My basic assumption as we come to this passage today is that it's not just an interesting story but that Jesus calls you and me today.
! There's a challenge, a big challenge in this passage but there's also a comfort and I'm guessing you'll need to hear one of those two things.
I'll let you decide what that is. But in chapter 5, if you've got your Bible open you can see what else has been going on in that chapter.
At the start, Jesus has called Simon Peter and then there's a whole thing with Peter not catching any fish and then just being blown away by who Jesus is.
As he puts his nets down and gets this great catch of fish and Simon Peter realises his sin and says, away from me Lord, I'm a sinful man in verse 8.
You've got the cleansing of the leper just after that and Jesus reaching out to the untouchable who no one else would go near.
And leprosy just so obviously a picture of sin that just pervades us from head to toe.
Then you've got the healing of the paralytic in verse 17 onwards and it's so clear by the end of that passage that Jesus is not just concerned with healing our bodies
but actually it's forgiveness of sin that is our big problem and that Jesus meets.
So there's this big theme that as Jesus comes into contact with people, their sin becomes all the more evident
but so does his ability to rescue them from it.
So we shouldn't be scared about talking about sin. I know sometimes Christians, some churches are a little bit scared to talk about sin.
Maybe you have been in the past, maybe you are now.
But actually we shouldn't be because it is the very thing that when we see it for all its horror, we start to see Jesus
and his ability to save us and our need for him.
So Luke is showing us Jesus' priorities and as we see what he says, we can't think Jesus has just come for religious people,
people whose idea of a Sunday morning is watching songs of praise, you know.
Actually he's come for everyone. He's come to forgive sins which presupposes that there are sins to forgive.
And so it's no surprise that the next thing he does in the passage we read is to call a sinner to follow him.
There he is in verse 27. His name is Levi.
Levi. These six verses are, you know, it's a short unit but it's quite punchy isn't it?
It all happens very quickly.
If you were to think about it like a film, you'd have two big scenes.
First of all, verses 27 and 28, you could say at the office.
It's at the office isn't it? Because Levi's there at his tax booth.
And then, of course, it's back at home.
But first of all, scene one, at the office, verse 27.
Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.
Follow me, Jesus said to him. Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
Just like that, as Tommy Cooper would have said.
I'm sure at breakfast that morning when Levi left the house, she did not expect him to come home.
Early, first of all.
And with a P45 form.
Saying his job was finished.
And he had a new life ahead.
Maybe you saw that story last week of the man a hundred years ago
whose wife sent him out to buy a set of dining chairs and he came back with Stonehenge.
He'd gone to an auction. Stonehenge was out for auction.
And he bought it. It was brilliant.
We don't even know Levi was married, so I'm sort of speculating a little bit.
But he goes to work, normal day, comes back as a disciple.
He will be an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, following Jesus, I know the word follow doesn't have quite the same impact today, does it?
Thanks to the online social network Twitter.
Where following someone just means that you subscribe to what they might say.
Which may be sensible or may not.
I mean, you may or may not listen to it.
Levi, though, will truly follow Jesus.
He will spend his life helping his fellow Jews in particular understand who he is.
Now, what made him do that?
We're not told.
Something about Jesus' words caused everything else in Levi's life just to take a back seat.
He's a tax collector.
When your country is under occupation, I don't need to say it's obvious you don't win any brownie points by collecting taxes for the enemy.
That's what he's doing.
In their eyes, particularly the Pharisees' eyes, he has sold himself.
He's on a level with the prostitutes.
Who is he today?
Well, he's somebody, he's anyone who has just turned their back on trying to pretend to be a moral person in any way.
At the weekend, he will do anything else apart from be at church.
That's the one place he won't be.
He'll be having a barbecue with his friends at home.
He'll be out in the country, getting away from town.
He'll be perhaps working weekends, if you can justify it.
He'll be watching the sport.
That's Levi.
Last place he'd be is in church.
Maybe that was you at some point.
Maybe it still is you.
Maybe actually you can see yourself in Levi quite a bit.
Socially, he's got loads of mates.
But spiritually, well, he's the unlikeliest man to be a disciple of Jesus.
But there's some sort of emptiness, some sort of realisation going on in Levi.
But Jesus, and you can see that Jesus fills it.
Maybe he's stood at his tax booth and heard some of Jesus' teaching wafting on the air.
