What's More Important?

A group of friends went deer hunting and paired off in two's for the day. That night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under an eight point buck.

"Where's Harry?"

"Harry had a stroke of some kind. He's a couple of miles back up the trail."

"You left Harry laying there, and carried the deer back?"

"A tough call," nodded the hunter, "but I figured no one is going to steal Harry."

The Jokesmith, Christian Clippings, p. 27.

What’s more important - getting an eight-point buck or saving a friend suffering from a stroke?!

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Sometimes, people have trouble understanding what is more important, don’t they?

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John 7 tells us that the time had come for the Jews to celebrate the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. This holiday occured somewhere in September or October. The Feast of Passover was about six months later, in March or April.

Jesus’ brothers challenged him to go to the Feast to publicly proclaim himself as the Messiah. Jesus refused to do this, but a few days later he did go to the feast privately. While Jesus celebrated the feast, he began to teach the people.

As he taught, the Jewish religious leaders marveled how he could teach with such authority when he had not attended one of their seminaries.

Jesus responded, saying that his message and his mandate came from God, and his motive was also to glorify God.

Jesus challenged them, asking didn't they have the Law? In other words, Jesus inferred they should have understood God's message, God's will, God's desire for their lives.

Then Jesus leveled a charge against the people. “You are lawbreakers.” Jesus said, “You are trying to kill me!”

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Can you picture the shock on the people’s faces when Jesus accused them of trying to murder him?

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While the religious leaders seemed to have a seething, murderous hatred for Jesus that was barely concealed, most of the people apparently were unaware of this and that behind the scenes plans were already being made to kill Jesus.

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So, maybe the crowd’s reaction is warranted.

John 7:20 ESV

The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?”

The crowd’s response sounds blasphemous, doesn’t it? Probably that was not their intention. You see, in that day one of the major signs of demon possession was insanity… and what Jesus said seemed insane to them.

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In other words, rather than trying to say Jesus was aligned with the Devil, the crowd was simply saying, “You’re crazy! We’re not trying to kill you! How could you say something like that?”

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While Jesus’ charge against the people was shocking - that they were lawbreakers because of their murderous hatred against him, what Jesus said next must have truly distressed the people.

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The basic question Jesus posed in John 7:21-23 is this: when God’s rules conflict, which is more important?

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We understand what to do when God and man's rules conflict, don’t we? We remind ourselves of Daniel and three Hebrew boys.

Like Daniel would not defile himself with the king’s food, we refuse to defile ourselves with worldly things. Like Daniel’s friends refused to bow the king’s statue, we refuse to bow to the things of this world.

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But what do we do when God’s rules conflict?

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Keeping the Sabbath day holy was the fourth of the Ten Commandments, but it was much more than that. The Sabbath day principle was recognized by God from the very beginning of Creation. For six days God worked, speaking our world into existence. On the seventh day, he rested.

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God is omnipotent - all-powerful! God doesn’t get tired. God did not need to rest after six days of work!

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God rested on the seventh day to demonstrate to us the importance for us to rest one day of the week, to relax our minds and our muscles, but also to seek spiritual renewal in him.

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When God instituted his covenant with Israel in the wilderness, he demanded that the people keep the seventh day holy. When God provided manna - bread from Heaven - he purposefully provided enough on the sixth day of the week so that they would not have to gather the bread on the Sabbath day.

On every other day of the week, if they kept manna as leftovers to the next day, it would spoil. But the bread did not spoil when it was kept for the Sabbath day.

In God’s laws for the people, God commanded that they not only keep one out of every seven days holy, but they were also to keep one year out of every seven holy.

On the seventh year, they would not plant crops. Rather, God would provide for the people as volunteer wheat and other crops would grow.

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Years later, after Israel’s continued rebellion and wickedness, God ordained Babylon to conquer the land and take them into captivity. 2 Chronicles 36:20-21

2 Chronicles 36:20–21 ESV

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.

After the exiles returned to Judea, we read in Nehemiah 13 how the merchants were coming to Jerusalem to sell their wares on the Sabbath day. Nehemiah put a stop to this, even closing the gates and not opening them on the Sabbath day.

For one or two weeks, the merchants camped outside the city walls on the Sabbath day until Nehemiah told them that if they did so again, he would lay hands on them!

We know, of course, that by Jesus’ time the rabbis had taken the rule to keep the Sabbath day holy and hedged it with so many rules that it was unbearable. In fact, Jewish rabbis identified 39 categories of work that was prohibited on the Sabbath.

