Well, good morning and welcome
to our continuing study in Luke chapter five. And today we're
concerned with verse 27 through 32. And we'll read those to start
out with. And after these things, he went
forth and saw a publican named Levi sitting at the receipt of
custom. And he said unto him, follow
me. And he left all and rose up and
followed him. And Levi made him a great feast
in his own house. And there was a great company
of publicans and others that sat down with him. But the scribes
and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, why dost
thou eat and drink with publicans and sinners? And Jesus answering
said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician, but
they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. And that's the section we'll
cover today. And I was thinking. As I was reading, I had a note
in my Bible there that said, no, not the Ninevites, not the
publicans, the awful people, the miserable people, we hate
them. Anyway, as we look at this block
of scripture, and we look at the circumstances after these
things, after Jesus had launched, caused them to launch out into
the deep, he said, and get ready for a haul, and we looked at
the spiritual connotation of that, and we looked at him cleansing
the leper, and healing the man taken with a palsy, and doing
that by saying, Thy sins be forgiven thee. that ye may know the Son
of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins." And now we come
to the circumstances where he calls out Levi, Matthew, the
publican. And Jesus had been in this area
of Galilee, and the first one there, it's called Gennesaret,
the Old Testament name for this lake, the Lake of Gennesaret,
Sea of Galilee, and preaching and declaring the kingdom of
the gospel of God. and multitudes, it said, pressed
on him. And he was well known throughout
the area. Everybody was thronging to see
him and hear the word and see the miracles. So he was well
known. It would have been surprising
to have Levi not been aware of him and what he was saying and
what was going on. I think it's important that we
note, as we noted last week, the purpose and will of God was
and is being executed. We read from John 6, 39 and 40
last week, this is the Father's will which sent me that of all
which he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise
it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me that everyone would seeth the Son and believeth on him,
may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last
day." And so we see the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
are all united in this will and the execution of it, all acting
in concert, each supplying a part of the whole, each part inextricably
united, each acting in accordance with and at the time before determined
and the Word of God going in power and in the Holy Spirit
to bring in the elect of God. That's that same principle that
Paul explained in 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 4 and 5. Knowing, brethren,
your election of God for our gospel came not unto you in word
only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance
as you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.
And we see that principle applied here with Levi as the Lord comes
to him and says, follow me. And so we see this next scene
in which the Savior He must need stop by and see a publican at
a tax booth, and he must meet with a certain man, the same
as he must needs meet with the woman at the well, the same as
he must needs meet with Philip and Nathaniel and all the others. So it's interesting in our translation
and in all the translations that I looked up, It says these same
two words to Levi, follow me. And in our modern understanding,
we think of following as being led. Like I mentioned, in Alaska,
we have a lot of road construction. This time of year, you have 12
weeks to get all your road construction done for the year. And so it
seems like you're always waiting for a pilot car to come and get
you and lead you through the construction zone and they they
come and they turn around and they have a big sign on the back
that says follow me and you're supposed to go behind them and
and go where they go but it's In this use, however, in the
Bible, and as we find what the Lord always says, there's always
sort of a deeper spiritual meaning in the things that he says and
does and in the view of things. In the Greek, this word follow
is a compound word which gives a sense of being in union with,
be in the same way with, and it says erode. So it gives us
a sense of being united with Christ in a way, in the thing
that's going. So spiritually, it's much more
than just saying that, well, I'm a Christian. We're all Christians,
no matter what. It means being in union with
Him in everything about Him. And for the church, this is just
much more than just stating, well, I'm a follower of Christ.
I'm a Christian. The question is, are you truly
in union with the same way and on the same path or on the same
road with Christ? We find this Same exact words
spoken by Christ in John chapter 10 verse 27 where Jesus is addressing
certain Jews who had issues with regard to the truth of the gospel
that Christ declared. And while on the one hand they
openly declared themselves to be people of God, on the other
they denied the very Christ among them and denied the gospel that
he declared. In John chapter 10 verse 24 says,
Then came the Jews round about him and said unto him, How long
dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly. And Jesus answered them, I told
you, and you believe not. The works that I do in my Father's
name, they bear witness of me, but you believe not, because
you are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice
and I know them and they follow me. They follow me. They become
united with me. The question then becomes, how
much can one then not believe and still be in union with Christ?
