Luke 5:27-32
Please turn in your copy of the
Word of God to Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 5. Our reading today
is from verses 27 to 32. Back in August, we began our
sermon series in Luke’s Gospel. We’ve meandered our way through
it. And over Christmas, we’ve looked at the themes of Jesus.
coming to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found. Remember that Adam and Eve, when
they sinned against God and Satan, the serpent, were called to attention
before God in the garden, he issued curses. Satan, the serpent,
would crawl on his belly, the dust of the earth. He would eat
all the days of his life. Adam would work hard. There would
be thorns and thistles in his agricultural labors. And by the
sweat of his brow, the ground would produce, but not what it
would have prior to sin. And then Eve was promised bearing
children will be not only difficult, it will be of great pain and
relationships, particularly the marriage relationship, would
be strained. And so when we sing joy to the world, the Lord has
come, let earth receive her king, we sing no more let sins and
sorrows grow nor thorns infest the ground. For Jesus comes to
make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found. And so
we pick up in our study of Luke’s gospel today and we see the curse
reversed yet again. Jesus has healed lame people.
He has helped the blind to see. And today we will see that he
converts He converts a sinner, a tax collector, Levi, also known
as Matthew. And so let us hear together from
God’s word. This is Luke’s gospel, chapter
five, beginning at verse 27. And there we read these words.
After this, after Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum, after this, he
went out, he saw a tax collector named Levi. He was sitting at
a tax booth and he said to him, follow me. And leaving everything,
he rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast
in his house. And there was a large company
of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them.
And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples saying,
why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered them, those
who are well have no need of a physician. But those who are
sick, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance. This is God’s word. Let us pause
and pray and ask for his grace. Our Lord, our God, our savior,
our king, author of the scriptures, the one who inspired holy men
of old to put down these words, even today, the physician Luke,
to put these words on paper that we, Because these have been preserved
through the ages by your spirit and providential care, we stand
before your word this day and see a sinner called by Jesus
to salvation. Lord, we we sometimes think that
we are not sick, that we are healthy, that we are righteous.
Lord, show us our unrighteousness. Show us our need for Jesus. Show
us our need of salvation. Help us to embrace him as he
is freely offered in the gospel so that we, knowing our true
condition, know our true salvation through faith in the great healer,
even Jesus. Help us to remember and treasure
this or to come to this great realization this day by your
word and by your spirit. And we ask it in the strong name
of Jesus and in his name we pray. Amen. Everybody. That’s a universal statement,
isn’t it? Everybody agrees with the Great
Commission. And why does everybody agree
with the Great Commission? Well, it’s on the pages of scripture.
Jesus, who said all authority in heaven on earth has been given
to me. Therefore, go into the world and make disciples, baptize
them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And after
you baptize them, teach them everything that I have commanded.”
Everybody agrees with the Great Commission. Nobody will really
argue whether or not Jesus said it or whether or not Jesus meant
it. Everybody pretty much agrees in the church that the Great
Commission is just that, the Great Commission. Where the problem
comes, where the rub comes, where the committee gets together is
in this area. Who will we take the great commission
to? So whom will we preach the gospel?
This week, as I considered this passage, I thought back through
15 years of ministry and some of the experiences I’ve had or
seen where the committee got together and though agreeing
that the Great Commission was real and biblical and our duty
as a church, the who was a little troublesome. There was an aging
church. in an aging neighborhood. And
that neighborhood had changed, but the church never did. And
so the call for that church that was obvious to everyone but them
was that they should then, if they’re going to stay in that
neighborhood, reach those neighbors. And the neighbors weren’t the
ones who were there in the 40s and the 50s and the 60s and the
70s, and maybe even the 80s and the 90s. The neighborhood had
turned. But the church, not being willing to recognize, not being
willing to change, would not minister the Great Commission,
which sounded good to everyone, which was agreeable to everyone.
But they would not minister the Great Commission to that neighborhood.
