Would you turn with me in the Word of God to the Gospel according to Luke, Luke chapter 5, our text this evening, there's only a few verses in Luke's Gospel, chapter 5, verses 27 through 32, short reading, but an important little scene that Luke records for us in his gospel. Luke chapter 5, verses 27 through 32. This is God's Word. After this, he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with him. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. So for the reading of God's holy word. Well, this little scene shows us the stupendous grace of God in Jesus Christ. It's a short scene, and we probably remember something of it, maybe from Sunday school or from other sermons we've heard in the past, but sometimes we forget how great of a display this little scene is of the long reach of God's grace for sinners who we might otherwise think are outside the bounds or outside the reach of the gospel. Because here's a guy whose countrymen had written him off. He's a thief. He's a cheat. He's a liar. Nobody wants to have anything to do with him. And God incarnate walks up to him and says, follow me. And if we think about the kind of people that should be the disciples of God, I mean, if God's really going to come into this world in the form of human flesh and gather around himself followers. Shouldn't he have the best of the best? Shouldn't he have, you know, the Navy SEALs, the Delta Force of all the soldiers, the elite for disciples? But it doesn't work that way. In fact, usually it's the opposite, the New Testament says. God doesn't choose the best of the best. Paul says, for consider your calling, brothers. This is always humbling every time I read this text in 1 Corinthians. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus. If you're a Christian this evening, it's because of Him. Sure, He used instruments in your life, But ultimately, it's because of Him. Not because of where you were born, or when you were born, or the type of family you were in, it's because of Him. Because of the one who ultimately said, follow me. Grace works like that. The gospel works that way. God shows His grace to the undeserving, to the demerited and unmerited. in order to make them disciples. And Jesus is still calling disciples today, just as he did 2,000 years ago when he walked up to this guy Levi who was sitting at his tax booth. He's still, the physician of souls, is still calling those who are sick. He is still looking for sinners and giving them his righteousness. And so let's think about this little scene. There's just three movements in this scene. The first is the call of Levi. The second is the protest of the Pharisees, which is really interesting. And then finally, Jesus' response. Very simple. First of all, I want you to notice the call of Levi. Now remember, he's a tax collector, Levi. And you might remember that the tax collectors were despised. Tax collectors, I suppose, are despised in many ways in most cultures, but especially in first century Palestine. Why? Because, as you remember, the Romans had conquered Palestine, had conquered Israel. And what did they do? They would tax people wherever they went. The Roman Empire stretched all over the world. You know, you can go to Scotland, you can go through all throughout Europe and find Roman ruins. You don't have to be in Rome. We find them all over in northern Italy. they just steamrolled their way through Europe and all through the Middle East and went all over the place conquering. And when they would conquer a land, they would tax them. And then the way it worked was they would find people to give bids to be a tax collector. And then they would make a contract with the guy that they liked the most. And then that guy who was a tax collector could collect all the taxes that he had to for the Romans and then collect a little bit more, you know, to give himself a profit and cover his expenses. But there was always the temptation to collect way more than you should and pocket the rest. And that's what a lot of these guys did. And that's why a lot of them were rich. They had a lot of money. Levi was rich. He threw a party that evening, which was a big deal in the first century. This was a wealthy man. He was the wealthiest of the disciples, and people hated him. Because think about it, if you're a Jew in the first century, your land has been conquered by the Romans, they tax you, and if you don't pay your taxes, they crucify you. And the people collecting taxes from you aren't the Romans, but a fellow countryman, another Jew like you. He's getting rich off of your hard work and your taxes so people do not like the tax collectors they're despised and so we can imagine how weird it was when Jesus walks up to Levi sitting at his tax booth because everybody sees him sitting there and you despise he's a despicable man they avoid him but Jesus didn't avoid him that day Jesus walks up to him and says, follow me. Now, at this point in the story of Luke's gospel, he has at least three disciples, Peter, James, and John, maybe a couple of others. And they were fishermen, you remember. And this is a tax collector. They probably paid their taxes, either him or a guy just like him, and are probably thinking, why would you ask him to be part of our circle, to be a disciple like us? It's scandalous. But as the scene shows us, loved ones, it shows us something very important. The point here is that no one is beyond the reach of God's grace. And I hope that the Lord will impress that upon our hearts this evening, that no one is beyond the reach of the gospel. And as we look through redemptive history, we can see the kind of people that God calls onto the stage of being a disciple of Christ or playing a part in his people. If you had seen Abraham, for example, when he was a pagan living in Ur of the Chaldees, you would not have looked at him while he was offering sacrifices to his pagan gods and said, that guy is going to be the father of the faith and God's going to make a covenant with him that's going to be critical for the for the flow of redemptive history you wouldn't have thought the gospel would have changed him and yet it did or if you had seen Saul of Tarsus when he was persecuting the church and putting Christians in jail you wouldn't have looked at him and said that guy's going to be a follower of Christ he would have been the last guy you would have said that about and yet the gospel got to him and he became the greatest of the apostles. And we can do that over and over again. You can go through church history and look at so many people who were completely changed by the grace of God. If you looked at