Who Needs Jesus?

The right way to see yourself is one who is sick with sin and in need of the physician to make you well.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.

Well, beginning last week, we entered into the part of the book of Luke where Jesus faces off against the religious people of his day. Some of you who are maybe newer to Christianity might be thinking, but he’s Jesus, isn’t he the religious person of his day? I mean, how do you get much more religious than Jesus? How can you get more religious than the central figure of Christianity? Who has a greater impact on the world than anyone else in human history and the religious department than Jesus? Well, when you when you see a person wearing a cross, what do you think? You think, well, that person might be a religious person. Well, the guy who died on that cross is Jesus. Why would religious people then, if they like Jesus, why why would they be against him? Why would they be upset with him? And yet here we are in the book of Luke, and we’re going to see this over and over again that they are we’re going to see it over and over again. But I want to start off this morning talking a little bit about this, because it’s going to be important for our understanding of this dynamic between Jesus and the religious people of his day. I think there’s a the idea of a religious person is a confusing idea in our culture. Okay? We I think we mean different things when we use that phrase. And and if you get what it means, if you get what a religious person, what it means to to be religious wrong, it’s really hard to understand Jesus.

And it’s even harder to understand why religious people would not like Jesus. So let’s start this morning with a definition of a religious person. Broadly speaking, a religious person is someone who believes that there is a God or gods, and that belief has some impact on their life. That’s pretty broad. Right? Okay. So that’s that’s the broadest sense. A person who’s religious is someone who believes in a god or gods, multiple gods. And that has some impact in some way on their life. And if that’s what we mean when we talk about being a religious person, then every person who has ever existed is in some way a religious person. Ever, ever throughout all of history. I would argue that even atheists are simply suppressing what they know to be true about God and that that suppression impacts their lives. But atheists would take exception to that. So I am happy to exclude them here in my definition. So let’s let’s quantify qualify it. I’ll say that nearly with an asterisk. Every person who has ever walked the earth is religious in that sense. All right, Asterisk noted. If all we mean by a religious person is a person who believes that there’s some kind of deity and that belief makes some kind of impact, then that is the broadest definition and it’s the easiest definition.

But that’s not usually what we mean when we use that phrase, is it? That’s not usually what we mean by religious person. We usually use this phrase to describe a degree of behavior. Some degree of behavior. This person is very religious. That person is not very religious. If a person goes to church or talks about God a lot, that person is very religious. If a person goes to church only on Christmas and Easter, that person we say, is not very religious. In the last 20 years or so, it has become popular for people to describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. You’ve heard this phrase before spiritual but not religious. These folks mean that they vaguely believe in spiritual things but don’t adhere to what they would call organized religion, meaning one of the big religions of the world. So in our country, when somebody uses that phrase spiritual but not religious, usually what they mean is they they believe in spiritual things, but they don’t go to church or call themselves Christians. By the way, these folks still do believe in organized religion. They just like to organize it themselves. Okay. They’re the organizer. It’s this degree. It’s the degree of behavior definition of religion that’s helpful for understanding Jesus problem with the religious people of his day and their problem with him. See, God designed the nation of Israel to be a people who would love him with all of their hearts and obey the law.

Because of that great love that they have for the Lord, it was designed to be a relationship. And you can see this throughout the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms. Read, read the words of David. This is Psalm 31, 3 to 5. Listen to this. For you are my rock and my fortress. And for your name’s sake, you lead me and guide me. You take me out of the net that they have hidden from me. For you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord. Faithful God. You hear that in David’s voice? You hear it in his voice. That great love and gratefulness that drives him to be willing to obey God. Not forced, but willing to obey God. That’s what a relationship with the Lord is supposed to be. The law. Mosaic Law was meant to be instructions to God’s people that they would carry out from a heart of love and appreciation and satisfaction in the Lord. There would be zeal and commitment, but that would be a product of the love that comes out of their hearts. What Judaism became, however, for many, especially the leaders like the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees and the other religious groups that we will meet all the way through the Book of Luke, what it became was a list of rules to put your godliness your behavior on display. That’s what they took the law and made it into what was supposed to be a loving relationship.

