Wednesday Night, April 29, 2020, PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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We live in constant gratitude to you for what you have done and what you continue to do in our lives.

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I pray, Father, that you would teach us to pray in accordance with your word, in agreement with your values, reflecting your character, naming your son.

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Teach us from your word tonight who you are and what you're about, who your son is in his glory, who we are in your perspective, that as we pray to you, as we intercede for our loved ones and for those that you bring to our attention, as we worship you in prayer, as we offer you praise and thanksgiving, as we come before you in humility, confessing our sins and seeking forgiveness, as we come before you asking you to meet the needs in our lives, the needs you already know about.

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In all these things, Father, I pray that you would help us to pray as we ought and that you would teach us about prayer tonight from this passage in Luke.

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We pray these things for Christ's sake, amen. We're gonna be in Luke 5, verses 27 through 32 tonight.

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Luke 5, verses 27 through 32. As you read through Luke 5, there are three major miracles thus far and another one shows up here in our passage.

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We begin the chapter where Jesus provides a massive catch of fish to those that he calls to be his disciples and then he heals a leper by touching him.

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That's a fairly remarkable thing to see in that time, in that day and age.

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Then also he heals a paralytic but forgives him of his sins.

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And so in all three stories, as we've been reading through Matthew 5, there has been an awareness of sin among those involved.

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There was a Peter fell down on his knees and said, oh, depart from me, oh Lord, for I am a sinful man.

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The leper was required to go to the priest to show himself as cleansed, as that he could be restored to the spiritual fellowship of his community.

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And then we have the forgiveness of the paralyzed man. And also through these three miracles,

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Jesus has been steadily teaching of his kingdom and he's been doing things that are controversial and surprising.

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He's associated himself with Galilean fishermen who were by nature of their work often unclean.

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There's also this leper that he touched and he has angered the religious leaders by demonstrating his authority to forgive sins, declaring and providing forgiveness of sins to this paralyzed man.

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And to remember the theme of controversy, all this comes after he angered his hometown synagogue neighbors and they attempted to throw him off a cliff.

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So that's in the backdrop as we come to this story in Luke 5, 27 through 32, and we are going to hear

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Jesus further solidify his place in the hearts of all the religious leaders by fraternizing with a tax collector named

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Levi. This is the word of the Lord, Luke 5, verses 27 through 32.

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After that, he went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth.

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And he said to him, follow me. And he left everything behind and got up and began to follow him.

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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 him.

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The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?

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Jesus answered and said to them, it is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.

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I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Becca and I were given a gift for our wedding.

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It was a framed scripture wall hanging with bronze lettering.

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And it's Matthew 4, verse 19. And Jesus says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

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Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Those words, follow me, spoken by Christ, appear repeatedly throughout the four gospels.

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And it is hard to find a better description of what it means to be a Christian.

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It really wasn't until the kingdom spread to Antioch, when Paul and Barnabas were teaching massive amounts of new converts that the name

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Christian began to be used of those who were born again alive in Christ.

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But prior to that time and long after that time that we first began to be called

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Christians, we were called followers of the way. Followers of the way.

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And that term follow, of course, was established by Christ. Follow me. And remember, he called himself the way.

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Jesus said to Philip, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the

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Father except through me. So Jesus said, I am the way. And then it makes sense that those who follow Jesus would be called followers of the way.

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Now, as we think about that, as we think about that description, being followers of Jesus, that this is so aptly descriptive of who we are as believers, how does that shape our prayer lives?

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How should our prayer lives, the way that we pray, how should that be altered and changed accordingly?

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How does our growing understanding of what it means to follow Jesus change the way we pray in our tone, in the time that we pray, in the topics we pray about?

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Those are questions that we ponder as we look at this passage. We're gonna consider the call, the complaint, and the clarification in this passage.

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We're just gonna look at some of the call this evening in verses 27 and 28.

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And I wonder how you find that call there at the end of verse 27, where Jesus says to Levi, follow me.

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Does that call arrest you with the wonder of his grace?

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What would that be like? What does that like to follow Jesus? I remember a painting just outside the chapel at my college and it depicted

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Jesus walking along with two of his disciples as they passed under the shade of a tree on the cobbled road he instructs them with a loving gaze and open gestures.

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And they're listening very intently with bright eyes. And I wonder if we think of something like that when we hear

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Jesus say, follow me. What kind of attention are we giving to Jesus? This term, this call, follow, follow me, is a call that is almost completely unique to the four gospels.

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It is akaluthai in the Greek. It's a verb, it's not a noun, it's a verb.

