Jesus, Friend of Sinners (Luke 5:27–32) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 41)

Transcript

JRNT 92
09/14/25
The Gospel of Luke: Jesus, Friend of Sinners
Luke 5:27-32
Jesse Randolph

Four days ago, the sound of a single rifle shot cracked out in Orem, Utah as the bullet which came out of that barrel cut short the life of a man named Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old husband, father, political activist and follower of Jesus Christ. Of course, over these past four days not only have our news channels been saturated but our nation has been rocked. Charlie was a voice for morality and sanity, and Charlie was a great example of what it looks like to have an impassioned yet respectful dialogue with those with whom you disagree, especially those of a younger generation. Charlie represented a voice of truth and sanity and charity toward those on the other side of the aisle. But this past Wednesday he was murdered, assassinated, some have used the word martyred. I know that many of you are hurting right now, and I know that many of you are struggling with what transpired over the last few days and that's understandable. This one hurts, I mean, this one stings. And so, I thought what I would offer are a few words of pastoral encouragement as we look ahead.

I just want to remind you of a few things, a few Biblical pegs to hang your hats on in the weeks ahead. First, I want to remind us, and believers in the room specifically, that this world is not our home. Right? Our citizenship is not here but it is instead where? Heaven, Philippians 3:20, “We know that our momentary light affliction,” as Paul says it in II Corinthians 4:17, “is working out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” So, remember that eternal perspective on things. Second, is to remind you all that we are, as Christians, people of truth. We have a book filled with truth and we proclaim truth, that’s what we're all about here in this church. Part of that responsibility for being torch bearers of truth is truthfully assessing the world in which we live. To not be ostriches with our heads in the sand, buried, ignorant about the world and its decline and ignorant about the world and its decay. Instead recognizing what the Bible itself predicted would happen in II Timothy 3:13 as things “proceed from bad to worse.” The reality is we do objectively live in very dark and very sad times. Morally our nation has cratered, and not just on the coasts but here in the heartland. Relationally we have become isolated and angry as garage doors go down and phones go up in front of our face. Spiritually we are a pale shadow of what we once were 50-60 years ago. Look at the empty seats in this auditorium. Things are going from bad to worse. A third reminder I want to give us this morning is that there is hope. Hope does exist, hope absolutely exists for this broken and decaying world. While God has in His kindness given us men like Charlie Kirk to serve admirably as lights and beacons of hope in these darkening times, we have to remember that those men aren't our ultimate source of hope. Those men, great as their legacy is, they are not our ultimate source of light. No, the light has already come into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. The light, John 1:5 says, “the light of Christ shines in the darkness.” Charlie knew that and if you are a Christian here this morning, you know that as well. So my prayer for us as believers in these dark days is that our focus would not be on red or blue, conservative or liberal, pro this or anti that, but instead our focus would be on the One who brings light into the darkness, the One who offers salvation from sin, the One who offers a true future hope—the Lord Jesus Christ. “Remember,” II Timothy 2:8, “Jesus Christ.”

With that I'd invite you to open up in your Bibles to Luke 5. This morning in Luke 5 we are going to be resuming our study of Luke's Gospel. Since it has been a while, let me remind you here of some of the context of what we have covered. Up to this point in Luke's narrative we've seen some of the earliest days of Jesus's earthly ministry covered. We've seen that He was conceived, and virgin born, we've seen that He was presented at the temple, we've seen that He advanced in wisdom and stature and in favor with both God and men. We've seen that He was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, that He was tempted in the wilderness by Satan, that He began His public ministry in the district of Galilee. We've seen that while in Galilee He was rejected in His hometown of Nazareth. Then, after leaving Nazareth He moved on to Capernaum, this fishing village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, where in Capernaum our Lord was widely embraced. It was there that He cast out demons and He performed miracles. We remember that scene where Peter's empty fishing nets were suddenly full of fish. It was while in Capernaum that Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom of God, it was in Capernaum He healed. He healed Peter's mother-in-law, He healed a leper, and finally we saw last time, He healed a paralytic. And that is where we left off last time, with Jesus's healing of the paralytic, that man you recall who was brought into that house by his friends who lowered him through the roof to be healed. He was not only healed by Jesus, but this man was forgiven by Jesus. Jesus's actions, viz-a-viz that paralytic, really stirred up the Pharisees in the crowd. Look at Luke 5:21, just to give us a little bit of a running start into our text. Luke 5:21 tells us that the scribes and the Pharisees in the crowd, as Jesus healed this paralytic “began to reason, saying, who is this One who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Well, that scene ended in Luke 5:25-26, that's where we left off last time, and it ends this way, “And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on,” that's referring to the paralytic,” and he went home glorifying God. And astonishment seized them all and they began glorifying God and they were filled with fear saying, We have seen remarkable things today.”

