Feasts. So before we get into this in Luke 5, I want to pray for us and then talk a few minutes about feasting, and then we'll start to look at the passage specifically. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for all the wonderful gifts you give to us. You are such a wonderful giver. We thank you especially for the gift of Christ Jesus. We thank you for the gift of the feast, the banquet he spreads for us each Sunday. We thank you for the overflow of that abundance into the rest of our lives. We do give you thanks and praise for these gifts. Father, we know that we don't always enjoy these gifts as we should. We don't always thank you for these gifts as we should. We don't always share these gifts as we should. But we pray that you would be at work in our lives to make us the kind of people you call us to be in your word. Generous givers, generous sharers, full of thanksgiving. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, Luke's gospel is certainly full of feasting, and I'm going to talk about that this morning, but I want to start off just talking about feasting in general, sort of a biblical theology of eating, and then we'll get into the specific passage. What is feasting for? I want you to think about all the ways in which we use food to celebrate. When a man and a woman, when a husband and a wife want to celebrate their anniversary, they begin the night's festivities by going out to eat, right? Typically that's what happens. What would a birthday party be without cake and ice cream? We use food to celebrate the occasion. When you want to get to know a family in your neighborhood or a new family comes to church and you want to get to know them, what do you do? You have them over for a meal. You break bread together. That's how we get to know people is around the table. It's how we introduce ourselves to others and get to know other folks. What do we do when we want to celebrate big events? Think about great feasts or holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. We refer to them as feasts because they're great occasions where we come together to eat. We all look forward to those times when we gather around the table with friends and family, and we even have special foods we associate with particular holidays. You know, what would Thanksgiving be without the turkey? A family's time to gather around the table, and this is all too rare in our society today, but a family's time around the table is perhaps the most formative event in the family's life. And it's formative even when it doesn't happen, it's just formative in a negative way. Think about all the different ways in which a family's culture is formed and shaped by what happens at the table. If dad's running late to get home from work, he can't get home in time for dinner. His absence changes the whole ethos of dinner that night. It casts a pall over what would be a much more festive occasion if he was there. The table's a place to share stories. It's a place to celebrate achievements, to lament failures, to teach love for neighbor, to train children in gratitude and those common courtesies we call table manners. In short, what happens at the table forms and shapes culture. What happens to the table is really the beginnings of civilization. Meals have religious significance. Obviously, this is true of the Lord's Supper, which is really our focus. It's the culmination of Christian worship, the Christian worship service. In the Lord's Supper, Jesus gives himself to us in the form of bread and wine to form us into his body. You know, there's that old saying, you are what you eat. Ludwig Feuerbach thought that he was refuting the Christian faith with that slogan when actually he was summarizing the Christian faith. He thought he was expressing the most fundamental truth of philosophical materialism. In reality, he was actually espousing the deepest religious truth there is. You are what you eat. At the Lord's table, we eat the body of Christ in order to become the body of Christ. Paul teaches this in 1 Corinthians 10. We partake of Christ's drink offering to become drink offerings ourselves so that just as Christ Jesus poured his life out for us, as we partake of his cup, we learn to pour our lives out for one another and for the life of the world. In the Lord's Supper, you are what you eat. In the Lord's Supper, you are who you eat with. Eating together brings us together into communion It brings us into communion with each other and it makes us one. We see from the very beginning in the book of Genesis, God created man to eat. And for this reason, it's inescapable that a meal with God would be at the center of the worship of God's people. We're just wired this way. We're wired to feast and we're wired to find our hungers satisfied ultimately in God. Alexander Schmemann, The orthodox theologian said, God made man hungry, but ultimately man is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally desire for Him. Shmaiman goes on to say this. In the biblical story of creation, man is presented, first of all, as a hungry being, and the whole world is his food. All that exists is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything he creates, and in biblical language, that means he makes all creation the sign and means of his presence and wisdom, love and revelation. