“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17
How sad when a desperately sick person refuses to admit the need for help! A cancer may be growing inside, but everything seems normal on the outside. The increasingly sharp pains or a suspicious lump are ignored. Doctors stand ready to help, but the fatally diseased person continues pretending health.
Jesus serves as the Great Physician of physical and spiritual diseases. Approaching Levi at a tax collector’s booth, He summons him to follow. Recognizing his spiritual alienation, Levi forsakes his questionable occupation and receives spiritual healing from the Savior. Jesus then eats with other tax collectors and notorious sinners to offer them similar healing.
Meanwhile the self-righteous Pharisees protest His associating with such people.
Where are you, my friend? Do you pretend health, though desperately sick with sin? Do you feel righteous because of a decent moral life, membership in a church, service to your community – while looking with disdain at alcoholics and drug addicts, divorced couples and unwed mothers, poverty-level families on welfare, and minority groups? Or do you let the Great Physician probe your innermost heart, diagnose a fatal disobedience and rebellion against God, and offer you Himself as the full payment for sin, the only treatment for your disease?
Jesus came for you. He loves you. He offers you life, now and for eternity. NEED A DOCTOR?
PRAYER: Thank You, Dear Jesus, for giving Yourself as the full payment for all my sins. Amen.
(Devotions from “My Daily Devotion” by Dr. Stephen J. Carter, copyright 1988, CPH. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be printed, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of Concordia Publishing House. For ordering information, please contact CPH at 800-325-3040 or visit www.cph.org.)
Today's Bible Readings: Job 32-33 Matthew 14:1-21
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