Cp. 9 Understanding Our Relationship to the Law - Part 1

Understanding our relationship to the law as believers can be one of the most complex issues facing us today. Many of our pastors and church leaders have inadvertently misinterpreted scripture thus creating added burdens upon Christians that God never intended. There are two areas that I want to focus on in this chapter and they are: Sabbath Keeping and Tithes Paying. There are more problems Christians face in the church setting than these two topics but I believe that if we understand these two then we will be able to “rightly divide the word of truth” when we encounter other similar situations.

When I speak of the “law” I am, of course, referring to the Mosaic law of the Old Testament. It’s important to understand what the bible has to say about the law. You can’t just pick out a couple of scriptures that speak about the law and expect to have a complete understanding of the issue. The bible teaches us to search the scriptures when we have questions regarding our faith and salvation. Knowing what the bible has to say on any given issue and properly understanding all that is taught is vital to our spiritual warfare.

For example, if we believe that God promises blessings based upon a certain action or obedience to an Old Testament law and we obey that action or law but receive no blessings then that opens the door for demons to tempt us to doubt God and His word. God does not lie; but if we expect Him to act a certain way because we erred in our understanding of scripture then we can be tempted to proclaim God a liar. Prosperity teachers are one group that are often guilty of this type of misinterpretation.

Sabbath Keeping

Seventh Day Adventists and Messianic Jews are two of the many denominations that erroneously teach that proper Sabbath Keeping is vital to ones’ salvation. They believe in observing the Sabbath the traditional Jewish way which begins at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday and restricts the amount and types of daily activities that they can do. They argue that the commandment to “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8) was one of the ten commandments and if we obey the other nine commandments then we should honor the Sabbath in the old way as well.

What was the original purpose of the Sabbath? It was to give man a day of rest from his labors as exampled by God when He rested on the seventh day of creation. When God told Moses to “keep it holy”, He was expanding it to include worship of God as well on that day of rest. Throughout the Old Testament years the Pharisees increasingly made keeping the Sabbath very restrictive, for example, by limiting the number of steps you could walk. Jesus, much to the consternation of the Pharisees, seemed to enjoy flaunting the Sabbath.

Matt 12:2-8: “When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath." 3 He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5 Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? 6 I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." (NIV)

Matt 12:10-12: “and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" 11 He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." (NIV)

John 5:10-11: and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat." 11 But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.” (NIV)

John 5:17-18: Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very
day, and I, too, am working." 18 For this reason the Jews tried all the harder
to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God
his own Father, making himself equal with God. (NIV)

We can see by this last verse that God and Jesus are always working. Apparently they do not take a Sabbath rest. It would be a sad thing indeed if God closed up shop on the seventh day and refused to hear and answer prayers because He was resting. According to Strong’s Concordance the word “holy” is defined as: “To be clean, to consecrate, dedicate, to keep, prepare, proclaim and to purify and sanctify oneself.”
Let’s take a look at what the bible has to say about these aspects of our holiness.

1. Clean - Jesus says, “John 15:3 - “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” (NIV)

2. Consecrate - Heb 10:20 - “By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;” (KJV) Through His death we are consecrated unto God.

3. Dedicate - As Christians we dedicate our lives to His service.

4. Keep - Phil 4:7 - “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (KJV)

5. Prepare - Heb 10:8-10: “First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). 9 Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (NIV)

Jesus prepared the way for us! We have been made holy by His sacrifice. Nothing we do will make us any holier than what Christ has done for us. When we stand before God, he isn’t going to look at our works or whether we kept the law or not regarding our salvation. The only thing He will look for is whether or not we have the blood of His Son covering us, for our righteousness (our efforts to be law keepers) are as filthy rags before Him.

6. Proclaim - By our living testimony we proclaim to the world our faith in Christ and every time we witness we are proclaiming the gospel.

7. Purify - Titus 2:14 - “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (KJV)

8. Sanctify - Heb 13:12 - “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.” (KJV)

Christ has accomplished all that was necessary to make us holy. Observing a day set aside for His honor can bring about nothing that hasn’t already been done for us.
The problem many people have is in not recognizing that in Heb 4:1-10: God redefined the Sabbath.

1 “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful
that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the
gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no
value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, "So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. 4 For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: "And on the seventh day God rested from all his work." 5 And again in the passage above he says, "They shall never enter my rest." 6 It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience. 7 Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.” (NIV)

As verse 10 points out we enter that Sabbath rest automatically when we believe in Him and make Him Lord of our life. Jesus, through His life and death did everything for us spiritually that the Sabbath was supposed to do. That is why He continually stated that “the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath.” It is in and through Him that we rest and keep the Sabbath. Those who make a big deal about setting aside a certain day for worship are proclaiming that what Christ did for us wasn’t good enough. They are saying that the Sabbath becomes holy through our observance of it and physically observing it the way the law originally intended. They have not yet realized that the New Covenant did away with all the past observances. Christ gave us two laws to obey: Matt 22:36-40:

36 “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (KJV)