The Sabbath for Man, by Casey Ferguson

In Mark 2:23-28 we read of a conflict between Jesus and a group of Pharisees. It was the Sabbath day, a legally enforced day of rest in that culture, and as Jesus and his disciples were passing through a grain field the men pulled off a few heads of grain because they were hungry. Seeing this, the Pharisees (religious leaders of the day) exclaimed to Jesus, “Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” (v. 24). Jesus answers their question with a story they would have known well.

Before he was king, David was often running for his life. On one of these occasions he had some men with him who were very hungry. In the temple there was a bowl of the bread the priests would eat as part of their religious ceremony. However, on this day David’s men needed to eat, and so he took the bread and fed it to his men.

In a society in which busyness is hailed as virtue and in which no day is so sacred as to let it pass sitting still, the idea of breaking a law essentially by grabbing a snack seems ludicrous. But in this first century society the law was that people rested on the Sabbath. Period. And Jesus being a Jew, he would have lived his life in accordance with this same law. This being the case, why did Jesus feel the need here to defend his disciples to the Pharisees?

‘And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath“‘ (2:27).

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees tells us he saw their priorities as being in the wrong order. For Jesus, people always come first. And  not only did Jesus say this two thousand years ago, he’s saying it to us today.

I don’t what is going on in your life but I do know that Jesus loves you so much, and he works to understand your pain. He’ll reach down from heaven to pick you up if you’ll let him, and he’ll defend you to the world, because from the very beginning he designed the world for you and not the other way around.