“TV shows and urban legends can give us the wrong ideas about what’s legal and what isn’t,” says The Wealthy Boomer. “Sometimes they can make you think that completely normal things are illegal.”1 The article goes on to list 25 things people think are illegal. Many will try to be sneaky, hoping they won’t get caught doing it when, in fact, a police officer standing beside you at the time you commit the alleged felony isn’t going to slap the cuffs on you.
For instance, I can remember being told as a kid that it is illegal to have the interior lights of the car on while you’re driving. If someone dropped something or needed to read a map, you had to pull over. However, this is untrue. While it’s probably distracting to have the dome light shining, it’s not illegal.
Here’s another “law” that has caused some panic. Your mattress came with a tag that read, “Under penalty of law, this tag not to be removed.” In a moment of frustration with the intrusive tag while changing the sheets, you ripped or cut it off – and then had a panic attack. What if the mattress police find this tag in my garbage? What if I get a new mattress some day and it’s found that this tag was removed. I’m stuck with this mattress the rest of my life! There’s quite a history behind those tags but the consumer has every right to remove them.
While we may get duped into believing something is illegal when it’s not, how tragic is this
when it comes to the Bible? Consider what happened from the Old Testament to the New Testament.
It has long been purported that there were 613 commandments given by God in the Old Testament. In the 12th century AD, Jewish philosopher Moses Ben Maimonides presented this list which “further divided the 613 commandments into positive, “do this” commandments, numbering 248, and negative, “do not do this” commandments, numbering 365.”2 The Scriptural references to those commands can be found at https://www.gotquestions.org/613-commandments.html. The list begins in Genesis 1:28 and ends in Deuteronomy 32:38
In Exodus 20, God boiled the Law down to 10 Commandments. And, in the New Testament, Jesus summed the entirety of the Law into 2 simple commands. Matthew 22:34-40 says, “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. (35) Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, (36) Master, which is the great commandment in the law? (37) Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (38) This is the first and great commandment. (39) And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (40) On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
What a shock this must have been to the Pharisaical lawyer’s system! The Pharisees had taken God’s Law and embellished it by adding “over 1,500 additional “fence laws” for the people to obey. They believed the best way to keep people from breaking God’s Law was to build a protective barrier around that Law, even though the Lord never told them to do this. The people of Jesus’ day were burdened down by man-made legalistic rules that God never commanded.
“Exodus 20:10 says not to work on the Sabbath day, so the Pharisees created 39 types of prohibited work so no one would break the Law. Here are some of their fence laws:
“***You could not spit on the Sabbath because it would disturb the dirt and you would be guilty of plowing.
***You could not swat a fly on the Sabbath because you would be guilty of hunting.
***A woman could not look at her reflection because she might see a gray hair and pluck it out, which would be doing work.” 3
There’s going to be more on this tomorrow but let me close with a reminder that God lifts the burden rather than imposing greater burden. He said in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (29) Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (30) For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
1https://thewealthyboomers.com/25-things-you-always-thought-were-illegal-but-arent/
2https://www.gotquestions.org/613-commandments.html
3https://kentcrockett.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-legalism-of-pharisees.html
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