The Gift of the Law
And the Unshakeable Kingdom of Mercy
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.
Luke 13:10-17
Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
Hebrews 12:28-29
We all have examples of rules from our childhood that it took us way too long to understand as love, though I confess I may have blocked mine out from memory at the moment. But I do remember something from going to Acadia National Park on our honeymoon. I don’t know why I noticed it, as a thousand interactions are like this, but we were at a place called Thunder Hole, named for its sound and sometimes danger. For whatever reason, I happened to notice a parent repeatedly holding their child back from getting too close to the railing and falling off a cliff into the ocean. Of course, this deeply upset the child, who must have “known” that their parent wasn’t seeking their good, they just wanted to control them.
So it is with us and God.
Do you ever wonder why Jesus uses the Sabbath as one of his primary teaching examples about the Law? Out of all the different ways he could shows exceptions to the Law, why does he return to that one? What is he trying to teach us about God’s Law?
To answer that, first I want us to go to what might be an unusual story from 1 Samuel 13 (I promise this connects to the Pharisees if you walk with me).
When Saul was first establishing the kingdom of Israel, he was a man of great power and strength, a head taller than anyone. But because he ruled by power, it also meant he was a man who ruled with and ruled by fear, eventually choosing to not challenge Goliath because of his fear. The books of Samuel show that Saul time and again would violate God’s Law out of fear. Because understood God and his Law in terms of power and fear, when the fear was great enough, he would break God’s law in order to serve the fear that served his power.
This was not a later failing of Saul’s but happens right near the start of his kingship. He and his men were outnumbered in battle, hiding from the Philistines. The prophet Samuel was running late, and Saul’s men were beginning to desert him. Because Saul was afraid, he decided to breach the Law, doing what wasn’t his duty to do and make sacrifices to God reserved for the priests. The idea that that only a priest can offer sacrifices to God might seem like a mundane or arcane rule to us, as it might have to Saul in the heat of battle. Maybe he told himself, “I mean, doesn’t the king rule over the priest anyway?” Or “Is it really that big a deal?” And then in that moment of fear of his lack of power, Saul took what wasn’t his to take.
Saul did not break the Law out of mercy for someone else, but because he was seeking to win divine favor for himself. He did not really believe God’s law was a gift from God, but a burden that he could no longer bear. As he tries to explain himself to Samuel, Samuel cuts him off and says, “You have played the fool! Had you but kept the command of the Lord your God, the Lord would have made your kingdom over Israel unshaken forever. But now, your kingdom shall not stand.”(1 Sam 13:13-14) And he was right.
So, as Samuel says, “The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart,” who is David. We know David would gravely break God’s law, but because he was after God’s heart, his repentance would spiritually restore him to God (though not without consequences for himself and others.
Just like the Pharisees, Saul is after God’s favor, but not God’s heart. They both see the Law as something transactional that could be manipulated for godly power. And Jesus sees how their power games keep a woman from receiving God’s liberation.
Like all human kingdoms, which are always built on the human desire for power, Israel would be and still be, in Scripture’s words, an utterly shakeable kingdom. But the true Law of God, that is, the ways of God and his love that are beyond us but given to us, is utterly unshakeable. As Hebrews says, God will remove everything that is shaken — everything under the sun — “So that what cannot be shaken may remain…a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” (Heb 12:27-28)
We live in very shakeable kingdoms here on earth. But Jesus shows us that the unshakeable kingdom of God is the unshakeable kingdom of mercy.
There are at least two big ideas in these stories of Saul and the Pharisees. One, we often treat following God as a way to seek divine favor instead of seeking his heart. Both Saul and the Pharisees each thought the Law was just a means to obtain divine favor. Saul thought you could break the Law if you were seeking righteousness, while the Pharisees thought you could never break the law if you wanted righteousness.
Jesus does not need divine favor. Nor is he a man after God’s heart; he is God’s heart. And when he breaks the Sabbath, it is not about self-righteousness, but demonstrating the heart of God. The Law of God as reflected in the Sabbath is not about earning God’s favor and power, but reflecting and seeking and showing the heart of God. Not because you want to be great, or for self-protection, or for self-promotion, but because you are truly in love with God.