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And it signifies a dynamic relationship. It is a command,

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Jesus is commanding. It is a summons from him to us in his authority.

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And this call, follow me, is a sound which should reverberate in our ears as amazing grace.

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And should resound in our souls as effectual grace. Let's consider the amazing grace of what happens in verse 27 and give it full consideration.

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When we consider the condition of the sinner and the compassion of the savior, we see the amazing grace.

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It is often, as we read through the scriptures, that the bright and morning star shines brilliantly in the dark night of human depravity.

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So notice, first of all, the wretched sinner, the wretched sinner. Jesus says, after that, he went out.

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And so it's Jesus leaving that house. He's leaving the house where he healed the paralytic. He's leaving the house that has the new hole in the roof.

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And he walks out and he comes into the busyness of a

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Capernaum afternoon. And there, located on the northwestern shore of the

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Sea of Galilee, not too far away from the entrance of the Jordan River, there is a great intersection of commerce, all manner of business going on.

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People bringing their wares to the marketplace. Fishermen bringing their catch out of the

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Sea of Galilee. Farmers bringing their crops to market.

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And in the midst of all of this human busyness, Jesus sees one man.

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He notices a man doing his job. There is a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth.

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The King James reads, he noticed a publican named Levi sitting at the receipt of custom.

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And so now it remains for us to consider just what is it that Levi is doing and why his chosen profession is significant to our story.

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He is at the receipt of custom, as the King James says. What does this mean?

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It means that Levi works for the man in charge of this area who is Herod Antipas.

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And Levi's job is that of a publican or a tax collector. It means that he ran a tax office.

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That doesn't mean that he's working on anybody's W -2s or 1099s. He is running a custom house.

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He is seeking to collect tariffs from convoys that are coming down from Damascus.

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He is trying to collect fees on goods coming across the Sea of Galilee. Matthew is running a toll booth and he's doing so at the point of a sword.

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You see, farmers and fishermen, foreigners, all these people carrying their goods to the market are subject to pay taxes on what they wanted to sell to the masses.

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And so Matthew, like these other tax collectors, and there were many of them in this time, had leased the privilege.

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He had temporarily purchased the right to do this, and he had to do so every year, by paying a fee in advance.

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And so he pays his great fee in advance, and then he, like other tax collectors, would then have to place their booths at the foot of bridges or at the mouth of rivers or by the docks on a seashore.

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And Matthew had just a kind of place. And there, he has to hustle fees as actively as he can in order to make his money on the fee that he paid.

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He paid this enormous sum to Herod to be this publican, this tax collector, and he's gotta collect fees all year long to make up what he's paid and make up enough to make it worthwhile, because he's gotta pay that same privilege next year and keep on making his living.

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Now, you can understand how you could make an exorbitant profit at the same time.

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If you really, really hustled, you could get all the money you needed and more. And should anybody refuse to pay you as a tax collector, you would have the sword of the man in charge.

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Matthew had the sword of Herod to point at anybody trying to engage in tax evasion.

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And so Matthew, you see, was a part of a fraternity of tax collectors who would have included

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Roman soldiers and officials who would collect directly for the Roman Empire as well. He was seen as a part of that group.

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And so he's at the receipt of custom, but it's important to understand that he would be regarded with contempt.

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He would be regarded with contempt. We can readily understand how Levi's contemporaries felt about him.

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Life was already difficult, but to be taxed by Caesar and Herod, just for trying to live, that would have fueled a great deal of resentment.

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And interestingly, even one of Jesus's other disciples was called out of just such a group that was full of this resentment, a local insurgent cell.

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I remember Simon the Zealot. Simon the Zealot was one of Jesus's disciples. And in another context,

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Simon would have gladly slid one of his daggers in between Levi's ribs because he would have seen him as a traitor.

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Well, tax collectors, as you read through the Gospels, you'll find tax collectors considered on the level with gluttons, drunks, and prostitutes.

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They're listed right there with those types of sinners. And sometimes they're just listed as a particular kind of sinner.

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Sometimes you'll read about sinners and tax collectors or a tax collector and sinners.

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And in this way, a publican or a tax collector was a sinner par excellence, the sinner of sinners.

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And Jesus knew that. And that's why, remember when he told that story about the Pharisee and the publican, he was making his point that only those who were wretched sinners and knew themselves to be wretched sinners would find

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God to be merciful, propitious, and find a wondrous Savior.

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Now, what does this have to do with our prayer lives? Well, it says that Jesus noticed a tax collector named

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Levi sitting in the tax booth. Jesus saw Levi.