Still be in the same way with Christ? Can one pick and choose
the truths they agree with and believe and reject some truths
which they are opposed to and in fact do not believe? And the
Gospel of John gives us a good example of some who liked and
agreed with some parts of what Jesus did and said and yet strongly
disagreed with the the sovereign point as he it says has he taught
in the synagogue in Capernaum in John chapter 6 verse 60 many
therefore of his disciples when they Heard this they said this
is a hard saying who can hear it And then we move on down to
verse 63 is Jesus said it's the spirit that quickeneth the flesh
profiteth nothing the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,
they are life. But there are some of you that
believe not, for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that
believed not and who should betray him. And he said, therefore I
said unto you that no man can come to me except it were given
unto him of my father. And we always read this, John
6, 6, 6, it says, from that time many of his disciples went back
and walked no more with him. in their minds they were in union
with him, they were following him, and yet when it came to
a spiritual truth, when it came to a sovereign issue, they weren't
with him. And that's true in religion that
we find today. Many say, Well, I like the part
about where it says, saved by grace. It sounds so catchy. But
I don't agree with what that really means. What does it mean? And that, not of ourselves, it
is the gift of God, not of works. It's totally of grace. It's totally, Christ said, I'll
have mercy on whom I'll have mercy on. I exercise my sovereignty, or
no man can come to me unless my Father draws him, or all that
the Father giveth me shall come to me. and the issues about predestination
and foreknowledge and so forth that's mentioned in Ephesians
and Romans. He says, well, I know it says
that, but I just can't go there. I just don't believe that part. I believe the part in John 3,
16, where it says, for God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten son that whosoever believed on him. They believe
that part, but they don't believe They seldom read right after
that where it says, and men love darkness rather than light, and
all the things that qualify that to say that. that the general
nature of man in his unregenerate state is that he rejects God
every time and wants nothing to do with Him. If it weren't
for the sovereign power of God overcoming that will, as it says
in Psalms, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.
If it weren't for that, they would never come. So to a man like Levi Matthew,
who by, you know, we have to say here that he had heard the
gospel as it was preached, as Jesus said, and he, I must preach
the kingdom of God to other cities, for therefore am I sent. And
we know that Christ must needs go to this man. And so we can say that Levi,
by grace was examining himself and saw no good in himself. He
left all. He left Judaism. He left prosperity. He knew the truth of the grace
in Christ. And it says in verse 28, and
he left all and rose up and followed him. He left, his name implies
he was Jewish. He was a Levi. He was involved
to some degree in the Jewish religion. Of course, They probably
didn't want much to do with him and because of his occupation
and so well a little explanation of the circumstances surrounding
Levi or Matthews as he's called in the other gospel narratives
remember Peter was called Simon or Cephas and Paul the Roman
name of Saul Matthew here with it Levi Matthew was a publican
a collector of taxes for tribute to Rome And remember that the
nation of Israel was a province of Rome at this time. They had
been conquered by the Romans and the Roman soldiers were there.
