Today we're turning in the Gospel of Luke. We'll look first at chapter five, a few verses there, and then chapter 14, the first 24 verses of that chapter. Gospel of Luke today. Let's pray and ask for God's blessing on the word that's read and preached and heard today. Our Father in heaven, as we come to this gospel. We're grateful that you've led here Luke to record the history concerning our Lord when he walked among his disciples and did all of his great works of power, his miracles. And as he would go to the cross and die, and you would raise him from the dead, that this shows the great love of God and not only sending his son as a savior for sinners, but that salvation has been accomplished for those who would believe and be saved. And we ask, O Lord, that you would accompany the word that's read and preached with the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that we would know that this is not merely the word of any one man, but it's the very word of God that will do its work in those who believe and will be of great help to us as those who do believe to continue believing, to grow in our faith, to grow in our knowledge of Christ. And Father, we ask that you would give your spirit to help us to profit from the word. Teach us your ways that we might walk in them. In this we ask in the name and for the glory of your son, in whose name we pray, amen. Well, Luke chapter five, Our Lord has been calling his disciples, and this set of verses we'll look at has to do with the calling and the conversion of Levi, or Matthew, verse 27. After that, he went out and noticed a tax gatherer named Levi sitting in the tax office. And he said to him, follow me. And he left everything behind and rose up and began to follow him. And Levi gave a big reception for him and in his house. And there was a great crowd of tax gatherers and other people who were reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at Jesus' disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with the tax gatherers 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 righteous men, but sinners to repentance. And we'll go to Luke chapter 14, looking at verse 24 verses. Jesus has been healing. He's been telling parables. And as we come to chapter 14, it came about when he went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching him closely. And there in front of him was a certain man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? but they kept silent. And he took hold of him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day? And they could make no reply to this. And he began speaking a parable to the invited guests when he noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them, when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both shall come and say to you, Give place to this man. And then in disgrace, you proceed to occupy the last place. But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher. And then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. And he also went on to say to the one who had invited him, When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, or your brothers, or your relatives, or your rich neighbors. lest they also invite you in return, and repayment come to you. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. And one of those who were reclining at table with him heard this, and he said to him, Blessed is everyone who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. But Jesus said to him, A certain man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many. And at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, Come, for everything is ready now. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it. Please consider me excused. And another one said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I'm going to try them out. Please consider me excused. And another one said, I have married a wife and for that reason I cannot come. And the slave came back and reported this to his master. And then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame. And the slave said, Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room. And the master said to the slave, Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of these men who were invited shall taste of my dinner. And so the reading of the word of God this morning from the gospel of Luke. It's been some years ago now that a neighbor, when common conversation was telling me of a TV crime drama that he and his wife were watching. It was about a man who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And the way this man dealt with the need to provide for his medical care and even for the family after him was to pursue the making of illegal drugs of methamphetamine. This led him into the world of drug cartels, of drug lords, and all sorts of evil and intrigue in those kinds of dark shady relationships. The man's wife, pondered divorcing him, later sided with him, and pursued the enterprise along with him. And in the course of the TV crime series, the man commits murders to sustain his business. In the end, he admits to his wife that the reason why he got into it was not out of the reasons that he had given, it was to gratify himself rather than the family security. As things come to a head with his schemes, He ends up being wounded in