Fishing for Bottom Feeders

Sermon Transcript

I don’t know any Philadelphia residents for whom fishing is a main hobby. Where would you go, where would you keep all your stuff in these small houses and apartments in which we tend to live? I did grow up in the more rural central PA though, and I tried my hand at fishing a bit when I was a teenager. I wasn’t good at it. Most of the time I only caught a fish if it swallowed the hook, which is not how you’re supposed to catch a fish. When I did catch a fish, I was pretty thrilled no matter the fish. But I had other friends who were real fisherman, and they were good at it. So sometimes they’d go fishing, I’d ask how it went, and they’d say something like “Ah it was pretty bad; all we caught were carp.” Mind you I’ve never caught a carp in my life, and the average size of a carp is 1-2 feet, which to me sounds huge. I’d be glad to catch a carp! But they weren’t, because carp are bottom feeders; they’re dirty, undesirable fish.

 

As we return to the Gospel of Luke, we’re on the heels of a passage we looked at last week in which Jesus talked about fishing. He went out into the boat of some fishermen, and by his miraculous power, enabled them to catch a massive load of fish, even though they’d fished all night and caught nothing. But then he told them that from that day forward, they would be catching men. What Jesus meant by that is just as he provided a big catch of fish through their nets, so Jesus was going to save many people through their preaching. He was the ultimate fisher of men, and in this passage today we are going to see, perhaps surprisingly, that Jesus is a different kind of fisherman than the fishermen with whom I grew up. Though he’s already proven that he’s able to catch any fish he wants, far from avoiding the unclean bottom feeders, in this passage we are going to see Jesus intentionally moving toward them—first an unclean leper, then a paralyzed sinner, and finally, the lowest of all to his Jewish audience: a traitorous tax collector. These stories today show us that Jesus is willing and able to bring the outcasts back to God. He is willing and able to cleanse the unclean, he is willing and able to forgive sin, and he is willing and able to call the sinners.

 

He is willing and able to cleanse the unclean

 

Our reading today began in verse 12 where we read of a time that Jesus was in one of the cities in Galilee, and there came a man full of leprosy. This guy didn’t just have a bump on his arm that he covered with his sleeves; Luke tells us he was full of leprosy. Today there is a specific medical diagnosis called Hansen’s Disease that corresponds to leprosy proper, but in the Bible the word leprosy referred to a whole host of skin diseases, diseases like what we might call today psoriasis, severe eczema, or scabies. These are all detrimental to your physical health long-term and painful in various ways, but notice in this passage, when this man approaches Jesus, his concern is not so much with the pain he’s in or the effects to his health—he says, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Leprosy was a big deal because it rendered one unclean.

 

Jesus was born under the law that God gave his people Israel through Moses, the law Jesus references in verse 14 of our passage. The section of the law of Moses that deals most thoroughly with uncleanness is the third book of the Bible, the book of Leviticus, especially chapters 11-15. There are all sorts of things there that can render someone unclean: Most obviously, a moral offense against God like theft, but also bodily discharges like blood, contact with a dead body, and, more to the point, leprosy. In each of those examples, there is a correlation between uncleanness and death: The wage of sin is death, the law taught that the life of a thing was in its blood, so the loss of blood moves one closer to the realm of death, contact with a dead body obviously brings one into contact with death, and leprosy, the decay of the skin, is a tick toward death. It even looks like what happens to a corpse: The skin decays. And under the law, the closer one got to the realm of death, the farther they were required to distance themselves from the God of life. The God of Israel, the true God who made all things, is pure life, a pure fountain of life, a Father eternally begetting a Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. And the way he chose to teach his people his purity of life and their impurity unto death under the law of Moses was that those who got closer to the realm of death were declared unclean by the priests, and were then in various ways barred from God’s presence.

 

We have to dig into this a bit to understand this passage because while the cleanliness laws and their application to lepers was second nature to the Jews in Galilee of Jesus’ day, they’re very foreign to us. God is completely present everywhere at all times; we call this his omnipresence. But God also made his presence known in a unique way to Israel under the law, such that he could be said to dwell among them, especially in the tabernacle, which was a tent, and then later in the temple. That dwelling place for God was literally geographically central to Israel when God gave them their land allotments. So you can picture the nation of Israel living together in a kind of circle, and at the center of that circle dwells God himself. Only one man, the high priest, was allowed to enter the holiest of holy places, where God revealed his presence most fully, and he but once a year, and only after an elaborate ritual. Other priests were allowed to go in to the tent, but not the most holy part of it, while ordinary Israelites were permitted to come up to the entrance of the tent to offer their sacrifices on the altar outside the tent.

