OUR FATHER WHO MADE THE SABBATH FOR MAN AND NOT MAN FOR THE SABBATH
Matthew chapter 12 starts off with a confrontation between Jesus' disciples and the religious leaders of the time.
What the religious leaders were objecting to was that the disciples were plucking the heads of grain to eat from grainfields even though this was disallowed on the Sabbath day of rest.
The complaint was taken to Jesus as an accusation against His followers for breaking the Sabbath. Verses 1 - 8 reads like this;
1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
2 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”
3 But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?
6 Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. 7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The Lord Jesus immediately turned to the scriptures to invalidate the charges of the pharisees against His people.
He referenced three scriptures to show the religious leaders that their contention was in error.
Firstly, Jesus showed them that it was not unlawful to eat anything if a person was hungry, where even temple bread, which was restricted and could only be eaten by priests in the temple of God, was eaten by David and his men when they were hungry.
Secondly, their contention that working on the Sabbath was unlawful was contradicted by the fact that the priests in the temple worked through the Sabbath and yet were not in contravention of the Sabbath. Jesus argued that if priests serving the temple could work on the Sabbath without breaking the law, how much more could Jesus' followers work on the Sabbath when they were directly serving the One who was greater than the temple.
Thirdly, Jesus scolded the pharisees because of their haste to indict His followers of wrongdoing when the scriptures clearly taught that God desired mercy over sacrifice. To falsely accuse the servants of the Lord of the Sabbath of breaking the Sabbath to the Lord of the Sabbath Himself was an aggriegious error by the religious leaders.
Amen.
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