Christians usually keep the Sabbath on the 1st day, not the 7th, as God commanded. How is it that you say God is pleased that we keep the Sabbath when we are violating the Law to keep it? If it is because we are keeping the spirit of the Law rather than the letter of the Law, should you be promoting the keeping of "the Law" rather than keeping the spirit of the Law? If the latter, then what role does the letter of the Law have, since the letter of the Law has been fulfilled for us by Jesus.
I never said seeking to please God was bad. I only meant that seeking to please God by the actions of keeping the Law is done in vain.
You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:“ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’” (Matthew 15:7-9, 1984 NIV)
The Jews were keeping rules made by men and not keeping the commands of God. The problem was their hearts were far from God. As such, keeping the commands of God would not be enough if their hearts were still far from God.
The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine admits that the Sabbath is Saturday and that transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday at the Council of Laodicea in 336 AD, but they were never given authority to change God's commands, and trying to do so was a sin (Deuteronomy 4:2). You cited Matthew 15:7-9, where Jesus was criticizing the Pharisees for setting aside the commands of God in order to follow their own traditions, and that is essentially what Catholics have done with setting aside God command to keep the Sabbath on the 7th day in order to follow their own tradition. There is nothing wrong with worshipping God on Sunday, just as there was nothing wrong with many of the Pharisees' traditions, but the problem is, and where it becomes are heart issue is where we set aside the commands of God in order to follow our own those traditions.
If a husband wants to give a gift to his wife and his heart is in the right place, then he shouldn't seek to give her something that he would be happy to receive, but rather he should seek to give her something that she has said she wants. If husbands shouldn't treat their wives that way, how much more shouldn't we treat God that way? Do you think that God would have been pleased if the builders of the temple had felt free to build it in whatever way they wanted because they decided that all God really wanted was just a temple? God gave specific commands for how to worship Him because He wants to be worshipped in a specific way and He gave commands not to worship Him in the same way as the pagans worshipped their gods because He has specific ways that He does not want to be worshipped. If our heart is in the right place, then our attitude should not be that we can worship God in any way that we want and that He should be happy with what He gets, but rather we should seek to worship God in the way that He has instructed us to worship Him. Submitting to God's law has always been about drawing close to God, so I agree that keeping His commands while our hearts are far from Him would be worshipping Him in vain, but that does not mean that seeking to please God by obeying His law as intended is done in vain.
Every Sabbath in a synagogue, a rabbi would take a Torah scroll to Moses' seat and fulfill the law by interpreting it and teaching how to understand it. In Galatians 5:14, it says that loving your neighbor fulfills the entire law, so it is something everyone since Moses who has ever loved their neighbor has done. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, then proceeded to fulfill it six times by teaching how to correctly understand how to obey it, so fulfilling the law does not refer to something unique that Jesus did to do away with the law. The same word is used in Romans 15:18-19 in regard to Paul fulfilling the gospel and nobody interprets that as Paul doing away with it. In Romans 7:14, Paul said that the law is spiritual, so it has always been intended to teach us spiritual principles of which the written laws are examples. Just as meeting a higher standard necessarily includes meeting a lower standard, following this spiritual principles necessarily includes following the written laws, so someone has not correctly understood a spiritual principle if it leads them away from obeying the written law.
God does want us to obey him, but it cannot be done the way you promote.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4, 1984 NIV)
Obeying the Law to please God has never been possible. Our obedience is tainted by the sinful nature. Living by faith and not works does not mean keeping the Law by faith. Keeping the Law is powerless. It is faith that pleases God.
Nowhere does it say that we need to obey God's law perfectly in order to please Him, but rather God is pleased by every act of faith in obedience to Him. It is true that we can't perfectly keep the law through our own effort, but with God nothing is impossible. Or do you think that causing His people to obey His law is the one thing beyond God's power to accomplish? In Hebrews 8:7-8, God found fault with the Mosaic Covenant, but the fault was not with His law or with the terms of the covenant, but with the hardness of His people's hearts. So rather than lowering His righteous standard so that anyone could meet it simply by subscribing to a short list of beliefs about Jesus, God's solution was to raise us up so that we could meet His standard. So God made a New Covenant where he would take away our hearts of stone, give us hearts of flesh, send His Spirit to cause us to obey it (Ezekiel 36:26-27), write His law on our hearts so that we would obey it (Jeremiah 31:33), and send His Son to free us from sin that that we would be free to obey His law all so that we might meet its righteous requirement (Romans 8:3-4). Our sanctification is about being made to be like Christ in being completely obedient to the law by faith as he was.
Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.
(Matthew 12:5-7, 1984 NIV)
Why do you think that God commanded sacrifices if He didn't want them? The word for "offering" literally means "to draw close", so if you make offerings without drawing close to God, then you are completely missing the point and are acting in vain.
For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
In Romans 7:12-25, Paul said that God's law is holy, righteous, and good, that it was the good he sought to do and delighted in doing, but contrasted that with a law of sin that stirred up sin and caused him not to do the good that he wanted to do. So when we were controlled by the sinful nature, we were under the law of sin, and it is not God's law that stirs up sinful passions, but the law of sin. We were not in bondage to God's instructions for how to do what is holy, righteous, and good against our will, but rather it was the sinful nature that caused us not to do the good that we wanted to do that we were in bondage to, and Paul specified that we died to and were released from what bound us. This fits with the example from the law in Romans 7:1-4, where the woman was never given the freedom to transgress any of God's laws, but rather she was only set free from what would have condemned her if she had lived with another man while her husband was still alive. In the same way, we have not been set free from obeying God, but from condemnation for our disobedience to God, which is the point he was concluding from in Romans 8:1.
We are slaves to the love God puts into our hearts, not slaves to any particular actions or methods to please God. Obeying the love in one's heart is what God wants of us. Jesus' yoke is easy and his burden is light. His commands are not burdensome. It is through the Law that we become conscious of sin, but that does not mean we are commanded to keep the Law. In Christ, we already succeeded in that, and it is complete.
In Deuteronomy 30:11, God said that His commands were not too difficult and 1 John 5:3 confirms that they are not burdensome, yet it seems like you want contrast Jesus' yoke with God's law when they are one in the same. Jesus taught to obey God's law both by word and by example, so he practiced what he preached and preached what he practiced, and he practiced perfect obedience to God's law, so that is what he commanded, and that is the example that we are told to follow. A rabbi's yoke was the way that they taught to obey God's law and Jesus was contrasting his way of obeying the law with the way that the Pharisees taught to obey the law as being a heavy burden (Matthew 23:3). When Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30 that his way is the way that they will find rest for their souls, he was making reference to Jeremiah 6:16-19:
16 Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ 17 I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not pay attention.’ 18 Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. 19 Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it.
Well, I've said enough. I think you are missing the message of Galatians and promoting keeping the Law as a way to please God, when in fact, the only way to please God is to have a heart for God resulting in living by the Spirit of love. It is not something we can "do," it is something that God grants us. The reason keeping the Law can please God is because of our hearts, not because we are keeping the Law. One can't keep the Law to please God. One with a heart for God will seek to please God in whatever way the Spirit leads.
Galatians was only speaking against obeying the law in order to become justified, not against obeying the law to please God. The law was given as instructions for how to live in a way that is pleasing to God by faith, not as instructions for what to do in order to become justified. If someone is living by the Spirit of love, then they are also living in obedience to the law because the Spirit leads us to obey God's law (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
The Good News could be stated as "God is pleased with you, but not because of what you have done, but because of what Jesus has done."
The Gospel of the Kingdom is to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, not that you are good as you are.
