GOSPEL MEDITATION # 179
Mark 2: 23-28
Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath
- Find a quiet place without distractions.
- Be comfortably alert, still, and at peace.
- Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer.
- Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
- Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
- From memory, determine the central points.
- Sabbath, the 7th day, God rested or ceased His creating work. Rules abounded around it and created impossible situation for common people.
- The legalists must have been tracking Jesus and accused Him of breaking Sabbath law when He and His disciples ‘gleaned’ food from the fields that were purposefully left for the poor.
- The Pharisees did not care if the people went hungry; their concern was breaking the Sabbath law and gleaning of the wheat was considered work.
- Religious people love law keeping; makes us feel good while ignoring heart felt worship and love for God and others.
- And we are all tending to this; faith and love are so much more intangible. Rules and more rules is the way of the world.
- Jesus was not promoting lawlessness; rather His intent was to teach mercy and human kindness.
- David and his followers were desperately hungry when they came across the old Tabernacle and there on the table was the Bread of the Presence. 2 rows, each loaves per row, directed in the Torah to be baked each Sabbath, new replacing the old.
- The old six would be thrown out and David and his men seized 6 loaves and ate them. The story in 1 Samuel 21 was know to all. Sabbath laws were heartless and damaging to humans.
- Jesus used the historical example as if it were intended to be prophetic and dramatized the fact that He was in fact Lord of the Sabbath.