What Jesus did #20: he broke the rules

Jesus broke the rules.

In fact, Jesus broke God’s rules. According to the spiritual leaders of the day, Jesus regularly broke one of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses for His people as recorded in Exodus 20.

So how could this guy possibly call himself a man of God, more than that, the son of God? It just didn’t make sense. He’d come along announcing a new, seductive kingdom in which everything they’d ever learnt was being turned upside down and people were following him and he was leading the people astray…He had to be challenged. He had to be stopped.

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shrivelled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. Matthew 12:1-14 

Jesus’ followers were hungry. They had the opportunity to eat.

The man with a shrivelled hand. Jesus had the opportunity to heal him.

These was good and right and natural things to do. And yet by doing them, Jesus and his disciples would be breaking one of God’s commandments – ‘Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy…On it you shall not do any work…’ Exodus 20:8-9

Over the years, this had been taken to the extreme. No self-respecting Jew was allowed to lift a finger to do anything at all on the Sabbath. The rules had become the foundation of faith.

There’s something bigger going on here, however.

I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.

The faith that Jesus is talking about is not based on stifling rules and traditions and structures. It’s a living relationship. It’s changing and evolving. It’s about right motive, right attitude of heart, living in right relationship with others. And sometimes that will mean that the rules have to be broken.

If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.

This speaks so well into what’s going on in our world today, doesn’t it? Because some have become so fixated on the rules that they have condemned others in irreparable ways. They have not shown any love or mercy or compassion. They have profoundly damaged other people’s relationship with God by the things they have said and the judgement they have passed and the way they have treated people.

Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly. John 7:24

That’s what Jesus says when challenged about healing on the Sabbath in John 7. We would all do well to take these words on board.

Mercy and love first, rules and tradition after. That is Jesus’ way.

But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

This man was undermining everything they had built their lives and reputation upon. You can see why he needed to be silenced.

The same story appears in Luke 6 and Mark 2:23-3:6, in which we read this.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27

God is the creator of all. He created the universe and the laws of the universe. Because He created the universe, He could bend and break the laws of the universe whenever He wanted to. We call these happenings miracles. In the same way, God created humankind and a structure/set of rules setting out the right and best way for humankind to live in relationship with each other and with Him. Because He created it all, He could bend and break these rules whenever He wanted to. He is the God of the rules. He controls the rules. They don’t define Him or control Him or box Him in.

And so despite his critics, Jesus continued to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus healed a crippled woman on the Sabbath in Luke 13. He healed a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body on the Sabbath in Luke 14. He wouldn’t stop healing just because of what anyone else might think or how anyone else might judge him, however important or ‘spiritual’ they were.

Living outside the tradition and rules is subversive and radical and people won’t like it, because it challenges the way they live and what they have built their lives upon. Going against the flow is tough. Doing it differently will never make you popular. You’ll be treated with suspicion, labelled as a rebel or ‘a ranting politically correct leftie’.

I’m not advocating anarchy and breaking the rules for the sake of it. It’s not a case of ‘anything goes’. It’s about not doing something just because you’ve been told to do it, because it’s always been done that way, because that’s how everyone else is doing it. It’s about responding with the love of God to whatever is before you, about living and breathing and working to let God’s will be done on earth, let His kingdom come on earth. Whatever that looks like for you today.

If we’re serious about looking to do life as Jesus did it, then this is the path he chose: a path of persecution that led to his sacrificial death. There’s no denying that.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defence, Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. John 5:16-18

But this is the path that ultimately leads to life in all its fullness, a glorious forever life in full relationship with God.

So are you in?

Are you serious about following Jesus’ way or not?