How God Saves

Luke 5:27-39

Today's passage is interesting on a few different levels. Jesus' teaching was truly polarizing to people. There were many who wanted to get as close to Him as possible to see what He was doing and hear the teaching. You had people who wanted to throw Him off of a cliff and also people who gave up careers to follow Him. Jesus' words demanded that you make a decision about Him. Was He what He claimed to be or was He just another teacher? The things He said and did, polarized. They really required an opinion of them. Some people knew how to respond to Him. But others, didn't see His arrival as good news at all. In fact, they saw it as a threat to themselves.

In Luke 5:27-39 we see Jesus calling those who need Him and the religious people complaining about the activities of Jesus and His followers. As I began preparing this sermon, I found that there was so much to be said about the first part of it that what I originally intended to be one sermon needed to be two so that we can give an appropriate amount of time to the verses. So this is going to be like part one, in which I'll work with verses 27-32 and next week I'll finish up with verses 33-39. I had Simon read the entire passage to give us the context in which we find these verses. With that bit of housekeeping done, let's turn out attention toward the passage and what is going on as Jesus moves toward those who need saving.

I. Jesus moves toward those who need saving.

The type of people we see Jesus calling to himself. His way of doing this probably seems backwards to many in our modern world. He didn't go straight to the most educated theological minds. He went to common, ordinary, and sinful people. He would call them to follow and then train them and equip them theologically. The people Jesus chose are not the people you would chose. This is important. It reminds us that Jesus uses broken people to move His kingdom forward in the world.

The beginning verses deal with the calling of Levi, who is elsewhere referred to as Matthew. He was a tax collector. This was a strange choice for Jesus to invite this guy into His close band of followers. For starters, if you look at Jesus' 12 disciples there was one and likely two of them who were zealots. These were revolutionaries who were violently opposed to Roman rule. Here you introduce Levi or Matthew who was a tax collector. The tax collectors worked for the Romans collecting taxes from their own countrymen. They were looked at as traitors. They regularly interacted with Gentiles and so were considered to be unclean. In fact, one rabbi said that if a tax collector entered your house it would be unclean. The tax collectors would bid for the amount of taxes to the Romans and the highest bidder won the contract. They would pay what they had bid and were free to keep whatever over the top that they were able to collect. They had a lot of money. It's not out of bounds to call them filthy rich. They were hated by the Jewish people. With that tension understood, you can see why it is scandalous that Jesus approaches this dirty sinner and calls Him to follow.

In this interaction we see several of our long held doctrines of salvation played out in front of the eyes of the people.

First, Jesus moves toward sinners. Jesus chooses who to call to. Theres's no way to get around this. In theological studies we call this the doctrine of election, the sovereign choice of God.

1. The Sovereign Choice of God

Theologically we call this doctrine the doctrine of election or the sovereign choice of God.

Before Levi got up and followed Jesus, God decided to make Levi His follower. There's really no way around this.

John 15:16 ESV

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

I would imagine that when Matthew heard Jesus say this later in His ministry he understood exactly what it meant. He knew his experience.

Charles Spurgeon said, "I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love." - Charles Spurgeon

Levi did not deserve to be chosen to serve and follow Christ and yet, in God's grace and sovereign choice, had Jesus call him. If you have followed Christ, if you have believed the gospel, it is by the grace of God on you. Someone approached you with the gospel because God chose that. It wasn't because you were good enough. None of us are. This should cause us to praise Him. This should move us into thankful worship.

There's much more that I could say here but we come to another doctrine, the effectual calling of God.

2. Effectual Calling

There is a general call to repentance and belief in Christ that goes out. Not everyone responds to this call. There is also what we refer to as an effectual call that goes out. This is the call that Paul is referring to in Romans 8:30.

Romans 8:30 ESV

And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

I was trying to think of a way to illustrate this. I came up with, when I was a kid we had this really cool thing that we used to play around with all the time. It was called outside. We would go there and no one would know where you were for hours on end. Eventually, one of the moms would come out and holler and their kids would go home. We all heard whichever mom calling but we didn’t respond because it wasn’t our mom. But when your mom or your dad called you went home.

The general call goes out to go home but it wasn’t effectual to us until it was a call from our parent to us specifically designed to get us home.

Salvation, the conversion of a soul from death to life comes only as a gift of God. It's at least interesting that people started calling this Levi, Matthew which means "gift of God."

