Wednesday Night, May 13, 2020 PM

Day that you have given to us, we thank you for providing for us in all the ways that you do. We give you praise for you are worthy of all of our worship, you are our maker, you have created us, ordained the lives that you have given to us, you are our shepherd, you govern the universe, you hold us in your hand, you are our heavenly father and we give you praise.

We thank you that you have concerned yourself with our lives, how you have saved us through your son Jesus Christ, how you give us instruction through your word. Father I pray that you would help us to know what it means to follow Christ, what that looks like as we look in your word and what following Christ means in our prayer lives.

That we would not follow our hearts, we would not exalt ourselves, but that we would follow Christ and that we would exalt Christ in our prayer lives. Father teach us how to pray, teach us how to depend upon you, teach us how to worship you, teach us about your concerns and your priorities that our prayer lives would be pleasing to you, that it would be a sweet aroma to you every time we take a moment to pray or spend an extended time.

In prayer.

Father that we would know you more and more through that, but that we would know who you are as we come to you in prayer. Father I ask that you would give us clarity, understanding of your word by your Holy Spirit that you would illumine the text to our hearts and that you would have your way in us.

We pray all these things for Christ's sake.

Amen.

Following Christ in Luke 5:27-32

We're going to be in Luke chapter 5 again this evening as we consider following Jesus. We'll look at verses 27 through 32. Luke 27 through 32, considering the call of Levi or the call of Matthew to follow Christ, what all is involved in that.

We've considered the amazing grace of this wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ, coming to a wretched sinner, the likes of Levi, a tax collector, and calling him to follow him. Not only was this amazing grace, but it was effectual grace.

This was the kind of grace that saves, the kind of grace that actually does a saving work in the life of the one who is called. Levi, immediately he arose and he left all that he had there and he followed Christ.

We now move from the call that we see in verses 27 and 28 to the complaint that is made against Christ and against his disciples by the religious leaders in that Jesus Christ and his disciples are fraternizing with the likes of Levi and his companions, tax collectors and sinners.

So, we read the word for us this evening, Luke chapter 5 verses 27 through 32. After that he went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth and he said to him, follow me. And he left everything behind and got 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. 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. So, the call in verses 27 through 28, the complaint in verses 29 and 30, and of course the clarification in verses 31 and 32.

So, in considering what the gospel of Luke is telling us here, what Luke is communicating to Theophilus as he's writing this to give a correct account to his patron of all that had happened with the person and work of Jesus Christ, he emphasizes this call of Levi.

And having seen the amazing and effectual grace of God in Levi's life, we see that this becomes obvious to everyone, not just to Christ who called him, but to everyone as Matthew hosts a dinner in honor of Jesus Christ.

And to this shindig, he invites all of those who are still his acquaintances, those who were willing to remain his acquaintances even though he was a renowned sinner, a loathsome tax collector. And understandably, we discover that those who are willing to spend time with Matthew, those who are okay with being associated with Levi, these were folks just like him.

This dinner was full of degenerates, full of tax collectors and other sinners, and this attracts negative attention from the religious elites. Remember that they had just accused, in the previous passage, they had just accused Jesus in their hearts of blasphemy when he forgave the sins of the paralyzed man.

And now they denounce his fraternization with the scum of their society. But what does this dinner of degenerates and this denunciation from the religious elites have to do with our prayer lives? Well, this is part of working on our salvation in fear and in trembling.

Consider the dinner in verse 29. Matthew must have been called to follow Jesus sometime probably later on in the day. He recognizes the time. He recognizes the need. And he immediately makes use of what he possesses.

It is time for the evening meal. Now Christ had been teaching and healing and laboring in the fields of harvest all day. And while Matthew had a booth to sit in and a house to live in, while the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, the Son of Man had no place to lay his head.

And so Matthew makes arrangements to see to the needs of the Master and all those who are with him. We find that Matthew's house and his wealth, his resources, were all once tarnished by the manner in which he had gained them.

They were once stained with sin, but now they are all sacred in a moment as they are laid before the King of Heaven, ready for his use. So we see that Levi left all and he arose and he followed Jesus there in verse 28.

Now that does not mean, however, that he abandoned his responsibilities regarding his domestic affairs. Rather, his management, all that he had, had been brought entirely under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

He could not go throughout his day and take care of the normal matters without thinking of what respect it had to do with Jesus Christ. Now how do we apply that into our prayer lives? How do we bring our resources to bear in our prayer lives?

