Have you ever been in a situation where you were faced with a choice and you had competing values guiding your decision? Maybe you wanted to help someone but that was going to keep you from doing something else important. Often we are faced with a choice where both options seem important based on what we value. Or maybe it’s the other side of the equation you have two choices and don’t like either. We live in a world that can face us with complicated situations often. The Pharisees tried to trick Jesus into several situations like this in order to be able to bring charges against Him. Let’s look at one such situation today in Matthew 12.

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” 11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” 13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

One of the best things to guide us when we have tough choices with competing values is the idea of first principles. What are the first principles that guide our life that are above all else? Jesus helped us with this when He summed up the law by saying to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the first principle that He uses in the above situation. Obviously the Sabbath is important to Jesus. It is one of the 10 Commandments. Yet, loving people is a first principle, one that would reign above Sabbath law. Whenever I am in a situation that seems to have competing values I always try to rely on first principles to decide a path. I have found that to be extremely helpful over time. Thanks to Jesus for His example of how to live that out.

In His Grip,
Pastor Dave