GET TOGETHER- THE PERFECT MODEL AND THE PERFECT HELPER
Mt 9:9 ¶ As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.
I don’t know if any of you have this challenge, but it is a challenge to me sometimes. I often pray Lord help me to be loving, but without compromising. Well, we have the perfect Model. His name is Jesus Christ. We have the perfect Helper, the Holy Spirit that indwells the believer in Jesus Christ.
Matthew was a Tax Collector. Tax Collectors were despised by their fellow Jews. They collected taxes for the Romans and often used extortion to pad their own pocketbooks off their fellow Jews. And in this passage, we see Matthew get up from his tax collectors booth and follow Jesus. He was leaving a lucrative and unscrupulous business to follow Jesus.
In verse 10 we see that Jesus associated with sinners. Mt 9:10 “Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.” The Pharisees criticized Him for this. Mt 9:11 “And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
When Jesus heard this, He answered their question Mt 9:12,13 “When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Jesus loves sinners unconditionally. He also loves sinners that repent of their sin too much to leave us in the condition that He found us in.
Those who repented must have been able to tell that there was something different about this man than the Pharisees. Perhaps they could tell that He had a genuine love for them and a care for not only where they would spend eternity, but a concern for their lives here on earth as well.
Jesus loves sinners. And yet He never compromised truth. Sometimes my challenge is that I am concerned that I will compromise truth because I want people to like me. Then the challenge becomes how can I do this without being a Pharisee.
Well, the perfect Model has given us the perfect Helper. Joh 14:26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.
Joh 16:13 “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. (NKJV)
When Jesus came to the earth He operated in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He did this voluntarily to help us. To show us how to do it. We are told in Ac 10:38 “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. (NKJV)
Here are just a couple of reasons that He has given us the Holy Spirit. He has given us the Holy Spirit to help us love as He loved. He has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can do as He commanded us to do in Mt 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We won’t go to a people that we don’t love. We can’t make disciples out of people that we don’t love.
Again, He is the Perfect Model, and He has given us the Perfect Helper. We are told in Joh 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (NKJV) He will give us the grace to love and He will enable us to speak the truth. Ask Him to help you to love as He did. Ask Him to help you to live truth, speak truth, teach truth, and to love people into the Kingdom.
Let Us Pray
Lord today in a culture that is so hostile to Biblical truth on so many things it is easy to get hardened an calloused. On the other hand, Lord, we sometimes are afraid that by loving those who have not yet come into the Kingdom that we may in some way compromise and begin to allow the culture to change us rather than us being used to change the culture. Holy Spirit help us to love as Jesus did. and help us to speak truth and live truth as He did.
In Jesus Name
Amen
Love you all!
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Preston
Preston Headrick
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Real Party Ministry
P O Box 2302
Hamilton, Alabama 35570
Real Party Ministry 