How do you deal with your past? Do you carry around baggage of guilt and shame? What of your history? How many are your failures? If you’re living in the past, you can’t move forward. Stop wasting time trying to “re-saw sawdust.” God created you for future destiny, not history. So what do we do with the failures of our past?
In Luke 13:10-21, Jesus is doing a new thing. He announces the kingdom and heals a disabled woman in bondage for 18 years. It is His compassion and power at work, to call the crippled woman forward and lay hands on her. He takes the initiative, it’s not of her own power or doing. Christ frees and liberates from the bondage of the past, and we “don’t look back.” She gave glory to God, and many people rejoiced over the coming of the kingdom and the wonderful things Jesus was doing.
Not everyone was pleased, though. Phooey on the synagogue ruler! He wanted to keep in the past and instructed the people, “Come on a different day to be healed, we don’t approve of Jesus and we don’t want to do a new thing.” The ruler and others were put to shame for their words, thoughts, and actions. Jesus is the king, the authority who saves, who does a new work. Sabbath is not the authority, nor is the synagogue ruler or Satan. Jesus frees and looses the woman from Satan’s grasp. The kingdom of God is a new Exodus, and Jesus is a new Moses, leading His people from slavery to freedom. He sets the captives free!
Freedom for what? The woman gave glory to God and the people rejoiced. Free to be holy, to worship, to live a life serving the Lord in richness and gladness. It is freedom from baggage, shame and guilt and past failures, and freedom for new goals and purposes, new works of devotion to the one who freed you. God is doing a new thing – do you see it? Can you feel it? Are you bound and imprisoned and burdened today? The kingdom is here, the king liberates, come and be free. He comes to you to be free this season.