his own weapon, fighting amidst co-people in the dark world, and he dies of his own wounds. Now, maybe you, like these neighbors, were infatuated with the series Breaking Bad. I never watched it. It doesn't sound like something I would watch. I wouldn't recommend it to you, but maybe you've seen it. And for what I'm interested in is the title. of Breaking Bad and Breaking Bread. As you notice today, we're here for the Lord's Supper as we observe this. And I'm interested in the title because you or I, maybe all of us together, would never and never were in such a dark realm. Some of you perhaps were. Maybe it was not this kind of dark world. But wherever it is from where the Lord brought you from your life of unbelief or life of sin, the Lord has made for you and me, regardless of where we've come from, to be those who still broke bad. We were those who were breaking bad. The scripture says of us that we all have turned to our own ways. Each one of us. The Scripture says, as Paul begins to lay out the very underpinnings of the gospel in Romans 3, that they have all turned aside. The Scripture reminds us that they have left the path of truth. Again, Isaiah says, they have made their paths crooked. Now, you or I might look at Breaking Bad, the television series, and say, Well, I thank God that I'm not like that man. Well, that should remind us that the Pharisees said that kind of thing. And even though you and I might say, I thank God that I was never in the methamphetamine business. Well, maybe it was some other substance that we abused. Maybe it was some other immorality that marked our life. Maybe it was some other sort of dark sin that if it were mentioned or worst case scenario that it was played out in five seasons of a TV crime drama, we would be horrified if people knew. I would think that we all have skeletons in our closet. And we're grateful that the Lord is one who has not only put a lock system on the closet door or boarded it up and locked it with only a key that he has, but he has in fact saved us from all justice of God against our sins. And if God were to open that door, we would find out it's empty. God has forgiven us. God has laid on the Lord Jesus Christ all of the guilt that we have against God, the debt that we owe God for not obeying his law. He's canceled it all. That wonderful statement of Isaiah, or one of the prophets, that he's thrown all of our sins into the sea behind his back. And so as we consider something like breaking bad or the skeletons in our own closet, we can have sheer relief. We go to the closet and we with fear and trepidation and shaking, thinking, oh no, as the door is opened, voila, there's nothing there. And what really is there is the full stocked, neat righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's what we look at when we open that closet door. We have set out on new trails, maybe. You take a walk in the beautiful fall harvest and you say, oh, I'm gonna pursue that trail. I used to walk Beaver Lake and it's been several years since I've been back there. If I were to take any trail, it would pretty much seem like a new trail. Trees are bigger, things look different when you're not at a place several years after the last time. Maybe you get out on a new trail. New trails can have bad consequences. Whether it's Beaver Lake and getting off on a trail you shouldn't, or whether it's Christian and hopeful in the Pilgrim's Progress. You remember the bypass going through the meadow. And it was hard, the path that they were taking by the river. It wasn't easy. But there, there's this meadow, and it's easy ground for their feet. Well, it was that ground that led to Doubting Castle. It's a word that we're reminded of here as we're thinking on breaking bad and breaking bread. The temptation to break bad never leaves. Holy desires come in. But the besetting sins often remain. They can entangle us. The temptation like Christian, because he was older in the Lord than hopeful, to think of hopeful's part, this doesn't seem right, and yet give deference to Christian because he's older, ended up having a joyful walk for a while, but it led to doubting castle. Beware, even as a Christian, as a believer, of breaking bad. what a scandal and what a hardship it would be for the believer to take a path and begin breaking bad once again, which leads us to Levi. And as we look at Levi, we look here and we see a man also named Matthew. And in one gospel, it's mentioned as Levi, Luke's gospel. But Matthew, this same Levi, who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, it's the same person, uses his name as Matthew. It seems that Levi was the birth name. That would be the legal name. And as a disciple, for whatever reason and whatever way it happened, he's known as Matthew. And it seems then that Levi wanted us to know, at least in his own writing, that he should be considered, as he considers himself, God's gift, Matthew. Matthew. And so here he thinks of himself throughout the gospel when he speaks of himself as a disciple in chapter nine, Matthew, and in chapter 10, an apostle. So this Levi is Matthew, but for Matthew, this event of his conversion changed the way he looked at himself. All things were new. And so the passage that we read about Levi and the other one at chapter 14 is good for us to examine