The color had changed. The skin tone was different than
theirs. And so while the neighborhood
had shifted, they had not in their mission. Or think about
another ministry that I have seen in my time, a blue collar
church, a working class church. They had been faithful in their
fidelity to the scriptures. They had been faithful in their
gospel centered content and ministry. They had been faithful in their
worship. They had been faithful in all sorts of areas and they
were a good church. Mind you, they were a little
blue collar. They were maybe not the wealthy in town, And
so when the mainline church in their own town with many white-collar,
not blue-collar folks, when they came knocking and said, we’re
looking for a church that preaches truth, all of a sudden, the Great
Commission, which everyone agreed was good, right, and true, it
was up for consideration because it wasn’t an issue of color in
this case, it was an issue of class. And so a welcoming church
all of a sudden became not so welcoming because these people
are coming in. Well, I’ve given you two examples
of 21st century American church. And both of these examples are
very common throughout America, very common throughout the church
in the United States, but really they’re not much different than
our story today. Israel, the chosen ones, The
ones called out of paganism, called out of Ur of Chaldeans
through Abraham and brought into covenant relationship with God
throughout the ages have been given the king and the kingdom
and the ordinances, the sacrifices, the liturgy, the worship, the
temple, the tabernacle, the palace, the city of God, Jerusalem, Zion
on earth. They see Jesus and they see him
ministering to people who aren’t their type. In fact, they see
Jesus ministering and offering salvation to those with whom
they would not hobnob, they would not associate. And so the question
in their mind is this, could Jesus really save a tax collector? And Jesus is gonna give an answer.
I didn’t come to save the righteous. I came to save the unrighteous. Dear friends, we are called to
preach the gospel to all nations, all people, all ethnic groups.
We are called to minister in our locale. We are called to
minister at our address and in our neighborhood. And we are
to freely offer the gospel of salvation to all who will hear
it. And sometimes that means Sometimes
that means we have to hobnob with sinners. Sometimes that
means we have to associate with people who aren’t our type in
order to relay the content, the message of the gospel. Well,
this story that we encounter today, it’s a couple of verses.
It’s not that many words on the pages of scripture, but it’s
like a three scene or three act play. And the first act takes
place at a tax booth. It’s January in a day or three.
And you’ll be gathering your W-2s and your 1099s and your
whatever 10s and Ws and Zs and whatever else. And you’ll be
gathering that. You’ll be, if you’re like me, putting it in
a shoebox. You’ll be rubber banding it. You’ll be finding all your
papers. And you’ll take it to your tax preparer. And you’ll
pay taxes really once and for all. Oh, but wait. Every time
you’ve been to the restaurant, the gas station, the Walmart,
the Harris Teeter, the McDonald’s, wherever it is you go, wait a
minute, there’s 6.75 plus hotel taxes, gas taxes, whatever. You pay taxes all year long.
You just don’t think about it. But here was Levi sitting in
a tax booth. He was sitting in a tax station
in Galilee along a Roman roadway. And as you passed by, you paid
your Roman tariffs. You understand that Levi was
considered a sellout. He was a Jewish man who was considered
a sellout because he was working for the Romans. And not only
was he working for the Romans who were occupying Jewish territory
given to them by God Almighty to be the promised land, Levi
was collecting their taxes. And so he had a double whammy
of hatred, a double dose of animosity coming his way. And as Jesus
is making his way through Galilee and is ministering to the people
there, he is ministering the word, he is healing. He bumps
into Levi, the tax collector. Yes, the sellout. Who’s got a
rather lucrative career collecting taxes and getting his own, if
you will. It’s probably worth the disdain.
It’s probably such a lucrative career that it’s worth the despised
looks. It’s worth the hatred. It’s worth
the animosity that comes his way. And Jesus is. You might
say he’s on a roll in ministry. He has called people to himself
through the gospel. He has made the lame walk. He
has helped the blind to see. And we’re gonna see throughout
the life and ministry of Jesus in the coming weeks. He is ministering
and making his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.
