13 He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. 14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus stitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. 15 And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
How do you solve a problem like Levi?
We’re told in Chapter 2 v13:
13 He (Jesus) went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. 14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus stitting at the tax booth.
He’s a tax collector, so what? Well, how do you feel when the traffic warden puts a ticket on your windscreen when you’re just five minutes overtime? They’re only doing their job and you’ve broken the law. But what if that traffic warden was working for a government that you despised, maybe even working for an occupying power? And what if you’d been parking your car in that space for years and it has been free ever since anyone can remember and the rules have since changed? You find yourself with a ticket on your car, and what if that traffic warden didn’t issue a fixed penalty but actually charged what they thought they could get away with and pocketed the rest? Do you see how tax collectors were viewed?
So here’s Levi, he’s a local customs official he works for one of the Herod's, and of course behind Herod is the hated Romans. So Levi is part of an oppressive system and this customs post at Capernaum is a relatively recent addition. Before then the kingdom had been under the control of Herod the Great and when he died it had been divided amongst his sons and so popping up in this area was a customs post. Maybe your family has been passing this way for generations and now you have to pay a toll for the privilege! And what’s more, with the force of the law behind him, Levi can charge what he feels he can get away with and pocketing the difference. And worse even than all of that, this is Israel, here is God's people. Here is one of their own, working for the pagans, fleecing his own people. That’s the problem that we have with Levi and the ultra-religious, the hardline Pharisees, this powerful pressure group, these self-appointed guardians of God's law, they put their fingers on it. Later when they see Jesus sitting with a whole room of tax collectors you can hear their outrage:
16 And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
What is Jesus doing befriending people like this?
As far as they are concerned tax collectors, and their ilk, sinners, are beyond the pale. They need to be quarantined, outlawed, condemned. As far as they’re concerned, when God's kingdom comes, tax collectors will be cast out of the kingdom into the outer darkness. So how do you solve a problem like Levi? Well say the Pharisees - "You don’t, you don’t solve a problem like Levi, you wait for the judgement. Because God is against these people and for these people, there is no way back."
14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus stitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.
What was it like sitting in that tax booth day after day? What was it like to be hated, despised, vilified? You’re a tax collector. At best you may get some icy politeness, at worst you’re going to get sworn at, denounced, maybe cursed and then Jesus comes. He doesn’t shout at you, doesn’t swear at you, doesn’t grumble or complain, doesn’t condemn you:
14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus stitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.
No one ever spoke to Levi like that, this is a word of welcome. In fact, it is an irresistible call “follow me” 'And he rose and followed him.' Up until now, Levi has been serving Herod Antipas who styled himself, King of the Jews. But here is Jesus, he's the real King of the Jews. He’s the king to end all kings and from now on Levi is going to serve him. Jesus said to him 'Follow me' and he rose and followed him. Levi surrenders control of his life to the true king the one who really is worthy - the Saviour of the World.
And there is something else here. That little word, he rose, "and he rose and followed him." It’s a resurrection word - he rose. There is something more going on here than just simply, he gets up and follows Jesus, he leaves his old life to begin a new life; a new life following Jesus. If you like the Levi that was, the one who sold his soul for money, that Levi is dead. There is a new Levi, a resurrected Levi, a changed man, resurrected, healed, forgiven and raised to a new life. A lover and follower of Jesus Christ! And of course, the first thing he does is to invite all his old friends to meet his new friend Jesus. And in fact, in Luke’s words, he holds a great feast in his house. And of course, when the Pharisees see Jesus surrounded, reclining, with all these tax collectors and sinners, they are outraged! Remember their view of these people? How do you solve a problem like Levi? You don’t. And yet here is Jesus, relaxing with a whole room full of Levis’s:
15 And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
How can he welcome, how can he befriend, how can he relax with people like this? What is going on? Jesus tells them exactly what is going on:
17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Imagine a doctor who refuses to see his patients because they might make him sick, who says the sick are not my problem. A Doctor who says I want nothing to do with the sick. Jesus says sick people need healing and tax collectors and sinners need rescuing, rescuing from a life that leads to hell. Sick people need to be made whole and so says Jesus, sinners and tax collectors, you need resurrection,
17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
And these sinners, far from contaminating Jesus, Jesus makes them well, he raises them to a new life, life that begins now in this world. Life that will reach its fullness in the world to come, God's new world. This isn’t the religion of the Pharisees, this is bigger than any religion, this is life! Follow me, he rose, resurrection life! And followed him. Paul writing to the Corinthians said this:
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. - 2 Corinthians 5:17
Here is a new Levi, the old has passed away, behold the new has come. So how do you solve a problem like Levi? You let him hear the call of Jesus, the call of Jesus, "'follow me' and he rose and followed him."