There was to be NO carrying, burning, extinguishing, finishing, writing, erasing, cooking, washing, sewing, tearing, knotting, untying, shaping, plowing, planting, reaping, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, selecting, sifting, grinding, kneading, combing, spinning, dyeing, chain-stitching, warping, weaving, unraveling, building, demolishing, trapping, shearing, slaughtering, skinning, tanning, smoothing or marking on the Sabbath!

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Keeping the Sabbath day was critically important for the people of God! This principle of taking one day of the week to rest and be restored spiritually through worship is still valid for us even today.

No, we do not need nor should we be bound by the legalism of the Jews regarding the Sabbath day. Yet, we should recognize that God created us with the need for periodic rest and so gave us a day to be renewed physically, mentally, and spiritually.

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As Jesus spoke with the people that day, he noted that they actually broke the Sabbath day by obeying another command of God. John 7:22

John 7:22 ESV

Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

Someone has explained:

For the Jews, circumcision was more than a rite of passage. For them, it was a sign of their covenant with God. Circumcision marked them as the chosen people – God’s special treasure.

Others in their time practiced circumcision, particularly in Egypt. But it seems that only for Israel did it have the significance of marking a covenant relationship with their national deity.

Source: https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/why-is-circumcision-so-important-in-the-bible.html

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While we see the Sabbath principle at work since the beginning of creation, keeping the Sabbath holy was not given as a law of God until the covenant was established with the Israelites in Egypt.

Circumcision, however, was established as a practice that God’s people must obey all the way back to Abraham. Every male born into Abraham’s family was to be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth.

While the Israelites lived in Egypt, the pagan culture and religious practices became deeply ingrained in the people. Apparently, circumcision was not practiced during that time.

After Israel crossed the Jordan River, but before they began to conquer the land of Canaan, all the males were circumcised.

Throughout the Old Testament, there is a division of the circumcised and the uncircumcised: God’s people and all others, Jew and Gentile.

In John 7, Jesus made the point that the Jews religiously observed circumcision on the eighth day, even if it meant doing this “work” on the Sabbath.

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Which law was more important?

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While the Jews revered the Sabbath day, they had the practice of doing the work of circumcision on the Sabbath, if that was the eighth day. With this in mind, Jesus then used a common type of argument among the rabbis of that time to argue from what is less important to what is more important.

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If care for one part of the body was permitted on the Sabbath, how much more should care for the whole person (the paralytic) be allowed?

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Here Jesus pointed back to the miracle he performed, recorded in John 5.

While the miracle of John 5 happened some time before the feast of John 7, apparently Jesus’ healing of the invalid by the Pool of Bethesda was one of those seminal moments in time, to which those opposed to him pointed as a sign that Jesus could not be from God.

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Boiling with anger because Jesus dared to do “work” on the Sabbath, they could not see the total hypocrisy of their doing work on the Sabbath also, when they circumcised newborn children.

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But even sadder was the fact that they could not understand what was more important - circumcision of a child to mark him as one of God’s people or the physical, even spiritual, healing of a man chained by infirmity, mired in desperation, and having little hope in the world.

Someone has written:

I tend to be a tosser – when something doesn’t work, I will toss it out, I will buy a replacement. So when the lawn mower stops working, I take it out to the garbage and go buy a new one.

But we have a neighbor who is wonderfully skilled in repairing things. So he will come out and grab the lawn mower, putter around for a few hours, and bring back a working lawn mower.

I may be a tosser, but God is a fixer - he takes what is broken and makes it whole again. (Floyd Johnson - Sermon Central).

While Jesus healed many of physical disease and illness, he came to bring complete wholeness to our lives. Indeed, John 5:14 tells us that after Jesus had healed the man, he later talked with him again and said:

John 5:14 (ESV)

… “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Someone has written:

Often people have the idea that the image of Christ is something alien to human beings, something strange that God wants to add on to our life, something imposed upon us from outside that doesn't really fit us.

In reality, however, the image of Christ is the fulfillment of the deepest hungers of the human heart for wholeness. The greatest thirst of our being is for fulfillment in Christ's image.

The most profound yearning of the human spirit, which we try to fill with all sorts of inadequate substitutes, is the yearning for our completeness in the image of Christ.

https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2010/may/4053110.html

Big Idea: The heart of God is the wholeness of people.

