Dear Lord, we pray that you would
bless your word today. Bless it to our hearts and for
your glory. Teach us the greatness of our
Savior, and the greatness of your mercy, that we might honor
you and know who you are in our hearts, and believe you, and
find rest in our Savior. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Matthew chapter 12, the first
A few verses here, at least through verse 8, I want to try to cover
this with you today. I've entitled this message, The
Lord of the Sabbath. Now, throughout Scripture, there
are many examples given of the Sabbath. God commanded in the
Ten Commandments that men keep the Sabbath. In fact, it's a
commandment He gave to the nation of Israel. He never gave that
commandment to all men, He only gave it to that nation. And He
gave it in the Ten Commandments. In the law, there's two places
it's written in the law. If you want to turn to Exodus
chapter 20, I'll read that one with you there, so you can see
this. There are many people today who
hold the position that believers are still under the law. And
there are some of those who even hold that they are under the
law of the Sabbath that God gave to the Israelites. We're going
to look at that today. But look at Exodus chapter 20.
And here you find in the first beginning verses the Ten Commandments. But look over at verse 8. Remember,
God says to the Israelites, He said, remember the Sabbath day
to keep it holy. To keep it holy means to keep
it, not doing your own pleasure, but doing the work, the service
of God and you resting. Six days shalt thou labor 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. Why did God bless in the Hallowed?
Because in the beginning, God created the world in six days,
and He ceased from His working on the seventh day, because His
work was finished, and He gave the Sabbath to Israel to remember
that God completed His work in six days and rested on the seventh.
And they were to keep it, they themselves resting, remembering
what God had done, and thinking about that, and not doing any
work on that day. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 5. The same law is given, but there's
an addition here. He says in verse 13, I'm sorry,
verse 12, he says, In verse 12 of Deuteronomy 5,
keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it as the Lord thy God has commanded
thee. Six days thou shalt labor 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, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy
stranger that is within thy gates, that thy manservant and thy maidservant
may rest as well as thou. And remember, that thou wast
a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought
thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm.
Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day."
Deuteronomy, the name Deuteronomy means the second giving of the
law. The people who heard the law at this time were those who
had lived out beyond the 40 years of the wilderness. In which God
had destroyed all those who had sinned, who didn't believe God.
And God said, as they had sinned and not believing God, that He
would bring them into the land of Canaan. That that generation
would die. And their children, 20 years
old and younger, would go into the land of Canaan. And Deuteronomy
is given to those children. Now they are grown up. 40 years
later. And so here, in this verse, verse
15, God tells them that the reason God gave the Sabbath was so that
they could remember that they were delivered out of Egypt.
They were bondmen in Egypt, under the thumb of Pharaoh, under the
bondage of Egypt, and God brought them out. So, two things there. God gave the Sabbath day for
those two things. If you remember those, it helps
us. remembering this. And look at Deuteronomy chapter
12. I think it's Deuteronomy 12. And in verse 9, well, we probably should read
the context, but I'm just going to go ahead and read verse 9.
This is, again, Moses talking to Israel. I'm reading this verse
for a reason, and you'll see it. He says, "...for you are
not yet come to the rest, and to the inheritance which the
Lord your God giveth you." So in scripture, there are three
kinds of rests that are mentioned. Three kinds of rests. First of
all, God rested when he finished creating the heavens and the
earth. So that's the first rest that's mentioned. Secondly, God
commanded the rest of the Sabbath day to remember that He had finished
His work in six days and rested on the seventh. And also to remember
that God delivered Israel out of Egypt. And then the third
rest that's spoken of in Scripture is this one here. Where it says
that the land of Canaan, the promised land, was a land of
an inheritance and a rest that God would give to Israel. God
actually gave it to them. They entered Canaan. But then
there's a fourth rest that's mentioned in scripture. And that's
the rest that we need to understand. It really is the rest to which
all these other three rests pointed forward to. The rest of creation,
when God rested at the beginning of the world, when He finished
making the earth, that's called a rest. God rested, He finished
all of creation, finished all His works. God created the world
for His purpose. He did it by His work. And in
that work, He had finished the work of creation, and He rested
the seventh day, because that work was done. And He anticipated
what the fulfillment of His purpose would be in creation by resting
the seventh day because the fulfillment of His purpose for creation was
His redemption of His people. Then, later, when God promised
Israel they were going to come into a land, a land called Canaan.
