Kingdom Expansion

Sermon Transcript

Many Sundays when we gather we point out that we are just one church among many gathering in Philadelphia this morning. Our church didn’t exist 12 years ago; many of the other churches for which we pray regularly also didn’t exist 12 years ago, and even more didn’t exist if you just go back 25 years: the original Citylight, Metro Church, Risen Christ Fellowship, Epiphany Fellowship, Liberti, Redemption City Church, Redemption Heights, Seven Mile Road, Christ Church South Philly, Grace and Peace, and I could go on. If you go back a few hundred years, there were no churches in Philadelphia at all. If you go back a few thousand years, to the time of Jesus, where we’ll be focusing today in Luke’s Gospel, there weren’t any churches in the sense we think of them today.

 

Instead, there was Jesus, and by the time we get to chapter 13, there’s also a small group of disciples following him around. Jesus called his first disciples from their careers in fishing in Luke chapter 5, and then there were three of them. By chapter 6, there were enough that he could set aside twelve of them as apostles. By chapter 8, we read of many women joining them and supporting them through their means (8:1-3). By chapter 10, there were seventy-two more Jesus sent out ahead of him to preach the gospel in the places where he was about to go. How’d we get from that, to the point where even in Philadelphia, a city with comparatively fewer churches and Christians than many other American cities, a city on the other side of the world from where Jesus was, there are still multiple churches 2000 years later? The passage before us today doesn’t tell us that whole story, but it does give us the basic paradigm. In it we see Jesus deliver one individual from a demonic spirit, we see her glorify God, and then we see more people rejoicing at what he did. In response to the event, Jesus tells us that this is what the kingdom of God does: It expands from the one, to the many, to the many more. So today, even as we look at a large city filled with people, most of whom think nothing of Christ, even as we look at a large planet, many of whom have never even heard the good news of Jesus, the kingdom of God is filling the earth through Jesus the king. It is overcoming evil, it is overcoming hypocrisy, and it starts small.

 

It is overcoming evil (10-13)

 

Our story begins today with Jesus teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, or the day we call Saturday. God called it the Sabbath because sabbath comes from a word meaning rest, and God declared the seventh day of the week a day of rest, meaning Israelites were forbidden from ordinary labor on that day, and were instead to devote the day to private and public exercises of worship. Here we see the public exercise of worship in the gathering at the synagogue, the Jewish analogue to the Lord’s Day worship gathering for which we are currently gathered. Much like we do in these gatherings, a central part of that synagogue gathering was the reading and teaching of scripture. So we find Jesus once again teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.

 

This time, though, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years, so that she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. The Bible is unapologetically supernatural–it affirms the existence of real spiritual intelligences beyond humanity, and among those are demons, demons which we’ve already seen in Luke can take up residence in human bodies and affect those human bodies. The Bible doesn’t say that every disorder is a result of a demon, or even that the majority of disorders are. However, here scripture reveals that this woman’s disorder was the result of a demon. For eighteen years she’d been incapable of standing up straight as a result.

 

And yet, on the Sabbath day, where do we find her? At the synagogue. How often do professing Christians let the most trivial of reasons keep them from the Lord’s Day worship gathering, while this woman was literally possessed by a demon, couldn’t even stand up straight, but she still found a way to gather with God’s people on God’s appointed day? And it’s not as though she was going because she thought she would be healed–she didn’t know Jesus would be there, and even when he was, she didn’t approach him to ask for healing.

 

Rather, we read in verse 12 that it was Jesus who saw her, and it was Jesus who called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” Notice the goodness and kindness of Jesus. He noticed this woman, and he cared. Do you know that whatever you’re going through today, Jesus notices, and he cares? As you read through the Gospels, in fact, you find that Jesus is like a magnet toward suffering, hurting, broken people. Are we like him in this way? Sometimes we aren’t because we aren’t confident we can do anything to help. But it’s not our job to solve all of someone else’s problems. We are limited in what we can do, but Jesus is unlimited in what he can do. We can always move toward people and point them to him.

 

This woman had a disabling spirit for eighteen years, she could not fully straighten herself, and no one else in that synagogue could straighten her out. But what they were unable to do, Jesus was able to do. He simply spoke, and said, “Woman, you are freed from your disability,” then laid his hands on her, and immediately, we read, she was made straight, and she glorified God. The identity of the disabling spirit was not revealed by the end of verse 13, but in verse 16 Jesus says this woman had been bound by Satan, which doesn’t necessarily mean it was Satan himself who was the disabling spirit, but it does mean the spirit was on his team.

