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I hope you're hungry! Today we continue looking at biblical meals and what the Lord wants to teach us through them. There is a very unexpected (for some) and meaningful meal in Luke 5:29-32.
"After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. 'Follow me,' Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' Jesus answered them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.'" (Luke 5:27-32)
Levi (whom most of us know as Matthew) chooses to follow Jesus at the beginning of this passage. And what does he do next? He invited his friends to meet Jesus too by hosting a banquet for them all. What a beautiful reaction to meeting Jesus! The first thing recorded about Matthew in this passage following His decision to follow Jesus is to introduce others who are far from God to Jesus too. We can learn a lot from Matthew's urgency to introduce others to Jesus. The right response to the grace we have received is to tell others and bring others to Jesus.
What are you waiting for? Share Jesus with someone you know who is far from Him today! So too were we once. As sinners transformed by grace, let us be bearers of grace by bringing the Gospel to others.
Obviously, we have much to learn from and about Jesus in this passage too. Jesus came for the sinner. He was sent here on a mission to save sinners, and to do that, He must be among sinners. What a picture of grace that the holy, perfect Christ would choose to associate with, dine with, and call sinners to Himself through repentance. He is truly a God of second chances. One thing that drastically separates Christianity from other world religions is that, in the many false gospels in this world, the narrative is about how man tries to reach God. In Christianity, however, God comes down to man on a rescue mission. What a Savior!
We also have things to learn from the Pharisees. Their religious pride kept them from experiencing the grace of God. By looking down on other sinners, the religious leaders were unable to see their own sin and their own need for radical grace from Jesus.
Allow the grace of Christ to humble you today. It is from a humble heart, not a prideful one, that we come to Jesus, grow in the likeness of Jesus, and bring others to Jesus as well.
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