A land that flows with milk and honey. They would come to this
land. God took care of this land. God
watered it. God took care of it. When they
came, there was stuff already grown. Huge clusters of grapes,
fig trees, and they didn't have to water it. God just watered
the land and took care of it. It was a land of plenty, a land
of rest. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. But God
specifically calls Canaan a land of rest. But now look over at
Psalm chapter 95. Psalm chapter 95. The land of
Canaan was given by promise to all of the nation of Israel. But there were those who came
out of Egypt who did not go into the land of Canaan. And the reason
they didn't go is because they sinned against God. And the sin,
the sin that God attributes to them, that the main reason they
didn't go in this sin was the sin of unbelief. When God told
them, now go into the land. And Moses chose out 12 men, one
for each tribe, to go and spy out the land. Seemed like a good
idea to him. He sent them in. And all these
men came back and ten of them said, we cannot go into this
land. The people of this land are huge. We're going to be swallowed
up by them. We're like grasshoppers in their
eyes. And Joshua and Caleb said, no, no, no, we can go in because
the Lord will fight for us. They are grasshoppers in our
eyes. And so they saw what God saw. And these other men in unbelief
saw themselves in the eyes of their enemies. And they saw themselves
small and puny and without strength. And so because of their unbelief,
God did not allow the nation of Israel to go into that land.
That nation, at least not the generation of that nation that
lived in those days. So he said, you're going to wander
in the wilderness so that there's a time of 40 years that would
expire. Beginning when you left Egypt
until this end of 40 years. All of you who would not believe
the Lord and enter into His rest that He promised to give you.
He brought you out of Egypt for crying out loud and you wouldn't
believe Him. All the miracles He did and how
He saved you out of Pharaoh's hand and brought you out. And
still in the hardness of your heart you would not believe Him.
would not trust in his salvation. So you're all going to die, except
your children will go in. And so that's exactly what happened.
Now, when they had all died, Moses himself had to die. He
went into the Mount Nebo, I think it was, and God showed him the
land of Canaan afar off, but told him, you are not going in
for the sin of the Israelites. And because he smote the rock
twice, that God had told him only to speak to that second
time. And so God had given Moses Joshua. Joshua was the captain. He chose Joshua and he said,
Joshua will lead the children of Israel into the land of Canaan.
And so after Moses died, Joshua took that nation, that generation
of people, and he went into the land of Canaan. And by mighty
conquest, he was the captain. God delivered all of the inhabitants
of Canaan into Joshua's hand. And by Joshua's conquest, he
gave the inheritance of that land to Israel. So that they
inherited it. And they went in and they possessed
it. And it was a land of plenty. All that they needed was there.
And it was a land of rest because God took care of it. It was their
inheritance, the promised land. And God gave it to them. Now,
David came along much later. David, these men in Psalm, these
were far after they were in the land of Canaan in Psalm 95. But
notice what he says in Psalm 95. He says in verse 1, Oh come,
let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the
rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence
with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For
the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In His hands
are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is
His also, the sea is His, and He made it, and His hands formed
the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow
down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. He's our Creator,
He made us. We didn't make ourselves, verse
7, for He is our God, we are the people of His pasture, and
the sheep of His hen. Today, if you will hear His voice,
harden not your heart as in the provocation. He's referring back
to that time in the wilderness. In the day of temptation in the
wilderness when your fathers tempted me and proved me and
saw my works, or work. Forty years long was I agreed
with that, with this generation and said it is a people that
do err in their heart and they have not known my ways unto whom
I swear in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. And yet He says, today, if you
will hear His voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation. Psalm 95 is telling us, at this
time in history, after Joshua had brought Israel into Canaan,
after Joshua had died, and all the generation that initially
went there had died, several generations later, while David
is king, God says, through King David, through the prophet, He
says, Don't harden your hearts. There's a rest yet to be entered.
And that's the rest that we need to look at. Because that's the
rest that God's rest in creation, God's rest of the Sabbath in
the law, and God's rest in the land of Canaan all look forward
to. Now turn to Matthew chapter 12.