 

But here’s the big cost of being declared unclean: You couldn’t even come that close. For ordinary forms of uncleanness like touching a dead body or bodily fluid discharges, you couldn’t come offer a sacrifice, and you couldn’t participate in Israel’s religious festivals, like the Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Day of Atonement. For leprosy, it was even worse. A leper wasn’t just barred from the tabernacle; a leper was barred from the whole Israelite camp. You couldn’t even sleep in your tent anymore. You had to go out into the wilderness. Not only that, but where other milder forms of uncleanness only lasted one day or at most one week, the unclean status of leprosy continued as long as the disease continued. And, on top of that, you had to yell “Unclean! Unclean!” anytime you saw someone getting close to you, so as to protect them from contracting the uncleanness themselves (Lev 13:44-45).

 

No doubt the social dimension of this was painful—you were cut off from your family and friends. No doubt the incessant itching and pain of a skin disorder was painful. No doubt having to yell “Unclean! Unclean!” every time someone got close to you didn’t do wonders for your mental health. But the big deal of uncleanness, the big deal of leprosy, was that it meant you were removed from the presence of God, the one in whom there is fullness of life, the one for whom your soul was made. Lepers weren’t just social outcasts; they were theological outcasts—cast out from the presence of God. And this man Jesus met on this day in one of the cities was full of leprosy.

 

And if you were full of leprosy, you didn’t have any real hope for restoration to the presence of God unless the leprosy left you, which you couldn’t control. The priest couldn’t help you in that department. The priest could inspect you and declare you clean, but the priest didn’t have the ability to cleanse you. So on this day, this man, who was still full of leprosy, didn’t go to one of the priests. Instead, he went to Jesus, fell on his face, and begged Jesus, saying: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Now think about that statement. You can go read the whole book of Leviticus where leprosy is addressed in detail and tell me this: Do you ever find any human who is able to make a leper clean? I’ll just tell you now the answer is no. God occasionally cleanses people of their leprosy in the Bible, but now this man comes to Jesus and says, “You can make me clean.” As verse 17 of our passage says, the power of the Lord was with him to heal. The Spirit of the Lord descended and remained upon him at his baptism (Luke 3:22), he returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit after his temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:14), and he is himself the divine son of God, one in being with the Father. This leper was right: Though no one else is, Jesus is able to make him clean.

 

But is he willing? That’s the question to which the leper doesn’t know the answer. Notice he says, “If you will, you can make me clean.” He’s not approaching Jesus with any hint of presumption or entitlement. He’s falling on his face and begging Jesus. There’s no, “Yes I know I’m a leper but I didn’t choose leprosy, and I really am trying to do the right thing.” There’s no list of the leper’s qualifications at all. He leaves it entirely to the will of Jesus, as if to say, “I know I have no right to it, I know I don’t deserve it, but if you were to choose to, if you just wanted to, I know you can make me clean.” The leper here is a picture for us of what true faith in Jesus is like: There is no doubting his ability to cleanse, but there is a recognition that he doesn’t owe us cleansing. And Jesus’ response is an assurance to all who come to him with such faith. In verse 13 we read that Jesus said, “I will; be clean” and immediately Luke tells us the leprosy left him.

 

Oh Jesus is a willing savior. He saves no one begrudgingly—he saves because he wants to. It’s not like God the Father is twisting his arm or like any of us has the ability to twist his arm. If he’s saved you, it’s because he wanted to. And if you’re here today and you are not a Christian, I want you to know he is willing to save you. No one will spend eternity in hell because when they tried to come to Jesus, they found him unwilling.

