We continue in our series in Luke's Gospel, chapter 15 verse 1.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered,

this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Then Jesus told them this parable.

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep

until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.

Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says,

rejoice with me, I have found my lost sheep. I tell you that in the same way, there will be more

rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to

repent. So at the front here, these are the questions that I

ask when I read through a little passage like this. And I start saying, okay, well, tax collectors

and sinners at the beginning here, they're important, right? So I want to know more about who are

the tax collectors and who are the sinners. What does he mean by this? In the Jewish community,

the tax collector was seen as a collaborator with the occupying Romans. They were traitors.

And then let's just consider the taxes that they were issuing on people.

Here's just a very small snippet.

There was a personal income tax.

There was a poll tax just for existing.

So men between the ages of 14 and 65 were taxed for being alive.

Women between the age of 12 and 65.

There was a land tax, one tenth of all grain that was grown,

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