Jesus knows you need Him

Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him. Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Nobody’s Perfect!

and that’s a major problem because only the perfect (sinless) can go to heaven.

And even though God set out a system of sacrifices, but we’re not even good at that.

Talk about all the different sacrifices

and this was brought on because Adam and Eve were tricked by satan into sinning

remember I taught a while back that Gods plan for us is to live with him forever is perfection?

Well how could that happen if we’re not perfected?

see if sin is in our lives then we’re not perfect and if we’re not perfect we can’t be with God… and God really wants us to be with Him.

So what’s a God to do???

If He wants to be with all of us then he needed something to makeup for all our sins.

And that is why he sent his Son Jesus!

Jesus was sent to us to atone (makeup for) our sin and as an added bonus God let him stay awhile on earth to teach us about God and how much He loves us.

So here we find Jesus. the worlds most perfect guy. and all the religious people thought that of course he would be spending all his time with them. because of course next to Jesus they believed they were the most people people around...

and they thought so because they followed most of God’s rules and laws

but here’s a question for you...

if you follow MOST of God rules are you good enough for heaven?

Allow for responces...

alright, here’s other question. which is better: a person who follows most of the rules and thinks they’re doing well… or someone who doesn’t follow the rules, but wants to learn how?

Allow for responses.

So here we have a guy named Matthew. he’s a tax collector… that means his job was to take money from people and give it to the Romans.. and that wouldn’t be so bad except that he was a Jew, not a roman… so the romans didn’t like him much… but the Jews just plain old hated him.

So when Jesus came by. everyone expected that He would want to avoid ppl like Matthew. But Jesus isn’t like that instead of avoiding Matthew… he asked him to join the crew and become a disciple too!

So here’s my question to you

Do you know people who no one else likes?

Do you know someone that other people avoid?

How do you think that Jesus would treat them?

Would he ignore or avoid them?

Would he stick to his group of friends and make snide remarks about them?

or would he seek them out and befriend them?

Would he make sure that that person feel welcomed and loved… no matter how that made his friends feel?

Would he make sure that they knew that God loved them by showing them love himself?

and if he would do that… shouldn’t we do that as well?

Remember last week I talked about being an extreme friend. remember that? remember how they went to extreme lengths to make sure that their friend could meet Jesus?

Well the same applies to to those who are not your friends....

Because God wants you to be friends with everyone… that's why he said. Love your neighbor… not just Love your friends.

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