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- Oct 26, 2007
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Then Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?" Luke 6:9 NKJV
One of the most significant ways Jesus tweaked religious expectations was how He handled the Sabbath. God instituted a day of rest right after He finished His creation, but throughout Israel’s history, they had ignored it, trusting in themselves rather than their God, until God enforced a seventy-year Sabbath by sending them into exile in Babylon. By Jesus’ day, the Sabbath had become a legalistic blockade, with strict punishments rigorously enforced over the detailed and bizarre interpretations of what constituted work.
The religious leaders repeatedly tried to catch Jesus breaking one of their arcane Sabbath rules—and He obliged them, picking grain from a field one time and healing a crippled man’s hand on another. His defense? “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath”.
Where Jesus is Lord, there is freedom from doing things the way they’ve always been done just because that’s how they’ve always been done. Trusting the Lord by taking a day to honor and celebrate Him to good, but what better way to do both than obey His command to love others well, to help where we can in Jesus’ name?
Prayer: Lord God, You deserve honor and obedience every day, but You desire sacrifices of praise and love more than rigid adherence to tradition.
One of the most significant ways Jesus tweaked religious expectations was how He handled the Sabbath. God instituted a day of rest right after He finished His creation, but throughout Israel’s history, they had ignored it, trusting in themselves rather than their God, until God enforced a seventy-year Sabbath by sending them into exile in Babylon. By Jesus’ day, the Sabbath had become a legalistic blockade, with strict punishments rigorously enforced over the detailed and bizarre interpretations of what constituted work.
The religious leaders repeatedly tried to catch Jesus breaking one of their arcane Sabbath rules—and He obliged them, picking grain from a field one time and healing a crippled man’s hand on another. His defense? “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath”.
Where Jesus is Lord, there is freedom from doing things the way they’ve always been done just because that’s how they’ve always been done. Trusting the Lord by taking a day to honor and celebrate Him to good, but what better way to do both than obey His command to love others well, to help where we can in Jesus’ name?
Prayer: Lord God, You deserve honor and obedience every day, but You desire sacrifices of praise and love more than rigid adherence to tradition.
