Building the kingdom: Who needs Jesus?
Luke • Sermon • Submitted
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Intro
Intro
In life there are certain "monumental" days that we will always remember. Such as:
The day you graduated high school,
the day you started college,
the day that you got married,
the day your children were born.
All of these are special days.
Others are not special but difficult,
Loss of loved ones,
Loss of health,
Accidents.
But for those who have been born again, you remember a day when your life was changed eternally!
You did not achieve sinless perfection, but a change takes place when a lost soul meets a loving Savoir!
There is an old Hymn says "What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought, since Jesus came into my heart!"
Some of you have not experienced this change that I speak of.
You are lost in your sins and you are headed for Hell.
Maybe you are trying to work hard enough, be good enough to get to heaven, but you cannot by your own merit, good deeds.
This is a devastating fact, but it is true nonetheless.
If that describes you, I have good news... this could be the day that everything changes for you.
This could be a day that you will never forget.
This could be the day that your life is changed eternally.
This could be the day that Jesus calls your name.
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.”
Last week we began to look at Jesus call to Levi and his response.
Luke, Vol. 1—That You May Know the Truth Levi’s Call (vv. 27, 28)
Jewish tax collectors were easily the most hated men in Hebrew society—despicable, rich vermin. They were classed with “robbers, evildoers, adulterers” (Luke 18:11), with prostitutes (Matthew 21:32), and with pagan Gentiles (Matthew 18:17). They were not only hated for their robbery, but also because they were lackeys of the Romans. Tax collectors could not serve as witnesses in court and were excommunicated from the synagogues. Low-life Levi and his friends were the lowest of the lowest.
Jesus called Levi out of his sin, to follow.
And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.
The next scene continues in our text to a party.
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.
Why a party?
Think of it this way,
Levi has no regrets about leaving everything and following Jesus.
He is even hosting his own goodbye party.
His change of life was an occasion to rejoice!
Just as when any sinner turns their life over to Jesus is a reason to rejoice!
In reality, there is no greater occasion to rejoice than conversion.
J.C. Ryle wrote on conversion
Luke, Vol. 1—That You May Know the Truth Levi’s Banquet (v. 29)
It is a far more important event than being married, or coming of age, or being made a nobleman, or receiving a great fortune. It is the birth of an immortal soul! It is the rescue of a sinner from hell! It is a passage from death to life! It is being made a king and priest for evermore! It is being provided for, both in time and eternity! It is adoption into the noblest and richest of all families, the family of God!
Levi is there, Jesus is there, other disciples are there, Levi’s friends are there,
and there are also some Pharisees and scribes who are around.
We don’t know if they were in attendance or watching from a distance.
The parallels in Mathew and Mark perhaps clear this up a little for when they say.
And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
So none the less, this truly is quite the party.
Probably the biggest show in town that evening.
Which is why problem began to arise.
Eating with sinners.
Eating with sinners.
And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
In this culture, to sit at the table with someone communicated acceptance.
This is the charge they were subjecting Jesus to.
The Pharisees avoided sinners to avoid any suggestion that they endorsed the sinner.
They preferred a level of separation, keeping away from the sinners.
Treating sin like we treat sickness today.
Remember some rabbi’s taught that even entering a tax collectors home made you unclean.
Jesus perspective and the Pharisees perspective cannot be more opposite.
Jesus on the other hand preferring to see the recovery of sinners, talks with them, eats with them, spending time with them..
After all what was his mission that he quoted from Isaiah
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus reaches out to sinners and meets them where they are.
We may think of this situation, another that comes to mind is the woman at the well.
Jesus actions separate him from the Pharisees
In doing so, he suggests that their actions, their separatism does not honor God.
This is the rub.
This begins causing a stir among the pharisees.
Complaining to the wrong people.
Complaining to the wrong people.
It’s kind of like driving a knuckle into a knotted up muscle in you back or shoulders.
Just a little pressure causes discomfort, the more it is pressed the greater it gets.
There is conflict growing.
The Pharisees don’t go to Jesus though, the one with whom they are having the issue, they grumble at the followers.
And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Kind of like how if you have ever worked for a larger company, grumbling always happens amongst the employees but nothing ever happens or changes because that is where it stays.
The Pharisees were religious, church attending people.
They were committed to God.
But they didn’t share the same heart for others that God had and was displaying through Jesus.
Their love was focused on themselves.
Think of the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
If we examine our own hearts, there is more than a little Pharisee in all of us whether we are willing to admit it or not.
Philip Ryken a pastor and commentator in Pennsylvania
Luke, Volumes 1 & 2 (The Pharisees’ First Complaint)
It is tempting for us to have a critical spirit about the way other people live, saying, “Well, that’s just not what Christians are supposed to do.”
It is tempting to think that there are some people who do not belong in church and hardly deserve to hear the gospel.
It is tempting to criticize the way that this denomination, that church, or some other Christian organization does ministry without ever getting personally involved in reaching out.
It is tempting to become so attached to our own particular style of Christianity that we never introduce Jesus to the people outside who need him the most.
But we are not called to stand somewhere off with the Pharisees; we are called to sit down with sinners so that we can share the gospel.
Jesus has come for the sick.
Jesus has come for the sick.
Jesus knew what was going on though and answered them.