ourselves. On the matter of having broken bad, on the matter of the temptation, and perhaps this finds you today going on a course of breaking bad, it's useful for us to examine ourselves. Now these events that we've read in Luke 5 and Luke 14, they're not about the Lord's Supper. These banquets or these dinners are not the Lord's Supper. This was in the one case, Levi inviting his fellow once tax collectors upon his conversion to celebrate his conversion. Now that he's come to know Jesus Christ, he has this deep burden inside for his friends, his fellow tax gatherers to know Jesus Christ. And so he holds a dinner, he throws a banquet, it's a common meal. And the Pharisees in Luke 14, when they threw the banquet and had the dinner, it was not like Levi's motive. It was entirely different. And as we'll see further, it was to show and try to one-upsmanship with Jesus. And it revealed their pride. So we have different reasons for throwing these banquets. They're not the Lord's Supper, but as we look at these gatherings, they're useful to us in terms of our own Supper of the Lord today on the theme of breaking bad and breaking bread. As we come to the Supper, have you ever broken bad? Has the Lord brought you back so that you break bread now? Are you breaking bad? The supper here finds you breaking bread, that you must repent of your sins. You must come back to the road from which you broke. And the breaking of the bread is that occasion whereby the Lord has you examine yourself of your life in Christ, of your profession, of your repentance, of how you're thinking about sin, not only outside of you, of other people, but even your own sin, even before the Lord. You and I then must examine ourselves as we read about Levi and the Pharisees at their occasions of breaking and eating bread. And so to examine ourselves then as we come to the supper today, two points for us is to see a first one that some people break bad and then break bread. There's a distinction here. The one is once upon a time. This next one of breaking bread comes later. They do the first, they are done with the first, and they draw, as it were, a line in the sand, and they say, thus for and no more. Now I will break bread. Some people break bad, and then they're brought to Jesus Christ. and they're converted. They see the bad way they've gone. And now as a disciple of Jesus Christ, like Levi, they break bread. That's the one point. But the second point is that other people break bad while they break bread. There's not a clear line in the sand. They break bad even while they break bread. This would be the hypocrite. This would be the people that are indifferent, not converted perhaps, or they're indifferent to the call of holiness right here at the setting of the Lord's Supper. So some break bad and then break bread. Other people break bad while they break bread. So let's look at this first point of some people breaking bad and then they break bread. Now here's Levi, and the setting here with Levi is quite interesting. This would be the tax collector that Levi was. And the ancient tax collector was an unusually greedy person most times. Politicians, perhaps right, there are good politicians, there are many bad politicians, that they're in it for greed, they're in it for the notoriety, they're in it for the kickbacks, and that's true of many other things, that people get interested and take up work that way. Under the Roman government, a tax collector was given a quota, a revenue that they had to collect. And Rome didn't care how you got it, really, as long as you got it for them, which meant that if you could get the quota reached, you could, by means of fraud or even by force, compel people to give beyond what they really owed. There were a lot of what people might call loopholes or a lot of wiggle room for people to bring in their own schemes and defraud people. Some would do it by fraud, others with force. That's why John the Baptizer said to the tax collectors on the Jordan River, and they said, what about us? And he said, don't collect more than you're supposed to and don't do it by force or fraud. And so the tax collector in the Roman Empire was to the people pretty much synonymous with the thief. It was the greedy, it was the corrupt, it was the scoundrel. This was the kind of person that people tend to hate the most. But what if you were a Jewish tax collector? It'd be one thing to be a Roman, but what if you're a Jewish tax collector? Well, to your fellow Jews, there's no category for that. That would be the worst that you could be because you've sold out your people and you've gone to these people that by the Jews were considered an occupying force that they wanted to be removed. They wanted to have their own land as it was the way they wanted. And so to have one of your own become one who works for the Roman government and to collect your taxes and even defraud you possibly. They didn't like them. So to make a career out of this meant that Levi was probably ill thought of by his Jewish compatriots. It meant that your allegiance was not for God's people. It was for the empire of Rome. To the Jews, it was to rob your own people and to give it to your enemy. and you keep the kickbacks. And so thus the term then, that they used against Jesus, that you're a friend of tax