WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.679 Good morning to everybody. Welcome. Glad that you're here at Church of the Advent. 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:10.939 Not used to using a handheld mic, so we're going to see how this goes. We had some issues 00:00:10.939 --> 00:00:15.540 with the wireless headsets. It's much more comfortable, I have to say. Did not have that 00:00:15.540 --> 00:00:20.900 on my head. But welcome to you if you're new. My name's Tommy. I'm a pastor here. Very exciting. 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:25.140 Some of you are here in particular because we're going to be celebrating a baptism in 00:00:25.140 --> 00:00:30.100 a little while. Finn is going to be baptized. So as many of you know, that's one of my personal 00:00:30.100 --> 00:00:34.640 favorite things we get to do as a family. So very excited about that. Before we do that, 00:00:34.679 --> 00:00:40.539 we're going to turn our attention to God's Word here in Luke's Gospel. Big news, as I'm sure you 00:00:40.539 --> 00:00:47.040 all know, coronavirus is on all the headlines. I don't have to tell you, this is a big deal. 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:52.500 Rising rates of infection, rising mortality rates, seems to be getting worse and worse every day. 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:58.859 Laura and I recently heard Dr. Francis Collins talk, who's the head of the NIH, and we heard 00:00:58.859 --> 00:01:05.579 him talk about this virus, and he said this is serious stuff. And the great physicians of the 00:01:05.579 --> 00:01:11.000 world are working to try to contain it and to try to cure it. And he said that Christians should be 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:16.560 praying for this. And so we should be. We should be praying as Christians that the cure is found 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:25.700 quickly that it's able to be contained. And yet, as we turn to Luke's Gospel, as awful as coronavirus is, 00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:32.120 and many of the viruses and illnesses that plague the world, the Bible actually says that there's a 00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:41.820 worse kind of sickness that requires an even greater physician. In Luke chapter 5, verses 12 through 32, 00:01:41.819 --> 00:01:48.979 which Kevin just read, Jesus actually refers to himself as a physician, which is very important. 00:01:49.139 --> 00:01:56.539 And he says, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. And the world 00:01:56.539 --> 00:02:04.459 has a kind of sickness that the Bible describes by using the word sin. And it's important to think 00:02:04.459 --> 00:02:08.519 about it this way, because I think most of us, when we hear a word like sin, it sounds archaic 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:15.100 and old-fashioned. And we often associate it with the idea of doing bad things. I sin, I commit sins. 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:22.820 But the way the Bible talks about it is much more akin to an infection or an illness. And it has a 00:02:22.820 --> 00:02:31.060 100% infection rate, and it has a 100% mortality rate. And there's really only one hope for a cure, 00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:35.140 and that is the great physician, Jesus Christ. And that's what this passage is all about. 00:02:35.139 --> 00:02:42.879 Luke shows us three encounters that Jesus the physician has with various people who need various 00:02:42.879 --> 00:02:51.139 kinds of healing. And in each case, we see how Jesus brings healing in ways that meet all of our 00:02:51.139 --> 00:02:59.379 needs and restore all of the ways that our world and we are damaged by sin. So, we're going to look at 00:02:59.379 --> 00:03:04.799 each of these encounters and learn what it means to come to Jesus as the great physician in the hope of a cure. 00:03:05.139 --> 00:03:11.919 Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for Finn and the baptism that we're 00:03:11.919 --> 00:03:17.379 about to celebrate. And Lord, we pray that as we open your word, it would reveal to us why something 00:03:17.379 --> 00:03:25.439 like baptism is so important, why you matter so much, why whatever distractions may be tugging at our 00:03:25.439 --> 00:03:31.500 minds right now, our eyes and our hearts need to be firmly fixed on you and your word. We pray that you 00:03:31.500 --> 00:03:37.379 would move us out of the way, Lord, that we all would receive what you have for us this morning. 