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Teachings of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke (Part 3 When Jesus called Levi)
After Jesus left His home town of Nazareth and after being rejected there we read about Him continuing on with His ministry of preaching and healing in the 2nd half of Luke 4 and 5.
We also read that He began to call certain disciples to follow Him. He tells some fisherman including Simon Peter that they now become fishers of men in 5:10.
I’m sure many in the religious community of His time were surprised and even frowned on His choice of companions as well as the company He kept. These guys probably had at best the basic religious education one would receive as a child yet Jesus chose them over the religious elite of His time.
And then in Luke 5:27 and following the Jews were probably even more shocked at His next choice.
Read 5:27-32 “ Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Tax collectors were NOT well liked back then. Their job was to collect taxes for Rome, the hated conquering occupiers of their homeland.
These collectors of the Roman tax made their living by taking a little extra off the top for themselves. And if they thought you could give a “little” extra – well, so much the better. There was not court of appeals. Whatever these men said you had to pay – you paid – you had no choice. The Jews therefore hated these tax collectors and viewed them not much better than prostitutes. Even the Romans really didn’t like them. Nobody seem to like these guys.
And, I suspect, when Jesus found him, Levi was tired of it all. Tired of being rejected and turned away. Tired of being hated and spat upon. I can picture him being a sad and lonely man who just wanted out – but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to change WHO he was and WHAT he was. And even if he did, nobody would let him forget what he had been, and how he’d made his living.
But Jesus didn’t care what Levi had BEEN. He only cared about what Levi had the potential to BE. Jesus not only has the audacity to associate with this man, He even goes as far as to call him to become one of his disciples and follow Him.
The grammatical tense of Jesus request indicates that He wanted Levi to come and follow Him not just for a moment but rather constantly, even permanently. And Levi responds by getting up and following Him.
The next thing we see in the text is that Levi throws a party and a feast at His home in home in honor of Jesus. Rather than feeling sorry about what he was leaving behind, the good paying job for a life of sacrificial, Levi wanted to party because he was obviously very happy. And Jesus and His disciple stayed and enjoyed the festivities.
.And, of course, Levi invites a number of his friends – and of course his friends were other tax collectors. They too were also despised by the community. There were probably other socially undesirables present as well base on comments made by the Pharisees and teachers in the following verses. The probably wondered, ‘How could this teacher, this Rabbi, possibly associate with such despicable people?’
And so Jesus responds by telling them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
A medical doctor is not much of a doctor if he only sees healthy fit people. If a Doctor wants to be a true healer he needs to work with sick people like these Jews… And I guess a savior would not be much of a savior if he only spent time with people who already thought they were righteous church people.
I can see a couple of lesson here from this text so far. #1. We are to be careful not to write off anyone when it comes to turning to Jesus. We don’t know where people really are and what’s going on in their life. They may have been scoundrels and they may have done some bad things in their past but they also may be ready for a change, a new and improved life lie Levi. Some of us have pretty shoddy backgrounds as well. We also need to see people for what they can become and not always for who they were and what they did in the past.
Verse 27 says that Jesus saw Levi, a better translation for the Greek word saw is observed, or look attentively at him. Maybe after taking some time to really observe and study this guy maybe Jesus saw how unhappy he really was. Maybe he took the time to see how much he was ready for a change. And maybe we need to do the same and open our eyes and really look at what going on in another person’s life before we make judgments about them.
#2. Jesus was no stick in the mud. He apparently liked to have a good time and party and have fun and probably have a few laughs. The Pharisees and teacher seem to be appalled at His behavior.
Look at what the Pharisees ask Jesus in Verse 33ff
“They said to him, “John’s disciples1 often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”
And so Jesus answered by saying, “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom2 fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them;3 in those days they will fast.”
All that those Pharisees could do was find something wrong to complain about. They did not even really know who was standing before them..
Isn’t it sad that so many people are like that. They could be standing in the presence of God Himself or be surrounded by all kinds of blessing in their life, but all they can do is complain about this or that and even look down on others and find something to complain about them.
Those men even ignored the fact that it was quite possible that some of those tax collectors and other sinners enjoying that party may have made a decision to change from their life of sin.
#3. A lot of us seem to have forgotten how to enjoy our Christian life. We work and go to church, work and go to church. What do we do to enjoy our self. And what about having fun with our brothers and sisters, having dinner parties or picnics, having a few laughs together. It is so rare today. No wonder so many churches are losing young people and can’t attract new people if all we do is act holy and stoic like those Pharisees and never have any fun. I think we need to loosen up a bit, find ways to enjoy life and have a few laughs together, and maybe then we will attract more outsiders like Jesus did that day.
Maybe we all have it backwards. The big thing we try to do is invite someone to Bible Study, Church service or may even a pot-luck meal after they have to sit thru a service and we wonder why people don’t come flocking in and come back for more each week. Levi called his friends and said come on over for a feast and a party at my home and people came. They had some good food, and wine, they probably had a few laughs and I sure Jesus probably made a few more friends that day. There might be a lesson in this for us today.
But as we’ve read, there Pharisees didn’t like the way Jesus did things.
Jesus goes on and tells them two similar parables in verse 36-39 saying, “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.”
Can you just imagine tearing a piece of material out a new shirt to patch a hole in the elbow of an old worn out shirt? He continues on by saying…
37 “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
I believe what Jesus was telling them was sometime you have to get rid of that which is old and worn out and replace it with that which is new. Some things are just not worth fixing. Like the way those legalistic Jews had been doing things had run it course and Jesus was ushering in something completely new. People hence forth would be saved by the grace of God, by their faith and trusting in Him as their Savior, not by adhering to their rules and regulations of the Pharisees and then pretending to be holy.
He concludes by saying, 39 “And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’ “
Back then old wine turned sour, it began to turn to vinegar. He was saying that despite the fact that it was turning sour some simply choose not to partake of the tasty sweet new wine because the old wine is what they were use to. And as a matter of fact they felt that it was better because that’s what they are use to.
Some say that there was a touch of humor there in Jesus’ illustration. It would be like saying, ‘I like using a washboard to wash my clothes on instead of one of those fancy new washer machines. I like my washboard, it’s better than a washing machine because that’s what I’m use to.’
Jesus was letting these critical Jews know that they were the one’s who were drinking the old sour wine and probably smiling as He told them that they prefer it because that’s what they were use to.
They couldn’t seem to accept anything that the Lord Himself was doing because it was different than what they were doing. They were in that much of a rut; keeping that law and all those rules and regulation for the sake of religion, and unfortunately overlooking the need to show love and mercy and the need to reach out to others with that love lie Jesus did to Levi.
And here lies our final lesson for this text today. #4. We have to be careful not to get in that same rut where we are more concerned about keeping rules and regulations and what we do at church rather that observing people and really paying attention to where they are. It should be more about at being willing to show them love and mercy as Jesus did that day rather that shaking a finger that folks because they aren’t doing what we are doing.
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