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Luke 5
Luke 5:27-32 27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax
collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow
me," Jesus said to him, 28
and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great
banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and
others were eating with them. 30
But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect
complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax
collectors and`sinners'?" 31
Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but
the sick. 32 I have
not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
I have two kinds of friends.
One kind – if you asked me to describe them, I would give you a
list. I’d say: ‘he’s Scottish,
he’s very loyal, he’s a careful person, he likes playing football.’ A list, like that. The other kind – if you ask me to
describe them, I’ll tell you stories. I’d say ‘to give you an idea about Sally, she once ran the
marathon, dressed as the pink panther, and she still beat her
boyfriend.’ All of a sudden,
you’ve got a vivid impression of Sally.
Jesus is like the second kind of person. If you come to the Bible and you say ‘Bible, tell me about
Jesus.’ Sometimes you get
a list: ‘He’s the Son of God, He made the world with His Father, He’s the
King of the Universe.’ But much
more often the Bible says: ‘you want to know about Jesus? Ok, true story: One time Jesus was at a party, and all
the important religious types were there, and this prostitute walks in …’ That’s how you learn about Jesus.
In our story this morning we get a fantastic window onto the
character of Jesus. Because you
can tell a person by the company they keep. And Jesus relates to all sorts. He comes into the work place, He comes into the home, He
meets the very good, He meets the very bad and we get to see Him up close
and personal.
We’re examining this Jesus because, He is the One who rose from the
dead, who sits in heaven now and who wants to meet each one of us – the
way He met Levi in the story.
None of this is simply a history lesson. We look at this story, because it tells us about the Jesus
who is alive today and wants to encounter each one of us. Bear that in mind as we enter into
this story.
Well the story happens in three stages. Scene one is verses 27-28
[SLIDE – v27-28]
and here we see Jesus calling Levi.
Scene 2 is verses 29-30
[SLIDE – v29-30]
There we see the party that Levi throws, and it’s in full swing
Then verses 31-32…
[SLIDE – v31-32]
Here we see the punchline to the whole episode Jesus speaks and jaws
hit the floor.
Let’s dive into the story in v27.
There’s Levi and his day began as just another day at the office.
This particular office was a tax collector’s booth. Levi was a tax collector. Now when I say ‘tax collector’ think
‘arms dealer.’ In Jesus’ day
these guys were despised. They
were Jewish men who forcibly took money from their own people and gave it
to the enemy – to the Romans who’d taken their land. Tax collectors were
notorious for collecting much more than what was owed. Levi is a traitor to his country, and
a cheat to his brother Israelites.
So there he is in v27 sitting at his tax collecting booth – in the
very midst of his shameful job.
And here comes Jesus. Now
I’m sure many Jewish men had walked up to Levi and said ‘I’ve got two
words for you.’ Jesus’ two words
were different: ‘Follow me.’
[SLIDE – Lord Kitchener ‘You!’]
Jesus doesn’t ask Levi, He tells Him. He doesn’t enquire whether Levi’s schedule is clear, He
doesn’t ask whether Levi minds, He doesn’t even say please. Instead He strides towards the most
hated man of the region, He enters right into Levi’s world in all its
mess and He says ‘You’re coming with me.’ ‘Enough of this.
This is stopping now. Follow me. ’
Besides these two words from Jesus, what did Levi already know about
Him? Well, he knew enough. He knew enough to make a calculation –
on one side was the life he knew, a life where he called the shots, a
life that was financially secure.
On the other side there was Jesus – a life with Him. A life where Jesus called the
shots. A life with no guarantees
of financial security. What to
choose?
V28 – no contest: ‘Levi got up, left everything and followed
Him.’ Nothing else had made Levi
give up the tax collecting game.
Not his parents’ pleas, not his friends’ urgings, not the public
taunts. But two words from Jesus change the man. Levi gives up
everything. Why? To be with
Jesus.
And that’s
the key isn’t it. Jesus doesn’t
call people to a moral code. Jesus doesn’t call us to a religious
path. Jesus calls people to Himself. And when you see Jesus for who He is –
then you do exactly what Levi did.