When we come to God in prayer, when we come to our Heavenly Father, what is the content of our praying? Are we majoring on what we do not have, or are we managing what we do have as for the Lord? Do we bring those concerns before him in prayer?

Do we have the mind of Christ with regard to our possessions? Are we striving to understand what the will of the Lord is? Are we asking for wisdom? Are we asking for a blessing? Are we asking for the Lord's blessing upon how we're using what God has entrusted to us?

Are we bringing what we have before the Lord in prayer, standing with our resources at attention in the presence of the King? We are, of course, reminded of the young man who had the five loaves and two fishes, but what he had, he presented it to Christ.

Let us be faithful with little that we may be entrusted with much, as the parables of Christ tell us. We are to seek prayerfully to maximize Christ's glory with our resources. Matthew immediately makes use of whatever he has for Christ.

And we are told he makes a big reception for him. The dinner that Matthew provides is called a great feast. We see that in verse 29. So Matthew invites his king to dinner, and it makes sense that he would make a great feast for his king.

And all that he had, and he had much, he provided in abundance. This feast was great, of course, to feed the crowd that attended, but it was also great in the sense of the magnificence of the provisions.

We see that Matthew was generous to Christ, and he was generous for the sake of Christ. Everyone who came to his table on that day, everyone who reclined with him at supper and enjoyed that sumptuous meal should have understood that the grace that they received, the favor they received, the many blessings that they received there at that meal was simply all for the cause of Christ.

It was really the overflow of Christ's glory. It's a funny thing. Sometimes children are excited when they have guests over to the house because they know that the meal will be extra special. It'll be the kind of food that they really enjoy, and desserts and everything else that come with it.

We eat better when guests come over. And that's exactly what Matthew's doing here. He's putting out his very best for Christ, and all of his guests enjoy what they have at Matthew's table because of the way in which Matthew honors Christ.

So this brings to mind that when we receive guests to dinner, I wonder if they know that they sit at a table that is graced by Christ, that what we set before them is really what our King has provided, that the abundance that we share, the hospitality that we offer, this should be understood in the name of Christ, for the sake of Christ.

We can make such matters clear in our prayers and how we pray for the meal. That is the best way to make Christ central from the very beginning, that no matter who is at our table, whether they are a believer or a nonbeliever, whether they are sympathetic to Christ or antagonistic to Christ, that we make it absolutely clear that while they're at our table enjoying our generosity and hospitality, we're doing so in the name of Christ, for the sake of Christ.

Well, the size of the meal was great, but the source of the meal is, though obvious, in need of some consideration. Levi is a tax collector, and as far as Jewish society is concerned, his status as a sinner is both great and irrevocable.

Tax collectors, we must understand, were as loathsome to religious Jews as Gentiles. Even Jesus understood this. He used an expression in Matthew 18 and verse 17 when he says, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

So Jesus is instructing his disciples, he's instructing the apostles on this particular point of church discipline. If there is someone who is within the membership of the body, and they sin, and they sin, they continue in sin, and no matter how lovingly they are addressed and compelled to repent of their sins, and they will not, eventually, he says, you're going to have to treat them like an outsider.

And to his Jewish audience, he makes it crystal clear to them, let them be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. The same kind of class of people in which you wouldn't go, a Jew wouldn't go to the house of a tax collector and have a meal with them, or invite them over to their house and have a meal with them.

And so we see that for Jesus Christ, to sit in a tax collector's house, to recline at his table, to receive his food and eat there, was incredibly scandalous. It was highly controversial. As we will see later on in the life of Peter, eating with Gentiles was an incredibly controversial thing, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We see this in Acts 11, verse 3, when Peter has come back from preaching to Cornelius and his household, and Peter has spent the night with these Gentiles, and he's confronted by Jewish brothers from the church in Jerusalem.

And they say, you have gone to a Gentile's home, and you have eaten Gentile food. They were aghast. They felt like that was an awful thing. But then Peter clarified the grace of God in the gospel going out to all peoples.

And Peter himself was not guiltless when it came to thinking of Gentiles in that way, as we remember from Paul's story in Galatians 2, verse 12, how he had to rebuke Peter for failing to eat with the Gentiles in the presence of the Jews.

