Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. When we first start reading Matthew 12, it could be easy to mistakenly think Jesus allowed his disciples to steal, but what was really going on?

I want to start by reading the first verse of Matthew 12.

It says, at that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were

hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain to eat. It's interesting. As I read that verse,

I was reminded of a story my dad used to tell me growing up. When my dad, when he was

growing up, he and his brothers would go on these cross-country biking trips with their dad, my grandpa.

And my dad has told me the story about one trip in particular where they're biking across the

country and stopped when they saw an apple tree hanging over a fence, ripe with apples, ready to be picked.

And when I read Matthew 1, I think of that story. Just as my dad and his brothers got hungry

and stopped to pick an apple or two, likewise Jesus and his disciples got hungry and stopped

to pluck some heads of grain. Now what my dad and brothers didn't know was that this blind

hand across the street who owned the apple tree, he could hear them, and he'd routinely get

frustrated every time he heard travelers stealing apples from his tree. And now, as my dad tells the

story, I guess that day was the last straw because he came out guns ablazing. I mean, quite literally,

as my dad tells the story, he shot a gun in the air to get my dad to look across the street

and ultimately scared my dad and his brothers down the road. And while the Pharisees, they didn't have guns,

they definitely wanted Jesus and his disciples to move out of town.

But here's what's crazy.

For my dad, plucking those apples really probably was illegal, stealing.

But for Jesus and his disciples, according to the Mosaic law,

they should actually have been able to pluck the grainheads.

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