Breaking the Sabbath

Key verse
Romans 5:19 - For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.


Numbers/Matthew
I would have liked more information about the man who broke the Sabbath (see Numbers 15:32-36).  He was gathering wood on the Sabbath, and those who found him brought him to Moses and Aaron, and he was stoned to death outside the camp, on God's orders.  Was it because he didn't trust God to provide the wood after the Sabbath, or he hadn't thought of God's day the day before, so he was had to gather wood on the Sabbath?  The story doesn't offer many details, and I'm left hoping that God didn't just have him stoned out of an unintentional sin.  But here is where we have to go on faith that God is gracious and compassionate and has proven himself to be such time and again.
In some ways, it is easy to see how the Pharisees became so focused on the letter of the law (see Matthew 23:23).   Looking at stories like this one from Numbers could lead them to think that breaking the Sabbath by doing any work is completely out of the question, or else you'll suffer the consequences.  But Jesus had the right attitude - it's not the outward appearance, but what's going on in the heart that God really looks at, so that is what we must focus on.