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He Ate with Sinners • Jul 01st 1985

Life of Christ #7 -Why Jesus Felt at Home With Sinners and Outcasts

Fellowship New Testament Organic Church The Gospels

Why did Jesus feel so comfortable with sinners, tax collectors, and outcasts—and why were the religious leaders so uncomfortable with Him?

In this powerful teaching from Gene Edwards’s Life of Christ series, discover a striking picture of Jesus Christ among ordinary people. At Matthew’s banquet, Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors and people considered sinful and unclean by the religious establishment. Yet rather than withdrawing from them, Jesus is at home among them.

The Pharisees cannot understand it.

Their objection leads to one of Jesus’ memorable declarations: the healthy do not need a physician—the sick do. He then points them toward a deeper revelation of God’s heart: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Gene Edwards explores what this scene reveals about the character of Jesus, the Father who dwells within Him, and the Christian life itself. What if following Christ is not primarily about religious appearances, rituals, or continually trying to prove ourselves to God? What if God desires genuine fellowship with His people?

This message also explores Jesus’ teaching about fasting, the Bridegroom, new wine and old wineskins, and the danger of trying to force God’s new work into old religious forms.

You’ll discover themes including:

• Why Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors
• Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees
• “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”
• Fellowship with Jesus Christ
• Prayer, fasting, and the Bridegroom
• New wine and old wineskins
• Religious tradition versus spiritual life
• God’s mercy toward imperfect people
• Experiencing Christ in ordinary life

Gene Edwards invites us to reconsider not only how we see Jesus, but also how we understand the Christian life. The Jesus revealed in these Gospel scenes is accessible, merciful, deeply relational, and remarkably at home among people who know they need Him.

Download Transcription Play Audio

I would ask those of you who drink the old wine to please not…please let us drink our new wine. Those of you who are trying to mix the two, would you please, please stop? You’re hurting the old and the new. You’re really getting us in trouble, because people are looking at you and calling you a troublemaker.

Stop trying to change the old because, essentially, it’s a critical thing. You’re doing something critical. You’re doing something negative. Respect the old. It brought us here. It got us to where we are. Respect it…and go with the new…or go with the old. The worst thing you can do is mix the two. That is the worst thing you can do.

Well, that was the Lord’s message. His closing words to them were that no one, after drinking old wine, cares for the new, for he says older is better. Someday that new wine you’re drinking will be old wine, and you will say to your grandkids when they come up with something brand new, well, I like this better.

Excuse me, but if any of you are Plymouth Brethren, you’ve got a really bad habit of thinking your new wine is the only wine and looking down your nose at anything different as old wine…or poison. Brothers, there’s always a chance that God might even trump the brethren, and I am certain the day will come; as wonderful as we hold the meetings we have sometimes experienced, if He does not come, the day will come when He will trump even what we have experienced.

Stay with the old…or go to the new. That is the Lord’s own call.

 

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