The sermon this morning comes from Luke chapter 5, starting with verse 27. Luke chapter 5, starting with verse 27. After that, he went and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and he said to him, follow me. And he left everything behind and got up and began to follow him. And Levi gave a big reception for him in his house and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with him. The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at this. began grumbling at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered and said to them, it is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Pray with me. Oh God, help us now as we dive into what you have said. Help us to understand your heart. Help us to understand what you are expressing to us this morning, that we could live in it, that we could rejoice in it, that we could see our place in it. And may it be a place of blessing, a place of joy, a place of humble reliance on you, that we could be strengthened and that we could be encouraged in our own weakness, Lord, and that we could be made confident and strong in you. It is in Jesus' name we pray, amen. When we have our interviews for the Lord's Supper and we ask people who are being interviewed for the first time about their life and their life in Christ Jesus, sometimes we ask them for their testimony and they describe their testimony and that's generally how they came to know Christ Jesus. I sometimes follow up with the question, are you a sinner? And I wait for the appropriate response. The response that we have always gotten is yes. And I follow up that question with, and how can you expect to eat at the Lord's table being a sinner? What we hope for in such a moment is that they could describe and they understand that Jesus Christ has died on their behalf, that Jesus Christ's righteousness has been given to them. And because of that, they can sit at the Lord's table and be welcomed and received by Christ Jesus. We have here a display and we have an assembly being brought together that is full of friction and it is full of tension. As we have the Sadducees and the Pharisees who have come in and their proper garb, the correct clothing, wearing it in a particular way that they would be beautiful and that the people who would see them walking down the street would recognize them as righteous people. We have the people on the other hand who have come in who are the tax collectors and even people who are described as prostitutes, who are not the right people. And they are brought together into this assembly here where Christ Jesus is reclining at the table. Now this gives us a really stressful picture. I don't know how many of you have had these stressful situations. A couple of weeks ago, I was going to speak to Caleb's class at BCCS, and it was brought out that he was a bit nervous about this idea. When I asked him, why are you nervous about this idea? He said, well, I don't know what my classmates will say, and I don't know what you will say in response to them. Some of us this past week, when we gathered together, some of us may have been nervous. We don't know what some of the family on this side is going to say and how other family members are going to respond to this. It can be stressful coming together for a meal. Here we have a meal coming together and you have what we would imagine to be the polar opposites coming together in this stressful situation. And who's going to be worse in this situation? The Sadducees and the Pharisees or the tax collectors and the prostitutes? Who's going to stir it up? Well, we can have that tension in our own midst. We can also have that tension in our own hearts. As we come together and there is this war within us, the Sadducee and the Pharisee on the one side in our hearts, the tax collector, the prostitute on the other side of our hearts. What is this war that takes place in us and how will the war be won in our own hearts? the Pharisee and the Sadducee who struggles or would imagine that he keeps the law perfectly and is able to look down on everyone else, or the tax collector and the prostitute who understands that they have sinned and they have fallen short of the glory of God. I expect in my life I have been both. Maybe you have been both in your life. Maybe even now in your heart, there's the struggle between both. In my life, I have had the world characterized and I've had the good guy and the bad guy. The good guy beats up the bad guy. The good guy wins. The bad guy loses. One of those pieces, one of those caricatures was, crumbled up and destroyed one day. I had to go visit someone at Providence Hospital, the nursing home. And I hadn't been there before, and somehow I was struggling to find it. And I was driving around the streets down there, and I saw a man and a woman talking, and I stopped and asked for directions. Can you tell me how to find Providence? And the woman turned to me, and she described to me how you find it. I said, thanks. And I drove on, and I still didn't find it. I came back, and I come back around, and I see the woman again. And I stop and ask, can you tell me again? And as quick as anything, she jumped into the car and said, well, I'll just show you. I said, all right. So we're driving along, and she says, so what do you do? And I looked over at her. When I did, she tilted her shoulder towards me, lowered her head, and blinked her eyes at me. And I realized that I had just picked up a prostitute. Well, I'm sure my head got really red at that moment, and so I quickly answered, I'm a pastor, what do you do? And she said, oh, pastor, you don't wanna know. And I said, that's what I was afraid of. And I asked, how's that going for you? And she lowered her head and she said, terrible. And I asked, then why do you do it? And she responded, because if I didn't, I wouldn't have a place to live, and my children wouldn't have a place to live. At that moment, the imagery or the impression of the good guy versus the bad guy was just stabbed and deflated in my mind. She wasn't a prostitute or a harlot because she loved evil. that she hadn't been cared for, she hadn't been taken care of, and the last thing that she had was herself to sell as an object. Who are we and what do we have? See, when we come to the place where we realize that we don't have anything to purchase a righteousness, or to purchase our salvation, that we can't do it. We remove and we