When the Law is central and keeping every bit of the law is what is most important, death reigns. It kills the life of the spirit.
It was really crazy what happened here. Read this:
On a Sabbath,while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
Think of this for a moment. When you walk through a field and grab the top of a piece of wheat and rub it between their hands, it takes less work to do that than it does for them to set out food dishes in their own homes and eat.
And yet it wasn’t in a home but in a field. So it must be work. And work on the Sabbath was wrong. They weren’t finished yet. The hardness of their hearts was about to become even more manifest.
On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
They were angry because a man whose dominant hand was crippled and now healed and the problem was because the healing took place on the Sabbath? They were so furious that he HEALED a man on the Sabbath that they wanted to kill him?
This is ridiculous! And yet it is true today. There are times where I have put the Law and the rules in their wrong place.
It’s not that Jesus was disregarding the Law. He didn’t. But they had defined the Law beyond what the Law taught.
It was freedom to heal a man on the Sabbath. They should have been celebrating the miracle.
It was barely any work at all for the disciples to grab a little bit to eat while walking through the grain fields. They weren’t doing a full on harvest.
The Pharisees were showing that they did not care about the people. They cared about their traditions.
The truth is we’ve got to be careful that the same thing doesn’t happen to us. Our traditions are not always obvious until they are challenged.
Like what happens when someone defaces the church or does something bad to the building? The church building is a tradition as the building itself is not the church.
What about things like church membership? Which is a tradition and while it has value, is not of the church.
Or church practices?
[For foreigners the term “sacred cow” is a wrong tradition that is strongly and wrongly held onto].
My pastor always used to say, “If you ever find a sacred cow, take it out back and shoot it.”