Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Okay, let's grab our seats. Have you got your Bibles?
[00:00:09] Let me kind of get you to do a bit of guesswork this morning. Where do you think we're turning to in the Bible this morning? Matthew. Matthew. Who said Matthew?
[00:00:22] We're turning to the Book of. So you're already there, aren't you?
[00:00:27] Yeah, kind of, sort of. Luke is in the New Testament.
[00:00:34] Just going to put some notes up there.
[00:00:37] Right. It's good to see you got a bit to get through this morning. I want to keep to time, so I've had some apples.
[00:00:44] I've been sat by Lesley having apples, and when I eat apples, something starts to happen.
[00:00:53] So if I do let out a little, how can I be polite here?
[00:00:59] It regurgitates. I'm going to try not to. Liv, don't put that on the recording, will you? When it goes out on Spotify.
[00:01:06] Let's not do that. All right, we're in Luke 5. And I'm going to read this morning from Luke 5. It's only a small passage, if you don't know. We have been going through. We felt the Lord called us to the book of Luke 20:25. And the whole series is called the Fullness of Christ. I believe in these days God wants us to understand exactly who Jesus, the personhood of Jesus is so that we can love him more fully. All right. And I believe that Jesus is revealing himself not just amongst our nation, but the nations of the world. And so we're going to read from Luke and verse 27, Luke 5. 27.
[00:01:48] Last week, remember, we had the paralyzed crippled man and then the calling of the disciples and the leprosy. So here we go. Verse 27. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his taxed tax booth. Levi was also known as Matthew.
[00:02:10] Follow me, Jesus said to him. And Levi got up and left everything and followed him, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees, everyone say Pharisees, and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples. You often find that people who want to complain never go straight to the source.
[00:02:48] They go via somebody else.
[00:02:52] And the Pharisees decided that they were going to complain about Jesus, but not to his face. They were going to go to the disciples.
[00:02:58] Of course, we would never do that, would we?
[00:03:03] All right.
[00:03:04] Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
[00:03:09] And then Jesus answered them. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
[00:03:21] I love this little snippet of scripture. Here we meet tax collectors. I'll explain a little bit about tax collectors in a moment. We meet the Pharisees who I want to talk about as well. The Pharisees and the tax collectors. Let me just quickly talk about the tax collectors.
[00:03:40] Levi was a tax collector. He would basically collect taxes on behalf of the Romans in the area. All right, so he would take money from people, we know that. But this is what tax collectors did. They would go and take a little bit more. So they would add and put on to the taxes. They'd put them up. And so the people had to then give more money. And the people really knew this. And so the tax collectors would become very, very wealthy people because they were really stealing money that wasn't theirs, but they would profit from it. And in this passage, Jesus comes along and is head to head with Levi and, and he says, levi, I am calling you into discipleship.
[00:04:24] I love that. Can you remember the time when you were first called into discipleship to follow Jesus? And so Levi is called into discipleship. We have seen over the last kind of couple of months, Jesus meets so many physical needs, and he does, he's the healer. But in this passage, we are now seeing Jesus meeting deep spiritual needs.
[00:04:50] Every single person on the planet has a deep spiritual need. When Jesus said, I've not come to call the righteous or the healthy, but I've come to call the sick, what he was meaning is that if you think you're healthy and righteous and you're okay, well, I've not come for you. I've come for the people who, who say, I am in need of a savior. I am spiritually dead. There is something more and I know something is missing. And when Levi said and followed Jesus and gave him this wonderful banquet, he was basically saying, I've got everything, yet I've got nothing until I've got Jesus. I need him.
[00:05:38] And so Jesus says, I have come for those that are sick. I've comfort those who are spiritually dead who know that they need a savior. And this is really interesting because I have called them to repentance. I'm going to come back to that a little bit later.
[00:05:58] Two thousand years ago, Jesus divided the room a bit like this.
[00:06:02] You've got all the gorgeous people over here, and you've got the gorgeous people over here. You wouldn't know what I was going to say then, didn't you? But 2,000 years ago, Jesus divided the room. He divided people. There was conflict wherever Jesus went.
[00:06:21] Today, Jesus still divides the room.
[00:06:26] And often that division will happen in church communities, society. It will, and it often starts. The conflict often starts with the interpretation of Scripture.
[00:06:42] That's why we desperately, desperately need people who are filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:06:48] Desperately. We were just worshipping down here and I And my prayer over the last couple of weeks is like, lord, we need a. We need a baptism of your Holy Spirit across our region. That's right.