 

What we have here, then, is a picture of salvation. The idea of standing up straight is used throughout scripture to describe the one who is righteous. Proverbs 15:8 says “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.” What’s the opposite of the wicked? The upright. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says that “God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” God made man upright, but then what happened? Genesis 3 tells us that Satan, the same Satan who bound this woman for eighteen years, entered the first home God made for humanity, and offered them that if they would just come and obey him, they would become like God, knowing good and evil. He offered them exaltation, elevation, promotion, glory.

 

But here’s what’s crazy about that: God had already made man glorious. Of all his creation, man was the only being God made in his very own image. And when God made them, God blessed them and told them to have dominion over the rest of his creation. He put them in a garden full of trees that were pleasant to the sight and good for food, he gave them one another in the bliss of marital love, and all he asked of them was that they be content with the reality that he is God, and they are not, a contentment he tested by forbidding them from eating of one and only one tree of all the trees in the garden. God made man upright, but what did we do? We listened to the voice of Satan, and in so doing, instead of being promoted to greater glory, we fell into the shameful condition of sinners. After the first humans sinned and God came to seek them, far from standing up to him and saying, “Ah see; now we are like you!” the man and the woman hid themselves from God in fear of him.

 

Far from now being free from God’s service, we became slaves to Satan’s service. Writing to Christians, listen to how the Bible describes our pre-conversion state: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:1-2). God made man upright, but we sought out many devices, and became enslaved to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, Satan, and so we too find that we cannot fully straighten ourselves. I remember when I first started really exploring Christianity as a 19-year-old, I still had the idea in my mind that to be a Christian was to get really serious about my faith, and to start doing the right thing. So I started reading the Bible, going to a Bible study, improving my church attendance, and I tried to stop doing the things in my life that I knew were sinful. I went on like that for a few years, but I found that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t straighten myself out.

 

Why? Because I too had a disabling spirit, the same disabling spirit we all once had, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. But look at how Jesus saves: First he saw her, and then he called her over. Don’t get the order of your salvation twisted. None of us seeks Jesus unless he first seeks us. He called us before we ever called out to him. Left to ourselves, we’re seeking out many devices, we’re following the prince of the power of the air–we aren’t seeking Jesus. Left to ourselves, we focus on getting people to like us, finding a mate, making money, and figuring out how to control our lives without God. But Jesus seeks those who weren’t seeking him. He says later in Luke that the very reason he came was to seek and to save the lost. 

 

In salvation Jesus seeks, and in salvation Jesus speaks. So we read in Romans 10:17 that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Jesus spoke to this woman and told her that she was freed from her disability, and Jesus speaks through the preaching of the gospel, not only offering forgiveness of sins to any who will believe, but leading those he’s chosen to believe, so that they do in fact receive the promised forgiveness. Those who are being converted often notice the change in that when they hear the words of the Bible, they begin to hear them no longer like you might hear the words of Homer or Shakespeare, but as though Jesus himself is speaking those very words to them personally. I have the experience from time to time of someone coming up to me after a service and saying, “Wow; it was like you preached that sermon just for me” and while often the person is paying me a compliment, I know I didn’t have any unique insight into their lives when I prepared that sermon. Instead, that’s evidence of Jesus himself speaking to them by his Spirit.

 

He also laid hands on her, which doesn’t have quite as exact of a parallel in our experience of salvation, because Jesus’ hands are now ascended to heaven with his body, which is seated at the Father’s right hand. When Jesus was preparing for his ascension, though, he told his disciples that he would send something better than his bodily presence: his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, one in being with him and the Father, to be with them forever. So now when Jesus saves, he not only speaks, but he sends his Holy Spirit, and when he does, there is an immediate change in the person. When Jesus spoke and laid his hands on this woman, we read in verse 13 that immediately she was made straight, and when Jesus speaks and sends his Spirit to those he saves, they are immediately born again, and made upright.

 

Some struggle to peg exactly when that happened in their lives; others know the exact day of their conversion. But what every Christian can say is, “I’m not who I was.” As Pastor Michael Lawrence puts it in his book entitled Conversion, a Christian is someone who’s “new, not nice.” The apostle Paul put it like this: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5). The ancient church father Augustine described the experience like this in a prayer to God: “You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put flight to my blindness.” The early modern hymn-writer John Newton described it this way: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.” Or as another hymn we’ve recently been singing puts it: “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed thee.”