And he's caught some of it.
And he just, he's become convinced.
So there's the question.
What made Levi just get up and follow Jesus?
Well, we're not told exactly.
But there's another question we could ask.
Arguably even more important.
Not just what made Levi do it.
But what made Jesus do it?
If you're on a disciple recruitment drive, why would you go for that man?
And we do know the answer to this question because it's explained in scene 2 at Levi's house.
We've had at the office.
Now it's back at the house.
Verse 29 onwards.
And Levi's clearly, he's not short of a bubble too.
He can invite friends.
Probably a load of other people who don't really give a stuff about religion either.
I'm sure in many ways it was a great party.
If you've been to parties, you know that parties like that, with those sorts of people,
can sometimes be more fun than with people like the Pharisees.
I'm sure it was a great party.
But Jesus' presence highlights something else.
Levi's purpose for this party is different.
He's clearly invited his friends for the sole purpose of connecting them with Jesus, hasn't he?
When you find something good, you want to share it with friends.
And that's what's going on here.
But not everyone sees things quite as simply as this.
Verse 30, we see that the Pharisees and the scribes complained to his disciples,
Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
In other words, they are not suitable company for someone like you,
who claims to be a teacher, a rabbi.
They're basically saying that he's condoning the behaviour of these people.
But Jesus' reply is very clear, very thought through of course.
Verse 31,
Notice here that Jesus doesn't give a general,
Oh, I love everybody, sort of answer.
He's quite specific.
He says essentially,
Well, where would you expect to find a doctor?
Would you go to a gym when you need a doctor?
Have you found the gym up?
Well, no, because they're fit and healthy there, some of them.
If you, you go to your surgery, don't you?
You go to the doctor's surgery, or to the hospital.
A doctor, when they qualify,
I've got a friend who's a junior doctor,
she is looking for jobs in hospitals, in surgeries.
That's the logical place to be.
That's Jesus' simple logic here.
Why would he keep sick people at arm's length?
If he is the great doctor of the soul?
So there's a challenge here,
when we're tempted to think that we're more righteous than other people.
There's a real challenge for each one of us.
But I think none of us are free from this attitude
that the Pharisees and the scribes show.
In their treatment of others,
in their attitude to Jesus,
in their view of themselves,
they've got a problem.
And Jesus challenges them with these verses.
And in terms of...
I don't want to go through all of those,
but they're so intertwined.
Their view of other people,
their view of themselves,
their view of Jesus,
they're all intertwined.
And perhaps it's good to think about it in this way.
I've got a little story
that will just help us to understand
why their view of Jesus and others and themselves is so wrong.
Here's the story.
It's about a woman in a village.
And she buys something from the market one day.
She's a very house-powered woman.
And she discovers something that is...
claims to be soap powder
that washes things whiter than any other soap powder.
So she brings some home.
And she washes her family's clothes,
her children's muddy t-shirts and things.
She lives in this village
where her garden overlooks mountains
in the near distance.
And she hangs her washing up with great pride,
comparing it to her neighbours.
It looks so much better.
The weather, though, changes.
It's looking a bit changeable.
Over the mountains,
the sky is looking threatening.
And the next morning,
when this woman opens her curtains,
it is a glorious day.
But something has happened during the night.
There's been snow
falling onto the mountain.
Now she looks out.
She sees her washing.
She looks at it,
and the first thing she thinks is,
who's been dirtying my washing?
Because yesterday it looked great next to her neighbours.
But suddenly she sees it
against the backdrop of the snow.
And then, I'm quoting,
it says,
she stopped and understood.
Nobody had dirtied her washing.
But snow had fallen in the night,
and the mountains behind her home
were covered in dazzling white,
too bright to look at.
Against that sparkling purity,
her sheets looked almost grey.
Wow, she thought.
They are nothing to God's whiteness.
Now, do you see my point of telling that story?
It's because the Pharisees,
they're like people who found some soap powder.
They think they've scrubbed themselves up.
And they think they look white and pure,
compared to the people who haven't even tried
to scrub themselves up,
who look grey and dirty in the corner,
the sinners and tax collectors.
But Jesus, when he comes along
in his pure, white holiness,
compared to them,
they and all of us
are filthy.
We've shown up.
And that is why when Jesus says,
it's not the healthy who need a doctor,
but the sick.