The second thing we learn from Jesus is that the Pharisees, Saul, and probably most of us naturally see the Law of God as a burden instead of a gift. This enduring posture is what pastor Tim Keller would call the ongoing lie of the serpent that tells us that God didn't give us rules on our behavior for our own good. The lie says that God’s will isn’t for our ultimate deeper freedom, but to punish us as part of a power game: “He just doesn’t want you to be like him.” (Gen 3:5)
But the Sabbath—whether we hold it strictly or not as Christians—is a wonderful teaching example for Jesus to debunk the lie of the serpent, because the Sabbath is very clearly about reflecting the nature of God; God rested, so he wants us to rest too. Unlike what the serpent says, God actually wants us to be like him, not out of our own fear and power, but in the ways that are a reflection of his heart and in communion with his true Spirit. So when people are twisting the Sabbath into primarily about a burden of things you can’t do, Jesus shows us no, the whole Law is not a burden of things you can’t do, but just like everything from God, a gift of mercy.
The Sabbath is ultimately about liberation, as the words of Jesus so starkly tell us; take this woman, enslaved by a spirit of the devil for eighteen long years, unable to live her life. What does Jesus say to her? “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” You are set free.
The gospel is always trying to tell us about true liberation and true freedom. It might involve avoiding mistakes and restricting some of our behavior, but it is not primarily about avoiding mistakes or avoiding sin, a burden of negation, but an active gift of positive love, helping other people become free through mercy.
That doesn't mean we do what we want. Jesus is not condemning the regulations of the Sabbath or saying that the rules don’t matter. You can easily imagine there would be a wrong way to try to set people free by putting people in a different set of chains, whether physical, mental, or spiritual. Anyone who has gone from preacher’s kid to addict can tell you that there are false freedoms out there disguised as liberation. Jesus does not mean to say that we can do whatever we want whenever we want just because we call it freedom.
But he does want our hearts to be, in the language of Scripture, “circumcised,” that is, transformed. He wants us seek God’s heart not simply by obeying his Word but by reflecting his mercy. And he wants us that to shift our language with how we think of each other. Our natural instinct is to say, “Look at so-and-so not doing it right,” instead of saying, “Look at so-and-so who could be embracing God’s mercy but can’t see it.” The saying goes that every preacher is first preaching to themselves, and I know that is something I don’t always do naturally.
When we become little Pharisees, we say, “Look, God, at all these great burdens I’m carrying, and look at all the burdens that person (or those people) aren’t carrying and causing the rest of us problems,” with the hallmark Pharisee prayer, “Thank God I’m not like them.” (Luke 18:11) But when we remember that the Law is really all a gift from God, and not a burden, it doesn’t make any sense to be mad at somebody for not accepting a gift. You might be sad, and you might really want them to see this incredible gift. But would you be angry at a kid for not opening a gift on Christmas addressed just to them? Of course not. So why should we be mad at anyone for not opening a gift from God as a child of God?
Of course when someone is doing wrong, it can be very tragic, and painful, and still requiring our intervention when they are hurt other people. Anger is not the wrong response to harm and injustice. But staying there burns us down. When we let ourselves eventually move from anger into seeing the tragedy of evil, there is much less space for the devil to bind us to his wishes in the name of self-righteousness, and much more space in our broken hearts to be with God’s broken heart.
Let’s go back to the Sabbath once more. As Isaiah 58 tells us, the gift of the Sabbath is not about pursuing our own interests or serving our own interests. That's trampling the Sabbath, trampling on grace. Rather, the gift of the Sabbath is delighting in God. The gift of all of this begins with delighting in God.
The unshakeable kingdom of God is his unshakeable mercy. How can we not delight in that? It is beyond every human kingdom that was, is, and will be, from the largest empires to our sandcastles on the beach. All our kingdoms are contingent, temporary, fleeting, dusty, and to be blown away by the unshakeable kingdom of God’s mercy. There is no law that can thwart that Law.
It is just as Paul told his Galatian friends. He was teaching them about God’s rules by teaching them about God’s Holy Spirit:
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” (Gal 5:22-25)
May it be so. Amen.
This was great! I’ve debated before with people who think that we should look at God with fear. I think God doesn’t need fear; he loves us.