We want to look at this. Because at this time, Jesus had
just pronounced, "'Come unto me, all you who labor and are
heavy laden, I will give you rest.'" I will give you rest. And verse 1, he says that at
that time, Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn,
and his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck the ears
of corn and to eat." Now, if you happen to notice in your
margin, a little later, well, I don't want to refer to that
later, but in Deuteronomy, I think it's 25, verse 23 or so, at the
end of the chapter, God says that if you're walking through,
if you're hungry, You can walk through another man's field and
you can pick the corn or the grain and you can eat it, but
you can't take a threshing instrument and reap it with that. Not a
threshing, but a reaping instrument. You can't put your sickle into
the standing grain and reap with an instrument, but you can pluck
it off and eat it because you're hungry. Okay, so there was a law that
allowed them to do this. So the disciples were going through
this field. It didn't belong to them. Jesus
actually went into the field, and his disciples were hungry,
and they took the grain in their hand, and they plucked it off,
and then they took their hand, it says in Luke 6, and they rubbed
it together, and then they were eating the grain. This was all
according to the law that was allowed. And the Pharisees objected to
this. And they held Jesus responsible
for what the disciples were doing. They were His disciples. He should
have kept them in line. And they were claiming that He
didn't. Verse 2, But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to
Him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do
upon the sabbath day. Was it unlawful for them to walk
through this field on the Sabbath day? No. There was nothing wrong
with walking through a field. Was it unlawful for them to pick
the ears of corn, of the grain, and eat them, and rub them in
their hands? Not really. Not really, because a little
later on, Jesus says they were guiltless. But we're not sure
at this point, was this somehow an extension of the law? Or was
it just their traditions? The traditions of the Pharisees
went beyond the law in some cases. Now, in Deuteronomy, it also
says in chapter 6, I think, that you're not to add to the words
of this book. And that's exactly what the Pharisees
did. They added to it. Why? Why did they add to it?
Well, they added to it in order to put rules on men, so that
men would look at them as the ones through whom God spoke.
They would have to go to them to find out if they were keeping
God's word. They would look to these men
as the oracles of God, and they would give honor to them. These
men could then judge them, and they would have to give honor
to them for being able to judge them. And basically, the Pharisees
put themselves in the position of the law givers, so that people
would have to honor them as the law giver and the judge. They
irrigated themselves to the level of God. The ones who gave the
law. It was a very arrogant thing
to do, a proud thing to do, a wicked thing to do. But they did this
by what's called their traditions. And they themselves didn't keep
the law. Many cases are given throughout
scripture, and we're going to read one in a minute here. So
this is a setting. Pharisees are putting a tighter
enforcement of rules on the disciples than the law actually did. And
here they accuse Jesus. Why don't you keep your disciples
in line? They're doing what is unlawful
on the Sabbath day. And then in verse 3 of chapter
12, Jesus speaks, but he said to them, he said to these Pharisees,
have you not read what David did when he was hungry, or would
you say hungry, and they that were with him? So David was hungry
and we just read it in 1 Samuel 21 verses 1 through 6. He was
hungry. His men with him were hungry.
He was running from King Saul. It was an unjust persecution.
He was doing the Lord's will. God had anointed David to be
the king of Israel. God said of David, he's a man
after my own heart. He's going to rule over my people,
Israel. He had delivered the whole nation,
the whole army from Goliath. He was a man God was with. And
so what he was doing was right in the eyes of the Lord. And
so Jesus refers to what David did. He goes to the priest. What
a bold thing, isn't it? David goes to the priest. He's
on the run. He's got his men. His men are off somewhere else.
He's by himself. But his men are just close by. I don't know how far. And he
goes to the priest and he says, I need those five loaves. That's
showbread. And the priest says, but this
is only bread for the priests. But he says, you can have it
if certain conditions were met. And David says they are met,
and so the priest gave him those loaves. And he took them. And he and his men ate those
loaves. They ate the loaves of bread that were only supposed
to be eaten by the priests. And Jesus refers to that here.
Well, how do you know that what David did was right? Jesus refers
to it. Notice that there's a key principle
here in scripture. Why did God record the event
of David in scripture? Was it just because God tells
us the history of the nation and He happened to do this and
so He writes that down there and there's another part of the
history? No, not at all. It's much more significant. There
were thousands of years of history that God didn't record. But He
recorded specific events. Because those events served His
purpose to teach us about His own character. About who God
is. God teaches us who He is, but
He does so in our mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot
know God apart from Christ. And scripture reveals Christ,
but He does so in a way that it's through these men who lived
in the Old Testament. And the events that happened,
the words they said. So what God recorded in scripture
was no accident, it was on purpose. And it was designed to teach
us the nature, the character of God in Christ, our mediator.