You give up anything and everything just to be with Him.
Jesus is
here the great ‘Commander in Chief’. He is the magnetic leader and people
leave their jobs, their money, their relationships just to be with
Him.
And notice
that this is the opposite of how the Christian message is often
preached. So often Christians try
to tell non-Christians ‘Please will you let Jesus into your life.’ And there is a lot of truth to that –
we do need to let Jesus into our life.
But if that’s all you say then you’re really saying ‘Jesus,
come follow me.’
I have heard
famous evangelists tell people
‘Be a teacher, be a plumber, be a cleaner, just take Jesus with
you.’ I have to say, that’s not
how it is. Jesus says ‘You follow
me.’ And maybe you follow
Jesus right back into your old job.
But maybe, like Levi, you don’t.
Maybe like Jason, you follow Jesus being a doctor. Then you follow Jesus by training to
be a minister. It’ll be different
for everyone. What you don’t do is say to Jesus ‘Jesus, I’m going this
way, and you’re coming along for the ride.’
Jesus will
not be a hobby to be taken up in our spare time. Jesus is the Commander
in Chief.
But Jesus is not just the Commander in Chief. The next scene in our story is ‘the
party’ where we see another side to Jesus. Look with me at verse 29:
Let’s read v29:
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house,
and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with
them.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is associated with dinner parties 14
times. Mostly He is at the
parties. Always He is the very
center and life of the party.
Often He tells people to throw more parties and better
parties. Constantly people were
shocked by how much Jesus liked to party and who He liked to party with
(that was the point of the video).
And Jesus was always speaking of the future day when He would
return and bring heaven to earth and He describes that day as a vibrant,
joyous, cosmic feast. Jesus is
not only the Commander in Chief, He’s also the Master of the Banquet.
[SLIDE – Master of the Banquet]
These are the words of one man who became a Christian when He
realized what kind of Man Jesus is:
“The first thing we [should] learn about [Jesus]
is that we should have been absolutely entranced by His company. Jesus was irresistibly attractive as a
man… What they crucified was a
young man, vital, full of life and the joy of it, the Lord of life
itself, and even more the Lord of laughter. Someone so utterly attractive that people followed Him for
the sheer fun of it… [We need] to recapture the vision of this glorious
and happy man whose mere presence filled His companions with delight…[He]
would have the children laughing all round Him and squealing with
pleasure and joy as He picked them up.”
(Lord Hailsham, former Lord Chancellor from his
autobiography The Door Wherein I Went, 1975)
Do you see Jesus like that? I
think, unless you see Jesus as the laughing, joy-filled Master of the
Banquet, Levi’s decision to follow Him will make no sense.
Put yourself in the shoes of Levi’s work colleagues. Imagine yourself that morning in the
tax office and word gets around ‘Did you hear about Levi – he’s got
religion. He just upped and left this morning. He’s gone to join this bloke Jesus, said he’s never coming
back.’ Can you imagine the kind
of reactions in the office? Some
would say ‘He’s flipped.’ Some
would say ‘Well each to their own, it’s just lovely he’s found something
that works for him.’ Some would
say ‘My goodness, I could never be that committed to religion
myself.’ What would you say about
Levi: is he crazy? is he sweet? (good for him) or is he impossibly
religious? Well all these work
colleagues get invited to the party.
And they got to meet the Master of the Banquet. They got to spend an evening with the
One who Levi wants to spend his life with.
I wonder if then they began to understand Levi’s
decision. (Is he crazy?) Maybe
spending your life with this Man is not bonkers. (Is he sweet?) Maybe joining this Man isn’t
just a nice thing for Levi, maybe it’s for me. (Is he impossibly religious?) Maybe following this Man is not about rigorous
rule-keeping, maybe it’s just about wanting to be with Jesus.
