Micah 7:18 NKJV
“Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy.”
The religious storm hit that day the Lord Jesus called Matthew the tax collector to follow Him (Mat 9). The Pharisees went up in arms because they considered Jesus’ association with the tax man as ‘unacceptable’—because the social construct then had branded tax collectors no different from sinners. To make matters ‘worse’ in the eyes of the self-righteous Pharisees, “…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” (Mat 9:10 NKJV)! Oh, what a sight that must have been! What could have drawn so many tax collectors and sinners to a Man’s presence more than to the synagogue?
It’s interesting that the Pharisees’ next question actually gives us a clue to the answer. They asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mat 9:11 NKJV). By implication, the Pharisees were saying, as it were, ‘It is not right for your Teacher to have anything to do with tax collectors and sinners, if at all He is a righteous Man.’ Oh, could that attitude be the reason tax collectors and sinners couldn’t find people in the synagogue willing to hear their plea, yet flocked in numbers to the Master’s feet? Asked differently, what was Jesus’ perspective of those the Pharisees avoided? We have an answer in the response Christ gave to the Pharisees:
“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” (Mat 9:12-13 NKJV). Hallelujah! In Christ’s eyes, these were spiritually sick people in need of healing through repentance—not just ‘sinners’ to be avoided or whose actions should be condoned. Like the Prophet Micah had observed (in our text) about God Almighty, who “delights in mercy”, Jesus’ passion for the spiritually sick was driven by His deep “desire [for] mercy and not sacrifice”. May that be our perspective for the lost: they, too, need the Lord.
Pst. Emmanuel