Tidings for Tuesday
And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath day? Luke 6:2
On one occasion, several boys who appeared to be in their early teens showed up at the tent a few minutes before the start of the Gospel meeting. They sat in a back corner, quietly chatting among themselves. Watching them, I said to Murray McCandless, ‘Look at that, they don’t even know enough to take off their caps!’ I indicated that I might go over and remind them to do so. But Murray stopped me. ‘Let them be,’ he said. ‘We’re just glad that they are here.’ Murray was right, of course. There is no telling whether a word from me might cause those boys to take offense and leave. As it was, they stayed and listened respectfully to the Gospel messages. What difference did it make if they kept their caps on, as long as they were hearing the Gospel? I was almost like those Pharisees in our text who were more interested in Jesus’ disciples’ behaviour than in Jesus’ message.
The crime didn’t seem to be so big. The disciples were hungry, and as they passed through a grain field, they pulled off some grain, rubbing the husks off in their hands as they ate. The law of the sabbath as given by Moses forbade doing work of any kind on that day, although it did not forbid the eating of food. But the Pharisees had developed a set of regulations to define exactly what they thought the law intended, in terms of the amount of work that was legal and that was not legal. They had determined that the gathering of any food from the field constituted the act of reaping, which was illegal. They had also determined that all food preparation must be done before the sabbath. So when the disciples rubbed the grain in their hands to remove the husks, they were in violation of the Pharisees’ rules. To the Pharisees, the rules were more important than what the law was intended to do. The intent of the law as Moses wrote it was to give the Israelites a day of rest; it was never its intention to force the people into strict religious observances. So why did the Pharisees create and enforce their sabbath rulebook? It was all part of their religion of works in which not even common sense was allowed to intervene. We have never been guilty of anything like that, have we?
A young brother began going on Saturday afternoons to a park near his home to distribute Gospel tracts. But when one of the elders of his Assembly discovered what tracts he was distributing, he ordered the young Christian to stop. The tracts were apparently written by a man that the elder disapproved of. Why did the elder not simply provide the young man with tracts that he deemed acceptable, rather than shut down a Gospel work and discourage a young Christian from a valuable exercise? This is an example of what we need to avoid when it comes to dealing with those around us in legal ways. We can do more harm than good by enforcing rules for the sake of enforcing rules.
How important are the rules that we expect those around us to follow, compared to the value of reaching sinners with the Gospel? – Jim MacIntosh