 

Some may doubt Jesus’ willingness to cleanse them because of an awareness of their sin, but others may doubt Jesus’ willingness to cleanse them because of their “outcast” status. Perhaps you’re so used to being cast out by your peers, your parents, or potential employers that you’ve given up hope that anyone would actually want to be close to you. But notice here how Jesus cleansed the leper. He didn’t just say, “I will; be clean.” Verse 13 tells us specifically that Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper. If there’s one thing you don’t do with a leper, it’s move toward them and touch them. In fact, under the law, if you touch an unclean person, you become unclean yourself! But Jesus can do things no one else can, because Jesus is the one being no one else is. So Jesus stretches out his hand, he draws near, to the leper, and far from harming the leper or harming himself, far from the leper’s touch making him unclean, Jesus is so amazing that from his touch the leper is cleansed! He moved toward the outcast for no other reason than that he wanted to, and he showed us here that to be near to him is to be in the safest possible place, however unclean you may feel.

 

You ever feel like you have to clean yourself up before you come to God? That’s impossible. Jesus is God, coming to us, those who were cast out from the presence of God, to clean us up, so that we could be restored to the presence of God. And so after healing the man, he tells him in verse 14 to go, show himself to the priest, and offer the appointed sacrifice for a proof to them. What this act does is it enables the leper to be restored to the community of Israel, and thus to participate in drawing near to God with them once again. By the end of verse 13 he was already healed of his leprosy by Jesus, but remember that the issue wasn’t really healing from disease like you want Jesus to heal your cold. The issue was distance from the presence of God, and so here Jesus draws near, bringing the presence of God to him, and then sends him to the priest, so that his access to the presence of God might be restored into the future.

 

Now the good news for us today is that we are no longer under the law of Moses. When Jesus offered himself on the cross, he offered the sacrifice to end all other sacrifices, and purchased for his people a cleansing to end all other cleansing rituals. Today, then, a skin disease really is just a skin disease; it doesn’t make you unclean or restrict in any way your access to the presence of God. A bodily discharge is just a bodily discharge; it may make your clothes unclean, but it cannot make you unclean in the presence of God or restrict in any way your access to his presence. Even being sinned against in heinous ways may and ordinarily does leave you feeling unclean in ways I would not wish to minimize; but being sinned against cannot make you unclean in the presence of God or restrict in any way your access to his presence. Under the New Covenant Jesus inaugurated by his blood, the only thing that renders us unclean in God’s sight and restricts our access to God’s presence is our own sin. So let’s look next at how Jesus is also willing and able to forgive sin.

 

He is willing and able to forgive sin

 

Our next story takes place, Luke tells us in verse 17, on one of those days when Jesus was teaching. At this point especially after healing the leper, word is getting around about Jesus more and more, such that now even the Pharisees and teachers of the law are coming to listen, some who came even from as far as Jerusalem, a multiple-day-journey away. This is the first time in Luke that the Pharisees show up, and they are key characters in the book, so let me just give a brief introduction to them. You know how today among Christians we have Baptists and Lutherans and Anglicans and so on? Well kinda like that, among the Jews of that day you had these different traditions within Judaism; you could call them sects or parties as well. The pharisees were one such sect that were known for their strict adherence especially to those elements of the law that dealt with things like cleanliness. In fact, they professed such a vigorous concern for purity that they also built up a thick tradition in addition to the scriptures to ensure maximal purity. So where God had instituted certain cleansing rituals to deal with uncleanness, the pharisees added even more cleansing rituals, for example. While they were a minority in Judaism, they held significant positions of influence.

 

So if someone else is starting to grow in influence, they want to come check it out. On this day they come with some other teachers of the law, and as the crowd is getting large around Jesus and he’s teaching in a house, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed. If you’ve ever been in a really tight crowd, you can imagine the difficulty of getting through it with a grown human on a bed that a bunch of guys are carrying. But these men were persistent, and they figured out a way to carry that bed up the outside of the house, get on to the roof, and then lower him down to Jesus through the roof. Picture more like a thatched roof made with hardened mud or clay and other materials that you won’t need a power tool to cut through or much effort to repair, but suffice it to say this is a significant undertaking on their part to get this guy to Jesus.