Guided by God’s law simply became law rules. The question changed from Do you love the Lord to Are you keeping the rules? And your commitment to the Jewish religion came to be defined by the degree to which you were behaving. According to these rules, religious leaders began debating each other. What constitutes the keeping of the rules? Are you within the rules set? Have you kept the rules? And then they said, Well, let’s make some other rules and we’ll add it to those rules. And that way we’ll know for sure that we’re keeping the rules. Because if we’re keeping our rules, we’re certainly keeping God’s rules. And so they added more and more, and they began to be the keepers of the rules even and started judging other people based on whether their behavior was keeping the rules and their own hearts had wandered so far from the Lord that they no longer cared how far they were from the Lord. And if you’re starting to resonate with this type of rule keeping religion that I’m describing, it might be because you’re familiar with churches that have done the exact same thing. Many people have grown up in churches where there was an outward appearance of godliness and rule keeping that was far more important than than the inner life of love for the Lord. Unfortunately, many churches that begin by teaching the grace of God, they are really rooted in the grace of God and the saving and sanctifying of sinners.

They move in the direction of rule keeping because it’s easier to monitor and to to control behavior than it is to shepherd a person’s heart and to cultivate love for the Lord that would naturally lead to obedience. It’s way easier just to point at behavior than it is to know what’s going on inside someone. The key to true transformation isn’t a set of rules. It’s God’s boundless grace to us through Christ. That’s where transformation truly takes place. The more you understand God’s grace to us in Jesus, the more you’ll want to follow Jesus. And the more you follow him, the more you will want to become like Him. And the more that you become like him, the more you’ll find that your joy and living is in living in step with the Holy Spirit. And He won’t just keep God’s instruction. You will love to keep God’s instruction because it’s your joy and because you love God. That’s how it’s supposed to work. That’s how it does work when your heart is in love with the Lord. Okay. That was all introduction. All right. We haven’t even got to our passage yet, have we? So I want to keep this in mind. I want to keep this distinction in mind. We need to, in fact, throughout the entire book of Luke, I want you to keep this distinction in mind between the rule driven, performance based religion of the first century in Judaism and the grace centered good news of Jesus Christ that he was preaching.

Over and over, we’re going to see these two worldviews collide. Jesus is going to take this on directly several times. And the reason he’s so clear and the reason he needs to go at this and the reason he can’t just let this slide is because the rules can’t save you. The rules can’t save anybody without the grace of God. The rules only. Harden your heart. They will either make you feel like a hopeless loser if you can’t keep them, or they’ll make you prideful and judgmental of other peoples that don’t keep them as well as you do. That’s all they do without Grace. Neither one of those things is the right way to see yourself. Neither prideful nor ashamed is the right way to understand yourself, as Jesus will show us today. The right way to see yourself is the one who is sick with sin and in need of the physician to make you well. That’s the way to see yourself. So go ahead. And if you have your Bible, you can open to Luke chapter five. We’ll be in verse 27 today. I’ll have it on the screen today as well. We’re going to meet an unlikely follower of Jesus today in a man named Levi. And Levi is going to get Jesus into some trouble. That’s probably not a great thing, but he gets Jesus into some trouble.

And so we’ll start by meeting Levi and seeing him follow Jesus, and then we’ll look at this trouble that Jesus gets into with with religious folks and what Jesus has to say about that trouble. So let’s start with Levi after this. He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, Follow me. And leaving everything. He rose and followed him. A couple of weeks ago, we saw Simon, Peter and the other fishermen leave their nets, drop everything and follow Jesus. And here Levi does the same thing. Only Levi isn’t a fisherman. He’s a tax collector. You know, when you pay your taxes every year and you. You always feel a little bit salty toward the IRS. Every time you do it, you’re just like, Oh, I don’t want to pay this. You hit send, right? And it’s all done. And you just feel a little bit bad. Well, they felt that way 2000 years ago, too, that that feeling has always been around. Okay, That’s not just us. They felt that way 2000 years ago, albeit for slightly different reasons. Levi was part of the IRS, of his day of Israel. Only his situation was worse because he was not only seen as a tax collector, he was seen as both a traitor and a thief because of his job. So maybe that’s how you feel about the IRS.