Jesus told the Pharisees, search the scriptures, for in them you
think you have eternal life, but they are they which testify
of me, in John 5, 39. And then Luke 24, and many other
places, the law and the prophets all spoke of Christ. Jesus himself
said, in the volume of the book, it is written of me to do thy
will, O God. And so David was no accident. This persecution of Saul was
no accident. His men with him were mentioned
here. That was no accident. His communication with the Himalayan
priest was no accident. It was no accident that he asked
for the showbread and that the priest gave him the showbread.
It was all there to teach us something. And Jesus teaches
us Right here, plainly, to the Pharisees, He teaches us something
very simple, which is this. That God delights in mercy, and
it is His will to show mercy, and that His main purpose of
creating the world and all these other things, which is to show
mercy to His people, to His glory, by Christ, That purpose trumps,
it supersedes the importance of all else. So that the ceremonies
of the law were all subservient to that purpose. The keeping
of the Sabbath itself was subservient to that purpose, because even
in the command to keep the Sabbath, it was done in order that Israel
might remember, first, what God did in creation, and how He rested
when His works were all done, and second, What God did in delivering
Israel from Egypt by the redemption blood. So He was teaching in
the Sabbath itself that Christ would finish the work of redeeming
His people. And they were to rest in that.
And now He speaks here of David and this event here. And David
is hungry. His men are hungry. Hey, this
bread is only ceremonial bread. It's just pointing to something
else much more important. Of course, David, you can have
it. God is merciful. He's compassionate. He wouldn't
make David go about his business and do his work, which David
was doing, and then leave him without the nourishment he needed
for his body. I mean, it's like you're driving
to church and you see some guy there who's got a flat tire on
the roadside. And you say, well, I can't stop
and work on the Sabbath day. We wouldn't dare work on the
Sabbath day and here's this poor guy with a flat tire. That makes
no sense. It's not showing him mercy, is
it? It just makes no sense at all. Of course we help people
on the Sabbath day. We do work in order to help them. It would make no sense otherwise.
And we're not even talking about the law of the Sabbath for ourselves
here, but for the disciples and for Jesus. Now, the Lord Jesus
never broke the law of the Sabbath. He never broke any of the commandments
of God. He kept all the law. And his
disciples weren't breaking the law here in this case either.
And Jesus uses this example of David. And I want to get back
to this example, but before I do, I want to go on to the next one.
Because he also says this. So the first thing I want you
to take away from this first example of David is that God
used David and events in Scripture for a purpose. And that purpose
is to teach His mercy in Christ to sinners and thereby glorify
Himself. And show the importance of what's
really important to God. And there's another thing here,
and here we're going to see it in a minute, about the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because David and his men are
a parallel to Christ and his disciples. I'm going to look
at that. But first, let's go on to the next level. He says
here... in verse 5. Or, not only that, and the argument
that Jesus makes in the first one to the Pharisees is, look,
David was hungry, his men were hungry. Yes, there was a ceremony
that the bread was for the priest only, but because they were hungry,
God mercifully gave them by the consent of the priest. His Word
governed whether David could have the bread, and the priest
gave him the bread. So God was validating the validity
of David eating that bread with his men by the priest doing that.
And God recorded it in the Scripture, and Jesus used it to show the
Pharisees that it was permissible. It was permissible for His people
to eat this bread, and also for the disciples to eat from the
field and rub the grain together because they were hungry. They
were about His business. If David And his men could eat
the showbread offered to God, which was designed for the priest
only. How much more Christ and his disciples, which were on
a much higher mission than David was, and a much higher mission
than David's men were, The disciples were bringing the gospel of the
kingdom of God. How much greater then is their
justification for his disciples eating from this field? And so
the next example here, verse 5. Or have you not read in the
law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane
the Sabbath and are blameless? So here's another example. What
is this he's referring to? Well, on the Sabbath day, in
my margin, it refers to Numbers 28.9. I'm just going to read
that to you. You can go there if you like.
But in Numbers 28.9, you understand immediately what he's referring
to. Because the priest had work to do on the Sabbath day. And here we have it. Verse 9
of Numbers. He says, "...on the Sabbath day,
two lambs of the first year without spot and two tenths deals of
flour for a meat offering and mingled with oil and the drink
offering thereof." So this is what they were offering. They
were supposed to offer two lambs and two tenths deals of flour
for all this stuff. A meat offering and a drink offering.
