Smoodock's Blog

According to my previous study, the Sabbath, although the name given the 7th day of the week, isn’t a day at all; the day is symbolic of a greater truth. The Sabbath is our rest, and resting from our daily labors is symbolic of a greater Rest. The Sabbath isn’t an intermission or a vacation. Instead, it is a way of life. We rest from our labors to be righteous and rest in the righteousness of Christ. He is our Rest, our Sabbath, our Righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6; 33:16; 1 Corinthians 1:30).

Many Christians have changed the ‘day’ to the first day in honor of the resurrection, but, if, indeed, the day, itself, is important, we have no authority to do such a thing, and the act, itself, takes away from the symbolic nature of the day, which is supposed to point to our rest. Thus, the name is also changed from Sabbath, and we call the day the Lord’s Day. Nevertheless, the logic is contradictory. If Jesus is the Lord of a day of the week, does this imply he is not the Lord of the other six days? If we agree that he is Lord of the whole week, how is he especially Lord of the first day, and how would we call this a day of rest?

It was the Sabbath day, and Jesus was walking through the fields with his disciples (Matthew 12:1). Notice that the text says the disciples were hungry, so they began plucking ears of corn to eat. Luke tells us they rubbed the ears together in order to eat the grain. The corn mentioned here isn’t our Indian corn but wheat stalks, and the grain is obtained by rubbing the heads of the stalks in one’s hands and blowing away the chaff.

At first, one may believe the disciples were doing this to satisfy their morning hunger, but this isn’t so. Luke tells us that this was done on the “second Sabbath after the first” (Luke 6:1). What could this mean? The fact that the disciples were plucking grain in the fields tells us this was a harvest season, either spring or fall. The Sabbaths in Luke’s narrative line up with the Sabbaths of the seventh month or during the fall season, where four annual Sabbaths occur. This being so, the “second Sabbath after the first” would mean that two Sabbaths occurred that week. The fact that the disciples were hungry indicates the first Sabbath that week was the Day of Atonement, the day of national fasting and mourning. The disciples’ hunger implies the two Sabbaths came back-to-back that year, so the Day of Atonement, the fast day, came on what we call Friday and the second Sabbath, of course, was the weekly Sabbath or Saturday.

When the Pharisees saw what Jesus’ disciples were doing, they objected, saying it was unlawful. The Pharisees had always labored to be righteous, so their obedience to the law was to the letter. The disciples were plucking/harvesting grain and this was labor that shouldn’t be done on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:3).

Jesus, however, disagreed with their approach to the Law. Indeed, the Day of Atonement was a National Day of Mourning, but the Sabbath rest was a day of feasting and joy. How could one fulfill its purpose by continuing to mourn for their sins by fasting? Thus, something must be done if one were to fulfill the purpose of each day. The disciples, therefore, were doing that and were blameless (Matthew 12:3). How so? Jesus explained that there were exceptions to the Law, and one exception was what David did when his men were hungry, and he asked the high priest for food for their journey (Matthew 12:4).

The logic behind Jesus’ statement is that David was King, and he made himself Lord of the things of the Temple. The bread was hallowed bread, meant only for the priests’ use, but he gave it to his men to eat, because they were in need, due to hunger (1 Samuel 21:3-6).

Jesus also gave a second witness to his argument by pointing to what the priests do every Sabbath. They slaughter and sacrifice animals, which implies a great deal of work. Yet they are blameless (Matthew 12:5), because they are also doing what the Lord commands, as that pertains to their office as priests. In other words, the Law is still obeyed in the spirit, albeit not in the letter. Thus, the authorities should have understood that these two witnesses in the scriptures logically upheld Jesus’ reasoning that his disciples were blameless in what they were doing.

Jesus, thus, proved that, if David was lord over what the Temple required, and the priests were blameless in breaking the Sabbath in the literal sense in order to serve the needs of the Temple, then the Messiah, David’s Son, being Lord over the things of the Temple was also Lord over the Sabbath, since its laws bowed to the greater laws of the Temple service (Matthew 12:6-8).