Big picture thinking for the kingdom
This week's Bible study is on John 7:21-24:
The Pharisees had gotten all upset about Jesus healing a guy on the Sabbath. In their minds, he was violating the "no working on Sabbath" laws. The thing is, they were missing the point. While it was true that the Sabbath law said "Don't do stuff on Sabbath" and that Jesus was doing stuff, the bigger picture was that Jesus wasn't working on the Sabbath, but was doing God's will.
Jesus was saying, "Hey, instead of just reacting to stuff, why not understand my kingdom?" He used the example of circumcision to demonstrate that God sometimes has things for people to do on a Sabbath day. How does circumcision get the green light from the Pharisees, but healing a boy, which is also God's will, does not? If anything, the healing should have been more approved, as it is a direct expression of God's love and liberating power!
The issue was that the Pharisees just looked at the outside symptoms without understanding why the laws were there. It's like a compliance auditor coming in and auditing a workplace. Everyone hates compliance auditors because they only look at symptoms. While most of what they point out is probably helpful or reasonable, they don't always understand the whole system or why the rules exist. So they'll do things like mandate fire doors in hallways of historical buildings, or specific model numbers of things which are no longer made, or for which better versions exist. There's no sense of "Someone wrote this law to keep tenements from burning down, and this isn't anything like a tenement," or "When the contract was written that was the latest hardware, but if they were around today they would have recommended Y instead of X." All you get are people freaking out over symptoms, and a sort of tyranny of ignorant box-tickers.
God gave us the Sabbath so that we could rest. Maybe if we spent seven days a week healing people all day until we burnt out and started getting huffy at sick people, we'd be in violation of the Sabbath law. But one act of healing isn't going to impact people's rest. The Sabbath is still being honored. Someone with an understanding of the big picture would see what was going on. It wasn't man's work on the day he was supposed to rest. It was God's act of love and power being done on God's day.
Jesus says to stop judging by appearances, but to judge correctly. (Notice that he didn't say not to judge at all. That's a Pharisee idea too.) Jesus said to not judge by appearances. In other words, don't freak out over symptoms and checkboxes, but take a moment to see the big picture. It may still be wrong, or it may be OK, or even something good. What is really going on? Is God being glorified? Whose law is it, anyway?
Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 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. 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? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”
The Pharisees had gotten all upset about Jesus healing a guy on the Sabbath. In their minds, he was violating the "no working on Sabbath" laws. The thing is, they were missing the point. While it was true that the Sabbath law said "Don't do stuff on Sabbath" and that Jesus was doing stuff, the bigger picture was that Jesus wasn't working on the Sabbath, but was doing God's will.
Jesus was saying, "Hey, instead of just reacting to stuff, why not understand my kingdom?" He used the example of circumcision to demonstrate that God sometimes has things for people to do on a Sabbath day. How does circumcision get the green light from the Pharisees, but healing a boy, which is also God's will, does not? If anything, the healing should have been more approved, as it is a direct expression of God's love and liberating power!
The issue was that the Pharisees just looked at the outside symptoms without understanding why the laws were there. It's like a compliance auditor coming in and auditing a workplace. Everyone hates compliance auditors because they only look at symptoms. While most of what they point out is probably helpful or reasonable, they don't always understand the whole system or why the rules exist. So they'll do things like mandate fire doors in hallways of historical buildings, or specific model numbers of things which are no longer made, or for which better versions exist. There's no sense of "Someone wrote this law to keep tenements from burning down, and this isn't anything like a tenement," or "When the contract was written that was the latest hardware, but if they were around today they would have recommended Y instead of X." All you get are people freaking out over symptoms, and a sort of tyranny of ignorant box-tickers.
God gave us the Sabbath so that we could rest. Maybe if we spent seven days a week healing people all day until we burnt out and started getting huffy at sick people, we'd be in violation of the Sabbath law. But one act of healing isn't going to impact people's rest. The Sabbath is still being honored. Someone with an understanding of the big picture would see what was going on. It wasn't man's work on the day he was supposed to rest. It was God's act of love and power being done on God's day.
Jesus says to stop judging by appearances, but to judge correctly. (Notice that he didn't say not to judge at all. That's a Pharisee idea too.) Jesus said to not judge by appearances. In other words, don't freak out over symptoms and checkboxes, but take a moment to see the big picture. It may still be wrong, or it may be OK, or even something good. What is really going on? Is God being glorified? Whose law is it, anyway?
Comments
Post a Comment