Well today we are picking up Luke's ongoing account of Jesus's early ministry there in Capernaum in the district of Galilee, and our text for this morning is going to be Luke 5:27-32. Let's go ahead and read it. God's Word reads, “And after that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi, sitting in a tax office, and said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ And he left everything behind and rose up and began to follow Him. And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

If you are new to Indian Hills this is what we do week over week, we hear directly from God through His Word as we work through His Word, the Scriptures, the Bible, verse by verse. I've broken up our text today along five lines. In verse 27 we're going to see The Order, as in the command that was given to Levi to follow Jesus. In verse 28 we're going to see The Obedience, as Levi left everything behind to follow Jesus. Verse 29, we're going to see The Overflow as Levi overflowing with gratitude and zeal, having just been called by Christ, hosts this major reception, this feast, this banquet in Jesus's honor. Verse 30 we're going to see The Objection as the grumbling religious leaders of the day couldn't believe that Jesus would openly associate with someone so low. In verses 31-32 we're going to see The Observation as Jesus declared to those who had a problem with His methods that He didn't come to rescue the righteous or the self-appointed righteous. He came for those who were spiritually sick, He came to save sinners. So, it's The Order, The Obedience, The Overflow, The Objection and The Observation.

Let's start with The Order, we'll pick it up in this account of this tremendous scene in verse 27. It says, “And after that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi, sitting in the tax office. And He said to him, Follow Me.” Now those first few words, “after that,” are words of a clear time indicator, this is a clear time marker. Luke is moving the narrative forward. As this Spirit-directed storyteller, Luke is moving on from the healing of the paralytic which we saw last time, to this next moment in Jesus's ministry there. And he begins with saying that “He went out,” He went out from where He had been in healing the paralytic, and as He went out, verse 27, He “noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax office.”

Now we want to do a little digging here to learn more about Levi and to learn more about his chosen profession. Recall from some of our earlier sermons in Luke's Gospel that Jesus lived during the days of the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire spanned from about 27 B.C. all the way to 477 A.D., so just about 500 years. Jesus's earthly ministry fell on the front end of that very wide date range. Now the Roman Empire, of course, was geographically very wide in its scope. It extended westward to modern-day Spain, it extended northward up to the British Isles, it extended southward into Africa, it extended eastward into Judea, the home of God's original covenant people, the Jews. Living under the rule of the Romans were these various conquered-people groups and nations from north, south, east and west. These various and different conquered-people groups and nations had people from those tribes and nations who had been propped up by their own countrymen to lead them, although under Roman rule. So, these were native rulers who had pledged their loyalty to Rome and in many ways served as puppet kings under the Roman influence, under the Roman reign. That's where we get names like Herod the Great and Herod Antipas and Herod Phillip, some of the Herods, these Jewish kings, these Judean kings that we have already encountered in Luke's Gospel. These were Jewish rulers, rulers in Judea who had pledged their loyalty to Rome ultimately, so they had been authorized by Rome to serve as kings over their native countrymen. But make no mistake that in these days all power was centered in and all power rested with Rome.

