daily java

Daily Java: He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)

There are greater things in God’s sight than doctrine. People trump doctrine.

It is our tendency to got o what is written down and say well, it says this. And the written word is important. It is God’s only sure way of communicating with us.

But there comes a time when you have to factor in the human element into it all.

In this passage, Jesus is being griped at for doing stuff on the Sabbath day. His offense? He and his disciples went through a grain field and ate some of the grain on the Sabbath day. On the Sabbath day, you were not supposed to do anything. Through the years, it had become interpreted as literally nothing done on that day.

What God had intended as a day of rest became a worshipped object. Jesus violated their interpretations of God’s word and made them mad.

He goes back to the Old Testament and the story of David. He and his men were very hungry and went into the temple and ate the special bread given to God that was kept on display. Ultimately, it was shown that it was okay in special circumstances to go around the prohibition against working. The Sabbath was meant for rest, not total turpitude.

Those in power, however, had their interpretations that were special and holy to them. You could do nothing on the Sabbath, no matter what. Jesus and the apostles needed. They even got mad when he healed people on the Sabbath, They counted that, as great as it was and as wonderful as the ability to heal was, as working. Even though it was somewhat of an emergency for them – they were traveling and had no opportunity to get anything else to eat – it didn’t matter. The law came first, people came second.

Jesus said that people came first. People trump doctrine. Sure, the Bible says something and it is absolutely true. But we have to remember that when Jesus was faced with a person and the sin that person committed, he always chose the person.

When the woman was caught in adultery in John 7-8, he didn’t condone her sin, he condemned the readiness with which people condemned. He condemned the condemnor, not the condemned. He hated the sin – he was after all God – but he loved the person. He tried to show that God was a God of second chances, that sometimes there were extenuating circumstances.

And for sure he wasn’t about to obey somebody else’s idea of God’s will. Much of their Sabbath day stuff was made up by committees of theologians who cared more about the word and cared little or none about the person the word was intended to bring to God..

The Sabbath was intended to help people rest. They had turned it into an assistant god that they felt compelled to worship.

It is kind of like people who will not allow the sanctuary to be used for anything other than common church services. Or feel so compelled to keep things the way they are – worship, prayer, translations of the Bible, preaching styles – that they drive people out.

Any time stuff gets more important than God, we are sinning. Jesus said he came to save, not condemn. He came to bring people to God, not separate them. He still hates sin, but he loves people and will give them every chance he can to come back to God.

So will I.