THE K I NG ' S B U S I N E S S
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us from public worship, for God can help us beyond ex- COMMENTS FROM pectation.—Henry. MANY SOURCES Infirm ity eighteen K eith L. Brooks years. A ttention has been called to th e significance of the number eighteen. Upon eighteen fell th e tower of Siloam. The number which is th ree times six, six being th e number of man, speaks of evil in its uprise. Satan had manifested his dreadful power over th is daughter of Abraham , bu t th e Son of man, who came to seek and to ’save the lost; has th e power to deliver her.— Num. Bible. v. 12. When Jesu s saw her. There is g reat beauty in the behavior of Christ to women, w hether it be the woman of Samaria, whose deep wound He probes so faithfully, yet w ith so light a touch; or the child of Jairu s, to whom He speaks in her own dialect; or the widow of Nain, whom He bids not to weep; or she whose many sins were forgiven her, loving much; or Mary, for whose lavish gift He found so pathetic an apology.— Chadwick. She does not seem to have asked to be cured, but th e language of th e ru ler of the syna gogue implies th a t she expected or hoped for cure, and therefore she may be credited with a measure' of faith.— Crit. Com. Called h er to Him. He was always going about doing good. He made human h earts glad. He removed a g reat amount of physical suffering. He devoted H imself to the work of blessing man. Once in all human his tory we meet a being who never lost an opportunity of doing good.—Young Uoosed from th ine infirm ity. This ex presses the setting free of her muscles from the power which bowed them down, and then the laying on of the divine hands confers upon her strength to rise and stand erect.—Alford. When He says “ loosed” all the powers of hell cannot bind us down. “He breaks the power of cancelled sin.”— Meyer. v. 13. Laid His hands on her. In th e healing of this woman our Lord did five things. He compassionately saw her, He called her, He healed her, He touched her, He lifted her up. Thus does He also perfectly cure a sinful soul. He sees it in His compassion, He calls it by His eternal inspiration, He heals it by rem itting the sin, He touches it by th e chastening of His hand, He raises it up to things above in th e w arm th of His divine love.— Ludolphus. Immediately made straigh t. . The resu lt of the spoken word and laid-on hands was imm ediate healing. Quite different
this from modern Christian Science healings. Our Lord is the same today (Heb. 13 :8 ). He does heal today when it is best th a t we should be healed and when we meet th e conditions of healing. — 1Torrey. Glorified God. When crook ed .souls are made straig h t they will show it by glorifying God.— Sel. v. 14. R u ler answered w ith indigna tion. This was the th ird tim e our Lord, by m iracle of healing, stirred up the w rath of the ecclesiastical ru lers a t His supposed violation of the Sabbath day.—-Dover. These rem arks he had n eith er the courage to address to Jesus Himself, nor the candor to address to th e poor healed woman, bu t preaches a t them by rebuking the multitude, who had no concern in the action a t all.— F a rra r. Six days in which men ough t to work. His folly is shown in his implied statem en t th a t the bestowal of divine grace and help is a kind of work by which the Sabbath is profaned.— Horn. Com. v. 15. The Lord answered. Every word of Christ’s answer is significant. It is not a defense of His breaking the Sabbath, bu t a declaration th a t He had not broken it a t all.— Trench. Thou hypocrite. It is easy to obey a number of outward rulers, difficult to en ter in-, telligently and self-sacrificingly into the will of God, easy to entangle the soul in a network of petty observances, dif ficult to yield , the obedience of an en lightened h eart, easy to be haughtily: exclusive, difficult to be humbly spir itual.— Butler. Loose his ox. There is here a three-fold contrast: (1) ox or ass and the daughter of Abraham ; (2) fastened to th e stall and bound by Satan; (3) a few hours of th irst and eighteen years of suffering.—Willcock. When I loose from long years of bond age one of your human sisters, a daughter of th e chosen family, and do it w ith no labor at all, you are filled w ith ho rro r a t the breach of th e Sab batic law. Such hypocrisy is its own complete self-exposure.— Laidlaw. On th e Sabbath day. Our Lord varied from tim e to tim e the argum ents w ith which He abolished the fanatical formalism of th e Pharisees respecting the Sabbath. Sometimes He appealed to His own in h eren t au tho rity (Jn . 5:17 -47 ), some times to Scripture precedents (Lk. 6 :3 -5 ), or to common sense and eternal principles (Lk. 6 :9 ). Here as in 14:5 he uses an argum ent refu ting th eir tra ditional rules by th e selfish insincerity with which they applied them.-1—Camb. Bible.
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