Obviously what's going on here? The priests in the temple are
doing the service of the temple. You see that? And what day is
it? On the Sabbath day. God specifically
calls out things they were supposed to do. But wait a minute, the
Sabbath says they're supposed to rest and not do any work.
Your manservant, your maidservant, your ox, your cattle, everybody's
supposed to rest. Yes, but the law also says that
the priests are supposed to be doing the service in the temple.
Okay, well Jesus refers to that. He tells the Pharisees, look.
In the law, the priests go about the service of God on the Sabbath
day and are blameless. Now that must have puzzled the
priest. Obviously the priest were always working in the temple.
So how do you reconcile those? Well, you reconcile it by this. What made it valid for the priest
to do this work? Obviously the law did. But what
made their work of value? What was it that gave importance
to their work? Well, there's this principle,
and it's referred to in Matthew chapter 23, if you want to look
there. And I'm going to read a few verses here and then comment
on them. He says in Matthew 23, 16, Jesus again is pronouncing
woe on the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. And He's unraveling
and exposing why what they did was so bad. He says, Woe unto
you, in verse 16 of Matthew 23. Woe unto you, you blind guides. Which say, whosoever shall swear
by the temple, it is nothing. But whosoever shall swear by
the gold of the temple, he's a debtor. So what Jesus is saying
here is that the Pharisees would say, it's okay to take an oath
and swear by the temple. If you break your oath, it's
okay. No one's gonna hold you accountable for that. But if
you swear by the gold that's offered in the temple, And you
break your oath, dude, you are still a debtor. You got to pay
up. You can't get out of that. Then there was a motive for them
doing this way. Number one, it allowed them to make all sorts
of wild claims and not keep their word. Ah, I swear by the temple. And then later on, ah, it's just
the temple. It's okay. Because remember we said that
it's okay if you swear by the temple. It's nothing. I didn't
swear by the gold of the temple. But if you, you, you sir, you
came into the temple, you swore by the gold of the temple, now
pay up. Well, what were the Pharisees
doing? They were the rulers. They were the ones in the temple
who received benefits from what was given and offered in the
temple. So, giving the gold and making them a debtor to that
gold meant that their That they were receiving compensation from
it. They were basically designing the compensation to themselves
under the guise of keeping this emphasis on not swearing by the
gold. And they say the same thing about
the gift. Look at verse 18. Whosoever shall swear by the
altar, it's nothing. But whosoever swears by the gift that is upon
it, he is guilty. And Jesus says, you fools and
blind. It's so obvious. It's like the conniving stupidity
of corruption that's so obvious in our world today. Isn't it? I can't believe we're even having
this conversation. ignorant. Anyway, he says, "...you
fools and blind, for whether is greater the gift or the altar
that sanctifyeth the gift, whosoever therefore shall swear by the
altar sweareth by it and by all things thereon." If you swear
by the altar, you're swearing by all the sacrifices offered
on that altar. You numbskulls! And then verse
21, And whosoever shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it,
and by him that dwelleth therein. Okay, so now we understand here. Jesus tells the Pharisees in
Matthew 12 that if the priests were going about the service
of the temple on the Sabbath day, they were blameless. Because
why is the temple important? It's the temple that made their
service important. And why was it important? Because
the temple is the dwelling place of God. At least in the ceremonial
sense. The temple was where God dwelt. It's where he met with his people.
It's where he made himself known to his people. And how did he
make himself known to his people there? In all of the service
of the temple. There was the candle, and the
bread, and the table, and there was the inner sanctuary, the
Holy of Holies, and on it where the mercy seat was, and the blood
was offered. That's where God's glory was
revealed. God made himself known in the
reconciliation of sinners to himself. This is where God dwells. This is where God is known and
seen. That's why it's important. That's
why the temple sanctifies the gold. That's why the altar sanctifies
the offering, the gift. Because Christ is being taught
in the temple. Remember what Jesus said in John
chapter 2. Destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise
it up." And then it says immediately after that, "...but he spoke
of the temple of his body." The Lord Jesus Christ is the temple,
His body is the temple of God. God dwells in the Lord Jesus
Christ, in His fullness. Remember Colossians 2, 9 and
10? In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In John
1, 14. The Word was made flesh and tabernacled
amongst us. It's Christ who is the temple.