[00:06:59] Because all we would have without the Holy Spirit, we would not have the deep understanding of what the word of God means and is. Because the word of God is living and active. The word of God is Jesus Christ, the fullness of Christ. And so Jesus divides the room and he divides the room mainly over interpretation of Scripture. Can we do this? Can we not? Can we do that? Can we go there?
[00:07:30] Surely there's grace. Surely I can carry on all of these questions. And this growing conflict and tension in Jesus day was mainly in a group called the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law. And they were a religious sect, roughly about 4 or 5,000 of them when Jesus was alive. So you can imagine the hassle they caused Jesus. And we'll look at them in a moment.
[00:07:56] It's important that we know, and I'm going to do a bigger context today. It's important that we know who the enemies of God are, not just 2,000 years ago, but today.
[00:08:08] Because the enemies of God. And if you dive into the New Testament, the Apostle Paul in Timothy points out exactly who the enemies are. And so often the enemies of God are those who look like sheep and they talk like sheep and they may even look like sheep.
[00:08:30] But inwardly they are rebellious.
[00:08:34] Inwardly, they are divisive. Inwardly, they are unteachable.
[00:08:41] Inwardly, they love themselves.
[00:08:45] They're not lovers of God.
[00:08:49] Paul was saying in Timothy, he said, so many deserted me on the journey. Demas. He deserted me all over Scripture, not fully understanding the living word. Jesus and Paul said there was dangers and there will be dangers of division even in the last days.
[00:09:11] And. And so often we find it in church. Let me go quickly because I'm going to. Who are the Pharisees? Okay. The Pharisees we know were this religious sect. The word Pharisee means separated one. Right? They would separate themselves from common people like you and I. And the reason they separated themselves because they felt they had a superior knowledge. And not only did they feel they had this superior knowledge of the law, and that's the law of Moses, which we'll come to in a moment. They felt that they were superior because they also observed the law. Everyone say the law, right? But they didn't observe the law. They gave the impression that they observed the law.
[00:09:56] God help us if we go through life as Christians just giving the impression that we love Jesus when we don't. Today is a good day to check our hearts.
[00:10:08] Tomorrow will be a good day to check your heart and the next day.
[00:10:14] And so they isolated themselves because they thought they were so superior.
[00:10:20] They held this belief. And this is important. We know this. Sorry, I'm having to do the bit of the background stuff, because as we go through Luke, it will make sense. As we go through it. They carried this belief. And if you read the history of your Bibles, the Old Testament, God's people were exiled so many times. In other words, they were taken into captivity. They were then placed in a pagan, godless nation and had to live there sometimes for 60 years, 70 years. And you read the Book of Daniel. Isn't it a great example?
[00:10:53] All right. And the Pharisees believe that because this happens so often to God's people, by the time they all came back to Jerusalem, to Israel, they were so lost spiritually. And so the Pharisees came along and they said, I know what we need to do to get people to come back to God.
[00:11:13] We need to give them strict laws.
[00:11:17] If they will follow these strict laws, it's going to bring them back to God.
[00:11:24] And that's what they did. And of course, the Pharisees then had scribes who would then add to these laws and make it completely impossible for people to follow.
[00:11:41] Pharisees themselves could not even follow the law.
[00:11:47] It was impossible. In fact, Jesus, if you turn really quickly, I haven't got it up on screen, but if you turn really quickly to Matthew, I think this is really, really interesting. Matthew 23, the title is called A warning against Hypocrisy. But Matthew 23:27, this is what Jesus says about the Pharisees. He says, woe to you, teachers of the law of Pharisees, you hypocrites, you are like whitewashed tombs.
[00:12:28] Imagine being called a whitewashed tomb.
[00:12:34] He says, you look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside you are full of bones of dead and evil, everything unclean.
[00:12:45] In the same way, on the outside, your appearance to the people, you appear to the people as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy. And Wickedness, Woe to you. A whitewashed tomb.
[00:12:59] Outwardly, they sounded and looked so holy and pure and as if they were pleasing to God, but inwardly they were a stench. They were spiritually dead and lost. 1 Samuel 16 has got to be one of my favourite verses. It says, the Lord doesn't look at the things that people look at.
[00:13:16] Aren't you pleased about that?
[00:13:20] Because, let's be honest, some of us at some point have judged somebody and then when we found out later on what that person did and the kindness they showed and all this kind of stuff, it's like, oh, I don't feel so great about myself now. I got that one wrong.