00:03:37.819 --> 00:03:44.860 In your son's holy name, amen. So, Jesus the physician, the first encounter that Luke shares 00:03:44.860 --> 00:03:54.819 with us in this passage is an encounter with a man who has leprosy. And the word leprosy in this point 00:03:54.819 --> 00:04:01.739 in history could be used to refer to any of a variety of illnesses that resulted in physical 00:04:01.739 --> 00:04:07.659 disfigurement. It's kind of an umbrella term. But this man is disfigured, and he comes and he throws 00:04:07.659 --> 00:04:13.680 himself at Jesus' feet and asks to be healed. But in order to understand what's going on, we have to 00:04:13.680 --> 00:04:20.240 understand the meaning of being someone with leprosy in the first century. If you were somebody with 00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:29.019 leprosy, you would have been an outcast, a social outcast. You would have been considered unclean, 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:35.519 and so you would be shunned by society. You would be stigmatized. You would be, in some cases, 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:41.639 considered to be cursed by God. And so people like this were not allowed into the towns. People wouldn't 00:04:41.639 --> 00:04:48.540 talk to them or associate them or even go near them. Anybody in normal, polite society knew to stay away. 00:04:48.540 --> 00:04:57.920 And the fear was that the uncleanness, the spiritual uncleanness of leprosy was contagious. 00:04:58.740 --> 00:05:05.439 So if I, as a clean person, talk to, associate with, or come in contact with someone who is unclean 00:05:05.439 --> 00:05:11.939 because of their leprosy, I would catch their uncleanness. I might also catch the leprosy. So 00:05:11.939 --> 00:05:19.620 they were cast out of society. And knowing this, I think, helps us to fully appreciate what happens 00:05:19.620 --> 00:05:26.420 next and how amazing it is. This man falls on his face, begs Jesus to heal him. And what does Jesus say? 00:05:27.319 --> 00:05:34.459 He says, I will be clean. And then he reaches out and touches this man, 00:05:34.459 --> 00:05:42.799 which is an incredible act of compassion. If you know anything about lepers in society in this day 00:05:42.799 --> 00:05:49.219 and age, it had probably been years since this man had felt any human contact. If you know anything 00:05:49.219 --> 00:05:55.240 about Jesus and his power, it's not necessary for Jesus to touch you, to heal you. Jesus can heal with 00:05:55.240 --> 00:06:01.219 a thought from halfway around the world. But Jesus nevertheless reaches out and touches this man. 00:06:01.220 --> 00:06:10.940 I will be clean. It's an action that is purely motivated by compassion. Superfluous, unnecessary 00:06:10.940 --> 00:06:16.500 act of love. And yet what it means is something even more profound. 00:06:19.260 --> 00:06:25.460 People avoided people with leprosy because they believed their uncleanness was contagious. 00:06:25.459 --> 00:06:33.859 If a clean person comes in contact with an unclean person, they become unclean. But what this shows us 00:06:33.859 --> 00:06:41.839 is that with Jesus Christ, the opposite is true. With Jesus Christ, holiness is contagious. When Jesus 00:06:41.839 --> 00:06:49.159 Christ comes in contact with you, when he touches you, his holiness, his cleanness is contagious. 00:06:49.160 --> 00:06:58.380 And you become clean. And you become holy when he touches your life. So no matter who you are or where 00:06:58.380 --> 00:07:05.480 you've come from, no matter what your background is, when you come to Jesus, when you ask to be healed, 00:07:05.620 --> 00:07:12.220 and when Jesus reaches out and when Jesus touches your life, you become clean. And you become holy. 00:07:12.220 --> 00:07:19.260 And this is why, after Jesus heals this man, he says, now you immediately need to go to the temple, 00:07:19.520 --> 00:07:24.360 and you need to present yourself to the priests there. The reason is so that the priests, this was 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:29.680 part of their job description, could examine this man. They could determine the leprosy was gone. 00:07:30.020 --> 00:07:35.100 They could then therefore determine that he was spiritually clean, and they could declare that to 00:07:35.100 --> 00:07:41.680 society so that this man could return to and rejoin society. So this is an act not only of 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:49.519 physical healing, but much more significant is the social healing. He is repairing the torn social 00:07:49.519 --> 00:07:55.860 fabric between this man with leprosy and the rest of society. Now he can be around his family and his 00:07:55.860 --> 00:08:05.540 friends. He can get a job. He can become a part of the society of clean people. And this is incredibly 00:08:05.540 --> 00:08:11.240 restored, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. So what we see is that Jesus is able to 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:18.680 bring social healing. And he specifically reaches out to the outcasts. And that matters to us as 00:08:18.680 --> 00:08:26.220 Christians because the world is full of outcasts. DC is full of outcasts. DC is full of people who 00:08:26.220 --> 00:08:31.720 don't fit in because they're socially awkward, or because they've simply fallen through the cracks, 00:08:31.800 --> 00:08:36.919 or people who have been bullied, or people who struggle with mental illness, or people who for a 00:08:36.919 --> 00:08:43.559 variety of reasons have been stigmatized