Portraits of Jesus: The One Who Makes Table Fellowship Possible

Our text this morning is taken from Luke 5:27-32:

Luke 5:27–32 ESV

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the 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.”

May God bless this, the reading of His holy and infallible Word.

The Significance of Table Fellowship

Our passage today is one of the most well-known, but unfortunately, the most abused passages in the New Testament. Many use it as an excuse to compromise on God’s standards, claiming that this is what Jesus and His disciples were doing at Levi’s house. Unwittingly, these people are saying that the Pharisees were right in their judgement of Jesus and His disciples, because Jesus and His disciple were in fact breaking the Old Covenant Law!

What such people are doing is not understanding the significance of table fellowship.

Table Fellowship is One of the Most Intimate of Fellowships

Think back to the most special moments in your life as you enjoyed fellowship with friends and family. If you are like most people, the majority of those memories have something to do with the sharing of food and drink with other people. The ancients realized this as well, that is why they considered table fellowship one of the most intimate forms of fellowship.

However, there is more here than just human fellowship. The “great feast” that Levi gave points to the Great Eschatological Feast God will give.

The Great Eschatological Hope is Table Fellowship with God

We find a beautiful picture of this Great Feast in Is 25:6:

Isaiah 25:6 ESV

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

The Apostle John was also given a prophetic picture of this Final Great Feast:

Revelation 21:1–3 ESV

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

We were created, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever”! The problem is, sin has broken our fellowship with God. The unholy cannot have table fellowship with the Holy.

This leads to the next point:

How Can the Unholy Have Table Fellowship with the Holy?

Unless the intimacy of table fellowship is taken into account, it is very easy to misinterpret this passage. In the Pharisees’ eyes, Jesus and His disciples were making themselves unclean by their close contact with “sinners”.

This was not an unfounded concern, for the OT Law did teach that Israel was to keep themselves ritually clean in order that they might be able to enjoy fellowship and serve a holy God. What the Pharisees got wrong is that they misapplied these Laws, thinking they were the way to become holy, when in fact they are designed to point us to the problem of sin.

The OT Holiness and Cleanliness Laws Point Us to the Problem

Israel was called to be a holy nation of priests. The holiness laws were designed by God to be daily reminders that they were “unclean” because of sin. This in turn, pointed them to their need for a blood sacrifice to atone for and purify them from their sins.

Sacrifice is the Solution

The link between table fellowship with God and blood sacrifice is clearly seen in the fact that God commanded the Israelites to partake in a sacred feast with some of the meat from the sacrifice after they had offered it. This link was very intentional on God’s part. He wanted Israel to know that they would never be “clean” enough to enjoy table fellowship with Him and serve Him as priests without their sins being paid for by another.

Of course, animal sacrifices, in and of themselves, could not atone for and purify a person from sin (Heb 10:4). This is why passages such as Isaiah 53, point to person who would die to atone for the people’s sins.

Jesus is the Answer to the Pharisees’ Question

The Pharisees’ “why” question was at its heart a “how” question: “How can Jesus and His disciples have such close contact with “sinners” and remains ritually clean?

The answer, given the context of this passage, is that Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”!

In the story of the calming of the storm, Jesus reveals Himself as the Holy One of Israel. Peter’s immediate response was fear and the realization that he was unholy. To this fear, Jesus speaks His peace and calls Peter to be a “fisher of men”.

In the next story of the healing of the leper, rather than being made “unclean” by touching a leper, Jesus makes the leper clean!

Finally, in the story of the healing of the paralyzed man, Jesus demonstrates that He has the authority to forgive sin!

This arrangement of stories is not an accident, but carefully arranged by Luke to show us that Jesus is the one who can purify us and make it possible to have table fellowship with God.

This is the Good News, and this is why Jesus came.

Luke 5:32 ESV

I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

In vs. 31, He likens Himself to a physician—He is the Great Physician who can heal those who are unclean and dead in their sins.

This is the condition of the whole world. In vs. 31, Jesus was not implying that the Pharisees were “righteous” in and of themselves. Quite to the contrary, they had been so blinded and deceived by sin they did not think they were in need of a physician! Christianity is for those who feel their need for salvation, and it those people whom Jesus came to seek and save.

Evangelism—Inviting Others to the Table

In this passage we have a great picture not only of Jesus, but evangelism as well. As we examine this passage, there are four things that we must do if we are to evangelize successfully.

First, you must...

Invite Them to Meet Jesus at the Table

This is what Levi did. In evangelism, we do not present people with information, but a Person. Most certainly there is much information about Jesus and what He did that we need to present to people, but if we lose sight of Jesus we can quickly go astray.

Secondly, you must...

Invite Them with a Righteousness Not Your Own

The whole point of the Gospel, is that Jesus is the one who makes us righteous. A little know historical fact is that the Pharisee were very zealous to make converts. Jesus make reference to this in Matthew’s Gospel:

Matthew 23:15 ESV

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Why did the Pharisees make their disciples “twice as much a child of hell”? It was because they were self-righteous, and they taught their disciples to be self-righteous!

Paul was once a Pharisee, and he totally renounced his self-righteous works for the righteousness of Christ, saying:

Philippians 3:8–9 ESV

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

Being righteous by faith in Christ alone, does not mean that we become Lawless.

The third thing you must do is...

Invite Them with a Standard Not Your Own

Earlier, I said that this passage can be abused if we do not interpret it correctly. Many have preached this passage as an excuse to compromise on Scripture and what it teaches. “You got to meet people half-way they say.” You cannot say or do anything that might “turn away” sinners.

This is blatantly false as can be seen very easily in this passage. First, look at the Pharisees. As I have demonstrated today that their interpretation and application of the Old Covenant cleanliness laws was a compromise of God’s Law. It was precisely because they were more committed to their “compromise” that God that they were “turned off” by Jesus. On one occasion, Jesus said this about the Pharisee and their teaching:

Mark 7:6–8 ESV

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

Moreover, Jesus and His disciples did not “go soft” on tax-collectors. When Jesus called Levi, he left his tax-collecting booth and followed Jesus. To have faith in Jesus means that you do not just have faith in Jesus as your Savior, but also as your Lord. As your Lord, Jesus calls you away from sin! We see this so clearly in our text, Jesus said He came to “call…sinners to repentance”!

Here is the sad truth, if we compromise Christ’s standard, we have made for ourselves, in the words of Jeremiah, a “scarecrow in a cucumber field” (Jer 10:5). We take it out of the field, plop it down at the table next to us and invite our friends. That is not evangelism, it is idolatry!

Finally, you must...

Invite Them with a Love Not Your Own

The love and compassion Jesus has for sinners is self-evident in this passage.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of how Christ has made him to be an agent of reconciliation, in other words, an evangelist. He says this about his motivation:

2 Corinthians 5:14 ESV

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;

That word “controls” has the sense of being compelled to do something. Paul is saying that the love of Christ seized his heart and compels him to share the Gospel with others.

This is the type of love we need to effectively share the Gospel with others. It is not a love we have of ourselves, but as Paul says, it is “the love of Christ”. Just like righteousness, it is a gift of God. This is why Jesus must be at our table. Everything is about Jesus, from our motivation to our message

In closing, I want to encourage you to attend the Evangelism Explosion workshop being offered on Saturday, April 22. I also want you to start think of who you could invite to your own home to meet Jesus in the book of Mark. Soon you will be hearing more about another evangelistic program that will assist you in doing what Levi did in our text. Inviting people to your home to meet Jesus!