Daily Bible Reading 17th October 2026 // Luke 14:1-6
1 One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. 2 And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. 3 And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” 4 But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. 5 And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” 6 And they could not reply to these things.
The first 24 verses of this chapter record some very penetrating and incisive teaching given by our Lord at a Sabbath-day dinner party. We look here at the first incident, the healing of a man with dropsy. Some think Jesus was invited to the meal with an ulterior motive, to see how He would react to the presence of the sick man. They watched Him (1) to see if He would violate the Sabbath by healing him. This, indeed, is a likely suggestion, since it says in 3 'Jesus answering spake…'. What did He answer? The question implied in their trap. We should note how our Lord took the initiative, passing some very forthright strictures on both guests and host. It is as if He were saying, 'You have tried to embarrass Me, and make Me uncomfortable: I will now embarrass you and make you uncomfortable' - not, indeed, in the sense of 'paying them back in their own coin', but rather in the sense of Psalm 18:25, 26, 'With the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward'! He can be difficult too, when occasion demands it; and this occasion assuredly did!
The healing miracle - one of seven Sabbath healings recorded in the gospels (cf Luke 4:31; 4:38, 6:6; 13:14; John 5:10; John 9:14) was the fulfilment of the meaning and purpose of the Sabbath day. This we have already seen in our studies of the others (see Notes on these passages). And if the miracle is also a parable of the gospel itself - the bringing of healing, restoration, life, renewal - the question that arises for us is to ask whether our Sabbaths serve to reflect the glory of the gospel we proclaim. Well, is this what our Sundays are about?