Although the Lord showed the impending fate of the Jews because of their uselessly cumbering the ground, He did not the less teach in their synagogues on the sabbath day. It was still the term of patience; and, further, grace was in no way hindered from acting individually. “And, behold, there was a woman, which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.” She did not seek the gracious power of Jesus, but when He saw her, “he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” Not satisfied with this, He laid His hands upon her. There was far more grace in acting thus than in simply curing her by a word. He could have done the one as easily as the other.
But grace, though it tenderly stoops to the wretched, does not accommodate itself to the obstinate unbelief of men, more particularly of men who make a show of their religion, but who have nothing real in the sight of God. Christ cured her on the sabbath and in face of the congregation, knowing it would provoke the enmity of the ruler of the synagogue. There is no use in striving to keep fair terms with men who profess to be the friends, but are really the enemies, of God. “And immediately she was made straight and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day.” Now had he for a moment reflected, he would have seen the folly and wickedness of his affectedly pious indignation; he would have seen that he was fighting against God. But passion in religious matters never reflects; and, being wholly apart from true faith, it is apt to be governed by present interests. So this man, little suspecting that he was carrying on war with God to his own eternal ruin, turns to the people with the words, “There are six days in which men ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.” Vain and wicked man, that presumed to lay down the law to God! He was far from keeping the law himself, yet ventured to give law to Him who was not more truly man than God. God is not to work on His own sabbath day! But as the Lord told the Jews in the Gospel of John, it is a folly to suppose that God, in presence of such a world, of man and Israel as they are, is keeping the sabbath. Morally speaking, He could not do so. His love would not permit Him to rest when the earth and human kind are full of sin, wickedness, and misery. Accordingly grace led both the Father and the Son to work for poor guilty man. “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” The Jews might be keeping their sabbaths in pride; but God was working for man! Alas! the world has as little sense of the holiness as of the love of God; and so the Lord here answers the ruler with stern rebuke. “Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to watering?” He does not take His text from the Father, as in the Gospel of John, but from men's own acknowledged ways; what even natural conscience feels to be right, what no legalism can blot out from the heart of man. Luke is the great moralist of the gospels. It would be cruel towards the poor brute to withhold its necessary provender or drink because of the sabbath day; and if it would be a mistake of God's mind so to treat one's ox or ass to keep it from what is necessary to its refreshment in natural life, how much more was it not worthy of God to relieve in grace a victim of Satan's power? “Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” He puts it on the double ground of relationship to Abraham, God's friend, and of subjection to the insulting power of the enemy. A daughter of Abraham, she ought surely to have in their eyes an additional claim, and no less because Satan had bound her for so long a time. It was plain therefore that the ruler under the pretense of high respect for God's institutions was in truth a satellite of Satan. If true-hearted, he would have rejoiced at the expulsion of that spirit of infirmity by which the woman had been so long bound. The people felt the truth of what Jesus said as well as the grace of His deed. “When he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed, and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.” Even the open opposers, if not won, were ashamed; but all the people rejoiced, for they at least have a sense of their need and are more free to acknowledge what is good and true. There may not have been power, and there is not without faith, to receive the truth in the love of it (for the heart is alienated from God); but they hailed with joy the divine power that rescued the miserable. Where there is divinely given faith. I doubt that the first action of the Spirit of God is joy. The entrance of the word gives light, and discovers what is within of sin, and guilt, and ruin. But, even without being converted, people who have no particular animosity against the truth presented in Christ and who feel the value of light nowhere else to be seen, may well rejoice. They are not broken down in the sense of their own evil, they are not brought to God, but they rejoice in what is come to men, owning the evident and excellent hand of God, and feeling the difference between Christ, however little seen, and the parchment divinity of the ruler of a synagogue. “All the people rejoiced for the glorious things that were done by him.”
Then the Lord is brought in by our evangelist, as comparing the kingdom of God to “a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and cast into his garden.” The kingdom of God was not yet coming in that power and glory in which all adversaries should be destroyed. The essential feature of it, evident to every eye which beheld Christ as its actual witness, was the power of God in lowliness displayed in His own humiliation; it was in no way a king governing with external majesty, but a man who takes a grain of mustard seed, a very little germ indeed, and casts it into his garden, where it grows and waxes a great tree; so that the fowls of the air would lodge in its branches. The Lord has before His eye the rising up of a vast worldly power which Christendom should become from the very little beginning planted by Himself then present. Such is the first view that is here given by our Lord. People were premature in rejoicing for all the glorious things that were done by Him, if they counted on a mighty deliverance and kingdom just yet. This would be the result in due time at His coming again, and man would try to found it on what He has already done. No doubt there would be deeper things underneath; but He speaks now of what would be before all the people, before men's eyes. It is Christendom commencing as a little seed in the world and becoming such a power that even the very adversaries themselves should find grateful shelter there. But it is not yet the time for the kingdom of God to come in power and glory. There is divine power dealing by the Spirit with individual souls, but not at all in the direct public government of the world. Christianity would grow into an outward system of power, but not such as to expel scandals and those that practice lawlessness.
Far different is the state of things now. Christendom is become a worldly system, just as much as Mohammedanism or Judaism. It is become an active worldly power in the center of civilization; and not a few among those of chief influence in nominal Christianity are the enemies of God and His truth.
But, besides the outward power, our Lord compares the kingdom to “leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.” The man is the figure of the agent in what is done publicly, the woman of the resulting condition in what is done hiddenly. Hence Babylon is compared to the woman in Revelation. There is the spread of doctrine, of creed, of a mere verbal confession which does not suppose faith. It is not only that there is that which rising from the least beginning becomes a great and towering power in the earth; but there is also a doctrinal system spread over a defined space (Christendom) which affects men's minds and feelings. This is compared to leaven; and leaven in scripture is never the symbol of what is good. The leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees was their doctrine, which differed in each but was far from good.
Here the leaven was hid in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. It does not mean all the world becoming Christian—a vain and groundless inference, opposed to many plain scriptures which treat of this subject expressly. There is a very small part of the world even nominally Christian; a much larger part consists of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and of Heathenism. We bear of “three measures,” a certain definite space of the world which God has permitted to be influenced by nominally Christian doctrine—a witness even more than enough.
Thus the spread of Christendom, as a political power, is set forth by the tree, and the spread of the doctrine, of Christian dogma, is shown by the leavening of these three measures. Both these things have taken place, and there is nothing in either to hinder the coming of the Lord on the plea that these scriptures have not been fulfilled. Christendom is long become a great power in the earth, and has spread its doctrine within extensive limits. What sort of doctrine it is, and what sort of power, scripture elsewhere at least does not leave doubtful; but the object here is not so much to show the character of its power or the quality of the doctrine, as to imply the height of pride to which it would grow, and its prevalence over a defined space. The fact is, that from a little beginning it becomes great in the earth, and is also accompanied by a certain spread of doctrine over a limited area. There is no trace whatever in these parables of the coming millennium or reign of righteousness where evil is put down. It is rather this age where evil insinuates itself and reaches the highest places under the protection of Christendom along with the spread of a mere creed without life or the power of the Spirit. How truly both have been and are before all eyes!