Journey of Faith: A Week of Daily Devotions

WEDNESDAY, 10 JANUARY 2024

TEXT: Luke 5:27-39

27: 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,

28: and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

29: Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.

30: 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?”

31: Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

32: I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

33: They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

34: Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?

35: But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

36: He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.

37: And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.

38: No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.

39: And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

(New International Version Holy Bible)

TOPIC: STOP CONDEMNING SINNERS, REACH OUT TO THEM IN PRAYER AND WITNESSING

The Lord Jesus called people from different backgrounds but on encounter with Him, they were transformed like Levi. Levi was such an unlikely one to be called because, as a tax collector for the gentile Roman Government, he was considered a betrayer of Israel for financial and material gains. Levi began calling out his former companions to come and meet the Lord Jesus.

Most of those written off who come to the saving knowledge of Christ often become more zealous than others in witnessing for Christ. For example, Saul a former Judaizer, the Samaritan woman a former prostitute and now Levi, a former tax collector.

The Pharisees saw the tax collectors as condemned sinners. The Lord Jesus, on the other hand, saw them as sick people in need of healing.

Like any disease, sin, if not treated, results in death. But in the case of sin, it is eternal death. Jesus is the only physician that can cure sin. And Christ (The New Wine) is too much to be contained in the old wine bottle of our sinful self or mere religious nominalism.

QUESTION: Are you condemning sinners or praying and working for their salvation?

PRAYER: O God, help me to pray and reach out to lost sinners with the message of Your salvation, in Jesus name. Amen.