Bible Verse of the Day Sunday July 3rd , 2022

Luke 5:27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

Up to this time in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus had encountered a paralyzed man, one who had leprosy and one demonically controlled. So now He was about to call a tax collector. The Roman Government used the Jewish tax collectors to collect the taxes from the Jewish citizens. Mainly, they would collect much more than the Roman Government called for and pad their own pockets with the rest. Consequently, the Jews in Israel viewed them as crooks and robbers and shunned by the Jewish people.

Two things are noteworthy and meaningful about Jesus calling Matthew to be one of His followers. First, Jesus reached out to and called someone that the Jewish leaders and the general population shunned. The Jewish people viewed tax collectors as Roman sympathizers, so consequently, no Jewish leader would even associate with them, let alone allow them to be followers. Secondly, To the Jewish people, Matthew and all tax collectors would be viewed as traitors, the most visible traitors in and among the Jewish people. The overall message in this scripture verse is that there is not one human being that could be considered unreachable to the spread of the gospel of Christ Jesus to the ends of the Earth.

Realizing how much Roman tax collectors were hated by their people, it is incredible that Jesus would call someone everyone else had turned their back on. Remarkably Jesus already knew how Matthew (Levi) would respond to this calling. Matthew responded to the call of Jesus by abandoning his livelihood as a Tax collector and following Jesus as one of His disciples. Matthew's sacrifice was, in one respect, more tremendous than that of Peter, James, and John. The three disciples could always go back to their trade as fishermen, but the door would have been closed by the Roman Government for Matthew to return as a tax collector.

Let us never count anyone out as a potential follower of Christ Jesus. Also, let us pray that God might open our spiritual eyes and be alert to the ones that God places in our paths that are ready to surrender their lives to Christ. Finally, let us all stay in the Word so that when the opportunity arises, we will be ready and prepared to tell the world's lost souls about the only way to heaven and eternal life (John 14:6).

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