Now the Roman Empire in Jesus's day was a very tax-happy government. We've already seen that in our study of Luke. Recall how in those days leading up to Jesus's birth, Joseph and Mary go to their ancestral homeland, hometown Bethlehem “to register,” it says in Luke 2:3, “for the census.” And for what purpose ultimately? Just to count heads? Well, yes in a sense but to count heads for purposes of taxing those heads. That's why people were moving around for the census. It wasn't just census taxes that people had to pay in the Roman Empire, there were income taxes and poll taxes and highway taxes and cart taxes and field taxes and boat taxes and all sorts of taxes. So don't think of yourself as being all that unique in our day. No, no matter what one's vocation was or their walk of life, everyone in the Roman Empire had to pay taxes of some sort. And then all those taxes would have been paid to some local tax collectors. Now tax collectors weren't like maybe we think of them as locally elected governmental officials. Let's not layer American democracy on top of the Roman Empire. No, tax collectors were businessmen. How this would work is that the Roman government would determine, based on the size and the population and the industry of any given territory within the Roman Empire, let's say the territory of Judea, how much estimated tax revenue they believed would be generated in that territory in that year. Then what the Roman government would do would be to sell the rights to collect that amount of taxes in that region to the highest private bidder. So, to put this in, let's use American dollars just to make it easy for reference. If a region in the Roman Empire was expected to generate a million dollars in revenue, tax revenue, that year, Rome would sell the right to a private citizen, a wealthy private citizen who could afford to purchase this right, the right to collect that million dollars in tax revenue that year. Now here is where the business side of it comes in. Anything above that million dollars in tax revenue that was collected by that lucky high bidder would go straight into his pocket. So, tax collectors were businessmen. They weren't your average governmental worker the way that we think of governmental workers, like a postal worker or a bus driver. No, they were pulling a profit, they were opportunistic, they were businessmen.

Now carrying that over into the region of Judea in Jewish circles in the Roman Empire, tax collectors were thought of not only as savvy businessmen, but they were also thought of as extortionists and swindlers and traitors and dishonest robbers. To the Jew, one living in Judea, a Jewish tax collector, one of your countrymen serving as a tax collector, you were guilty not only, if you did that, of lining your own pockets, but you were doing so while you were representing Rome, the captors, the overlords of God's chosen people. And you were doing so at the expense of your fellow Jewish countrymen, your fellow Judean brother. A Jewish tax collector was viewed by his countrymen as a charlatan, one who had forsaken his own people, one who had in fact abandoned the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It went even further than that because the rabbinic writings of the day, the writings of the Jewish rabbis would say things like a tax collector was ceremonially unclean. He couldn’t enter certain houses, he couldn't go to synagogue. He made everything around him polluted and unclean.

Back to our text here, that's all background to explain that that was Levi, verse 27. Levi was a Jew, he was the son of Alphaeus, we learn from Mark 2:14, and we learn from Matthew 9 that he had another name. In fact, go to Matthew 9 with me. There are two different parallel accounts of our account today, one is found in Mark 2, the other is in Matthew 9. We'll just get our eyes on Matthew 9 here where we're going to see the same episode or incident recorded this way by Matthew, by the very man we're talking about later. Look at Matthew 9:9, it says, “And as Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax office. And He said to him, Follow Me. And he stood up and followed Him.” So, in Matthew's Gospel this man is called Matthew, this tax collector, but over in Mark's Gospel and in our Gospel, Luke's Gospel, he is referred to as Levi. So, what gives? Is this a Saul to Paul situation? Is this a Simon to Peter situation? Did this man change his name from one to the other—Levi to Matthew or Matthew to Levi—once the Lord called him? No, I don't think that's what is going on. I believe Levi had two names, two Hebrew names. Levi comes from his lineage through the original patriarchs; one of the twelve tribes was Levi. And then Matthew, Matthias in Hebrew, means “gift of God.” Now we're not spending too much time there because that's really not the point to this narrative, going back to Luke 5. The point of mentioning Levi here is to establish that he was not a man with two names, but rather that he was a tax collector. The focus here from Luke as he reports on Levi was his trade, his chosen profession. “After that,” verse 27, “he went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in a tax office.” That's what is being highlighted here, emphasis on those words, “tax collector.” Levi was one of those unclean, shameful, lacking in integrity, lowest of the low tax collectors. Levi was one of those despised traitors who had no problem bilking his own countrymen not only to put more money in the coffers of the Roman government, but to line his already fat pockets with a few extra shekels. Not exactly the kind of guy that you would expect Jesus to call as one of His disciples. Not exactly a standout representative of the virtues that Jesus would later embody and teach.

