Tag Archives: the law

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

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CAUGHT IN THE ACT

“But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around Him, and He sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’  John 8:2-5 (NIV).

How convenient! Just when they needed some way of catching Jesus out on some (perceived) breach of the Law, one (or some) of them “happened” to come across this woman in a little liaison. Would these guys stop at nothing to nail Him? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it! Was this woman part of their trap? Were they willing to sacrifice her to get their way? And what of the male member of the conspiracy? Where was he? It takes two to tango.

In this whole debacle, what kind of a god were the religious leaders representing? Was this the God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt; the God who led them; cared for them; protected them; fed them and entered into a marriage covenant with them in the wilderness and gave them the Promised Land? Is this the God who taught them about loving Him and loving their neighbour as themselves? Was God’s Law intended to turn them into monsters or to show the world what kind of God He really is, gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness?

Jesus was, along with rabbis Hillel and Shammai who preceded Him, a rabbi with authority. How often did the common people not wonder at His authority because He showed, them by His words and works, the true nature of God, and they marvelled! The other rabbis perpetuated the tradition of a God of law and justice who wreaked vengeance on those who stepped outside the Law, especially the way they interpreted the Law. They made a fetish of the Law and twisted the nature of God to suit their distorted version.

Jesus’ yoke was unlike theirs. He portrayed a God of mercy and compassion, one who was on the side of the poor and oppressed. He was not out to destroy but to restore. He had forgiveness and mercy for those who repented and healing for the sick in body and mind. His kingdom was built on love, God’s limitless and unconditional love for all people, and man’s love for each other because all barriers had been removed.

The Jewish leaders hated Jesus because He made God too nice. It didn’t suit them because a “nice” God took away their power to control the people through fear, and stripped away their cloak of hypocrisy.

How insensitive these men were! Imagine them dragging this poor, half naked wretch in front of Jesus, flinging her down on the ground and loudly demanding that He pronounce His “Guilty!” verdict on her or else…! ‘Come on, Jesus. We caught her IN THE ACT! Moses said we must stone her. What do you say?’ They were confident that they had Him. If He showed mercy to her, He would be deliberately acting against the Law of Moses. If He agreed to their stoning her, He would be applying their yoke, not His own. He would be going against His own authority and bowing to theirs.

Was Jesus caught off guard? Would He have an answer that would vindicate Him and be merciful to the poor victim who lay trembling on the ground, waiting to hear her fate?

I can imagine the self-satisfied grins on the faces of these men as they looked at one another in triumph. ‘We’ve got Him now,’ they must have thought. ‘There’s no way that He can wriggle out of this one!’ In full view of their audience of people eager to listen to the gracious teaching of the rabbi whom they admired and followed with expectation and enthusiasm, they waited for their answer.

But they didn’t know Jesus. He knew exactly how their minds worked. There was one small part of the Law they had forgotten…

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

HOW MANY BRICKS?

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HOW MANY BRICKS?

“The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’

“But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ‘So they asked him, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’ “John 5:9-12 (NIV)

The Sabbath — a hot issue for the Pharisees, but why? Anyone who violated the Sabbath got them going. Was it because it was the one thing they could control? Breaking the Sabbath was an outward violation of the law and they could come down hard on the culprit to show him who was boss.

However, to them Sabbath-breaking wasn’t about “breaking” the fourth commandment as much as it was about contravening their petty laws which were added to the fourth commandment as their interpretation of God’s law. The fourth commandment was about keeping the Sabbath, not breaking it, and it all depended on what was meant by “keeping” the Sabbath!

In order to understand the Sabbath, we have to go back to the time and place where this commandment originated. The Sabbath was a creation ordinance and it became part of God’s marriage covenant with the children of Israel at Sinai when they came out of Egypt. Why was it necessary for God to give His people an instruction like this? Was it to put restrictions on them? No, it was to set them free.

The only life the Hebrews knew in Egypt was a life of slavery. Seven days a week they made bricks. Their value for their masters lay in what they could produce. God sent Moses to deliver them from Egypt and everything Egypt stood for. Without an instruction like that, they would have gone on thinking that their only worth to God lay in what they could achieve or produce and not in who they were. 

They had to be reprogrammed into realizing that their work did not make them who they were. They were of worth to God because He had created them in His image to be a reflection of Himself, not only for His own sake but also to train them to treat one another with dignity and respect.

When God’s work of creation was complete, He rested but He did not sit back, fold His arms and do nothing. He supervised what He had created to ensure that everything functioned together in perfect harmony. He wanted these newly-freed slaves to remember that it was He who set up the Sabbath as a legitimate day of rest and it was the Egyptians who had contradicted His instruction.

For the Jews, the Sabbath was intended to be a gift from God to set them free from viewing themselves in terms of what they could produce, and to give them time and opportunity to catch their breath, recover their strength and get ready for another six days of labour. They were to remember that God set it up for them because He had rested on the seventh day after His work was complete. It was a “sign” of His covenant with them established at Mount Sinai.

“Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.'” Exodus 31:13 (NIV).

The religious leaders had turned the Sabbath into a day of restrictions and religious rules so that they could monitor what the people were doing and jump on them when they stepped out of line. They prescribed what “work” was in such petty detail that the people were hardly able to move.

Jesus refused to be dictated to by these religious slave-drivers. He was not intimidated by their accusations and threats. Carrying a mat was not work; it was part of legitimate daily activity. He insisted that the Sabbath was a gift of God’s love, not prison bars to dehumanize them, and that He was the author of the Sabbath, not some human rule-makers who failed to understand why it was needed in the first place.