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He knew who he was. He knew what was going on in his life. Do we see ourselves as God sees us?

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I mean, do we really understand our own sinfulness, our own wretched nature when we come before him in prayer?

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In the previous passage, when Jesus was, when he knew what was going on in the hearts of the

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Pharisees, we were reminded that while man looks up on the outward appearance, God looks upon the heart and that Jesus, according to John 2 .24,

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knew what was in the heart of man. And so when Jesus looked at and noticed

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Levi, the tax collector, it wasn't just the externals that he noticed. He wasn't just the outside appearance of who

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Levi was and what he was doing that drew his attention. Jesus knew what was going on on the inside. He knew

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Levi as this sinful, wretched man. Now, what does

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God know about our hearts and what can be very difficult for us to admit about ourselves?

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Well, Genesis 8 .21 says, from God's point of view, the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth.

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And that doesn't mean that all sin and all sinners are equally sinful, but we are all thoroughly contaminated by sin.

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Now, before we, and that's important for us to recognize because before we too quickly isolate Levi and kind of put him in a category safely distant from ourselves, we need to consider the nature of our own struggle with sin, our own sinfulness.

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And this really had an impact on Paul's prayer life. In Romans 7, we hear the way that Paul understood himself in the light of God's truth.

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In Romans 7, in verse 18, we read Paul say this, for I know that nothing good dwells in me.

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That is in my flesh. For the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

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And that's something that we need to be honest about in our prayers. Notice verses 24 and 25 of the same chapter.

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Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?

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Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then on the one hand,

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I myself with my mind and serving the law of God, but on the other with my flesh, the law of sin.

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Paul's being honest about his struggles with sin. And he's confessing the fact that he knows that there has been a change in his heart, but he knows he still struggles with sin.

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And that should have an impact on the way that we pray. How does God see us? Levi, God sees us for who we are.

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So if we're gonna follow Jesus in our prayers, we need to be honest about who we are and deal with that.

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In saying all of that, in recognizing the wretchedness and the sinfulness of our hearts, that is not any kind of pathway to permissiveness of saying something along the lines of, oh, well,

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I'm a sinner, I might as well sin. Paul addressed that in Romans 6, verse one.

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He said, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. Those who are born again, those who are alive in Christ make no practice of sin.

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How do we pray about our sinfulness? Well, we certainly confess our sins.

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We are to seek God's forgiveness for our sins. We ought to pray that God would help us mortify sin to kill sin in our lives.

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We should call down even God's judgment upon sin and sinners as we would find in the imprecatory

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Psalms like Psalm 53. And we can pray to seek to be delivered even from the temptation to sin as Jesus taught us in the model prayer and instructed his disciples in the

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Garden of Gethsemane. There's all sorts of things we can pray about if we would recognize our own wretched sinfulness and recognize

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Christ as our wondrous savior. The same kind of relationship we have here in verse 27 of Luke five.

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It's a wretched sinner and it's a wondrous savior. Jesus shows the amazing grace of God in this passage in the way that he deals with Levi.

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Jesus shows, first of all, his selecting concern and secondly, his saving call. I think it's remarkable that Jesus noticed

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Levi sitting in his tollbooth. Jesus comes out of his house and there have been many people still milling about who had witnessed the forgiveness and healing of the paralyzed man.

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We have many people engaging in their labors and in their business and through this human cacophony, Jesus sets his concern on a single man.

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That's the kind of wondrous savior that we have. Jesus is the kind of wondrous savior who sets his love and shows his concern on even a particular individual, even when that person lives in the midst of billions of people.

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And as with Levi, we ought to remember this, that Christ knows both our needs and he knows our names.

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Look how he focuses his attention on this one man and he says, follow me.

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And he knew his need and Jesus knew his name. First of all, Jesus knew his need.

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Here is a sinner who was settled in his sin. Matthew is there plying his dishonest trade.

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He's locked into this work. He's required to press the purses of the people until their livelihood drips into his eager hands.

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It would have become even necessary, we understand, for Levi to take far more than he needed or should have in order to insulate himself from the isolation and the hostility.

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He would have to buy privacy for himself, even buy community for himself. Proverbs 18, 11 reminds us that a rich man's wealth is like a high wall in his imagination and that with much wealth comes many friends,

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Proverbs 19, four, and Matthew would have been caught up, Levi would have been caught up in that kind of thinking.

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Matthew was a man ensnared in his sin and Jesus saw that and Jesus knew his name.

