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Text: Luke 6:1-5
Common meal
- The disciples are hungry. Who knows when their last meal was? They’ve been walking a while and haven’t eaten. Their stomachs are rumbling. As they get close to town, they pass through a cornfield and each disciple grabs an ear of corn, shucks it, and eats it.
- And in this simple meal, there is so much to learn about God and about sinners.
Critical spirit
- Now, what you find out about these hypocritical sinners in verse 2 is that they’ve been watching Jesus and his disciples closely. They particularly watch them on the sabbath day that way they can find fault with them.
- Why pick the sabbath? Because the sabbath was a day of rest from your normal work week.
- But these hypocritical sinners concocted their own traditions around this simple law of rest.
- They took something meant for rest and turned it into a burden
- Because they hate righteousness and they hate God, and therefore hate Jesus Christ, their mission is to create guilt where no guilt exists. They want to condemn the guiltless.
- Example in the crucifixion: Jesus Christ was betrayed by a friend because of envious priests. He was then falsely accused and run through an illegal trial being beaten over and over again. The Jewish rabbis hired liars to create charges against him, though they never would agree. And ultimately Jesus was turned over to Rome under trumped-up charges and murdered on the cross. Now, the hypocritical priests’ concerns were that his body shouldn’t stay on the cross through Passover. So they asked Pilate to break Jesus’ legs in order to asphyxiate him that day, so they didn’t have to look at him during the Passover. Long story short. The priestly sinners weren’t supposed to work on a high sabbath and taking Jesus’ body down would’ve been working, so they needed to get him killed and off the cross before Passover.
- So you’re concerned about keeping the sabbath, but you’re not concerned with murder? You’re concerned with keeping the sabbath, but you’re not concerned with lying? Or injustice? Or betrayal? Give me a break.
- Well, in this account there is a similar hypocritical misplacement of priorities. The higher calling is thrown on the ground to be trampled under.
- You have a need to find guilt in people you hate.
- And that hatred makes you blind to failures in yourself.
- And that hatred makes you blind to the clear light of the word of God.
- And that hatred makes you turn things that God meant for rest into burdens for others.
- God meant the scriptures for good, but for some of you it’s such a burden you can’t keep your eyes open to pay attention to the good scriptures God’s given you.
- 1 Corinthians 14:3 & 31 God meant preaching for your good, but some of you do your best to avoid it all costs. You play on your phone, you wonder in your mind. It’s pretty amazing how you turn a well of water into a point of contention and poison. Some of you are so distracted God CAN’T comfort you even when He wants to.
- God meant fellowship for good in 2 Corinthians 7:13 but it turns to a competition of MY ministry, MY seat, MY church.
Character of God
- God’s character is that He’d rather have mercy than sacrifice. He isn’t looking to create guilt where no guilt exists. Partaking of God’s nature means quitting looking for reasons to hate people you hate.
- The LORD Jesus Christ answers these critical spirits with scripture that they knew, but were blind to because of their hatred for Christ.
- Jesus reminds the priests of David when he was hungry like the disciples. David and his men hadn’t eaten in days. But David didn’t demand food from the tabernacle. He asked for it. Because of David’s circumstances, the priests decided to give David and his men bread from the shewbread table because there was nothing else to give them.
- The bread belonged to the priests, it wasn’t lawful for David to eat the bread, but it was fine for the priests to give the bread to whomever they wanted to because the bread belonged to the priests. The priests chose to support David and his men and to do good with what they had.
- The LORD Jesus Christ is Lord of the Sabbath and the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
- God is the God of rest. He gives gifts so that souls can rest.
