“Calling Sinners to Repentance”
Luke 5:27-32
A sermon for 4/11/21
Harmony & Swansonville UMC
Luke 5 “27 After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” 28 So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.
29 Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. 30 And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, “Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
31 Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
This week I return to where we left in Luke 5. The last time we were here, we watched as several folks brought their friend to Jesus on a stretcher. The Messiah healed the man and commended the faith of the friends. Now, the story returns to Jesus’ calling of disciples. He takes the invitation to one of the most dis-liked kind of people in the whole culture – the dreaded tax collector. Last week, I read Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount (chapter 5) in which He warns us not to be like the tax collectors. Why were they looked upon in this way?
Tax collectors were in all parts of the Roman Empire. They were natives of the country in which they worked, but they were hired by the Roman officials to collect taxes. If folks hated the Romans for controlling their land – they also hated those who worked for them. And since NOBODY likes to pay taxes – the tax collectors received a special kind of scorn. When Jesus approaches Levi, he is busy with his work of collecting the surcharge required when a person traveled from one city/town to another. (NIV Application Commentary – Luke p. 159) Levi accepts Jesus’ invitation and responds by throwing a party!
Now, there are lots of reasons to have a party – birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, having a baby (now they have very elaborate gender reveal announcements – not when my kids came along), holidays and even for big sports events. You may have had parties for some or all of these reasons, but I’m pretty sure none of you ever had a “COME MEET MY JESUS” party. That’s what Levi did. This was not a chance for Levi to introduce Jesus to his friends – no, it’s the other way around. This is Jesus, the one who will accept you no matter who you are, despised tax collector or smelly fisherman. Jesus sat to eat with all of them – the same way He invited you and me - Revelation 3:20 “20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
It was this dining with “others” that bothers the Pharisees so much that they complain to the disciples. You see – sitting with someone to eat, by their standards, meant you approved of their sinful lifestyle. The Pharisees had nothing to offer these “sinners” but condemnation. We hear this in the prayer offered by the Pharisee in Luke 18 – “11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’”
Do I need to explain to any of you why that is NOT a good prayer? Thank God!
Jesus came to offer the Grace of a Loving Father to all who will receive – who will open the door. Imagine if we – the local church – kept that Grace of God behind these stained-glass windows and four walls. How would the world hear? Would we stand under the same condemnation reserved for the Pharisees and religious folks of that day?
If we are keeping grace in here and if we live in fear, avoiding the outside world, like the World has been under quarantine from fear of a virus – then we need to hear the words of Jesus again this day – “31 Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
When the patient calls the doctor – then she or he admits the need for help.
When the alcoholic / addict goes to a meeting – then he or she admits the need for help.
When the sinner and the saint repent – then she or he admits the need for help.
We already heard the prayer of the Pharisee in Luke 18. Now listen to the utter dependence on God in the prayer of the tax collector – “13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’
Everyone who admits they need help from God can repent!
The unbeliever and Believer can both repent
Repentance is the same for both – the unbeliever repents for the first time and the Believer should learn to repent at the first sign of temptation. It’s all about our relationship with sin. Before we are saved by the blood of Jesus/the Lamb of God, sin defines us – it’s what we are. It’s very much like being an addict. Life for the addict is all about the addiction. Long before me, there were folks who called our BC days (Before Christ) the days of Sin Addiction. They compared the change in a Believer to the 12 Steps of AA and the change in the life of the alcoholic or addict. About 250 years ago, John Wesley gave the folks called Methodists a way to meet together – confessing and repenting. It looked a lot like an AA or NA meeting. We have lost that today. In the past, the Church called Believers to live a life of sanctification. We even used the language of Entire Sanctification. Listen to Dr. Timothy Tennent writing about this life of sanctification in “The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God for the Love of the World” – “Sanctified people still sin. However, the difference is that in the life of a sanctified person, sin becomes your permanent enemy and no longer your secret lover!” (p. 54)
That one hit me like a ton of bricks when I first read it! All preachers have secret sin – we sure can’t make it public. When we keep sin hidden – in the darkness – we give it a power that it should not have over us. We should be able admit to God – that’s my secret desire – that’s my hidden shame.
I have been helped by my fellow pastors in my Discipleship Band. They listen to me and now I have a time of repentance every day in by prayer hour. Do we even know how to repent in this day?
The Repentance Protocol
This morning I am going to share a little from a booklet I am working on writing – “The Repentance Protocol.”
