July 13th, 2025: Matthew 12:1-8 | The Lord of the Sabbath

In Hebrew, it is Shabbat or Shabbos. It means to rest, to cease. The purpose of the sabbath is twofold.  

1. Reverence for the Creator and the work only He can do:

   Genesis 2:3

   And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

2. A Blessing and Delight for His People:

   Isaiah 58:13-14

   If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:

   Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

   
   

Weekly, God’s people lived under a covenant to remember that God alone created the world and holds it together. It was a time when no work was to be done, as they remembered there is more to life than what can be seen.  \According to Isaiah, it was intended to be a delight and a joy.  Holy days created by God were sacred family times, a relief from hard labor, and times of worship and gratitude. Religious Jewish families still observe the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, Saturday. While it is traditional to call Sunday the sabbath in Christian culture, Sunday is the first day of the week, and the early church worshipped on that day because it is the day of the week that Jesus rose from the grave. While we should worship, delight, and take time to remember our creator by going to church, it is not a replacement of the Sabbath. The Sabbath command was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We rest in Christ continually, not weekly. We trust that the work He did to save us could only be done by Him. Our salvation rests on what He finished on the cross; the payment is complete. He is also our delight. Christ is our source of joy, relationship, and delight. The closer we draw to Him, the more we discover how wonderful He is.

Hebrews 4:9-11

 For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

• The pattern for this day of rest came from God Himself. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. (Genesis 2: 2-3).

•  God reminded His people of the covenant nature of the Sabbath.  And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the Lord: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto the Lord: to day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 16: 22-30).

• The importance of the Sabbath was declared in its inclusion in the Ten Commandments.

   Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11).

  
  

By the time Jesus came to earth,  Jewish tradition had lost the true meaning of the sabbath and the overcomplication of the observance of the day made it a painful burden instead of a delight.  They had added  so many rules about the Sabbath that they had forgotten the intent. It became about earning favor by human perfection instead of resting and enjoying the Creator.  

At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.

Christ could have avoided ministry on the Sabbath, if His goal was to appease. His goal was to fulfill the will and intent of His Father, which set Him perpetually in conflict with religious authority. The scriptures record at least seven times that Jesus was confronted by religious leaders for performing miracles on the Sabbath day. In this account, He is walking through a field and his disciples are grabbing grain to eat. Pharisees, who were constantly searching for reasons to find fault with Jesus, accuse Him of harvesting food (working) on the sabbath. Their reasoning, He is disqualified because He has sinned by breaking the Sabbath law.  First, read carefully!  His disciples were plucking ears of corn to eat.  Secondly, God made provision for the poor and hungry to be fed in the old testament by allowing them to glean from the corners of the fields.  It was not a sin to do good on the Sabbath.

But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?

 Guess who, by necessity, also worked on the Sabbath with God’s blessing? The priests in the temple.  What is shewbread (pronounced show-bread)? It was also called the bread of the Presence; twelve loaves of bread, baked fresh every Sabbath,  that were kept on a gold table in the tabernacle and later in the temple. 

And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake. And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the Lord. And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the Lord. Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be Aaron's and his sons'; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord made by fire by a perpetual statute. (Leviticus 27:5-9).

When David ran for his life, with an army of men, from the presence of King Saul, he brought them to the priest in desperation and hunger and asked for bread for his men to eat. Priestly tradition said that ONLY the sons of Aaron could eat this bread, but God said it was to be given to them. The law of God is never in conflict with the heart of God. This Shewbread -Bread of the Presence- represents Jesus. The one that sustains; the Bread of Life. This Bread/Jesus is available to everyone. It is distributed and recognized by the teachings of the law and prophets, but available through Christ to anyone seeking God. Why did the disciples want the corn… they were hungry!  They were not harvesting; they had been traveling with Jesus, and they needed food. Their actions were not a purposeful or flagrant disregard for the sabbath; they were taking part in the provision of God under the law.  

Why does Jesus mention the priests?  They worked double hard on the Sabbath, offering sacrifices, lifting, building fires, cleaning, etc. The longer the religious Pharisees talked the less they seemed to understand about the Sabbath. The Sabbath was not intended to be a burden; it was God’s blessing. Religious rules and restrictions created by man do not bring us closer to God, they teach us to rely on ourselves. The Pharisees are missing the point of the Sabbath completely.  Jesus told them. And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.(Mark 2:27-28).

But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.

The temple was a promise, every piece of it from timber to tassel testified to the person and purpose of the Messiah to come. The fulfillment of the temple was standing face to face with those who should have recognized Him best, but they were blinded. Traditions, superstitions, personal opinions, human preference, and a desire to control kept them from seeing God in the flesh. The human heart is deceitful; it is a mistake to put confidence in what we feel. Feelings are fickle. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.”  Jesus quotes from the book of Hosea For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. The theme of the book of Hosea is the pain that God experiences over the unfaithfulness and disobedience of the people He loves. The next verse says: But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me. (Hosea 6: 6-7).

The Pharisees miss the point of the Sabbath; in essence, they had exchanged the Son of God for a God they had created in their own image. There is one greater than the temple present.  He is the Lord even of the Sabbath.  Jesus is our Sabbath.  He is offering you delight, an opportunity to stop and recognize that the God of the Universe is in control and desires a real and committed relationship with you.  Salvation is a change to know the heart of God intimately, by entering into the covenant made possible through His Son.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30). We are safe in the presence of Jesus. 

So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 4:28).

Thank you for studying with us! God bless!