A Prelude to Blessing, Part 1

Luke was a physician. He was trained to observe. As he wrote down his thoughts in the Gospel of Luke and later in the Book of Acts he was doing so for an audience relatively unacquainted with the Jewish customs du jour. He chronicled a number of situations where the copious rules that had barnacled themselves on to the original ten commandments would have made little sense to a Gentile. By the time of Jesus they made little sense to the average Jew. But more to the point – the abundant and officious footnoting and naysaying by the religious elites had become offensive to Jesus. The spirit of the law had been lost. It was now covered over by dry and dusty bureaucratic tomes of religious perfidy. None could keep up. It was akin to our present day need to keep an accountant on retainer. Accountants are trained to stay abreast of ever changing and often ambiguous tax laws. They keep us out of trouble. The typical Jew had no such recourse. The religious authorities acted as the writers of the law, the accountants, the judges and the litigators. They held all the cards. On any given day, the common layman was likely to break some vague rule, some latest permutation or interpretation of the law absent any knowledge of having even done so. The very leaders who should have been helping their congregants stay a true course toward loving God and their fellow human beings were acting like odious communist apparatchiks. They had eyes everywhere.

There was no command more subject to abuse than the 4th one: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. That last word – holy – was ripe for inflation in the hands of religious busybodies. Over time, “holy” became defined by hundreds of things one could or could not do on the Sabbath and with a strong predilection toward the “could nots.”
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One day Jesus and his disciples were walking across a field on the Sabbath and their bellies began to growl. They each grabbed a bit of grain and downed it. Standing by were the Pharisees who said this: “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” ~Luke 6:2 This paltry act was considered harvesting; therefore work and therefore “unholy.” Jesus offered them a Bible lesson: “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions…The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” ~Luke 6:3-5

Evidently they had NOT read that bit about old King David the temple trespassing grain thief. The Pharisees thought they had exclusive rights to the Sabbath. Jesus was denying their claims. He would say in another place, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” ~Mark 2:27 In other words, the Sabbath was meant to be a blessing not an affliction. Blessing people was the centerpiece of the Father’s heart. And as we shall soon see, blessing others is the centerpiece of the Father’s purpose for our lives as well.