More on that in a moment. For now, still in verse 27, Jesus spotted Levi sitting in the tax office, the tax booth, the toll booth. Now interestingly, verse 27, this text tells us that Jesus noticed Levi. That word is key, that word is important, that He “noticed Levi.” The sense here is that Jesus was observing Levi. He didn't merely glance at Levi or catch Levi in the corner of His eye. He didn't just incidentally spot Levi in the crowd. This was no accident. No, no, here the Lord was being intentional. He was walking up to this specific tax booth on this specific day to call this specific sinner from this specific class of societal outcasts to be His disciple, to be His follower. Now look at what Jesus said to him. Just two words, “Follow Me.” Akolouthei moi. Follow Me. It's a present imperative verb which means that Jesus was calling Levi here to be His constant and permanent follower. Not a temporary follower, not a seasonal follower, but instead a totally dedicated and devoted follower. And that has always, friends, been the nature of Jesus's call on a sinner's life. He has never, if you look to the Scriptures, there never has been this call on people to be halfway disciples or sort of followers. He has always called on those who He calls to be wholly committed followers. We see this all over Luke's Gospel. We've already seen it back in Luke 5:10, this is that fishing scene with Peter. Luke 5:10, “When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.” Or consider these words from Luke 9:23, “If anyone wishes to come after Me,” this is Jesus speaking, “let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Or later in Luke 9, 9:58, “Jesus said to him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Then it says, “And He said to another, Follow Me.” Then there is the account of the rich young ruler in Luke 18, the scene there ends with Luke 18:22 with Jesus saying to him, “One thing you still lack, sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven. And come follow Me.” See Jesus has never called on anyone to be His fan, just to rock with Jesus, be cool with Jesus, be on board with Jesus, to be down with Jesus. Instead, what Jesus has consistently called on people to do down through the ages is to become His follower; and that goes right down to the present day. As you read through various different books of the New Testament and specifically what those books teach about what it means to be in relationship with God through Christ, what you won't find anywhere is fandom. What you won't find anywhere is easy-believism. Instead, what you'll find over and over and repeatedly is a call to follow, a call to submit to Jesus's Lordship. Jesus is not merely the Savior of the world, though He is that, He is the sovereign Lord over all and He is calling on anyone, everyone to have Him be the Lord of their lives. His Lordship was announced at His birth, Luke 2:11, “For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord.” His Lordship was expressed by His mother Mary in John 2:5 where she says to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” His Lordship is expressed through His own lips in Luke 6:46 where He says, “Now why do you call Me Lord, Lord and not do what I say.” His Lordship was expressed by His apostles who referred to Him as their Master and them as His slaves. II Peter 1:1, “Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ.” His Lordship was expressed by other apostles in a variety of different ways, sometimes simply referring to Him as Lord. Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Colossians 2:6, “Therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” Philippians 2:9&11 speak of the fact that a day is coming where “every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

See, many today will call themselves Christians, they'll identify themselves as Christians, but when it comes to their day-to-day relationship with Jesus Christ, at best they are a loosely associated fan. They have the hat, they have shirt, they have the license plate frame, they have the bracelet, they have the swag, but they are a fan, not a follower. And if that describes you, I just want to implore you and warn you that whatever hope you think you have it's awfully shaky. I mean, you are like a blind amputee on a balance beam. It's shaky because biblically Jesus nowhere calls on anyone to be His fans, and He calls on everyone to be His followers. He calls us to be His followers, those who are totally submitted to His Lordship in each and every corner of our lives.

