Matthew 9:9-17

Matthew Called

⁹ As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth; and He *said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him.

¹⁰ Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” ¹² But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³ But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The Question about Fasting

¹⁴ Then the disciples of John *came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” ¹⁵ And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. ¹⁶ But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. ¹⁷ Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

iPhone, Android, tablets, laptops, desktops…pen and paper. Throughout the years technology has changed how we function day to day. At some point we all have to make the leap…embrace change. You can’t just keep adding on to a typewriter to get a tablet, you have to change how you do things.

For centuries there was a certain way of life. Jesus’ contemporaries thought it’d always be the way they knew. But Jesus is changing it up. He’s not supporting the status quo, He’s bringing something much bigger and better. He’s trading in the sorrow of fasting for celebrating. Why would we fast and long for someone who is in our midst? Jesus was in their midst…but just for a short time.

Where are you allowing status quo in your life, allowing old rules to dictate how you live?

Prayer: God, help me to see how You want me to live and to change what needs to be changed.

Scripture quotations taken from the NASB © The Lockman Foundation (www.lockman.org)