In yesterday’s post, I argued that churches were correct in applying the specific command to meet together (Hebrews 10) over the generic command to submit to government regulations (Romans 13). Yet some have considered that to be a contradiction to our initial submission to government restrictions to close. So why did churches close in April of 2020 at the start of COVID, only to open again even when the government wanted them to stay closed?
Let me put it this way: in order to implement the South African government’s COVID regulations, my fellow elders and I have made many decisions that we knew were bad for the spiritual life of our church. Spiritually speaking, it is bad for a church not to sing, not to share communion, and to destroy its sense of community by meeting in an absurdly fragmented fashion numerically speaking. Because we care about our people’s physical health, we are not sorry that we made those decisions. However, I can also assure you that we were not sorry to reverse those decisions when it seemed right to do so.
We should not imagine that God’s purpose for creating the church was to obey government regulations. Rather, the purpose of the church is to preach the gospel while demonstrating a love for the lost that transcends nation and government. Naturally, embracing a ministry mindset has, at times, created a tug-of-war between government regulations and gospel ministry.
How should a church handle that tug-of-war? My answer is this: by following the model laid down by our Lord when He reproved the Pharisees regarding their misapplication of the greatest regulation of all time: the Sabbath law of the Ten Commandments.
THE SABBATH: WHEN GOD EXPECTED JEWS TO BREAK IT
The Pharisees frequently accused Jesus and His disciples of breaking the Sabbath, for example, when the disciples “harvested” ripe heads of wheat while passing through a grain field, and when Jesus healed the man with a withered hand (Matt 12:1-14; Mark 2:23-3:6). Jesus’ rebuke to the Pharisees reveals four tests by which God not only allowed, but expected His people to thoughtfully ignore the Sabbath regulation: common sense, other commands, crisis, and compassion. Let’s take them in reverse order.
COMPASSION
“And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?’ But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”
Mark 4:3-5
The Pharisees had become so fixated on the Sabbath regulation that they could not see that legitimate compassion was a God-approved reason to “break” the Sabbath. In fact, Jesus was angry at them for being so “regulations conscious” that they tried to hinder an obvious and beneficial act of love.
CRISIS
Jesus actually commended the Pharisees for understanding that crisis was a legitimate reason to violate the Sabbath regulation: if a sheep fell into their well on Saturday, they “worked” to lift it out (Matt 12:9-11). However, Jesus also rebuked them for failing to apply the same logic to people: “How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (12:12). Did the Sabbath law really mean that if a Jewish woman went into labor on Friday night after sunset, that the community midwife was forbidden to assist that woman in giving birth because God said the midwife couldn’t do her normal work on the Sabbath?
Jesus also gave a one-line proverbial summary to guide God’s people regarding regulations of this nature: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Restated, Jesus’ wisdom principle was, non-moral regulations exist to serve people; people do not exist to serve regulations. That doesn’t mean that rules aren’t important or that they can be dismissed cavalierly whenever we find them to be inconvenient. But it does suggest that God expects His people to be intelligent, informed, Spirit-indwelt adults, thinking through when a non-moral regulation is harming them rather than helping them, and on rare occasions, setting that regulation aside.
OTHER COMMANDS
“Have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?” (Matt 12:5). The Pharisees were making the mistake of imagining that the only biblical command related to the Sabbath was the command to do no work on Saturday. However, it was short sighted of them not to factor in other biblical commands. To illustrate this, Jesus cited the fact that the OT commanded priests to work on the Sabbath. Conclusion? Not all human exertion on the Sabbath was inherently wrong. If you read the second post in this series, Jesus’ argument is very familiar. A specific command regarding the priests’ God-appointed responsibilities had to be given priority over the general command to do no work on Saturday (again, see yesterday’s post for more examples of that).
COMMON SENSE
Jews were to stockpile food on Friday, so that they would not have to work on Saturday (Ex 16:22). Did that mean that people who legitimately had no opportunity to stockpile food (such as the disciples in Matthew 12:1) needed to starve on Saturday out of respect for the Sabbath regulation? To correct that skew thinking, Jesus cited the example of David breaking a similar non-moral regulation of the Mosaic Law: “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions,how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone?” (Matt 12:3-4; cf. Lev 24:9).
Jesus implied that it was acceptable for David to ignore the regulation limiting the consumption of the show bread to the priests. Why? Because it was simply common sense that God had not prescribed that regulation to extend human suffering. In the same way, it was not “harvesting” for the disciples to grab some wheat kernels on the Sabbath to sustain themselves since they had not been able to stockpile food the day before.
QUALIFICATIONS
It is exceedingly important to note that what Jesus did with the Sabbath regulation is something He did only with the non-moral regulations of the Mosaic Law. Jesus would never have applied that rationale to the commands, “Do not murder; Do not steal; Do not commit adultery.” For example, Jesus would never have said that a woman was free to commit adultery if she were lonely and had a lousy husband. The world might call that compassion, but Christians should never use such “logic” to rationalize away the moral commands of Scripture.
However, isn’t it dangerous to give people the freedom to reason through situations and regulations in this fashion? Couldn’t this lead to abuse? The answer is “yes” to both questions. Certainly the Pharisees would have said that about the Sabbath. However, it is safe to assume that Jesus was fully aware of those dangers and laid down this pattern anyway. Clearly Jesus expected His listeners to be wise enough to avoid the ridiculous and extreme conclusion that no rules matter. Nonetheless, He did teach that God expects His people to act like intelligent, informed adults and to apply sanctified reason, their consciences, and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to a situation, rather than to robotically exhibit a “regulations above all else” attitude.
Part 2: Romans 13 vs. Hebrews 10
This post: When Jesus set aside regulations
Part 4: Modern Applications of Matthew 12