 

What were these saints doing in these descriptions? They were glorifying God for his saving work in their lives, and that’s what we see the woman who Jesus healed doing in this passage. Verse 13 ends by telling us that when she was immediately made straight, she glorified God. The unconverted person must be cajoled into singing God’s praises, but the redeemed heart longs to give God glory for his saving work. How could you truly believe that you were a sinner destined for hell, but God saved you by sheer grace through the death of his only son, such that now you will never perish, but have eternal life–how could you truly believe that and not glorify God for it? If you find no desire in you for his glory, if you find service to him is only ever motivated by a sense of compulsion, “Yeah I know I should,” the most likely explanation is that you’ve not yet become a Christian. The disabling spirit still has you bound.

 

But even in the lives of truly converted Christians, we can get too far removed from the day we were made straight, and our desire to glorify God begins to wane. If you find that happening in your life, go back to this: I once was bent over and could not fully straighten myself, but he made me straight. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. A time or two someone who knew me before I was a Christian will comment on how strange it is that I am a pastor now, but what’s really crazy is that I’m even a Christian! Do you sense that about yourself? The apostle John writes, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

 

The kingdom of God is overcoming evil through Jesus the king. From this woman to today, God is making people new by the word of Christ, and they are glorifying God. She had a disabling spirit for eighteen years, and in one moment on one day, immediately she was made straight. His kingdom is overcoming evil, and next we’ll see that it’s overcoming hypocrisy.

 

It is overcoming hypocrisy (14-17)

 

Now given that Jesus just performed this glorious act in the synagogue, you would think widespread rejoicing would follow, unless of course you’re familiar with the rest of Luke’s Gospel, and if you remember that Jesus did this on the Sabbath. So we read next in verse 14 that the ruler of the synagogue, the lead pastor of sorts, was indignant, angry, enraged–and Luke tells us why: Because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. Remember earlier I mentioned that God instituted the Sabbath as a day of rest from ordinary labor so that it could be devoted to exercises of worship public and private. Well God never prohibited healing on the Sabbath, but one of the many ways the religious leadership of Jesus’ day sought to appear righteous while their hearts remained far from God is they made up all kinds of rules as to what people were and were not allowed to do on the Sabbath. 

 

And I mean, the ruler’s logic is plausible on the surface: God set this day aside as a day of rest, so he says there are six other days on which the woman could have come and been healed. A few problems with that, though: One is the woman didn’t even come to the synagogue to be healed. She just came because it was the Sabbath, and even once at the synagogue she only came to be healed because Jesus told her to. Another problem is that this wasn’t hard labor for Jesus: All he did was speak and lay his hands on her. Jesus could have pointed out these or other flaws in the ruler’s logic, but instead, this time he goes another route.

 

He says in verse 15-16, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” Jesus points out that the Jews of his day already realize that some works are valid on the Sabbath! They do the “work” of untying their ox or donkey, which for them is actually more effort than this work was for Jesus, and then they walk the ox or donkey so it can drink water. Now, if they’re willing to do that on the Sabbath, Jesus says, shouldn’t this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?

 

The leaders of the synagogue cared for their animals enough to untie them on the Sabbath day, but this was a woman, made in the very image of God. Not only that, but she was a daughter of Abraham. She was one of their own people, and one of God’s people! And, even though the ox or donkey was only bound since the same time yesterday when they took it to get a drink of water, this woman had been bound for eighteen years! I mean, you don’t tell your ox or donkey to wait another day to get water; why would you tell this woman she had to wait another day to be loosed? Not only that, but the ox or donkey was just bound with a cord–this woman was bound by Satan himself. And still, they were indignant with Jesus when he loosed her from her bond.

 

Recall Jesus’ warning to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy (Luke 12:1). Look at what keeping your heart far from God will do to you. The ruler of the synagogue was in a position of spiritual leadership among God’s people, and when Jesus himself, the Lord as Luke calls him in verse 15, heals a daughter of Abraham from a disabling spirit that had afflicted her for eighteen years, rather than rejoicing, he was indignant! Instead of living with the joy of receiving God’s grace, hypocrites are grumpy. They’re grumpy because they don’t like God, and so the only way they can justify themselves is to also crack down on everyone else in an effort to make themselves feel more righteous. Though this woman had been bound by Satan for eighteen years, who seems to be more in bondage to Satan as the story progresses?

