They Were Hungry, and He Answered With What David Did

Somewhere along the line he learned that needing something is a character problem.

Nobody sat him down and taught him that. It came in sideways, over years, out of a hundred small things. A tone somebody used about a man who took a day off. The way tiredness got talked about. A joke about somebody's wife. The general drift of a place where the strongest available compliment was that a person never complained.

So he does not say when he is hungry. He does not say when he has hit the end of something. When he was sick two winters ago he worked through it and everybody was proud of him and he was proud of himself, and that is the whole mechanism in one sentence.

The cost shows up somewhere else. It always does. It has shown up in his marriage and in a temper he does not recognize and in an inability to receive anything from anybody without a joke attached to it.

There is a scene about this and it starts with men eating in a field.

He answers a rule complaint with a hunger story

Here is the scene, in the King James Version:

At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, 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. (Matthew 12:1-2)

His disciples were an hungred. That is the whole cause. The text says it plainly and does not treat it as an excuse.

And the criticism is not invented. There was a real question there. But look at what Jesus answers it with, because He does not argue about the rule at all.

But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? (Matthew 12:3-4)

What David did, when he was an hungred.

He reaches for a story about a hungry man and the food set apart in the house of God, and He tells it without embarrassment, and He does not soften the part where it says the bread was not lawful for him.

The defense is hunger. Not necessity in some grand sense. Not a mission. Men were hungry, and a king was hungry once, and God did not treat either as a scandal.

You are not weak for needing something and you were never wrong to have a limit. Matthew 12:3 has Jesus defend hungry men by telling a story about a hungry king, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a tougher constitution who makes that defense reach a man who has never made one for himself.

The verse He says they had not understood

Then He gives the reason the criticism happened at all, and it is one line from a prophet.

But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. (Matthew 12:7)

Ye would not have condemned the guiltless.

He calls them guiltless. That is not a concession or a technicality. It is a verdict, and it is delivered on behalf of men who had not said a word in their own defense.

And He traces the whole misjudgment to a single misunderstood verse: I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, which He is quoting out of Hosea and which He quotes twice in this Gospel.

That is worth having, because it means the mechanism is identifiable. A structure that has never absorbed that one line will systematically read need as failure, and it will do it sincerely, and the people inside it will be surprised to be told so.

You are called guiltless by somebody who was there and you have not been quietly getting away with something. Matthew 12:7 says ye would not have condemned the guiltless about men criticized for eating, and it is His Spirit who makes a verdict spoken two thousand years ago land on a man's own week.

Which one was made for which

Mark records the same episode and keeps one extra sentence, and it is the one that reorders everything.

And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

Made for man. The thing was made as a provision. It was given to somebody, for their good, and the order in that sentence is a permanent test.

Any practice can get turned around. It starts as something given for a person's good and ends up as something the person exists to satisfy, and the turning around usually happens over a generation and nobody notices the moment it flips.

And the test is available to anybody: is this thing serving the person it was given to, or is the person now serving it. That is a question a man can ask about a specific rule on a specific Tuesday, without a scholar in the room.

You have a test you can run yourself and you were never supposed to need a ruling to see this. Mark 2:27 puts the order of the two in one sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old sentence into a live question a man can actually apply.

He is not surprised by what you are made of

The last thing worth having here is the reason none of this catches God off guard.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13-14)

He knoweth our frame. Frame is the build of a thing. The load rating.

He remembereth that we are dust. Not resents. Remembers, which in Scripture is an active word about acting on the basis of something.

A structure that treats need as a flaw is operating on a picture of humanity that God does not hold. He designed the limits. He is not disappointed by them, and He does not require a man to perform past them in order to be well thought of.

You have limits that were designed rather than tolerated and you were never expected to run past them. Psalm 103:14 says He knows our frame and remembers we are dust, and it is His Spirit who makes that something a man believes about himself rather than something he grants to everybody else.