1 And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him. 2 And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. 3 And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? 4 And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; 5 And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? 6 And they could not answer him again to these things. Luke 14:1-6
The Pharisees were outwardly very respectable people. They upheld the Law, and were proud of it. They were perhaps not the first, but they were certainly the most important of the “holier than thou” groups. Their idea was that they would build a fence, so to speak, around God’s Law, to prevent people from breaking it. Most of the practices of modern Judaism derive from the practices of the Pharisees in one way or another.
For example, God’s command is not to take his name in vain. The Pharisees said that in order to prevent using God’s name in vain, we shouldn’t say his name at all. This tradition became so widespread that we are not entirely sure how the Hebrew name of God should be pronounced.
As another example, God actually gave a command to the Jews that they should not boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk, in Exodus 23:19. To prevent that from ever happening, the Pharisees introduced a tradition that kept Jews from eating milk and meat at the same meal.
God gives the command to honor the Sabbath, to keep it holy, and not to work on the Sabbath day. The Pharisees set up an elaborate list of traditions to define what did and did not constitute work.
The Pharisees started out with good intentions, the intention to uphold God’s Law. But despite their intentions, they missed the whole point of the Law. Once Adam and Eve fell in to sin, it became impossible for us to keep God’s Law. Even if we could keep the letter of the law, we know that we could not keep the spirit of it. The Law demands perfect obedience in thought, word, and deed, and even the slightest deviation from that standard is enough to condemn us forever. Have you ever even thought about hurting someone else? That’s enough. Have you ever spoken harshly, or in anger? That’s enough. You have broken God’s Law, and you are subject to God’s eternal punishment.
The punishment for breaking the Law is quite clear – eternal damnation, separation from God for all eternity. As God says through the prophet Ezekiel, “the soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:13). As Paul says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Thankfully, though, there is hope, because God came to live among us and fulfill the Law that we could not. As often as we break it, we know that Jesus was tempted just as we are, but instead of yielding to that temptation he resisted it, and kept the Law as we could not. That is why his suffering and death were innocent – because he never sinned, he could offer himself as as sacrifice on our behalf. And so we trust in that perfect life, and his innocent suffering and death to cover our sins, and that will be our plea when we face God in the end. When Satan (which means “accuser”, by the way) accuses us before God, we can plead that we are not guilty because Jesus’ blood covers our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
But now that we know what Jesus has done for us, does that mean that the Law has no meaning? That we don’t need to follow it? Is that what Jesus is saying here, to these Pharisees, that the Law is optional for us?
First off, we definitely want to say that following God’s Law is not optional for anyone. We were saved from sin, not so that we could sin more. But we have to understand what God’s Law actually requires of us.
In our text for today, Jesus puts the Pharisees to the test. A man is sick with the dropsy, which is called edema today – an abnormal swelling with fluid. And so Jesus asks, “Is it legal to heal someone on the Sabbath?” The Pharisees cannot answer, because their framework of traditions does not include the notion of miracles.
So Jesus heals the man, and in so doing, teaches us an important lesson about the Law. Not all of the Law of the Old Testament is on the same footing. We use different terms today to refer to these classifications of the Law – moral, ceremonial, and civil. The ceremonial and civil laws were introduced by God primarily through Moses.
The moral law is binding for all people at all times. We recognize elements of the moral law because it is written on our hearts in the form of conscience. Almost every society, even the pagan ones, has laws against murder and burglary, and promotes marriage and family. There are exceptions, but it is common enough. We see evidence of this in Scripture because Cain is punished for murdering Abel, long before the actual giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. We recognize these as the definitive statement of the moral law, but they certainly were binding before they were given and are still binding today.
The ceremonial and civil laws were the laws God gave through Moses for Israel to govern itself until the Messiah, Christ, came. They were binding for the people of Israel but are not binding on us today. We know this because Scripture tells us so directly – in recent weeks, we have studied Acts 10, where God tells Peter to kill and eat. Peter refuses, because the animals in his vision are ceremonially unclean. Three times, God tells him to kill and eat, to understand that the Jewish law that he had lived under his whole life has been set aside. Similarly, Paul tells the Colossians that they are not to allow anyone to judge them with regards to food or Sabbath or holy days (Col 2:16) – all things very distinctive of the Jewish ceremonial law. Even for those to whom the ceremonial law was binding, there were circumstances where they could break it without sinning. Jesus mentions one here – if an ox or donkey falls into a pit on the Sabbath, it is not a violation of God’s law to get it out. In the same way, Jesus uses the example of King David’s men eating the showbread when they were on the run – according to the ceremonial law, only priests could eat the showbread – but David’s men were running for their lives and that was the only food available, so they ate it. In the Gospel of Mark, when the Pharisees criticize Jesus’ disciples for eating grain on the Sabbath, Jesus says “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” When we allow ourselves to think or believe than man was made for the Sabbath, we are perverting the Law, and making it an end unto itself. The point of the ceremonial law is to foreshadow Christ, and point us to Him. As Paul says (Col 2:17) “Which are a shadow of the things to come – the body is in Christ.”
All of this stands in very stark contrast to how Jesus handled the woman who was caught in adultery, which we recently discussed in adult Bible class. In that case, there wasn’t any question that she had done wrong, and there really wasn’t any question whether she deserved to die for it. There is a big difference between deserving death and being shown mercy and not deserving death at all. As we can tell from Jesus’ final words to her – “Go and sin no more” – this is another example of the moral law that applies to everyone.
So, you might wonder, what good do the Jewish civil and ceremonial laws do for us today, if they do not apply to us?
For one thing, they help us to understand the world that the New Testament was written in. We may not understand the implications of the Jewish laws, but Peter and John sure did. How can we understand the importance of Peter’s vision in Acts 10, where God told him to kill and eat, without understanding the Jewish ceremonial law? How can we understand John the Baptist’s cry, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, without knowing about the Passover and the Jewish ceremonies tied to it? How could we understand the importance or necessity of the sacrifice of Jesus, or the value of his blood, without knowing about the daily sacrifices that were carried out in the ceremonial law?
The earliest Christian church sure believed it had to understand the history of Israel. It was very important to the church to preserve the entire Old Testament for us to read and understand, including the ceremonial law. Perhaps most importantly, we need to understand that the ceremonial law was temporary from the very beginning, that it was never meant as a way for us to earn God’s favor. Paul points out that God gave Abraham the Gospel first, long before the law of Moses came into play. And from this we learn that while God’s law is good, the Gospel is a greater and more important word. At the same time, the Law is important – it shows us how to live out our lives of gratitude. Let us keep each in their proper place, until we face God in joy and thankfulness. Amen.
- Martin Jackson