 

Well verse 17 shows us that as Jesus said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him. The adversaries were defeated by the superior wisdom of the Lord, but they didn’t repent. They didn’t become upright. They were just put to shame, and notice that whereas in verse 13 it’s just the woman who was healed who glorified God, now in verse 17 we read that all the people, there meaning all the people besides the ruler of the synagogue and his allies, all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by Jesus. Do you see the kingdom of God expanding, as God gets more glory through king Jesus? The hypocritical ruler of the synagogue tried to oppose it, but the story ended with more people rejoicing at all the glorious things Jesus did.

 

And there have been hypocrites in every period of the church’s history. Today we hear of pastors who took the office and then used it to embezzle funds, commit adultery, and feed their pride. False teachers abound who claim to be representing God, and many of them are quite powerful. Recall that this wasn’t just some random attendee opposing Jesus; it was the ruler of the synagogue. Here in Philadelphia many of the false religions have impressive buildings and powerful, influential people involved: We’ve got the Mormon temple, the cathedral basillaca, and plenty of Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches with historic buildings who have abandoned the historic gospel.

 

And sometimes what God does with hypocrites is he saves them! But often God simply passes over them in judgment. So here, the adversaries are left ashamed, while the people rejoice. Whichever approach God takes, the point is that his kingdom still advances, not because every individual person repents and enters into it, but because despite their opposition, God still gathers a people who rejoice in the glory of Jesus. So even this morning throughout the city, often in less impressive buildings made up of less impressive people, there are countless assemblies gathered in Jesus’ name to glorify God, listen to his teaching, and rejoice in the glorious things Jesus has done. 

 

And Jesus, upon seeing what happened in the synagogue, says this is just how the kingdom of God spreads: It starts small.

 

It starts small (18-21)

 

He said therefore, starting in verse 18, first that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which was the smallest known seed of the time, but which then grows to become a tree. Here he says it will grow to become a tree so large that the birds of the air will make nests in its branches. Then starting in verse 20 he reaches for another illustration of the kingdom of God: It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened. A leavening agent in bread doesn’t need to be very big at all, but it will still leaven the whole lump of dough. The three measures of flour there would equal about fifty pounds of flour in today’s units of measurement, and yet still the leaven filled it all. 

 

In verse 13 of our story, just one woman glorified God. By verse 17, all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him. I mentioned already how Jesus had a group of disciples at this point, but these were not the rulers of the synagogue, these were not the religious or political leadership of Israel, these were not the greats of the Roman Empire. In fact, when they go to preach later, one of the first things people notice about them is that they were common, uneducated men (Acts 4:13). And after Jesus rose from the dead, we read that there were only 120 of them (Acts 1:15). But then as the gospel is preached, the Lord starts to add to their number those who were being saved. On the day of Pentecost, about 3000 believed the gospel, were baptized, and were added to the number of the church in Jerusalem. The Lord continued to add to their number there until some were scattered due to persecution, who then went to Antioch speaking the word. There some believed and were baptized, forming a church in Antioch. From Antioch Paul and Barnabas were sent out to take the gospel to other parts of the Roman Empire, and by the end of their labors, Paul made it all the way to Rome. 

 

The book of Acts narrates this advance of God’s kingdom, and as it advances, we see some similarities to how it spreads here: Jesus’ appointed representatives go to a city in which they are vastly outnumbered, and they begin preaching the word of Christ, often in synagogues. The Jewish leadership opposes them, many reject them, but some inevitably end up believing and glorifying God for his saving work through Jesus. They get baptized and form churches in those new places. And when the book of Acts ends, Paul makes it all the way to Rome, and guess what we’re told he’s doing in the final verse? “Proclaiming the kingdom of God” (Acts 28:31).

 

The kingdom of God would keep expanding from there, from less than 1% of the population of the Roman Empire, until a Roman Emperor even converted to Christianity a couple hundred years later, at which time somewhere between 5-15% of the empire’s population were Christians. How did it spread so much from that initial group of 3 disciples of Jesus to millions of Christians throughout the Roman Empire? Sociologists and historians offer various theories: Christianity offered a personal love relationship with God that no other religion did, Christianity was multi-ethnic in a way other religious weren’t, Christians cared for the poor, Christians didn’t take revenge on their enemies, Christians took care of abandoned babies, and no doubt all of that contributed. But why does a mustard seed become a large tree? Because the mustard seed is alive. It contains an embryo, nutrients, and biological machinery that enable its growth into something much larger. And once it becomes a tree, the tree drops more seeds, so that more trees continue to grow. 