[00:13:37] Says the Lord, doesn't look at the things the people look at.
[00:13:42] It says people look at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Every single time.
[00:13:50] Every single time. I want to take us back to a big picture. I haven't got long this morning and I won't be long.
[00:13:57] Big picture, the Bible.
[00:14:05] I love the word of God. I love the Bible. The Bible is all about covenants, agreements, all right? God and his people. At the start of time, it was God and his people. We picture it God and his people. This is how much God loves people. God and his people.
[00:14:25] At the end of time, because this is where the rapture is going to take place, is God and his people.
[00:14:34] Start of time, you've got God and his people. At the end of time, you've got God and his people.
[00:14:43] And from start to finish, God's desire is for you and me.
[00:14:49] His desire is for you and me.
[00:14:52] But right through Scripture, there are covenants and agreements that God makes with his people, right? And each agreement contains a promise and a demand from both parties.
[00:15:05] So God would promise to do something if the people would be faithful to him, would obey him. The first covenant, the first agreement, Adam and Eve in Genesis, they completely messed that one up.
[00:15:25] God promised them. You know, the first covenant made was supposed to be the only covenant. It was supposed to be permanent.
[00:15:33] God and his people, they would adore him and love him forever, and he would take care of them.
[00:15:39] But we know that freedom, the freedom that Adam and Eve had brought sin into the world. They decided to break that agreement and listen to the lie rather than God. So that was the first covenant that was broken. Then God renews the covenant with Noah. We know that God floods the earth and then you've got Noah coming along, and God says, here is a righteous man.
[00:16:09] And God renews this covenant with Noah. But the trouble is Noah's descendants Also mess up.
[00:16:18] Then we come to Abraham. I'm making a very long story, very short. Then we come to Abraham, and this is the turning point with this covenant with Abraham. This time, God says, I am making a covenant that is going to be everlasting through all generations, and that includes you and I. And that's the good news. And this is the promise of a Messiah, a savior coming. Galatians 3. I love how the old and the new connect with each other. Galatians 3 says, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So this new covenant with Abraham and everlasting for the generations to come.
[00:17:00] But 430 years later, God's people are taken into slavery.
[00:17:09] And we know the story. You see Moses and the Israelites in Egypt.
[00:17:14] God brings them out of slavery and now gives them new terms for a covenant. This is what he says. He says, if you will follow me with all your heart, if you'll obey me, if you will trust me, I will fight your battles for you.
[00:17:32] And so when the Israelites obeyed God, they won. And they were able to go through the land peacefully, conquer countries. But when they failed God, when they were faithless, when they doubted him, when they were disobedient, God just left them to their enemies.
[00:18:02] That's when the Ten Commandments came in.
[00:18:05] The law was not in the world before the Ten Commandments.
[00:18:10] The law came at that point in history because evil was so bad, there was wickedness across the face of the earth.
[00:18:22] And so God said, okay, I've got this covenant with you. That's going to be an everlasting covenant. But what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you my commandments, my laws to keep you, if you like, to protect you, to help. You know, okay, that these are my standards.
[00:18:41] So God gave the Ten Commandments.
[00:18:45] But guess what?
[00:18:48] Oh, no, here we go again. People failed to follow the Ten Commandments, God's laws. They failed. They rejected God. All right? And then this is where it gets exciting. And. And you can smile at me. And then we've talked about kings, haven't we, today? And thrones and kingdoms. But then David comes along.
[00:19:07] And David.
[00:19:09] With David, God once again renews his agreement and covenant with God's people, right? And we see a king and a throne. We see the temple, we see sacrifices. Stay with me because it will all make sense in a moment. We see sacrifices of lamb where the high priest would have to go in and sacrifice lambs. And we'd see a King on a throne. And all of this, all pointing to the final covenant, Jesus Christ, the final covenant. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law.
[00:19:46] He's the fulfillment of it. And he calls people like he called Levi.
[00:19:53] He calls people to repent from their sins.
[00:19:58] Repentance means I'm going to turn away from doing wrong. I'm going to walk in the way of Jesus and follow and obey him. This whole series is not about us getting you to understand Scripture necessarily, although it is, but not fully. The point of this is that we point you to Jesus. To Jesus.
[00:20:27] And Jesus called Levi and he said, repent. I've come to call those who are spiritually dead to repentance, to return to God, to receive eternal life. You know, I just. I don't think this side of eternity we will really fully understand this wonderful grace and wonderful salvation.