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. The whole creation depends on food, but the unique position of man and the universe is that he alone is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from him. He alone responds to God's blessing with his blessing. It's very interesting, I just talked about how the Lord's Supper makes us one, and the Lord's Supper is really the culmination of Christian worship, and it's where we celebrate and become the body of Christ in the fullest way. It's interesting to contrast that with meals in ancient Roman societies. The Greco-Roman worldviews meals in a very different way, whereas the Lord's Supper united all the Christians together, whatever their gender, class, race, whatever the other distinctions we might find in the cultural background that they have, we would come together at the Lord's Table and become one there at the Lord's Table. But in ancient Roman society, meals were actually used to divide rather than to unite. Meals were divisive rather than unitive or unifying. Table practices were used to marginalize or exclude the poor and slaves and women and children, whereas the Lord's Supper would bring all these different groups together. See, it was very different with the church's Eucharist. Rich and poor, freed and slaves, men and women, parents and children would all come together and eat at the same table and partake of exactly the same food. And because of this, the Eucharist transformed society, it transfigured society. The Lord's Supper created a new kind of society where this kind of fellowship and friendship was possible. The Lord's Supper is a celebration of God's creation, it's a celebration of God's Indeed, in the Lord's Supper, we celebrate the redemption of this creation. We find, we discover in the Lord's Supper, it's this creation, it's the stuff of this world that God is redeeming. We celebrate God's gifts at the Lord's table so we can also celebrate those gifts at our own tables. You could think of the Lord's table as the archetype of our family tables and every other table we share together. Mark Twain once lamented the fact that there were houses with six Bibles and no corkscrews. I share Twain's lament. Americans have a tendency to make all kinds of rules about food and drink. This is just something that seems to be built into our American psyche. In fact, today, you know, it's been pointed out that Americans are far more strict about food than we are about sex. We have all kinds of rules about food. and apparently no rules about sex. For Americans, health foods have become sacraments, as it were, instead of going to confessional, we go to Weight Watchers. Aerobic instructors have become our new priests and priestesses. This seeking salvation in what we eat or in what we don't eat is a long-standing American tradition. Think about prohibition. What a brilliant idea that was, right? And yet, largely led by Christians who thought they were being well-intentioned. You may know, you know, there's a lot of stories like this in American history. I forget his first name. John Kellogg, I think was his name, Kellogg. We got, you know, Kellogg cornflakes. Kellogg developed the cornflake as part of an overall very bland diet with the expectation that it would lower bestial impulses. come into humanity. Sylvester Graham developed his special flower to go in his Graham crackers in order to reduce what he called vile affections. Okay, so you can see this is something that's been a part of American society a long, long time. Salvation by food or at least sanctification by food. But the only food that can save and sanctify is the Lord's Supper. The only way to eat in such a way that it does us good is to eat what God wants us to eat with the people He wants us to eat with. Food is so good and it's so important in the Bible that God uses food not just to symbolize His salvation, not just to symbolize the Savior, but God uses food to actually give us salvation, to give us the Savior. So we feast upon the Savior as we eat and drink the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. God uses food to give us life. God uses food to give us new life, eternal life. Thorne Oakenshield was exactly right when he said, if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. Amen to that, right? So there is your short little introduction to a biblical theology of feasting. Let's read about a particular feast in Luke's Gospel. This is from Luke chapter 5. I'm going to pick up in verse 27. After these things he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office and he said to him, follow me. So he left all rose up and followed him. Then Levi gave him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them and their scribes. And the Pharisees complained against the, his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and centers? Jesus answered and said to 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 centers to repentance. This is the word of the Lord. Indeed, we do give God thanks for his word. One thing, if you read through Luke's gospel, you cannot help but notice is that Luke's gospel is full of feasting. Luke's gospel is full of stories about Jesus eating with people. It's interesting that in Luke 2, right after Jesus is born, where is he placed? He's placed in a feeding trough for animals. Indicative, I think, of what is to come. But Jesus himself feasts throughout the gospel. Luke chapter 5 here, this passage we just read, Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners in the home of Levi. But that's just one of many meals in Luke's gospel. Luke 7, Jesus eats at the home of Simon. In Luke 8, we read about women who followed Jesus and provided food for him. In Luke 7, Jesus feeds the multitude of 5,000. In Luke 10, he eats in the home of Mary and Martha. In Luke 11, he eats as he has a discussion with the Pharisees. In Luke 14, he eats a meal on the Sabbath with the Pharisees. In Luke 19, he eats in the home of Zacchaeus. In Luke 22, he eats the Last Supper, a Passover meal with his disciples before his betrayal and death. And then, of course, we reenact that each Sunday, in a way, in the Lord's Supper. And at the end of the Gospel, in Luke 24, the now risen from the dead Jesus eats two meals with two different groups of disciples. It's been said that in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is always either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. And that does indeed seem to be It's a gospel that just reading it makes you hungry. I would add too, Jesus, when he's not eating, or sometimes when he is, he's constantly telling stories about meals as well. Several of the parables he tells in Luke's gospel are very famously about feasting. And so it's been said you can quite literally eat your way through Luke's gospel. You can really capture the flow of