daily java

Daily Java:

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them! So Jesus told them this story: “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!” (Luke 15:1-7)

It is so easy to lose track of your mission. What did God send you to do? To whom did he send you to minister?

On the one hand, there is the church. It is full of people who are usually pretty good people. Some are old and some are young. And they have needs. They need to be ministered to.

But then again there is a big world out there full of lost and dying sinners. And they have needs and they need to be brought to Jesus to experience his grace.

The problem comes when the difference between the two is noticed so much.

One group is the church, the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. The other isn’t. and it is easy for the group that is in Jesus to become smug and self-satisfied. We have made it. We are God’s children. Isn’t it great that we found the right church and worship the right way and live our lives in the right way?

It is so easy to begin to see yourself as the one that God is proud of.

Jesus faced that problem. Those that were here already felt a sense of entitlement. They had worked for this church and had gotten all this stuff together. They had paid for it and fixed it up.

Then comes the feeling that they were worth it. When the Messiah came, he was going to come to them and tell them how good they were. He would uphold the corporate theology and make sure they knew God loved them. He would put his stamp on the fact that they were the true righteous.

But when he came, he went to the other side. He hung around with people that were not like those who were in charge, those who had seniority. These people were sinners. They drank and they caroused, they didn’t dress like us nor act like us. Jesus had no right to be with these people and prefer them over us.

Jesus tried to tell them that the sheep who were already in the pasture were fine, that he came to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. In fact, he even goes so far as to tell them that God and his angels are happier when someone comes back, then when someone stays. Especially when they have the attitude of the ones who stayed: self entitlement.

It made him sad and it made him angry at times.

And I think sometimes it baffled him as to why they refused to accept him and what he had to say. He was, after all, human and subject to the same problems we have.

He finally found that they were not going to hear him and not going to listen to him. so, like the apostle Paul after him, he turned to those who needed him.

There is more to life than what the people in the church think there is.

Of course, it ended with his death. Or at least the church thought it did.

But our life came from that death. And our life came from the resulting resurrection.

Praise the name of Jesus.