“Why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” Mark 2:24
In the fourth commandment, God calls us to set aside one day in seven to rest from our work and to enjoy all that He has done. That is a gift and a blessing from God.
But the Pharisees had turned the blessing into a burden, with an endless list of rules about what you could and could not do. In their eyes, pulling a few ears of corn while walking along a field was harvesting, and that is work. Religious systems turn God’s blessing into a burden.
I meet many people who have had a bad experience of religion that really alienated them from God. It was about rules and traditions that seem to have no point. It felt like a means of control, exercised by people who have very little joy in their own lives.
Sometimes, religion stops people from knowing God rather than helping them. God doesn’t take that lightly. If you have suffered under a religion of rules that lacks joy and imposes great burdens, do you see that this is the very thing that Jesus is against?
Jesus came to free us from these kinds of burdens, not to impose them on us. He came to break the power of dead religion. This is precisely what Jesus was doing when He said to the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (2:27). He leads His disciples into joy. He lifts the heavy burdens of silly rules and stuffy traditions.
A Christ-centered church will be marked by joy. It will not be a place where the burdens of human rules and traditions are imposed, but rather where they are lifted. When you see this, you may have a new interest in following Jesus.
What has been your experience of religion?
