Look with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 12, and my text is going to be from verse 1 down to verse 8. Matthew 12, 1 to 8. And I want to speak with you about Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. Here it says, At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn, and his disciples were and hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day. There's two. And then verses 3 and 4, But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he was in hunger, and they that were with him, how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for the priests. Verse 5, have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? And then verses 6-8, But I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath day. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Here we see where the Pharisees continued to contradict our Lord Jesus Christ and His ministry that He came to accomplish on the earth for his people. This is the true spirit of Antichrist. Most people, when you say the word Antichrist, they're thinking of some person that's going to appear at the end of time, and everybody's going to recognize him as the Antichrist. But John said that many Antichrists are already gone out into the world, and here we see them manifested in these religious Pharisees. There are really only two spirits in the world. There's the Spirit of Christ, which is revealed in the hearts of those that He came and saved at the cross. And then all the rest are anti-Christ. There are really only two religions in the world. There is that which is of works, which is the religion of Cain, And there is that which is of Abel, which is of Christ, or by grace. You can take every religious denomination and put them in one of those two categories. And we see those two opposing spirits here in my text. You've got Christ with His disciples, leading them as their shepherd, who came and would lay down his life for their sin debt, except for that of Judas, who was the son of perdition. And then you've got the Pharisees that were religious, and the scribes, and yet were of works religion, and thereby of Antichrist. Jesus Christ. I know that I personally have experienced this sort of opposition over the 40 years that the Lord has enabled me to preach the gospel. When people do not agree with your doctrine of giving Christ all the glory, they're going to find every reason they can to nitpick and to accuse you and try to find fault with you. But they did that with our Lord. You know. And here it's over something relatively simple. The disciples were hungry. And so as they passed through a field, they would pick off pieces of corn, which was allowed by the law, and they were eating as they went. But now the Pharisees are saying, Ah, you can't do that, because you're harvesting grain on the Sabbath. So, In reality, there was nothing wrong with what they did, because even the law enabled them, in passing through a field, to glean whatever was in that field for their hunger, and it was never considered to be stealing or working, as these were accusing them. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. In fact, when you go back to the law in Deuteronomy chapter 23 and verse 24 and 25, you'll see that the law gave them the right to do what they did. Here it says in Deuteronomy 23, 25, When thou comest into thy neighbor's vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure, but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel. I will give you water." Verse 24 says you'll eat to your fill. So if you're hungry, you can pick grapes and eat them from your neighbor's vineyard. Just don't bring a vessel and start putting them in to carry off more than you need. Follow up. And then verse 25, when you come into the standing corn of thy neighbors, that's really what the disciples were doing here. Then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand, but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor's standing corn. You can eat what you're hungry to eat, but you can't take a sickle and start harvesting out of your neighbor's field. So even the law provided for those that might be hungry and poor as they passed through the fields. And those that had the fields were not to be greedy or accuse any that would eat of the grain that they had grown." Why? Because it was the Lord's. The Lord had given them that harvest. And so the Lord ordained that those that were needy should partake of even the fields of others. One lesson we do learn from this is that our Lord and his disciples were poor. Christ, who was rich in glory, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but condescended to become a man and take on him the form of a servant and to lay down his life in order to save his people. This is the picture we have here of Christ. who impoverished himself and drew to himself poor sinners and yet is providing for their daily need. Therefore the farmers, when they had planted their fields, and God had given them abundance, They were commanded not to completely harvest their crops, but to leave a little behind for the sake of travelers and the poor. That's evidence of God's mercy. You remember the story of Ruth and Boaz, how that this is how the Lord purposed that Ruth should be sustained in the field of Boaz. And it's a picture of how Christ draws sinners to himself as the daily bread and provides for them through his abundance. You remember in my last message, in Matthew 11, 28-30, how the Lord had commanded those that were heavy laden and labored, that they should come to Him and find what? Rest. That word rest means Sabbath. And he said, My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Oh, to be yoked to Christ, and to know that He is our Sabbath rest. You know. What a contrast between Christ, our Sabbath rest, and religion that takes all kinds of heavy burdens and yokes and puts them on people and makes slaves of them. That's what we see here of the Pharisees. Since the Lord has delivered us and brought us to Himself, we're not that far removed to remember what it was like to live under the bondage of religion, with all the do's and don'ts and all of the legalism that was imposed upon us, and it was never enough. There was always something more you had to be doing, and it was a yoke that was too heavy to bear. Yes. Yes. Here in my text in Matthew 12, verse 1, it says simply that the disciples began to pluck the heads of corn because they were hungry. But oh, now the eyes of the religious leaders looked on them and accused them of reaping, of threshing, of winnowing, and of preparing food. Those were the four things that these religious leaders accused them of violating the Sabbath. All in one mouthful. Did you? Uh uh. These Jewish religious leaders, these rabbis, had such a system of rules and regulations that they added to the scriptures, and that's what they called the law. It wasn't what God had said, but how they had misinterpreted the law. Ancient rabbis that were there in Christ's day, they taught that on the Sabbath day a man could not carry something in his right hand or in his left hand across his chest or on his shoulder, but he could carry something on the back of his hand or with his foot or elbow or in the ear or on the hair and the hem of the shirt or in his shoe or sandal. In other words, it couldn't be too heavy a load. And even among the rabbis, there were different schools of teaching. They didn't even agree with each other. But the point is that all of these were burdens that they themselves could not bear, and yet they imposed them on those that were their followers. And so in verse 2 of Matthew 12 of my text, They brought this to the attention of our Lord. They said, look or behold, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Such was their blindness that here they were accusing the very Creator of the universe who had come in the flesh to save His people. They were accusing Him even of wrongdoing by saying that he permitted his disciples to do what they did. Now we know that our Lord Jesus was the perfect Savior, the perfect Substitute. And He