A fish was kept in a large tank and the researcher blocked off one end of the tank with a glass partition and he put food in the sealed-off section of the tank and so the fish couldn’t get to the food and after repeated attempts of trying to get to the food, remember there is a glass barrier. The fish gave up trying, then the researcher removed the glass partition and put more food in. There was now nothing to stop the fish from getting to the food but because the fish didn’t believe it could get to the food, it didn’t try. And actually the poor thing died of starvation. The fish didn’t believe that things had changed and so it perished.
Now up to a point, Levi is like that fish. The Pharisees with all their rules and all their religion, they’ve put in place a glass partition, now on the other side of that glass partition there is the promise of life but of course, there is no way that Levi can keep those rules so he’s given up even trying, given up any hope of ever being saved, he's just a sinner under a death sentence so I might as well make the best of it.
But now Jesus comes and he’s not like the Pharisees, in fact, what he does, he removes that partition and says it’s not like that, the way to life is not by keeping impossible rules. Actually those impossible rules will keep you out, the way to life is to hear the call of Jesus, is to hear my voice and to come to me. I came not to call the righteous but sinners. Jesus says, I’m the one who gives life, I’m the one who removes the obstacles and though it contradicts all that Levi has been told and maybe all that he believes, he hears the voice of Jesus and he comes to him and lives, he arose and followed him.
My friend, I wonder if you’ve given up trying. Maybe you believe the way to eternal life, the way to healing, the way to salvation, lies in being religious. In going to church and keeping the rules. Well you don’t want to be religious, you don’t want to keep rules and maybe you know, I can’t anyway so you’ve given up trying. The way to life is to hear the welcoming voice of Jesus and to come to him. It’s only those who refuse to believe that Jesus saves, it is only they that shuts themselves out from the way of life. And of course, the irony here is the Scribes and the Pharisees, the self-righteous scribes and Pharisees, will close themselves out because they won't come to Jesus.
Now maybe today there wouldn’t be a problem - this is a more tolerant age. Maybe Levi had a difficult childhood, maybe this is the only job he could get and after all, he has made some success, a decent job, he works for the king, maybe we would be much more tolerant of Levi so we wouldn’t have to solve a problem like Levi today and therefore you don’t need a Jesus today. Ok, what if we called Levi Harvey Weinstein? A convicted sex offender. Well then maybe he’s not worth saving, a man like that is just a sick person, how do you solve a problem like Harvey? Well maybe you don’t, maybe he deserves all that he gets, maybe there is no redemption for people like Harvey. Ok, so the Pharisees are still with us aren’t they?
What if we called Levi Sinead, Sinead O’Connor, singer-songwriter. A while back she posted an emotional video saying she was suicidal, she had been suffering from illness and depression. She comes a from a religious background, a broken home, she has courted controversy, shaved her head, had 4 children by 4 fathers, had an abortion, been defined a priest by the Irish catholic and apostolic church. An intelligent woman wrestling with the mess she finds inside her and the mess she finds in the world. How do you solve a problem like Sinead? Of course, the Pharisees say you don’t, she’s a sick person, leave her! Well in the tolerant 21st Century, they might post their support, might signal their virtue with a few nice supportive words that cost nothing and solve nothing. How do you solve a problem like Levi today? What of the sick people today?
What’s the answer?
Well it’s the same answer, isn’t it?
14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus stitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him............17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
The answer now, as then, is to hear the welcoming voice of Jesus. And to come to him. He doesn’t leave people where they are, they’re sick, they’re under a death sentence and Jesus never minimises that, he never plays down the judgement fo God, and they’re running downhill and they are getting faster and faster, they’re building up a momentum, getting faster and faster until they can’t stop at the cliff edge of death, judgement, eternity, Hell. Jesus stands at the bottom of the hill with arms opened wide, arms outstretched out on a cross and he calls the call of Jesus to sinners and he says come! Come to me and I will save you! I will save you from that punishing death you deserve to die and I will give you a new life, life that’s real, full, abundant, life that not even death itself can kill. Eternal life! That fish tank, that poor fish, the thought that there was no way through, no way back so it didn’t even try, it just gave up. My friend sometimes in life there is no way back, but never with Jesus. While Jesus lives, While you live, however sick I am there is hope!
17“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Now maybe you’re not a Levi, not a Harvey, not a Sinead. But says the bible you are sick, you're a sinner. Paul writing to the Romans says: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, none is righteous no, not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God, all have turned aside, together they have become worthless, no one does good not even one." Did you hear that? No one righteous. I did not come to call the righteous, no one good, this is a world of sick sinners. And that includes me.