Back to our text, verse 27. Up to this point in Luke's narrative so far all he has done is Jesus has called these three grubby fishermen, these exhausted fishermen to follow Him. Remember the words of Luke 5:10, “Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.” Now here He is, calling on this loathsome and despised tax collector, Levi, to do the same. It's quite the rogue band, quite the motley crew of followers here in Jesus's assembly, but Levi was one of them. Now with this command, this order from Jesus hanging out there in the air, “Follow Me,” Levi had a choice, he had a decision to make. He had the choice and the decision that we all have to make at some point in our lives. Would he answer Christ's call to follow Him? Would he embrace Christ's Lordship over his life? Or would he continue with life as usual?

In verse 28 we get our answer, and here is our second point. We've looked at The Order, this is now The Obedience. Luke 5:28, “And he left everything behind and rose up and began to follow Him.” Levi was invested in his tax collection business, no doubt. He had set himself up financially, he had this fortune to lose. To simply leave it all for the sake of following Jesus would cost him and it would cost him dearly. But that's exactly what Levi did. Note the language, “he left everything behind and rose up and began to follow Him.” The starkness and simplicity of Jesus's command, “follow Me,” was matched only by the immediacy and totality of Levi's response as he followed Him. That language is so clear. When Luke here says that Levi left everything behind, there would be no clearer way in the Greek language to express the thought. It means literally that Levi, as he rose up from his tax booth, his tax office, left everything behind. I'm picturing the monitor is still on, the coffee in his coffee cup getting cold, leaving the blinds open, whatever a tax office looked like in first century Judea. He left it. He didn't take a few extra days to collect on those large, big fish accounts. He didn't wait a few months to consider in a way which path would be more profitable for him. No, he said farewell to everything he had and everything he once was in order to follow Jesus. “At once he left everything behind and rose up and began to follow Him.” As Levi left his tax office that day, he was walking into a truly unknown future. He had truly no idea where following Jesus would take him. We learn of his martyrdom later, but he didn't know at this moment what was going to happen to him. But he was willing to take that first step of faith to obey. Jesus would later say in Luke 9:23, I've already read it, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Levi was willing to do just that. Jesus would say in Luke 9:62, “No one after putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Levi was willing to keep his hand on that plow with his eyes fixed forward on a future with Jesus. Levi was willing to say farewell to his past, abandoning his old ways of shady double dealing, pocket lining, tax collecting living for the sake of following Jesus. He was willing to leave it all behind to follow the Man who was now claiming to be the Messiah, to follow this Man on this dusty road outside of Capernaum, heading into this completely unknown future. Levi had this clear, crystal clear, break with his past.

Now we know, Hebrews 13:8, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” So, knowing that He calls on His followers like Levi here to follow Him and to take that principle to our day, the question on the table this morning is…When did that take place for you? Maybe you are not a tax collector or a county assessor or some other form of societal outcast, maybe you don't have that part of your biography in common with Levi, but one part of your biography that you do have in common with Levi, as I do, is that you are a sinner. And the Holy God of heaven whom you have sinned against throughout your life, He could have already cast you into the eternal flames of hell, consigned you to hell forever, but He didn't; and He hasn't yet. You are still here. God has been incredibly merciful and patient and gracious toward you as He has been to everybody in this room who is still breathing His air and drinking His water and enjoying the rays of sunshine. Now for the vast majority of you here this morning, you have put your faith in Jesus Christ. And praise the Lord for that. But even so the question is the same. As you came to Christ, whenever that was, what was it that you gave up to follow Christ? What was it that you left behind to follow Jesus Christ? Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said this, that “the only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.” That's right. So again, what did you leave behind to follow Jesus? Was it a self-righteous, prideful outlook on life? Was it a lying tongue? Was it an inappropriate relationship? Was it hidden sexual sin? Bonhoeffer also said this, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die,” which is really a paraphrase of a couple of Scriptures. II Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, behold the old has passed away and the new has come.” Or Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” What part of you died when you say, as Levi did here, that you started following Christ? Was it a hardened, angry heart? Was it a critical, divisive spirit? Was it a state of perpetual unforgiveness? What did it cost you? And not merely financially, but relationally even to follow Jesus Christ? What friends did you lose when you made a profession of faith? What family relationships got much more tense when you put your faith in Christ? What invitations did you stop receiving when it became known that your allegiance was not to this world or to the things of this world. Or to the comforts of this world or to the people of this world but to Jesus Christ and Him alone? Have you had that moment? For Levi there is this clean break. Verse 28, “he left everything behind and rose up and began to follow Him.” In an instant Levi left everything behind to follow Jesus.

