This week’s Gospel reading comes from Matthew chapters 12 & 13.
On Sunday Jalen and I addressed the topic of Faith in Our Families as part of our Grow in Faith sermon series. In that sermon I stated the following: “Everybody has faith…the question is faith in what?” This is the main question that Jesus addresses in Matthew 12.
The story begins with Jesus and his disciples picking heads of grain as they walk through a wheat field. If you’ve ever been in a wheat field you’ll know instantly how simple this is to do. You simply snap the head off with your hand as you walk along…you aren’t lifting, twisting, pulling, etc. Now the reason this had become an issue is this was being done on a Sabbath, and the Law of Moses did not allow working on the Sabbath day (Ex. 31:13-14, 35:2).
The big kicker here is how Pharisees interpreted “work.” You and I often do things around the house on a day off that we wouldn’t consider to be work, however the Pharisees had set themselves up as the ultimate interpreter of God’s word. They felt that they, and they alone had the right to enforce what work was or was not. Scripture did prohibit preparing food on the Sabbath (Ex. 16:22-30; 35:3), but Jewish people often had great feasts on the Sabbath where the food had been prepared the previous day. They created all of these very strict laws of interpretation as to what constituted as work or not. It even extended to medical issues, as can be seen in verses 10-14. The most extreme rule surrounding the Sabbath observance I have found surrounded eating eggs laid on a Sabbath. You shouldn’t do so because the chicken had to work to lay it. However, they said that you could eat the egg which had been laid on the Sabbath as long as you killed the chicken for Sabbath-breaking.
Do you see what has happened here? The Pharisees have put their faith in their ability to follow rules…rules that God never created. And they’re imposing the following of those rules as a judgement of righteousness upon others. The Pharisees had substituted their faith in God’s promised salvation for faith in their ability to follow strict legalistic self imposed rules. And Jesus’ response comes from an Old Testament reference: “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” (Mt. 12:7) The passage Jesus quotes is from Hosea 6:6. Jesus only quotes part of the verse, but I will share the whole verse: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” Notice that Jesus quotes a verse that is all about acknowledging God rather than external actions. This was the biggest sin of the Pharisees.
When we try to put our faith in ourselves and our own abilities rather than God’s promise of salvation in the person of Jesus, we become just like the Pharisees…looking really good, but dead on the inside (Mt. 23:27).
For teaching on other parts of Matthew 12 & 13, you can watch or listen to the following sermons on our website:
–Matt-
Living in the Word 