Luke 6:1-12
The sabbath day was the seventh day of the week, which we call Saturday. One sabbath day Jesus and the disciples walked by a field of ripe grain; the grain is here called “corn,” but that word long ago meant any grain; it may have been wheat or barley, as the disciples picked some and rubbed it in their hands to take off the chaff, and ate them as you may have done in a harvest time.
The people then were free to pick a small amount from thier neighbor’s fields, but the Pharisees saw what the disciples did and said they were wrong to do that on the sabbath day. The law of God to Israel was that no work should be done on the sabbath, and the leaders had made their own laws as to what was work.
Jesus answered them with a story from the Scriptures of what David once did: the men thought highly of David, and Jesus asked them,
“Have ye not read what David did, when ... . hungered... how he went into the house of God, and did take and eat of the showbread, and gave also to those with him?” 1 Samuel 21:6.
The “showbread” was the bread put in the house of God, fresh each Sabbath, and the old bread could be eaten by the priests, but by no one else (Lev. 24:5-9). So it was not lawful for David to take the bread. But David was the anointed of God to be king, but King Saul was trying to kill him; so when he and his men were hungry they were kept alive by the holy bread.
Jesus was the Anointed by God, greater than David, all belonged to Him, yet people did not provide for Him and those with Him. If the Anointed One was not honored, the laws had no force or use. He told the men that He was Lord, or Master, also of the sabbath; so His disciples could take the grain for food on that day.
Another sabbath day Jesus was teaching the people in the synagogue, and there was a man with his right hand so withered that all could notice it, and the Pharisees, who said the disciples were wrong to take the grain on the sabbath, began to watch to see if Jesus would heal the man’s hand, so they could accuse Him of breaking the sabbath.
Jesus knew their thoughts against. Him, and He told the man with the withered hand to stand up before the people where all could see his need. then He asked the question, “Is it laul on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy?”
Jesus then told the man to stretch forth his hand; and as the man did so, his deformed hand became perfect as his other hand.
To see the Lord Jesus do this mircle by the power of His word, should have shown those men Who He was. But they still thought more of the koi of the sabbath day, than of the power of God, which only could do so wonderful a cure.
ML 01/28/1945