As Christians, we tend to talk a lot about the need to get saved. We acknowledge there is coming a day of judgment in which God will hold the whole world to account.

We have all sinned and have come short of God’s glory. But Christ’s sacrifice in our place has paid the penalty of our sins. We are redeemed. We are made holy in God’s sight. We have been given eternal life.

Sometimes, however, we miss an important reality of what it means to be the born-again people of God.

God has not merely saved us from death and judgment. God has made us new. He has given us new life, eternal life. He has recreated us to be his children.

Consider just a few scriptures that talk about this wonderful reality…

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

While the world likes to point out to our past, if we have been redeemed, we are forgiven and we are made new in Christ. We are new creations, new people, in Christ.

Galatians 6:15 ESV

For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

Circumcision was that defining characteristic that put people in one group or another - the holy versus the unholy. But in Christ, God revealed that all are accepted. His desire is for a circumcision of our heart, not so much a cutting of our flesh.

Ephesians 4:20–24 ESV

But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

We are made new creations in Christ, but there is still a putting off of the old and a putting on of the new that must continue.

Like the Israelites who became so ingrained in Egyptian culture during their 400 years of slavery and had to spend years in the wilderness learning to trust God, so it may also take us some time to shed the ways and thoughts of the past to truly trust Jesus.

But if we faithfully submit ourselves to God, we will be made new. As Romans 12:1-2 say…

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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What these verses teach us is that God’s heart, God’s desire, God’s passion for us is to make us WHOLE.

God is not merely saving us from a wicked world bound for a fiery hell. If that merely was God’s purpose, maybe he would take us to heaven immediately when we say a prayer of salvation.

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No! God’s desire is to make us a new creation. You see, God created our world - a perfect creation - no sin, no suffering, no death. Humanity was created with a free will but without any sin.

Unfortunately, our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, chose to rebel against God, to seek the knowledge of good and evil by their own wisdom instead of relying upon God’s revelation through himself.

As a result, sin entered the world. Adam and Eve knew they were naked and felt shame. God drove them out of the Garden of Eden because he knew that if they were to eat of the Tree of Life, it would be misery forever in sin.

All suffering and death present in the world are a result of their sin and that sinful nature being passed down from parents to child, parents to child.

Ephesians 1:3–5 ESV

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,

With his knowledge of all things - past, present, and future, God set about a plan of salvation. He worked through a chosen people to whom he gave his good Law.

In the fullness of time, he sent His only Son to be our Redeemer, who through his substitutionary death and resurrection provides our salvation and restoration.

In John 7 we see Jesus bringing this kingdom of salvation and restoration into the world, explaining this Good News to the people.

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Have you heard the story of Hans the tailor? Because of his reputation, an influential entrepreneur visiting the city ordered a tailor-made suit. But when he came to pick up his suit, the customer found that one sleeve twisted that way and the other this way; one shoulder bulged out and the caved in.

He pulled and managed to make his body fit. As he returned home on the bus, another passenger noticed his odd appearance and asked if Hans the tailor had the suit.

Receiving an affirmative reply, the man remarked, "Amazing! I knew that Hans was a good tailor, but I had no idea he could make a suit fit so perfectly someone as deformed as you."

This is what the Jewish religion was doing to people then and what legalism does to the Christian today. We get some idea of what serving God should look like: then we push and shove people in to the most grotesque configurations until they fit wonderfully! (adapted, Richard J. Foster.)

The Kingdom of God is not about rules, regulations, and keeping everything under the watchful thumb of the Church!

The Kingdom of God is about seeing Creation restored - first and most importantly as human beings are born again - made alive in Christ and restored to Christ's image - but also as this restored, redeemed humanity then speaks, lives, and brings life to their world.

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Circumcision and the Sabbath day… these might seem like issues almost irrelevant to us today, especially in the sense of coming into conflict so that we do not understand the heart of God.

But there are many issues we face in which this principle should guide us. Do we follow the strict application of rules that might disqualify people from experiencing God’s love and our fellowship OR do we follow the principle of grace and welcome them?

Are we more concerned about our preferences, our traditions, our ideas OR do we recognize that God can love people who don’t look like us, act like us, or even necessarily agree with us on everything, even things that seem important to us?

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What’s more important - this is the question that should regulate our interactions with others, especially those who might disagree with us or do things that we disagree with.

Do we live by the value that God’s heart is for people to become whole?