This morning I am back-tracking a little in Matthew's Gospel, starting in his twelfth chapter. Although still focused on the Kingdom, I am seeing a different twist this morning, more of a looking at what the Kingdom of God is not. Here are the verses I am considering - Matthew 12:1-2, 9-14 NIV:
[1] "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. [2] When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
[9] Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, [10] and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
[11] 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? [12] How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
[13] 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. [14] But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus."
So the chapter starts out with a conflict over rules. I was thinking about how the Pharisees were really the keeper of the rules, under the law, and how Jesus comes along and basically thumbs His nose at many of the laws that the Pharisees were most concerned with upholding. Both of the conflicts described in these verses have to do with doing work on the Sabbath, a highly defined set of religious rules. The Pharisees had developed a complete list of what constituted work, and what didn't, so they could be sure are to being righteous according to the Law. For an understanding of the modern Sabbath rules, please go to teh following link: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/95907/jewish/The-Shabbat-Laws.htm/mobile/false
The actual command from the Law was to keep the Sabbath holy, and was the fourth and longest of the Ten Commandments. Here is the actual commandment from Deuteronomy 5:12-15 NIV:
[12] “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. [13] Six days you shall labor and do all your work, [14] 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 ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. [15] Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."
The commandment is quite clear about not working, and thus they had spent years defining exactly what work was, how many steps they could walk, etc. Jesus and His disciples were picking grain on the Sabbath, that was work (harvest) and thus not allowed. Jesus was demonstrating the Kingdom paradigm of relationship and care for His friends, and they were coming up against those who guarded the old paradigm of a rules-based understanding of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus must have just drove the Pharisees crazy, because they set traps constantly, and He just never fell into them. His perspective was completely different, and His answers were out-side the bounds of how they thought. They were all focused on rules and laws and such and He was focused on the people. That is actually a really good Kingdom principle, its about people not rules. They were trying to trap him and in both cases he uses the scripture and their own practices against them.
In the first example Jesus talks about the Priests and their requirement to "work" on the Sabbath. In the second, He uses their own escape clauses from their countless lists of what constituted work. While work on the Sabbath was outlawed, there were allowances for saving lives, crops and animals should something happen on a sabbath. God required your rest, but not that you lose possessions or money. However healing for the sake of healing, when it wasn't life threatening clearly crossed over into being classified as work. What I think really irked the Pharisees is that Jesus didn't actually do any work - He apparently didn't touch the man, didn't say a prayer, didn't go through any healing ritual, He just had the man stretch out his arm, something that was completely allowable under the "work" definition. So even though Jesus addressed their concerns and proved them wrong in their thinking, He didn't actually even break the law. It must have drove them crazy.
Finally, the real conflict was that Jesus was proclaiming the Kingdom of God, something the Pharisees thought they understood completely, and as Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated it was radically different. This is a great example of a new wine skin, or a new paradigm (using modern language). The Pharisees were the experts on the old, and Jesus comes along and completely upsets their world and understanding. The Pharisees maintained their power because of their demonstrated knowledge of the Law, not because of power or authority. Jesus demonstrates that He has all three - power, authority and a better knowledge of the Law. He was directly confronting their power base, and defeating them at every turn. Rather then listen to what Jesus was saying and seeing what He was clearly demonstrating as definitions of the Kingdom, they refused any redefining, and chose instead to reject everything new. They could not transition from being rule-based to relationship-based in their thinking and thus failed to recognize who Jesus was and what He was proclaiming.
In our own lives we want to look at our own understanding of the covenant we are under, the precepts and realities of the Kingdom of God as demonstrated by Jesus, and make sure we are not stuck in a rules-based mindset. As I have written many times before, we are no longer under the old covenant, but are instead partakers in the new covenant established by Jesus. He fulfilled all the requirements of the Law (Old Covenant) and set us free from them. The new covenant is established by His blood, and we join ourselves to it when we accept the salvation that He has purchased for us. This is the message of grace, that we didn't earn it, rather that He did and He gives it freely to all. Since we didn't earn it, nor can we earn it, we do not focus on works (rules) of righteousness but rather on the One (relationship) who has given us this great gift of righteousness.
Amen. Help us Lord.
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