Crisis Looms (Matthew 12:1-8)

Introduction – Crisis Looms

In Matthew chapter 12 we read about the beginning of a series of crucial events in the life of Jesus. In everyone’s life there are decisive moments, times and events on which the whole of his life can turn. This chapter presents us with the story as it reaches a pivotal point in the life of Jesus. In it we see the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day coming to their final decision regarding Jesus and what he has said and done, and that was to reject him and his claim of Messiahship. It was not only rejection in the sense that they would have nothing to do with him; it was rejection in the sense that they came to the conclusion in such a way than it was likely that nothing less than his complete elimination would be the proper way to deal with Him. Here in this chapter, we see the first steps, the end of which could be nothing other than the Cross. 

The main characters in this tragedy are presented clearly before us. On the one hand there are the Scribes and the Pharisees, the representatives of the hierarchy of the religion of their day.  We can see four stages in their increasing attitude of malignant hostility to Jesus.

(i) In Matthew 12:1-8 , Today we will read the story of how the disciples plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, and we see growing suspicion. How the Scribes and Pharisees regarded with growing suspicion a teacher who was prepared to allow his followers to disregard the minutia of the Sabbath Law. This was the kind of thing which could not be allowed to spread unchecked.

(ii) Tomorrow in Matthew 12:9-14, tells us the story of the healing of the man with the paralysed hand on the Sabbath day, we see a hostile investigation into these events. It was not by chance that the Scribes and Pharisees were in the synagogue on that Sabbath. Luke says they were there to watch Jesus ( Luke 6:7 ). From that time on Jesus would have to work always under a malevolent eye of the religious leaders of his day. They would behave like private detectives, seeking the evidence on which they could level charges against him. The religious elite were no longer be happy to just to watch and criticize on the side lines; they were preparing to act. They had gone into council to find a way to put an end to this disturbing man of Galilee. Suspicion was now changing into open hostile actions.

However, we can also how Jesus will respond to this growing opposition. He will meet it with courageous defiance and a continual commitment to do good demonstrated in the story of the healing of the man with the paralysed hand ( Matthew 12:9-14 ) we see him deliberately defying the Scribes and Pharisees. So, far from evading the challenge, Jesus is about to meet it head on. He also meet the accusations made against him head on a theological level with a staggering series of claims about himself. He will claim he is greater than the Temple ( Matthew 12:6 ), and the Temple was the most sacred place in all the world to the Jews. 

Later in the chapter he will say he is greater than Jonah and Solomon. His claim will be that there has been nothing occur in spiritual history of the Nation of Israel than which he is not greater. There are no apologies here; There is the statement of his claims as Christ and Messiah at their highest level.

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

So today let’s begin by looking at the fist accusation made against in this chapter, that of breaking The Sabbath Law.

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”3 He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5 Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? 6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”  (Matthew 12: 1-8)

In Palestine in the time of Jesus the cornfields and the cultivated lands were laid out in long narrow strips; and the ground between the strips was always a right of way. It was on one of these strips between the cornfields that the disciples and Jesus were most likely walking when this incident happened. There is absolutely no suggestion that the disciples were stealing. The Law expressly laid it down that the hungry traveller 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:

"When you go into your neighbours standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbours standing grain"

(Deuteronomy 23:25 ).

In the eyes of the Scribes and Pharisees, the fault of the disciples was not that they had plucked and eaten the grains of corn, but that they had done so on the Sabbath. The Sabbath Law was very complicated and very detailed. The commandment forbids work on the Sabbath day; but the interpreters of the Law were not satisfied with that simple prohibition. Work had to be defined. So, thirty-nine basic actions were laid down, which were forbidden on the Sabbath. Interestingly amongst them were reaping, winnowing and threshing, and preparing a meal. These legalistic interpreters were not left at that, as each item in the list of forbidden works had to be carefully defined and broken down with sub laws.

For example, it was forbidden to carry a burden. But what is a burden? A burden had to be defined, and a burden was defined as anything which weighs more than two dried figs. Even the slightest suggestion of anything which might symbolically be regarded as work was also prohibited. By the time of Jesus, it had been prescribed that to pluck ears was a kind of reaping." Therefore by their conduct the disciples were guilty of that rule and more, 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. At that time everything which was to be eaten on the Sabbath had to be prepared the day before. To keep these commandments was to keep the Law of God; to break them was to break the Law of God. There is no doubt whatsoever that, from their own point of view, the Scribes and Pharisees were by their own definitions entirely justified in finding fault with the disciples for breaking the Law, and with Jesus for allowing them, if not encouraging them, to do so.