But note this, that even though he had given up that once lucrative career, Levi apparently had enough money left in the bank to do what he did in verse 29 because we see in verse 29 that he hosted this large banquet. Verse 29, “And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.” Here is our third point this morning if you are taking notes. This is The Overflow. So having just walked away from his lucrative tax collecting business to follow Jesus and now filled with this sense of deep delight over the Lord's call on his life, Levi, it says here, gave this big reception, this big reception for Jesus. This was a feast, this was a banquet, this was not your normal chips and guac affair on Super Bowl Sunday. We know this because of that language at the end of verse 29, “reclining at the table.” That's describing the customary way that people feasted in these days, in a grander black tie like banquet setting in first century Judea. At these feasts there would be these broad, wide couches which really resembled more like how we think of a mattress. Those couches or mattresses would be lining these low tables on which food was served. Then each person in this arrangement would be resting on their left side on their left elbow and reaching with their right side to grab whatever food was put before them on the table in the middle. And while that visual of leaning on our elbow as we shovel food in our face definitely shakes our notion of what it means to eat a proper meal, that's how it worked back then.

But more importantly what Luke is highlighting here is not how people fed themselves but rather who Jesus was associating with in this setting. Look who Levi invited to this reception in verse 29. It says, “There was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.” Now in the parallel account, I won't take you there, we've already looked at one of them, in the parallel account of this same reception over in Matthew's Gospel those “other people” that Luke refers to where he says, “tax collectors and other people,” Matthew refers to them as tax collectors and sinners. There is no inconsistency there, Matthew is just getting more specific in defining who these other people were. They were tax collectors and sinners. The idea here is that Levi, this new follower of Jesus, was hosting this big reception for Jesus in his house. And because it's a big reception we can sort of put two and two together here and realize that this must have been a pretty big house to hold a big reception. So, he is bringing into his house all these individuals from the very ranks from which he came—tax collectors and sinners. That's what Levi was just days before.

But why? Why this banquet? Why this feast? Why this reception? And for what purpose? Was Levi here hosting like a retirement party like the Rolex party? Was it a farewell party for Levi? Was this his way of saying, I am now cutting you out of my life, you'll never see me again, I'm now not only not of this world but I'm now not even in this world as I follow Jesus? I don't think so. Rather, the context here would suggest that what Levi was doing by hosting this big reception was he was bringing everyone from his old walk of life to meet Jesus, to hear Jesus. He wanted to introduce everyone he knew from those old circles to this Jesus that he was now following. He wanted his Lord to be their Lord; he wanted them to receive the grace and the mercy that he had been shown by Christ as His new follower. In the words of J. C. Ryle who wrote many centuries later, “A converted man will not wish to go to heaven alone.” That was Levi here. The main attraction at this reception that Levi was throwing, this party that Levi was throwing, Levi wasn't the main attraction. Levi wasn't the focus or the point. The focus, rather, was on Jesus and bringing Levi's old acquaintances and friends to meet Jesus. I've titled this heading The Overflow because I really think that's what is happening here. Levi wasn't feeling sorry or sad that he left this lucrative career behind, instead he is overflowing in excitement and zeal and joy over the fact that he is now a follower of Jesus. So, he wants to throw this big party, this big reception to introduce others to his Lord.

