We'll be in Luke chapter 5. Just a few verses in Luke chapter
5. Starting in verse 30. Now I've entitled this message, God
Calls Sinners. God calls sinners. Luke chapter
five, starting in verse 30, and their scribes and the Pharisees
complained against his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink
with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus answered and said to them,
those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who
are sick I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance. Now, a few verses back, we see
Levi, also known as Matthew, one of the writers of what they
call the four gospels, and he was sitting at the tax office.
because he was a tax collector. And I assume he was meeting Jesus
for the very first time. He might've heard of him, of
course, you almost couldn't go anywhere without hearing about
Jesus in that region. But as far as I can tell, this
was the first time they met. And Jesus then calls Matthew
and tells him to follow him. And then Matthew, leaves his
chair, his desk, whatever it is, and he follows Jesus. There's no pleading. There is no long speech, no begging,
just a call and an answer. And presumably that very same
day, Matthew then invites Jesus to his house for a feast. And
this is where the story gets a little bit interesting. As
you know, tax or Jewish tax collectors under the Roman occupation of
Israel were considered turncoats. They were reviled. They were
on par with harlots. And not only because they collected
taxes for a foreign occupying nation, but also because they
were known to be extortionists. They would take what was demanded
of the, you know, the tax law and the Romans, and they would
then ask for a little extra, and they would pocket that extra.
And Jesus knew of their social standing very well, and he used
it not against them, but against the religious folk of the day.
And those were the chief priests, the Sadducees, the scribes, the
Pharisees. And when he taught in Matthew
5, verses 43 through 48, that believers should love not only
their friends, but also their enemies, that they should pray
not only for those close to them, but even for those who persecute
them. When he did that, do you remember what group of people
he used to provoke them to jealousy? Tax collectors. He dug low. Or as in the King James, it calls
them publicans, but it's the same thing, it's a tax collector.
He said, Jesus said, for if you love those who love you, what
reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors
do the same. And if you greet your brethren
only, what do you do more than others? Do not even tax collectors
do so. So he said that if you only pray
for your and greet your friends and do good to those who are
kind to you already, you're just as good as tax collectors. And
I'm sure that ruffled some feathers. He even told the chief priests
and the elders at one point, assuredly I say to you that tax
collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you.
Now he said that because they wouldn't believe John the Baptist's
message. But the tax collectors and the
harlots believed him. And nobody likes it when somebody
makes you look less pious than you believe yourself to be. And Jesus never stopped comparing
the religious folk to some very, very base things, like brood
of vipers, blind fools, Sons of hell, whitewashed tombs. And I didn't even have to go
to multiple books or even multiple chapters to find those. They
were all in one chapter in Matthew. So I thought it's kind of a wonder
that these guys continued following Jesus around because every time
they spoke, he would make them look like fools. But they were,
of course, hoping to catch him off guard, somehow show how unrighteous
he actually is, or they thought he was. So it's not difficult
to imagine how they are feeling right here in our verses that
we just read. They're hanging around outside
Matthew's house. They're watching people enjoy
the feast that they weren't invited to, not as if they'd go, And wouldn't you know it, this
tax collector's house was full of other tax collectors. And
just to make sure everyone around knew just how bad the population
of that house was, some of or all of the other people inside
the house, they called them sinners. So you had tax collectors and
you had sinners in there. and they couldn't contain their
righteous anger any longer. That sight was too much. They
were fixing to complain, but they didn't complain to Jesus. They knew they were all gathered
there because of Jesus, but they didn't go to complain to Him.
Instead, they went up to His disciples and gave them the dressing
down. Why do you eat and drink with
tax collectors and sinners? Why are you associating with
this lot? You should set yourself apart and only associate with
the people who are clean, like us. These people are unclean. If you keep this up, people are
going to start talking. You don't want rumors to spread
about you, do you? But all glory to God, our compassionate
Redeemer is not ashamed to be seen with us, sinners all. We have in Christ a close friend,
a close friend. I was listening to a message
by John Chapman, and he was relaying a story about his son. And he said, some time ago, my
son was in jail for almost six months. And he had a friend who
went through high school with him. And someone said to him, You
need to separate yourself from him. And he said, no, no. He's my friend. And he came at
different times and stood with us in line to see him. Nobody
else did. But he did. He's my friend. Now the Pharisees, the Pharisees were implying guilt
by association. If you're hanging out with sinners,
people might start thinking that you condone what they do. And that you might be a sinner
yourself. Jesus answered, I have not come
to call the righteous, but sinners. Call them to do what exactly? Make a decision, go to catechism,
get a doctorate of theology, or D, none of the above. Jesus said, to repentance, to
repentance. But wait, isn't repentance a
decision? I'm using someone else's voice,
this is not me. I decided one day that I should
pray to God and repent of my evil ways. Well, if that's how
you describe it. There was no true repentance. Coercion, persuasion, emotional
bribery, none of these are the instruments of the merciful God. When I repented, and I'm not
saying I knew exactly when that happened, I'm saying when I repented,
and it's repeated, there was no decision As if I chose between doing that
and something else. It was just on my heart to do.
