August 2, 2024

Luke 5:30-32

³⁰ And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, “Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

³¹ Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ³² I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Why are we out doing Free Hugs Campaigns? Why would any church do outreach of any sort? Those outside the church do not contribute anything useful toward the programs of the church. They don’t contribute to the maintenance of the building or supply any help toward the various programs of maintaining church people.

And yet Jesus was making it clear that His mission was to go out and look for the people who needed Him the most. They weren’t the “righteous.” They were the sinners that needed repentance.

Now if you read between the lines, there really weren’t ANY righteous people. Every person, even the outwardly religious person who was living an outwardly religious life, was desperately in need of a physician to heal their broken spirit. None of them had the ability to walk in a personal relationship with God. They were all separated from Him because of their sin nature.

But religious people tend to be very deceived people. They think that their personal performance is bringing them closer to God. It isn’t!

These particular religious people that Jesus was interacting with had two other classes of people that they considered to be especially far from God. And they were in a room FULL of them! They were the tax collectors and the sinners.

As far as these religious people were concerned, the tax collectors and the sinners were classes of people who lived in the wrath of God. They were hopeless. And they weren’t worth investing any of their time into them. They were the lowest of the low. And they didn’t want their moral dirt to infect them.

But here was Jesus. Sitting in a room and dining with a large group of these people. In fact, one of them, Levi by name, had been invited to become a follower of Jesus. A disciple.

Why are you interacting with these people? And not just interacting. You’re eating with them! Yuck!!

We interact with them and eat with them because they are sick and need a doctor. And the doctor’s name is Jesus. And today, the Doctor lives inside of us.

There is no way for those who are lost and sick to meet this Doctor without first meeting us. We know they are sick, but we can’t let their sickness prevent us from offering them the cure for their sickness.

And sick people are looking for a cure. They just can’t find one on their own. They need someone who will go outside of the church building and introduce them to God’s love.

And THAT’S why we do Free Hugs Campaigns and go to nursing homes. It’s why we minister to young ladies in a crisis pregnancy. It’s why we involve ourselves in a food coop to feed struggling people.

They need us because they need Jesus. And if Jesus is trapped inside the church walls by church people, then He probably isn’t there anyway. He never was sent to call the righteous. He was sent to call the sinner to repentance.

If we’re going to walk with Him, then we need to walk with Him where He is. Out there looking for tax collectors and sinners who need repentance.