Daily Devotional For Monday, February 5, 2024

Well, I pray everyone had a great weekend. Since we have been looking a miracles by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, I thought we would pick up with the next miracle. There is a gap from the last miracle in Matthew 9 and we have to go all the way to Matthew 12:9-14. But, before we look at it, this miracle sits in the context of Matthew 12:1-8. To understand Matthew 12:9-14, we first have to look at Matthew 12:1-8. We will finish with Matthew 12:9-14 over the next several weeks.

Matthew 12:1-8  But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” (3) He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: (4) 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? (5) Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? (6) I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. (7) And 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 of the Sabbath’” (ESV).

Matthew 12 is one of those spiritual events that mark the kind of Messiah Jesus would be. Why? In this chapter, the people and the tide begins to turn against Him. There is a shift in the tide and that shift is an attempt to be an undertow and drown Jesus and His ministry. Every obedient Christian, Christian minister and leader understands when people who claim they love  them, then later turns on them. We love Jesus’ words in John 8:32, “Truth will set you free” (ESV) until the truth comes at us personally, convicts us individually  and puts us under its microscope. That is the Apostle Paul’s point in Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (ESV).

What is it that caused the religious leaders of Jesus’ day to turn on Him and over time get the people to turn against Jesus? The same thing that happens in churches and Christian ministries. The quest for power and control. Jesus began to attack the religious systems of His day — these man-made systems of rabbinical tradition. In Matthew’s Gospel the first attack came in Matthew 9:3, “And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, `This Man is blaspheming’” (ESV).

Then quickly the next attack comes in Matthew 9:11, “And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, `Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (ESV). They hated this because they hated tax collectors and sinners, which sinners they were themselves. Then in Matthew 9:34, they accused Jesus of this: “But the Pharisees said, `He casts out demons by the prince of demons’” (ESV). They accused Jesus of being demon possessed.

The more Jesus came after this system of control and power the Jewish leaders had erected to exert and wield manipulative domination over the Jewish people, the more they came after Him. They refused to recognize, see and repent from their own sin. They really believed that by their position alone, they were sinless. Their continued criticism began to boil like lava in a volcano until it erupted. 

And today, we see one of the top issues for the religious leaders opposition to Jesus — how He acted and His disciples on the Sabbath. So, let’s look at it in Matthew 12:1, “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” (ESV). In Judaism, the top law no one was to ever break were the laws about the Sabbath and when Jesus did, in the religious leader’s minds, He added fuel to an already burning fire. Both the Hebrew word of Sabbath [שֶׁבֶת, shabbat} and the Greek New Testament word for Sabbath [σαββάτον, sabbaton] both imply the same idea. Both the Hebrew word and the Greek word mean  “to cease, to rest, and no activity.” 

This goes all the way back to the Genesis 2:3, “So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation” (ESV). God then incorporated this in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:9-11, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, (10) but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. (11) For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (ESV).

If you read the Ten Commandments, nine of them deal with moral and spiritual absolutes which are repeated and expanded in many other places in the Old Testament. This commandment about the Sabbath, does not fit that. It was to be purely ceremonial. Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians commanded to honor the Sabbath Day. Jesus, who gave us the Ten Commandments, observed every requirement in Scripture because it was His own Word, which Jesus tells us He came to fulfill and not destroy. Look at Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (ESV). 

In Jesus’ day, most Jews had no idea how to honor the Sabbath biblically. Due to the power the religious leaders yielded, they had turned this commandment in the Ten Commandments from not being a blessing to Jews, but a burden. Some scholars say that the disciples were stealing because this was not their grain-fields. But the Old Testament Law expressly laid it down that the hungry traveler was entitled to do just what the disciples were doing, so long as he only used his hands to pluck the ears of corn, and did not use a sickle. Look at Deuteronomy 23:25, “If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain” (ESV).

The question was: what constitutes work? Since God had not defined that in the Old Testament, the religious leaders came up with their definitions and laws to enforce them (William Barclay, The New Daily Study Bible, “Matthew,” Vol. 2, pp.22-23).

