Man’s rules, many times, take God’s commandments and narrow them.

  Think about the Sabbath day in which Jesus and His disciples were walking through a field of ripened grain.  The disciples picked some of that grain, rubbing it with their hands to remove the outer husk.  Then they ate the grain.  Some Pharisees were watching them…apparently closely.  They asked the disciples “Why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”  (Luke 6:1-2)

It is interesting that Jesus is the one to answer, not the disciples.
(NASB) Luke 6:3-4 “And Jesus answering them said, ‘Have you not even read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him,
4 how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the consecrated bread which is not lawful for any to eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions?”

Jesus gave an illustration of the greatest king in Israel, David.  Before David sat on the throne, he was running from King Saul…and he and his men were hungry…very hungry.  (1 Samuel 21:1-6)

Jesus silenced the criticism of the Pharisees.  He silenced these pious men who thought of themselves as being morally righteous by keeping the rules that men had made.

God’s commandments are boundaries which we are to stay within, they are for our good, our best.

When men make additional rules to God’s commandments, don’t they make them more restrictive?

Where is the balance you and I need in our lives?  Do we live by our own rules?  Or do we live by what is politically correct?  By what commandments of God do we need to be living?

In wanting to please God, we do what He says is good.  But people, being people, begin to think about what they think will please God and not what does please God.

Tomorrow’s devotional will explore what God states about keeping the Sabbath.