Matthew's Feast; the Charge of Sabbath-Breaking

Notes

Reading.

Mark 2:13-28; Luke 5:27-39; 6:1-5; "Desire of Ages," pp. 273-283.

1. "'Sinners,' a name given indiscriminately to usurers, gamblers, thieves, publicans, shepherds, and sellers of fruit grown in the Sabbath years."—Geikie, vol. 2, p. 30.

2. Mercy is that quality of disposition which leads us to treat an offender better than he deserves. These sinners did not deserve Christ's presence, but He showed mercy to them, and so rebuked the haughty, self-contained Pharisees, who felt themselves too good to mingle, socially, with any but those of their own caste. Christ associated with those sinners who felt themselves to be such, and needy, in preference to attending the gatherings of the Pharisees, who were righteous in their own estimation, and felt no need of help.

3. This language could not refer to the earthen bottles, but to those made of goat skins, which were common in the East. They were of different sizes. The larger ones, in which water was carried for domestic purposes, were made from the tough skins of he goats. Smaller ones, such as were used for drinking purposes on journeys, were made from kid skins. They grew brittle with age, and then would not bear the expansion produced by the fermentation of new wine.

4. It was not counted wrong, ordinarily, to pluck and eat all the grain one's hunger demanded; nor was the journey on that day accounted wrong, since the Pharisees themselves were along. It was, however, considered wrong by these fault-finders to satisfy hunger in that way on the Sabbath, but only by a law of their own making. The Sabbath law is silent regarding such details. The Mishna (a collection of rabbinical rules and precepts), however, lays down such minute restrictions regarding Sabbath observance as even to forbid a tailor going out with his needle, near sundown, on the approach of the Sabbath, lest he forget, and carry it with him on the Sabbath.