With no fast
food or convenience stores available in those days, we find Jesus and His
disciples cruising through a farm field on the Sabbath Day, and they are
hungry.
There are a
number of laws in play here, for those who govern themselves according to God’s
Law.
The first
law in play is that a farmer could only go through his field once, and would
not glean every last leaving of his crop for himself, in order that passers-by
and those who are hungry may be fed.
A second law
in play was those who were passing by or hungry were not to make a harvest from
the farmer’s field for themselves, as this would be stealing. A passer-by was only
allowed to gather what he could with his hands to feed himself in the moment.
A third law
in play was the Law of the Sabbath. This was the Sabbath Day. A man was not
allowed to do any work on the Sabbath. Additionally, by Jesus’ time, the
Sabbath Law had been extended to include what was known of as a ‘Sabbath-Day’s
journey,’ that a man could only walk a certain number of steps on the Sabbath
Day, and it would be considered a work to walk farther than the allowed
distance.
For Jewish
people in those days, as it is for Christians in our day, there was/is always
to be a consideration of God’s desire for us in everything we do or say. The
question is who is to govern this behavior? Is it to be an external person or governing
body enforcing God’s Law, or is it to be our conscience guided internally by
God’s Holy Spirit?
There is no
question the ‘enforcers’ in those days were the religious leaders, be they
Pharisees or Sadducees or religious lawyers. This is what is taking place here.
The question
is: What were the Pharisees doing following Jesus? We know why His disciples
were present. They had a genuine interest in Jesus ministry, and were being fed
Spiritually for the first time in their lives. They were hungry for God.
The
Pharisees, on the other hand, were only present to find fault. Their hard
hearts prevented them from being fed Spiritually, and so they would seek to
prevent others from being fed physically. In reality, their desire was to
starve the ministry of Christ.
-Pastor Bill
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