William Barclay writes: "We know from reading ancient Jewish religious documents such as the Midrash, the religious leaders had 39 prohibitions such as reaping, winnowing and threshing, and preparing a meal. And it didn’t stop there. For instance, it was forbidden to carry a burden. But what is a burden? A burden is anything which weighs as much as two dried figs. Even the suggestion of work was forbidden; even anything which might symbolically be regarded as work was prohibited. Later the great Jewish teacher, Maimonides, was to say, “To pluck ears is a kind of reaping.” By their conduct the disciples were guilty of far more than one breach of the Law. By plucking the corn they were guilty of reaping; by rubbing it in their hands they were guilty of threshing; by separating the grain and the chaff they were guilty of winnowing; and by the whole process they were guilty of preparing a meal on the Sabbath day, for everything which was to be eaten on the Sabbath had to be prepared the day before. Whoever lies with his wife, or plans to do anything on the Sabbath, or plans to set out on a journey (even the contemplation of work is forbidden), or plans to buy or sell, or draws water, or lifts a burden is condemned. Any man who does any work on the Sabbath (whether the work is in his house or in any other place), or goes a journey, or tills a farm, any man who lights a fire or rides any beast, or travels by ship at sea, any man who strikes or kills anything, any man who catches an animal, a bird, or a fish, any man who fasts or who makes war on a Sabbath—the man who does these things shall die. To keep these commandments was to keep the Law of God; to break them was to break the Law of God.”

But in time even the religious leaders found their own rules too much of a burden. So, they came up with new rules and regulations on how to get around them:

John MacArthur writes this: “If you had placed some food within 3,000 feet of your house, you could go there to eat it; and because the food was considered an extension of the house, you could then go another 3,000 feet beyond the food. If a rope were placed across an adjoining street or alley, the building on the other side, as well as the alley between, could be considered part of your house. Certain objects could be lifted up and put down only from and to certain places. Other things could be lifted up from a public place and set down in a private one, and vice versa. Still others could be picked up in a wide place and put down in a legally free place—but rabbis could not agree about the meanings of wide and free. Rating restrictions were among the most detailed and extensive. You could eat nothing larger than an olive; and even if you tasted half an olive, found it to be rotten and spit it out, that half was considered to have been eaten as far as the allowance was concerned.

Throwing an object into the air with one hand and catching it with the other was prohibited. If the Sabbath overtook you as you reached for some food, the food was to be dropped before drawing your arm back, lest you be guilty of carrying a burden.

Tailors did not carry a needle with them on the Sabbath for fear they might be tempted to mend a garment and thereby perform work. Nothing could be bought or sold, and clothing could not be dyed or washed. A letter could not be dispatched, even if by the hand of a Gentile. No fire could be lit or extinguished—including fire for a lamp—although a fire already lit could be used within certain limits. For that reason, some orthodox Jews today use automatic timers to turn on lights in their homes well before the Sabbath begins. Otherwise they might forget to turn them on in time and have to spend the night in the dark.

Baths could not be taken for fear some of the water might spill onto the floor and “wash” it. Chairs could not be moved because dragging them might make a furrow in the ground, and a woman was not to look in a mirror lest she see a gray hair and be tempted to pull it out. You could carry ink enough to draw only two letters of the alphabet, and false teeth could not be worn because they exceeded the weight limit for burdens.

According to those hair-splitting regulations, a Jew could not pull off even a handful of grain to eat on the Sabbath unless he were starving—which, of course, is often a difficult thing to determine and would be cause for considerable differences of opinion. If a person became ill on the Sabbath, only enough treatment could be given to keep him alive. Treatment to make him improve was declared to be work, and therefore forbidden. To determine just how much food, medicine, or bandaging would be necessary to keep a person alive—and no more—was itself an impossible burden.

Among the many other forbidden Sabbath activities were: sewing, plowing, reaping, grinding, baking, threshing, binding sheaves, winnowing, sifting, dying, shearing, spinning, kneading, separating or weaving two threads, tying or untying a knot, and sewing two stitches.” (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, “Matthew,” pp. 282-283).

So, as you can tell, the Sabbath was not really a day of rest with all these non-biblical requirements According to the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus and His disciples were in violation of breaking the Sabbath by simply walking through this grain-field. The fact that the text tells us the disciples became hungry show that they were NOT in the fields trying to find something to eat. This grain would not be ripe until March or early April. In those days they did not have roads as we do today. They had paths and it seems this path went through this grain-field. So, seeing the grain, caused them to become hungry. 