Three Responses to Unjust Accusations.

To meet the criticism of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus put forward three arguments.

(i) He quoted the actions of David ( 1 Samuel 21:1-6 ) on that occasion when David and his young friends were so hungry that they went into the tabernacle--not the Temple, because remember this happened in the days before the Temple was even built--and they ate the shewbread, which only the priests could eat. 

The shewbread is described for us in Leviticus 24 . It consisted of twelve loaves of bread, which were placed every week in two rows of six in the Holy Place. They were a symbolic offering in which God was thanked for his gift of provided the people with sustaining food. 

These loaves were changed every week, and the old loaves became the property of the priests and could be eaten by them, but only them. On this occasion, in their hunger, David and his friends entered in and ate those sacred loaves, but after investigation no fault was attached to them. Because it was decided that under the spirit of the law the claims of human need took precedence over any ritual custom.

(ii) He quoted the Sabbath work of the Temple. The Temple ritual always involved work--the kindling of fires, the slaughter and the preparation of animals, the lifting of them on to the altar, and a host of other things. This work was actually doubled on the Sabbath, because on the Sabbath the offerings were doubled compared to other days.

Any of these actions would have been illegal for any ordinary person to perform on the Sabbath day. To light a fire, to slaughter an animal, to lift it up on to the altar would have been to break the Law, and hence to profane the Sabbath. But for the priests it was perfectly legal to do these things, for the Temple worship must go on. That is to say, worship offered to God took precedence over any other Sabbath rules and regulations.

(iii) He quoted God's word to Hosea the prophet: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice" ( Hosea 6:6 ). What God desires far more than ritual sacrifice, or legalistic rule following is kindness. T display a spirit which knows that no law is higher than to answer the call of human need.

In this incident Jesus lays it down that the claim of human need must take precedence of all other claims. The claims of worship, the claims of ritual, the claims of liturgy are important but priority over any of them is the claim of human need, and that need has been the principle ever since of many if not all Christian mission and outreach to the needy.

Jesus insisted that the greatest service of God is the service of human need. It is strange to think that, with the possible exception of that day in the synagogue at Nazareth, we have no evidence that Jesus ever conducted or attended a church service in all his life on earth, but we have abundant evidence that he fed the hungry and comforted the sad and cared for the sick. Christian service is not the service of any liturgy or ritual; it is the service of human need. Christian service is not expressed by retreating to a monastery but in the involvement of supporting people in all the tragedies and problems and demands of the human condition. Meeting the needs of everyone in their everyday problems of life.

There remains in this passage one difficulty which it is not possible to solve with absolute certainty. The difficulty lies in the last verse, "For the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath." This phrase can have two meanings.

(i) It may mean that Jesus is claiming to be Lord of the Sabbath, in the sense that he is entitled to use the Sabbath as he thinks fit. We have seen that the sanctity of the work of the Temple surpassed and he has  over-ridden the Sabbath rules and regulations, by his expressions of love, healing and mercy. 

Jesus has just claimed and shown that something greater than the Temple is here in him; therefore, he has the right to dispense with the Sabbath regulations and to do as he thinks best in Gods will, even on the Sabbath day. That is the traditional interpretation of this sentence, but there are, I believe, some further insights to be drawn from it. 

(ii) On this occasion Jesus is not defending himself for anything that he did on the Sabbath; he is defending his disciples; and the authority with which they did it. He is stressing here is was not done not just  on his own authority, but also on the greatest authority of meeting human need with the love of God.

It can also can benoted that when Mark tells of this incident he introduces another saying of Jesus as part of the climax of it: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" ( Mark 2:27 ).

If we remember that what Jesus is pressing here is the claims of human need; and if we remember that it is not himself but his disciples that he is defending. Furthermore, if we remember that Mark tells us that he said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; then we may well conclude that what Jesus said here is: "Man is not the slave of the Sabbath; he is the master of it, to use it for his own good, and the good of his fellow man." 

Jesus by what he says is rebuking the Scribes and Pharisees for enslaving themselves and their fellow human beings with a list of tyrannical regulations; and he may well be here laying down the great principle of Christian freedom, which applies to the Sabbath as it does to all other things in life.