Receive the Precious Gift

April 15

“Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." Matthew 9:10-13

The Pharisees were exceedingly critical of Jesus. They didn’t like when He ate (see Mark 2:23-27), they didn’t approve of the people who flocked around Him (see above), they didn’t like where He came from (see John 1:46), they didn’t approve of His healing of the sick and lame and deaf and dumb and blind (see Luke 11:15).

The bottom line of their assessment of Him is that they wanted Him to die for the people (see John 11:48-50.) In saying this, the High Priest Caiaphas was prophesying, for indeed, Jesus had come to save the nation, the Jewish people, and the entire world from sin by taking the punishment for the sins of all the world!

Why did He eat with them? Because He loved them, because He wanted them to know that Someone had entered the realm of time to make sense of their weary lives, Someone had entered time to give them rest.

Matthew 11:28 says, “"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus knew the burden of sin was a heavy one to carry and He came to lift it. What better place to begin His search for the lost and burdened of humanity than among the tax collectors (who cheated the people by extracting more than their legal tax burden in order to pad their own pockets) and the sinners?

The Pharisees were quite smug in their own self-righteousness (see Luke 18:9-14). It would have been pointless for Jesus to approach them. No doubt He wanted very badly to confront the most influential men of the nation with the reality of their sin, for who better than they to then instruct the people of the way to salvation! But other than Nicodemus, we are told of no religious leader who followed Jesus.

May we not be like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day to whom He referred as “white-washed sepulchers,” pure in external appearance but filled with rotting bones. May we, like the tax collectors and sinners, recognize our need of salvation so we may be bathed in the cleansing flow of Emmanuel’s veins.

It doesn’t matter how bad we’ve been…Jesus has paid the price for all our sin. Let us receive His precious gift.