Christians get this wrong all the time. We so often lose sight of the One we’re following and think
the Christian life is about disciplined rule keeping. Jesus, the Commander in Chief, may
well be calling on you to give up on something, or to step out into a
risky situation, to put right a relationship, or to serve in
uncomfortable ways. But Jesus is
not asking you to do ANYTHING for the sake of being more disciplined! Jesus does not command ANYTHING just
so you become more moral. He
wants us pursuing Him – not some kind of ideal of what a Christian
ought to look like. We obey
because we want to stick close to our Commander, because we want greater
and deeper friendship with the Master of the Banquet. Never lose sight of that.
Well v30 is the turning point of the story. Things party turns prickly. There are two groups of people
who do not get along and Jesus is in the middle of them. There are the goodies – the Pharisees
and teachers of the law. And
there are the baddies – the tax collectors and sinners. And to have both groups under one roof
means there’s going to be trouble.
Let me quickly explain: The Pharisees were a religious group who got
serious about being good. They had
made their whole lives into a quest for moral and religious purity. To look at a Pharisee in Jesus’ day
you would see the most committed, upright, well-to-do citizen you could
imagine.
They are outraged that Jesus should be befriending the baddies: the
tax collectors and ‘sinners’.
Now when the Pharisees use that word ‘sinners’ – they’re calling
attention to the fact that these people not only do wrong things but
they’re flagrant about it. They are thieves, cheats, prostitutes,
criminals, friends of the Romans.
Basically these people are wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Sinner!’
And on the back it says ‘And I don’t care who knows it.’
So at this party we have the sinners and we have the righteous
Pharisees. Who did Jesus party
with? This should shock us: Jesus – the holy One of Israel – He
partied with the sinners. And the
Pharisees and teachers of the law are left frozen out.
Let’s just think about the seating plan at this party.
[SLIDE – seating plan]
Now this is all a guess, but I’m just piecing this together from the
fact of who said what to whom.
Jesus is there – the guest of honour, surrounded by Levi’s mates –
Tax Collectors and sinners. Now
the Pharisees have a major problem with this. But the trouble is, the Pharisees would never actually
sully themselves by joining the table with sinners and tax
collectors. So, wonderfully, they
can’t actually get to Jesus to tell Him how appalled they are. I love that thought – Jesus knew the
Pharisees were there, He knew they didn’t approve, He knew that every
time He laughed or shared a joke with these people, the Pharisees were
getting madder and madder. But He
also knew that their pride would keep them all away!
So what did the Pharisees do with their moral indignation? They questioned the disciples. See, the disciples seem caught
between their joyful Master befriending the sinners, and the stern
Pharisees who condemn sinners. And then the question from the Pharisees
comes:
"Why do you eat and
drink with tax collectors and`sinners'?"
And the
Pharisees are basically saying: ‘Don’t you people care about what’s right
and wrong? Don’t you people care
that those low-lives are funding the Romans who are killing our people? Don’t you care that these sinners are
openly flouting God’s holy law?!!’
Umm… I think
the disciples are flummoxed.
‘Maybe the Pharisees are right.
My goodness, what are we doing?’
These guys are tongue-tied.
So v31 – Jesus
answered. You can hear Him
piping up from the middle of the room, where all the fun has been. The Master of the Banquet has
something to say and it will turn the tables on the Pharisees in a
second.
"It is not the healthy
who need a doctor, but the sick. 32
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
This is the third characteristic of Jesus we see: He is the Doctor of
the Soul.
[SLIDE – The Doctor of the Soul]
The Pharisees had it entirely wrong.
They thought of Jesus as someone who had come to reward our
goodness. Actually He’s come to
heal our badness. Jesus is a
doctor for sick sinners. So as a
doctor He spends His time with patients who at least know they have an
illness. Jesus parties with
sinners because sinners know they need a Saviour. The righteous, on the other hand,
don’t come to the Saviour. They
have nothing to do with Jesus, and Jesus has nothing to do with them.
This is such an important truth about Jesus – He is the doctor of the
soul. We should meditate on this.
