The Bridegroom and the Lord of the Sabbath - Mark 2:18-28

One of the things that has really struck me during this lockdown is how compliant many people have been to some of the really irrational and quite frankly petty laws and regulations that have been introduced. For example, wearing masks while you are driving alone in your own car, or in the great outdoors, not close to anyone else. How exactly can that stop spread the virus? If you are enlightened in this regard, I’d love to know! I could carry on, but the point here is that there is something in our sinful nature that defaults to an obedience for obedience’s sake.

We think that our obedience makes us better people. It makes us seem more righteous than those other people out there who are not obeying the law and being as upstanding us we are. Perhaps we even think that our obedience is the way to earn our way to God. That we will be made right with God by our actions. Or we think that the heart of Christianity is following a moral code. Don’t get me wrong – obedience to God’s laws is a good and necessary thing. God’s law is good, but it’s not our obedience to it that saves us. Thinking that obedience to law saves us really the root of legalism. Doing things in order to justify yourself before God.

This can manifest in a variety of ways: adding to God’s law in order to seem more spiritual and pious. Common way we see this is when people say things like drinking alcohol, or dancing or playing cards or listening to secular music or having tattoos is sinful. Forbidding things that God himself has not even forbidden. Or being more obsessed with the letter of the law than the spirit of the law – obeying the externals, having an outward form of righteousness, yet your heart has no desire to please and worship God.

In Jesus’ day, the legalists were the Pharisees. Throughout all the Gospels they are Jesus’ nemesis. As we saw last week, the Pharisees were a sect of Jews who placed a strong emphasis on obedience to the law, especially their own oral law traditions. They believed that their obedience to these laws earned them righteousness, right standing with God.

In this morning’s passage, we are going to see two examples of how Jesus challenges the legalism of the Pharisees, and shows how radically different the gospel is from legalism. We’ll see that Jesus himself is the antidote to legalism, because he is God’s promised Messiah, who has already obeyed the law.

Preacher: Rev. Antonio Coppola.