Matthew 12:1-2 English Standard Version

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”

Matthew kept to the script of what happened that day. His scriptures serve a purpose. I ask myself if I understand exactly what law was broken.

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.

Eating when hungry is not work. Using a sickle would be considered work. Neither does Deuteronomy 23:25 call it theft or trespassing. So what law was broken?

While studying Matthew 12 extract literal intent, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, I suggest that we are more likely to make the same mistakes that the Pharisees made in Matthew 12:2. 

• Romans 7:7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
  Romans 9:14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!

God was just in creating the law. Man has been unjust in its application and interpretation. It is not enough to say the law does not apply to us because we have grace from God.

I have said before, knowing a speed trap was ahead, I reduced my speed to the legal limit. When I did, God said to me “Is this how you eat my grace?”

Yes, I was convicted of my attitude. I had not been caught breaking the law by man but that cannot be our standard for living by faith. I try not to intentionally violate the speed limit. That is not to say I have always kept my eye on the needle. And yes, I urged my wife to run the red light while I was having a heart attack. So I justify my actions from time to time.

So the teachable moment here is that the intention of the heart is what God looks for in us.

The law is just but does not have a handle to be used as a weapon.

Psalm 2:7 I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.

Today I declare that I remember what it was like before He said to me “You are mine”.

How I was before Jesus haunts me because I cannot understand why I was like that other guy. My rational mind says I was broken and did not know it. I cannot understand those behaviors before Jesus. They are foreign to me. How could I have been like that?

I cannot turn back the clock to examine my brokenness. It feels a little like gaining sight and then never wanting to seek blindness once again just because I can now see the ugliness.

• Psalm 31:12
  I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.
• Psalm 34:18
  The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

I do not want to be blind again.

• Revelation 2:5
  Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
• Revelation 3:3
  Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

Even if I should never sin again, I would still have something to repent of because being afraid of getting it wrong and not doing anything is ignoring the work that we are called to do.

Forget the past and live for today while it is still called today.

Hebrews 3:13

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

The deceitfulness of sin can be thinking we are so broken that we cannot be used.