 

And amazingly, when Jesus saw their faith, verse 20 tells us, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven.” Notice again the willingness of Jesus. There’s no back-and-forth with these guys; as soon as the guy gets in front of Jesus and Jesus sees their faith, Jesus forgives the man’s sins. It’s like mercy is already bubbling up within Jesus, and all it takes is to get some faith in front of him for it to flow out. Luke doesn’t even mention the paralyzed man’s faith, though it’s safe to assume he wasn’t on the bed begging them not to take him to Jesus. He was paralyzed, not comatose. The clear implication is that he’s on board with this and united with the friends in their faith. Nonetheless, it did require faith from those friends that Jesus really was able to heal their friend, a faith that was strong enough to persevere through difficulties and setbacks to get their friend in front of Jesus.

 

Interestingly, though, when they get to Jesus, Jesus doesn’t begin by saying, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” He starts with, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” Did the paralytic and his friends go to all that trouble to get the man in front of Jesus so his sins could be forgiven? Who knows? But we do see that Jesus thought that was the first order of business. What is paralysis, after all, but a consequence of sin? I don’t mean that every case of paralysis is God’s punishment for some specific sin that person or their parents committed; that’s possible, but Jesus tells us elsewhere not to assume that (John 9:2-3). I mean that in general, the reason paralysis is in the world is because sin is in the world. Paralysis, like the uncleanness we talked about earlier, is downstream of death, and death was the curse God threatened on human disobedience, a disobedience we then willingly walked in, and continue to walk in up to this very hour. Paralysis and even leprosy are like the pollution of sin, but sin itself is still the root problem, and here Jesus shows us that he is willing and able to deal with the root.

 

If you are here today exploring faith in Jesus you may be doing so for a whole host of reasons: A better marriage, the hope of getting married, better parenting, better mental health. Those are all good things that Jesus is willing and able to do something about, but I also want you to know that if you really want to get to know Jesus, the first priority he is going to have for you is dealing with your sin. We all are guilty of sin in God’s sight and inclined away from what is good, and while we are often more aware of the pollution that causes, Jesus isn’t going to cleanse us of the pollution while leaving the root cause unaddressed. As Jesus starts here with the forgiveness of sins, so a relationship with him must begin with a receiving of him for the forgiveness of sin, not just for the many other blessings he brings, and he shows here that he is willing to grant that forgiveness to those who come to him by faith.

 

But is he really able? Now that the scribes and pharisees are around, they start to question that in verse 21: “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Where in the previous story the question was, “Is he willing?” in this story the question is, “Is he able?” After all, who can forgive sins but God alone? Well verse 22 tells us Jesus perceived their thoughts, and though he kinda rebukes them for them, he implicitly acknowledges that it is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven” than it is to say, “Rise and walk.” Anyone can go up to someone else and say, “Your sins are forgiven,” and we have no way of verifying whether that person’s sins are then actually forgiven in God’s sight. But Jesus says in order that they may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sin, he tells the man who was paralyzed to rise, take up his bed, and walk.

 

Before we look at the result of that, let’s just double click on this title, “Son of man,” because it’s also the first time it’s occurred in Luke, and it’s going to occur another 24 times after this in Luke. It’s the way Jesus especially prefers to refer to himself. Where’s Jesus getting this title? He’s getting it from another book of the Old Testament, Daniel, in the 7^th chapter. In that chapter of Daniel, Daniel saw a vision of the Lord, who there was called the Ancient of Days, and in verses 13-14 here’s what it says happened: “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” Notice there what’s happening to this one like a son of man: He’s appearing before the Lord, the ancient of days, and being given “dominion and glory and a kingdom” which the text then goes on to say is “an everlasting dominion.” Remember what the angel said to Mary back in chapter 1 about the child to be born to her, Jesus? “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33). So here Jesus connects that to Daniel’s vision of this son of man who receives an everlasting kingdom, he says he is that son of man, and that with that dominion and glory and kingdom that the Lord has given the son of man, the Lord has given the son of man the authority on earth to forgive sins.

 

Of course, the scribes and pharisees are right that God alone can forgive sins, and so it is only fitting that the son of man also be himself truly God, but Jesus doesn’t let the cat of his divine nature all the way out of the bag here. Instead, he reveals another aspect of his glory: Not only is he truly God, but he is the son of man, to whom authority has been given not only to rule over a kingdom, but to forgive sin. And he proves it by saying to the man, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” Sure enough, in verse 25 we read that the word of Christ’s power once again had its effect immediately, and the man rose, took up his bed, and went home, glorifying God. There’s the proof: The visible sign of healing the paralyzed man once again attested to the truth of the spoken word: “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” Jesus is willing and able to forgive sin.

