BIBLE STUDY - Matthew Chapter 12

📖 www.veganchurch.uk/scripture.php?ref=Matthew12

The chapter starts with Jesus' disciples eating bread on the Sabbath and Pharisees commenting that it was unlawful

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them.
2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
📖 Matthew 12:1-2

Jesus talks to them of David when hungry, and He is referring to 1 Samuel chapter 21 when David ate bread in the Temple against the rules at the time:

3 But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:
4 how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?
5 Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?
Matthew 12:3-6
📖 cf
3 Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found.”
4 And the priest answered David and said, “There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women.”
5 Then David answered the priest, and said to him, “Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out. And the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was consecrated in the vessel this day.”
6 So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread which had been taken from before the Lord, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away.
📖 1 Samuel 21

Jesus affirms it is scriptural to eat what is good - bread - in the eyes of God even in the Temple or on the Sabbath. Yet what the priests were doing was profanity.

In verses 6-7 Jesus directly quotes Hosea 6.6 that God desires mercy, not sacrifice, and accuses those who kill animals as sinful - this was what. the profanity is - the killing of animals.

6 Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple.
7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
📖 Matthew 12:6-7
📖 cf
6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
Hosea 6:6

Jesus specificilly is saying that the eating of bread is blameless, and the killing of animals is profanity. This is a message for all of us about not killing animals. He also talks of the will of God as greater then the temple.

Jesus then proceeds to do more to affirm life on the Sabbath - he heals the sick and says it is good. In parallel with Genesis 1:29-31 where the plants to eat given by God to eat were declared specifically as GOOD, it is also good to heal as Jesus demonstrated, as Jesus is the giver of life:

10 And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—that they might accuse Him.
11 Then He said to them, “What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?
12 Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
📖 Matthew 12:10-12
📖 cf
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
📖 Genesis 1:29-31

Jesus affirms it is scriptural to do what is good - to heal and gove life instead if ignore, to eat bread instead of killing animals - in the eyes of God even in the Temple or on the Sabbath.

In this chapter Jesus further clarifies in verses 33-35 that goodness is about making the fruit of the tree good. It is about not having destruction in our hearts like carnivorous animals.

33 “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.
34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
35 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
📖 Matthew 12:33-35

Jesus is calling us to follow a good way of non-violence in our lives rather than the way of destruction. Having already quoted God’s desire for no sacrifice, in the final verse of this chapter, Jesus says clearly that is is those who follow God’s will who are His brothers and sisters

50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.
📖 Matthew 12:50

Thanks Be to God 🙏

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