this gospel, what this gospel is all about, by looking at these meal scenes, these meal stories, and to get a taste of Luke's gospel. See, did you catch the pun there? See how clever I can be? To get a taste for Luke's Gospel, we're going to look at one of these meal scenes today. This is the first meal that Jesus has in Luke's Gospel here in Luke 5. And what I want us to do, I think the best way for us to approach this is to look at each of the major players in this meal story. So we'll look at Jesus, we'll look at Levi, and then finally we'll look at the Pharisees. We've got these three parties involved in this story. So first let's look at Jesus. They say you know a man by the company he keeps. Well, what kind of company does Jesus keep? Who are his dining companions? Who does he choose to eat with? This is very early in Jesus' ministry, but before we even get to this story, Jesus has already started recruiting followers, and so we get a feel for the kind of team he's putting together. We can call this Team Jesus. But it's not exactly a dream team. It's not as if Jesus is going around signing a bunch of first round draft picks or five star recruits. It seems like he's actually choosing the leftovers and the left outs to make up his team. It starts in chapter four when he says he came to preach the good news to the poor, to the prisoners, to the blind, to the oppressed. That gives you an idea of the kind of people he's going to call to himself and then we see him do it. In Chapter 5, he calls a handful of fishermen to himself. Now, fishermen, you could say, were kind of, you know, decent, hard-working, middle-class type people. They made a decent living. They might even have had a decent education. But they were certainly not part of the cultural and social and political establishment. They were not powerful. They were not movers and shakers. While it would have been a worthy profession, a noble profession in certain ways, it was not a high-ranking profession. So they're social and political outsiders. They're just ordinary guys trying to make a living. But Jesus calls these fishermen to follow him, and indeed he promises that from now on they will fish for men. Right after that, Jesus heals a leper. You know, who wants a leper on his side? Who wants to claim a leper as his own? Lepers were considered unclean. They were excluded from temple worship and from the community, the life of the community. They were viewed as the walking dead. They were spiritual outsiders because of their leprosy. But Jesus takes this leper onto his team, of course, cleansing him in the process. Jesus then meets a paralytic. Obviously, this is a man who's a physical outsider. You know, when teams are getting picked for dodgeball out on the playground, the paralytic is always the last one to be picked, right? That's not the guy you want on your team. But Jesus, that may be a bad joke, right? Was that a Donald Trump kind of joke? Was that in bad taste? I'm sorry. Sorry for any paralytics I've offended. But Jesus heals the man, so obviously that's a good thing. But he makes this man his follower. He claims this paralytic as his own and brings this paralytic onto his team. Then we come to Levi the tax collector, okay, here in Luke 5. Levi, certainly this is a man who would have been considered an outsider by everyone in Israel, the Israelites as a whole would have despised Levi as a tax collector, because tax collectors worked for the Romans. And the Romans, of course, were the enemies of Israel, and therefore the enemies of God. They were the ones who were oppressing God's people and holding God's people in bondage. And all the Israelites figured that when Messiah finally comes, what he's going to do is throw off this yoke of Roman bondage and bring us back under the rightful yoke of the Mosaic law and a Davidic kind of order. Tax collectors took money from hardworking Jews and gave it to Caesar while keeping enough for themselves to become exorbitantly rich in the process. They were basically professional extortionists with the power of Rome's sword to back them up. And so any Israelite who became a tax collector was viewed as a traitor and as a thief. Tax collectors represented Israel's exile. They reminded Israel of her exile. They represented the fact that the kingdom had not come, that Caesar was still in charge. Tax collectors and their tax offices were a constant reminder, hey, Rome's in charge and Israel is her slave. So these are the kinds of people Jesus is recruiting, people who are the social, spiritual, physical, and moral outcasts. But all of these people found something in Jesus irresistible. They found something in Jesus they knew they needed and could not get anywhere else. They found Jesus magnetic and compelling. They found him irresistibly attractive. They found a beauty in him they had not seen anywhere before. And I think a big part of this in Luke's gospel is the fact that everywhere Jesus goes, he feasts. Everywhere Jesus goes, there's a party. Jesus comes to bring in the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of God is a party. You could read Luke's Gospel and mistakenly think that Jesus was some kind of professional partier, you know, just a socialite, bouncing from one party to the next. And everywhere he goes, not only does he join the party, but he's really the life of the party. He's the reason for the party. Everywhere he goes, there's a party. In fact, he partied so much, what was the charge brought against him again in Luke's Gospel? He's accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Now those charges weren't true, although if you go back to the book of Deuteronomy, you find the son who becomes a glutton and a drunkard is to be put to death, and that's a big part of the charge that's brought against Jesus leading to his death. Those charges weren't true. He wasn't actually a drunkard or a glutton, but the charges were plausible because Jesus was a man of many feasts. Three times, there's probably a few more than this, but there are at least three times that really stand out in the Gospels