and don't fit into proper society. And they don't know what 00:08:43.559 --> 00:08:50.219 it's like to belong. And now more than ever before, loneliness is an actual full-on epidemic 00:08:50.219 --> 00:08:58.899 that is arguably more pervasive and more harmful even than the coronavirus. They say that loneliness 00:08:58.899 --> 00:09:07.120 is physically detrimental to your body. It is on par, some research says, with smoking 15 cigarettes a day 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:14.240 in terms of the impact that it has on things like your heart health, not to mention the rising rates 00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:22.039 of suicide among people who live their daily lives alone. This is, and I know this is going to feel like 00:09:22.039 --> 00:09:28.279 a random pivot here, this is one of the reasons why people like Lady Gaga are so popular. Right? If 00:09:28.279 --> 00:09:32.219 you're familiar with Lady Gaga, whatever you may think of her music, I think that she's very talented 00:09:32.219 --> 00:09:37.679 as an artist. But one of the reasons for her sort of meteoric rise is from the very beginning of her 00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:43.379 sort of public, the development of her public persona, she intentionally identified with the 00:09:43.379 --> 00:09:49.259 outcasts. She said, my people are the people who have been bullied, the people who have been shunned, 00:09:49.259 --> 00:09:53.659 the people who have been told that they're freaks, the people who have been told that they don't belong, 00:09:53.779 --> 00:09:59.240 that they don't fit in, the people who have never had a crowd to call their own, the people on the 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:04.740 outside of the clique. The name for her fans is Monsters, and that's what it's meant to convey. 00:10:05.279 --> 00:10:09.460 And what we should pay attention to, whatever you think of her music, what we should pay attention to 00:10:09.460 --> 00:10:17.860 is the response. Her fans love her. They are indefatigably loyal to her because finally they have 00:10:17.860 --> 00:10:24.560 somebody who is willing publicly to identify with them, to represent them, and to allow them to belong. 00:10:26.259 --> 00:10:31.360 So you say, well, what are you saying? That the church should be like Lady Gaga? Well, here's what I'm saying. 00:10:32.419 --> 00:10:38.879 If somebody like her could do that, how much more should the church be able to do something like that? 00:10:38.879 --> 00:10:46.439 Because we have a Savior who has done just that. A Savior who says, I will be clean, and then touches 00:10:46.439 --> 00:10:54.439 this man, associates with this man, breaks a dozen different social taboos in the process. 00:10:56.039 --> 00:11:03.279 So everybody, everybody needs to belong. And if the church is in a place where people can experience 00:11:03.279 --> 00:11:10.659 that kind of welcome and belonging, I don't know what is. And so this is the kind of healing that Jesus brings. 00:11:11.299 --> 00:11:17.240 Social healing. He's able to reach out and touch people and make them holy, make them saints, welcome them into the 00:11:17.240 --> 00:11:23.279 community. And that's a kind of healing that we need because God didn't create human beings to live as outcasts. 00:11:24.379 --> 00:11:27.860 It literally kills us when we experience that. 00:11:27.860 --> 00:11:33.600 So that's the first kind of healing we see. But then we have to go a step further because as much as social 00:11:33.600 --> 00:11:39.139 healing matters, the next encounter shows us that there's an even more crucial kind of healing that we 00:11:39.139 --> 00:11:45.500 need from Jesus because of the infection of sin that we have in the world. And we see this through his 00:11:45.500 --> 00:11:51.879 encounter with this paralyzed man. In this second encounter, Jesus is teaching in a home. It might very well, 00:11:51.879 --> 00:11:57.820 by the way, be Jesus' house. He was in Capernaum. He's staying with Peter and his family. 00:11:57.860 --> 00:12:03.000 It doesn't tell us where he is, but because it doesn't tell us, it's very likely that this was his home where he was 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:12.680 staying. So Jesus is in his house with Peter's house, and somebody rips a hole in his roof and lowers a man down, 00:12:12.740 --> 00:12:20.159 right? So he would be rightfully upset. He could be very justifiably upset. But his response is not only to not be 00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:26.680 upset, it's altogether bizarre because these friends, they bring their friend on a mat. They want him to be physically 00:12:26.679 --> 00:12:31.359 healed. It's very obvious that this man is paralyzed. It's very obvious why they brought him to Jesus, 00:12:31.359 --> 00:12:36.979 why they went to the trouble to tear the hole. And yet what happens? What happens? 