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October 18, 2015
*Read Lu 13:10-17* – Just prior to the text we have read, Jesus has been talking about the importance of bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.
Luke follows with a dramatic illustration from another occasion showing two responses to Jesus’ message – one fruitful, one fruitless.
One is a response of grace thru faith.
The other is a response of legalism.
Luke wants us to choose grace as seen in the disabled woman.
Hopelessly deformed, she responds to Jesus’ call and is healed, illustrating physically what Jesus can do spiritually.
But the woman is not the only actor in this drama.
After the healing, the ruler of the synagogue weighs in.
And he is not happy.
Amazing, isn’t it?
This guy is in charge of a place dedicated to the worship of God and benefit of people.
He should have been overjoyed to see the power of God demonstrated in this extraordinary way in his synagogue, and to the benefit of this poor, helpless woman.
Instead, he is indignant that Jesus would violate his Sabbath rules.
What caused this irrational reaction?
I can answer in one word – legalism.
This man was a legalist.
And his reaction shows us the dramatic contrast between grace and legalism.
One is in submission to Christ and loves Him wholeheartedly.
The other sits in judgment of Christ and hates his call for repentance.
And the question this poses for us is -- which are we?
Now, I mentioned last week that many people think law and grace are at odds with each other.
Competitors!
But that is wrong.
Law and grace work hand-in-glove to bring us to Christ.
Some think the law was meant to save.
It was not!
It has 2 great purposes – neither of which was to save anyone.
FIRST, it shows us our need –that we are so morally bent that we could never save ourselves.
We need a Savior.
SECOND, it shows how to live a fruitful life of love for God after we are saved.
The law condemns us, yes, but it is good in its purposes to show 1) our need and 2) to light our path after salvation.
The problem isn’t law.
The problem is legalism which is the misuse of the law.
Legalism is the act of using the law to earn God’s favor instead of accepting the gift of God’s favor.
Legalism is me trying to earn what I can only have as a gift.
Legalism is me playing God instead of submitting to God.
Anyone know what a wine brick is?
You were probably drinking during prohibition if you do!
When wine was outlawed, bootleggers began to press grape concentrate into the form of bricks, which was not against the law.
The label warned, "Do not let this brick sit in a gallon of water for 21 days.
It will ferment and become illegal wine."
Wine bricks were a way of circumventing the law, and that’s what legalists do.
No one could actually keep the law as written by God.
So the scribes and Pharisees over time added interpretations they could keep and declared themselves clean.
They circumvented the law by their legalistic tag-ons.
BUT God, of course, was not fooled.
He saw their hearts.
He knew.
They only fooled themselves.
They were tragically bound up in a system of regulations that kept them from true repentance.
And the result is evident in this man.
This is where legalism leads.
Here’s what it looks like.
*I.
It’s Compassionless*
A woman who has been 18 years bent and broken is now standing straight and tall – completely and gloriously healed.
And this guy hardly notices.
Why?
Because legalism is heartless.
It cares nothing for people, only for rules.
It is loveless, joyless and crushing.
Legalists gladly condemn anyone who fails to keep the rules as they understand them.
Just like this man would willingly have consigned this woman to her former brokenness -- for the sake of the rules as he understood them.
He was indignant.
Look what he says in v. 14, “There are six days in which work ought to be done.
Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”
If he could have, he’d have bent her over again and said, “We’re closed for healing.
Come back tomorrow.”
It was exactly this kind of legalistic cruelty that led to the Reformation.
Martin Luther was a legalist – thinking, because that’s what he’d been taught – that he must keep the law.
He agonized as few people ever over his sin, sometimes spending 6 hours a day in confession.
He wore his confessors out.
One told him, “Martin, go out and steal something or kill someone.
Do something worth confessing!”
Yet Luther despaired of his salvation.
He hated the God who put such demands on him.
But when he began to study the Bible and found among others Rom 1:17, “The just shall live by faith” it changed his life.
He realized it was not what he did, but what Christ had already done that mattered.
Salvation was a gift to accept, not a position to earn!
But though Martin Luther got it, he was still living in a society and church that definitely did not.
By the Middle Ages legalism had replaced grace in the message of the church.
It now offered salvation by grace through faith PLUS works – first baptism and then ongoing confession and penance to restore salvation anytime sin intervened.
There was no assurance – only fear.
Last rites were imposed at death on penalty of losing one’s salvation.
Purgatory hung over everyone’s head.
Heartless legalism.
The last straw for Luther was when Friar Johann Tetzel rolled into town selling indulgences – “get out of jail free” passes for release from purgatory based on excess merit earned by saints.
He had a catchy advertising jingle.
“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
The church was fleecing people.
Just as the Pharisees had corrupted the OT by their traditions, the Roman church had corrupted the gospel message with their heartless, legalistic traditions.
Tradition meant more than Scripture; ritual more than relationship.
Luther saw through it all as he examined Scripture and found nothing about grace plus works for salvation, no excess merit, no penance, no last rites, no purgatory or indulgences.
He said, “Enough,” posted his 95 theses and refused to back down when threatened with death if he would not recant.
But that’s legalism, Beloved.
Rules replace relationship, but you can never be sure when enough is enough.
It is a power play with no assurance of anything.
And we do the same when we impose rules not found in Scripture.
*II.
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