Today’s Daily Lesson is Matthew 12 verses 1 through 14:
At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’3He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. 5Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? 6I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”, you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’
9 He left that place and entered their synagogue; 10a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, ‘Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?’ so that they might accuse him. 11He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?12How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.’13Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.
Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”
In Jesus’ time the Sabbath commandment was a founding principle. The Bible says the Israelites were given the law of the Sabbath before even entering into the Promised Land. It was a law given from Moses and older than the Temple. It was a law which was seen by the Pharisees as binding the people and keeping them holy and set apart from all the other nations. As it has often been said, “The Jews didn’t only keep the Sabbath; the Sabbath kept the Jews.”
Yet holy as the Sabbath law was, it was subject to misinterpretation. It was not intended to be an end in itself. It was a law originally given for the good of the people, yet it had become an idol. What was given to serve the people and help them worship God, had been turned into a god itself. The means had become the end. Sabbath, which was given to Israelites, had now subjected them.
A law should never be an end in itself. Laws were made to serve the people, not people the law. So when a law is made master of the people it needs to be re-interpreted or changed.
Jesus saw this 2,000 years ago. Every generation has to see it in its own age also.
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