00:12:38.959 --> 00:12:48.459 He looks at this man and he says, your sins are forgiven. And of course, everybody is utterly confused 00:12:48.459 --> 00:12:53.399 by this, right? The friends are confused because they were like, okay, that's nice, but we wanted him to be 00:12:53.399 --> 00:13:01.079 able to walk. The religious leaders are scandalized. They say, how can Jesus claim to forgive sins? They 00:13:01.079 --> 00:13:07.959 start grumbling to one another. This is blasphemy. This is a direct claim of divinity coming from Jesus, 00:13:09.019 --> 00:13:15.439 right? I mean, imagine if you went out of town for a month, and as you left, you called one of your 00:13:15.439 --> 00:13:19.960 friends and said, will you house sit for me? Your friend says, yeah, you go out of town. And then while 00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:25.180 you're gone, your friend just acts like they own the place, right? They sleep in your bed. They eat 00:13:25.180 --> 00:13:31.420 all your food. They let your plants die. Your pets escape. They throw huge parties and invite all 00:13:31.420 --> 00:13:36.139 these people in. They completely trash your place. And then imagine you come back from being out of 00:13:36.139 --> 00:13:40.320 town for a month. You discover that your house is completely wrecked and destroyed. And you confront 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:43.120 your friend and you say, what did you do to my house? I thought you were going to take care of it. 00:13:43.400 --> 00:13:47.259 And your friend says, well, it's okay. I went and talked to my pastor, and my pastor actually already 00:13:47.259 --> 00:13:53.819 said that he forgave me for, so it's okay. It's no big deal. And you say, well, that's nice that you 00:13:53.819 --> 00:13:58.620 talked to a spiritual leader about this, but the only one who can forgive you is the one who was 00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:06.960 wronged, right? You need my forgiveness. It was my house. And the same is true when we talk about sin. 00:14:07.139 --> 00:14:14.600 Sin is essentially living in God's world and treating it like it's our own, right? And so the only one who can 00:14:14.600 --> 00:14:20.620 forgive that is the one to whom the world belongs, which is God himself. So when Jesus says this, 00:14:21.180 --> 00:14:27.220 it's this direct claim of divinity. And then to prove his point, Jesus says this in verse 23. He says, 00:14:27.540 --> 00:14:34.820 which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or rise and walk? And then before anybody answers, 00:14:35.080 --> 00:14:42.100 in order to show that his words have power, Jesus tells this man, rise up and walk. And he does. 00:14:42.100 --> 00:14:51.100 Which means, if Jesus says to you, your sins are forgiven, they are. And this is the point that 00:14:51.100 --> 00:14:57.480 Jesus wants to make to this crowd. As much as we need social healing, as much as the social fabric 00:14:57.480 --> 00:15:03.960 of society needs to be re-woven, as much as we need to bring the outcasts of the world into a community 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:09.899 and a family where they can belong, our greatest need is actually spiritual healing. It's not the 00:15:09.899 --> 00:15:14.840 healing of our horizontal relationships. Our greatest need is the vertical relationship that 00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:21.500 we have with God. That's the thing that needs to be healed first and foremost. Because most of us 00:15:21.500 --> 00:15:29.079 are like this man on this map. I know I am. I know I was. You come to Jesus with some vague sense of what 00:15:29.079 --> 00:15:34.919 you hope to get from him. We all start out this way. If you remember a time in your life when you came 00:15:34.919 --> 00:15:39.399 to Jesus for the first time, you probably had some vague idea of what you were hoping that would mean 00:15:39.399 --> 00:15:45.139 for you. Maybe you want a little help finding a job or a little help finding a spouse. Or maybe you're 00:15:45.139 --> 00:15:50.620 going through a time of anxiety or depression. Or maybe you need a breakthrough professionally. 00:15:51.039 --> 00:15:59.579 Or maybe you need to be healed in some way spiritually or emotionally or physically. And for a lot of people, 00:15:59.580 --> 00:16:05.480 the first time they really reach out to God is when they feel a need like that. And the hard truth is 00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:11.220 Jesus doesn't always heal us in the ways that we believe we need to be healed. You come to Jesus and 00:16:11.220 --> 00:16:16.100 you pray for a very real need in your life and sometimes you don't get the answer that you were hoping for. 00:16:17.300 --> 00:16:22.960 But the point of this passage is this. While that may or may not happen for reasons only God knows, 00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:27.220 when we come to Jesus and ask for forgiveness, Jesus always forgives. 