gatherers and sinners. There was such as much a sin as being a career tax collector. But for Levi, it was twice as bad. Like Zacchaeus, he had made a career out of sin. He had broken bad from among the Jews. He, if he was like all the other tax gatherers, then he would have been a dishonest man. He was a liar. He was a thief. He was somebody that God would have despised. But the fact of the matter is, and this is the good news, is that Jesus loved Levi. He's a friend of tax gatherers and sinners. We notice it at verse 27, that Jesus went out and noticed a tax gatherer. He noticed Levi. Now there's a term there that brings us deeper. It's sort of like Jesus who had to go to Samaria to meet the woman so that she could be converted. And so here's Levi in his tax booth going about his usual day. and Jesus notices him. He's busy, he's been healing people. Levi had probably been in that tax booth every time Jesus had passed by previously. He had likely seen Jesus, heard him teach, seen people be healed. Maybe he just saw the paralytic man go by carrying his own mat. And now he's putting two and two together and he's connecting dots. He's hearing these things. And what probably made Levi's crooked and wretched heart ready to receive Jesus' gospel call that day was this matter of people being healed and sins forgiven. He had broken bad. And yet at verse 27, there's something new that's happening. Jesus went out and noticed Levi. Now all Jesus did was to call him and by the power of his own word and said, follow me. Levi, who had broken bad, now breaks good by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. And it says that he had left everything behind. And you can see Levi brought to a crisis point where Levi, what are you going to do? Are you going to stay in the tax booth, collect your taxes, line your pockets with whatever you really care to? Or are you going to do the right thing and break good? Are you going to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? We can see all the coins there on his table. We could see him just get out and immediately, because God's word is effective in irresistibly drawing and displaying grace to convert someone by the Spirit's power, make them believe and follow Jesus. There is Levi getting out from his tax booth, leaving it all and following Jesus. If there are other tax collectors there, they might be saying, Levi, what are you doing? If there were people that were seeing this happen and they had broken bad or remained bad in their trespasses and sins, they might have said, here's my chance. Look at all that money that's sitting there on the table. Levi is leaving. And that'll be for me. But the Lord's mercy came to Levi. And when he called him, he believed the gospel. He left everything behind, got up, and began to follow Jesus. You see, with Levi here, that very day, he was converted from breaking bad and then went to celebrate by breaking bread. And so although this account is not about the Lord's Supper, It does provide us a link with Levi as to how we should come to the Lord's Supper. We should own the fact that we're those who have broken badly. We're broken people. We're brokenhearted. We have things that we've broken, relationships maybe. Maybe we've broken our promises to the Lord. And we're here today as we come to the supper, confessing similar sins, maybe identical sins, that we confessed last time. Or that we said with some serious moment of unction and holiness that the Spirit of God convicted us. Maybe there was some word that we read in the scripture and we made a vow to God. that we're not going to do that sin again. I'm going to guard against that, or Lord, I'll never do that again. And yet we come back and we find we've broken bad once again. Well, as we come to the Lord's table, we have to remember that line in the sand and that, what's the word, inetchable. You cannot etch what God has smoothed. You cannot Draw a line in the sand where God has smoothed. And if you've broken bad, you've broken bad going the direction of following Jesus. You've not necessarily broken bad going from Jesus, like apostates do. If you're remorseful here today for your sins, and you've broken bad, you're in the company of Levi. because you want to leave the silver and the gold there at the tax booth. And you've broken bad once before, and Christ has granted the forgiveness of sins by faith in Him. His blood was shed once and for all, once and forever, so that for all the sins you may commit, you merely come back to Jesus, confessing that you've broken bad. and there's a place for you to celebrate. That's the spirit of Levi, and that's the spirit of a true believer. They've had a conviction of sins, and they've come back to that very conviction. Broken bad, but here to break bread. And as you come to the Lord's table today, is that your heart? Is there a Levi sense in you that says, I'm leaving it? and I'm coming back to the Lord. I'm going to follow Him. I'm going to walk in obedience. I'm not going to defraud people. I'm going to treat them honestly. I'm going to be a man or a woman or a boy or girl of integrity. And I'm going to do the right thing. And I'm going to be about repentance and faith. You come because you must have what Levi had that day that he came from the tax booth. Remember, Levi wrote the