He's the one in whom God dwells. And it's in Christ that we see
God and know God. And He dwells with us in His
atoning work, offering Himself to God. That's why the temple
sanctifies the gold. And that's why the priests were
blameless on the Sabbath day to do this work. Because the
purpose of God showing mercy to sinners, making himself known
in his glory and showing mercy to sinners, pointing forward
to Christ, was so much more important than not doing work on that day
that it made them blameless. So, with these two things, He
teaches the Pharisees. That's the argument. That's why
He sets up the next verse. Look what it says in Matthew
12, verse 6. Now, they would naturally say,
when He gave this example, Yeah, but the priests were in the temple
doing the service of the temple. Your disciples are out here in
the field. Where's the temple? What did Jesus say in verse 6?
But I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the
temple. It's the Lord, the Lord of glory
in the body of a man. The temple of God is among men. The tabernacle of God is among
men. Man, they were so ignorant and blind. And here, when he
tells it to them, don't you feel just the tingling of the awesome,
amazingness of what is happening here? And he's referring to this
himself. I'm the temple, and these men
are my ministers, my apostles. They're being sent to proclaim
the kingdom of God. How the king of glory is going
to Bring His kingdom on earth. He's going to establish His kingdom
in triumphant victory over sin and death and the devil. And
send His gospel and gather His sheep and build His temple. And
dwell with men by His Spirit in their hearts. And build His
church and the gates of hell won't prevail. That's the temple.
That's the kingdom that He's sending His disciples to proclaim.
It's at hand. He's coming. He's coming. So
they are going to the field. These men who are about their
master's work. The King of Glory. Not King David. The King of Glory is here. And
they are going about his work. And they are getting hungry.
Why not give them food from this field? They need it. Their bodies
need it. And Christ in his mercy and compassion
is giving them what they need. So they can carry about the work.
And then in verse 8 he says... And verse 7, if you had known
what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice you would
not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even
of the Sabbath day." Why is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
Son of Man, why is He Lord of the Sabbath day? Because He interprets
the Sabbath day. Because He gives the rest that
the Sabbath day pointed to. In fact, He is that rest the
Sabbath day pointed to. Remember David and his men? I
want to refer back to them for just a moment. David and his
men. They go there. They go to get the bread there
from the Himalayan priest. And they ask for the bread. David
is on a mission. But his mission is not the mission
Saul sent him. It's the mission God sent him.
Saul is persecuting David. Saul wants to destroy David.
David is fleeing from Saul. The Lord Jesus Christ is pursuing
the will of his father in these verses here. And the Pharisees
are persecuting his soul. They want to destroy him. But
David and his men go to the priest to eat the bread. The Lord Jesus
Christ and his disciples are in this field and the disciples
are eating the grain. Because they're hungry! And He
doesn't stop them. David and his men take the bread,
the show bread that was meant for the priests, and they eat
it. And so they're strengthened. Now what is this teaching us
about the Lord Jesus Christ? Well remember, when the Lord
Jesus Christ came to this earth, what did he came here to do?
The will of his father. And remember in John 4, 34, the
disciples come back after he's talking to the woman of Samaria,
and they say, Master, eat. And he says, Ah, I have meat
to eat that you know not of. And what meat was he talking
to? About? He was talking about doing the
will of his father. He says, For I, in fact, I'll
read this to you. In John 4.34, because I'm not
going to quote it correctly if I try to. He says, Jesus said,
"...my meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish
his work." There it is. You see that? The work. that
Jesus did, in the immediate context of John 4, is that he went to
this woman. And here's this woman coming
to the well, and she sees Jesus sitting on the well. There he
is, sitting on the well, tired from his journey, thirsty. And
he says the first thing to this woman, he says, Woman, give me
to drink. And then the whole account of
this woman and the exchange between Jesus and her. She never once
even thinks or offers him a drink of water. And yet he told her,
give me to drink. And at the end of it, he tells
his disciples, I have meat to eat that you know not of. What
is this teaching? It's teaching that the Lord Jesus
Christ eats and drinks by making himself the offering for his
people to eat and drink. In his work, He is eating and
drinking because He's doing His Father's will and He loves to
do it. And it satisfies His soul, but
it also satisfies Him to make Himself the meat and drink for
His people. And so when David, in the Old
Testament, asks Ahimelech, the priest, for the bread that was
meant for God, think of the Lord Jesus Christ taking that bread,
which is the will of God for him, and laying his life down
for his people, pouring out his soul, and in doing that, making
himself the bread of life for them. He offered himself to God
and that became our bread and our drink. Remember John 6? 33-35, 51, 53, and 54. Jesus
says, my flesh is meat indeed, my blood is drink indeed, and
I will give my flesh for the life of the world. And so in that historical account
with David, you see the men taking the bread and eating it, which
was meant for the priests. So we take the bread of life,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and we eat of Him. We believe Him, that
He's done for us all necessary to put away our sins and to bring
us to God and perfect us before God and to make us accepted and
favorable in God's eyes. to finish our work of redemption
and we believe Him and we rest in Him. We're laboring under
the load of sin, the fear of the wrath of God and our ignorance
and confusion because of our sin. We don't know God. We have
all these things going on. It weighs us down and Christ
says, come to me and eat. find your soul satisfied in me."