are able to remove ourselves from the place of the Sadducee and the Pharisee who imagines that he has accomplished his own righteousness and we realize that we've got nothing left to give up but ourselves. It's that place of humility and that place where we are finally able to humbly rely on grace. This tension will always be real in this world until Christ comes back. It will always be real within the church, and it will always be real within your own heart. So the call for you this morning is to humbly rely on grace and nothing that you have to offer. Our first step, number one, is be small in your own eyes. Verse 27, after that he went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth and he said to him, follow me. This is the strange place that Jesus goes walking out and he starts building his team. Jesus walks, he doesn't go into the church and build his team. He didn't go into the synagogue to start it off and pull it off. He did not go into temples. He did not go to these great places. He did not go to these palaces. He went and he walked along the shore and he gathered fishermen. He walked down the street and looked and found the worst of the worst, the lowest of the low, the tax collector. Matthew 18, 17, when we go through that section on church discipline, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses even to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile, that is those who are rejecting the true God, and as a tax collector. He brings in this picture, the lowest of the low is the tax collector. Matthew 21, 31, which of the two did the will of his father? They said to him, the first Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, this is Jesus talking to the religious leader of the day, truly I say to you that the tax collector and the prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. Could you take that statement? Imagine if you were visiting at another church and they wanted to interview you for the Lord's Supper. You come in and you sit down and they ask you about your Christian life and you describe to them your own righteousness. Those elders, that session could rightly look at you and shake their head and say, the prostitute, a prostitute would get into the kingdom of heaven before you. if you laid out your own righteousness, your own good deeds as to why you should be brought to the Lord's Supper. And Luke 7, 28 through 30, I say to you, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. When all the people and the tax collectors heard this, they acknowledged God's justice, having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves. not having been baptized by John. That is to say, when we stand on our own righteousness and the things that we do or the things that we don't do, you're actually rejecting God. You're actually rejecting God's purpose for your life, God's purpose for the world, God's purpose for his kingdom, God's purpose for his church. Can it be the things that you have done? Can it be the things that you don't do that are your righteousness? It can never be. I may have described before as I was doing a membership study for a man from the community here. And you know me well enough to know that I bent over backwards presenting grace to this man. When we had finished the full study, I looked at him and asked, so how can you go to heaven? He said, oh, well, you know, don't say bad words. Don't drink, don't smoke, and don't do that stuff. And I promise, I never said anything like that to that man. Nothing remotely similar to him. And this is after weeks of study together. Now we gotta look at our own heart. I'm gonna say that as humble as that man was, and though he did not dress like a Pharisee, he had the heart of the Pharisee. He had the heart that imagined that he could not do bad things and therefore he was saved. This is the same tension that's on us, but we have to be small in our own eyes. Now a bit of the tension comes in now with verse 30. The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at his disciples, saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Let's hop back one verse there to 29. 529. And Levi gave a big reception for him in his house, and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. So the Pharisees have their tension, and this is our second step. Be with people who want Jesus. Be with the people who want Jesus. Because we have this tension. We understand that bad company corrupts good morals. We understand that. We teach that to our kids. We want our people to be around people who are walking in light and walking in truth. We don't want to be the one in the first few verses of Psalm 1, walking with sinners, sitting in the seat of scoffers. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to be with those people. So here's where the tension comes in. How do we do this? How do we have this relationship? Well, this relationship that's taking place here, there's something these people want, and it's actually to be with Jesus. When we're with people that actually want to be with Jesus, we can walk together towards Jesus Christ. That's the answer. So if we're with the sinner, what are we doing? Are we sinning with them? That would be the tension. But are we with, on the other hand, it's with the people who want to move towards Jesus Christ. That might be people in the church. It might not. It might be people in your own family. It might not. The tension is going to be Are we able to move one another and to be those people? On the Sabbath day, today in our discussion, ideally, we're going to be those people who want to be with Jesus, discussing Him, discussing His word, talking about lives of ministry together. being with those people and working together to go and be with Christ. This brings us to our third step. This comes from verse 27. After that, he went out and looked and noticed the tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. Now, this is a pretty obvious step here, and this is follow Jesus. Now, what does it mean to follow Jesus? We don't have the option to do it in the ways that Levi did and the rest of the apostles. What does it mean then? Psalm 85, 13 made the statement regarding Jehovah Yahweh. Righteousness will go before him and will make his footsteps into a way. How do you follow Jesus? You look at what he did in the scripture, and more specifically, you look at the directions and the instructions