Augustine, for example, up until the time he was 30, you never would have believed that that guy would have become a follower of Jesus Christ, let alone the greatest theologian for the first thousand years in Western Christianity. Because all he did was seek satisfaction through a life of hedonism, Sex, power, philosophy, scholasticism. It took him out of his backwater town in northern Africa onto the city of Carthage and then onto the city of Rome and then onto the capital of the Roman Empire at that time, Milan. The most important city in the world in the 4th century. And there as he's in the mix with the most powerful people and living the party life, He's a brilliant thinker. He comes under the preaching of the gospel by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. And today, if you go to Milan, you can go down this winding staircase underneath the cathedral, the Duomo, and see the ruins of Santa Tecla, one of the first churches built after the edict of Milan. And there's the baptismal pool where Ambrose baptized Augustine in 387, Easter Sunday. And he became the greatest theologian of the first thousand years. You know, his mother, Monica, prayed for him year after year after year. God, please save my son. And how many of us think that of people that we know this evening? I don't know if he's ever going to follow Jesus. I don't know if she'll ever be a disciple of Christ. But we can look at church history and at the Bible itself and see people like Levi, who others had written off, but Jesus didn't. Jesus didn't write them off. Levi himself probably thought he'd be the last person in the world that Jesus would be interested in because he wasn't good enough for Jesus. So imagine his emotion when Jesus walks up to him and says, follow me. Follow me. And here we see what? We see the doctrine of election. Jesus said, it is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you and have appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and your fruit should remain. John 15. We see the doctrine of effective calling. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. John 10. Jesus saw Levi and said, follow me. And Levi did what? He left everything, his lucrative business, his reputation, his job, his livelihood, and he followed Jesus. Now that was a huge sacrifice you know for Peter James and John they had stopped being fishermen they left their nets and that was a sacrifice but if things didn't work out being a disciple of Jesus they could always go back and be fishermen again but for Levi as a tax collector wouldn't work that way nobody's going to hire him the Romans would not hire him again after that he did it all he burned the ships on the beach and said I'm all in once he left his job there was no hope of getting it back and he took that step with joy how do we know because he threw a party he threw a party in the ancient world when you threw a party you had to have some money and it was a sacrifice it was a big deal you kill a fatted calf you you you kill the pig you invite people over you have costly items like oil and wine and animals. You feed others. And that's what he did. Why? Because he wanted to tell others about Christ. He wanted his fellow tax collectors to hear of this one who had given him hope when he said those words, follow me. He wanted his best friends to go where he was going. As J.C. Ryle said, a converted person does not want to go to heaven alone. A convert wants his loved ones, his family, his friends to be in heaven with him. And yet the real proof of his conversion was the fact that he continued to follow Jesus throughout his life because Levi, as you probably know, became Matthew, the writer of the gospel. well sadly we all know people who have made a profession and then fell away as jesus said in his parable of the sower they hear the word they receive it with joy but these have no root they believe for a certain time said jesus when the test comes however they draw back they fall away their profession was false or as john said they came out from us but they were not of us because if they had been among us, they would have remained with us. But that wasn't the case with Levi. His conversion was genuine. He followed Jesus to the end and even was martyred for the name of Christ. What does that mean? It means no one is beyond the reach of God's grace. No one, period. And that's reason to rejoice. That's reason to throw a party. But not everybody he rejoiced that day. That brings us to the second thing, the protest of the Pharisees. They weren't so happy about this. So in verse 30, we read that the Pharisees and the scribes murmured against his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Tax collectors and sinners is a term you see come up amongst the Pharisees many times in the New Testament and the Gospels. It was basically a catch-all phrase, sort of a category for the dregs of society. So tax collectors, people hated. You know, they're considered, in fact, the Talmud, a commentary on the Mosaic law, classified tax collectors as thieves. So they're considered thieves, liars, untrustworthy. And then you had prostitutes, you had, you know, criminals, sinners, they would be called and jesus and his disciples are over there eating with tax collectors and sinners the dregs of society so we might think of who are those dregs of society in our own minds today the worst in society the people creating the most problems for our nation or for us politically, economically, or just people ruining themselves and ruining other people. But we might look at and say, well, they're beyond the reach of God's grace. They're hopeless. They're lost. They'll never become a Christian. And why would Jesus go and eat with them? Why would he even do such in the first century, especially in Jewish society, to eat with somebody, to share a meal, was more than just getting fuel for the body. It was communal. In the Mediterranean world, it's still that way. In Italy, when you sit down to eat a meal with somebody, it's more than just food to keep you going. You're sharing your life with that person. And so they had ceremonial laws as well that made, in their minds, Jesus ceremonially impure. And so why would He do such a thing? Because Jesus was there to reach people. He didn't go and sit with them to be all-inclusive, but rather to call them to repentance. But the point we don't want to miss is that if we're honest, sometimes we think the same way that the Pharisees did, don't we? We see the stuff on the news. We see the stuff on Twitter. We get angry and we think they're the ones that are causing all the problems. And