A misunderstanding...

"One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?'

Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.'" Mark 2:23,24,27&28 (NIV)

This story has really piqued my curiosity in the last week or so. It occurs to me this is one of the few places where we get to see behind the curtain. Jesus gives us a glimpse into God's motives for setting the Sabbath law.

The pharisees had come to a place where the written law was more important to them than God. They thought observance of the law in its own right was enough to grant access into the presence of God. But that was not God's intention at all.

In the Old Testament it is interesting that the law is given after the Isralites were rescued from Egypt. God had already redeemed them. He gave them the law, not to save them - but to show them how to live now that they were saved. He also gave them the sacrifical system because he understood they could never live up to the law. The principal sin of Old Testament Israel was not that it sinned, but that it turned to idols to make amends rather than trusting in God's provision. The pharisees avoided the mistake of idolatry - but they fell into the trap of trusting their own good works rather than God's provision.

And then along comes Jesus and tells them that not only is observance of the law insufficient, it is, in this case, misguided. God created the sabbath law not because he demanded it, but because he knew we needed it.