where Jesus tells us why and how he came. Specifically where he uses son of man language to say this is why the son of man came. Son of man is one of those titles for himself. Why did the son of man come? Well, in Mark 10, verse 45, Jesus says the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. In Luke 19, verse 10, we're told the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. And in Luke 7, 34, we're told the Son of Man came eating and drinking. Why did he come? He came to eat and drink. He came to throw a party. And this is because the prophets long before had promised a party. The prophets long before had sent out the invitations and said, save the date. The day of the great party, the day of the great messianic feast is coming and you don't want to miss it. There's going to be a great party when Messiah comes. When the prophets described the kingdom, they continually described it in culinary terms. as a great party, as a great banquet. So Isaiah 25 verse 6, to give you an example of this, says that when Messiah comes, when the kingdom comes, there will be a feast on the mountain in God's presence with the best meat and the best wine. Amos chapter 9 verse 13, describes how when Messiah comes, the mountains will flow with sweet wine. There'll be such an abundance of sweet wine, it'll be like it's rolling right off the hills, just the hills will be flowing with this sweet wine. Zechariah chapter 8 verse 12 tells us in the kingdom, the vine will bear abundant fruit and the ground will give its increase. There'll be an abundance of food, there'll be a wonderful drink, there'll be an abundance of fruit in the kingdom. God promised when Messiah came, he'd bring the kingdom with him, and the sign of that kingdom would be a great feast. And so those who went to Jesus' dinner parties, those who joined Jesus in his feasts, were really getting a meal with God. They were getting to share in these kingdom meals. They were getting closer to God than the priest or high priest would get when they would eat a meal in the temple precincts. That would be as close as you could get to having a meal in the very presence of God in the temple with the priests and the high priests where they would eat there in God's presence. Those who had meals with Jesus were getting even closer to God. They were getting to have this kind of face-to-face fellowship with God. It's as if the veil was pulled back and God came out from behind the veil in the most holy place and came out to begin feasting with his people. That's what it's like when Jesus goes around having these meals. The meals of Jesus then must be understood as kingdom banquets, not just as symbols or metaphors of the kingdom, but as the reality of the kingdom, the kingdom being enacted. Because these meals really do embody the welcome and the friendship and the community and the grace and the love of the kingdom and of Jesus. They embodied and enacted his mission to the world. They're not just symbols of something else. You can say they do have a symbolic dimension. But they really are the kingdom themselves. The kingdom takes shape around the table. Again, it's as if God came out from behind the veil in the temple to meet and greet and feast with his people face to face. That's what's happening in the meals of Jesus. The Son of Man came eating and drinking. But I want you to let this just really soak in. What does this tell you about Jesus, about who Jesus is? How does this show us the good news about Jesus? Whoever Jesus goes, he's the life of the party. Joy follows in his wake. He loves to feast with his friends. We find throughout the Gospels he loves to do things like he loves to play with children. He loves people. They love him. He loves to be with people and hang out with people and share himself with people. And they love to be with him. They find great joy in his presence. This is the portrait of Jesus we have in the Gospels. A very different portrait of Jesus than the one you find typically painted in the culture. Perhaps a very different portrait of Jesus than the one that you were given growing up in the church or in Sunday school, because sometimes Christians have not gotten this right. You don't have the right Jesus if you don't have a Jesus who could be accused of gluttony and drunkenness, because Jesus was. That man accused of gluttony and drunkenness, that's our Savior, that's the Son of Man. What does that tell you about Jesus? It tells you He's not just the Lord of life, He's the Lord of laughter. He's not just the Lord of providence, He's the Lord of the party. He's the joyful Jesus, He's the jolly Jesus. One writer puts it this way, he says, He was someone so attractive, people followed Him for the sheer fun of doing so. Now, it's not the whole following Jesus. Obviously, there's a lot of other things besides feasting we could point to, but this is an aspect of it. There's a kind of joy and a fun, and people would follow Jesus for the sheer joy of it. Jesus, you get the impression in Luke's gospel, Jesus is the kind of guy you'd want to hang out with. He's the kind of guy you'd want to go grab a beer with after work. There's nothing dull about him, nothing distant, nothing awkward. He was the perfect man, the perfect model of what a human should be, the perfect dining companion, the kind of man you would want to be with. You see him throughout this gospel fully engaged with the people around him, fully enjoying God's creaturely gifts. That's Jesus. Now, sure, this feasting may seem excessive. and extravagant, like a bit too much. But remember this, again, these meals signaled the in-breaking of the promised kingdom. These meals were exactly what the prophets so long before had talked about. They said, this is what will happen when the kingdom comes. There will be all these great feasts, these great banquets will be spread for God's people. So when Jesus has these meals, again, these aren't ordinary feasts, these are messianic feasts, kingdom feasts, feasts of salvation that demonstrate the kingdom is here, the kingdom is coming. And you see this play