Repentance is always on the heart to do. Like a leaf that falls
into a river and that current pushes it along. I just had to repent. I just
had to. That's the only way I can describe
it. Because by the time a man repents,
he has already believed. And by the time he has believed,
he has heard the gospel. And he has heard the gospel because
God called him. Repentance is no decision. It is the outcome of belief.
Just as if you plant an acorn and out of the ground comes an
oak tree. Cause and effect. If I had had
a choice to repent or to do something else, then God's calling was
not sure and it was not effectual. All praise to the gracious father
that he whom he calls, he also quickens. A dead man doesn't repent. And there is no such thing as
a sinner in today's false Christianity. Everybody's just pretty good.
They're all right. Everyone has a little or a lot,
depending on righteousness, depending on who you talk to. So here comes that fleshly argument. If we are good and righteous
already, then obviously Jesus will be our friend. Right? Didn't He say that all who came
to Him, He would by no means cast out? That's true. That's true. And don't we all go to church,
maybe not every time, but at least sometimes, And we try to
live good, moral lives, and we give, and we volunteer, and we
help our neighbors. We're doing everything we can
for him. Of course he's our friend. Well, let me tell you, that is
works disguised as worship. Work. And I mean that in even
the fleshly sense. Work is a relationship that demands
payment for services rendered. You did something, somebody owes
you for that something. And make no mistake, God will
pay everything they are owed. But they won't like his payment. You don't know your own heart
and the wickedness of everybody else's heart. If that's foreign
to you, then the fact that Jesus associates
with anyone is unremarkable. Of course He would want to associate
with His creation. We're pretty good. In our minds, choosing friends
is pretty easy. Just find someone you like to
be with. Right? Jesus did not do that. Do you know how close Jesus is
to the elect people of God? Now, Jesus says in the next chapter
of Luke, and this is sort of a Luke's version of what we already
read about in Matthew 21 a little bit earlier. But he said, if
you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For
even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those
who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners
do the same. What is he talking about? Why
bring the charity and good deeds of sinners into this? What is
he comparing? He then says this, but love your
enemies. Love your enemies. Hoping for nothing in return.
He's showing us two things. First of all, and in what I would
call kind of a lesser sense, but it's still important, he's
telling everyone, and believers especially, how to treat their
enemies. How do you treat your enemies? And I know we do not want to
love our enemies, but that is what Jesus tells us to do. We
ought to love our enemies. Now, what we ought to do and
what we do are sometimes different things, and I'm pretty sure I
have not satisfied the requirements of that command, but I'm trying.
Our enemies are the same as the enemies of God. They're unbelievers. And one way you can show them
love is simply by telling them about the one you love. Well, second, and to a greater
sense, of course, it is an analogy about our relationship with Christ
and with God, if you wanna say that. In this comparison, we
are the enemies and he loves us. What does he even receive in
return for that relationship? He receives our love our adoration,
our thanks, our worship, and our reverence. We might not think
our worship and our love, which often feel cold, we don't think
they could be worth anything, anything to Jesus. But the Bible does say that when we offer up our thanks,
our praise, it's like the burnt sacrifice
on the fire of the altar. It's a sweet aroma to the Lord. How can that be? Because when
we do that, we give all the praise, all the glory to the sacrifice
of Christ. Now does it sit well with you
to be called the enemy of Jesus Christ? I heard my dad preach once that
Jesus would often refer to the people he was speaking with with
the same labels that they themselves were using to refer to themselves.
That sounded kind of clunky. I hope you have followed that.
So basically, if they claim to be righteous, well, he would
say, okay, you don't need a savior then. If you're righteous, you
don't need a savior. But if they said they were sinners,
he acknowledged that sinfulness and said, your sins are forgiven. When God reveals himself to you,
it can feel like a contradiction, opposites actually. You once
thought you could see, but then you realized you had been blind. And that's when God tells you
in your heart, now you see, because I have opened your eyes. So what is in store, or what
was in store for these chief priests, these religious folk
who stood by condemning them who were at Matthew's feast?
Well, Jesus told him, those who are well have no need of a physician,
but those who are sick. Now, what's that mean? It means I have not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And we know what the chief priests
thought of themselves and the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
They thought they were righteous before God because of who they
were and what they did. But now here comes this Jesus
saying that he won't have anything to do with them since they call
themselves righteous. You can call yourself righteous
all you want. It doesn't make it a fact. It's only true or
something's only true when God says it. When man and God meet and they
disagree, we'll see which one gets his way. So what type of person, I ask
again, does Jesus call sinners, sinners? And he doesn't need
to point that out to them either. He doesn't need to point out
that they're sinners. They already refer to themselves
as sinners after they see what they are. They say, Lord, I'm
a sinner. I need your mercy. Rescue me
and be my hiding place. Take me up in your everlasting
arms in the time of your love. I'm just a sinner in need of
your grace. Jesus lived and died and lived
again for only one type of person, and that type is a sinner. That does not mean we get to
scorn his love by committing more sin. That's not the freedom
we get. It says in Isaiah 55, Let the
wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
And then what? Then what? It says, let him return
to the Lord and he will have mercy, mercy on him. And to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon. Sometimes you find those little
jewels I'll leave us with this hymn. It says, once I was foolish and
sin ruled my heart, causing my footsteps from God to depart. Jesus had found me, happy my
case. I now am a sinner saved by grace. May the Lord bless his message.
Bruce, would you close this please?