"Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'"

In Jesus' day there was a group called the Haverim, the associates of scrupulous people. They were devoted to purity beyond what God had ever asked of them. When the Old Testament law said not to boil a young goat in its mother's milk, they took that and built an entire system around it, rules about how long you had to wait between eating meat and cheese, regulations on top of regulations. And on the surface it looked like holiness. It looked like devotion. But it was all a show.

The Haverim looked down on the people who did not keep the law the way they did, who did not tithe the way they did, who did not perform the way they did. They called those people the Am Ha'Aretz, the people of the land, and being near them jeopardized their cleanliness. So they kept their distance. They did not associate with those who lacked discipline, they did not want the messiness of the lost, they did not have patience for the lost, and they enjoyed the comfort of the synagogue and the traditions and routines that affirmed themselves.

Now watch this... the Haverim did not see the lost as sheep left behind. They saw them as less than sheep. And that is exactly what made them false shepherds. In Ezekiel 34:4, God accuses the shepherds of Israel and says, "The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them." The Haverim did not hate the lost. They just loved their comfort more.

And that should make every one of us stop and examine ourselves. Because here is the incredible thing about Luke 15:1-2. Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to Jesus. Lost sheep were running to the Shepherd. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled. The ones who were supposed to know the heart of God were the very ones pushing the lost away from it.

So what I'm seeing is this... the danger was never that the religious people rejected God outright. The danger was that they replaced God's heart with their own preferences, their own comfort, their own version of what faithfulness looked like. They built walls to keep themselves clean instead of building bridges to bring the lost home. And they used their position to justify why they could not care.

Do sinners see the Shepherd in you?
Do the lost see a way home in you?
Do lost sons and daughters see a loving father waiting for them in you?
Or do they see the Haverim?

Because the lost are not looking for a perfect church. They are looking for a church that is looking for them. They are looking for someone who is willing to leave the comforts of the synagogue, the traditions, the events, the gatherings and lifestyles that affirm our beliefs... they are looking for us to leave the 99 to come find them.

Tomorrow we bring all of this together and ask the question that matters most. Will you leave?

Take an honest inventory of your weekly routine. Identify one comfort, one tradition, or one habit that you could set aside this week to make space for someone who is far from God. It does not have to be dramatic. It just has to be intentional.