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The universe
is broken. Humanity is broken. Human beings have
been devastated, paralyzed, corrupted, ruined
by the powerful forces of rebellion, sin and death.
Our rebellion caused us to be alienated from our
Creator, who is the source of well-being, peace,
happiness and eternal life. We are now under the
control of dark, evil, demonic and satanic forces.
We are headed toward death, not life; Hell, not
Heaven.
Yeshua
alone is the answer! He is the Son of God and
Son of Man and the unique God-Man; He came on
a great mission to rescue ruined humanity. He
is the only Savior of a lost and dying world;
He is the Messiah - the ultimate Prophet, Priest
and King; He is the Supreme Sage; wisest of Rabbis;
greatest of Torah-teachers, teaching us about
God and salvation; He is the Healer of Humanity
- the One through whom God was doing and will
do great miracles of healing from all kinds of
illnesses; One through whom God was casting out
demons; the One who will ultimately cast out all
evil spirits.
Yeshua
has ascended back to Heaven. There He is seated
at the right hand of God the Father. From there
He will return to planet Earth one day, to take
over the administration of this planet. Until
He does that, the Savior needs our help! The One
who is the Source of Salvation, the Only and Great
Helper of Humanity, the Rescuer of the Wretched,
needs good men and women, boys and girls to help
Him rescue human beings.
Yeshua
needs our help. Yeshua wants us to take on His
mission. Yeshua asks a lot from human beings who
will follow Him. He asks for total commitment.
And, what He asks is not just for the leaders,
like Peter, James and John. This request to take
on His mission is for every potential Christian
and Messianic Jew.
Yeshua
is not looking for pew-warmers. He is not looking
for mere synagogue-goers. He is not looking for
people to only give money to their congregation
and think that is enough. He is looking for disciples,
students, followers, co-workers, assistants, helpers.
And, the people He wants aren’t only the ones
who start off being good and respectable and religious.
Yeshua is able to take bad and unrespectable and
irreligious people, and touch them and save them,
and teach them and transform them, and make them
into His followers and the forwarders of His great
mission to rescue human beings.
Let’s
learn about what God wants from each one of us
- mission and purpose and discipleship - from
what happened with a tax collector named Matthew.
After that Yeshua went out and noticed a tax
collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth,
and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And Matthew
left everything behind, and got up and began to
follow Him. Men of God are to help God create
other men of God. Saints are to help the Holy
One make saints. Disciples are to help the Master
make other disciples.
Yeshua
turned this tax collector, Matthew, into His disciple.
Then, brand-new disciple Matthew took what he
knew, even though it may have been little, and
tried to do the same with his friends. And
Levi gave a big reception for Yeshua in his house;
and there was a great crowd of tax collectors
and other people who were reclining at the table
with them.
Tax-collectors
were generally disliked by the rest of the Jewish
community. They were not known for their great
religious piety and faith. They were perceived
to be collaborators of the hated Romans. They
were perceived to be greedy blood-suckers and
parasites. They collected taxes for Rome; maybe
they collected taxes for Jewish leaders as well.
The taxes they collected were perceived by the
population as being too high. Then on top of those
already high taxes, the tax collectors would charge
even more, and take that hard earned money from
an impoverished people for themselves.
But,
these tax collectors and their associates were
Matthew’s co-workers and friends, and Matthew
wanted to honor his new Rabbi and Mentor, and
introduce Yeshua to his friends and co-workers.
Even though most of the other rabbis of His day
wouldn’t have gone to a party like this with people
who were known for being irreligious, Yeshua went
to Matthew’s reception. That did not please Israel’s
other religious leaders who were monitoring everything
Yeshua was doing, and who were increasingly hostile
to the miracle-working Rabbi.
The
Pharisees and their scribes (experts in Torah)
began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why
do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and
sinners?” The Pharisees knew that this world
is full of sin and temptation, and righteous men
and women need to avoid temptation, and avoid
getting too close to sinners. That’s true, but
it is only part of the truth. Godly men and women
are on a great mission for God. They need to be
salt in a decaying world, among human beings who
are not tasty to God. They need to be light among
human beings who are living in darkness, confusion,
chaos and death. They need to be strong enough
to get close to people who are far from God, who
are far from morality, and bring them closer to
God and repentance and salvation.
Yeshua,
who was and is perfectly holy and good; Yeshua,
who resisted all temptation; Yeshua, who hated
and hates evil, understood that His great mission
was to heal spiritually sick human beings. And
to accomplish His great task of redemption, He
had to get closer to those who were far from God.
And
Yeshua answered and said to them, “It is not those
who are well who need a physician, but those who
are sick. I have not come to call the righteous
but sinners to repentance.” Humanity is spiritually
very sick. We are not just a little sick. We are
deathly ill. We are dying. If left to ourselves,
we will die physically and spiritually. We will
experience the First Death - Physical Death, followed
by the Second Death, eternal death in Gehenna.
Yeshua
is the Greatest of all Doctors who came into this
world to help those who have broken God’s laws,
who have ignored God’s ways, to turn them to God,
to turn them back to God’s ways; to encourage
them to start doing what is right. Doctors need
to be among the sick. Healers of the spirit need
to be in contact with their spiritually sick patients.
The righteous need to be among the unrighteous.
Obvious,
right? But, here is the problem: Christians and
Messianic Jews tend, after time, to only associate
with other Christians and Messianic Jews. Our
contact and interaction with those who are not
part of our community can become less and less.
In our desire to be holy, we can become isolated
from a sin-sick world. That’s not good!
