Rules

 

I was reading today about the religious leaders during the time Jesus was on earth. Jewish law isn’t a simple set of rules. They are detailed ways to live and worship. To those rules, the religious leaders had added many additional rules, just to make life more difficult. Originally the Jewish Law was set out to help bring order to the people, legal issues like how to handle arguments and debt and crime. These rules are important in any culture. The religious laws were there to help the people know how to approach God. These laws taught the people the need for a sacrifice in their place for forgiveness of their sins, whether giving up of some portion of their wealth or livestock, or the death of one of their animals. All of these rules pointed to their need and dependence on God for His acceptance and forgiveness.

The major focus of Jewish Law was the Ten Commandments, beginning with our relationship to God and ending with our relationship to each other. Jesus made it even simpler by summarizing the Law into loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (the worship perspective) and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Do that and you will fulfill the Ten Commandments.

There is a great picture of the people of Israel in the wilderness (after fleeing Egypt), being called near to Mt. Sinai to hear what God had to say to them. At first this seemed exciting, but as they drew near they began to feel the huge difference between them and God. They began to feel their unworthiness. They became frightened.  So instead of humbly approaching God, recognizing their sin nature, confessing their unworthiness, they tell Moses, their leader, “you go and talk to God and then come tell us what He said. Whatever He wants us to do, we will do.”  It’s understandable to feel the gap between us and God, and to feel uncomfortable and even afraid. But God had invited then to come near. All God had done for the nation, including bringing them out of Egypt, was to show them when they couldn’t accomplish something, God could. They couldn’t get free of being Egyptian slaves, but God could free them. They couldn’t cross the Red Sea or find water in a rock or bread when there wasn’t any to be found, but God could and did. By the time they arrived at the mountain they should have been well versed in how God wanted to do things for them they could not do for themselves, like approach him. He wanted a relationship with them.

So rather than trust God and approach Him, they asked Moses to do it for them, and made a promise they could never keep, “whatever He asks we will do.” And sure enough, while Moses was up having an amazing time with God, the people grew restless and decided to construct an idol, a golden calf. Idols are so much less demanding. They are created by our own hands, ask nothing of us and we can make up what goes with them. And without even hearing it, they broke the first commandment of having no other gods before God.

It’s not like God expected them to perfectly follow his Law. He understands our nature better than we do. What He wanted was for them to trust Him, and admit that they couldn’t do whatever He asked. He wanted them to ask Him how they could be obedient to Him. He had shown them many times before how coming before him humbly and in faith is really all He wants. He will fill in the missing pieces, not because they or we deserve it, but because of His grace to make a relationship with Him possible.

Our nature is so perverse in these matters. Tell us not to do something and we can’t wait to do it. Even better, tell us what to do, and we’ll add 15 other steps to it, because we could make it better. By the time Jesus walked on earth, the religious leaders had become masters of adding more burden (more things we cannot do). Most of their additional laws totally stripped any compassion out of their religion, losing all the emphasis God placed on loving Him and loving others. 

Take the Sabbath law, for instance. The law was to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, set apart for rest and worship. The religious leaders felt that needed a bit more explanation so they added 39 much more specific Sabbath rules. These were not God’s rules. It’s hard enough to set aside one day to rest and worship, let alone have specified in minute detail what signifies labor. Jesus had the audacity to heal people on the Sabbath, when it was a day of rest, which the leaders took to mean a day not to do anything, and healing was something.

Interesting thing, however, is the creators of these additional, oral traditions also had multiple ways to get around them (our nature at work). So they said you could only take so many steps beyond your property on the Sabbath. But, if on the day before, you happened to take some of your property and leave it along a path you’d like to take on Sabbath, you could walk the ordered steps to your prearranged property, and because it was “property” you could walk an additional set of steps. 

That’s a problem with making our own rules. We can rig them. We can come up with rationale why we needed to stretch them, on occasion. The reason we even need to rig them is because following rules just isn’t in our wheelhouse. We are natural rule breakers, even ones of our own making.

Yes, God set up Laws, rules for living. Many were specific to the needs of the time – to help Israel become a healthy, functioning nation. The Ten Commandments specifically are rules even for today. If we could follow them, the world would be a better place. But, we can’t, any better than the Jews could. So we try adding additional rules on to the original, as if adding more would make it easier??

Many Christians grew up with their own set of Sunday/Sabbath traditions to “help” keep the day set apart and holy. These could include no cleaning on that day, no non-church activities (youth group, yes; community soccer, no), and so on. However, mom was expected to make a big Sunday lunch for everyone, and afterwards clean-up was required, but somehow that was different than laundry or vacuuming.  I grew up with other rules around me, no dancing for example. I’m not sure which commandment that evolved from, but it certainly ran up against obeying my parents when I was asked to my first dance.

Jesus illustrated what was important to him. He had made the laws, and He showed everyone that Sabbath didn’t mean sitting at home twiddling your thumbs. It also wasn’t to be used as an excuse to not help people in need, “because that would be work.”  Jesus did a lot of healing on the Sabbath, much to the religious leader’s dismay.

The biggest pitfall with our additions to God’s Law is that they most always are designed to make us look better. And when we look better we can look down on anyone who isn’t doing what we do. So If I don’t clean on Sunday, I can thoroughly judge someone who uses that day to clean. If I don’t go to dances, I can totally judge the spiritual weakness of those who do. And we are blinded from our own sin of judging those others.

In the book of Romans, chapter 8, the writer proclaims that “the righteous requirements of the Law” was fulfilled in Christ Jesus on the cross for us. What we could not do, God did for us, making it possible for us to come before Him without fear. We don’t obtain this gift by doing or following anything. We just accept it, taking God’s grace offered to us, admitting that without that, no matter how “good” we are, we fall far short of God’s requirements.  Romans 8 goes on to say that once we take God’s grace gift, the requirements of the law are now fulfilled through us, not by us. Beyond finding relationship with God, we also can now live as God intended, through His working in us. We can learn to be less judgmental and more compassionate.

The church today isn’t that much different from those religious leaders in Jesus’ day. The church has created a multitude of human rules and conditions that have nothing to do with salvation and everything to do with trying to look good, earn a place, be better. And we can’t even see that’s what we’re doing, any more than those religious leaders. We need to stop trying to earn our way to heaven. We need to stop making other people clean up their act before they can begin to earn their way. There is no “earning”, and heaven isn’t a payment for services rendered to God. We are told that “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” We need to admit that we are at our very core “rule breakers” who can do nothing to fix ourselves. We need to accept God’s gift, and come humbly to Him, thankful for His grace.

I am a terrible rule follower. I always have been. I do like making the rules for others, but that never goes as I’d like. Either way, rules are not what God’s about. He isn’t keeping track of the ones I keep and the ones I mess up. He probably rolls his eyes at our silly attempts to please Him (and others) that way. God just wants us. He went to great lengths to make a relationship possible. How remarkable is that?