I am a male,
so I never go to the doctor. I
complain about every little cough and cold, but I don’t go to the
doctor. When I do I like to save
up all my little niggles and sicknesses so when I go I have a decent list
of ailments. Why? Because you don’t want to go to a
doctor when you’re healthy.
No-one sits
down with their doctor and says, ‘I’m a picture of perfect health, I
thought you’d be impressed.’ They
won’t be impressed, you’re wasting their time. Doctors are for sick
people. And Jesus is for
sinners. Jesus is for the person
who wears the T-shirt – ‘Sinner – and I don’t care who knows it.’
Jesus here
asks us to think about sin as a sickness. Sin’s not really about the individual bad stuff that we do
or say or think. Instead sin is a
chronic condition that we have.
And the symptoms of our sickness aren’t really as important as the
fact that we have it. I mean your
symptoms will be different from my symptoms. My sickness comes out as lust and pride. Yours might come out as greed and
gossip. And there will be some
people who have really gross obvious symptoms – like the tax collectors
and sinners at this party. But we
all have the same disease. I
spoke with a man on Friday, who said ‘Physically I’m ok, mentally I’m
fine. But I can feel a real
spiritual illness in me.’ He’s
just facing up to reality.
We all have
a spiritual illness. And it’s not
in our hair or we could shave it off.
It’s not just a skin complaint or we could buy an ointment. It’s just in our hand or our leg or we
could amputate. No we have a
sickness in our bones, in our blood, in our brain and heart and
soul. We have a chronic, terminal
illness called sin.
A Christian
is someone who knows that they are sick.
And that’s why they love the Doctor very much. People misunderstand Christianity so
much because they don’t understand that Jesus is a Doctor.
Jesus is a
doctor and churches are hospitals for sinners. What a revolution there’d be if we truly saw ourselves and
the world saw us as sick people who have found the Doctor. This is not an awards ceremony for the
righteous. This is
treatment. And just like
Alcoholics Anonymous opens up their meetings with ‘My name’s Jim and I’m
an alcoholic’ we could say ‘My name’s Glen, and I’m a sinner.’
Jesus said:
‘It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I’ve not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance.’
Written
across the gateway of heaven could be the sign: ‘Sinners Only! The righteous need not apply.’
The
Pharisees who seem so close to God are far, far away because they don’t
acknowledge their sickness. The
tax collectors and sinners seem so far from God, but there they are
flocking to the Doctor of the Soul.
Where are
you this morning?
Perhaps you
are a Christian here this morning.
Two quick implication of this for you.
1) Please remember
that Jesus is a Doctor and that Doctors want sick people in their
surgery. When I stuff up majorly
in the Christian life, I usually spend the best part of a week trying to
avoid the Doctor and trying to cure myself. Jesus is the cure – come to Him in the midst of your sin,
come to Him at the height of your horrible sickness, come to Him and say
‘I am desperately sick. I am
desperately sinful.’ Jesus is the
friend of sinners.
2) You see
yourself as sick – do you see that others also desperately need the
Doctor? If your friend fell into
a coma, you’d get them to the Doctor wouldn’t you? You’d move heaven and earth. Levi knew what his friends
needed. He brought his friends
and work colleagues into an environment where they could meet Jesus and
meet other followers of Jesus.
You could do that. But I
find the real battle is perceptions.
If I see my friends as healthy, I’m not too bothered about
introducing the Doctor. But we
must trust the Doctor’s diagnosis: our friends do need Him.
Perhaps you’re
not a Christian at the moment, I hope you’ve seen a little window onto
Jesus.
He is the Commander in
Chief who joyfully leads us to forgiveness and cleansing. He is the Banquet Master who is strong
to lead and tender to heal. He is
the Doctor who rejoices with us in His cure and leads us on in health and
wholeness.
The Commander has a
brilliant sense of humour and a deep knowledge of the human heart. The Banquet Master, has an
irresistible strength and a tender compassion for the broken-hearted. The
Doctor has all authority to make us well and the very best bed-side
manner.
Won’t you be His
patient? Won’t you come to the
Doctor, just as you are. Won’t you submit to His treatment?
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