The Impotent Woman.
I. This impotent woman may fairly be taken as a type of character to which we, or many of us, answer; and answer much more closely than, for example, to that of the prodigal son. For if we have inherited a soul naturally Christian, or have had a pious nurture and training, or if, under the mask of our insensibility or our indifference to religion, the grace of God has wrought on our hearts in secret and inscrutable ways, we probably have not broken into open rebellion or flagrant vice, and wasted our patrimony in riotous living. We much more nearly resemble this faithful daughter of faithful Abraham. For her misfortune was, not that she was a contented slave in willing submission to an evil power, but that she was held in a grievous bondage, insomuch that, try how she would, she could in nowise lift herself into straightness and health. Like her, despite all our efforts after truth and goodness, there is a spirit of infirmity in us, an incompetency to do the good we would; a subtle, mysterious malady whose origin is in the will a malady inscrutable to human eyes, immedicable by human art. There is but One who can make us straight. The Healer of the impotent woman can heal us. Only Christ, the strong Son of God, can redeem us from the weakness which mars our service; but He will do it if we let Him.
II. We may also learn why He often delays His help. God often delays to grant us the help we ask and need, that He may develop faith in us by trial, that He may let patience have her perfect work, that out of weakness we may be made strong by conflict and prayer and endeavour; and last and best of all, that, when we are thus prepared for His coming, He may bring us a good beyond our hopes, and bestow on us a blessing greater than we could once ask or receive.
III. Finally, we may learn, when we are exercised by these kind delays, where and when to look for the Divine appearing. We shall find Christ, as the impotent woman found Him, in the synagogue on the Sabbath; or, to translate the phrase into modern terms of speech, we shall find Him amid the sanctities of worship, when the soul has learned to rest in Him.
S. Cox, Sunday Magazine,1886, p. 306.
References: Luke 13:10. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 111.Luke 13:10-13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1426. Luke 13:10-17. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 88; W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 144.Luke 13:11-13. G. Macdonald, Miracles of Our Lord,p. 43; W. Walters, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 326. Luke 13:11-14. T. Birkett Dover, The Ministry of Mercy,p. 136. Luke 13:18; Luke 13:19. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., pp. 471, 472.Luke 13:20; Luke 13:21. Ibid.,vol. ii., pp. 471, 479. Luke 13:23. D. McLeod, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxi., p. 275; J. Burton, Sermons on Christian Life and Truth,p. 22; R. W. Church, Human Life and its Conditions,p. 97. Luke 13:23; Luke 13:24. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 309; Ibid.,vol. xxvi., p. 187; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 256; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 369.