who wants to be around us?

Mark 2:13 Then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him.

14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector's booth.

        "Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him.

So Levi got up and followed him.


  15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests,

         along with many tax collectors and other disreputable, notorious sinners.

         (There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers.)

16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples,

       "Why does he eat with such scum?"


  17 When Jesus heard this, he told them,

"Healthy people don't need a doctor—sick people do.

I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners."



There was something in this incident that struck me this morning...

Jesus, the perfect, holy Son of God, attracted "sinners" - Mark says there were "many" who followed Him around.

And I wondered...

Do "sinners" want to be around us ?

     (you know what I mean by the term, "sinners" ;-) )

Do people who don't do the God thing want to be around you & me, individually?

What was Jesus like that people who certainly weren't holy people wanted to be around the holiest person who ever lived?

What was there about Jesus that sinful people felt that way about Him.

You can probably answer that question as well as I can - there were lots of obvious reasons why.



So now comes the kicker.

If we are followers of Jesus....

And He lives in us...

And the same Holy Spirit that lives in Him lives in us...

why don't we have those same kinds of people wanting to be around us?



I think we both know the answer to that - don't we?