Monday Thought -- October 3, 2011

Good Morning Friends,

“David answered Ahimelech the priest … ‘What do you have on hand?  Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.’  But the priest answered David, ‘I don't have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here – provided the men have kept themselves from women.’  David replied, ‘Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out.  The men's things are holy even on missions that are not holy.  How much more so today!’  So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.” (1 Samuel 21:2-6)

There were strict rules regarding the use of the consecrated bread in the tabernacle of God.  It was holy to the Lord and only to be eaten by the priests.  But David and his men were very hungry and no other food was available.  When he asked for food from Ahimelech the priest, he was given the consecrated bread.  And David and his men ate that bread and were nourished by it.

Do you wonder how God felt about that act of disregard for His commanded ritual and regulations?

You don’t have to be in wonder, Jesus points back to this incident in His teaching and makes God’s opinion about it clear.  When His disciples were criticized for taking handfuls of grain from the field on the Sabbath day, Jesus responded by talking about David’s act of taking the consecrated bread.  “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain.  The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’  He answered, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?  In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat.  And he also gave some to his companions.’  Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’” (Mark 2:23-28)

God’s attitude toward David’s incident tells us a great deal about God’s heart:  God loves people more than He loves ritual and regulations.  David was hungry and in need, when nothing else was available, God was not displeased when David took the consecrated bread to eat.  It’s not that the regulations were wrong, they were from God Himself.  It’s simply that God loves people more.  He always has – He always will.

His, by Grace,

Steve