“Jesus and his disciples were walking through some wheat fields. His disciples were hungry and began picking and eating grains of wheat. 2 Some Pharisees noticed this and said to Jesus, “Why are your disciples picking grain on the Sabbath? They are not supposed to do that!” 3 Jesus answered: You surely must have read what David did when he and his followers were hungry. 7 Don’t you know what the Scriptures mean when they say, “Instead of offering sacrifices to me, I want you to be merciful to others?” If you knew what this means, you would not condemn these innocent disciples of mine.” - Matthew 12:1-3, 7 (CEV)
Observation
Man, I wrestling with this text.... So, let’s take things back to figuring out who God is and what God looks like.
In the book of Hebrews, the Bible says, “God is a consuming fire.” This basically means that God changes us. He changes the way we look and the way we think. There is nothing more powerful than Him, nothing more aggressive than Him and nothing more able to shape and bend to His will than God.
In Psalm 144:2. It says, “He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge.” So not only is God a consuming fire, but He is a refuge, a shield, a fortress and a castle. So not only does God change whatever He touches, but if we run to Him and run into Him, He is our protector, He is our defender and He is our provider. “I am your fortress. I am your shield. I am your protector.”
And then the last and most common picture that God is most painted with and the way that God has chosen to communicate Himself to us most consistently is with the term “Father.” So God is a consuming fire, God is a fortress, shield and provider, but He is most often in the Bible simply called Father. Now that’s a tough one. It’s tough because all of us, regardless of who you are, had imperfect men as fathers. When that happens, we begin to believe that God is like our earthly father. So if our earthly father didn’t have enough time for us, didn’t want to bother with us, abandoned us or didn’t care about us, then if we’re not careful, we’ll believe that God is like our earthly fathers. All earthly fathers are broken.
In Matthew 12:7 Jesus emphasized, “Instead of offering sacrifices to me, I want you to be merciful to others?” Is Matthew 12:1-7 talking about developing a genuine personal growing relationship with Jesus verses merely going through the actions? God’s purpose in sending His Son was NOT to condemn us - the Law already did that! God’s purpose in sending His Son was to save us from condemnation (personal & eternal) through the work Jesus fulfilled on the Cross.
My Personal Application
Now here’s the best news that I’m going to be able to give anyone ever. This consuming fire, this fortress, this shield, this protector, this provider, this infinite all-powerful God Father in heaven longs to adopt us as sons and daughters, to correct and make right the shortcomings of our fathers and to fill in where they have failed.
Wow, I can’t believe how this plays out!
Let’s go Galatians 4, starting in verse 3. “In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” Let me try to explain this as easily as I can. You and I have one thing in common – we are sinners. I’ve lied! Have you? That’s unanimous. I’ve taken something that’s not mine (my kids candy)! Have you? So if we have all told lies, then we are all liars. If we’ve all taken what’s not ours, we’re thieves.
Watch what happens next in the text. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” So you’re a sinner, I’m a sinner, you’re a thief, I’m a thief, you’re a liar, I’m a liar, you worship other things besides God and I worship other things besides God. All of this is true, so we’re under the Law and condemned. So Christ comes and He obeys all the rules. He literally breaks no rules. He obeys all of them and says to us that if we’ll believe in Him, He will give us His goodness and take from us our badness or our rebellion.
Now Jesus did not come to bring your rules to be followed. Because you already know the rules and you can’t keep them. The problem is not the action. The problem is my heart. So what I need is a new heart, not to do better at following the rules. It has been my experience that most people with a church background struggle with this idea. It’s the difference between grace, an acknowledgment of what grace is and a belief that I can control my own salvation with my behavior.
So what he’s describing in this text in Galatians is that, after my sin is taken from me and I’m given this sonship, the heart change is we cry out, “Abba! Daddy! Father!” Which means I know He’s for me, He loves me and He has made a way for me. So I pursue Him rather than run from Him. And that takes care of the bad stuff. The bad stuff doesn’t get removed from my life because I try not to be bad. The bad stuff gets removed from my life when I find something that is more beautiful, lovely and desirable than the bad stuff.
It’s here I need to stop offering sacrifices of action and continue to focus on extending to others all that Christ has extended to me. “Instead of offering sacrifices to me, I want you to be merciful to others?”
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