We all have ways to rationalize our breaking of the rules. And we all break the rules. When was the last time you were driving and all the traffic was going above the speed limit, and you joined in because you didn’t want to cause an accident by making everyone pass you? Or you took that extra cookie even though it doesn’t fit into your calorie count? Or said “yes” to that commitment even though you knew you weren’t going to fulfill your commitment?
We do it sometimes with Scripture as well. Lots of cultural rewriting of the text is taking place today. Here are a few examples of some of that rewriting. Hell doesn’t exist for some people. All those sexual sins are just backward, primitive chains of a backward culture. We now know better. We now know sex is just like a handshake with fluids. It doesn’t really mean anything. Marriage is also a backward institution invented by men to keep their women in bondage. We don’t need it either. Any ‘family’ can raise healthy kids.
This practice of adding to the Old Testament Law started very early in the Jewish tradition. When people had a problem not specifically dealt with in the Scriptures, they would go to the religious leaders in their town and ask for a judgment, ask them to decide what was right. Over time those specific interpretations were collected and studied.
And then those same religious teachers began making rules that became loopholes in the Law’s requirements. I am sure it began innocently enough. One of the often repeated instance of these extra regulations deals with a Sabbath’s day journey. This is the reason you see a concentration of Jewish people living right around every synagogue even today. They live close so that they can walk to service without violating the Law.
According to the Old Testament Law, you are only allowed to travel 2000 cubits, or less than half a mile from their home. So if they needed to travel further than that, they would either have to travel the day before, or the day after the Sabbath. But they figured out a way to get around this restriction.
On the Sabbath they would fill their pockets with things from their home and then drop them along their journey every half mile or so, leaving a trail of ‘home’ to be retrieved when they returned. Now they could travel almost any distance, if they had big enough pockets.
Our text tells of one of these sets of traditions that went so far from the Law that it violated the Law itself. The religious teachers of that day would allow people to set up a financial living trust in the Lord’s name. Everything in the trust was declared the LORD’s. But the people could continue to use it until their death. Then the rules of the trust would take effect and the value of the trust would be transferred to the offering plate.
This little arrangement allowed people to continue to use their money the way they wanted to, but prevented those pesky provisions of the Law from taking their money. They didn’t have to care for the widows, orphans or their parents. Since they didn’t have any money, since it was in this trust, they didn’t have means to help out. They violated the essence of the Law for their own convenience.
Don’t come up with new interpretations of God’s Word so that you won’t have to be obedient. We didn’t become that much smarter since the 60’s and 70’s than the millennia of people before us. Our Western culture is not superior to many others throughout history, at least not at this particular time. Beware of people who dismiss God’s Word as something old fashioned and out dated. They are about to sell you some swamp land in Florida.
The Arnold Journey 