 

What about leaven; why does it leaven a whole lump? Because the yeast in the leaven consumes available sugar and produces carbon dioxide, which then fills the lump of dough and causes it to rise. The point in either case is that the seed and the leaven are alive in some way that gives them a power to grow large and fill the space into which they are put. Jesus says the kingdom of God is like that, but what is in it that gives it this power to become large and ultimately fill the earth? It is the king himself, the Lord Jesus, who is still alive today, working by his word and Spirit. So the Bible can speak of the word of God increasing and multiplying (Acts 12:23), of the gospel bearing fruit and increasing (Col 1:6). Though none of the local churches the apostles planted are still on earth today, the kingdom of God has spread far beyond those churches, not only through the Roman Empire, but to the other side of the globe, where we are today.

 

And how did it happen? It happened as Christians went about proclaiming the word of Christ locally, it happened as Christians were sent out from churches to proclaim the word of Christ in places where no one had before, and as the Spirit of Jesus gave life to the hearers of that message, caused them to be born again, led them to get baptized, and gathered them into churches. We have the promise of Christ here that this kingdom will prevail, and will fill the earth, we have two thousands years of church history now to prove it; do we really have a good reason to doubt it today?

 

As glorious as Jesus’ work was in making this woman straight from a disabling spirit, the glorious work of Jesus that the apostles proclaimed, and through which the kingdom has expanded even to us, is more glorious still: Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead. The reason the blessing of new life is even available to us is because Jesus Christ first took the curse of death for us. We were not mere victims of a disabling spirit; we were accomplices, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. But Christ set us free from our bondage to Satan by being bound to a cross, to suffer the curse our sins deserved. Then when it appeared Satan had bound him in death, he stood up straight and walked out of the grave! If any is made alive, they are only made alive together with Christ, and it is by the power of his life-giving Spirit that this kingdom continues to grow, even from small beginnings.

 

I wonder if you ever consider the sheer size of a city like Philadelphia. Sometimes I look at the high-rise apartment buildings and think, “I’m not sure I know a single person who lives in that building.” How many of them are Christians? If the demographics are accurate alongside our own experience, we would have to assume not many. Who is proclaiming Christ to them? Would they even listen if we could somehow meet them and tell them? Have you had the experience yet of finally taking the risk to share the gospel with your co-worker or your neighbor, only to find the response is little more than a blank stare? 

 

What are we to do? Should we just hole up, bide our time, give our passion to our education, career, and hobbies, and try to just preserve what little Christianity still is here in the city until Jesus returns? Should we hide our light under a basket, as Jesus says it elsewhere (Matt 5:15)? Brothers and sisters, may we never. We are citizens of the very kingdom of God, and though it starts small, it is still filling the earth through Jesus the king. If we don’t see it spreading the way we’d want to in our city, let that drive us to more fervent prayer and more earnest zeal to spread the seed of the gospel. And let us look beyond our city, to those parts of the world, those parts of the dough, that the leaven of the gospel has not yet filled. Let us pray, give, send, and go, until the earth is filled, until all the peoples of all the nations rejoice at the glorious things Jesus has done.

 

And let us be willing to start small. You and I probably won’t meet every person living in those high-rise apartment buildings, but you know what we could do? We could meet the person living next door to us. You could meet the co-worker whose desk is next to yours. You could ask them, “Do you have a faith?” You could pick a day each week to pray for their salvation. You could invite them to the Christmas eve service this year, or to come to church with you some other Sunday. You could ask them if they’d ever be interested in reading through the Gospel of Mark with you. You could grab a fellow church member and help them grow to greater maturity in Christ. You could encourage them in their evangelism. What if each of us were just faithful in these small things? Well, we know what would happen, because we know what will happen: The kingdom of God will fill the earth through Jesus the king. He’s guaranteed it, and he has taken personal responsibility to ensure that it will happen. He ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and he will call them to himself until the day when all the children of God scattered abroad are brought together into one flock under one shepherd. As Pastor John Piper has boldly put it, “This mission that we are on, it is going to finish. So you can either get on board and enjoy the triumph, or you can cop out and waste your life.” Brothers and sisters, let’s get on board and enjoy the triumph.