Now I'm sure there are many of you here this morning who can relate and you can recall a similar experience in your life, your early life in Christ, if you are a Christian here this morning, where you first came to know Jesus as Savior and Lord, when you first, like Levi here, began to follow Him; and what happened? You couldn't tell enough people about Him; you couldn't tell people enough about Him. Right? You were inviting people left and right to church, you were sharing Scripture with people all day long, you were that “Jesus” guy or that “Jesus” gal as the case may be, your evangelistic zeal couldn't be put out, nothing and no one could quench the fire you had for sharing the news of Jesus Christ. But then time went on and life got busy, and you got distracted. The message of messages started to lose some of its luster and its shine for you. Those initial blissful moments of remembering when you first came to Christ began to fade. Why? Ultimately, only the Lord knows and only you know the why.

And speaking of why, I want to highlight something for you all this morning. You might have received one of these on the way in. We're going to start on Sunday mornings, I'm going to start putting together discussion questions tied into the text that we'll be working through every Sunday morning. Questions that get us really thinking about the sermon that we heard and the text we worked through by tying in other Scriptures also causing us to pause in our busy life and give some reflection to what the Lord might be teaching us and prompting us and convicting us to do on a Sunday-to-Sunday basis. So these discussion questions, you'll see them if you got one, if not I'd encourage you to get one on the way out, are meant to just give you another form or venue by which you can open up the Bible for 15 minutes, open up God's Word and take cross references to what we learned this morning and paint a broader picture of what God's truth says; His Word says on a variety of different topics that came up that Sunday morning. The Sunday morning message is the main meal of any body of believers, and what better way to unify us and deepen us in our relationship with the Lord and with one another than to work through the very Word that we heard preached that past Sunday. So, I'd encourage you to go through these worksheets, whether in your home Bible study context, at the dinner table, breakfast table, on your lunch break, at your work desk, wherever you might see fit. It's just another way to get into the Word and to see the Spirit drive it into our hearts. I brought that up because of that question, why? I was thinking about questions, now you have discussion questions.

But back to the text. The encouragement to all of us from this text as we consider the example of Levi here is to not let that first love, joy in Christ, that first love, zeal for Christ, to wane. Now back to this scene. What specific words Jesus used at this reception that Levi threw for Him, we're not told; but remembering that Jesus came as a teacher, Jesus came as a preacher, and Jesus came preaching a message. We saw it back in Luke 4:18, that He came “to proclaim release to the captives.” We saw it back in Luke 4:43 that He came to proclaim the “good news of the kingdom of God.” Given that those were the anchor points of what He came to preach and teach in Judea at that time, that's about as good as any. That is what He came to preach at Levi's banquet, at Levi's house that night. As this gathering of tax collectors and sinners came to Him, Jesus, I believe, proclaimed to them what it means to be saved, what it means to follow Him, what it means to one day inherit the kingdom of God. We don't have the specific words that were said, we don't have the specific words that were given in response, we don't have a record of conversions in the moment, but what we do know is that Jesus's message brought a reaction.

Look at verse 30, “And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” If you are taking notes, that's our fourth point, The Objection. Now interestingly these Pharisees and scribes weren't even invited to the party, they weren't on the guest list. They probably wouldn't even have come if they were invited because they were so paranoid about being contaminated and unclean by tax collectors and sinners. But that didn't prevent them from speaking up about what was happening at this reception. It bothered them that Jesus was associating with the lowly, it bothered them that He was commiserating with the dregs of society. So, they “began,” it says, “grumbling at His disciples.” Now that word grumbling is a fun one to say, it's gonguzo. It's actually this literary device, you English major types will appreciate this, this is onomatopoeia. You probably thought, if you are not an English major, you'd never hear that word again after high school. Onomatopoeia. But what an onomatopoeia is, is it's a word that imitates or resembles the sound it is describing. So, some of our common onomatopoeias are words like meow or oink or splat or coo or bark. Well, this word gonguzo is a form of onomatopoeia because it is in the word itself a trace of the grumbling or the murmuring, gonguzo, that it's describing. That's what the Pharisees were doing outside of Levi's house here. They were murmuring, they were grumbling because they were displeased at what was going on inside.