Levi still had to respond. Though salvation is the gift of God, man still has the responsibility to believe the gospel and repent of their sin. This brings us to the next doctrine at play here which is repentance unto life.

3. Repentance unto Life

Luke tells us that Matthew left everything and followed Jesus.

Repentance requires a break with the old life of sin no matter what the cost to us is. It's letting go and turning our back on anything that gets in the way of us following Jesus. For Levi, it was his career built on sinfully taking more from people than needed. It was turning his back on taking advantage of others to benefit himself. Once he left these, he could never go back to them. He walked away.

As a Christian, our lives should be markedly different than unbelievers. We aren't supposed to keep on doing the same things as unbelievers but conduct ourselves with a behavior that shows a significantly larger amount of love.

When Levi meets Jesus and responds to the call of following Christ, he immediately worships.

4. Worship

He throws a party in Jesus' honor. He realized that this kind of grace deserves honor. He has a feast and invites his sinful colleagues to the party.

This is what happens when someone comes to know Jesus. He wants to worship and ascribe to Jesus everything He is due. Worship is Worth-ship. It's ascribing worth to Jesus. It's lifting up and praising His name for He has saved and is worthy of being worshipped and followed obediently.

Notice the nefarious guests who are present. Other sinners like Levi are the party guests.

5. Witness

When a man meets Jesus, he's so overjoyed that he wants his buddies to meet the man who called him to a different life as well. Those who truly know Christ want other people to know Jesus. He wanted to introduce his colleagues to Christ.

It makes me wonder, if we too think Jesus is so wonderful, then why are we not more exuberant about seeing people meet Him? Is it because some among us may not truly know Him and have not experienced the amazing grace found only in Christ Jesus?

The other tax collectors weren't the only other people there. The Pharisees show up and they've got complaints.

II. Jesus confronts the complaints of the religious people.

The Pharisees thought of themselves as the good guys. They were the ones keeping the faith and guarding the traditions of their nation. And they were against anyone who they deemed to be a threat to their traditions or their power and influence.

1. Jesus saves those who know they need a Savior.

The Pharisees failed to understand that they couldn't be clean in and of themselves but that someone outside of themselves had to make them clean.

They believed that if they were personally associating with sinners they would be made unclean by the contact. Whereas, in the previous section we saw Jesus physically touching a leprous man, and instead of contracting the man's uncleanness, the touch of Jesus made the man clean. The Pharisees were hearing first hand from who could forgive their sins but they didn't think they needed a Savior. Jesus saves those who know they need saving. It's those who realize their sickness, realize their need for saving that Jesus radically saves and changes for life.

Our great Savior, chooses people to save, moves toward them, calls to them with an effectual call, changes them from enemies to worshippers, and sets them about the business of telling others about Him. And... if you know Him, this is what happened to you. You may not fully understand why, I get that. But you were set free because God picked you to hear the truth about Jesus, His death as your sacrifice, and His glorious resurrection from the dead. If you are here and you've never trusted Jesus as your Savior, you've never bowed your knee to Him, but you're hearing this message right now, God has you here for a purpose. You are hearing me right now because God wants you to. You're not an accident. You didn't just happen to show up to church.

Romans 3:10–17 ESV

as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.”

Romans 3:10-17 tells us that no one seeks God. If you have questions about God and the gospel I want to talk to you because I believe God is working on you. Lean into that. Lean in.

Maybe you find yourself sitting there listening to the sound of my voice and you know you’ve tried everything you can think of to be better. You’ve tried like the Pharisees to be very religious and do all the “right” things. Maybe you think that the good you’ve done will somehow outweigh the bad. I’m here to tell you it won’t. This doesn’t work like that. Thinking like that is why the religious people in this story missed the boat. They missed Jesus. He was right there for the sick and hurting. He came for those who know they aren’t righteous on their own. And there is a great tragedy here because the very people who should have recognized Him and welcomed Him would rather try their own methods rather than surrender and follow Jesus by GRACE. How sad. Don’t miss Jesus and His grace because you think you can do it on your own.

I now want to speak straight to anyone in the room who says, “I am a Christ follower.” You claim to follow the risen Christ. Have you left everything and followed Him? Or did you start out strong and then let other concerns of life creep into the priorities of your life? Do you find that you might have picked up something that you need to lay down in order to follow Christ and run more freely. I want to urge you to repent of wrongly ordered living and follow Christ alone. Have no other gods above Him.

Will you go where He goes?

Will you obey as worship as a response to His grace.

Will you witness to His goodness?

PRAY