But he he was more than just an employee. They saw him in a very, very dark light. In the first century. Ce Israel was an occupied country. The Roman Empire had taken over and had colonized Israel. That’s probably the best way to describe it. And of course, the reason for a strong country to do this to a weak country is so that they can take their money to take their resources and use it to to empower their own country. And so Jewish people were taxed to fund the government and to enrich Rome. Levi was a Jewish person who worked for that foreign occupying government. So he’s not so much like the IRS today with a guy with a job, but he’s actually sort of it’s more like when Britain demanded taxes from the colonists in our country. And we all know how that ended, Right. It didn’t end well. Can you imagine how much he must have been hated for seeing not just as working for a bad corporation, but working for the enemy? That’s how they saw him. This is this is a this is a traitor to us. And on top of that, the way that Rome would pay these tax collectors, the way you got your your money as a tax collector, was that Rome simply allowed you to collect however much you could get? Just just go and get as much as you can. So they would they would pay Rome with part of the money that they could collect, but then they would keep the rest for themselves.

That was that was their wage. And so there was incentive for driving up the taxes. I’m sure there were reputable tax collectors at that time, but the whole occupation had this this this earned reputation for being slimy. These were slimy people. That’s, by the way, why, when we get to it, Zacchaeus and his transformation is such an amazing thing because he’s also part of that. So Levi had a lot going against him in the culture. So culturally he just had tons going against him. He made his living by isolating himself from his neighbors. So for Jesus to approach him and to choose him to be his follower, to be his disciple, would seem to everyone else, everyone else like a terrible choice. Why would you choose him? If you’re picking your team, Why would you why would you choose the most hated guy in town? Why would you pick the guy so obviously unqualified for that position? Well, we’re going to answer that in just a minute. But first, let’s consider what Jesus says here. His words. He says, Follow me. It’s interesting that he doesn’t lead with the command to believe he leads with the command to follow. Now, that’s not saying that belief is unimportant. We know that it’s very, very important. But what you believe is of the utmost importance. But if you confess with your mouth, it says in Scripture and you that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

What happens? Is inside of you. What happens in your mind, in your heart and your commitments and your beliefs are incredibly important. But when Jesus calls disciples, it is not simply a mental internal exercise. It’s a call to get up and go. There is movement involved. There is life change involved when it comes to Christ. Do you remember the fisherman earlier in the chapter? Luke makes a point to say that they left everything to follow Jesus. There’s a reason for that, because that’s what discipleship looks like. It looks like it looks like getting up and going. There’s no sense in which a person can become a disciple of Jesus or have salvation through faith in him and not have that make a visible impact on his life. You can’t be a follower of Jesus and not have that effect who you are and everything that you do and what you do with your life. The Christian life is a visible, life altering pursuit of Jesus. There’s going to be in the heart of a believer in Christ, a follower of Christ. There is going to be a heart of hunger in you that will cause you to pursue Jesus. There will be a desire in your in you for for fellowship with the church and engagement in the mission of Jesus.

It’s going to affect how you use your time with your family and and how you engage in your work, how you build your friendships. There’s going to be a sense in you of discontent with where you are. That’ll drive you to get up and follow Jesus just as closely as you possibly can. And here’s the thing, friends. If that is not in you. If that drive if that change, if that motivation is not in you. That says I have to be with Jesus. That should cause you to question whether it’s Jesus you’re actually following. That’s not there. You should ask yourself and do a mental inventory. Who am I actually following? What actually motivates my life. Perhaps you’ve not actually responded to the gospel at all. So Levi certainly does here, though, he gets out of the booth and it says he throws a party for Jesus. And Levi made a great feast in his house. And there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at the table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Let me make just one really quick literary note here that’s important for understanding what’s happening. There is a gap of time between verses 29 and verse 30. I used to when I when I read this, I used to picture Jesus having this meal with these people. And then somehow the Pharisees were just there.