And he does so in this very moment with Levi. And he simply says
to Levi, follow me. He says to him, follow me. And we could pass right over
that and think, oh, he’s just wanting another disciple. He’s
told Levi, you come. And when Jesus says come. you
come. But friends, there’s so much
more taking place in that simple phrase. God, who in all eternity
decided in his grace and mercy through the ministry of his son
and the work of his Holy Spirit, set his affection upon a people
whom he would call by name through the gospel. And when he called
them, their eyes would be open. Their hearts would no longer
be hearts of stone, but hearts of flesh. Their chains would
fall off. and their hearts would be free
and they would arise, as the great hymn writer Charles Wesley
says, they would arise and follow me. And so here you have the
wonderful story of the glorious and miraculous conversion of
Levi, a sinner, a tax collector, a cheat, a thief, extortionist. Mafia member, a dictator, you
name it. Every evil intention in his heart
was there. The same as the wickedness which
we see across the landscape of humanity in our day. I can remember back in the early
2000s when we liberated Iraq from the wicked dictator of Saddam
Hussein. And I remember many Christians
saying something like this, he needs to die. He needs to go
to hell where he belongs. You fill in the blanks. Saddam
Hussein, so wicked, he needs to blank. And I remember some
person saying, no, he needs salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. You see, we pick and choose.
We get the committee together and we decide who deserves to
be saved and who does not. But friends, Jesus has already
determined that and we’re to be faithful and we’re to go with
the Great Commission, with the gospel and to preach to all nations. And so in this little snippet
of gospel story, we see Levi hear the command of God. Follow
me. The same voice of the master
who spoke and the world came into being. The same voice of
the master who speaks and the world that we live in is sustained.
The same voice of the master who spoke and Lazarus came forth
from his tomb from death to life has spoken here to Levi, just
as he has spoken to many of you. And you came to faith in him. You see, there’s a lot going
on behind the call of Jesus on Levi. There’s the nuts and bolts
of salvation. There’s what we call in theology
the ordo salutis. God chooses us before the foundation
of the world. He he effectually calls us through
his gospel. He works faith in us by his word
and spirit. We embrace Jesus Christ as he’s
freely offered in the gospel and then begins justification
and adoption and sanctification and glorification. You see the
nuts and the bolts of salvation of the ordo salutis, as we call
it in theology, are behind the simple call by Jesus to Levi
or Matthew, follow me. And notice the response of Levi. There’s a threefold way to look
at this. Jesus calls. He’s going to pay a big sacrifice.
and then he’s gonna follow the commission of Jesus. Follow me. When we hear those words, follow
me, Jesus is saying what he really said to Abraham, leave your land,
leave your idols, leave your family, leave your pleasantries,
leave your good life on earth and come follow me for a good
life in heaven. We sing songs from time to time,
gospel songs, I surrender all. Or we sing, I’d rather have Jesus
than silver or gold. I’d rather have Jesus than anything. We sing songs like I’ve decided
to follow Jesus. I’m not going to turn back. And
so the gospel call is a summons to leave behind our death, our
darkness, our sin, our shame, our disobedience, our idolatry,
our really our worthlessness to God. And it’s a call to embrace
Jesus Christ, to become a new creation in him where the old
passes, the new comes. And by his gifts and graces and
by the work of the spirit, we become servants of God, children
of the living God. We become subjects of the kingdom
and we serve him in this life and the next. But there’s a sacrifice
to this call. And some of you have felt this
sacrifice. We see here the sacrifice for Levi is to leave behind a
lucrative career. He can never go back to being
a tax collector, a thief, an extortionist, a member of the
mafia, whatever you want to call it or however you want to describe
it. He can never go back. And for him, he gets up. The
Bible tells us. Leaving everything, he rose and
he followed Jesus. He gave up the world to gain
heaven. The great missionary Jim Elliott,
who lost his life in the 1950s while trying to reach the Akka
Indians in Ecuador with the gospel, said this. He said, he is no
fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he can never
lose. Friends, I know some of you have
had to count the cost of following Jesus. You’ve had to leave your
friends. You’ve had to change your associations. You’ve had
to put away your darling pet sins that you thought brought
such delight to your life. You’ve had to disassociate maybe
in some of you cases with some of you with a church that no
longer believe the gospel. You’ve had to leave behind things
that were comfortable to you, things that were a blessing to
you. And you’ve had to count the cost and say, it’s worth
it. It’s worth everything to follow Jesus and to gain heaven
and to leave earth behind. Friends, this first act to this
first scene at a tax booth. is really the scene where Jesus
came to each of us. Maybe we weren’t collecting taxes.