A protocol is the set of rules that allow devices/computers and servers to communicate. We see the “http:” or “https:” at the beginning of a website address so often that it never occurs to us that these are abbreviations:
• http - Hypertext Transfer Protocol (I actually went to high school with original developer of this protocol.)
• https - Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
I use that definition of the word, protocol, because I believe we have lost a vital part of communication with God – repentance. For these two to communicate – a human and God Almighty – we need something before the first rule of the protocol – we need an admission or a realization. Here it is – “You are God and I am not.” In the past, you did not need to start here, but those days are long gone. If we let God be God – then we don’t get to tell God what is right or wrong. We don’t get to tell God what He calls blessed. These belong to God and He gets to tell us.
Rule One – Knowledge of Self and God
We started with admitting, “I am NOT God.” Then who am I? I am who God says I am: I used to be a sinner, but now I am a Child of God, a saint, who still deals with temptation on a daily basis. A certain percentage of every day, I give into temptation and I sin. That’s an honest knowledge of self but I don’t want to stay there. I want the percentage to go down every day. To do that I need a standard – God’s Holy Word. God has the right to say what is sin. Since I am NOT God, I believe that God has revealed what we need to know in the words of Holy Scripture. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
We also need to consider who is God? If I asked you to describe to me the God to whom you pray – would it sound like Santa Claus? Would it sound like a heavenly vending machine? God has described Himself to us through self-revelation. God created us and the universe. God gave us His Son and the Holy Bible. By the way – to clarify what I believe about how we have God’s Word – what I believe has a fancy name – “Verbal Plenary Inspiration.” I always explain it this way: If you sit down and write a letter with pen and paper, who writes the letter, you or the pen? Everyone say, “Me.” Yup! When God used humans in the times of the Old and New Testaments, it’s like the writers were the pen and God was the hand holding them – leading and guiding them to write just what He wanted.
So here I am, a certified Child of the Most High God, and I am reading God’s Word for me. Then I see something I am doing that God says is a sin – it’s wrong for me to be doing that. At this point I have a decision to make because I can move onto Step Two – if I want to. (You can always just keep reading after thinking “I sure wish ___so-and-so___ would read that verse!”)
Rule Two – We Say “God, you’re right and I’m wrong”
Everybody sitting in a pew or car this morning (hearing or reading this) – we all have at least one good excuse for the sin that remains in our lives. What’s my go-to example of sin? Unforgiveness. It’s the most accepted sin in the Church (right behind gossip – nuff’ said). So when I talk to somebody who is in pain over the past, I ALWAYS talk to them about forgiveness. Here is what they usually say, “Yeah, but you don’t know what they did to me.” That’s the definition of an excuse. No Christian has an excuse for the sin of unforgiveness. When you see that sin in you, say “God, you’re right and I’m wrong.”
If you are dealing with the sin of lust (pornography)– no excuses - “God, you’re right and I’m wrong.”
If you are dealing with the sin of pride (judging others)– no excuses - “God, you’re right and I’m wrong.”
If you are dealing with the sin of prayerlessness (not praying)– no excuses - “God, you’re right and I’m wrong.”
Rule Three – Stop, Turn Around, Go the Other Way
We used to just teach folks that repentance was about doing a U-Turn. What I saw were folks saying “I need to repent, so I will turn around.” But they never stopped sinning. They get caught in a “Sin Skid” that looks like the little cars that drift sideways as they go around a turn with wheels spinning and smoking. Hear this loud and clear – you have not repented if you are still doing what God told you to stop doing. You are still sinning if you are not doing what God told you to start doing. When you stop and turn around – replace the sin with something of God. Replace complaining with praising God. Replace fear and worry with worshiping God. Replace too much time on social media with time reading and studying God’s Word.
Rule Four – Set Your Boundaries
All of us have had a temporary victory in our Christian Walk. We repented and stopped. We gave God the glory for the victory. Then, we did not “the enemy” preparing a new kind of temptation and we got sucked right back into sin. This is where it gets tough – we need to have boundaries that we will NEVER cross – NO MATTER WHAT! Addicts have to do this with drugs and alcohol and sin addicts need to do it with sin. At this point, I have to be blunt with you - like the alcoholic needs a sponsor to progress in sobriety – we often need an accountability partner (like the folks in a Discipleship Band). This is hard – I know it is, but is your freedom in Christ worth the cost? The thing that amazes me the most is how little we have changed since the Bible was written. Listen to these verses from 1 John 1 “8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” God is still calling us to repent – nothing has changed. God is still in the business of empowering us to lead holy lives in freedom. Amen!