The Roman rulers were there and they were subject to Roman rules. And the Romans exacted a heavy
toll on them in the way of taxes. And they had three types of taxes. They had a tax called tributus
sol, which was a head tax or tax per person, tributus agri,
which was a land tax, and tributus capi, which was a tax on goods. And I was reading in a, in a, commentary that there's archaeological
evidence found that fish coming out of the Sea of Galilee was
taxed on its way to being sold. And now there were two types
of publicans as well engaged in collecting the various taxes
imposed. There was a chief publican who
was responsible for the overall collection of the required revenue
that was to be given to Rome. and lower publicans who primarily
were engaged in collecting taxes on goods brought in and sold
in the region. And nearly every stopping point,
nearly every little town had a customs station with a publican
there to collect the compulsory tribute. And apparently there
were lots of them. And the chief publican would
be appointed and he would bid out the lower collection positions
people would pay him for those jobs, and the winner would be
given authority to collect the tax, and they were given broad
leeway in collecting for themselves a tidy sum for that service. But first of all, the Roman Empire
must be satisfied with their demand, and after that it amounted
to what the publican could connive or extort out of the victims. We have some record of that given
to us in the Gospels. In Luke chapter 19 verse 1, as
Jesus needs to go to Zacchaeus, it says, in Luke 19 verse 1,
Jesus entered and passed through Jericho And behold, there was
a man named Zacchaeus, who was chief among the publicans, and
he was rich. And then again, here in verse
27 of the chapter we're in today, Luke 5, 27, after these things,
he went forth and saw a publican named Levi sitting at the receipt
of custom and said, follow me. And so these publicans, these
customs agents, these tax collectors, They might charge the prescribed
rate on the goods a trader brought into the region for Rome and
then exact perhaps a conveyance tax on the transportation, a
cart, or the beast of burden used to carry it. They might
exact a tax on the use of the road. A publican might use the
tactic of extortion threatening to accuse the victim to the Romans
of some crime and even though they might not be guilty they'd
still have to go through the process of being arrested and
thrown in prison and the Romans didn't just they just took a
dim view of things and if someone accused someone of a crime it
was it was pretty harsh treatment that they would receive and until
it was somehow proven wrong and that might not even be likely
to happen. A publican might be making money by assessing an
exorbitant tax which the victim couldn't afford to pay. and then
through usury, loaning them the money to pay the tax and then
charging interest payments on the loan. Kind of a loan shark
set up as we would think of it in today's terms. And we know
kind of these things were happening because in Luke 19, 8 talks about
Zacchaeus standing up and saying unto the Lord, Behold, Lord,
the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken
anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold."
So, as a result then, these publicans were given authority to squeeze
taxes out of the Jews in tribute to their conquerors, the pagan
Romans, and they hated having to give money to their conquerors,
and then they were forced to pay the the publican tidy some
for himself and in addition they were responsible for an annual
temple tax that was by the Jews themselves and was to be deposited
in those containers in the portico in the temple and when we were
studying that earlier There was a row of those containers, one
for each tribe. As they came into the temple,
there was a big brass funnel where they would throw their
money and it would go down into this container and it would make
noise. People could hear whether you
were throwing in a lot of money or not so much. Roman money was
not allowable as a temple tax, and so you had the money changers
that were there to exchange Roman coinage into the acceptable Jewish
denomination in silver, and there was a tidy fee to charge for
that exchange. So a publican then was despised
beyond measure by the Jews, and they were classified as lower
than or equal to sinners. Luke 18, verse 11, we have the
typical view of the Pharisees regarding publicans and other
sinners. This Pharisee stood and prayed
thus with himself there in Luke 18, 11. God, I thank Thee that
I am not as other men are, extortioners. unjust adulterers, or even as
this publican, he was kind of the lowest denomination of sinner,
the lowest scum, and lumped right in there with everybody else
that they considered not worthy of being around them and having
anything to do with them. And so imagine the life then
of this publican, this Matthew, this Levi. He's despised. He's hated beyond measure. He's
scorned. He has no friends except others
of his kind or others that are deemed even worse. The extortioners,
the unjust, the adulterers, The Samaritans, the woman at
the well, the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans and so forth. And the leper, they had to go
around blocking people from coming near them saying, unclean, unclean.
