Festival of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Posted on June 24, 2021 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 12:1-8 (NKJV)
12:1 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,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Devotion
“For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Faith starts with Jesus. We don’t start with something else (e.g., our understanding of God, or of man, or of the Law) and then check out Jesus to see if He measures up. We start with Jesus, and so we understand who God is, what man was meant to be, and how the Law serves us.
The Pharisees had it backward. They figured they knew the Law, and they believed the disciples were breaking it by “harvesting” (picking heads of grain and eating them) on the Sabbath; and Jesus was letting them get away with it, therefore He didn’t measure up. Jesus corrects the Pharisees. The Sabbath is His, and He teaches what He wants with it.
By means of the Law we see our need for Jesus, but that Law never was going to save us. Hence, John the Baptist called people to repentance, but pointed them to Jesus. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). So as the days begin to shorten, we celebrate the Nativity of John the Baptist; as they begin to lengthen (increase) again, we celebrate the Nativity of Jesus (Christmas). The Sabbath was the Old Testament day of rest. Now, Jesus says, “Come to Me … and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). We find rest for our souls, not in a day, but in Jesus.
Prayer: Almighty God, who through John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, didst proclaim salvation, grant that we may know this Thy salvation and serve Thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
