“Moses therefore gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?” John 7:22-23.
Jesus poses a kind of a conundrum here to show their scrambled thinking. As noted in the verse, circumcision was not from Moses but from the fathers.
By this the Lord shows that the rite of circumcision was started before the Law of Moses was given; though it is given again in the law.
“And God said to Abraham: ‘As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations, he who is born in your house or bought with money from any stranger who is not your descendant. He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant’” Genesis 17:9-14.
“Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “If a woman has conceived, and borne a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her customary impurity she shall be unclean. And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. She shall then continue in the blood of her purification thirty-three days. She shall not touch any hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled.”’” Leviticus 12:1-4.
These Draconian rules for women are not mere whims; they do have a purpose. The primary reason for this ritual is to remind every man and woman that sin is transmitted down to each one born.
Moreover, rules concerning her menstrual cycle have reasons of health behind them. It is to keep her from having sex during this cycle, because it is much easier to catch diseases and infections. By these rules, men are kept from forcing themselves on their wives at a dangerous time.
The regulations regarding childbirth have much the same purpose, since it is easier for a woman to conceive right after childbirth; another unhealthy thing since her body has not recovered from her recent pregnancy. I do not know that much about medicine so this is not necessarily a complete rundown.
“…are you angry with Me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?” John 7:23b.
Again, the completely perverse thinking that there is something wrong with healing someone on the Sabbath attests to the deadness which the Pharisees had brought to God’s Law.
There is nothing in the law that says that a person cannot be healed on the Sabbath. For the most part Sabbath laws have to do with physical labor and causing others to work on that day.
Food was to be prepared on the day before, because a fire could not be kindled on the Sabbath. This forced the wife or housemaid to rest on the Sabbath too.
It was designed to be a day of rest for everyone because men are too greedy not to take advantage of a seventh day in the week to earn more in money or possessions; working themselves, or preferably their slaves or employees to exhaustion or death.
Men are not content with keeping something simple. Somebody always comes up with a, what if this happens question. Oh, well in that case, we should add some rules to cover that in case it comes up.
Once the door is opened, Satan slips in to add ridiculous and ponderous rules, greasing the slide from simplicity to unwieldy complexity which goes on until a thing becomes a Rube Goldberg type of machine with no soul but many fancy looking whistles, belts, wheels, and cogs; and pity the person who gets caught in it.
These oppressive rules and regulations come directly from the pit of hell. They are demonic in origin and designed to cause men to become frustrated with following God due to all of His stupid rules, rules which never entered God’s mind.
The Law of Moses is complex in that it deals with many different things, yet each individual thing is treated in a simple manner.
Murder was treated differently from accidental death. A thief was treated differently from one who kidnaps someone. We may not understand some of these things today, yet they had a purpose, God does not waste ink writing laws.
Know this, it is always ungodly men, who, under the guise of religion, come in and defile the things that God has set up.
If the leadership of Israel had been totally inflexible in their selection of godly men for teachers, leaders in the synagogues and among the elders of the people, their decline into apostasy would not have happened or it would have been slower and they would have enjoyed much more freedom in their lives.
Not to mention, of course, they would have recognized their Messiah, rather than crucify Him.
This is exactly what happened when godless men wheedled their way into the early church and took it from simple gatherings in buildings or house churches and perverted Jesus’ last commandment to His disciples.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. ‘Amen’” Matthew 28:19-20.
Search all of the gospels, or the New Testament, there is nothing that says anything about complex overweening church hierarchies or huge ornate buildings built with money taken from the common man to support a form of lavish welfare for this overweight monstrosity. Only the godless could conceive of such a plan.
Only the godless could conceive of such demonic things as roasting people near the fire, hanging them in dungeons, or slowly suffocating them in lime because they rejected the churches version of Christ.
Search the Scriptures diligently, nowhere are Christians told to torture people until they accept Christ as their savior, nowhere is the church set up to become an unwieldy machine.
We are commanded to give out the gospel; it is up to the hearers to make up their own mind. It is just like the ungodly to corrupt and suck the life out of the church and then accuse Christians of the horrors that were committed by their predecessors in Christ’s name.
These things did not stop at the end of the Middle Ages, the tactics just changed from century to century until today when the gospel of Jesus Christ has all but been gutted by most of the modern church.
“Now let me sing to my Well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding His vineyard: My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; for righteousness, but behold, weeping.” Isaiah 5:1-7.
These things happened to Israel and they are beginning to happen to America and all of Christendom.
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe to men mighty at drinking wine, woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink, who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away justice from the righteous man!” Isaiah 5:20-23.
We live in a generation like this, and while it could honestly be said that there is little that we can do; we are not to give up. Speaking of the gathering of the manna by the children of Israel it says this.
“As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.’” 2 Corinthians 8:15.
As the saying goes, little is much when God is in it.
You and I have little to offer, but God is able to take that and multiply it into a great deal.
Do not be discouraged and give up, rather do the things we have the power to do in this country, vote responsibly, and avoid products and companies which support the destruction of our country, and our morals, while we are still free.
Work for things that are true, righteous and just, and by the power of God nothing will be too much.
When the righteous give way, the unrighteous take over; it happened in Israel, and to the church of the Middle Ages, and even now evil is pounding on the door of the church and our civilization.
“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without, Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21.
“Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” John 7:24.
We are not to judge by appearances. After all what were the Jews looking at; a humble carpenter, not a knight in shining armor. Jesus did not fit their mental grid and so the Christ could have been rejected by His appearance alone.
Where is the king who was to throw off Roman rule and restore Israel to leadership in the world? Certainly not this person!
Nor were they to judge by an appearance of evil, which the religious leaders accused Him of. Each person is responsible for their judgment of the Christ, whether He is who He is, or not.
Remember that; no one will point to another and say, “I rejected Christ because they said to.” Well maybe so, but they cannot make that choice for us, we will be held responsible for our own choices.
This is a life and eternal death question; it should be handled like a life and eternal death question, not an excuse to see who wins a religious debate.
Finally, righteous judgment is based on the facts gathered, not on personal prejudices. If a person hands you a parachute in a falling airplane, you do not reject the chute because you dislike the person handing it to you.
In the same manner righteous judgment is made, on the facts, not on the circumstances under which you receive them.
Judge with Righteous Judgment, John 7:22-24 taken from godisrevealed.com posted on 11-1-12, updated on 9-27-17.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission, all rights reserved.