I don’t know if they were poking their heads in the windows or something. I’m not, I’m not sure exactly, but I always thought that they were just hanging around outside and they shouted their questions at Jesus through the door or something. And that’s not what happens here at all. Okay. There’s there’s a bit of time. This has been conflated a little bit. There’s there’s a feast in Levi’s house. And then the word gets out about what Jesus has been doing. And then the Pharisees go and they grumble about Jesus to his disciples. So it’s a little bit it’s a compressed narrative. All right. Just a little a little note for you. So here’s what what Jesus is doing. He he is now as a popular teacher of the law, as a as a rabbi, as a guy who represents God in some way, at least to these Pharisees. He represents God in some way. He is beginning to turn the hearts and the minds of the people to himself. Right. Here’s this guy. He is having dinner with the local tax collector and his group of friends, sinful friends. These are people who do not keep God’s law. They certainly don’t keep the rules added by the Jewish tradition. Levi would not have had reputable friends, okay? He would have had friends. The people that came to his house to eat. His friends would have been people that are on his level of society.

He would have had friends who were just as rejected from the religious social classes as he is. And those are the people that Levi wants to have come and meet. This is Jesus. But the Pharisees problem here isn’t with Levi. Notice. Their problem is with Jesus and his disciples because they chose to accept this invitation to hang out with all of these unclean sinners and disobedient godless people. How dare Jesus stand on a platform and talk about the love of God and share God’s word with people and read the scriptures and say God’s Word and then go eat and kick back and have fun with these people who reject the Lord. How dare he do that? How could he live his life like that? You know, here’s the thing about this. We look at this and we go, yeah, that’s probably not right. But you might be feeling the same way too. You might be thinking this too. You might be saying in your heart. Real Christians have to choose their friends wisely. Real Christians have to be really careful about how you choose your friends. You might think that it’s important to protect your witness. This is a phrase if you’re not familiar with the phrase, it’s probably because you haven’t hung out in churches long enough. But this phrase goes around and this phrase, it says, you’ve got to as Christians, we’ve got to protect our witness, meaning we have to watch what it is that people think about us.

And we’ve got to make sure we don’t appear in certain places or interact with certain people. I’ve heard it said that that most the most important thing a Christian has is his witness to the world. And so you need to guard that witness by not associating with anyone or anything that could in any way tarnish your good reputation. So because of that sort of value that that is among some in the church, I’ve heard leaders in churches say things like, well, you can have some non-Christian friends, but they shouldn’t be your close friends. They can be kind of sort of on the outskirts of your life, but they shouldn’t be your close friends. You shouldn’t be building you shouldn’t get too close to them. Let me ask you something. Does that sound like the friendship strategy of Jesus? Does that in any way reflect what Christ did Himself? Jesus here seem to be at all concerned with the what? Hanging out with sinners at a party will do to his reputation. He doesn’t seem concerned about it at all. I want you to notice something here. Church And it’s really important. This is really important for our mission as a church. So I want you to start to think about the mission of the church here. Who is offended by Jesus behavior here? Has Jesus ruined his witness among the people of the world who don’t yet know about God’s grace? Has he tarnished that reputation? Will they look at him and think, what a hypocrite.