out again and again in Luke's gospel. If the kingdom is coming, how can you not celebrate? If the kingdom is coming, how can you refuse to feast? So in Luke 13, when Jesus describes salvation, he does so again in festive terms. He describes people coming from north, south, east, and west and reclining at the table in the kingdom to eat and drink. Together, salvation comes to the nations in the form of a feast. You'll know the nations have received God's salvation when they're feasting in this way. In Luke 15, when the lost son returns home, they slaughter the fattened calf and feast because salvation has come. Jesus' parties are those kinds of feasts. His extravagant meals are pointers to his extravagant grace. There's nothing about Jesus that is parsimonious. There's nothing about Jesus that is cheap. He's not a tightwad. He goes all out with these feasts because they are to be lavish demonstrations of his lavish grace. In these feasts, he is showing the richness and the riches of his salvation, the riches of the salvation he brings. So yeah, there is a kind of excess in this feasting, but that's because there's an excess of grace in his kingdom. There's an abundance of grace in his kingdom. His meals represent and usher in a new world, a new covenant, a new way of seeing, a new way of life, a new reality. And the great thing is Jesus invites all of us to share in these new realities. He invites all of us to come to the feast. We are welcome to come to the feast. Jesus issues an invitation, an invitation to the feast that says, come as you are, come to the party, come to the kingdom banquet, come and join me at the table, come and celebrate with me. We may see ourselves as outcasts. We may see ourselves as outsiders, as weak, poor, powerless, but those are the very kinds of people Jesus calls in Luke's gospel, the very kinds of people he invites. If Jesus is known by the company he keeps, then he must be known as the friend of sinners. because that's who he's eating and drinking with throughout the gospel. He invites sinners to come and feast. He invites us to a feast that costs us nothing. Come and eat and drink, he says, and you don't have to buy anything and you don't have to bring anything. It's all going to be provided for you. It will cost you nothing. So how is the feast going to be paid for? It's going to be paid for with the price of his blood. See, in Luke's gospel, it's very clear. When Jesus goes to the cross, what is he doing? He is punching our ticket to the feast. It is his death on the cross that makes all these meals possible. It's his death on the cross that means now God can have fellowship with sinners. That's really what this story is all about. That's what this story in Luke 5 is all about. It's really what Luke's whole gospel is all about. This is the good news. We talked about the gospel and the gospels. These feasts in Luke's gospel, these feasts are good news. The good news is Jesus still eats and drinks with sinners. He invites sinners to come and eat and drink with him, eat the Lord's Day. That's what the Lord's Supper is all about. More on that in just a minute. That's Jesus. What about Levi? We can deal with Levi and the Pharisees a little more quickly. Consider Levi, the tax collector. It's very, very interesting what happens here with Levi. Think about who Levi is and his position. He's a trader to his people, as we said. He's a collaborator with the pagan Romans. He's a white-collar criminal of the worst sort. His tax office is an outpost of Rome, and therefore an offense to all the Israelites who see it. And when Jesus seeks him out, what does Jesus do? Jesus comes to Levi and says, I want you. I want you to follow me. I want you to join me on my team, and I want you to join me at my table. And as soon as that happens, as soon as the call comes to Levi, what happens? He undergoes this stunning transformation. Levi shows us that even the most hardened sinner can change. Even the iciest heart can be melted by the warmth of Jesus' love. Even the hardest heart can be broken by the very presence and call of Jesus. You know where that name Levi comes from? I think this is fascinating. This is a man who's named after the tribe of Levi. The tribe of Levi, of course, was the priestly tribe. What does it mean that Levi was the priestly tribe? Well, it means they were God's special representatives. They were God's special servants. They were God's go-betweens. To be a Levite meant you were supposed to be the human face of the loving God to the people of Israel. You were supposed to bring people to God and God to people. by the way you lived your life, by the words you spoke. If you were a Levite, you were supposed to be a bridge between God and his people. That's your role, that's your calling, that's what it means to be a priest. But because of his greed, Levi has twisted that identity into something else altogether. Levi has become Caesar's special representative, Caesar's servant, Caesar's go-between. He's become a bridge between not God and Israel, but between Rome and Israel. As a tax collector, he has become the human face of the oppressive Roman Empire. He brings the tyranny of Caesar to the people and brings the people under the tyranny of Caesar. You know, we've heard horrifying stories of what the IRS has done to conservatives over the last several years, and of course we are rightly angered by those injustices and went to see them rectified, but all of that was nothing compared to what tax collectors like Levi did to fleece the people of God in ancient Israel. Nothing at all. Levi was a bad guy. He was a wicked man operating on behalf of the Roman Empire and all its injustice. But all of that changes the moment Levi meets Jesus. His identity is untwisted. He's straightened out. He becomes what he was supposed to be all along. He's set free to live up to his name, to become a true Levite, to be a true priest, to be truly and fully human, to play his role in bringing people to God and God to people. Look at verse 28. Levi left all, rose up from his seat in the tax office and followed