While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath,
his disciples were picking the heads of grain,
rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.
Some Pharisees said,
"Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?"
The Pharisees were on the lookout for any excuse to criticize and condemn Jesus, to stem the rising tide of his popularity. This prejudice caused them to condemn a small thing like picking grain on the Sabbath as though it were full-fledged harvesting of fields, against which there actually was a prohibition (see Exodus 34:21).
When the Pharisees express this critical eye at such a historical distance and about laws which seem to us unfamiliar it is easy for us to sit in smug and self-satisfied judgment. But for there are probably those of us for whom this sort of absolute nitpicking adherence to rules for rules sake does represent a kind of temptation. This is not to say that the rules themselves are necessarily at fault. Jesus didn't contradict the importance of the Sabbath. It is rather to say that our desire to prove our worth by how well we comply with the rules can make us myopic about the larger picture and the context that makes those rules make sense. And if we prove ourselves by our own adherence to rules we will have a hard time not judging others who don't measure up, especially since we will also know that we ourselves are never so perfect as we would like. We need to discover our self-worth in something deeper in mere adherence and conformity.
Jesus said to them in reply,
"Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
Jesus was the Messiah, the son of David. Just as David's mission and destiny took precedence over the ordinary demands of the sabbath so too did the mission of Jesus and his disciples. Just as David and his men needed food in order to continue to elude the grasp of Saul so too did Jesus and his disciples need food to continue their mission as the Pharisees sought to entrap them. This subtle statement of Jesus was actually a messianic claim, a claim about his status as the rightful king of Israel.
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?
David was in some way a priestly figure and sang in a psalm that the heir in his line was a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. After David's time this song had long been seen as pointing to the coming of the messiah. So it was no surprise to discover that the original mission of David was in some way a priestly mission, pointing forward to the greater priestly mission of the Son of God, who would offer his very life as a sacrifice for sins.
Matthew's account of this exchange reveals that Jesus took this self-revelation even further.
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 (see Matthew 12:5-6).
Because the temple was holy, the place of God's presence, it was right that the priests service within was something sacred, something ought not to stop even on the sabbath. It is breathtaking, then, to hear Jesus call himself "something greater than the temple". For this claim is more than just another messianic claim. If we consider it, he must mean that he, more than the temple, is the true place where the presence of God is to be found. He himself is the true sacrifice and altar. He himself is the perfect coming together of God and man, in a way that the temple could only foreshadow.
We read that the temple was made based on a heavenly blueprint.
They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, "See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain." (see Hebrews 8:5)
But that blueprint was Jesus himself.
And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb (see Revelation 21:22).
Should we be diligent about our observance of the Lord's day as the sabbath of the New Covenant? Of course we should. But let us realize the reason for the importance of Sunday is precisely as a celebration of the great heavenly reality that we are meant to encounter in the presence and person of Jesus himself.
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