This is all to say that for the anointed one, for the Messiah, to eat a tax collector's food was as heinous as eating Gentile food. But the twist in the story is this. As so often the holy one of God, he is not desecrated by the unclean, but rather he makes the unclean clean.

Remember that the one who touches lepers and makes them whole, here he is eating a tax collector's food and ostensibly making it holy. So back to our consideration of praying before our meals. Why do we thank God for our food before we eat?

Well, yes, it is a custom. It is a valuable tradition handed down to us. Yes, it is the pattern that we find repeated in the scriptures. But so also is threshing grain and walking to distant cities. And we don't do that very much anymore, do we?

But giving thanks for our meals is commanded of us. And when we offer thanksgiving to God, when we ask his blessing upon our food, when our provision is thus offered to Christ in thanksgiving, our food is made clean, it is holy before God.

1 Timothy 4 verses 4 through 5 says,. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.

And so when we bless our food, when we bless our meal, when we offer it with thanksgiving to God, it is sanctified, it is made clean. And thirdly, consider the scene that is before us in verse 29. A great crowd, we read, a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.

This phrase, great crowd, shows up over and over again in these stories about Christ. You know the expression, hoi poloi. Well, this is the Greek version of that, the polos oklos, that's how you say it in the Greek, polos oklos.

And that's the way of saying great crowd, just a bunch of people. And this phrase can refer to anything from the rabble to a riot, the people pressing all around. And such was the crowd that surrounded Christ.

Remember, there was a crowd through which the leper had to come to be healed. There was a crowd that laid siege to the house where Christ was, and the friends had to break in through the roof to deliver the paralyzed man to Christ.

Well, once again, the polos oklos has gathered. But this time, those in great need of Christ's ministry are not the ones fighting to be let in. And the ones who feel themselves well, those who have acquitted themselves as righteous, they're the ones who are left outside.

And their consternation about this matter will soon be made known. But in the meantime, consider this great crowd, this polos oklos of tax collectors and those willing to associate themselves with these scoundrels.

The Pharisees marked these others who were reclining with the tax collectors as sinners. They said, these are sinners. Now, perhaps they were sinners merely by association, or perhaps they were the usual companions of the publicans, junkards and prostitutes.

But in any case, when you look at this crowd, we are to think to ourselves, well, the whole crowd is leprous. It's not just one leper. The whole crowd is as good as leprous, and the whole crowd is contaminated.

But Christ is there among them. And what is our point of view on the polos oklos? I mean, Christ willingly entered into Matthew's home and sat with Matthew's company. And he is not at all making some sort of a statement of approval in this.

He was always even compassionate towards sinners. He would tell them, go and sin no more. Never gave approval to sin or sinful lifestyles. And he makes his mission known in verses 31 through 32. He knows that they're sick.

He knows that they're in need. He knows that they're unrighteous and that they need to be saved. In view of our master, and as we try to follow Christ, what is our point of view in prayer? What do we think of the polos oklos in our prayer lives?

What place do they have as we pray? As we walk among the rabble and we hear the riot, when we're eager to escape the press of the people, will we pray for these made in the image of God? Are we not but just one more face in the crowd?

One upon whom God has placed his grace and love as Christ did with Levi? Now, you may be able to name loved ones who prayed for your deliverance from sin, who prayed for your salvation, but you cannot name those who did not know you, and yet they prayed nonetheless for the salvation of sinners in their neighborhood, the salvation of sinners in their city, in their state, in the nation and in the world.

And will you too care about the polos oklos and pray for their salvation? Let's consider the denunciation that is given by the Pharisees and the scribes in verse 30. The Pharisees and the scribes are the keepers of the law, and that means philosophically in the way that they live, but also literally as the scribes were tasked with writing down copies of the Holy Word of God.

And in Matthew's account and in Mark's account, we see that their approach is to denounce the master through the disciples, that they're trying to show in their denouncement that Christ is a bad teacher, not someone you want to follow, as he and his disciples are willingly contaminating themselves by spending time with these tax collectors and sinners.

And their manner of expressing their denouncement is called grumbling. It says in the text that the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at his disciples, that King James has murmured. They began murmuring to Christ's disciples.

The Greek term is as onomatopoetic as murmur. The word sounds like it is.

Ganguzo, ganguzo.

The grumble means that you're making noises in the back of your throat.