sometimes we think they're beyond the reach of God's grace. And I know, I do this myself when I was coming over here in the airport. I had to go through Heathrow, and I never liked going through Heathrow in London. It's chaotic. There's so many people from all over the place, and you're weaving your way through the crowds. And, you know, I do the same thing sometimes on the metro in Milan. It's just tons and tons of people. And there's times when you can kind of look at people and think, maybe he's elect. Her? Definitely not. as if they had a green E over their head for elect or a red R over their head for reprobate. We don't know. We have no idea. If we saw Levi, we'd say no way. If we saw Augustine before he was converted, no way. Saul of Tarsus, no way. How many stories? How many people? But no one is beyond the power of the gospel. We see sinners and sometimes we lack compassion and we forget that the gospel can change their hearts. Maybe we see our co-worker or we see a member of our family and we think he'll never be a believer. She'll never follow Christ. But we don't know that. We don't know the end of the story. And for any parent who's here tonight who has a wayward child, there is hope. You don't know the end of the story. But God does. And there's hope with God. Because the same one who walked up to Levi and said, follow me, is still going up to people today and saying, follow me. Just as he did with you. Because you're no more worthy than Levi. How did Jesus come up to you and say, follow me? He used his word. Sure, maybe it was your parents, maybe it was a Sunday school teacher, maybe it was a friend, maybe it was a stranger. But the power of the gospel is still at work in the lives of sinners. It still takes the power of the one who spoke the universe into existence to open the human heart to receive the gospel. It was no harder to open Levi's heart than it was to open yours. Because we're all sinners in need of salvation. And we need to remember too that sometimes that person that we think is just beyond the reach of God's grace just needs someone to go up to them and say, follow Jesus. Because we don't know what's going on in their life, what battles they're fighting, what story they have, what's happening exactly. Who knew what Levi was thinking as he was sitting there at that tax booth that day seeing Jesus and his disciples? Clearly he was thinking something and searching. Jesus, the Son of God, knew and went up to him and said, follow me. Sometimes we need to have more faith in the power of the gospel to do its work. The person who we might think is the last guy in the world to follow Jesus might be the next Augustine. We just don't know. No one's beyond the reach of God's grace. No one is beyond the power of the gospel to change their lives. And we don't want to be guilty of the same kind of self-righteousness that the Pharisees were that day when they grumbled against Jesus. Why are you eating with them? Why would you go hang out with them? Jesus says, I'm calling them to repentance. That brings us to the last thing, Jesus' response. Notice verses 31 and 32. Jesus answered them, those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If you're righteous, if you have loved the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength, all of your mind, and loved your neighbor as yourself, you don't need a gospel. You don't need a Savior. You're good to go. You go directly to heaven. Good people go to heaven. Bad people go to hell. That's a fact. But the Bible tells us that nobody's good. There is none good. No, not one. all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So Jesus is the only solution and the only answer for those who are sick, for those who are sinners. The problem with the Pharisees is they didn't see themselves as sick. They just thought everybody out there were the sick ones. Those bad people on the edge of society, they're the sick ones. When they didn't realize that they themselves needed a doctor, needed a physician, needed Jesus. The gospel is not for the healthy, it's for the sick. It's not for the righteous, it's for sinners. And the church is a community of sinners who have received the righteousness of someone else, Jesus. The one who earned righteousness for us and then paid the debt that we could not pay ourselves on the cross. And he brings us into his community. And what are we? We're a hospital. The church is a hospital. And thank God it is. In this life, it's a hospital of needy sinners. Repentant sinners. Justified sinners. but sinners. And thank God that we have a physician, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see yourself that way? Do you know that you're sick and you need a physician, the Lord Jesus? Do you want to see the power of God at work in your life? Well, there's good news for you this evening. Today, Jesus calls you to repent and to follow Him. Following Him means that He has the first priority not the tax booth so if there's some obstacle in your life from following jesus there's a tax booth you don't want to let go of you will not regret leaving it and following jesus levi didn't and neither will you for the gospel is the power of god unto salvation for all who believe and it will change our hearts day after day after day as we make our pilgrimage through this life until we finally see him at last and we receive our inheritance in the new heavens and new earth put your trust in him and follow him wholeheartedly and without fear in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for Jesus, the physician of souls. We thank you that you made sure that he came and got to us through the power of the gospel and the power of the Spirit. Thank you that that word and that call continues to go out day after day, week after week in this world. Oh Lord, we thank you for calling us out of darkness and into light. And we pray for any here this evening who need to abandon the tax booth and follow Jesus. Oh Lord, we pray that you would open their heart to receive the gospel and fill their heart with joy, even as you did with Levi. Lord, that they may have a foretaste of that great feast that we will enjoy in the new heavens and new earth, oh Lord. Cause your gospel to continue to go out into the world and to do its work here in this place and Escondido URC and Milan and in every place where your saints are gathered. Help us to be faithful also, Lord, to show compassion to others who are lost and to have boldness and to tell others about following Jesus. Oh, Lord, we thank you for all that you've given us in Him. For we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.