Jesus' Call: Embracing the Outcasts and Sinners

“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.’ So, he left all, rose up, and followed Him. 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. And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, ‘Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered and said to 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.’” [00:16:43]

Again, Luke gives us another particular example of Jesus reaching out to an individual. This follows immediately after the healing of the paralytic, in which Jesus declared that as the Son of Man He had the authority to forgive sins on the earth. What follows immediately after that in Luke’s account is the manifestation of that authority of Jesus to forgive those who are sinners. [00:01:15]

I tell that story, I’ve told it before, but I tell it for a reason. This kind of hatred that the woman had for the traitor, the collaborator, was how the Jewish people felt about tax collectors. In Israel, the terms “sinner” and “publican” were virtually anonymous terms because the worst sin that the people felt was that sin of collaboration with the Romans who so severely oppressed the Jewish people. [00:07:48]

The burden of the taxes that the Roman government imposed upon captive Israel was incredible. The Romans were able to discover a tax for just about everything, taxes on wheat, taxes on olives, taxes on grapes, taxes on wine, taxes on chariots, taxes on gasoline…no that wasn’t the Romans. And here was this Jewish man who was working for the Romans, sitting at his table outside, along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, right on the route, the trade route from Syria to Egypt, and he was collecting a toll tax or a tariff of some sort, keeping a percentage of what he collected for himself. [00:08:39]

A few weeks ago in Philadelphia, I listened to a lecture from a man by the name of Jack Templeton, whose father John Templeton, perhaps the most famous philanthropist on the face of the earth and founded the Templeton Foundation, and Jack Templeton lectured on thrift and generosity as biblical virtues. He talked about the connection between thrift and generosity. He said, “You won’t have anything to be generous with if you’re not first thrifty.” [00:15:14]

Levi was a wealthy man, and you know he wasn’t tithing. But when Jesus came to him, a man who routinely stole from God and stole from his own people, Jesus called him to be His disciple. Jesus called him to write the first Gospel in order of the four Gospels of the New Testament, because Levi’s other name was Matthew who wrote the Gospel according to Matthew. He said, “Leave this, and follow Me.” [00:19:41]

Jesus responded to them, because remember that the Pharisees believed in salvation by segregation, by separating themselves from the “am ha’aretz,” the people of the land or it could be translated “the people of the dirt, the dirty people, the outcasts, the sinners, tax collectors.” If you wanted to be saved, you had to stay a safe distance from these people because if you come close to them, you’ll become like them and you’ll become contaminated. [00:21:56]

Jesus responded to them with very simple wisdom, where He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Oh, I know we get annual checkups or some of us do. I know sometimes we go to the doctor when we’re not sick. But for the most part, we hold off that call until we need the doctor. [00:22:49]

Who do you expect Me to spend time with? You don’t know who I am or why I’m here. I’m the Son of Man, and I’ve come to seek and to save the lost. And I found one of those people who was lost, really lost at that table, sitting along the toll road by the Sea of Galilee. And I asked him to join My group, and he left everything to follow me. [00:24:31]

I came for Matthew. I came for tax collectors. I came for prostitutes. I came for the people of the land, the dirty people. They are My people. I’m going to shed My blood for those people, for collaborators, for your enemies. And, Mr. Pharisee and Mr. Scribe, I didn’t come to save the righteous or to call the righteous to repentance, but to call sinners to repentance. [00:24:52]

Nobody needs a physician more than somebody who is fatally ill but doesn’t know it. So, it was with the Pharisees, and so it was with the scribes, and so it was with all of us who think for a minute that we don’t need the ministrations of the Son of God to cover our sins, to forgive us and to redeem us. [00:26:32]

Beloved, this is our Savior who calls tax collectors to join Him, who calls tithe evaders to be His, who wants His people to be made whole, to delight in the things that He delights in and to delight in the law of God. [00:27:14]