In Australia, a bloke came home and normally he was greeted by the cheery chirping of his budgie but as he came in the house it was quiet and so he went up to the cage and looked in but at the bottom of the cage in a coil was a snake with budgie sized bump. It had squeezed through the bars, eaten the budgie but now it was too budgie bumped shaped to squeeze out again, trapped by its crime. And that’s me, I am trapped by my sin, I can’t break free, I can’t stop myself. There’s a sense in which I love my sin, I love my fallenness. And I’ve been found out, that's why we have those moments when we wrestle with our feelings of guilt and shame, we have a conscience. That sense that I’ve been seen, somebody knows. And I don’t love my neighbour as myself, I don’t care for others in the way that I care for myself and in fact, the truth is that I often hurt those most those I love best. And the one that I really should love, the one who has given me life, the one who is actively good to me every day, the one who really is worthy of my love and devotion and worship, the God who is. The God who made all of this, the God who made me. I’ve frozen him out as far as I am concerned. I owe him nothing, who is God to tell me what to do? I defy him, I wrong him, I reject him, I am a sinner. None is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God, all you, me, everyone, the human race have turned aside. Together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one.
So how do you solve a problem like you and me? Because we’re the sick people. Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous but sinners! Here’s Jesus, the great physician of souls, and he has by himself prepared the cure that sick people like me need. He went to that cross where he took our sicknesses upon himself, the sins of countless Levi’s that offended God were put to his account so that when God came to punish the guilty, Jesus took the blame. The prophet Isaiah puts it like this:
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. - Isaiah 53:5-6
The physician heals the sick by taking their diseases upon himself, dying their death and then rising from the dead to give to them new life. Jesus has done it all, Jesus has done everything to make sick sinners well. So how do you solve a problem like you? Hear the call of Jesus, come as a sinner to him, come just as you are and you will live. How do you solve a problem like Gerard? I had religion but I didn’t have God and I knew I was a sinner and I have to say this, I was fed up with being tolerated. I was fed up with, well it was for me then, 20th-century niceness. Maybe it’s now 21st-century toleration, I didn’t want to be tolerated, to be tolerated is like sitting in a drafty cold waiting room when the family are all inside sitting around the fireside. I didn’t want to be tolerated.
But then Jesus passed by, he didn’t shout at me, he didn’t pick me up on another thing, didn’t make me feel like an outsider, because his first thought wasn’t to condemn and neither did he post something nice about me. He passed by, he saw me on the outside and he said come into the warm. "Follow me." And such was the welcome in his voice, I knew he loved me. I knew he’d come looking for me. And he loved me enough to point out my sins and loved me enough not to minimise the consequences of those sins. The wages of sin is death, eternal punishment in that other place but he loved me enough to die for those sins to save my soul from hell. And he loved me enough not to leave me as I was but to raise me to a new life, a new life where blood, sweat and tears counted for something. That here was the life that was worth living because here was the Lord who was worth loving. The call of Jesus found me. "Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous but sinners."
So what of you?
The love of Jesus calls you, follow me! Come to me! In a country far from here, there was a knock at the door, a real hammering on the door and the door was opened and there stood a man holding his little girl, very sick and he said to the man who opened the door, we have no medicine, no money, no transport, help us! My friend I am sick, I am a sick person, I am a sinner but Jesus saves so come knocking on his door! Hammer on his door! Lord Jesus, I have no medicine, no money, no transport, I can’t get out of this, but help me! You died on that cross to rescue condemned sinners, that’s what I am, help me! Save me! Rescue me! Forgive me! Change me! And Jesus, have you never thought about it? He’s nailed to a cross, he hangs on a cross with arms opened wide, ready to embrace, ready to save and he calls to you tonight, he says come to me. I never turn any sinner away, come to me, no sinner whoever turns to me is lost, come to me! says Jesus. And he says it to you now, here in your room. He says it to you tonight, calls to you, hear the welcome in his voice, no one ever spoke to Levi like that, no one ever welcomed Gerard like that. The welcome in his voice, follow me, I came not to call the righteous but sinners. He’s calling to you, this night, to come for healing, come for salvation, come for resurrection. Come for a new life, a life that is handed over to Jesus, a life that now belongs to him, a life serving the true king, a life that can never be taken away. Eternal life.
Let’s put it like this, we’re in a darkened room. There’s a darkened room, all of us are sick, all of us are dying and we’re looking at each other wondering what to do and there are some, the Pharisees who are jabbing the finger and there are some people being very nice, very tolerant but we’re all looking at each other and we’re all awaiting the same fate – death, judgement, eternity, Hell. But then Jesus comes into the room, here’s the physician that we need, here’s the one who by his cross has done everything that we couldn't do to make us whole and what does he do? He starts pulling down those curtains and throwing open the shutters and the light of his love comes flooding into the room and he says to you tonight, why are you sitting here? Everything is changed, leave your sin. Rise from your old life and follow me into the light of God’s new day.
Oh our gracious and loving Lord, we sometimes make the accusation of someone else that they are a sick person. Lord we are sick sinners and we are dying and we’re not ready for the judgement and to be taken from there to an eternity in Hell. Oh gracious God, have mercy, have mercy upon us. Lord, everything in this message, we’re preaching it through a screen, and all of those things that will militate against the reality of what we’re trying to say. May they be so many nothings. May we tonight hear the welcome, the warmth, the invitation and the music in Jesus' voice and that we may come to him, the one who calls sinners, the one who calls me and that we might come to him this night and find life because we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.