The Sabbath was a visual aid of a rest that went much deeper that just one day of not working. It was prophetic of a day which God called “today” in which we would rest form every effort to please God by our own “work”. When we enter into Jesus, we enter into His rest, because He satisfied God’s requirement for a perfect life and then died to pay the debt of our imperfection. He calls us to enter that rest by trusting in His finished work.

Have you entered His rest?

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

DECEIVED BY SIN

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DECEIVED BY SIN

“What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life, actually brought death.” Romans 7:7-10.

How can we ever say that God’s law is sinful?

The law expresses both God’s character and His requirements for a holy life. God’s law is not the problem, but the rebel nature in us that rises up as soon as God says, “Don’t!” We were not created with a natural bent towards disobedience. We inherited it from Adam when he changed allegiance and decided to step out from under the covering of righteousness and go it alone. When he chose to make his own rules, it was necessary for God to establish His boundaries so that man would know wherein his safety lay.

Unfortunately, God’s law has the opposite effect on man’s fallen human nature. Instead of providing protection for him, the law provokes his rebellious nature to go the opposite way. Wherever God says “Don’t!” man says “I will!” and deliberately steps outside his safety zone and into the death zone. The law has exactly the opposite effect to what God intended. Instead of protecting us, it provokes us.

Why did Paul choose the last of the Ten Commandments as an example? Why not murder or adultery or theft? I think he chose coveting because coveting is where it all starts. Sin begins in the mind and coveting is the motive for outward acts like murder and adultery that come from coveting. Covetousness is inward sin. Only God knows what goes on in our hearts. Even though we may not steal or murder, the driving force behind these sins is already in our hearts.

Our natural bent is towards selfishness and greed. To change that, God had to intervene and take active steps to change our hearts in order to change our nature and our attitudes. We are not naturally contented. We are dissatisfied with what we have – we want more or we want what others have. Have you ever watched two toddlers playing together? Even though they might have a room full of toys, they will fight over the one toy that they both want! It’s in the heart. It’s in the disposition and the bent from the day that we were conceived.

It frustrates us to see the selfishness displayed in children and the disharmony that it produces in the little ones, but we don’t recognise coveting in ourselves. We call it ambition, or progress or getting ahead or some other cover-up word but, bottom line, it’s just plain coveting. And where did it come from? From our response to God’s law, written on our hearts, “You shall not covet.”

“For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment, put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous and good.” Romans 7:11, 12.

What was Paul’s conclusion? God’s law is holy. It was given to His people to show them the path to Himself. If they walked His way, they would surely arrive at the destination He intended for them. Unfortunately, the law has the opposite effect, because of built-in rebellion. Everyone, since Adam, thinks that he knows better than God. Sin is so deceptive that it will persist in making its own rules in spite of the fact that the outcome is always chaos and destruction.

An alcoholic knows that his drinking is destroying him and his family but he is driven by it and can’t stop. He refuses to acknowledge that he has a problem. He knows he cannot help himself but he keeps telling himself that he is okay and that he can stop drinking at any time if he so chooses. Why is he so foolish and stubborn? Sin has deceived him.

So it is with every form of sinful practice. We are foolish enough to believe that we can keep doing the same things and expect a different outcome! The problem lies with us, not with the standard by which God measures us. Paul is going somewhere with this explanation. He is building up a case for our utter helplessness without the intervention of God’s mercy and grace.

Stick with me. We’re getting to the exciting part.

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

OUT IN THE COLD

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OUT IN THE COLD

“Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.” Romans 2:25-29.

Paul took great pains to ensure that his Jewish readers understood the place of the law in their lives. Being a Jew was much more than having the outward and physical sign of the covenant in their bodies. It was an issue of the heart. Paul needed them to understand that they were all lawbreakers, no matter how much they viewed themselves as the privileged covenant people of God.

Like the Pharisees who were Jesus’ persistent opponents, defending their natural birth into the nation of Israel was of no use if they did not back it up with obedience to the terms of God’s covenant. It would be the same as thinking that natural birth in a country would be enough to keep me out of prison even if I committed a crime.

The thinking of the Jews whom Paul addressed then is, unfortunately, the same false teaching that deceives millions of people today. False religions teach people that the way to please their god, or the way to get rid of sin is to subscribe to a certain religion and to do certain things, rituals or rules that relate to the body but cannot change the heart. Eat or do not eat certain foods; wash here or wash this way; offer sacrifices of food or blood; bow so many times, or bow this way etc. What can any of these things do to alter the state of the heart, or remove the guilt of the soul?

The prophet Micah, in the Old Testament, struggled with the same issue.

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He had shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:6-8.

What value is there in washing the body, putting the right kinds of food in the mouth or offering sacrifices to an inanimate block of wood or stone? What evidence it there to prove that these rituals have any effect on the guilty conscience? Of what value is circumcision, as a mark of membership if it does not issue in obedience to God, or offering sacrifices if they are an excuse to keep on sinning? All the adherence to religious practices in the world cannot and will not change the heart.

Paul was slowly building his case for the hopelessness of all human beings. Not even the Jews, who had thousands of years of history – God actively involved in their lives, revealing Himself to them, cutting covenant with them, intervening in their lives with many miracles, protecting and providing for them, governing and guiding them – were any better than the Gentiles because they were just as guilty of ungodly behaviour as their uncircumcised neighbours.

Worst of all, although the Jews probably did not even give it a thought, was their arrogant attitude towards the Gentiles whom they despised. It was their very pride in their privileged birth that cut them off from God. “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5b. So, instead of living in God’s favour, they had cut themselves off from Him because of their arrogant attitude.

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.