And then they’ll turn around and reject the gospel? Who is he actually offended? Has he. Has he created a problem here for his personal witness? Because he had fun at a party with godless heathens? No. The only reputation problem that he created here was hanging out with by hanging out with sinners is the the way the rule keeping religious people saw him. That’s who he offended. Not not not. He didn’t tarnish his witness. He tarnished his reputation with religious people. They saw him at not fitting in with the rule oriented religion that they had created for themselves. Religious people love to build a world and then judge other people for whether or not they’re living in it properly. That’s what that’s what religious people tend to do. They build a world. They have a set of rules, a set of ways, the way the way that things should be done. And then they turn around and they look at other people and go, Are you living up to the standard, up to the are you within the range of behavior that I think should be happening? Rules oriented religion, even the kind that labels itself Christian, cultivates a prideful, judgmental heart. And that’s what we see here. That’s what’s happening here. These Pharisees, they came to Jesus disciples not with a concern for Jesus, but with a deep concern for their personal rules.

See their religion said, Make sure that you keep the filth off of you. Make sure you don’t go near any of these people. Reject these non-believers and only associate with God’s people. With. With our people. In our day, this would be phrased as the doctrine of separation. You’ll hear the separate yourself out and the logic goes like this Avoid the state of the world by avoiding the world. Just keep yourself separated out from those things in the world that could be staining in some way. Some denominations will even teach doctrines, and they’ll use a phrase like double separation, which means you can’t even hang out with people who would also hang out with the world. So Christians, we’ve got to separate ourselves even from Christians. Create the smallest, safest, purest, most ordered world that you can around you with only the right people in it. Somehow, this is what has passed for godliness for so many people in our church today. But it doesn’t matter what the church thinks. It only matters what Jesus thinks. Let’s see what he thinks. Jesus answered 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. So here it is. Church The theology that goes right to the heart of what the gospel does in the world and what we are called to do in the world. Jesus hangs out with sinners because he says it’s sick people that need the physician.

Do you ever make an appointment with your doctor just to go down there and show him how well you’re doing? Do you ever do that? You ever get to get you get that down at the clinic. Does that happen at the clinic? Do people show up and they’re like, oh, perfect bloodwork. Thanks. Check that out, Doc. Bill me? Is that how they. Of course not. A lot of people won’t go to the doctor even if they are sick, let alone whether they’re. Well, they don’t want. People don’t want to go to the doctor. The sick people, man. Sick people. If you’re feeling ill, if you’re doubled over, if you’re in pain, if you’re worried and concerned about what’s going on in your in your body. People who are really hurting, people who fear for their lives, they get themselves down to the emergency room. They demand to see the doctor. They have to see the doctor. Jesus says, that’s who I’m here for. I’m here for the people that have to see the doctor. I’m for here, for the people that they know they have to see me or they’re goners. They’re going to die. So who are those people? Well, there’s a parallel here. The well and the sick and the righteous and the sinners who get the well, the sick, the righteous and the sinners, obviously, the people who are sick. In this illustration, match up with the sinners and the righteous match up with those who are well.

And what Jesus is saying is, I’m with the sick because they need me. You religious rule keepers don’t appear to need me. Now. They do. They do. They do need him. Their rule Keeping and self anointed righteousness won’t do anything to save them from the penalty of their sins. But they think it will. They think they’re fine. They think they’re physically well. They think they’re spiritually well. Charles Spurgeon. The great Charles Spurgeon said the greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation. That’s the greatest enemy. For these guys to understand their need for Jesus, they would have to put aside this facade of self righteousness. They’d have to admit that they need to be at the table with Jesus to, but their pride will not let them do that because they think they’re well. You see, the the thing about Jesus is that to follow him, you have to see that you’re hopelessly soul sick without him. You won’t follow him. Otherwise you won’t follow Jesus unless you recognize how soul sick you actually are. You have to know that you’re a sinner in need of grace. You have to admit to yourself and to the Lord that you’re sick with sin. And then when by his grace, he pays for your sins and he heals your soul, and he makes you right with the Lord.