 

The friends of this paralyzed man believed that enough to go to great lengths to get him to Jesus; do you believe that enough to bring your friends to Jesus? Jesus is in heaven now, so we can’t carry our friends to him by moving them through space. How then do we bring friends to Jesus? Three basic ways: prayer, proclamation, and church. First, we should persist in prayer for those we want to see Jesus save. Perhaps the greatest theologian in the history of the Christian church, Augustine, was not converted and baptized until he was 32. But his mother was a believer in Jesus, who famously persisted in prayer for him for years prior to his conversion. She would often go to her pastor and plead for his prayers for Augustine, so much so that at one point the pastor said, “Go away from me: as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.” And so it was that the son of those tears did not perish. Parents, let’s pray like that for our kids’ salvation. If you have grown children even who aren’t walking with the Lord, will you persist in praying for their salvation?

 

The second way we bring others to Jesus is through proclamation: We proclaim the gospel, the word of Christ to them. We tell them that they were made by a good God who they have sinned against, but who is so gracious as to offer them a way of forgiveness through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, such that now any who turn from their sins and believe in him are promised forgiveness of their sins, and we warn them that there is no other way for their sins to be forgiven. Not only does the son of man have authority on earth to forgive sins, but only the son of man has the ultimate authority to forgive sin.

 

And the third way we bring others to Jesus is through the church, which the Bible calls “the body of Christ” (Eph 1:22-23). Jesus’ physical body is in heaven, but if you want to bring people to Jesus, what better place to bring them than to his body on earth, the church? When you bring friends to a church gathering like this one, not only will you give them a very clear exposure to the proclamation of the gospel through the sermon, but you’ll introduce them to the people that gospel has created and united, and you’ll expose them to the worship it creates. Prayer, proclamation, and church—three ways we can bring friends to Jesus.

 

But what if you’re the one paralyzed on the bed? Looking around the room today, I don’t see any physical paralytics, but you may come to points in your Christian life where you feel spiritually paralyzed. You’re downcast, God feels distant, sin looks enticing, and the world seems like a warm blanket. In those moments, where do you turn? Might I commend to you turning to your church family? Like, what if you just called another church member when you’re in those times, told them what you’re feeling, and asked them to pray for you? I remember a time a year or 2 ago when I was feeling spiritually paralyzed, and I called Dave Hackley, a brother who was a member here at the time who’s now off getting more training to preach in Chicago, and I did this with him. I called him, told him what I was feeling, and asked him to pray for me. He asked me a few questions, then he prayed for me. The whole phone call took about 20 minutes, but man, the Lord might have sustained me for the next 20 days off that phone call. And if you hear me say that and you think, “I don’t even know who in this church I’d call if I got spiritually paralyzed,” then today is the day to start developing those kinds of relationships in this church. Don’t bank on calling your family back home or a friend from some past season of life—“Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away” scripture tells us (Prov 27:10). Build those kinds of relationships in the body of Christ to which you committed, so that when you are paralyzed, you have friends who will carry you to Jesus.

 

Jesus is willing and able to forgive sin, and last we’ll see that he is willing and able to call the sinners.

 

He is willing and able to call the sinners

 

After this verse 27 tells us that Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. This is not the first time in Luke’s Gospel that tax collectors show up; if you were with us back in chapter 3 you may recall that they were among the crowds that came to be baptized by John, the man God sent before Jesus to prepare the way for him. John had told those crowds to bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and when the tax collectors asked John what that would look like for them, he said, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do” (Luke 3:13). John had to tell them that because it was normal for tax collectors to collect more than they were authorized to collect. The Roman Empire didn’t have an IRS, so they’d employ local tax collectors who would collect the Roman tax, and then some on top to cover their own salary. However, in the absence of any real accountability, it was common for tax collectors to collect even more than they were authorized to collect in order to line their own pockets.

