Delighted

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

DELIGHTED

Luke 13:14-17

14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, "There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath." 15 The Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?"  17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

NIV

Here if the rest of the story regarding Jesus setting the woman free from her infirmity of eighteen years. There are two sides here, the opponents and the delighted people. We don’t think the ruler of the synagogue really cared about the woman but was only concerned about the law. Jesus used the law to show him this hypocrisy and, in essence, made a fool out of the ruler of the synagogue in front of everyone who was there. Then there were the people who were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. It is interesting the Greek word " delighted ", means rejoiced, cheerful, calm delight. Because we trust in Jesus, that is we have accepted him as our Lord and Savior, being born-again and being baptized in the Spirit, we have found a life of rejoicing, a life of being cheerful and of calm delight. We are reminded of the little song that says if you’re happy and you know it your face should surely show it. We wonder if we reflect the kind of life we are living in delighting all the glorious things Jesus is doing in our lives, instead of reflecting all our aches and pains, and the hurts in our lives. We also wonder if what we see in some others are attempts to live under some kind of law, they think the word of God puts on them. We see the sternness in their faces as they live under the burden of being righteous by their acts of service. We cannot allow the burden of the law to take away the joy of the Lord in our lives. Jesus has shown us the foolishness of living under the law, the hypocrisy of trying to live under the rules and regulations set up by man in that living by one law, we break another. However, what Jesus tells us is to live a life of love, and to live rejoicing in all the God has done for us and is doing in us and through us. If we are rejoicing in the Lord then our faces would show it. If we are glad then we would be reflecting the glory of the Lord in ever-increasing glory.