One Walk

Dear Lord God, I feel Your presence, I seek Your will, I look to fulfill Your purpose; O Lord my source of source I call upon You in the name of Jesus Christ to help me to always reflect the fruit of the Spirit, know Your will and carry out Your purpose. I need Your help now Lord! Eliminate from me any fear and or desires under the sun. For it is only You that I should fear; fear of Your absence, fear of failing You. Let this month be for me the beginning of months; the first month of a new year and time for me and my family. For when I read my Lord Jesus words, `I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ I realize I am Your child, fortunate to belief in Christ Jesus, to have You planted deep in my heart. My only regret is that I allowed the ways under the sun to separate me, to trick me into believing in myself rather than You, but now my eyes are open, my heart seeks Your heart. Set my feet on solid ground, guide my heart, grant me a discerning mind, committed to You. This I ask in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

What has a person to fear who lives in the arms and bosom of God?

— St. Paul of the Cross

Exodus 11:10 — 12:14

10 Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 "This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household; 4 and if the household is too small for a lamb, then a man and his neighbor next to his house shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats; 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening. 7 Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. 8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled with water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning, anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s passover. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. 14 "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance forever.

Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18

12 What shall I render to the LORD for all his bounty to me? 13 I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD, 15 Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. 16 O LORD, I am thy servant, the son of thy handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds. 17 I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD. 18 I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people,

Bible Study: [Psalm 116] A thanksgiving in which the psalmist responds to divine rescue from mortal danger (Psalm 116:3-4) and from near despair (10-11) with vows and temple sacrifices (Psalm 116:13-14, 17-19). The Greek and Latin versions divide the psalm into two parts: Psalm 116:1-9 and 10-19, corresponding to its two major divisions.

Matthew 12:1-8

1 At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath." 3 He said to them, "Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it 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 how on the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And 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 of the sabbath."

Bible Study: [1-14] Matthew here returns to the Marcan order that he left in Matthew 9:18. The two stories depend on Mark 2:23-28; 3:1-6 respectively, and are the only places in either gospel that deal explicitly with Jesus’ attitude toward sabbath observance. [1-2] The picking of the heads of grain is here equated with reaping, which was forbidden on the sabbath (Exodus 34:21). [3-4] See 1 Sam 21:2-7. In the Marcan parallel (Mark 2:25-26) the high priest is called Abiathar, although in 1 Sam this action is attributed to Ahimelech. The Old Testament story is not about a violation of the sabbath rest; its pertinence to this dispute is that a violation of the law was permissible because of David’s men being without food. [5-6] This and the following argument (Matthew 12:7) are peculiar to Matthew. The temple service seems to be the changing of the showbread on the sabbath (Lev 24:8) and the doubling on the sabbath of the usual daily holocausts (Numbers 28:9-10). The argument is that the law itself requires work that breaks the sabbath rest, because of the higher duty of temple service. If temple duties outweigh the sabbath law, how much more does the presence of Jesus, with his proclamation of the kingdom (something greater than the temple), justify the conduct of his disciples.  [7] See the note on Matthew 9:13. [8] The ultimate justification for the disciples’ violation of the sabbath rest is that Jesus, the Son of Man, has supreme authority over the law.

Rabbinic tradition later than the gospels allowed relief to be given to a sufferer on the sabbath if life was in danger. This may also have been the view of Jesus’ Pharisaic contemporaries. But the case here is not about one in danger of death.