I've not come to call the righteous
but sinners to repentance.
He's not saying,
I've not come for you, Pharisees,
you're righteous.
He's saying,
actually, you're all grey.
You're just different levels of grey.
Different tones and shades of grey.
But you're all sin sick.
You all need a doctor.
Now we make this mistake all the time.
In our world,
as long as we can find someone else,
greyer than us,
then it makes us feel just a little bit superior,
doesn't it, inside.
It's crazy, isn't it?
You can walk into work,
and you can,
because you went to church the day before,
you can just feel a little bit morally superior.
It's stupid.
But that's what we're like.
But if you and I were held up against God's purity,
we'd see how foolish and deceived we are,
and what sinners we are.
So you see how our view of Jesus,
our view of others,
and of ourselves is so intertwined.
And maybe you need to hear that challenge today.
Have you fallen under that deception
that you're whiter than you think,
and it's causing you to look on others
as being the greys?
We're all greys.
Jesus is the white, the pure.
He's the one, the doctor we need to come to.
There's a challenge.
But there's also a comfort
here in these verses
that if we missed it,
we'd be overlooking the best,
best fit in these verses.
Because these words and actions of Jesus
are a comfort to all those
who in a very profound sense
start to realise
that they're grey,
they're grubby,
they're sinners.
And maybe you know what it's like
to be shunned by somebody.
Maybe you've felt that
at some stage in your life.
But look at Jesus.
He hates the sin,
but he still comes alongside these sinners.
He loves these sinners.
Which means there's no one here
in this room
whom Jesus would,
you know,
he would avoid.
He'd say,
no, you're too grey,
you're too dirty for me.
He comes
to wash us clean.
He's the doctor
who comes to deal with sin.
He comes to be among sinners.
If you're feeling like
a sinner without hope,
Jesus is your man.
We see it in all of the
rest of Luke chapter 7
when a notorious woman comes
weeping.
She goes away
finding forgiveness.
Still in chapter 15,
the lost sheep,
the lost coin,
the lost son,
and the joy in heaven
over one sinner
who repents.
We see it
in another tax collector
in Zacchaeus
in chapter 19.
Well that invitation
from Jesus
is the most important invitation
Levi
ever received
to follow me.
you could say
it's a command really.
But it's still
the most important invitation
that you or I
will ever
receive.
And here's a question
for you.
What have you done
with Jesus'
call to follow him?
What have you done
with that call?
We saw two surprises.
The fact that
a man like Levi
is following Jesus.
Surprise number one.
Surprise number two,
the fact that
Jesus is calling Levi.
Third surprise,
that Jesus
offers our call
to you
as well.
Now of course
there are great
differences between
us and them
but the same
essential
leaving
behind
of the old life.
The walking
in the footsteps
of Jesus.
Relationship
with your
heavenly father
restored
as sins
are forgiven.
That freedom
that comes
with forgiveness
of sin.
That lightness
of heart
that comes
with knowing
that there is
a point
now to life.
It's following
Jesus.
And maybe like him
you're here today
and you know
you're like Levi
you're chasing
the material things
but you're feeling
spiritually barren.
While Jesus
says
it's not too late
I've got something
much better.
This is the point
to living.
It's the most
exciting thing
to follow Jesus
if you know
a Christian here
you're with them
ask them about it.
You might think
well this Jesus
he's about to die
he's going to
end up on a cross
very soon.
You Christians
are crazy
to want to
follow this man.
Yes he's about
to die.
He's also about
to rise.
And
to entrust
your life
to him
therefore
is to put
your life
into the hands
of somebody
who has gone
through death
knows what's
beyond
can take you
there as well.
And one day
we'll find
ourselves
before
this same
Jesus
he will
not just
be a
2,000 year
old
sorry
not 2,000
year old
but 2,000
years ago
he won't be
an historical
figure
with sandals
and a
robe on
he will be
the judge
he will be
your judge
and mine
and we will
find that we
give account
to him
to this
Jesus
but for
now he
does not
condemn
he reaches
out to
you
he says
follow me
it's the
greatest
invitation
Levi
followed him
just like
that
my question
for you
is today
for all
of us
are you
following
this
Jesus
in the
same
way
I'm
going to
pray
let's
ask that
God's
word
would
stay in
our
hearts
and do
its
work
in us
let's
pray