Which law were the Jews not keeping in John 7?

Zathrus

I read something that caught my interest a couple of days ago.
From John 7:

lone-traveler · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 9:04 am Post subject:

Mat 23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier [matters] of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

They were paying their tithes, they were keeping the sacrifices, they were teaching the "works" of the law. But what they left out was the Spirit of the Law. The good judgment, the mercy, and faith in God that He would save them and not themselves.

They took the role of authority and lorded over the people with ceremony and pomp and unmercifulness.
Looking at the scene with the woman caught in adultery, they are supposed to listen to both sides, have two or more witnesses and the man who is caught is to be stoned also.
They didn't even bother going to court. They were just going to sentence her to death without even hearing the case.

They left of humanity to just be able to kill. (murder), however you put it.

Lev 19:15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: [but] in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.

Deu 1:16 And I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear [the causes] between your brethren, and judge righteously between [every] man and his brother, and the stranger [that is] with him.

Deu 16:18 Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with just judgment.

They didn't Hear the causes, they just condemned.

Question is...where is the man?
Jhn 8:3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
Jhn 8:4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Jhn 8:5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

Lev 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with [another] man's wife, [even he] that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Jhn 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
Jhn 8:9 And they which heard [it], being convicted by [their own] conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, [even] unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

It would be interesting to learn what Jesus had written on the ground...

If their own conscience bothered them, and they hoped for mercy and forgiveness of their sins, shouldn't they have been willing to at least
1.Listen to the case
and
2. Abide by the whole law and not just the part they wanted to hear.

Eye for Eye, tooth for tooth....you want mercy...show mercy, you want forgiveness..give forgiveness....

This they ommitted and left off the weightier matters of the law.

Judgment, Mercy, and Faith.

Yehushuan · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:29 am Post subject:

I would think the answer to John 7:19 could be found in the following text, especially in verses 23 and 24.

(John 7:23) If a man on the Sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day? (24) Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

I would say it was the Law of Love that Jesus accused them of not keeping, in that God gave the Law (all of them) to try and help men implement righteousness (Love). While keeping to the entire letter of the entire Law, they did not seem to fathom the underlying desire of God that we should seek the benefit of our neighbor even to the detriment of our self (true righteousness). This was lost in their obsession to achieve personal obedience - an appearance of righteousness.

But Righteousness is not achieved within one’s self. It is established only in relationship to someone else.

The Law can only look at the behaviour of the individual. What did *I* do; what should *I* do; what does God say should happen about what *I* did? (And the “warcry” of the Law? “*I* didn’t do anything wrong!”) The Law is totally wrapped up in the ego - within oneself - to check one’s behaviour in accordance with some measure, to measure oneself against this measure, to improve the individual’s ability to keep these measures, or to meet out punishment to the individual, based upon what that “ego” did or did not do.

Yet the Law of Love isn’t really a “law” at all in this sense, because it has nothing to do with oneself. The focus of Love isn’t at all on what you did or did not do (your obedience), but upon how well the other person was helped.

The Law is solely concerned with you – the individual.

Faith (the Royal Law; the Law of Love) is solely concerned with the other person.

An eye for an eye was meant to discourage evil from fear of retribution to oneself. All this law did was foster revenge. The Law was meant to guide the individual. All it did was create judgment (judgmentalism).

Do unto others was meant to teach that we should be proactive in helping someone else (not ourselves).

The Law of Moses (and even the Law of God – cf. Exodus 20:5) said do this and YOU will receive a blessing. Do that and YOU will receive a curse. It is all dependent upon the self – upon YOU.

But the righteousness of God apart from the law does not focus upon the self, but upon the other (person). How can I be of help to you? What do you need? Have we actually been of benefit to you?

Obedience is an obsession with the self; measuring the self continuously to some list of objective commands. Righteousness in the Holy Ghost is an outpouring of rivers of life in concern for the well being of someone else - everyone else. That is why Jesus broke the Sabbath to heal another.

Jesus broke the Law, but did so to Love.

Yehu

PS: As my choice was not on the list, I have not submitted a vote.
_________________
There must be a God; Natural Selection would have gotten rid of you a long time ago.

soleprobe1 · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:36 pm Post subject:

cballard · Grizzly Bear Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 731 Location: WV

Probably with totally different reasoning, I can say that I agree with Yehushuan in that Jesus broke the law. The LAW without LOVE is meaningless. Love means the betterment of others not something self-serving. The Jews accused Him of breaking the sabath by working. He showed doing good works is always acceptable. Yehu, What other laws did He break?

soleprobe1 · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 4:50 pm Post subject:

lone-traveler · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 5:32 pm Post subject:

Hi Yehu,

you wrote:

soleprobe1 · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:02 pm Post subject:

Yehushuan · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 7:46 pm Post subject:

Yehushuan · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:29 pm Post subject:

Grace · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:16 pm Post subject:

Jesus never broke any of Gods laws, He only broke the oral tradition. There was no way He could have been the Messiah and broken a law.
The Talmud and other writings is the oral law, but the first five books are Gods first law.

Grace
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British diplomat, orator and writer Edmond Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

hear hear.

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mtimber · Lion King Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 1216

Jesus broke Jewish tradition.

Do you realise you are saying Jesus was a sinner Yehushuan?

lone-traveler · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 3:57 am Post subject:

Hello Yehu,

Good post..

What does the law say about "doing" on the sabbath day?

Isa 56:2 Blessed [is] the man [that] doeth this, and the son of man [that] layeth hold on it; that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.

Isa 58:13 ¶ If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, [from] doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking [thine own] words:
Isa 58:14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken [it].

Did Jesus come to do His own will or the Father's will?
Did Jesus speak His own words, or the words God told him to speak?
Did Jesus do things his own way, or the way he had seen his Father do them?
Did Jesus seek His own pleasure, or did He come to give health and hope to others?

Jesus was "doing" his father's will on the sabbath days. How then could he have broken them?

Were those with Him in the field hungry, God fed them by the gleanings left in the field.
They were rewarded, because someone had left corn in the field to begin with.

(Mark 2:23) And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. (24) And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?

They didn't HEAR the law....They wanted to do their own thing...

Zathrus · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 4:30 am Post subject:

mtimber · Lion King Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 1216