Laws and rules

Matthew 12

New King James Version (NKJV)

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

12 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. ² And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”

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? 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,’^[a] you would not have condemned the guiltless. ⁸ For the Son of Man is Lord even^[b] of the Sabbath.”

The versus above remind me to be careful of man-made rules.  What is Jesus saying to us here?  What is He trying to tell the pharisees and scribes.  The pharisees and the scribes were always trying to trip Jesus up with all the laws and rules.  But Jesus was saying I'm greater than all these laws and rules.  Sometimes we are living our lives by a set of rules that the Holy Spirit did not put into place.  We are burdening ourselves down with laws and rules.  All I can do is look at the Word of God and see what Jesus says:  He desires mercy and not sacrifice!