A New and Better Way!

Saturday morning, March 8, 2008
On this particular Sabbath, Jesus went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees (a member of the Sanhedrin!) to have lunch and, as you might imagine, lunch was short-lived. As he entered the house, He practically stumbled over a man who was suffering from dropsy (we would call it edema today; in his case, severe edema), which meant that this man probably had heart and kidney problems, even pulmonary problems. In other words, he was sick and needed to be in the local hospital—yesterday!
This is the question Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees (what a group!) who were carefully and closely watching Him, hoping to catch Him violating one of the Ten Commandments (truth is I think it was a set-up!): “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not” (Luke 14:3)? Whatever else you might conclude from His question, you can rest assured that He knew what their answer would be, no doubt about it! Just for the record, He also knew that “Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy” was one of the Ten Commandments! What they did NOT know, that He knew very well, was this: He is not only Lord of the Sabbath, He IS the Sabbath!
If my memory serves me correctly (which is doubtful!), in their effort to interpret and apply this particular commandment, the Jews came up with 210 rules that told them what they could and could not do, not the least of which made it clear that it was unlawful to heal on the Sabbath, which was exactly what Jesus was about to do, even though He was well-aware of the law and of the consequence of violating it—death!
Interestingly, their response to Jesus’ question was silence—deafening silence—even though they were lawyers and leaders of the Pharisees—members of the highest court in Israel. Funny what silences idiots and fools!
Anyway, Jesus did not hesitate; instead, he took hold of the sick man, healed him, and sent him on his way. I can only imagine the fury that was churning in the minds of these religious bigots; the last thing they wanted from this “set-up” was for this man to walk away completely healed, especially, against the backdrop of Jesus’ question.
As you have probably already guessed, Jesus broke the silence , and He did so with this rhetorical question: “Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day” (vs. 5)? Again, they responded with silence [“And they could make no reply to this” (vs. 6)] because they knew that Jesus knew what they would do, and they also knew that an honest answer would betray their own inability to keep the very laws they required others to keep.
Sadly, what they did not know was this: Jesus came to usher in a new and better way, to take away the first (covenant) in order to establish the second (covenant) [see Hebrews 8:6 and 10:9]. To be sure, in the Old (first) Covenant, the Sabbath was supposed to be a day of rest from work (one of the many ways men attempted to please God); HOWEVER, in the New (second and better) Covenant, the Sabbath is no longer a day, but a Person, who has done all the work for us, a Person in whom we eternally rest from our labors and efforts at keeping the commandments.
Now, I want you to notice something, something very significant: These men took the business of keeping the Sabbath Day holy very seriously, life and death seriously; consequently, when Jesus healed this sick man on the Sabbath, He took an incredibly bold stand, one that could and did bring Him much grief. Why did He do this? He did because He came to take away the futility of attempting to please God by maintaining certain standards of behavior AND to establish a new and better way, by doing for us what we could never do for ourselves—meeting the Law’s requirement of perfection in our behalf. “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Sprit” (Romans 8:3-4).
By the way, are you taking a stand and spreading the good news about this new and better way, or are you hiding behind the façade of being a keeper of the commandments? If you are doing the former, you should know because the religious are giving you hell, just as they did Jesus; if not, they love you with all of their hearts.