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:34.620 Every single time. His death on the cross was the guarantee for this. 00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:40.000 And this passage makes that clear because, I don't know if you noticed this, people like to kind of 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:46.060 gloss over this because it makes us uncomfortable. But Jesus is so ready to forgive sin that he doesn't 00:16:46.060 --> 00:16:52.660 even wait for this man to speak. Right? Jesus doesn't say, and I think oftentimes we can think of Jesus as 00:16:52.659 --> 00:16:56.579 being more like this. You know, the man is lowered down and Jesus says, oh, you want to be healed? 00:16:56.639 --> 00:17:00.639 And he says, yeah. And he says, is there anything else you want? And the man says, what do you mean? 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:05.599 Is there anything else you want? Now, trying to get him to say the formula so that then Jesus doesn't 00:17:05.599 --> 00:17:10.000 wait for the formula. He doesn't wait for the man to utter the words. He doesn't wait to see if the man 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:17.180 genuinely wants it. He proactively forgives him. I don't really know what to do with that 00:17:17.180 --> 00:17:21.579 theologically. But what it shows is that it's Jesus' prerogative to forgive. 00:17:22.660 --> 00:17:27.980 And he is ready to forgive. He will take the slightest opportunity to forgive because that's 00:17:27.980 --> 00:17:34.180 the reason he came as the great physician to bring spiritual healing to the world. And this is good 00:17:34.180 --> 00:17:40.860 news if we believe that spiritual healing is our greatest need. If we don't, it won't make sense. 00:17:40.860 --> 00:17:45.220 If we're too focused on the need right in front of us, it's not going to mean much to us. But if we 00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:50.660 realize that under all of those other needs, the broken relationship with God is our biggest need, 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:59.920 this is good news. So Jesus offers both social healing, horizontal healing, and vertical healing, 00:17:59.980 --> 00:18:04.560 our relationship with God. He offers both. And, you know, what's interesting is it's, you know, 00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:10.400 I think churches can sometimes get focused on one or the other. There's some churches that only focus 00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:15.779 on healing social relationships, bringing social justice in the world. And there are some churches 00:18:15.779 --> 00:18:22.779 churches that only focus on getting people saved, right? Neither has the full picture. Jesus came 00:18:22.779 --> 00:18:29.899 to bring both. And yet he came to bring a whole lot more than that. Because it's not just about getting 00:18:29.899 --> 00:18:34.759 saved, and it's not just about building a great community where people can belong. There's a whole 00:18:34.759 --> 00:18:40.480 lot more. That's just the beginning. And we see this last piece of it in Jesus' encounter with the tax 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:49.579 collector. Any first century Jew reading this passage, they would read about the man with leprosy, 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:54.400 and they would feel tremendous compassion for this man. They would read about the man who's paralyzed, 00:18:54.599 --> 00:18:58.960 and they would feel compassion for the man who's paralyzed. They would want Jesus to heal these people, 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:04.640 to forgive these people. That would be wonderful to read. But then when they read about Levi, 00:19:04.640 --> 00:19:13.240 they would only feel hatred and scorn. Because a tax collector was the worst kind of person in this 00:19:13.240 --> 00:19:20.160 society. A tax collector was a Jew who had contracted with the Romans. They were the ones with all of the 00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:28.120 power and the privilege, or the occupiers. This is a Jewish person who had contracted with those people 00:19:28.119 --> 00:19:36.519 in power. And in order to make personal profit, they exploited their own people for financial gain. 00:19:37.719 --> 00:19:43.599 They were sellouts. Not only did they betray their own people, but they actually many times exploited 00:19:43.599 --> 00:19:50.759 them to get rich. So this is like a modern-day drug lord, or a pimp, somebody who doesn't bat an eye 00:19:50.759 --> 00:19:59.480 at abusing or exploiting people in order to line their own pockets. And yet Jesus seeks this man out, 00:19:59.480 --> 00:20:03.319 right? There's probably all of these other people around him who are clamoring for his attention. 00:20:03.319 --> 00:20:08.440 And Jesus is weaving through the crowd, kind of, you know, passing through this, no, no, no. And then 00:20:08.440 --> 00:20:14.359 he finds Levi, the worst kind of person, the most hated person, a betrayer. And he says, I want you. 00:20:14.359 --> 00:20:23.399 Come and follow me. And Levi, it's a spiritually profound response, immediately leaves everything 00:20:23.399 --> 00:20:29.879 behind. Leaves his job, his house, his entire way of life, and he becomes a follower of Jesus. And the 00:20:29.879 --> 00:20:35.079 thing that we need to recognize here is this invitation to follow Jesus is way more than just 00:20:35.079 --> 00:20:41.799 come learn a few things from me. This is all about identification. Jesus is reaching out and touching this 00:20:41.799 --> 00:20:50.200 man's life. Jesus is saying to Levi, from this point forward, no longer will you be known as a betrayer. 