Welcome to Day 25 of Journey to the Cross, a forty-day devotional leading to Easter. Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite subject: grumbling and complaining. We will begin by reading Luke 5:27-30.
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me.” So, leaving everything behind, he got up and began to follow him. Then Levi hosted a grand banquet for him at his house. Now there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were reclining at the table with them. But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Luke 5:27-30
If you have ever traveled with a young family, one thing you knew is inevitable. If you are lucky, after a few days grumbling and complaining starts. Sometimes it begins within a few hours. Once it begins, it is near impossible to get it to stop. “He’s touching me!” “She touched me first!” “Can’t we just go back home?” “I’m sick of this trip, tired of being in this car, and just want some personal space.” It’s almost enough to make you give in, turn around, and go back home.
The Pharisees and scribes, the Jewish religious leaders, saw what Jesus was doing and they began to complain about His ministry. Once they started, they did not stop. The Pharisees disagreed with Jesus on just about every issue, large or small. All of their complaints boiled down to one thing: Jesus was not the Messiah that they expected. Don’t get me wrong! He was the Messiah, the promised Savior for God’s people, but He did not meet the ideal that they had in their heads. He was not doing the things that they wanted Him to do. They thought the Messiah would get them out of subjugation to Rome and any other foreign power. They looked back to the golden age of Israel, when kings like David and Solomon ruled. But Jesus was not that kind of conquering king.
Rather, Jesus was something far greater. He was and is the King of Kings. He’s a greater Savior than they could have anticipated. Jesus had not come to overthrow the Roman legions or to lay down a stricter standard for following the commandments as the Pharisees hoped. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. That’s why he said at the end of the passage. “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32). He came to make all things new, to give us His righteousness, and to put an end to death. Jesus was not the Savior the Jewish leaders expected; He was the Savior they needed. He was the Savior we needed.
As you pray today, thank the Lord for the Savior that we needed, not the one that was expected. Ask God to help you deal with grumbling and complaining in your own life.
Thank you for joining me for Day 25. Come back tomorrow to see how God’s plans never fail.
Joel McReynolds 
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