We don’t
want to stay within these walls and only relate
to other believers. We want to be getting strength
and encouragement from one another, and then going
out to heal a sin-sickened world, and help those
who are spiritually sick become healthy by getting
close to God and faith and morality and truth
and salvation and life - meaningful life, purposeful
life, eternal life.
The Creator
wants to redeem and save and transform and eternalize
human beings who will be loyal companions, eternal
loving friends. God wants sons and daughters.
Yeshua wants disciples. It turns out that God’s
eternal son and daughters and Yeshua’s disciples
are the same thing.
Be a
disciple! Get closer to Yeshua. Allow Him to teach
and transform you! Then, go and make other disciples.
Go to where they are. They may be enmeshed in
sin, in ignorance. Go to those tax collectors
and sinners and help them!
The Pharisees
and their Torah experts were offended by Yeshua
and those who committed themselves to learn from
Him because they went to this party. The Pharisees
and their Torah experts also observed what they
thought were other inconsistencies with Yeshua,
and how He was training His disciples. Not only
were they were hanging out with tax collectors
and sinners, they weren’t fasting and engaging
in organized times of prayer like some of the
other religious groups.
And
they said to Him, “The disciples of John often
fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees
also do the same, but Yours eat and drink.”
You can almost sense them thinking: “This man
supposedly is a new and great prophet, and maybe
the Messiah? And, He doesn’t have the discernment
to avoid sinners? He likes to party with them?
And, He and His students don’t fast and pray?
We don’t think so”!
And,
to some degree it was true. Yeshua and His band
of disciples conducted themselves differently
from the Pharisees and the disciples of John.
But, there were good reasons for it. Something
very very special was taking place. The Son of
God, the long awaited, much hoped for Messiah,
the Savior of Israel and the World, was finally
here!
The One
through whom God created the universe had visited
this planet, and His Chosen People, and was in
our very midst. Adonai Tzidkaynu, the Lord our
Righteousness had come among us! Immanuel, God
with Us, was with us, and was powerfully teaching
us the crystal clear Word of God. The Lord Who
Heals Us was present, healing us physically and
spiritually. This was amazing! This was worth
celebrating! This was a time of unparalleled happiness!
The amazing joy from this very special situation
was like the joy that happens on one of the most
joyous occasions - a wedding - only greater!
And
Yeshua said to them, “You cannot make the attendants
of the groom fast while the groom is with them,
can you? But the days will come; and when the
groom is taken away from them, then they will
fast in those days.”
Yeshua
knew God’s plan for His life. He knew His mission
would result in His rejection by the majority
of the nation, and His death, burial, resurrection
and ascension. The Son of God knew that this very
special time among us - when the One through whom
the universe was made could be physically present
with us, and teach us Himself - and help us and
heal us, was limited. It would be appropriate
to fast after He died and ascended and was no
longer physically present among us. But to fast
when the King of kings and Lord of lords was here
doing amazing things - no. That would not be appropriate.
May each
one of us always have that sense of amazement
and happiness that comes from knowing that the
Son of God has come!
The entire
world, including us, needs to understand that
a radial change happened when Messiah came into
this world. Messiah’s arrival marks the beginning
of a whole new age, a new dispensation, and expansion
of salvation history. New things were needed.
And
He was also telling them a parable: “No one tears
a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it
on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear
the new, and the piece from the new will not match
the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins;
otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and
it will be spilled out, and the skins will be
ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.
With
the entry of Immanuel into this world, all of
the same old ways and forms and patterns of doing
things simply will not do. New teachings and a
new message and a new mission were necessary -
new, but consistent with the old; new leadership
was called for; a new mission among the Gentiles
would shortly take place; new communities would
develop made up of Jews and Gentiles; new traditions
would need to be developed. New life and forms
and ways of doing things should characterize Christianity
and Messianic Judaism - incorporating the best
of the old, but integrating them with the new.
But,
Yeshua understood that not everyone would accept
the new realities. Some were too comfortable with
the old. It seemed so safe. It was tried and tested
and familiar. And so anticipating their rejection
of the new, Messiah gave the Pharisees and their
experts in Torah a warning:
And
no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new;
for he says, “The old is good enough.” But,
the old is not good enough if God really is doing
something new. And, in Yeshua He really gave us
something amazingly new! New, but not unexpected.
He had forewarned us to expect and be ready for
something new. He let us know ahead of time that
the Messiah would come and we were responsible
to recognize Him and listen to Him - otherwise
we would be suffer. He told us that a New Covenant
would be enacted that was not like the older Sinai
Covenant, which we would break. He told us that
through the Messiah we would get new life and
a new outpouring of the Spirit of God. Those new
realities cannot be ignored if one wants to please
God, be accepted by God, if one wants to be right
with God and live with God.
But not
everyone welcomed the new. The majority of those
who were the most religious, and the most knowledgeable
among our people rejected the new. So, the conflict
between Yeshua and the religious leaders intensified.
Their rejection of Him increased.
The old
still refuses to acknowledge the new. Those who
have new life, and those of us who are now representatives
of the new, like Yeshua and His disciples, we
will also face rejection. We need to be willing
to endure conflict, hostility and rejection. We
need to be strong. We need to be disciples of
the new who honor God, who honor Messiah, who
stand for the truth. We need to be like Yeshua.
We need to be like Matthew. Be strong! Be bold!
Be courageous! Don’t compromise before hostility.
Speak the truth. Reach the lost. Correct those
who are wrong! Make disciples. Teach them the
truth. Don’t back down!
It is
not easy, but it is so important. It is so much
what our life is to be about. It is so much what
our future rewards will be based on. And, there
is so much grace to help us!
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