Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: Matthew 12:1-14

In the ten commandments, the LORD blessed His people with the gift of Sabbath rest. Knowing our propensity to anxiety, worry and fear for tomorrow, He went one step further and commanded the blessing of rest by commanding us not to work on one day of the week, the Sabbath.

By the time of Jesus, the rabbis had taken God’s good gift of the Sabbath and “weaponised it” (as we would say in the 21st Century) by adding Sabbath rules and regulations by the hundred. During his earthly life, Jesus never violated God’s command to observe the Sabbath or approved of His disciples violating God’s Sabbath command, but He often broke man’s legalistic additions to that law and He sometimes seems to have done so deliberately in order to provoke the religious authorities to examine their hearts. So when his disciples broke a human Sabbath rule (in Matthew 12) Jesus defended them by pointing to the deeper principles of Sabbath that are also revealed in God’s Word (v.3-7); and then, on top of that, He also pronounced: “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (v.8)

Jesus then went on to powerfully demonstrate His authority over the Sabbath and over disease and human brokenness by healing a man with a “shrivelled hand” on the Sabbath. This healing provided the context for further teaching on the deeper principles of Sabbath – especially that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Sadly, despite the truth He had revealed and the life He had profoundly improved, the Pharisees “went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.” (v.14)

As followers of Jesus this passage alerts us to how important it is to avoid adding our own detailed rules to what God has revealed about Himself and His will for human thriving through the Bible. Our place is to discern from Scripture what is pleasing to God and then to pursue that with all our hearts, while continually testing our interpretations against what we know of God’s holy character as revealed by the same Scripture – for God’s commands, precepts and decrees (as we saw yesterday) will not contradict His nature and character.

LORD, thank You for Your written self-revelation in the Bible. Please guide us as we interpret that revelation into our everyday lives in the 21st Century. Help us not to reinterpret Your revelation through the lens of our sinful desires, but rather through the lens of Your beautiful holiness and majesty. Amen.