Reading of July 17, 2026: Matthew 12:1-8
In this issue:
Children’s story: The apostles are accused of unlawful Sabbath conduct
Essay Question
Bible Accent: Whenever Jesus cured a person on the Sabbath, he was accused of wrongdoing.
Spotlight on the Saints: St. Peter Chrysologus
Puzzle: Unscramble the letters
One day, Jesus and the apostles were traveling on the Sabbath.
The apostles were hungry. As they walked through a field of grain, they picked and ate the heads of the grain.
When the Pharisees saw what the apostles were doing, they approached Jesus.
“See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the Sabbath,” they said accusingly.
Jesus looked at them.
“Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat?” Jesus asked the Pharisees.
“Or,” Jesus continued, “have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests serving in the Temple violate the Sabbath and are innocent?”
Jesus then told the Pharisees that something greater than the Temple was here.
“If you knew what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned these innocent men. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” he said.
After speaking to the Pharisees, Jesus entered the synagogue.
There was a man in the synagogue who had a withered hand.
The Pharisees asked Jesus a question, hoping they might accuse him of answering incorrectly.
“Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” they asked.
“Which one of you who has a sheep that falls into a pit on the Sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out?” Jesus asked. “How much more valuable a person is than a sheep. So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
Jesus turned to the man with the withered hand.
“Stretch out your hand,” Jesus told him.
The man stretched out his hand, and it was restored as sound as the other.
The Pharisees left the synagogue. They spoke together and decided to put Jesus to death.
When Jesus realized this, he left the area.
Many people followed him, and he cured them all. However, Jesus warned them not to make him known.
READ MORE ABOUT IT:
Matthew 12
Q&A
1. What did the apostles do with the heads of grain they picked?
2. What were the Pharisees upset about?
Essay Question
When have you been falsely accused of wrongdoing?
Bible Accent
Whenever Jesus cured a person on the Sabbath, he was accused of wrongdoing.
For example, in John 5, we read that Jesus went to the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem on the Sabbath. A large number of ill, blind, lame and crippled people could be found lying around the pool.
One man who was there had been ill for 38 years. Jesus saw the man and walked up to him.
“Do you want to be well?” Jesus asked.
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me,” the man replied.
“Rise, take up your mat, and walk,” Jesus told him.
The man immediately became well, picked up his mat and walked.
Afterward, some Jews saw the man carrying his mat and told him it was unlawful to do so on the Sabbath.
“The man who made me well told me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’”
They asked him where the man was, but Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.
Jesus and the man spoke again in the Temple area. The man then told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had cured him.
The Jews began to persecute Jesus because he cured the man on the Sabbath.
Spotlight on the Saints: St. Peter Chrysologus
St. Peter Chrysologus was born around the year 380 in northeastern Italy.
Peter initially served the church as a deacon. Around the year 425, Emperor Valentinian III named him archbishop of Ravenna, the capital of the Western empire.
After hearing his first sermon as a bishop, the empress became a patron of Peter’s building projects and church reforms.
His many surviving and well-prepared sermons highlighted his pastoral warmth and also revealed many details about fifth-century Christian life in Ravenna.
Peter died around the year 450 and was declared a doctor of the church in 1729. We honor him on July 30.
Puzzle
Unscramble the letters in each word and arrange the words to form a quotation from the children’s story.
lewl od tawn ot uyo eb
Answers: well, do, want, to, you, be
Do you want to be well?
