Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Luke 15:1-2.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
The Pharisees, the scribes, and the chief priests all had problems concerning Jesus receiving and conversing with those that they described as “tax collectors and sinners” and even eating meals with them. And if that was not enough, He chose a tax collector to be one of His twelve disciples. And yet He was teaching in the Temple and the people were hanging onto every word He said.
And He was teaching daily in the temple; but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him, and they could not find anything that they might do, for all the people were hanging on to every word He said. Luke 19:47-48.
When Jesus spoke, the people listened because Jesus spoke with authority and not like the scribes. Even the temple guards that the chief priests sent to arrest Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles could not bring themselves to arrest or harm Him because, as they explained to the chief priests, no man had ever spoken like He did before. I spoke to you in times past in various ways and at various times through the patriarchs and prophets, but I speak directly to you now in My Son.
Jesus knew Me and He knew what He was talking about. His words had power. He cast out demons, healed ailments, gave sight to blind eyes, gave ability to paralyzed limbs, made mute tongues speak, and opened deaf ears. No one could raise a question He could not answer. When He prayed, it was short, to the point, and got results immediatley
But His only purpose in all that was to save you and make your life wonderful. He came to bring you the abundant life of shalom that I planned for you, to wake you up to true righteousness in Me and to give you the Kingdom to reign with Him forever. He wanted to do everything for you that you could not do on your own. But that did not make His victory any less yours as well. He is My gift to you and you are joint heirs with Him to all I have and am. He emptied Himself and gave all His is and has to you.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9.
In the Garden of Eden, I shared everything with Adam and yet he turned against Me and destroyed our relationship. Why? Look at the Pharisees, chief priests, and scribes. They considered themselves to be My people, the inner group of those who considered themselves as experts in My Laws and righteous before Me, but they wanted to destroy Jesus though He said nothing but My Words and did the works I showed Him.
Adam and the religious leaders of the Jesus’ day and the devil all had the same basic problem, they wanted to be the Most High. They wanted to rule and reign, but without Me. The chief priests and scribes may not have articulated it that way, they hid behind zeal for Me, but it was jealously over their position of authority that drove them to seek to destroy Jesus and all the good He was doing and had done before them. What they did not realize is they could rule and reign with Me much better than they could without Me. At the Crucifixion they chose Ceasar over Me and that proved to be a devasting choice.
And that was the parable My Son told about the vineyard that explains your dominion authority as a leasehold whereby you can shut Me out of the world I made and gave you. The reason they killed the prophets and My Son was that they wanted to keep the vineyard as their own without its maker. And that was Adam’s problem as well.
But it all began with the devil wanting to put his throne above the angels and be just like Me, the Most High. But that did not work. You cannot be the source. Only I am the source of life and all that goes with it. But I am willing to give you everything I have and am.
So what do you lack that you would need to take that away from Me in your life? Do you really want to live without love? Do you really want to have to supply everything for yourself and others with no other source to rely upon? It will all dry up and end only in hatred, strife, anxiety, jealousy, and death.
There is only one road to perfect joy, perfect provision, and a life of perfection, and that road is walked together with Me. What is wrong with having a father who wants to give you everything He has and more besides because I am an unending source of supply?
When I give to you more comes, grace on top of grace. In your future there is no lack with Me as your Shepherd, healer, provider, helper, refuge, fortress, deliverer, redeemer, savior, LORD, and Father forever.
And that is why Jesus told the Pharisees, scribes and chief priests the parable of the prodigal son, was to open their eyes to the wonders of staying in the father’s house and of My tremendous love for all those I have created, both sinners and saints, for My love once understood, can turn sinners to saints and justify all. You just have to come to Me and come under My jurisdiction so I can act on your behalf. While the prodigal son was seeking to be on his own, the father could do nothing. But the moment his heart turned to the father, then the father could run and clothe him again in the authority of the son.
Everything both sons in that parable needed in abundance was in the father’s house and was all there for them, they just needed to take it and then more would pour in to fill up what they had taken, an overflowing cup that never ran dry. There was always more.
But out in the world, rejecting the father’s house and the father’s authority, the prodigal son found that taking control of his resources and life decisions did not work out as he had thought it would when he rejected the father. The prodigal son ran out of resources trying to draw his supply from the world, the flesh, and the devil. These are not sources of supply so they must steal or scam to get the supplies over to their territory from Me and My followers.
Adam was like the prodigal son of the parable, and those were the sinners that Jesus ate and drank with that made the Pharisees recoil in horror. The Pharisees were like the elder son that condemned sinners and declared themselves righteous but shut out the father even more than the prodigal son had.
In His conversation with the Pharisees and scribes, seeing the grumbling over His association sinners, Jesus told them three parables.
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” Matthew 13:10-17.
At first Jesus spoke in conversation with the Pharisees and scribes plainly as He shared His heart with them, but they rejected and closed their ears and eyes to the signs of the times, after that He spoke to them in parables. This occurred after they had blasphemed the Holy Spirit by saying that Jesus cast out demons by the devil himself. Matthew 12:24-32.
It happened soon after that, that all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Luke 15:1-2.
So Jesus turned His attention to them and began a conversation with them that made the sinners rejoice and the Pharisees more determined to destroy Jesus than ever.
So He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Luke 15:3-7.
Jesus came to seek out and save the lost. And do you know, that was everyone? In Adam, you all lost it all. But in Jesus, your good Shepherd, you all got found and brought back. Here Jesus was talking to people of the everlasting Covenant that began with Noah and then through Shem to Abraham, creating a household of faith, but then with the twelve sons of Jacob and the stay in Egypt went from one household to over two million people, who with Moses and those redeemed out of Egypt became a nation of faith that birthed the Messiah according to the flesh. And with the Messiah, the covenant was again updated, amended, and restated to bring in the gentile and the Jew into one new man, a new creation in Christ, which became His body on earth and in Heaven, the Church.
Jesus primarily in His sojourn on earth went after the lost sheep of Israel. The ones who had made Covenant with Me by sacrifice and had the morning and evening sacrifice of the unblemished lamb, a sign and a shadow but a payment on credit nonetheless.
But you see from this parable how very important every member of My covenant family is to Me. When you take Jesus as your Lord, I seal you in Him by the Holy Spirit as a pledge of your redemption—spirit, soul, and body. And I then give you to Him as your great good Shepherd and I command Him to keep you and raise you to glorified bodies on the Last Day. Hence, once you are sealed in Him, if you should wander away, He must go after you and bring you back amid the rejoicing of all of the church in Heaven. It is not My Will that one of My little flock shall be lost.
So here He made the point to the Pharisees that He was seeking sinners to bring them back, to reconcile them to Me.
He then went on to teach two more very important parables for you to know more about how souls are saved and the interest and role angels take in helping you heirs of salvation with evangelizing.
But this is enough for this Life Lesson.
I love you. You are with Me always and all I have is yours. Keep yourself from idols.