# 343 Know the Law!

The Book of Genesis

Day 343

Ge 37:20 "Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, 'Some wild beast has devoured him.' We shall see what will become of his dreams!" 21 But Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands, and said, "Let us not kill him." 22 And Reuben said to them, "Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him" -that he might deliver him out of their hands, and bring him back to his father.

The similarity between the plotting of Joseph’s brothers to do away with Joseph and the plotting of the Pharisees to do away with Jesus continues!

Here we read of Reuben trying to invoke some reason into the situation as he talks his brothers out of actually killing him. It reminds me of Nicodemus defending Jesus before the Pharisees when they plotted to arrest Jesus: We read about it in Joh 7:44-51, “Now some of them wanted to take Him, but no one laid hands on Him.  45 Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, "Why have you not brought Him?"  46 The officers answered, "No man ever spoke like this Man!"  47 Then the Pharisees answered them, "Are you also deceived?  48 "Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him?  49 "But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed."  50 Nicodemus (he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them) said to them,  51 "Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?"

There he is. Nicodemus. Standing in the gap much like Reuben stood in the gap for Joseph. But even before Nicodemus responds, let’s back up and look at the attitude of the Pharisees toward the followers of Jesus: Notice their perception of the followers of Christ. “”This crowd that does not know the Law,”

There it is again, right at the center of the dispute between the Pharisees and Jesus….the Law! That was the perceived problem. The Pharisees were convinced that Jesus was promoting a system of belief that would throw out the Law! Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus had stated previously that He did not come to do away with the Law, but to fulfill it! What He did away with  was the ceremonial Law which was solely meant to foreshadow Him, and more importantly, He did away with the idea that one could be saved by obeying the Law! AND He showed the emptiness of any man made interpretations of the Law that stood in the way of mercy, or stood in the way of loving God and neighbors!

True followers of Jesus ought to know the moral Laws of God better than anyone. They ought to know that strict obedience to it, is impossible and therefore it can’t save them, indeed it is the Law that shows us our need for a Savior, but we also know that seeking to keep the Law is pleasing to the heavenly Father, because it shows us how to live as His children.