Jesus. What a dramatic portrayal of Levi's conversion, of Levi becoming a disciple. The magnetism of Jesus is more powerful than the magnetism of money. In the presence of Jesus, all those old idols that held Levi in their grip, they all become powerless. They lose their pull. They lose their power. Levi becomes a true Levite. He leads all to follow Jesus. He chooses Jesus over Mammon. Then look at verse 29. It says, Levi gave Jesus a great feast in his own house. And Levi invited all his friends. And of course, the only friends this guy has got are other scumbags, other tax collectors. You know, it says tax collectors and others. It's just they're not. Other unmentionables. Other tax collectors, sinners, outcasts. Okay, the scum of the earth type people. But that's who he knows. Those are the only friends he's got. And so he invites them to come and meet Jesus. And they all come, and they sit at the table, and they feast with Jesus. Levi is being a true Levi. He's acting as a true priest, bringing people to God, and God to people. Bringing people to Jesus, and Jesus to people. You see the transformation that takes place here? Levi meets Jesus and goes from greedy to generous. He goes from taking to giving. This was a man who took from other people and now he's giving. Instead of taking money for his own private feasting, he's now giving a feast and a party for others to share in. And, of course, we know how this goes. Levi goes on to become known as Matthew, one of the twelve in Jesus' inner circle and the author of the first gospel. Apparently, Levi was a pretty good note-taker and gave us the first gospel. He undergoes this complete change in allegiance, a change of kingdoms. Now what does this say to us? What does the story of Levi tell us? How is this good news? How is this gospel for us? What does this mean for how we live our lives? The invitation to the feast Jesus offers us says to us all, come as you are. That's the invitation. It says come as you are. But it also says you can't stay as you are. Because if you do become a follower of Jesus, if you do feast with him, it's going to change you. It has to. You can't be with Jesus and remain unchanged. Being with Jesus, following Jesus, responding like Levi does, feasting with Jesus is going to change your life from top to bottom, from inside out, and from outside in. It's going to change what you do with money. It's going to change what you do with your sex life. It's going to change the way you work and play and speak. Ultimately, following Jesus is going to change everything in your life. We see this with Levi. To follow Jesus means sharing in his way of life. It means sharing in his mission. It means you become a priest. And now you become a representative of God to others. You become the face of Jesus to other people. You become the body of Christ for others. That's what you see with Levi. See, Levi becomes a true priest. Those who are followers of Jesus become true priests, bringing God to people and people to God. And so if we want to be followers of Jesus as Levite, I think one good question for us to ask ourselves, there are a lot of questions we should ask ourselves, but one is this. Who might Jesus want me to eat with? Who might Jesus want me to share a meal with? Who in your life can you be a true Levite for? Bringing them to God and God to them. Ask yourself this, how can I show hospitality? Or how can I make friendships so I can help people get closer to Jesus. I know that a lot of times doing that is going to take you out of your comfort zone, so to speak. Doing that a lot of times is going to stretch you, it's going to grow you, it's going to strengthen you. You know, we naturally gravitate towards the kind of people who tend to be just like ourselves, the kind of people who are easy for us to be around, the kind of people who don't really challenge us or stretch us in any way. But the kingdom of God isn't like that. The kingdom of God is not homogenous in that way. God wants to draw us out of ourselves and into the lives of other people. He wants to use us to draw all kinds of other sorts of people into his kingdom. And we should never write anyone off as too hardened or too far gone to be brought into the kingdom. When we feast, we not only find grace, we form community. And so we have to ask, how can we form community? How can we expand the community of Jesus the way Levi did? How can we play a similar role? How can we be good news to others? How can we bring the gospel to others in this way? What we do around our tables is a huge part of it. Not everyone is happy with what Jesus is doing. The Pharisees, we find, are offended by it. And so in verse 30, they have the audacity to crash Levi's party and then complain about the guest list. They weren't invited, and then they show up and complain about those who are invited. The Pharisees, of course, were the religious elite, sort of the religious power brokers. They were the real insiders. They're part of the establishment. They have cultural clout and social connections. They have power and status and influence. They're part of the in-group. And here, they're upset. Because this man, Jesus, is claiming to be the Messiah. He's talking about bringing in the kingdom of God. And what is he doing? He's eating and drinking with the wrong people. And so the Pharisees want to have a food fight. That's how you can picture this. The Pharisees come in, they crash the party, they want to have a food fight. They ask Jesus, why are you eating and drinking with tax collectors? Now, you've really got to travel back in time to see why they'd ask this question, why this is such an explosive issue for them. Why does it matter? It's been said in the first century, doing lunch was doing theology. Doing lunch was a way of doing theology. Who you ate with was a religious issue. In that culture, fellowship meals functioned as boundary markers. And who you chose to eat with or not eat with said everything about your religious identity. The Pharisees believed that eating with people that they considered sinners would