[00:20:47] I just don't think. I just don't think we can get our heads around this, around it.
[00:20:54] See, the Pharisees missed the workings of God completely. They were so bothered about the Word and the law.
[00:21:04] And let me just say something here. The law was given right to make people aware of their sin.
[00:21:12] The law was given to actually say, you know, we need a Savior.
[00:21:17] We're helpless, like, if these are God's standards, like.
[00:21:23] And so the law was given as a guardian, as a point of reference, to ultimately point us to Jesus.
[00:21:33] In this passage. The Pharisees, they must have been so confused with Jesus. Jesus is eating with sinners. Jesus is making himself so unclean by eating with these people and hanging out with these people.
[00:21:49] They're common people. They're lepers. If he is such a holy man, he wouldn't be doing these things.
[00:21:57] The Pharisees used law as a control, to control the people. And you know what? We see this often in church today where people use and misinterpret scripture to control people.
[00:22:13] See, I believe when we present particularly parents here this morning, yes, we have to. You know, there are guidelines and there are boundaries and there are truths that we live by.
[00:22:25] But one of the greatest things I believe we can do as parents is that through our lives, through the way we talk, through our actions, through we are every day consistently that we point our children to Jesus, that we point our kids to Jesus. You know, when Jesus came, he was full of grace and truth.
[00:22:48] And Jesus today, he invites us not into following the law, and I'll come back to that in a moment, but he invites us into a law of obedience, of love, and of submission to him.
[00:23:01] Not submission to regulations, but to submission to Him. I'm so thankful for parents. I remember being 13, 14, turning up to church in like, let's just say probably not the best of outfits that I probably should have been wearing at 14. And you know, on the front, my parents were just like, whatever. I imagine inside my mum was probably like, goodness me, what is that girl wearing?
[00:23:26] But I thank, I thank God for parents that just allowed me to speak it for myself. And I remember sitting there with. Well, I'm not even going to describe, but thinking, do you know what? Yeah, I feel a bit uncomfortable like this. And I'm thankful for the Holy Spirit. That's why we need the Holy Spirit. He gently guides us and leads us into all truth. And so we, we point to Jesus. Not regulations, not a law of legalism, not a law of self righteousness, not a law of looking the part on a stage Sunday.
[00:23:59] And then during the week, we're so far away from him. Legalism and the grace of Jesus came into conflict.
[00:24:09] You know, we do not live in the Old Testament. I love the Old Testament, don't get me wrong, I love the history of God's. The God's story. It's his story. In fact, you can see Jesus through every page of the Bible. And the Old Testament is phenomenal. I love it. I encourage. I used to read the Old Testament stories to our kids going to bed. But we are New Testament people. Somebody said to me recently, isn't your church observing Lent?
[00:24:37] And I went, not that I know of.
[00:24:40] And it so offended them. Now, if you want to observe Lent, and I know some of you are, that's wonderful, but I'm not, not for any reason.
[00:24:51] I know what I do before the Lord.
[00:24:54] I'm not under law.
[00:25:00] But we're in the New Testament and God gives us actually more freedom than we probably think we have. He does. He releases this wonderful freedom to us.
[00:25:13] But on the other side as well, this freedom and grace isn't so that we can carry on sinning.
[00:25:23] I encourage you to read Galatians over this week. That's lovely, that music. I thought, wow, could you sense the Holy Spirit coming and.
[00:25:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my cue to wrap up soon. Thanks, Lawson. I'm getting there.
[00:25:43] Yeah, yeah. So, Grace, it's not so that we carry on sinning.
[00:25:48] There are some real obvious things in the New Testament that God calls us to. You can read all about them. How we're not to live lives of sexual immorality and slander and wickedness and murder and debauchery. And drunkenness, all those kind of things. There are clear things that God said and they're very obvious relationships between men and women.
[00:26:12] But here's the thing. God also says, I'm going to give you my spirit.
[00:26:16] We need the Holy Spirit to help us to make good decisions, to use this freedom to the glory of God.
[00:26:25] To use this beautiful freedom for the glory of God. You know, freedom is really risky. Give me a wave. Parents, put your hands up if your kids are not yet teenagers.
[00:26:44] So when my kids were really little, can I just have like a bit of a hero moment? I had three under the age of three and a half.
[00:26:57] I don't advise it at all. It was nightmare. But three kids growing up, okay, when they were young, I could control what they watched on the telly. Yes.