 

As a result of this system, tax collectors could get very wealthy, tax collectors were often engaged in the sin of theft, and tax collectors were widely hated by the Jews. They were Uncle Toms to the Jews, getting rich off the oppressive Roman Empire. Though the job itself wasn’t inherently sinful (John the Baptist didn’t tell them they had to quit to repent), those who did it found easy opportunities to sin, often did, and were viewed as among the most sinful people in the society. It’s hard to find exact parallels to this today, but we might think of the wealthy who can pay a team of accountants to find creative tax loopholes that while technically legal lead to them bearing very little of the nation’s tax burden compared to their income. Maybe you’d think of a tow-truck company that just waits by certain parking spots and if you so much as park there to drop off your groceries, they’re ready to tow you. I can’t help but think of the recent protests that interrupted a service of Cities Church, by all appearances a faithful church in St. Paul, Minnesota, because one of their elders was an ICE agent. There’s a job that it’s not sinful to hold, but that does at least provide the temptation to sin, and that is currently hated by about half the country.

 

But rather than try to find an exact modern parallel, just recognize that tax collectors were generally wicked, and were certainly viewed that way. But Jesus goes to him, while he’s sitting at his tax booth, and says, “Follow me.” I told you Jesus was a willing savior, right? Most people today like that when he’s going to pitiable characters like a leper and a paralytic, but what about when he goes to the ICE agent, the tow-truck guy, the rich tax evader, or, in this case, the rich tax collector? What about when he goes to whoever you don’t have any natural feelings of pity toward? Now how do you like his willingness to save? He shows us here that he is willing not only to forgive sin, but to call the worst of sinners to himself, that he might bring them back to God.

 

And Levi’s response shows us that he is also able. We read in verse 28 that after hearing these two words, “Follow me,” which may even be only one word in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, Levi left everything, rose, and followed him. Remember that in chapter 4 Jesus called demons to come out of people, and they came out. He rebuked a fever, and it left the woman who had it. In our passage today he said “be clean” and a leper was cleansed. He said, “pick up your bed and go home” to a paralytic, and he picked up his bed, and went home. Now he speaks to a tax collector and says, “Follow me,” and the tax collector leaves everything, rises, and follows him. In theology we call this the “effectual call,” which is distinguished from the “general call.” The “general call” refers to the call we make every time we preach the gospel, calling people to repent and believe the gospel, a call that often does not lead to people leaving everything, rising, and following Jesus. But the effectual call happens through the general call, when Jesus himself exercises the power of his word to produce the called for response. If the general call was all there was, we could hear it a million times, but we are so hardened in our sin that we’d say no every time. None of us by nature wants to follow Jesus. We may want to use Jesus, we may like certain aspects of things he said, but none of us by nature want to follow him because following someone means giving up your authority over your own life, and that’s something no sinner naturally wants to do. But Jesus is willing and able not only to forgive sin, but to change sinners, so that we do then willingly and freely leave everything and follow him.

 

That’s what Levi did, and upon doing so he made Jesus a great feast in his house, with a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with him. Much like the paralytic glorified God when he was forgiven and freed from his paralysis, much like amazement seized the crowds that day and they glorified God, so here Levi is so happy to be following Jesus that he throws a party and invites his friends. Maybe you invite a friend to church, but they don’t come. Here’s another option: You can have a party, or just have dinner, and invite people from your church and unbelieving people together to meet one another. Levi was already going to eat, but this time he invited Jesus and his tax collector buddies to eat with him. It sounds like he had a big house; I know many of you don’t, so it might not look like a great feast, but you can probably fit at least one church friend and one unbelieving friend in your apartment, right? Especially if you’re more recently converted, one of the first things a new convert who is truly converted will have a concern to do is to introduce their unbelieving friends to Jesus. As J.C. Ryle writes, “Converted souls desire to promote the conversion of others…It may be safely asserted that there is no grace in the man who cares nothing about the salvation of his fellow-men.”

 

Converted souls desire to promote the conversion of others, but the pharisees and scribes weren’t converted. They grumble and ask, not Jesus, but Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” which suggests to us that Jesus brought his disciples with him to this meal. Remember, what was the concern of the pharisees? Cleanliness. And if you want to stay clean, what do you do? You stay away from lepers and tax collectors and sinners. And what is Jesus doing? He’s intentionally moving toward them. He’s touching them and calling them to follow him and now he’s even eating and drinking with them! Eating and drinking in the ancient world especially implied close association; why is Jesus, this man who claims to be the very son of man, the one appointed by God to an everlasting dominion, why is Jesus eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?

