I Call Them Guiltless

What They Were Standing On

The Pharisees called it unlawful, and here is the law they were standing on.

In harvest thou shalt rest. Now the same law lets a man do this.

Thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand. So the plucking itself was allowed. The charge was the day. And I am not going to tell you they broke the law, because before this is over Jesus calls them something else.

Jesus never argues that point. He does not say they were not harvesting, and He does not say the sabbath had loosened. He answers with two accounts out of their own Scriptures, and then He tells them why.

David Ate What Was Not His

That is 1 Samuel 21. David was running from Saul, and he came to Nob where the tabernacle was, and he asked Ahimelech the priest for bread and for a weapon, having neither. Note who handed it over. Ahimelech gave it to him.

There was no ordinary bread in that house. Only the shewbread, twelve loaves set out before the LORD and changed every sabbath.

Aaron’s and his sons. Ahimelech gave it to him.

And Jesus does not soften it. He says it was not lawful, and He says it twice, once for David and once for the men with him.

And Scripture records no judgment from God against David or the men with him for eating it. Twice in one sentence, they that were with him.

And He Will Not Drop the Men With Him

Matthew does not name them and does not tell me who they were. What he does tell me is that Jesus would not leave them out of the sentence.

That they ate because of who they were standing with is my reading, and Matthew does not say it.

What the Law Told Them to Do on That Day

This is the one people walk past, and it is the stronger of the two.

God commanded that. Every sabbath, two extra lambs offered up, and Numbers says it, on the day the same law said do no manner of work.

So the same law that said rest also said offer, about the same day.

And Jesus uses the hard word. They profane the sabbath. That is His word for what it looked like. But they were doing what God told them to do, so I am not going to say God commanded them to break His own law. And they are blameless.

What became of the day itself I have opened in The Sabbath. Here I am only after what covered the men. Nothing in the men.

So What Cleared Them

David was not a priest, and read what he told Ahimelech.

Saul had commanded him no business. He was running from him. The men with him are not named and Matthew tells me nothing about them. And the priests were doing what looked like profaning, with God’s own command in their hands.

And read what Matthew actually gives as the reason. Not one of the three is cleared by anything in the men. The shewbread was set apart and David had no claim on it. The temple service was commanded and the priests kept it. And for the hungry men in the field, Jesus gives His own reasons, and they are coming. Not one of them was covered by deserving it.

And Then He Says Something Greater Is Here

And here is the first of them. And He tells them it is standing in the field with them.

Not near the temple, not sent by the temple. Greater than it. And that is Matthew’s word and not mine. What I take from it is that the greater thing is a Person, and He is walking through a cornfield with hungry men.

Here Is the Answer, and It Is His Own

This is the verse that answers everything, and I have not often heard it opened. He is quoting Hosea, and here it is.

Written long before Matthew, and God said it Himself.

And Jesus does not say they had never read it. He says they did not know what it meant.

So the question was never what made David special. Nothing did. What Jesus points at is a thing God had already put in writing, and they had gone straight past it.

And look at the word He gives the disciples. Guiltless. Now the King James gives verse 5 as blameless and verse 7 as guiltless, two different English words, and the lexicons give one word underneath both, so take it as the lexicons give it and not as mine. Hungry men eating on the sabbath, and He calls them guiltless.

And They Condemned Them Anyway

Ye would not have condemned the guiltless.

That is the charge. Not that they misread a rule. That they had God’s own preference in their hands and used the law to convict people He had already cleared.

Lord of the Day They Were Arguing About

He does not say Lord of the harvest. He does not say Lord of the corn.

He names the day they came at Him about, and He calls Himself Lord of it. What I take from that is that the day was never over Him.

One Hard Thing, Because It Is in the Text

Somebody who knows 1 Samuel will raise this, so let us not pretend it is not there.

Ahimelech gave David that bread, and Saul heard of it. Read what happened, and read who would not do it.

Fourscore and five. And David does not hide from it.

He says it himself. So somebody did die because of that bread.

But read who did it. Saul killed them, in his madness, for helping the man he was hunting. And Scripture does not record God judging Ahimelech for handing over the loaves. Jesus does not treat it as a sin either.

Saul killed him for it. Scripture does not tell me what God held against Ahimelech, and it does not tell me it held anything.

And David Wrote a Psalm About It

Psalm 52 carries it in the heading. A Psalm of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul.

So David sat down and wrote about the man who did it, and look what he charges him with.

The tongue. Not the sword.

Doeg killed eighty five men with a blade and David names his mouth. Saul’s own footmen refused to lift a hand against the priests. Doeg spoke first and struck after, and the psalm puts its weight on the speaking.

Mighty man, and he had just cut down unarmed priests that trained soldiers would not touch.

Strengthened himself in his wickedness. That is where his strength came from, and David says so.

And That Is the Whole Charge

The priests were doing what God had given them to do, and Jesus calls them blameless. David is called something else. Jesus says it was not lawful for him. And of the hungry men in the field, Jesus says guiltless. Not one of them by being worthy of it.

And hear the charge again.

They had it in writing, and they used the law to condemn people He had already cleared.

I have not earned the bread either, and neither had David, and he ate it with his hands still shaking from running.

Now that word was spoken over those men in that field, and Matthew does not turn round and say it to me. But here is where I land, and the landing is mine and not the verse. If that is what He called hungry men who had nothing to plead, then I believe it is what He calls me, and not because I got away with something. Guiltless.