Luke 5:27-32

Rachel Workman:

²⁷ After this, 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.” Jesus knew the heart of the question. I have no doubt there was some jealously and a lot of someone wanting to accuse Jesus.  

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John Burnett:  ²⁷ After this, 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.”  We are all sick and need a doctor.  Our sin is a sickness that will kill us so we need to repent and put our trust in Jesus.  The church IMHO has done a bad job of preaching the repentance part of the gospel.  The only righteousness we need is that imputed to us from Jesus when we put our trust in Him.  If you remember in Isaiah 64:6 our righteous deeds are like dirty rags and we know dirty rags won’t save us.

Good to see you back Mike.

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Allen Michaels:  ²⁷ After this, 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. Once Levi left his booth, it was like turning in his resignation. Although being a tax gatherer cost you your friends and family and the respect of your neighbors, it gave you great wealth, and there are always people who will do almost anything for money. In that society, just like in ours, there were men who were willing to be seen as a traitor if they could just become rich. Money, in today’s society, has pretty much become an idol to many people. There was a time in my life when I was working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for almost 9 months. The money was great, but I had no life. I lost a wife and kids due to the fact that I was never home. Even when I was home I was sleeping.

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. Being socially outcast, tax collectors and others like them were the only type of people Levi knew. He didn’t know any upright and socially acceptable people, as they would not want him for a friend. Levi and his companions are not the “moral upper crust of society”. We run the risk of losing so much when material possessions become idols to us. 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?” And so they complain to His disciples. This indicates that the disciples had also gone with Jesus to this meal. The Pharisees probably approached the disciples, rather than Jesus, because they had recently got whooped by Him in an earlier verbal joust. There is no denying or arguing about the truth.

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.”

Repentance is a turning away from sin toward obedience. As with the call to follow Jesus, repentance is not the same as believing in Jesus for eternal life. During His life, some people followed Jesus who did not believe in Him for eternal life, and some who believed in Him, did not follow Him. So also with repentance. Repentance is for all men, and even non-believers can turn from their sin toward obedience to God, but this does not give them eternal life. And believers, even though they have eternal life, must continue to repent as the Spirit convicts them of patterns of sin in their lives. And it is people who have patterns and habits of sin in their lives who are the sick. Those who recognize their sickness seek out a doctor.

It must be noted that during His ministry, Jesus did not spend a lot of time trying to convince people of their sin. He does this occasionally, but it is not His main focus of his ministry or evangelistic efforts. Most of His time is spent helping those who already know they need His help, while showing love, mercy, and unconditional forgiveness to everyone else.

This is what He is teaching His disciples. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict people of their sin (John 16:8). Jesus, and those who follow Him, should spend time with those who have been convicted of their sin, teaching them from the Scriptures about the love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God. Fishers of men cast their nets where the fish are most hungry. Those who were considered to be outside the boundaries of God’s love and concern are the very ones to whom Jesus has been sent. (Green 1997:248).

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Tomorrow’s reading for Luke 5:33-39.

³³ They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

³⁴ Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

³⁶ He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. ³⁷ And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. ³⁸ No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. ³⁹ And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”