And so all this is seen here in chapter 12 of Matthew. And
so he speaks to these Pharisees. The Pharisees were nitpicking
about eating grain. What were they doing on this
day? It was a day to be kept holy to God. This shows you the
The amazing wickedness of their hypocrisy. What are they doing? The Pharisees in their heart
are plotting to murder the Son of God on the Sabbath day. And they're complaining about
grain being crunched up by these disciples in their hands and
eating it. It shows you the blindness of
the impenitent and deliberate unbelief of man's religion, that
we would stumble on the stumbling stone of Christ and not see what
He's done for our souls, that we're poor and needy and ruined
and lost and laboring under the load of our sin and the threat
of God's wrath. And the separation that we created
between us and God. And He comes and He takes all
that's required and He reconciles our souls to God. Takes away
our sin. Produces an everlasting righteousness
by His obedience to God in His death. And He gives that to us
and He says, come unto Me and take it. Take it and eat it. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Look to Him only. Don't do any work. Cease from your own works at
trying to make yourself acceptable to God. Look to Christ. God only
accepts what He has done and only accepts Him and He gives
all blessings in Him. Now remember, the land of Canaan
How did the Israelites come into that land? It was a promised
land. But it was a land they got by conquest. Joshua gave
it to them by what he did. He went in as the captain and
destroyed the enemies. And so our Lord Jesus Christ
did the same. It was a land of plenty because in Christ all
spiritual blessings are given. Everything is given in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Remember what it says in Ephesians
1-3? God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. According as He's chosen us in
Him. Accordingly, according to those all spiritual blessings,
He's chosen us in Him. For what purpose? That we should
be holy and blameless before Him. In love, justified and accepted,
adopted, redeemed. All the blessings in Christ.
And we look to Him. We see that all the promises
of God in Him are yes and amen. And we say, Lord, that's my rest. That's my all. And in resting,
you know what we do? We do nothing to make ourselves
acceptable. We do nothing to save ourselves.
But in resting, you know what we do? We embrace the grace of
God. We embrace the fact that Christ
has not only done all things for us, but He has given us power. over sin, over the devil, over
the world, over our flesh, and we don't see it in the evidence
of our life, but we say, Lord, this is your promise and I'm
resting, I'm waiting for that day of redemption. Galatians
5.5, we through the Spirit do wait for the hope of righteousness
by faith. And we wait, and we rest, and
we look, and we hope, and we long, and we desire, and we're
happy to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He's
our rest. And so it was with this man who
had a withered hand. He commanded him. He stuck out
his hand. Christ healed him. He showed his mercy. And revealed
God's glory and the mercy that God has to sinners. That's why
the Sabbath was given. That's why the priest of Himel
gave David the bread. That's why Jesus allowed his
disciples to eat. That's why the priest could do
the service. It's all about God's glory in Christ. What a mercy,
what a mercy that God would give us His rest in Christ. Let's
pray. Father, thank you for this rest
in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that He is our Sabbath
day. He's the one who fulfilled it.
He explains it. He gives it to us. He accomplished
the will of God and He sat down because it was all done. And
we rest in Him. Lord, help us to enter this rest.
Help us not to harden our hearts in unbelief as those Israelites
of old would refuse to go into the land of God's rest. Help
us to see that it's all in Christ. And come to Him. And embrace
Him. And to lay down our lives in
happy service and love to Him who first loved us. In Jesus'
name we pray. Amen.