Ganguzo.

And they're grumbling about Christ and his disciples. It's interesting, is it not, that we read in the previous story how the reasonings of the scribes and Pharisees, the reasonings were well hidden in their hearts, these hidden reasonings where they were accusing Christ of blasphemy from within their hearts.

But now these protests have progressed from their hearts to the back of their throats, and soon their accusations will be fully voiced. Well, these quarrelers, these Pharisees, these scribes, we must remember that they had committed themselves to preserving the traditions that they believed would keep the law.

They had committed themselves to following all 613, as they saw them, 613 commandments of the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im and the Ketuvim, the law, the prophets and the writings. And they ascribed to varying schools of thought on ever-progressing rabbinical tradition on just how to ensure that you are indeed keeping the law.

And that's the way the Pharisees operated. Well, their scribes were even more knowledgeable than they were as they copied out Holy Scripture for themselves. And they would also copy out the traditions that they would hold to.

One could not find, as far as in the eye of the beholder, in the eye of the common folk, no one could find a more holy group in all of Israel than these Pharisees and scribes, unless you traveled a way out and spent some time with the Essenes, who kind of were like a monk, a monkish society.

They had completely cut themselves off. But these Pharisees and these scribes were public holy figures, and they felt that any other Jewish religious movement ought also to be publicly holy by their standards.

It is significant that they assume the center in this debate. They had irrigated to themselves the dictionary of sanctification. They were the ones who outlined holiness. They were the ones who drew up its boundaries and established its limits.

And because what Jesus and his disciples did failed to meet their expectations, they grumbled against them. It seemed it was up to them to make Jesus and his followers stay in line. Did they not also go out and deal with that troubler of Israel, John the Baptist?

Well, here's another threat to their religious order. This Jesus of Nazareth had already committed blasphemy in their book by forgiving sins, but now he's defiled himself by his associations. So it seemed important to them to draw attention to these blots and to disprove thus his authority and dispel his adherence.

And so they ask a question. And it's not because they're curious, but it's because they are contentious. They ask their question. They say, why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?

They grumble at his disciples. They throw this questioning accusation at them. Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners? It is often the case that the opponents of Christ ask questions.

These questions are not asked in the interest of gaining understanding of Christ's gospel or clarifying his doctrine. These questions are accusations covered in a thin veneer of propriety. Christ's opponents often ask questions in order to try to prove what they see to be his contradictions, his folly, his corruption, his failures.

But as we see time and again, his answers always prove his righteousness, his wisdom, his integrity, his goodness. Now it's helpful for us to know that their question is not sincere. It is meant as an incendiary tactic.

They really don't want to know. They're not curious about the breadth of God's love and the depth of God's grace to sinners like tax collectors. They're not interested in how the Son of Man can forgive the sins of the great crowds.

They're not concerned for the salvation of publicans. And why not? Why are they not concerned with these matters? Well, as we'll see, they're not even concerned for the salvation of their own souls. They think they're fine.

They think that they're the righteous ones. They think that they're the healthy ones. They don't need the Son of Man. And they don't think anybody else does either. Well, as we consider the denouncement of these religious leaders, as we consider how they quarrel against Christ and they use this question against him, it gives us an opportunity to think to ourselves, what is our attitude towards Christ?

What is our approach to the authority of the Son of Man and the things that he does in our world? How do we pray? There may be many things that go on in our lives and in the world today that we would consider to be outrageous, and we may begin to feel the need to question whether Jesus Christ is being a good king or not.

But in what attitude, in what attitude are our questions being offered to God in prayer? We need to be humble. We need to come before the Lord humbly, not like the scribes and Pharisees, but more like the tax collector Levi who humbled himself and presented the best that he could for his Lord Jesus Christ.

The more humble we are in our praying, the more righteous our questions will be. It is a good thing to ask questions of the Lord in our prayer lives, but let us do so in humility. So we have the complaint being made, and next time, as the Lord wills, we will consider the clarification that Jesus brings to the manner of his ministry.

Well, let's go ahead and pray. Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your Word. I pray that it's been a help to our hearts, a help to our prayer lives. I pray that you would help us to consider, well, what does it mean to follow Christ?

And that you would, as we consider your Word, that you would shape our lives in agreement with your Son, Jesus Christ. It's for his sake that we pray. Amen.