account about himself. And Luke refers to him as Levi. There's an easy way to remember it. Levi, Luke, and Matthew, Matthew. When Matthew writes, he doesn't use Luke. He only uses Matthew. That may be significant for us an encouragement to know that the way we always are now is we're not Levi. We're God's gift. We are gifted by God. We've been graced with salvation. And I'm not the person I used to be. I'm the same person, but I'm not the same person. Grace has changed me by the gospel. And so Matthew never forgot it. Levi never forgot that change that day. His conversion story, by virtue of his telling it in his own gospel, is that the gospel is real. He had broken bad, but then he broke bread. The call is for us then to leave our sins, to be about an earnestness with repentance, to remember That first love, remember that Jesus mentioned to the church at Ephesus in the revelation. How far you have fallen, you have left your first love. God's first love in Jesus Christ has not left any believer, never will, hasn't left you. But if you've left your first love, you come back to remember that there's breaking bad, but now there's breaking bread. And God will receive you. as you come with repentance today to eat bread. God willing, you are a person, and here as that person who broke bad, but is here to break bread. But there's that second point that I had mentioned, that there are another kind of people who break bad while they break bread. And that line in the sand is not there. They do both at the same time. And this should be concerning. Do you remember that this marked Israel under the Old Testament? In Psalm 78, as they're journeying their way through the desert, and they're tired of onion leaks and garlic, and they're wondering about the water, and this stuff called manna. What is it? Is what it means. They have this, so however many ways they learned or figured to prepare manna to take away some of the boredom and the routine, oh, if we just had meat, and so the Lord provides quail, and they could eat meat, and they got what they wanted in view of their eating bread of manna, and yet the Lord gave them an abundance of quail so that even while they were eating it, While it was in their teeth, the Lord's judgment came upon them. You see in their hearts, they were the kind of people who were wanting a certain thing. God gave them what they wanted, what in a sense they may have needed, but yet their hearts were unchanged and they forgot God and they filled themselves with what he provided, but their hearts were breaking bad even while they ate what God gave them. That's a possibility of people when they come to the Lord's Supper, is that they break bad while they are breaking bread. And the unbelief in their heart is not changed. There's not only Israel in the desert. Well, you can remember Judas there at the Lord's Supper. Here is another instance of a man who broke bad while he broke bread. Now there's some debate as to whether Judas partook actually of the Lord's Supper, but every time I read the scripture and compare John 13 with Psalm 41, which is a prophecy that John notes is fulfilled with Judas eating the bread and having his hands on the Lord's table, even he with whom I broke bread has lifted up his heel against me. So I think in reading the scripture that Judas took the Lord's Supper. He broke the bread. And just afterward, Jesus said to him, that which you are seeking to do, do quickly. And of course, the disciples are examining themselves while they're breaking bread. And as Jesus had alerted to one whose hands are on the table and who will dip and eat with me, What was that question they asked, but is it I? Is it I? And Peter motions to John and says, in a sense, since you're closer to him, who is it? But that self-examination is there. Am I here today breaking bread, but yet at the same time breaking bath? Am I here to partake of the Lord's supper, but I'm indifferent to sin. Or I'm not coming thinking of sins that I've committed and using the Lord's Supper as a means to focus on Christ, my only hope, the one I love, the one who first loved me. And God, through partaking of this, give me spiritual strength that I could fight against sin and remember Christ. Some people are indifferent to those things. It would not be good if you're here today and you are indifferent to those things. Judas himself partook of the Lord's supper, but broke bad while he broke bread. Or remember the Corinthian church. Not only Israel in the wilderness, Judas at the supper, but the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 11. They're to have the Lord's Supper, and as people are filing into church, they're going ahead ahead of them. They're not waiting for one another. No, it seems that they were using that as their meal, so they probably had more than just the one loaf of bread here that we have. They probably had a meal, and so people were using that in a common way, not in a holy way, They were using it for their own selves to fill their bellies before other people showed up. And even in some case they were using, it seems, real wine that they were getting drunk from it. And so they had a carnal way of coming to the Lord's Supper. But you know, in 1 Corinthians 11, that some were sick, some had died. And the Lord, as He judged Israel under the