contaminate them, would tarnish them. They wanted to be separate from sinners. That's what Pharisee means. They wanted to separate themselves from the sinful. And they, along with other people in the first century, viewed sharing a meal as a way of sharing life. It was an act of solidarity. If you have a meal with somebody, you're saying, I'm with this person. And so if you eat with the wrong kind of person, you send the wrong kind of message about your identity. And so the Pharisees were very much into policing the social boundaries of their community. Policing the social boundaries of different groups within Israel. For the Pharisees to be righteous was a matter of eating with the right people and shunning the wrong people. Who can I eat with was an intensely charged religious and cultural and even political issue for them. And of course we know the Pharisees practiced a spirituality of exclusion. If Jesus said love is the fulfillment of the law, for the Pharisees, hatred was the fulfillment of the law. You prove you're a righteous person by hating all the right people. That's the essence of what it meant to be a Pharisee. So they avoided sinners because they didn't want to get infected. They wanted to keep themselves separate. They wanted to maintain relational boundaries as a way of maintaining righteousness. And then here comes Jesus talking about being a harbinger of the kingdom of God, claiming to be the one through whom God's kingdom will come, and who is he eating and drinking with? He's violating all those social norms, and he's upsetting all those boundaries. He says he's bringing in God's kingdom, but he's eating and drinking with all the wrong people. And so the Pharisees, as the food police, the feast police, they've got to get out their badges and turn on the siren and run to the scene of the crime and break this party up. So they come in, they crash Levi's party, they want to know what's going on. But Jesus is not going to let them crash the party. He's going to keep eating and drinking with sinners until the end. Ultimately, as Robert Karras says in Luke's gospel, Jesus got himself killed because of the way he ate. Or you could say because of the people he ate with. The Pharisees just couldn't take it and so they finally crucified him. But you know what, not even that could stop Jesus from eating and drinking with sinners because after his death, he rose on the third day and he got right back to it. Just about the first thing he does after he rises from the dead is he goes and he has a meal with those same followers he had before the cross. Those same followers who had abandoned him and denied him the night he went to the cross. And see, that's really what the Lord's Supper is all about. It's all about Jesus eating and drinking with sinners. It's very interesting. how Jesus closes out this passage. When Jesus explains why he eats and drinks with sinners, he gives this metaphor. He says, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. He says, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Why does Jesus eat and drink with sinners? Jesus hangs out with sinners, the same reason a doctor is around sick people all the time. Why do doctors hang around sick people? Not because they love illness, but because they want to bring healing. Why does Jesus hang out with sinners? Not because He loves sin, but because He wants to bring healing. He wants to heal them. You know, most men don't like to go to the doctor. Most men hate going to the doctor. I know I do. Most men will not go to the doctor until death is knocking at the door, you know, and their wife has finally nagged them enough that he says, okay, I'll go to the doctor. Why don't men like to go to the doctor? It's because we want to think of ourselves as healthy and strong. Now, if you do that with your physical body, you might put yourself at great physical risk. But there's something even worse. If you do that spiritually, if you say, I am healthy and I am strong, then the reality is you are dead already. You have to admit you have a terminal disease. You have to admit you can't cure yourself. You can't self-medicate. You can't do your own doctrine, as we say in Alabama. You can't self-operate. Only Jesus can heal you from this disease the Bible calls sin. The symptoms of our disease may vary. For one, it may be gossip. For another, it might be grief. For one, it might be pride. For another, it might be impatience. The symptoms of the disease might vary, but it is a terminal disease. We might try to mask the symptoms in various ways, but we cannot wipe out the disease. We cannot cure the disease on our own. Only Jesus can do it. But Jesus only heals those who admit they're sick. If you don't see your need for Jesus, if you don't see your sin, sickness, Jesus can't do anything for you. He did not come to call the righteous He came to call sinners. He did not come for the healthy who think they have no need of a physician. He came for those who know they're sick. That's the good news. That's the good news. You know, Levi probably thought he was too sinful for Jesus to ever seek him out and include him in his kingdom. He thought he had probably crossed the line and gone too far in his alliance with Rome. But Levi shows us no one is too bad for Jesus. No one is too sick for this doctor. In fact, knowing how sick you are is really, you could say, the one and only qualification for entering the kingdom. The Pharisees, of course, had a very different kind of problem than Levi. They thought they were too good for Jesus. They thought they were healthy and had no need for a doctor. They could not admit their sin and their brokenness. The real surprise in the Gospels is not just who is bound for heaven, but also who is bound for hell. Heaven is for sinners who know they're sinners. Hell is for those who think they're righteous. That's what Luke shows us in his gospel again and again. Jesus came for the sick. He came for sinners. He came for outsiders. He came for people like you and me. He came for people who have violated God's word, who have refused to give God thanks for his gifts, people who have been prideful, people who have been impatient, unrighteously angry, people who have been greedy and lustful. Jesus came for sinners. And as I said, he comes to sinners and he says, follow me, come and join me at my table. Come just as you are, but know that when you come and sit at my table, you're going to be transformed. You're going to be changed. I'm not going to leave you as you are. That's the good news. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you that we have a friend in Jesus, a friend of sinners. We thank you that we have a physician in Jesus, one who has come to heal the sick, those who know they're sick, who see their need. Father, I pray we would see our need. I pray we would not deceive ourselves into thinking we're better than we are. I pray that we would humble ourselves before Jesus and ask him to do his healing work in our lives. And Father, we pray, too, that even as we have experienced the grace of Jesus, that we would be able to share that grace with others, even as he has lavished upon us such generosity and so many gifts, that we would, in turn, be able to lavish generous gifts on others in our lives as well. Even as Levi had to learn what it meant to be a true priest, a true Levite, I pray that we would learn to be true Levites, true priests as well, representing you, representing your love, representing your welcome, representing your kingdom to those around us. All of this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We've probably got about five minutes, so if anybody has any questions from last night or this morning, this might be a good time to do a follow-up. So, Arnie? There are a number of biblical stories where feasting is Yeah, yes, it's a great point. There are two kinds of feasts in Scripture. There is the feast of the kingdom, and all the right kind of feasting that flows out of it, and then there's feasting with demons. And so I think you definitely see that distinction in scripture. And I think when you look at gospel stories like the one we just looked at today, it helps you to discern the difference. No doubt Levi had had lots of parties and lots of feasts before this one in Luke 5. They were all demonic feasts, like those that you mentioned in your question. This feast is different because this feast has Jesus at the center and his grace is what motivates it and drives it. So, yeah, there are two kinds of feasts. And we should, you know, so we could, we should not use a passage like this to actually become drunkards and gluttons. We don't want that church to actually be true. It wasn't true in Jesus' case. It should not be true in our case either. There's a kind of righteous feasting that's healthy and proper, a good use of God's gifts. There's also a kind of demonic feasting that you see in scripture that is an abuse of God's gifts. And I think you can tell that there are all kinds of telltale signs that indicate the difference between those two kinds of feasts. The kind of excess that's involved, if there really is drunkenness or actual gluttony, that tells you it's a feast of demons rather than a feast of Jesus. The guest list, I think, is actually part of it. If people are intentionally excluded because of their socioeconomic status or skin color or what have you, That's a sign it's not a kingdom feast, but a demonic feast. So there would be a lot of indicators like that. But yeah, it's a great point. There are two kinds of feasts. This is kind of a follow-up. Is that where maybe some of the prohibition and restrictions come from, is people look only at the demonic stuff? I think so, yeah. I think that the teetotaling approach or the prohibitionist approach to, say, alcohol, is driven by fear, a fear that any kind of feasting is going to become demonic. And because God's good gifts can be abused therefore the best thing to do is to avoid them all together. The problem is that's just not the solution scripture points us to and actually Paul in 1st Timothy 4 says those who forbid certain forms of food and drink are acting demonically. putting themselves in the position of a divine lawgiver, so to speak. So I think that kind of, and I'm not saying people who are teetotalers or prohibitionists are actually demonic, but I'm saying that's the direction, that's the tendency. It's not a godly or faithful way of receiving and using and enjoying God's gifts. The interesting thing is people who take that approach, say, to alcohol are never consistent with it in other aspects of their lives. You know, Martin Luther said that, you know, he said, He said that yes, alcohol has been abused, but he says women, or we could say sex has been abused as well. He says, should we abolish women? Should we abolish sex because sex has been abused? Or he says, people worship the sun, moon, and stars. Shall we pluck them from the sky? You can't do away with something just because it could be subject to abuse. You have to learn the right and proper use of it to God's glory with gratitude in our hearts and according to God's law. Yeah, that mentality, I think we can see where it comes from. It comes from wanting to curb the excesses, and it comes from seeing God's gifts abused, and certainly in situations where you have people who have been greatly impacted, say, by alcoholism, you take a quite different approach to things like alcohol than you do with other folks. There needs to be a kind of sensitivity there that I think Paul also talks about when he's talking about the strong and the weak. But just in general, we need to be maturing in our use of God's gifts. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with anything God has made. We just have to learn how to rightly use the things God has made. All right. Thanks again. OK. All right. Thank you. Speaking of our feast, real quick, 1230 and 6 o'clock are our meals. It's obviously a little crowded in the dining hall this year, so try to be prompt so that we can give our grace and we like to sing our grace for the lunch and dinners. So if we're all together, we'll be able to do that.