Matthew 12:1-8
“At that time Jesus went through the grain
fields on the Sabbath. His disciples
were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to
him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”
From heavens view, if a man steals to feed his family or
because he is hungry, that is not good and he must repay, but if a man steals
because he is a thief, then the penalty is much greater. So is what Jesus’ disciples are doing theft? Let’s look at the book of Deuteronomy 23:25, “If you enter your
neighbor’s grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not
put a sickle to his standing grain.” What’s the problem, it is not the eating of
someone else’s grain, but the picking of it on the Sabbath.
“Work was prohibited on the
Sabbath, and it seems that the First-century rabbis divided work into 39
categories, each having many subcategories.
Three prohibited categories were picking, threshing, and winnowing. The disciples picked grain and rubbed it
between their hands to remove the husks and thus broke the highly restrictive
rabbinic law on three different counts.” (HC
Study Bible page 1633)
Jesus brings up to the Pharisees the account in 1Samuel
21:1-6 where David and his men were on the run from King Saul and being hungry,
they went to Ahimelech the priest at Nob, and asked for bread. As we listen to Jesus we understand that He
taught the Sabbath law was overridden by genuine human need. He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and
those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence,
which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but
only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law
how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are
guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple
is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not
sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of
Man is lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:3-8)
Traditions and
religion go hand and hand, and if someone dares to break them, they have stepped
into a real mess. In the Gospel
according to Mark, we have the encounter with Jesus and the keepers of
tradition, the Pharisees and scribes, Mark 7:5-8. “And
the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk
according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he
said to them,
“Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as
it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far
from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of
men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” Does this shed some light on
why religion hates Jesus and those who are willing to stand and speak the truth
in love? It was not fun to go one on one
with your Creator, not then or now.
If only the Pharisees had been open to listening to Jesus
they would have understood what defiles a person, listen to Jesus telling the
people, then and now. “And
when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him
about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you
not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but
his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from
within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft,
murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit,
sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All
these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
From
the Back Porch,
Bob
Rice
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