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 another one of those verses that we all know and comes to mind relatively easily.
Jesus knew the Pharisees would object to almost anything He said. If He quoted scripture to them to explain why he was eating and partying with a room full of sinners, they would argue with Him. So Jesus did what He did best...He used a parable to communicate deep truth to people who didn’t want to hear any truth at all.
Jesus compared sinners to sick people. When you are sick, really sick, you need to see a doctor to get well. The doctor knows the right medicine to cure your illness. Without the doctor’s care, you will remain sick, and maybe even get worse.
This really is a powerful image, especially for us today.
When we go to the doctor, unless it is for a routine checkup, we know several things.
We are sick, we need help, we cannot help ourselves.
In other words, Jesus is reminding the pharisees that the call goes out to those who need help.
Jesus has come to seek out sinners who realize they need help.
To go to people who recognize they are not the perfect picture of health.
And he goes to call those who are not well to get better by coming into the grace that God offers them.
All mankind is desperately sick.
Romans 3:23 (ESV)
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Change does not happen without God reaching in to be the great healer.
Jesus mission is to regain the lost by going to them!
The name Norma McCorvey probably doesn’t mean anything to you. But the pseudonym that Norma McCorvey used in the landmark Supreme Court case in which she was the plaintiff you will probably recognize—
Jane Roe, of Roe versus Wade, the infamous decision in 1973 that legalized abortion on demand.
According to Kathleen Donnelly, in 1969 Norma McCorvey was working as a carnival barker to attract people in when she discovered she was pregnant. She asked a doctor to give her an abortion and was surprised to find it was against the law.
She sought help elsewhere and was recruited as the plaintiff in Roe versus Wade by two attorneys seeking to overturn the law against abortion.
Ironically, because the case took some four years to be finally decided, McCorvey never was able to abort the child and instead gave her baby up for adoption.
She remained anonymous for a decade or so, and then Norma McCorvey went public. Donnelly writes:
Shaking, sick to her stomach and fortified by drugs and alcohol—she told a Dallas television reporter she was Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade.…
Next, she admitted she had lied about that pregnancy in the hope it would help her get an abortion:
And, little by little, through occasional interviews, sporadic speaking engagements and a 1989 television movie, she revealed that before she gave birth to the Roe baby and gave her to adoptive parents, she had given birth to two other children.…
Slowly she began speaking of her troubled life before the case and in writing a memoir she left little out of her difficult childhood and wild adult living.
According to writer Jeff Hooten in Citizen, McCorvey soon went to work answering phones for a Dallas abortion clinic. Next door to the clinic the pro-life group Operation Rescue leased an office.
After a time, Norma began to have a change of heart. One day she began referring callers to Operation Rescue. Hooten writes:
Her turning point came when a 7-year-old girl named Emily—the daughter of an Operation Rescue volunteer who greeted McCorvey each day with a hug—invited McCorvey to church.
(Kids you make a difference, even inviting adults to church! God uses you as well!)
On July 22, [1995], McCorvey attended a Saturday night church service in Dallas. “Norma just kept praying, ‘I want to undo all the evil I’ve done in this world,’ ” said Ronda Mackey, Emily’s mother. “She was crying, and you knew it was so sincere.”
In August of 1995 she announced she had become a Christian and was baptized in a swimming pool in front of ABC “World News Tonight” television cameras. For a short time she said she still supported abortions in the first trimester, but before long that conviction fell by the wayside. Says McCorvey, “I still feel very badly. I guess I always will … but I know I’ve been forgiven.”
Norma McCorvey proves once again that our Lord Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost.
Craig Brian Larson, 750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers & Writers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 479–481.
Set apart.
Set apart.
This ideas of separatism portrayed by the Pharisees is still around in churches today.
If you were here last week you will remember the story we ended with of the church praying for sinners and the women that came and told her story when seeking to join the church.
Some sought to postpone accepting her into membership, likely because of they thought that it would mean acceptance of her sin.
God can change any life.
I think for us it may be that thought of, why should I invite that person to church, I know how they live, I know what they will say, perhaps you have asked before and been shut down.
Jesus spends time with sinners when so many righteous people of the day wanted nothing to do with them.
To be saved is to be made holy.
To be made holy is to be set apart.
To be set apart does not mean though to be separated from the world around us.
Looking down from on high.
Must we be careful, absolutely.
We all have our own struggles and difficulties things that lead us astray.
Should a person that struggles with alcohol (or perhaps gossip for that matter) be a part of a ministry going into bars?
You get the picture.
But there are countless opportunities to serve.
Luke (The Calling of Levi (5:27–32))
Jesus calls sinners to righteousness and to share in mission with him.
Jesus does not merely forgive sinners, he openly associates with them.
Luke, Volumes 1 & 2 (Doctor Jesus)
What are you doing to reach sinners outside the church?
There are plenty of ways to do it. Get involved in the life of the neighbor that everyone avoids.
Spend time with the kid that no one likes.
Serve in a ministry to people who are down and out.
Invite people to church—even people who will probably say no.
You never know what they will say, so at least give them the chance to turn you down.
Do not avoid the difficult people, but seek them out for relationships that might lead to their salvation.
Identify the sinners in your life that need to know Jesus, and reach out to them with gospel love.
We all need Jesus!
We are all sinners in need of God’s grace.