I remember the day like it was yesterday, my best friend at age 7 at my door ratting me out to my dad. I was standing behind my friend as he stood at my door and told my dad I just said the word *&%! I do not know why he wanted to rat me out, but I thought I was going to be in big trouble. I remember my dad getting a slightly angry demeanor about him, but he turned his scorn to my friend. Can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like, “Don’t you come here and rat on my son, get off my porch!”
I remember learning something about my dad that day. He had my back. He also took the importance of cuss words as a really bad thing and nullified it as a standard for how my dad viewed me. I knew that cuss words could not put a dent in the love he felt for me.
In this section of Mark, the highly respected religious leaders came to Jesus and accused His disciples of breaking the law by picking grain on the Sabbath. “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” Maybe the disciples felt busted, like they had been caught. Would Jesus scold them?
Jesus actually turns His scold to the Pharisees. He asks them if they have ever read about what David did in the Old Testament. That is like asking a preacher if he has ever read the Bible. He pointed to the time when the High Priest of Israel gave David and his men consecrated bread that was only lawful for them to eat. If they could do it and it was fine, why not them. The problem the Pharisees had was not with the act, but with Jesus Himself. In the previous sections they had made it clear they did not believe He was one of them, they did not approve of whom he associated with, and His followers were not spiritual enough. So, they are going to use the law of the Sabbath as the final grounds for accusation. They could point to the fact that they had broken the law. If Jesus did not scold them, then He was definitely not from God.
The Sabbath had been established as a benefit to mankind. After Adam and Eve sinned and God punished mankind by causing their labor and work to be accompanied by hardship (Genesis 3:17-19), He also provided the Sabbath so that man could rest. On that day they were not to have to struggle. The Pharisees took that day of rest and added all sorts of conditions to it so that it became a burden, an actual punishment. People could not do good deeds for themselves or others on the Sabbath because they called those acts “work.” So when the disciples of Jesus picked heads of grain for food, they called that work. When Jesus will heal a man on the Sabbath, they accuse Him of working.
Jesus makes it clear what the purpose of the Sabbath was from the beginning. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”
Jesus also makes it clear who He is. The Pharisees acted as though they were the keepers of the Sabbath. Jesus made it clear that He was the Lord of the Sabbath.
Sometimes we hold on to religious standards and measures that are not based on God’s intentions. They have a grip on us. The best way to tell if a false view of religion has a grasp on you is that you find yourself more trying to please man, even religious men, over God. No man should have the grip on you that is reserved for God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.”
Jesus, let me be free from the grasp of men so that I may be gripped by your love.