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Now, it's interesting that Levi is named Matthew in all the lists of the disciples and you can find those lists,

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Matthew 10, Mark 3, and Luke 6, you read the lists of the 12 disciples and Levi is always mentioned as Matthew.

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He's never called Levi in those lists, it's interesting, but here he's called Levi and he's identified as a son of Alpheus in Mark 2, 14.

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Now, that may mean that he's the brother of James the Less who is listed in the list of the disciples who's also a son of a man named

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Alpheus, but we're not told if that's true. They may have been brothers, they may not have been, but we're not told one way or another.

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Now, why does Matthew have two names? Why does Levi have two names? Well, some of the other disciples did as well.

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There was Cephas and Peter, and then, of course, Thaddeus or Bartholomew.

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Why did they have two names? We don't know in the case of one. Jesus gave a special name to Peter, but in Levi's case, it's possible that he took a different name in order to hide the shame of his profession.

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Maybe he didn't wanna go by his other name, but in any case, we see the providence of God in these names as they declare the amazing grace of God.

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Matthew means gift of Yahweh, it means gift of Yahweh, and Levi means joining, and the way you can remember that is that two lead coverings are joined together in one pair of jeans.

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That's actually not what it means. Leah, who was the unloved wife of Jacob, when she gave birth to her third son, she called him

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Levi in the hopes that her husband would be joined to her and really truly love her for giving him three sons.

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Well, in this case, this man is named Matthew and Levi, and consider that it is indeed the gift of God to Matthew that Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God, would come to him and call him to join him. He says, follow me, and he does.

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Consider this saving call as part of the wondrous grace, the amazing grace of this wondrous

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Savior. He calls Levi to follow him.

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Now, Levi's been nothing more than a publican, a tax collector. We don't know how long he was in that trade.

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What would his family think of him? What would his neighbors think of him? What would he think of himself?

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But all of that is made dim in the light of the saving call, and in this, there is a loss that is required of Matthew, but there's also gain, and it's not just a loss for gain.

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This call, in and of itself, where Jesus says, follow me, is actually a gift.

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That call is a gift of love. So first of all, consider what is lost for what is gained.

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It's important to remember that this call of Christ, follow me, is found exclusively in the four gospels, except for Revelation 14, four, and it's always a personal call given by Christ.

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It has the idea that there is the need to break with former ways, to break with former ties and identities and values.

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It indicates that there's a joining with Christ, a breaking away from this, and a joining with Christ in his suffering and in his glory.

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We are to take up our crosses, and we are also, with Christ, raised from the dead.

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We suffer persecution, but we are also going to reign with him. So we're joined with Christ in whatever he experienced, and whoever he is, we are connected with him, and that is the idea behind this saving call, to follow him.

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We'll go wherever he went. Did he go through suffering? So shall we. Did he go through rejection? So shall we.

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But does he go to glory? So shall we. Does he have the victory?

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Well, so shall we. There is a breaking with this, but a joining with Christ. Now, this saving call, follow me, is both exclusive and inclusive.

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At the forefront, it's exclusive, it's clear. There's only one discipleship. There's only one following.

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There is an exclusive loyalty to the person of Jesus. When he says, follow me, that's a royal summons into a relationship with the king of God's kingdom, and there's only one king.

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To refuse this call means to maintain a hold on what you have, only to lose it.

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He who would seek to save his life will, in the end, lose it, but he who gives up his life for my sake and the gospel's will find it.

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To receive this royal summons of follow me means to give up what you have to gain what?

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To gain this connection. To gain this relationship with Jesus Christ.

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What did Jesus say to the rich young ruler who thought himself very good? He tells him, one thing you lack.

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He says, go and sell what you have. Release your hold on your idol, which was wealth for him.

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Release what you have and give it to the poor, and then he says, come follow me.

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What was it that the rich young ruler lacked? He lacked the most essential thing of life.

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He lacked Jesus Christ. He did not have that connection with Christ. He did not have that relationship with Christ.

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And it turns out that whatever loss one encounters in swearing loyalty to Christ and Christ alone, whatever one loses and sacrifices and gives up, it turns into, as Mark records, 100 -fold gain.

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Jesus says, whatever you've given up, families, lands, homes, businesses, whatever.

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He says, whatever you have given up, you will gain 100 -fold, he says.

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And how is that the case? How is it that Jesus can promise that? Because he is the heir of all things.

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He is the heir of all things. So this call is exclusive and inclusive.

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It is exclusive in that all must be forsaken for Christ alone, and it's inclusive in that Christ inherits everything.

