SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2.27

            lord of the sabbathWhen Jesus and his disciples are accused of breaking the Sabbath, Jesus can respond to the Pharisees in a variety of ways.  He can quote the already rich tradition of the rabbis on the subject and get into a debate about that tradition.  He can stick to scripture and demonstrate that technically,  rubbing the husks off grain in your palms does not constitute “threshing” and thus does not violate the letter of the Law.  But Jesus refuses to engage the Pharisees in this way – ever. Jesus refuses to either invest rabbinic tradition with normative force, or to use the Bible in the way the rabbis used it.

            What Jesus does is to use God’s law to identify, and to be obedient to God’s will. Reading the original command in Exodus 20.8-11 it is clear that God has given us an example of rest. Since He stopped working for a day and He expects us to stop.  He expects us to provide ourselves, our children, our servants, and our animals a day of rest that we would be loath to provide apart from His command. He made the Sabbath for man (and beast). Jesus, in the passage cited above (Mark 2.23-28), provides the Pharisees an example from the Old Testament -  David eating the consecrated bread of the Tabernacle -  of someone in violation of the letter of the law, but not of the will of God. The Pharisees had make Sabbath keeping a burden, thus, though they respect the letter of the law, are violating the will of God.  Jesus’ final point is that since He is the Son of Man (i.e. the Messiah) He is Lord of the Sabbath. Sabbath keeping is determined by the will of God.  As God’s Messiah He is uniquely qualified to determine what it is and what it isn’t.

            God is changeless (James 1.17). His laws have changed, though. They are age-appropriate. The sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law is completely inappropriate now that Jesus has sacrificed Himself once-for-all. Now we offer ourselves as living sacrifices (Romans 12.1-2).  God’s laws are an expression of His will. We can litigate the letter of His laws and get everything wrong, or we can discern the will they communicate and live righteously. 

Jesus really expands upon this way of reading scripture in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” (Matthew 5.27-28). If we see only the letter of the law then we end up arguing whether  President Clinton was telling the truth about Miss Lewinski. But if we, like Jesus, use the letter to discern God’s will, we understand that it is wrong for a man to derive sexual pleasure from a woman who is not his wife - whether he uses his eyes, or other body parts.

This is not situation ethics. The way Jesus teaches us to read and apply scripture is all-encompassing.  There are no loopholes in it. If we understand God’s law this way then we see no contradiction between His command that the Israelites not mingle with other nations (Deuteronomy 7.3), and His welcoming Rahab, and Ruth into the faith community, and the lineage of Christ. If we understand God’s law this way we see, as Jesus does, that it was right for David to eat the consecrated bread.  If we understand God’s law this way there can be no loophole for sin, no rationalization that it is okay to break the spirit of the law because we haven’t broken the letter of it.

Jesus teaches us to read the Bible a certain way. Our alternatives are to extend moral license, or to insist we all be lawyers. I prefer Jesus’ way.

                

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