BLESS by Dave Ferguson

Author:Dave Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

In Jesus’s day, tax collectors were considered the scum of the earth. Tax collectors worked for the Roman Empire. Most Jewish people considered them traitors because they made money by overcharging their own people. Tax collectors were seen but rarely spoken to, and certainly not someone you’d share a meal with.

Notice the first thing Jesus did after Matthew said “yes” to following Him wasn’t to enroll Matthew in a class on how to be a disciple. He didn’t challenge him to start studying the Bible and memorizing Scripture. Those would have been vitally important assignments, but instead, He simply went to Matthew’s house to eat.

And who else joins them for this meal? Even more tax collectors, along with a whole group of people referred to as “sinners.” The term “sinner” in Jesus’s day was a catch-all term for anybody who wasn’t religious or who was involved in an illicit lifestyle, like prostitution. The crowd at Matthew’s house was a veritable who’s who of the socially unacceptable.

In fact, it was so unacceptable that the religious establishment tried to undermine Jesus by asking His disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” But Jesus overheard them. I don’t know if this is how it happened, but I picture Jesus with a mouthful of chicken, shaking a drumstick at them and saying: “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (To be clear, Jesus was not saying the religious Pharisees were the healthy, good people who didn’t need a doctor.)

Then He said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ ” taking a page from the Old Testament. The Pharisees were famous for knowing the Old Testament backward and forward. They were all-stars at memorization and performing religious rituals and sacrifices, but they ignored the poor and the marginalized. So Jesus said, “You know God says, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ but you don’t really know what it means. And if you do, you aren’t living it out.”

Jesus was on a mission with His life, and the Pharisees didn’t get it. For them, the first priority was obedience to laws, but for Jesus it was blessing people. He came to show them grace and mercy. And not just to hope people would find their way back to God, but to help them do it.

Praying for an empty house

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