Old Covenant, And as Judas went to his own peril, the Lord brought a judgment on the church. And these who had broken bread died or were sick for breaking bad while they broke bread. And so we have to come then to the Lord's supper with a holy regard. If you're not here to pursue holiness and the fear of God, without which no one will see the Lord, then you ought to conscientiously consider, perhaps I should wait. Or if you're here and that is you, then you ought to come with repentance, real zeal to walk in the Lord's ways, to take up your profession of faith with seriousness. We can only think that that's how the church at Corinth responded to this. You can imagine being absent that day at Corinth when this ordeal happened. And you show up the next week and you say, where's Bill? Well, Bill is sick this week. Oh, well, where's Mary? Well, the sad news is that Mary died this past week. Well, what's happened? Why are these people of our congregation so affected? Well, if you were to ask Paul, he could say, this is why. This is a solemn thing that we can't be indifferent to, of breaking bad while we break bread. We have to examine ourselves. And that leads us to the passage here in Luke 5 with the Pharisee and Levi's banquet. In Luke chapter 5, what are these men here all about? They're about their pride. They're about looking down. the tax collectors, and they don't bring their issue to Jesus. They find fault and they bring it to the disciples. The Pharisees, verse 30 of chapter five, their scribes grumbling at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with the tax gatherers and sinners? They're looking down on others. They have the mindset of holier than thou. and they're not there recognizing. This man has known something where he's left all that money at the tax booth. And rather than inquiring about it, rather than being teachable before the Lord Jesus, they find fault. And they don't go to Jesus, they go to the disciples. Jesus, of course, then defends his disciples. He said, it's not those who are well who need the physician, it's those who are sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners. The gospel is for sinners. And the Pharisees missed all this at the banquet of Levi. They found fault. They accused the disciples. But Jesus teaches that the supper properly is for those who are sick, for those who are repentant. And so as convicted as you may be, There should be that desire then to close with Christ and say, my Savior will forgive me. And as convicted as I am, I come not breaking bad, but breaking good like Levi, as and while I break bread. And so you should not come to the table if you're without repentance, holding grudges, against other believers. You may be here saying, well, I think I'm ready to partake of the supper. I've dealt with all my faults, but I sure hope that she has over there, or he has. No, we all are in the same boat. We come to the same Savior for mercy. The religious leaders didn't do that when they had an opportunity with Levi. We know that Levi did, and he's wanting other tax collectors and sinners to know that same grace. Or over in chapter 14, with these religious leaders, And the occasion where it seems they threw the banquet, one of the leaders of the Pharisees, and perhaps they planted this man with the dropsy. He has an inflammation. He's filling out and retaining water in some way that's needing healing. And so maybe they planted the man here and then the only reason why they're hosting this banquet is not for Jesus. It's to see what is Jesus going to do? And they want to find fault with Jesus. They want to find fault maybe with his disciples again, so that they can press charges against him. Well, these are the Pharisees. They have an artificial, a superficial view of what it's meaning to gather with Jesus and the disciples. And likewise, you could have an artificial view, superficial, going through the motions, hearing the same call to repentance and faith, oh, I understand what the elements are about, but not ever really pondering them, not ever coming in a meaningful and significant way to say, God, use these means by the Holy Spirit in my own soul to nourish me, to feed me with the bread of heaven. There can be artificiality. There can be an indifference to the whole thing that's going on, is that Jesus will do good for the man with dropsy. That you come to the table and fail to see that this might be a turning point in someone else's life here in the congregation. Today could be a day of conversion for one of you children. Today could be the very day when the Lord gets ahold of you and makes for a besetting sin to be altogether clipped. And something happens in you with the exercise of His grace that you find yourself out of doubting castle, out of the giant despair's grip, and things turn new and bright for you in a way that you didn't expect. We may come with indifference. We may come with partiality of favoritism, selfishness, lack of care, going through the motions. But Jesus has us to know that we should be here, not breaking bad as we break bread, but doing good and being earnest for obeying the Lord. That's how we come and profess our faith. We come and acknowledge ourselves to be the Lord's and we like Levi and the other disciples are gonna walk with Jesus. In Luke 5, it