What happens here is that as the festivities are wrapping up and people are starting to head home, the Pharisees asked Jesus's disciples, those who were following Him and who were at that party, a question. Verse 30, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” Now the implication from behind this question from these hair-splitting legalists was clear. They were being critical, they were being judgmental, they were being scornful. Why would Jesus, the One who was calling on sinners to repent, be eating and drinking with sinners who needed to repent? Why would this One who was saying He was the Messiah, and why would His followers be associating with such lowly outcasts? To the Pharisees, to the scribes it didn't add up, it didn't make sense. Weren't sinners by definition dirty? And weren't sinners by definition impure? And haven't we already seen that tax collectors were the dirtiest of the dirty and the lowest of the low? So why associate with them? It perplexed the Pharisees; it perturbed them and annoyed them. Remember the Pharisees were the righteous ones, the self-appointed righteous ones. The Pharisees were these set apart ones, that's what their name means. They were the diligent Law keepers, they were the guardians of the Law, they were the ones who had hedged in the Law with their various forms of manmade tradition. So, they couldn't fathom that someone like Jesus, this teacher, this man who is claiming to be the Messiah, could enjoy a meal, which was a sign of friendship and fellowship, with sinners like these. Of course, what they failed to recognize and what all self-righteous people of all generations fail to recognize is that we are all sinners. Right? Paul would say it later in Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, not even one.” Paul would say in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But these aren't even purely New Testament concepts. It goes back to the Old Testament which the Pharisees should have been familiar with. Solomon in Ecclesiastes 7:20 said, “Indeed there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and never sins.” The Pharisees should have known that. Or I Kings, another Old Testament book, I Kings 8:46, it says, “There is no man who does not sin.” But truths like those were totally lost on the Pharisees of Jesus's day. Maybe they read them at one point, but the truth had gone completely over their heads. They appeared to be outside pious, pious on the outside but on the inside the Pharisees were sinners, just like those inside Levi's house. The Pharisees were externally religious but internally they were totally unrighteous. Jesus would call them later white-washed tombs.

Well, they failed to see ultimately that Jesus came to save sinners, sinners like them, even. I Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus was, like we see in an episode like this, a friend of sinners. Not a friend in the sense of encouraging sinners in their sin or approving sinners in their sin, but He did from time to time, this is a perfect example of it, rub shoulders with sinners, those of the dregs of society as a way to teach them about Himself and what He had come to do for them.

Well, that takes us to our fifth point this morning, which is The Observation. Look at verses 31-32, “And Jesus answered,” He's answering the Pharisees here, “and said to them, it is not those who are well who need a physician but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” This is absolutely brilliant. Having heard the Pharisees grumbling, gonguzo, outside Levi's house, grumbling over His eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus draws this analogy to make this key observation, to drive home this central point which comes out in these parallel thoughts in verses 31-32. In verse 31 Jesus likens Himself to a physician, to a doctor. “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.” And that's true, we can all relate to that. You visit the doctor when you are what? Sick. You visit the doctor when you have a fever, or your tummy hurts, or you can't hold something down or you are dizzy, or you are achy or whatever. You don't go to the doctor, you don't call the doctor, you don't pay that co-pay when you are feeling great. Right? Well Jesus is making that very point here, albeit in the spiritual realm and with a spiritual application. Look at verse 32, He says, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” He was saying to the Pharisees that He was associating with sinners, in the context here tax collectors in Levi's house because they were the ones who recognized their need, and they were the ones who recognized that He possessed the cure. They were the ones that were receptive to His message, they knew that they were spiritually sick, they knew that they were spiritually diseased. They knew that the root cause of their sickness and disease was sin. They recognized the cure that He offered as the Great Physician. They recognized that He came to this earth with a remedy, that remedy being His message of salvation which would cure anyone who repented and believed in Him. See, Jesus came for people like Levi, a former tax collector. Jesus came for people like Levi's friends, that gathering of tax collectors and sinners. He came for people like you and me and Charlie Kirk, people who understand that we are spiritually sick, and not just spiritually sick but spiritually dead, that we need a spiritual cure, that we need a spiritual resurrection, that we need true hope. He came for sinners, He came offering hope for sinners, salvation for sinners and He truly is a friend of sinners, friend to those who repent of their sins, trust Him and follow Him all the days of their life.