Daily Bible Reading 8th October 2026 // Luke 13:10-17
10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” 13 And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. 14 But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” 15 Then the Lord answered him, “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? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” 17 As he 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 synagogue ruler was moved with indignation! We need to see in this the end product of a process which was perverted and twisted in its interpretation of the Sabbath law. Here is legalism at its worst and most inhuman and ugly! Yet - and this is surely the supreme tragedy - Pharisaism in its origin was a spiritual movement, which stood for godliness as against unrighteousness and godlessness, in a time when the prevailing atmosphere of the Church was political and secular. It was a protest movement of the best kind. But somewhere along the line the Spirit's seal was 'institutionalised' and lost. Then hardness set in; and a form of godliness lacking the power of godliness, and the humanity of godliness, took over, leading to this. Is it really possible to stray so far from the spirit of the law? Seemingly! What a parody and caricature! But more: it had driven the ruler of the synagogue to an enmity against the good. To be so utterly absorbed in legalism that the good is missed and opposed - this is the danger, and the tragedy of the situation!
Jesus was angry too! This is seen in His words in 15: 'Thou hypocrite...!' It was a twofold hypocrisy: that of pretending to address the people (14) while all the time getting at Jesus: and also that of professing to have a zeal for the law, when his motive was hostility against Jesus.
All this should not, however, make us too afraid of taking a true stand for the sanctity of the Lord's Day. We are not within a hundred miles of this kind of legalistic bondage in the Church today! Our opportunity is to show forth the beauty of holiness by a true and glad observance of the Day as one of joy and blessing and spiritual refreshment.