OK all our Hebrew roots friends, we all know that the Jews are the people God chose through which to demonstrate His righteousness truth, power, wisdom and love and let’s not forget judgement, but as we can see from the Bible, this didn’t make them any less righteous or ‘good’ in themselves, or any wiser than the rest of us gentiles, those to be grafted in later as Jesus was to shine an even more intense light on our sins, truth and how to live.
So if you are one of those modern Christians that is always telling people how wise the Jewish Rabbis and old testament figures were and more worryingly the Rabbis are today, here are a few applications of the hundreds of made laws that were added to God’s perfect Ten Commandments for you to peruse and wonder after, invented to ensure that the ten were never transgressed, but that in the end probably made things far more convoluted and exasperating and put the jews in a lot of bondage. Again, let’s not confuse the many added laws with the perfect and simplistic, un-burdensome, beautiful and frankly easy-to-keep 10 commandments (when everyone is committed to doing the same) from God Himself and summarised by two by Jesus into two.
Is this wisdom?
Anyway – on the Sabbath you;
- are not allowed to pin your clothes together as that would be sowing
- must not drag a stick in the dust on the Sabbath and make a line in the dust – you are ploughing.
- no false teeth on the Sabbath – as this is considered carrying a burden.
- nowadays if you get into an elevator you must not press the button as this is work – Sabbath elevators are providers that run automatically so no buttons are pressed. Alternatively you can walk up 10 flight of stairs. This of course is not seen as work!?
All this working out of exactly what the law of Moses is and how it should be applied, is still worked out today in detail. I have a feeling the original laws of Moses made much more sense than these crazy applications of those laws – even the one often cited as a bit odd – that of disallowing mixing of different clothing materials makes a lot of sense as a symbolic gesture to not mix light with dark, but these?
Either way – if they were ‘keeping’ the law such obscure and disconnected ways its very, very easy to see how they were blind when the Messiah they were expecting arrived not on a horse to conquer their enemies, but instead on a donkey crying for jerusalem. And then, he did something else. Instead of taking the road on the right (where the Romans were) he turned left to the temple and the crowd fell silent as he whipped the Jews out of the temple. Shortly after having not fulfilled any of their hopes he was handed over to the jews and the gentiles for 2 trials to be killed.
I love God, Christ, The Bible. art, painting, playing music, improvising music, guitar (first instrument), drumming (not very good at it:), and anything musical or art related. Quick note – my articles are usually spun off in minutes so forgive any errors – hopefully you get the essence of the article and I’ll pick up mistakes later. If you want to write of 101ChristianMagazine and inspire and edify Christians with articles on faith, general news, hobbies or anything that interests you email me at: epgb101@gmail.com:)