never, in any instance, ever violated one of God's commands or approved His disciples in violating any one of God's commands. But He often would break man's legalistic additions to the law and deliberately did so in order to show their error. And just like any that are still in their false religion, they work hard at supervising and accusing others that the Lord has delivered, and will always seek to find fault with them, because they're not bound to the Lord. The Pharisees had no other foundation for their rules and regulations than what they themselves had imposed on men. But our Lord, you'll notice here in verses 3 through 8, goes back to the Scriptures because He is the Word. And he's the subject of the scriptures, but he goes back to a story in David's life to show that what the disciples were doing was in accord with the law. Jesus Christ. That's why he says in verse 3 of Matthew 12, 12 Have ye not read, what David did when he was unhungered, and they that were with him." So he's showing himself to be as a type of David. And those that followed David, his disciples following him. And how when he was hungered, he went in and partook of the bread off the showbread, verse 4, off the table, which was typically only for the priests. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Now what he's referring to, as it is written, is back in 1 Samuel chapter 21. And this was during the time when David was being pursued by Saul. And in verse 1 it says, to Abimelech, or Ahimelech, the priest. And Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone and no man with thee? And David said unto Ahimelech, the priest, The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know anything of the business whereabout I send thee, and what I have commanded thee, and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place. Face number one. For more. 3 Now therefore what is under thine hand? Give me five loaves of bread in mine hand, or what there is present. And the priest answered David and said, There is no common bread under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread. If the young men have kept themselves at least from women, and David answered the priest and said unto him of a truth, women have been kept from us about these three days since I came out, and the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel. So the priest gave him hollowed bread, For there was no bread there but the shewbread that was taken from before the LORD to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away. So, David. Okay. So David was requesting to eat bread off of that table of shewbread that was in the tabernacle at that time. And that it would have been on the Sabbath, because verse 6 says, that it was at a time when that bread had been removed. It had been taken from before the Lord. It says to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away. All of that exchange took place on the Sabbath day. They took away the old and they put in the new. The So you can see how our Lord took this incident from the Scriptures and compared it to his own with his disciples. It wasn't that they were out of rebellion going in and violating the law on the Sabbath day, but it was out of need and therefore not to be blamed, just like with David. So coming back here to my text in Matthew 12, It wasn't only the example of David providing for the hunger of his men that were with him from off the table of showbread, but our Lord in verse 5 shows that even they, the priests, were violating, by their standard, were violating the Sabbath every time they went to work in the temple on the Sabbath day. He says that in verse five. Or have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? In other words, they were working, there was no rest, and yet they were not blamed for working on the Sabbath. David. The temple ritual always involved work. Think about the work that the priests had to do even on the Sabbath day, starting the fires or slaying animals and preparing those animals to be sacrificed, even lifting them up on the altar and all kinds of other things. This was work and it was actually doubled on the Sabbath day because the Sabbath had more offerings than any other day of the week. I often tell people that if Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, like most people say it should be, then the preacher is the most guilty, because that's his busiest day when he has his most work in preaching and ministering and traveling and doing all these things. There's no rest for a preacher on Sunday if that were a Sabbath day, and it's not. That's where the Lord says here in verse 6, bringing the attention to Himself. I said to you that in this place is one greater than the temple. There's one greater than the Sabbath, and that is the Lord himself who is our Sabbath. We rest in him. You see? When he says one greater than the temple, that means all of those sacrifices that were being offered. And even the priests that stood there offering those sacrifices, they were representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ who was to come and lay down His life in order that He might redeem and deliver a people from under the bondage of the law and truly give them rest. Jesus. Here in verse 7 is where our Lord truly shows the blindness of these religious leaders when he says, if ye had known what this meaneth. These were men that boasted of being theologians and educators from the Scriptures, and yet the Lord condemns them here for their ignorance. Here he says, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. If you had known that you would not have condemned the guiltless. So here we see not only that the purpose of the law, when the Lord established that law to provide for the needy, it was that they might know he's a merciful God. But secondly here, He shows His authority as God in the flesh, when He says here that He is Lord. You see that in verse 8? He is Lord even of the Sabbath. The Sabbath serves Him. It's not Him serving the Sabbath. How was our Lord greater than the Sabbath, or greater than the temple, in verse 6? Well, those were but types. in pictures, but he is the fulfillment. And it's by his work, his coming, his doing, his dying, his sacrifice, that his people are saved. Our Lord is greater than the temple. In Christ's day, they were admiring the temple and the beauty of it, and yet it had been given as a type and picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is to be admired The temple was a place of sacrifice and service, of offering up of animals, but none of that could put away sin. Here is one greater than the temple, that all of those sacrifices represented And He came and laid down His life that by His death, God the Father should justify once for all that people for whom He came. You see why He's greater than the temple? The temple was a place of worship, and yet it was there as a type and picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is to be worshiped. above men's rules and regulations. He is the one that approves and receives sinners that he came to save. I'm thankful that He is the Lord of the Sabbath and that in Him we find all the rest that we need for our acceptance before God and that none of man's traditions or rules or regulations could ever take that away from us. We'll stop there for now and Lord willing, pick up on the next part with the healing of a lame man on the Sabbath day and how the Lord continues to confront the Pharisees over this matter. Joshua, to God be all the glory and honor, my dear brother, because of the beautiful, once again, a time when the Lord took him to my heart. This is very mysterious. Even myself, I was not understanding verse number five of Matthew's chapter 12, where it was saying, Have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? To my side, I was knowing that that what they were doing in sacrificing, it was working, it was profaning. But for sure, more grace, more grace is needed and Christ to continue increasing in us as we are increasing because day by day Christ is showing mercy to us so that we see Christ