Maybe we weren’t extortioners. Maybe we weren’t doing this or
that, and we weren’t as wicked as we thought, but all of us
were dead in our sins and trespasses, just the same as Levi. And Jesus
came and said, follow me. Well, the next act takes place
at a dinner party. It takes place at a dinner party
at the home of Levi, the tax collector. And here’s a question
for you to think about. How do you know someone is saved?
How do you know a person is really converted? How do you know that
someone who says, oh, I believe in Jesus. He’s my savior. I go
to church. I teach Sunday school. I’ve got an attendance record
that’s impeccable. And I have a King James Bible or whatever
mark there may be. How do you know? Their life shows
forth fruit. And here we see the fruit of
the conversion of Levi. He holds a dinner party and he
invites all his friends. who need to meet Jesus just like
he has. He invites to his home all his friends who need a savior
just as he has experienced. He’s bearing fruit, he’s showing
through this feast, through hosting his pagan friends, as it were,
his thieving friends, his sinners and tax collectors, he’s showing
them His new master, his new savior, his new Lord. He’s no
longer mastered by money. He’s no longer mastered by a
lucrative career where he gains the world but loses everything
else. And you can imagine this was
a pretty special dinner party, a lot of good food, a lot of
good things, a lot of people. It was in a nice home. It was
in the right part of Capernaum, the right part of town. And can’t
you just speculate in your minds? Can’t you just imagine in your
mind the ministry that Jesus had? We know that Luke has written
down for us, well, for Theophilus first, a faithful account of
the life and ministry of Jesus. And he’s put enough in here that
by the work of the Holy Spirit, we can believe that we have a
faithful eyewitness to what Jesus did and what he what he’s promised
to do. But we also read the end of the
gospel of, is it the gospel of John? Were all the things that
Jesus said, did, taught while he was on earth written, it would
fill volumes of books. And so we can’t know everything
that Jesus did, but couldn’t we speculate for just a moment
that this was a pretty special dinner party? I mean, in a dinner
party where there are sinners and Jesus, something gospel is
likely to happen. Something salvific likely took
place. And we don’t know what happened.
We don’t know if more people got saved, more people got converted.
It could be that some had more judgment heaped upon them because
there was Jesus, the Lord and author and savior of life in
front of them. And they continue to deny him. That could be the
case as well. But can’t you imagine this was
a special dinner? And then there’s that three and
we’ll just call it Levi’s courtyard. We’ll call this Levi’s courtyard.
The, Pharisees couldn’t wait for Jesus to tiptoe out the door,
quit your talking with sinners, quit your conversing and gospel
telling to these tax collectors. And there are the uncharitable
Pharisees out in the courtyard, the wrong spirit in their hearts.
