John 7
God on trial
“Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”
16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
20 “You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”
21 Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. 23 Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? 24 Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”’
The Pharisees were angry with Jesus because he “worked” on the sabbath by healing an invalid who had been crippled for 38 years, and he told that man to break the sabbath by carrying his mat home.
How dare God break the sabbath rest rule. What was the law?
“8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Interpreting this law of God fell to the leaders of Israel.
Rest became a job for the Jewish people. I don’t have the specifics but I heard recently that stipulation was that you couldn’t wear false teeth because it constituted carrying a burden.
The people were so concerned with keeping Gods laws that they lost touch with the God who gave them the laws. The laws weren’t put in place to drive us away or to drive us crazy but to drive into the arms of God who loves us.
Jesus has come to set us free, not from the rules but from our failure to keep the rules. We can’t keep the rules. He can, he did, he died to pay for our breaking them.
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