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:58.359 No longer will you be known as an exploiter of the poor. From this moment on, once you're my follower, 00:20:58.359 --> 00:21:07.799 you are going to be entirely defined by me. People will know you and associate you with me. 00:21:07.799 --> 00:21:17.319 It's a new identity. My reputation, my identity is going to be imparted to you. And in following me, 00:21:17.319 --> 00:21:24.359 Jesus is saying, as we share daily life together on the road as my follower, you're going to become 00:21:24.359 --> 00:21:28.039 more and more and more like me. So you're going to get this new identity from the start, and then you're 00:21:28.039 --> 00:21:32.440 going to begin to learn how to live into that identity. You're going to take on my characteristics. 00:21:32.440 --> 00:21:38.600 That's what discipleship means. And we know that this was a successful ministry because the other name 00:21:38.600 --> 00:21:45.160 that we use for Levi is the name Matthew. And Matthew is the one who, of course, eventually came to write 00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:53.960 one of the four gospels, the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. Right? So Matthew, the tax collector, 00:21:53.960 --> 00:22:00.519 is one of the first gospels that we encounter that shares the good news about Jesus. 00:22:02.600 --> 00:22:09.720 While the first encounter shows us social healing, the second encounter shows us spiritual healing, 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:17.960 the story of Levi is all about our desperate need for personal healing. Right? When Jesus calls us to 00:22:17.960 --> 00:22:25.559 leave everything and follow him, he's saying, I can cleanse you, I can forgive you, I can reconcile you 00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:33.240 to other people and to God, but that's not all you need. From that point forward, you need to relearn how 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:38.840 to live. Right? So think about if you've gotten very sick in your life, and maybe some of you have, 00:22:38.840 --> 00:22:43.400 or have friends or family who have, and maybe you're bedridden for a really long time, your body doesn't 00:22:43.400 --> 00:22:48.360 work right. And then, and then praise God that you, you are restored, you're healed, but you've been in 00:22:48.360 --> 00:22:53.080 bed so long, you've been sick so long, that your muscles have atrophied, and your body isn't working 00:22:53.080 --> 00:22:57.960 right. And even though you're healed, you need to go through rehabilitation, you need to work with 00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:03.480 physical therapists and occupational therapists, you need to learn how to live again as a healed, 00:23:04.360 --> 00:23:09.640 healthy person. It's the same spiritually, right? We are forgiven, we're cleansed, but a lot of 00:23:09.640 --> 00:23:14.520 Christians think that's it. Like you get forgiven, and then you're done. And you know, that's the last 00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:19.240 chapter. But that's just the beginning. For the rest of the life after that, we need rehabilitation. 00:23:19.240 --> 00:23:24.120 We need to learn how to walk again, and talk again, and love again, and have relationships again. We need 00:23:24.120 --> 00:23:28.360 to learn what our priorities need to be, and what matters in the world, and how to think, and how to 00:23:28.360 --> 00:23:33.640 interpret, make sense of suffering, and how to rely on God, and what trust means, how to forgive. 00:23:33.640 --> 00:23:38.920 All of these things, we have to learn. It's all spiritual rehab, personal healing. 00:23:40.600 --> 00:23:47.320 And once Levi begins to get a taste of this new life, what's the first thing he does? He goes, 00:23:47.320 --> 00:23:54.040 and he throws a party, right? He uses his home and his resources, throws a party, and who does he 00:23:54.040 --> 00:23:59.160 invite to the party? He goes out and finds every tax collector he can. He's like, you got to meet this 00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:03.480 guy. You got to see what this guy's done. You got to see what this guy's like. You got to see, 00:24:03.880 --> 00:24:07.960 the difference in my life, because I've been knowing and following this guy. You know, 00:24:07.960 --> 00:24:12.920 that's the great thing. Anybody who has been really meaningfully transformed by Jesus Christ, 00:24:12.920 --> 00:24:19.079 you don't have to tell a person like that to go evangelize, right? They will do it naturally as an 00:24:19.079 --> 00:24:24.279 overflow of their joy, right? They will do it because they have experienced something. They want 00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:26.759 everybody they know and love to experience the same thing. 