And they were made to live outside the city. They were scorned and
shunned. Not many friends, no friends
except others of his kind. And imagine having heard the
good news of the gospel. This Jesus, the Holy Spirit and
the Father had been pretty active in the area and a gospel had
been made alive to him by the Holy Spirit. Imagine him like
the woman at the well, like the leper, like the man taking with
paralysis, having the Savior come to him, one who was shunned,
one who was scorned, one who was in an awful condition. In Luke 5, 27 it says, And after
these things he, Jesus, went forth and saw a publican named
Levi sitting at the receipt of a custom. And he said unto him,
follow me. And in the normal course of events,
Jesus would not have had much reason to approach the custom
house, much less speak to the public and inside particularly. He sold nothing, but he freely
gave the gospel of himself. He knew something about being
despised and rejected. It tells us in Isaiah 53, verse
three and four, that he is despised. and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were,
our faces from him. He was despised, and we esteemed
him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted." He was generally despised and
rejected, and we've seen that over and over and over again
through the Scriptures. And even though he does the miracles,
and he feeds the 5,000, and heals people, and casts out demons,
and all the things that he did, those things never resulted in
anyone being redeem. It never resulted in anybody
being regenerated, but he was acquainted with grief. And I
think that we can safely say that as the scriptures that we've
always looked at in the past, that when the Lord gives one
a new heart, when the Lord takes away the stony heart, when the
Spirit of God breathes into them the breath of life and reveals
himself in them, they have a new sense of sin. And Ezekiel says, then you'll loathe
yourself over your sins. But he says, but then, I give
you the oil of gladness for your heart. I give you the joy of
gladness to realize that your sins have been paid for, they're
covered. And so I think that Jesus, he
being acquainted with grief, this means to know by seeing,
by observation, that acquainted with grief and whatever the sin
or infirmity, he could see that. that bearing down on his heart. And this publican, by the rule
of the new birth and given by the Holy Spirit, surely exhibited
grief caused by an awareness of sin which he didn't possess
prior. And he was made aware by the
spirit of his need for a physician. As it says in verse 31, they
that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. And I
came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And
so we can see that that must be applied to Levi here, and
he left all and rose up and followed him. He left all those things
behind. And I think we can apply what
we learned in Hebrews chapter 4 verse starting in verse 3, it talks
about entering into the rest, this rest of Christ. He that
has entered into His rest, that's Christ's rest, has ceased from
His own works, even as God ceased from His works. So it's, He left
all, it says. And To be made aware of deliverance
from so great a calamity that we find ourselves in when it's
been revealed to us is cause for change and for giving thanks
and praise and glory to whom it is due. And it says in Luke
5.27 that he said, follow me. And he left all and rose up and
followed him. And Levi made him a great feast
in his own house. And there was a great company
of publicans and others that sat down with him. I just couldn't
help but remember back to the other times that we've seen that
happen. Come and see. Come and see. He
would have said, Levi would have said to these. Come and see a
man that told me all I ever did. Come and see. We found the Messiah. Come and see Philip and Nathanael. And the words of Jesus, the words
of the woman at the well, come and see. And one of my favorite
hymns came immediately to mind as I read this account of a publican
who was shunned and scorned and despised with no friends outside
his own circle of fellow sinners, like that woman of the well who
had to come at a certain hour because no one would be around
to chastise her, ridicule her, abuse her there. And this hymn
was written by a pastor of the Free Church of Scotland. His
name was James G. Small. He wrote it in 1866 and
it's called I Found a Friend and I think it just says so much
about the circumstances that we've just read about. I found
a friend, oh, such a friend. Christ loved me ere I knew him.
He drew me with the cords of love, and thus he bound me to
him, and round my heart still closely twine those ties which
not can sever, for I am his and he is mine forever and forever. I found a friend, oh, such a
friend. He bled, he died to save me,
and not alone the gift of life, but his own self he gave me.
Not that I have my own, I call. I hold it for the giver. My strength,
my life, my all are his and his forever. I found a friend who
is such a friend. All power to him is given to
guard me on my onward course and bring me safe to heaven."
And all these things. all the elements of the gospel
are contained in this, and it surely sheds a light on how I'm
sure Levi must have felt. And so, as we close up this lesson
on the calling out, Matthew, Levi, follow me, be one with
me, be united with me in the way, and be grateful and be thankful. And so, next time we get together
we'll be looking at, why don't your disciples fast, and about
the bridegroom fast, children of the bridegroom, and putting
a piece of new garment upon an old. Can you mix grace with works? We'll look at those kind of things
next time. Thank you, and thank you for your attention, and as
always, be free.