John 7: 19a
” Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law.”
Hmmmm… Which law do you suppose Jesus is referring to?
God gave Moses the Ten Commandments which would serve pretty well if you wanted a Users Manual from the Creator of the Universe. To that, he added a large number of laws specific to Israel and the covenant God made with Abraham. Then there were all of the hundreds of laws added by the Jewish leaders during the exile and afterward.
If you had to pick one of these three groups of laws as being more important than all of the others, it would be hard not to pick the Ten Commandments. They were given directly to Moses by God and written by God on stone tablets.
It was the fourth commandment that had stuck in the craw of the Pharisees. They repeatedly accused Jesus of doing work on the Sabbath. Ironically, in condemning Jesus, they were themselves disobeying the first three commandments. They held the law in greater esteem than God or his son, Jesus. They worshipped the law rather than the God who gave the law. Finally, in declaring themselves to be speaking for God when they were actually speaking for themselves, they misused the name of God.
So back to the fourth commandment:
Q: How was Jesus not breaking the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy when he healed someone on the Sabbath?