<p>2:26<em> How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the showbread, which it is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and gave also to those that were with him?-</em> <em>&nbsp;</em>For non-Levites to enter the Sanctuary was also not 'lawful', quite apart from eating the bread which only the priests could lawfully eat. This prepares the way for the Lord's later parable about God urging unclean street people to 'enter His house' because Israel had rejected the invitation (the same words are used- Lk. 14:23). The psychological magnitude of the Lord's new system of thinking is hard to appreciate. Non-Levites could now enter it- and even the worst of the Gentiles. But the magnitude of the new thinking in Christ for anyone, not least secular people of the 21st Century, is no less.</p><p>The opposite of love isn&rsquo;t so much hatred, as indifference. To be indifferent to the real welfare of our fellows in this world, and of <em>all</em> our own brethren, is perhaps our most common sin. The Lord taught us that we should have a sense of urgency in our response to others. The Lord showed by His example that it is better to meet the hunger of human need than to keep the letter of Sabbath law (Mk. 2:25,26). <em>His </em>urgency, <em>God&rsquo;s </em>urgency, <em>our </em>consequent urgency&hellip; all means that when even Divine principles appear to come into conflict, we are to be influenced above all by the urgency of others&rsquo; need.</p><p>The Lord defended the non-observant Judaism of the twelve as being due to their joy that He, the bridegroom, was with them (Lk. 5:33,34). When they &lsquo;ground corn&rsquo; on the Sabbath, the Lord defended them to their critics by saying that they were like David&rsquo;s men eating the showbread. Those guys were just walking through a cornfield rubbing ears together as their manner was, as they had done on many a Sabbath day, but not realizing that this time there was some Scribe out with his binocular vision scrutinizing them. They surely weren&rsquo;t doing it because their minds were on the incident of David&rsquo;s men eating the showbread. The Lord had asked them to obey the Scribes, who sat in Moses&rsquo; seat, over this kind of trivia. But He doesn&rsquo;t rebuke them. Rather, He defends them to others, imputing far more spiritual perception to them than they had (Lk. 6:1-4). Clearly the Lord is suggesting that His ragtag crowd of disciples and questionable ministering women were the new priesthood of a new Israel.</p>