Biiblical scholar Steven Barabas writes on all these Jewish Sabbath requirements. Please forgive me because some of this is a repeat from above: “During the period between Ezra and the Christian era the scribes formulated innumerable legal restrictions for the conduct of life under the law. Two whole treatises in the Talmud are devoted to the details of Sabbath observance. One of these, the Shabbath enumerates the following thirty-nine principal classes of prohibited actions: sowing, plowing, reaping, gathering into sheaves, threshing, winnowing, cleansing, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking; shearing wool, washing it, beating it, dyeing it, spinning it, making a warp of it; making two cords, weaving two threads, separating two threads, making a knot, untying a knot, sewing two stitches, tearing to sew two stitches; catching a deer, killing, skinning, salting it, preparing its hide, scraping off its hair, cutting it up; writing two letters, blotting out for the purpose of writing two letters, building, pulling down, extinguishing, lighting a fire, beating with a hammer, and carrying from one property to another. Each of these chief enactments was further discussed and elaborated, so that actually there were several hundred things a conscientious, law-abiding Jew could not do on the Sabbath” (Steven Barabas, The New International Dictionary of the Bible, “Sabbath,” p. 877).

God in His foresight knew this would happen to travelers who failed to not take enough food with them on their journey and found themselves running out of food on the Sabbath. Read Deuteronomy 23:24-25, “if you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. (25) If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain” (ESV). 

The disciples were not reaping on the Sabbath, which was forbidden by Mosaic law (Exodus. 34:21, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest” — ESV ), but simply satisfying their hunger according to the provision of Deuteronomy 23. Rabbinic tradition, however, had ridiculously interpreted the rubbing of grain together in the hands (which the disciples were doing; see Luke 6:1, “On a Sabbath, while He was going through the grain-fields, His disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands” — ESV) as a form of threshing; and they regarded blowing away the chaff as a form of winnowing. The Talmud said, “If a person rolls wheat to remove the husks, it is sifting. If he rubs the heads of wheat, it is threshing. If he cleans off the side adherences, it is sifting. If he bruises the ears, it is grinding. And if he throws it up in his hand, it is winnowing.”

We can understand their hunger. You haven’t eaten in a while and you smell fresh bread baking and your stomach makes some noises. What is interesting to me is this — what were the religious leaders doing out in the grain-fields themselves or how did they learn this? We know in Jesus’ day the religious leaders had what we might call “spies” out looking on the Sabbath. For these religious leaders, they did not apply the Old Testament Law biblically, but politically and legalistically. They used Scripture as a means to justify the traditions, most which contradicted and opposed God’s Word. Jesus mentioned this in Matthew 15:6b, “So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God” (ESV).

Questions To Consider

1. Is there anything you are legalistic about in your relationship to God and others? If so, why?
2. Bible scholar Charles Ryrie defines for us what is legalism. “Legalism is a fleshly attitude which conforms to a code for the purpose of exalting self” (Charles Ryrie, Balancing The Christian Life, p. 159). Do you know any legalists in the church? If so, how do you deal with them? What are they so legalistic about in their life or the church? Is their position biblical? If not, how could you show them biblically they are misguided and mistaken — probably for good intentions?
3. To the religious leaders, Jesus was a major disappointment to the religious bullies of His day. Jesus broke the mold in His day. He saw and personally experienced what was to be a day of joy, had turned into a day that was a joke. It was not a fun day, but a frustrating day. It was not a day of awe, but anxiety. Have you ever run into religious bullies? If so, what were they bullying about and how did you deal with it?
4. I remember growing up as a young kid we had what were call “Blue Laws.” These laws were primarily a carry over from the Colonial Days. Liquor could not be sold on a Sunday and many businesses were closed on Sunday, including restaurants. Our culture has changed. Is there anything you think Christians should not do on the Sabbath and why? Do you have a biblical basis for this?
5. When anyone comes along that is a threat to some people’s perceived power and control, that person will have a target on their back. When we were at a church in Louisville we called a full-time Youth Pastor who began to reach out to “street kids” in the church neighborhood. He invited them to our regular Wednesday night youth actives and Bible study. One mother made it very clear she did not want her “church kids” associating with these “street kids.” She was reminded we were compelled by God to reach them because they were on their way to hell. Her response was: “I don’t care if they go to hell.” Whew! Legalism is never based on Scripture or love, but on self-centeredness and a desire to control, no matter the consequences — teens going to hell. How would you have handled such a Pharisee as this lady was in our former church?

Scripture to Meditate On: John 1:17, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (ESV).

Prayer to Pray: “Dear Jesus, I do not want to be known for being legalistic. I want to be known for loving you and loving people. Please forgive me when I judge others by my standards of righteousness rather letting You judge them by Yours. Lord, open my eyes to see where I am blind to my own legalism. I want to be like You — serve, not be served. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”

I love you!, Pastor Kelly