John the Baptist, confronted the Pharisees and the Sadducees and called them a generation of vipers and warned them to flee from the wrath to come.

Now as this chapter begins by recording for us the crystallizing of their rejection, it does so by relating to us a very particular incident, and the key is in verse 1. “At that time, Jesus went on the Sabbath Day,” and you can stop at that point. This is a Sabbath Day issue. The crystallizing of their rejection of Christ occurred because He violated their Sabbath; that was the last straw. Because the Sabbath Day, to them, was the absolute epitome of their legalistic system. Everything in their legalistic system ultimately focused in on that one day, and when He violated their rabbinical traditions on the Sabbath, He was striking a blow at the heart of their system. And that becomes the final straw that brakes the camel’s back, as it were.

So the disciples are moving along, and they began to be hungry, it says. And they began to pluck the ears of grain and to eat, and that is exactly what Deuteronomy 23:25 said they had a right to do. They’re not in violation of the Word of God at all. They were poor. They had left their livelihood to follow Jesus Christ, and they lived by faith. They carried really nothing. They had to depend upon the laws of the land, which permitted that, and the kindness and generosity of people who fed them and cared for them. And Jesus didn’t restrain them, because they were in line with the Old Testament Scripture. Now Luke expands the thought a little bit of verse 1, and he says, “His disciples began picking and eating the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.” So they were going through that very process: You pick it, you rub it in your hands, separating it, throw it in the air, the chaff is blown away, and you have what remains.