says that he began to follow Jesus. And the way it's there is that this is the new path that he made. The Lord set him out to always be breaking in a good direction. And so as we come to the table, consider it a way for you not to break bad, but to break more towards good. The Lord would lead you in a place of obedience and righteousness. Jesus here takes the occasion then. to show that in speaking to the people invited there, he takes everybody on. He has something for everybody at this dinner banquet. To the invited guests, you see it in verse seven through 11. You're sitting as a guest. And where is it that you sit today? Have you chosen the great place of privilege, You're doing well in the Lord, and I'm only taking the Lord's supper because I don't really need it, I'm doing well spiritually. But he needs it, and I'm in the first place. Well, Jesus said the way that you come to the dinner banquet is you get the last place. And then it said, no, no, no, no, friend, don't sit in that seat, come up higher. You have someone bring you up higher. But if you come and you get the first seat to the Lord's Supper, the Lord is basically saying you should sit in the back. You should sit in the last seat. You who came first, you're really last. We should all be in the last seat here that the Lord would make us to come higher. People have an attitude of just the opposite of the way it is in the kingdom of Christ. And so he says there at verses seven through 11, that when you come, you have to come with a position that it's all up from here. It's all my being helped and brought into the Lord's grace and privilege. It's not me being at the top and being ashamed and put down. Don't come to the Lord's Supper thinking well of yourself. Come to receive grace and assurance of salvation and a testimony of forgiven sin. People who come to the Lord's Supper rightly are those who come with repentance and a desire for grace, not those who think they are fine in themselves. And then at verse 12, he takes on the one that's the host Imagine this there in a dinner banquet and Jesus speaks to those who came in and they're in the wrong seats. And he deals with that one. He says, well, glad that awkward moment is done. And then Jesus proceeds to talk to the host. And he says to the host that when you give a luncheon or a dinner, don't invite your friends. What do you mean don't invite your friends? Don't invite your relatives. Don't invite your rich neighbors. Well, we want to impress people. We want to show people that we're doing pretty good and we're just here because that's the custom. That's the thing you're supposed to do. Jesus says, no host, that's not why you're to throw a banquet. The problem with that is those people can repay you. Because you're all in together, they're just going to invite you to their house. But the way true banquets and dinners and certainly the Lord's Supper works is that the Lord brings the blind. He invites the lame. He invites the poor. He likes those who are going to be utterly dependent on grace. They can't pay him back. It's all of God's grace. It's not of our uppity-ness, not of our spiritual smugness, not our self-absorbedness. It's, no, I'm like Levi. I'm like the dropsy man whom Jesus had there and probably healed him so that after he was healed and ate, he could leave and get out of this unholy presence. The disciples there were given a lesson as to how to come to the Lord's table. Be there to be healed. Do you come to this table to be healed? And then Jesus just shows how abounding he is in his grace. Are there not enough people here? Are people making excuses that they won't come? Well, go out further. go out to the highways, the byways, beat the bushes and the hedges, bring in all who want to come. Which means that as we come to the Lord's table, we're the privileged some that are here. The Lord's brought us by His grace. We were the kind of people that were way far off, and here we are. And there's plenty of room for more. We are those who realize it's not about me, it's not about what I bring to the table, it's the fact that God is gracious to call me here. Like Levi, who has a mark of breaking bad, now is here to break bread. And now that I'm here breaking bread, I'm not gonna break bad while I break bread. I'm gonna eat and be satisfied with all that the Lord has given for me with the people of God as I come. So which person are you today as you come to the table? Are you that person who has broken bad and here to break bread? Or are you that person who is to break bad while you break bread? God give us grace as we come to the table. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we're humbled as we hear your word. And we see that it's not about us. It's really about Christ and his abounding love, his everlasting grace, that we who are guilty and unworthy, failing as disciples, our conscience is wounded, our motives are sketchy sometimes. But Lord, we come with all of who we are, And as disciples of Jesus Christ, we come to the table and ask that you feed us, heal us, mend us, advance the kingdom of Christ in our hearts and lives, and bless us in what we eat and of which we partake today. It is Christ, the living bread, whom we sup. We ask that you would feed us and bless us with your grace. In his name we pray, amen.