Wisdom Principles - Intent

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

Wisdom, knowing what is the proper thing to do in any situation. The Bible is our guide to wisdom. It shows us many principles to guide us in determining what is the right thing to do.

What appears on the surface is not necessarily all there is to a thing. An iceberg is 90% under the water. And so it is with some of God's laws. We need to go deeper than the surface to determine what is the intent of that law.

The context to this verse is Jesus and His disciples using the materiality concept we discussed yesterday. They were traveling down the road and going through a farmer's field, picking ears of corn to eat as they went because they were hungry (vs. 23). The Pharisees called them into question on this, not because they were taking corn from someone's field, for they knew Deuteronomy 23, but because they were doing this on the Sabbath day (vs. 24). And Moses' law said that Israelites were not to work on the Sabbath day.

Jesus comes right back and pointed to a situation where David, running for his life from Saul's men sent to kill him, took the Shew Bread from the Tabernacle for he and his men to eat. The law of Moses said that the Shew Bread was only for the priests to eat. David was from Judah's tribe, not Levi's, so he could not eat of it! But David knew that the saving of life was more important than keeping ceremonial restrictions (see 1Sam 21:3-6). And based on that example, Jesus applied the same reasoning to declare that the Sabbath had been instituted for man's good and blessing. So doing necessary work to eat on the Sabbath was acceptable in God's sight.

More to the point, the LORD had stated the purpose of the Sabbath when He gave it - for rest (Exodus 23:12). It was the Pharisees that had forgotten the intent and turned it into an purely ceremonial observance. Let us be wise men who know the intent of God's instructions for our lives. Then we will be equipped to make wise judgments!