They waited at the gate and cleared their throats. Jesus, this is not the way we do it
in Israel. We don’t take the gospel to sinners. We don’t take
the gospel to people of other color. We don’t take the gospel
to unclean people. You see, that was probably what
was really going on is Jesus, you’re a rabbi, you’re a teacher,
you’re clean. These are unclean people. If you go in there, you’re
going to get dirty. And no amount of dove or lava or ivory or whatever
soap will scrub their filth off of you. And you begin to fill
in the blanks and you begin to think how we in the Christian
church, we pick and choose who we think ought to get saved,
who ought to be able to come into our doors and who ought
to be able to come into our homes and eat at our table. And we
really say, like the Pharisees, because we’re better, we’ll set
the parameters. We’ll make the definitions. I
was talking with my parents over the weekend about life in the
first church my dad served in Virginia. It was a church in
Southside, Virginia, where everybody made their money either from
timber or tobacco. And in that church where people
who had made it in the world, they were senators or they were
representatives to the state in Virginia and other such things. And one day when dad was at his
study working, there was a van load of prisoners. They were
on a chain gang, as we used to call it. Right, and they were
out in the cemetery under the shade of the tree, a couple men
with their shotguns over their shoulders, and these men were
eating their lunch and resting. And just as you would know it
as a young preacher new to a church, there wheels up Mrs. Watkins,
the matriarch of the church in her Cadillac Fleetwood. And you
can imagine the angst in a young pastor, oh Lord, I’ve done it,
I’ve invited the prisoners to eat in the graveyard their lunch.
Well, Miss Watkins gets out of her car and she and her husband,
mind you, were the ones that paid for and built the fellowship
hall. And she walks right up to those men, looks at every
one of them and says, there’s a wonderful water cooler in the
fellowship hall. And I hope you’ll go and drink
from it and be refreshed. Friends, that is the attitude
of the gospel. That is the attitude that when Jesus changes us, we
don’t have that uncharitable spirit of the Pharisees and decide
who gets to come into the kingdom and who doesn’t. No, that’s up
to Jesus. That’s up to God almighty. You see, Levi, he left everything. He rose and he followed Jesus. And to answer the Pharisees question,
Jesus can save everyone. He can save Levi and he can save
you. He can save each and every one
of you. Let me ask you this question. If you have a cure. If you have
a cure, an antidote for the worst illness a human could ever face,
and all we would think of it as leprosy or AIDS or HIV or
cancer, we might think of it in those terms. Wouldn’t you go and sell it to
everyone who would hear of your pitch? Wouldn’t you go and offer
it to everyone wherever and whomever might take it? Friends, that’s
what Jesus did. But Jesus wasn’t selling some
miracle pill. He wasn’t selling some miracle
injection or infusion or 90 day treatment that would add a few
years to your earthly life. No, Jesus was selling something
far greater. He was selling salvation to the
sin sick soul that needed a savior. And he was that savior. And he
did not come for those who believed themselves to be righteous or
healthy. He came to those who know their
sin sick condition, who know they’re not OK, who know of their
unrighteousness and their need of a righteous one. If you have
a cure for the world’s worst illness, wouldn’t you go sell
it anywhere you could? Well, Jesus did. And he even
came to you. And so therefore, the great commission
is for us to go into all the world, or even to invite all
the world in, that they may hear the gospel. Let us pray together.
Our Lord and God, we are grateful that at Christmas, the hope of
the gospel is this, that Jesus came to make his blessings flow
as far as the curse is found. We rejoice in Jesus, the curse
reverser. We rejoice in Jesus who can heal
the sin sick soul. We rejoice in Jesus who sees
people as people. He calls them by name. He draws
them to himself and he heals their worst illness, their sin,
their shame, their idolatry, their desire for the world and
not heaven, their desire for the flesh and not the spirit,
their desire for Satan and not Christ. And he calls them out
of darkness into his marvelous light. He plants their feet firm
on the ground. He puts a robe on their back,
shoes on their feet, a ring on the finger. He fattens the calf. And the love of the heavenly
father is delightfully placed on these children. Lord, this
gospel we love, we treasure. We mix it up. We goof it up,
but we need your help to make it straight. And so give us your
grace. We ask and pray in the strong name of Jesus, our great
savior and healer. And it’s in his name we ask all
these things. Amen.