00:24:26.759 --> 00:24:35.799 So Jesus, the great physician, is able to bring social healing. He's able to bring spiritual healing. 00:24:35.799 --> 00:24:41.160 He's able to bring personal healing. And this is a time in the life of our church where we're really 00:24:41.160 --> 00:24:45.079 thinking about what kind of church do we want to be. Going through a lot of transition right now. 00:24:45.079 --> 00:24:51.240 So we're looking ahead. And here's what I'll say about that. If we as a church are serious about 00:24:51.240 --> 00:24:56.919 following Jesus, which is one of the things that defines us, then we need to be serious about 00:24:57.480 --> 00:25:02.359 social healing, spiritual healing, and personal healing, personal renewal. 00:25:02.359 --> 00:25:09.159 And the thing that you realize if you begin to really ask what that means is that if you as a 00:25:09.159 --> 00:25:15.639 church are focused on all three, you're not easily going to fit into categories like liberal or 00:25:15.639 --> 00:25:22.439 conservative. You're going to be weird. You're going to be irksome to many people because you won't 00:25:22.439 --> 00:25:29.879 quite fit the mold, right? Imagine, just to make a comparison here, imagine that you go to your 00:25:29.880 --> 00:25:35.080 doctor, maybe this has happened to you. It may or may not have happened to me. Imagine you go to 00:25:35.080 --> 00:25:38.360 your doctor and your doctor, after looking at your blood work and all of that, says, 00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:44.920 I have some bad news. You're so out of shape that unless you start exercising and changing your life 00:25:44.920 --> 00:25:51.000 right now, you're going to die a premature death. You say, okay, I hear you. I'm going to do what I 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:56.120 need to do. So you go home and you start researching health clubs and exercise clubs. You got, I got to join 00:25:56.119 --> 00:26:01.159 gym. I got to make some changes here. And imagine you find there are two health clubs near your house 00:26:01.159 --> 00:26:04.919 and they happen to be on opposite sides of the street. There's one on the right and there's one 00:26:04.919 --> 00:26:09.000 on the left. And imagine you want to compare them and figure out where you're going to go 00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:13.559 to turn your life around. And you look at the club on the right and you're like, wow, they take fitness 00:26:13.559 --> 00:26:19.959 very seriously over here. They are, the exercise equipment is state of the art. Exercise programs are 00:26:19.960 --> 00:26:24.680 state of the art. It's all internet integrated. This is amazing. But then you look at the people 00:26:25.720 --> 00:26:33.240 and every single person there is like toned and tan and beautiful and they look amazing in spandex. 00:26:34.519 --> 00:26:39.079 And imagine you kind of look down at yourself and you see your belly kind of hanging over your lululemons 00:26:39.079 --> 00:26:46.039 and you're like, yeah, that's the last place I want to go, right? And you look at yourself and you 00:26:46.039 --> 00:26:49.559 look at them and you're like, I'm never going to fit into a place like that. I walk in the door there, 00:26:49.559 --> 00:26:54.119 they're going to laugh at me. They're going to judge me behind my back. So, okay, what about 00:26:54.119 --> 00:26:56.839 the club on the left? So then you go to the club on the left, you do a little research. You realize, 00:26:56.839 --> 00:27:00.359 oh my gosh, they're so welcoming. They're so amazing. You look around, they're all different 00:27:00.359 --> 00:27:05.319 kinds of people. Some like me, some completely different and, oh, much less spandex here, 00:27:05.319 --> 00:27:09.960 a lot more sweatpants. So you feel a lot more comfortable there. And then you kind of notice, 00:27:09.960 --> 00:27:13.639 well, you know, you say, what about your exercise programs? You look around, you realize there's no 00:27:13.639 --> 00:27:19.399 exercise equipment anywhere. No exercise equipment. And then you talk to one of the 00:27:19.400 --> 00:27:23.320 the trainers and you're like, well, you know, how to, where do I exercise? And, you know, 00:27:23.320 --> 00:27:29.000 I need to get in shape. And they say, oh, oh, listen, listen. We don't use phrases like morbid obesity 00:27:30.360 --> 00:27:37.240 or heart disease. We don't talk about high cholesterol because we don't want to be judgmental. 