SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/9/2022 8:09 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-4
“The Incident”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 12:1
Message of the
verse: “1
At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath through the grainfields, and His
disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.”
As we look at this verse which tells us that Jesus
and His disciples went through the grainfields was itself a violation of Jewish
tradition, but not of Scripture. We see
that the reason that they went through the grainfields was because they were
hungry, and not there to harvest the grain, as they were passing through to
find food to fill their hungry stomachs.
It is felt that because they were only eating grain that was ripened,
that this was probably March or April when grain normally ripened in the Jordan
Valley, so this was near to Passover.
There were very few roads like we
have today, and people traveled on wide paths that went from town to town and
passed through many pastures and grainfields.
MacArthur writes “As travelers walked along, they passed within an arm’s
length of the crops on either side. Inns
were rare even in small towns and villages and were nonexistent between
them If a traveler did not take enough
food with him or found his trip extended for some reason, he had to live off
the land. The Lord recognized such need
in a provision of the Mosaic law: ‘When
you enter your neighbors vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are fully
satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. When you enter your neighbor’s standing
grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a
sickle in your neighbor’s standing grain’ (Deut. 23:24:25).”
So we can see that the disciples
were not reaping on the Sabbath, which was what was forbidden by Mosaic law as
seen in Exodus 34:21, but they were simply satisfying their hunger according to
the provision of Deuteronomy 23. We saw
some of the things in our last SD that was a part of the Rabbinic tradition,
and that was nothing like what we have just read in Deuteronomy 23 and Exodus
34:21.
MacArthur concludes this section: “The disciples had left everything to follow
Jesus and had no source of income other than occasional gifts from their
families and fellow believers. When they
became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat, they were perfectly
within their scriptural and social rights.
They lived by faith, and the divine law of the land provided for just
such sustenance. Jesus did nothing to
discourage the disciples and probably joined them in eating the grain.”
Lord willing we will begin looking at what is called “The
Indictment” in our next SD.
1/9/2022 8:29 AM
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