Mark 2:26
How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
The verse tells how David, when he had need and was hungry with the men accompanying him, went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, ate the shewbread which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to those who were with him. On the occasion when Jesus cited this, He and His disciples were passing through a grain field on the Sabbath, where the disciples plucked heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate the kernels. They did this from hunger after long labor in teaching and healing, to sustain bodily strength for the service of God. Their act was in keeping with God's provision that a hungry person is permitted to enter a neighbor's field and eat to satisfy hunger.
Excessive hunger and need excused David for violating even the holiness of the sanctuary and made his eating guiltless. Jesus used David's precedent to answer and repel the charge of Sabbath-breaking, denied the charge, and established that the disciples were guiltless, innocent, excusable, right and lawful, because what they did was in harmony with the Sabbath commandment. The service of God comes first, so it is right to satisfy fatigue and hunger and the wants of humanity even on the Sabbath, and God's service and human needs are not opposed. The Sabbath was made for man to give him rest and peace and to remind him of the work of his Creator, and was not given to interfere with the needs of his being, to bring pain and discomfort instead of blessing, or to be a grievous burden.
The verse belongs to an account in which rulers, scribes and Pharisees watched to accuse Jesus and charged Him and His disciples with transgressing and breaking the Sabbath. Their accusation was foolish and blind, as if they had put out their eyes, because they accused the One who made the Sabbath and is its Lord of breaking it. The same blindness and loss of bearings happens when people want to carry God's work in America in their own way. In defending the disciples, Christ with a dignity He alone possesses cast over them the shield of His own prerogatives as God in the flesh in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, to whom all things are delivered of the Father and who as Son of man has life in Himself and authority to execute judgment.