00:27:37.240 --> 00:27:43.880 Those are judgmental terms. All diets are equally valid and equally true. And whatever diet you want 00:27:43.880 --> 00:27:48.440 is going to be right for you. And you realize that it's not so much like a workout gym as it is a kind 00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:53.000 of buffet. And you look and there's pizza and donuts and ice cream. And most people are just 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:57.320 sitting around eating pizza and donuts and watching Wheel of Fortune on television. And you realize, 00:27:59.320 --> 00:28:04.759 so which gym are you going to go to? Which gym, right? If those are your only two choices, 00:28:04.759 --> 00:28:09.799 where are you going to go? Where's the hope? And of course, you know, when we talk about sin, 00:28:09.799 --> 00:28:13.240 we're talking about a spiritual diagnosis, right? Scripture's saying, 00:28:13.799 --> 00:28:17.720 you're in really bad shape spiritually. And unless you make some major changes, 00:28:17.720 --> 00:28:25.400 unless you make major changes, you're headed for disaster, right? And yet, when you look, 00:28:25.400 --> 00:28:29.720 most churches are kind of like those health clubs, right? There are some churches that you look at and 00:28:29.720 --> 00:28:34.759 they take holiness very seriously. But they give you this sense, sometimes unintentionally, 00:28:34.759 --> 00:28:41.480 many times unintentionally, that you have to get your act together. You have to have your doctrine and your 00:28:41.480 --> 00:28:47.960 life and your morality completely squared away before you will ever be accepted there. And you're 00:28:47.960 --> 00:28:51.000 constantly worried in a place like that that people are talking about you behind your back. 00:28:52.360 --> 00:28:57.960 Right? And yet, there are other places where you go and you sort of feel like, you know, 00:28:57.960 --> 00:29:03.799 they're all about including, they're all about being as diverse as possible. They say, come as you are, 00:29:03.799 --> 00:29:09.480 you're fine the way you are, but there's no growth and no change and no transformation. And you know, 00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:16.279 deep down, when you look at yourself, you need some help. So, where do you go, right? Where's the hope? 00:29:17.079 --> 00:29:23.960 Communities on the right demand change before you can belong. Communities on the left say, you can 00:29:23.960 --> 00:29:33.960 belong, but there's no hope of change. Jesus calls us, I believe, in this passage to a third way. Right? 00:29:33.960 --> 00:29:41.000 Unlike people on the left, Jesus says, sin is real. The diagnosis is real. He says at the end of this 00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:46.759 passage, I came to call sinners to repentance. That's why I'm here. I didn't just come to be a life coach. 00:29:47.559 --> 00:29:53.240 I came to take people who were spiritually headed for disaster and turn their lives around. I came to call 00:29:53.240 --> 00:30:01.160 sinners to repentance. Unlike people on the right, Jesus embraces us while we are still in our sin, 00:30:01.160 --> 00:30:08.519 where we are still unfit, where we still are filled with doubts. We still have no idea what 00:30:08.519 --> 00:30:14.440 way is up. He embraces us. He reaches out and he touches the leper and he makes him clean. He 00:30:14.440 --> 00:30:21.720 forgives the sin of the paralyzed man before he even asks. He calls Levi to follow him even as he's sitting 00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:28.120 at his tax booth. And this is the kind of culture we're trying to build at Church of the Advent. 00:30:28.119 --> 00:30:35.399 A culture where on the one hand, it's okay to have doubts and to be broken and to be socially awkward 00:30:35.399 --> 00:30:41.799 and to be mentally ill and to not know how to fit in, to not know how to have friends, to not have a 00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:49.000 family, to not have kids, to not be married, to not have a job. All of the things that might lead one to, 00:30:49.159 --> 00:30:55.159 this is a community where people like that can come and we will be your family. You will belong here. 00:30:55.160 --> 00:31:02.920 And yet we take sin seriously and we encourage one another daily to follow Jesus because we believe 00:31:02.920 --> 00:31:10.279 that when Jesus comes and he touches your life, he makes you holy and you become a saint. And we want 00:31:10.279 --> 00:31:17.960 to know what it means to live like saints in the world until he returns. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you 00:31:17.960 --> 00:31:24.120 for your word and we thank you for the hope of the gospel and we thank you that your gospel can be lived 00:31:24.120 --> 00:31:30.120 out, albeit imperfectly, in communities. And we pray that this would be a gospel-centered community 00:31:30.120 --> 00:31:38.120 where we are taking sin seriously and yet we are taking love and gracious hospitality just as seriously. 00:31:38.119 --> 00:31:46.199 And we pray that through this, Lord, we would follow you and would know more what it is to be identified 00:31:46.199 --> 00:31:51.399 with you. And we thank you that all of this is true because you first identified with us and gave 00:31:51.399 --> 00:31:57.879 yourself for us. And it's in this hope and in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. 00:31:57.880 --> 00:31:59.880 Amen.