Mark2:23-28

Picking Grain On the Sabbath

Jesus was passing through the grain fields and His disciples began picking the gain heads and eating them. They were traveling and became hungry and ate the grains that they picked. This is natural.

When we get hungry we get food to satisfy our hunger. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. This is natural and the way God designed us.

We have natural desires that we have and God affords us the opportunity to satisfy those natural desires. When we get hungry we eat. When we get tired we rest.

The only problem with this is they were picking grain on a Sabbath. According to the Pharisees this was sinful. They base it on Ex:34:21

Exodus 34:21 NASB95

“You shall work six days, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during plowing time and harvest you shall rest.

The pharisees thought the disciples were harvesting on the Sabbath. However they were not harvesting but feeding their hunger. The law was given so people would not harvest for profit, not that they would be forbidden from eating. They were not transgressing the law. Deut. 23:25

Deuteronomy 23:25 NASB95

“When you enter your neighbor’s standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor’s standing grain.

Mark 2:23–24

The Sabbath also commemorated the covenant He established with Abraham and, by extension, the nation of Israel. Once He gave His covenant people the Promised Land, Friday at sundown became a time for feasting and singing, a time when families delighted in their God of provision and protection and set aside work to bond with one another. Then, after the armies of Babylon destroyed the temple in 586 BC and carried the Jews away from their land, the Sabbath became something different in the eyes of the Jews. Having been stripped of so much of their distinct Hebrew culture, they clung to the Law of Moses to maintain their identity and to unite them. During this period of exile, the party of the Pharisees rose to prominence, touting a religious system that made legalism king in Israel. And with it, grace began to fade from Jewish faith.

By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had transformed the Sabbath into something very different from what God had ordained. To the simple command “rest,” the Pharisees added a long list of specific prohibitions that, ironically, turned this day of rest into a terrible religious burden. They established thirty-nine categories that constituted “work,” all forbidden on the Sabbath: carrying, burning, extinguishing, finishing, writing, erasing, cooking, washing, sewing, tearing, knotting, untying, shaping, plowing, planting, reaping, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, selecting, sifting, grinding, kneading, combing, spinning, dyeing, chain stitching, warping, weaving, unraveling, building, demolishing, trapping, shearing, slaughtering, skinning, tanning, smoothing, and marking.

On this particular Sabbath, Jesus’ disciples gleaned grain as they passed through a field (cf. Deut. 23:24–25), but Pharisaic custom identified such activity as work: “Plucking wheat from its stem is reaping, rubbing the wheat heads between one’s palms is threshing, and blowing away the chaff is winnowing

Today we have “christian rules” that God never said were rules. What are some of those rules? Don’t drink, Don’t dance, don’t play cards, Only read christian books, only listen to christian music.

What constitutes the “Christian box”

David Ate the Consecrated Bread

Jesus pointed out the fallacy of the Pharisees rule by giving a biblical illustration. He used the example of David eating the bread that only the priest were suppose to eat. 1 Sam. 21:1-6

1 Samuel 21:1–6 NASB95

Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest; and Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?” David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has commissioned me with a matter and has said to me, ‘Let no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you and with which I have commissioned you; and I have directed the young men to a certain place.’ “Now therefore, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.” The priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women.” David answered the priest and said to him, “Surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out and the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey; how much more then today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him consecrated bread; for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence which was removed from before the Lord, in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away.

The Pharisees did not understand the spirit of the law and hence created laws that God never intended.

First, the Pharisees placed the customs of men before the Law of God.

Second, God gave laws to His people to bless them, not to burden them

Third, the Law was given by God; therefore, the Law can never be greater than God.

Sabbath is for Man Not Man for the Sabbath

What Jesus is communicating is that the laws of God are meant for our good and not to burden us. For example we will look at the ten commandments and discuss why they are good for us and how people can turn them into a burden.

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of [a]slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods [b]before Me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself [c]an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not [d]leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.

8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who [e]stays with you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”