[00:27:07] I could control the whole gadgets. Yes. I could control their eating habits. Totally healthy. They lived on roasts. We just did roast because Phil's Yorkshireman and he just said, can we have roast every night with gravy? Like that's all he wants. And I could control who their friendship groups were. I could control their bedtimes.
[00:27:27] Parents with teenagers, you know where I'm going.
[00:27:30] But now they are older, they have a bit more freedom and suddenly I can't control them the way I used to.
[00:27:40] But as parents, we bring them up in the hope that one day they will use their freedom to honour, to serve, obey and give their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:27:58] Parents, let your kids make mistakes.
[00:28:01] And when they do like Jesus does, and we are honest and we are open and we come with repentant hearts, we embrace them lovingly into our, into our arms.
[00:28:17] I'm wrapping up now.
[00:28:23] Submission to scripture, submission to the Bible, New Testament. Remember, we're in the New Testament. It isn't a problem when you love Jesus.
[00:28:32] I have so many people growing up and they say, oh, Esther, how can you be a Christian? You've got all this, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this, you can't do that.
[00:28:43] I'm like, when you love Jesus and you realise what he's done for you, there is so much freedom, freedom to live. I was talking to one of my kids. If you honour the Lord with your sexuality, you start your lives right. Honestly, you're going to have the best relationship.
[00:29:01] God's going to honour you, he's going to bless you.
[00:29:07] Submission to God's word is only a problem when we, when our own desires and our own flesh goes in conflict with what Jesus says.
[00:29:21] And what happens then? We take the bits of the Bible we like and we dismiss the others.
[00:29:28] We're not under law.
[00:29:30] The Pharisees were so under law that they missed point completely. They missed Jesus. The law was there through all these beautiful covenants to keep us on track.
[00:29:42] The Lord is looking for holiness.
[00:29:45] He is looking for purity.
[00:29:49] He's looking for us to gaze upon his loveliness, to gaze upon his beauty. I am praying that all people in Newton Abbott from all walks of life come and join us.
[00:30:05] All walks of life.
[00:30:07] People who are spiritually in need of a Saviour, will come and join us on this journey and say, I am repenting from my old life and I'm going to follow Jesus with all my heart. With everything within me, I see Jesus, I'm going to love him, I'm going to follow him. It is a call to radical discipleship. I believe the Lord is calling a generation into radical discipleship.
[00:30:35] That's why we've got to know the scriptures, particularly the New Testament. We've got to know and live in them and say, lord, even though this is hard, I'm going to follow them with all my heart.
[00:30:46] Levi knew that he needed a savior. He knew he needed more.
[00:30:52] Isn't this a wonderful gospel?
[00:30:56] Do you think this is a wonderful gospel? You couldn't make this stuff up.
[00:31:02] Will you just stand with me this morning, Lawson? Will you come?
[00:31:06] I just want to pray this morning.
[00:31:15] Lord, we thank you that we are not under strict regulations, but we're under the grace and the goodness of God today.
[00:31:28] But Lord, I pray that in that grace, Lord, that we would continue, Father, like we've heard so many people say, it's the grace was free. We accept this gift as free that you freely gave us. But it didn't come cheap.
[00:31:46] It came at a cost. And Father, discipleship is a cost.
[00:31:53] Lord, today, as we renew again, and maybe we need to do it every Sunday, we just keep renewing our love for you. We keep renewing and saying yes to following Jesus.
[00:32:05] Help us, Lord, to submit to your ways.
[00:32:09] And, Father, when we get it wrong, I pray, Lord, that we would just be able to come in repentance and say, lord, here I am. Forgive me of my sin, Lord, this year we want to love you more.
[00:32:27] We want to love you more.
[00:32:30] And Father, as we love you more, as we seek to obey you, as you fill us with your Holy Spirit, Lord, things will speak. Sin will just start dropping off.
[00:32:40] It will just start dropping off.
[00:32:44] Thank you, Lord, that we are in a season of grace. You've been so kind. You've been so patient.
[00:32:54] So Holy Spirit, help us to bow the knee every day and every moment to the Lord Jesus Christ in our words, in our speech, in our workplaces. Lord, let people see the fullness of Jesus in us. Let them see it, Lord, with the grace on our lips, with the kindness that we show.
[00:33:15] And Father, as a church with one another. Lord, let us be the most loving, gracious people.
[00:33:22] But Lord, may we always make sure that we are people of truth also.
[00:33:27] Because the truth sets us free. It is knowing the truth that will set us free. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the wisdom that's found in your word.
[00:33:39] In Jesus name, Amen. Thanks.