that he has given. in Luke 9, 23, and he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. What does that look like in your life? For me, sometimes in the morning, I don't want to get out of bed. Sometimes it hits me even before that, when it's time for bed. I don't even want to go to bed because I don't want to start the next morning. Now, for us, in such a moment, how do we move past that and how do we follow Christ Jesus when we're struggling with such a heart? In my own household, I have to think, all right, in what ways can I follow Jesus in the morning in relationship to my wife? In what ways can I follow Jesus in my relationship, in relationship to my first son, to my second son, my daughter? It'll have to extend beyond that then. In what ways can I follow Jesus in my relationship to the manager at the hot dog shop when I get there, and to the cook, and to the person that works the counter? In what way can I follow Jesus in my relationship to the congregation tomorrow? You see, following him is this, thinking in terms of the ways that he has loved. And all of a sudden, life has purpose then. We've got a reason to go to bed at night, and we've got a reason to get up in the morning. if we're following Christ, if we're thinking in terms of that relationship. Now, as we do this, we have to look at what has taken place. And this is our fourth step, coming from verse 28. Verse 28, and he left everything behind and got up and began to follow him. And our fourth step is give up your own provisions. Now, when I think of provisions, I think in terms of going camping. I think of the stuff that I gather up. And you plan your meals when you have to go and you have to carry everything with you. You think of provisions in terms of providing for yourself. Well, these provisions, as we are looking at them here, Matthew, at that point, he had his provisions. He was providing for himself financially. He had his own plans. He had his own life. He had it laid out. He had quite the job where you could get very rich and take care of yourself. And yet, he left everything behind and got up and began to follow Jesus. The question for you now will be, what are your provisions? What do you imagine that you are providing for yourself that gives you eternal life? You imagine that you're pulling it off, as the young man from Eastvale did, by not saying bad words, by not drinking beer, by not smoking cigarettes, by not doing this, by not doing that. I'll remind you of that one lovely day when we had a little boy from the neighborhood in our house and he asked the question, so what all don't you believe in again? Having noticed the things that we didn't do. And the wonderful response was, how about instead of telling you what we don't believe in, we tell you about who we do believe in. rather than what we don't do, but who we know. Rather than where we don't go, who we do follow. See, this is the great tension between the Pharisee and the one who will be saved. It's an amazing thing if we think in terms of our lives and the way that the physical world works. If we went to someone and put a strong person and a weak person side by side and said, all right, who do you think's gonna win? Who do you think's gonna make it? If it were a race, who's gonna win? Who do you think is going to make it? And when we put that in terms of the gospel, Who is more likely to have success? The strong or the weak? Now, given the right circumstances, we would say the strong and the weak are equally as likely to come to the place of salvation if the strong can admit that he's weak. And this is where we are now, verses 31 and 32. And Jesus answered and said to them, it is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And this fifth step is rely on your physician, Jesus. Take a strong person and a weak person and put them side by side and say, show me your strength, get to heaven. What strong man can get himself to heaven? None. And John 9, 40 through 41, Jesus took this poor blind man that had been blind for the sake of God's glory. He makes them this object lesson for the Sadducees and the Pharisees, for the church at the time and for the church eternal. Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said to him, we are not blind too, are we? Pharisee saying, not us, we're not blind, not us, we are not weak. Jesus said to them, if you were blind you would have no sin, but because you say we see, your sin remains. Because you say you're strong. Because you say you're righteous. Because you managed, you have arrived. Because you think you're the good guys, and you will get to heaven. Because you're good, you're going to hell. So where are we? Where are you? Where is the struggle in your own heart? Are you the Sadducee? Are you the Pharisee? Or are you the tax collector who can lower his head and the prostitute who can lower her head and know that we're weak and know that we have nothing to give, nothing to provide, nothing to buy eternal life? That is the place where we can humbly rely on grace. That is where we can talk to the lowest of the low and not be condescending, where we're not bigger than them, where we are not stronger than them, where we are not more righteous than them. But we are weak. We are small. We have nothing to add to our own salvation. This is the picture of humbly relying on Christ Jesus. Is this where you are? Or are you able to look down on others? Those who don't do what you do, or those who do what you do not do. Are you able to see that everything you have is from grace? is from mercy, is from the pity of the Father. I invite each of you to this place where we trust our great physician, Christ Jesus, who has called us and who has given us love and life and grace and has made his footsteps into a way not to be walked in in pride, but in all humility. Pray with me. God, we thank you for the mercy that you have shown us in Christ Jesus. You have called people such as us together in grace and in love and affection. You have called us sons. You have called us daughters. and as you call us to your table together and you receive us with joy. Father, as we each struggle in our own hearts with the sinner and with the sinner, God help us to love you and to rely on your grace that you will be glorified in the ways we come together and sing to you, in the ways that we proclaim you, and in the ways that we walk in this world. It is in Jesus' name we pray, amen.