabbath had been desecrated. He was indignant. He does not directly address Jesus but instead tells the people that there were seven days in a week on could come for healing but not on the Sabbath.

The ruler of the synagogue did not realize that there was another way the Sabbath could be broken, Isaiah 1:13 says: “Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.” One could try to keep the outward form of the Sabbath but desecrate it in his heart by failing to discern why there is a Sabbath day in the first place. If the ruler of the synagogue had been more sensitive to the purpose of the Sabbath rather than outward conformity, he would not have made so galling a mistake.