 

Jesus answers: “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.” Ah, now we see why he’s touching lepers and eating with tax collectors and sinners: He’s come as a physician, not a judge. I’ve never gone anywhere near a body-building competition, but I imagine there are judges, and what is the judge in such a competition looking for? They are looking for maximal health, or ok maybe you don’t think body building is truly healthy, but they’re looking for maximal performance at least. But what are doctors looking for? Doctors are looking for the sick; if someone’s in perfect health, the doctor has no work to do on them. Hospitals don’t look like body building competitions. So Jesus is saying he did not come to crown the righteous; he came to call the sinners to repentance. He’s a savior, and only sinners need a savior.

 

Sinners are not righteous, so sinners need a righteousness that is not their own if they are to be accounted righteous in God’s sight. Jesus came to provide that righteousness through his life of perfect obedience. Sinners are not righteous, so sinners need someone to pay for their sins if they are to be forgiven of their sins. Jesus came to pay for their sins when he was paralyzed in place on a cross, and he suffered the penalty they deserved, the ultimate uncleanness: Death itself, and burial in the realm of the dead. Sinners are not righteous, so sinners need someone to win eternal life for them if they are ever to receive it. Jesus came to do that when he rose from the dead and ascended to the presence of God. Sinners are not righteous, so they need someone to effectually call them, give them a new heart, and make them willing to believe. Jesus has done that and continues to do that today every time someone hears this call, leaves everything, and follows him.

 

As the late Pastor Tim Keller pointed out, though, there are also two ways to resist the general call to repent and follow him that Jesus issues to all of us today, two ways that are similar to the two ways to avoid the doctor. I’m sure even you doctors and med students know that some people really don’t like going to the doctor. One way you can avoid the doctor is to just live as though there are no physical laws, no way your body is supposed to work, no healthy or unhealthy foods. Eat what you want, don’t exercise, and when you feel sick, just find something that makes you feel better. The spiritual parallel to that would be the person who lives as though there is no law of God, no such thing as sin, and so just does whatever they want. We might call them an immoral or irreligious person, a “sinner” even. Jesus shows us here that is willing and able to call such people, and the call he makes to them is to repent. Did you catch that in verse 32? “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” You cannot have Jesus without confessing yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, taking his side against your sin, and resolving to fight it by the power of his Spirit. That’s repentance, and the irreligious or immoral avoid the doctor by refusing to repent.

 

But the other way to avoid the doctor is to get fanatical about your diet, your exercise, your sleep, your stress levels, your sunlight exposure, your supplement regimen, and so on. That way you’ll be so healthy you don’t need a doctor, because, after all, as Jesus said, those who are well have no need of a physician. The spiritual parallel here would be the hyper-religious individual, the pharisee, who gets all the rituals spot on, who adds even more for extra measure, who, in the words of a pharisee later in the Gospel of Luke, “fasts twice a week, and gives tithes of all he gets” (Luke 18:12). Such a person trusts in himself that he is righteous, and treats others with contempt (Luke 18:9), and that’s who Jesus is talking about when he says he did not come to call the righteous. He’s not saying there are people who actually can be righteous without him; he’s just recognizing that there are many, like the pharisees and scribes of his day, or like many today on the right who look with contempt on the LGBT community, or many on the left who look with contempt on the MAGA community, who trust in themselves that they are righteous, and who therefore don’t think they need a savior, and who therefore also refuse to repent. Brothers and sisters, however mature you grow in Christ, don’t get to thinking that you have any righteousness of your own. Jesus is willing and able to call the sinners, not those who trust in themselves, that they are righteous.

 

But if you are a sinner and you know it, you are in the right place. We should always be afraid to sin, but we should never be afraid to repent, because Jesus did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. We are all outcasts from God by nature, but Jesus is willing and able to bring the outcasts back to God. He’s willing and able to cleanse the unclean, he’s willing and able to forgive sin, and he’s willing and able to call sinners. Come, fall on your face before him, beg him for cleansing, leave everything, and follow him. However unclean you are, however sinful you are, you will find him to be both willing, and able, to bring you back to God.