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And as Romans 8 says, we are with him, co -heirs. We are co -heirs with Jesus Christ.

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So that everything that we, everything then is gained in Christ precisely because we have him.

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So there's a loss for gain in this call. He says, follow me. He's obviously saying, leave where you are.

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Leave that group you're with. Give up on this way of life and come follow me.

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So he's saying, give up that to gain this. So it's a loss for gain. But the very fact that Jesus is calling

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Matthew to follow him, that in and of itself is a gift of love. It's a gift of love. It is a gift of love for the wondrous

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Savior to say to a wretched sinner, here is eternal life.

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That's what he means when he says, follow me. He's offering him eternal life. This is eternal life, Jesus says, that they may know you, the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, John 17 3. That is eternal life, that they may know the one true

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God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Well, how do we know who God is? Jesus said to Philip, you've seen me.

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You've seen the Father. If we have Christ, then we have God. And so we're shown amazing grace in that this wonderful Savior calls men of the lowest rank, like fishermen, and men of the worst reputation, like this tax collector,

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Levi. It's a gift of love. He didn't just pick out

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Matthew because he was a tax collector and thereby give honor or respect or attention to that class of sinners, but he really did set his attention on Levi himself.

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There are many tax collectors in Capernaum, many tax collectors around the Sea of Galilee, but he put his attention upon Matthew.

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They call to him and says, follow me. That is a gift of love. Revelation 14 verse four, speaking about this call to follow me, says, these are the ones who have not been defiled with women for they have kept themselves chaste.

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These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been purchased from among men as firstfruits to God and to the

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Lamb. So what do we learn about those who follow Christ? We learn that those who follow him are those who have been purchased by him.

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How were they purchased? By the blood of Christ. He purchased them by dying for them upon the cross.

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And as we consider who is it that for whom Christ died, he explained that to the religious leaders of his day.

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He was explaining to them why it was they resisted him, why it was that they rejected him, why it was they would not believe in him.

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What did he say to them? He says they rejected him for one particular reason.

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John chapter 10 and verse 26. He says, but you, to the religious leaders, but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep.

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Okay, so then who are the sheep of Christ? He explains, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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I and the father are one. So what do we hear? He says, my sheep,

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Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me, right? So he comes to Matthew, he says, follow me.

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What is he saying about Matthew? Matthew, you're one of my sheep, follow me. And Matthew, because he is one of Jesus' sheep, he hears

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Jesus' voice and he follows him. How is it that Matthew is one of the sheep of Jesus Christ?

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Jesus said, my father has given them to me. You see, it's a gift, it's a gift.

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It's a gift of love, a love that is set upon us by God himself that we would know

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Christ, love Christ and follow Christ. Well, how does that impact our prayer life?

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Well, I think it should make a difference in our prayers when we think about amazing grace, when we think about the wondrous savior and how he puts forth this saving call to us.

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I think it makes a difference in our prayers to God when we recognize Christ's saving call as God's loving gift.

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We have to be honest, who are we to catch the eye of a holy God, to impress him?

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What can we offer to him that would attract his love? We cannot even claim a hair on our head or a second of our life which has impressed

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God, which means that when we come to God in prayer, we must always come humbled, humbled by his grace.

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And what does that look like in our prayers? Well, if we're humbled by God's grace when we come to him in prayer, that means in our prayers, demands are replaced with gratitude.

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Desperation is replaced with confidence. Negotiating is replaced with worship because of who

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God is, his love for us based upon his merits and not our own.

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And remember that when we come to God in prayer, if we're going to really follow Jesus in our prayers, we need to remember that God sees us for who we really are, which means we have no need to pretend in our prayers.

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We don't have to pretend with God, he knows exactly who we are. We'd be very foolish indeed to try to put on airs with God as we pray.

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Certainly revere him, worship him and honor him, but we have no need to put on airs as if we're more than what we really are.

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Remember who we are praying to, he knows our names and he knows our needs.

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The greatest need we have as we pray is to be crucified to the flesh and alive to Christ.

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This is what it means to follow Christ. I hope that is the manner, the content, the initial focus of our prayers.

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I hope this has been helpful. We will look more in this passage in the coming weeks as the Lord allows.

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Let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you for the time that we've had in your word to be reminded that you have given us a wondrous savior.

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We who are wretched sinners, we thank you that Jesus Christ has set his gaze and love upon us.

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We who are born again and alive in Christ, we've done nothing to earn that, it's a gift from you. I pray that the truth of your grace would permeate our prayers as we offer to you all the glory that you deserve.