And he gives you a new heart and a new life that that will worship the Lord. You find yourself at that table again. You were at the table sick with sin and in need of the physician. But when you are made well, you find yourself at the same table and you say, Why? Why would I still be there at the table? Well, you’re there this time so that you can share Jesus with others like Levi. This time you’re hanging out with all the wrong people and you’re building those relationships because you were sick with sin too. And you realize there is nothing in you that is better than those people. They are just like you, apart from God’s grace. Jesus wasn’t worried about his reputation with self-righteous religious people. He didn’t care about that. He was worried about the people who were very far from him. Jesus went to where those people were so he could make friends. He could preach the gospel and he could see their lives transformed by the gospel. I’m telling you, Church, I’ve been blessed that in the 25 years that I have been a Christian, the the rule oriented religious facade type church folks have had very little impact on my life. I didn’t really I wasn’t I wasn’t really in those circles. I didn’t grow up in a church like that. But I’ve known plenty who have and I’ve known plenty of people who see Christianity that way.

I’ve seen how that hurts people, especially if you grew up in it, and your understanding of Christianity included some grace and there was talk of Jesus and his forgiveness of sins, but mostly it was grounded in your performance. And that’s what was really what was important to everyone around you was how well you were performing. I’ve met so many recovering Pharisees. There’s just so many recovering Pharisees. You know what that religion does to you. You know what? You know what? You know what That that strange combination religion does to you. It’s very ironic what it does in a person. It gives you the constant feeling that you’re not doing well enough, all while judging other people for not doing well enough. Isn’t that weird? That self-righteousness is not going to save you. And if that’s what you’re clinging to, you’re clinging to the wrong thing. It won’t change your heart. It won’t make you more like Jesus. The only thing that will save you is a constant dependence on the saving grace of Jesus. And the only way that the hardest, most sinful communities and friend groups of Rochester will hear about that grace is if those of us who have been saved by that grace go to them, hang out with them, make friends with them, and share the gospel with them and get to know these folks and walk with them in life and care about them and spend your time in your life.

Getting to know them and loving them and sharing Christ with them. I want to challenge you, Church. I want to challenge you to think like a missionary. I want you to think like a missionary this morning. Where do you go and hang out with the soul Sick. Where is God sent you? Where do you. Where are you? Eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors. Figuratively. Where is that place? And if you have a place in mind, that’s great. That’s wonderful. If a if a place has jumped to mind, fantastic. If certain friendships leapt to mind. And you can already hear yourself starting to pray for certain people, that’s awesome. That’s a wonderful thing for you to have these opportunities. Praise God that he’s given you that that field in which to work. And if you if you don’t, if you don’t have a place or a person that’s just leapt to mind for you, that’s okay. That’s okay. God may not have placed you right this moment in a context like that. But let me ask you, are you cheering on and praying for your fellow church family members who are going to those places? And are you open and willing and courageous to branch out? Beyond your Christian relationships. What happens in your heart when the opportunity arises to go and be with people far from Jesus? What happens at that moment for you or when you hear that others are hanging out? When you hear about other people who are going and doing these things and building these relationships, what happens in your heart? Do you do you cheer them on? Are you praying for them? Do you become judgmental? You start to question.

And what keeps you from pursuing non-Christian friendships? What’s holding you back from that? Is it fear? Is it Pride? Is it a desire to only be around people who love the Lord like you? Because that’s where you feel comfortable? Are you are you too intolerant of other people’s views? So it’s hard for you to hear those views. Do you not like to hear some of the language you hear when you are with those folks? Are you too sensitive to that sort of thing? I want to challenge you, Church. I want to challenge you. We are called to be unstained by the world. That is true. But we’re not called to leave it. We’re called to be in it. We’re called to go into it and be salt and light for the gospel. Salt preserves, dying things, light illuminates dark things. You can’t be salt and light unless you are near the dying and the dark. It’s the only place that that you can be. Salt and light is where it’s darker than the gospel. And it’s dying in need of preservation. We’re not called to follow Jesus only to the places where everyone already loves him. We are called to follow Jesus every place that He went. Let’s pray.