February 2, 2000
GREAT QUESTIONS OF THE BIBLE:
""Why do you eat and drink
with tax collectors and sinners?"
Luke 5:30
___If the question were to be asked to us today, I wonder how we would respond. I venture that I would say, "I was once in that state, and Jesus sat down and ate with me." It was then I realized I was a sinner and needed to repent of my sin and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of my life.
___To the religious right of the day, both tax collector and sinner were in the samecategory, though I believe some tax collectors were performing a task and cannot be judged as people not knowing about Jesus.
MATEO RENDON JR.
Pastor, Primera Iglesia Bautista, Corpus Christi
It is true that because of one bad tax collector everyone was labeled as bad. It would be like saying all IRS personnel are without Christ. I don't believe that is so; there are many fine Christians who work for the IRS and have a job to perform. Yet I do believe that both a tax collector and a sinner without Christ as Lord and Savior are in the same group.
___So, why do I eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners. They need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. They need to be redeemed as we were, and as the religious right of that day and today need the Lord. Anyone without Christ needs for us, the redeemed, to sit down with them and share the good news of Jesus Christ.
___Why do I eat with them? Because they, too, need to know the love of God. Anyone who is living in sin needs someone to come and share the bread of life with them and let them drink from the living water, which will cause them never to thirst again.
___Jesus was sitting with Levi the tax collector and other disreputable people who needed to be brought to repentance. It is interesting to read that the act of Jesus in eating with the tax collectors should enlighten the hearts of those who are asking the question, yet apparently they didn't get it.
___While it is an imperative that the disreputable people of the world need Jesus, the reputable also need the Lord if they are without him. We can claim only the "nobodies" need the Lord, yet we ought to be saying everybody needs the Lord. Our task is to imbue them with the love, peace and joy of the Lord.
___Some reasons Jesus and his followers ate with the IRS people and sinners are because he wanted to:
___1. Allow them to experience true repentance, to turn from their sin and regret all their wrongdoing. They had to come to a state in their lives where not only could they see their sin but feel it and repent from it. Then and only then can people come to the Lord with a contrite heart. At this state in life the Lord will…
___2. Take our lives and restore them. In essence, the Lord will give us back our lives, the lives the world has taken for its use. God will restore them for his use. God will recall them, re-establish them and reinstate our lives, all because he loves you and me, and together we can sing, "Revive us again. Hallelujah! Thine the glory. Hallelujah! Amen." And then the Lord wants to….
___3. Ultimately reward us. "I came so they can have real eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of" (John 10:10b).
___It doesn't matter who or what we may think we are, God wants to give us his very best--Jesus Christ--so that after eating with him we will be totally satisfied.
___We must acknowledge that without Christ we are unforgiven sinners, and he wants to sit down and eat with us so that we can get to know him for what he is--the Salvation of peoples.
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