How Jesus Transforms Sinners

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Well, as a history fan, I grew up being fascinated by the White House. As a matter of fact, as a kid, I always thought I’d love to grow up and live there someday. Now, it just seems like a headache.

I’m no longer interested in that, any more than y’all would be interested in me living there. But I’m fascinated by the history of it, and one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s not the same building, it’s not the exact same building that’s been there for over 200 years. That building has been rebuilt multiple times.

The first time was when the British torched it during the War of 1812. One of the more recent times it was rebuilt started back in the 40s. There were stories about how Truman’s daughter’s piano, she’d be sitting there playing the piano, and the legs of the piano would go through the floor.

And they realized, you know, that’s a bad thing if you go through the floor you’re standing on. So they realized, we need to do something about it. And Congress appropriated a few hundred thousand dollars, just a few hundred thousand dollars, to do some remodeling.

And they got in there and realized this was going to take millions and millions of dollars. They were essentially going to have to gut the entire structure, nothing left but the outside, and completely rebuild the entire thing from the ground up, from the inside out, which makes me feel a lot better about when I start projects and have to go to Lowe’s 56 times. It’s never been quite on the scale of what they got in there and found out they were going to have to do.

But they got in and realized that with all the problems that were there, a remodel, a redecoration, a few things sprucing up here and there, that was not going to be enough. They had to completely gut and transform the inside of the building. And so now what we, and I think there may have even been some reconstructions since then.

But now what we look at, we look at this house that the shell of it has been there since John Adams was president. That’s a long time ago. Nobody in here was alive when John Adams was president.

But the shell of that building has been there, and we look at it and we think that’s the same building. But if you go inside, it’s been completely transformed. And that’s what Jesus does in the lives of sinners.

We may have the same body that we had before. We may look the same on the outside. To somebody that knew us before Jesus and knows us after Jesus, we may look the same on the outside.

But Jesus doesn’t come and just do a little remodeling and redecorating. Jesus completely transforms us from the ground up and from the inside out. And this morning, as we continue on through our study of the book of Luke, we’re going see where Jesus talks about that role that he plays in the life of a sinner transforming us.

And so this morning, if you would, turn with me to Luke chapter 5. Luke chapter 5, and we’re going to read the end of this chapter together. Once you turn there, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

And if you’re not able to find it or didn’t bring your Bible this morning, it’s all right. It’ll be on the screen for you. But we’re going to start in verse 27, where we left off and go through the end of the chapter.

Now, throughout here it uses the name Levi, but it’s the same person that we more commonly know as Matthew. And here’s what Luke says. After that, he went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and he said to him, follow me.

And he left everything behind and got up and began to follow him. And Levi gave a big reception for him in his house, and there was a great crowd of tax and other people who were reclining at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at his disciples, saying, Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?

And Jesus answered and said to them, It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And they said to him, The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers.

The disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but yours eat and drink. And Jesus said to them, you cannot make the attendance of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and they will fast in those days.

And he was also telling a parable. No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Otherwise, he will both tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old.

And no one puts new wine into old wine skins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins will be ruined. But the new wine must be put into fresh wine skins.

And no one, after drinking old wine, wishes for new. For he says, the old is good enough. And you may be seated.

A lot of times this is treated as two different stories. First, the conversation about the tax collectors and why Jesus would eat with them. And then a separate story about the conversation they have afterwards.

People will put a division there between verses 32 and 33. But as the more, and originally as I was planning out this sermon series, I had it divided that way as well. But the more closely I looked, I realized there, this is one event.

The conversation that follows is a direct result of them seeing Jesus eating with the sinners. And so for us to understand what’s going on here, it’s best to take this all as one event and as one story. Now, this is about the transformation of sinners and how Jesus changes us from the inside out.

As we’re reading the story, though, we may wonder why does Luke call him Levi? The other Gospels say this is Matthew. That’s not a contradiction.

A lot of people in that time had multiple names. They were in a multicultural area. You might have one name that you’d use with your Jewish friends and one name that you’d use with your Roman friends.

Sometimes you would get renamed. Jesus was really fond of renaming people. Levi and Matthew are names for the same person.

And some Bible scholars think that his original name was Levi, the name that he would have been known by among the people in his life as a tax collector. And Luke being the historian saying, I want to research this and get all the details right, might have called him by his legal name. And those same Bible scholars think that Matthew, which means something along the lines of gift of God, would be a name that Jesus gave him to break with the past, to say you’re no longer the guy who used to sit there at the tax booth.

You’ve been changed. So I think even the name where we look at this and say, why does one gospel call him Matthew, one gospel calls him Levi, even that may very well point to the transformation that took place when this man met Jesus. But this morning, I want to look at a few things that this passage teaches us about how Jesus transforms sinners.

And first of all, who are the sinners? It’s you and me. It’s all of us.

It’s not just this one guy. It’s not just a few people he met during his time. It’s anybody that has ever existed, any human being other than him, because Jesus wasn’t just a mere man.

He was God in human flesh. The rest of us are cursed with a sin nature. We sin because we’re sinners.

It’s in our nature, and so we go and live out that job description. And any sinner that meets Jesus can be transformed by him. But how does this happen?

First of all, Jesus summons sinners to follow him. He did this in Matthew’s day. I may just out of habit call him Matthew.

The text says Levi. You know we’re talking about the same person. But this happened in Levi’s day, in Matthew’s day.

It happened with other people that Jesus encountered while he was walking the earth, but it’s still happening today that Jesus summons sinners to follow him. It says, they’re starting in verse 27, that Jesus saw him. He saw this tax collector.

And this is one of those things that I’ve read this story and the parallels in the other gospels numerous times, but either didn’t notice before or had forgotten about. When Jesus notices this tax collector, he’s actually sitting there collecting the taxes. he’s in his booth he evidently was somebody who worked for Herod who would have collected taxes or customs he’s like the border patrol I guess at that time people would have come into Herod’s territory there in Galilee they would have gotten off the boat and they would have had to pay a custom to Herod so he was in the act of collecting taxes when Jesus found him and while this wasn’t inherently sinful.

You know, if the law required the taxes and the people did it honestly and fairly, it wasn’t sinful. These people who collected the taxes had a terrible reputation. We don’t know if Matthew, Levi was crooked or not, but whether or not he was, he would have had a terrible reputation that went along with anybody who collected taxes.

There were a couple reasons why they were considered such awful people. First of all, they were collaborating with the Gentiles against their own people. The Jewish nation was occupied by the Romans, and they kind of resented that.

Imagine some other country came and took us over and occupied us, and then some of us went and worked for the other country that occupied us. We wouldn’t look too fondly on that. So they were working for the Gentiles.

They were collecting taxes on behalf of this foreign power against their own people, but even worse than that, they were also by and large cheating their own people. You know, if the tax was one coin, they might say, well, you know, it’s two today. They were collecting extra fees, and then they were pocketing those fees.

And so because of that, because of their cheating and because of their collaboration with these foreign powers, they were considered some of the lowest of the low. Nobody wanted anything to do with these people. And I think one of the reasons why Luke takes an interest in this event is because one of the themes that we see all throughout the gospel of Luke is that the gospel is for everyone.

Luke frequently records Jesus’s interactions with other people that nobody else would deal with. That’s why Luke talks about Jesus dealing with the leper and healing him. Jesus touching the leper, as a matter of fact.

That’s why he talks about him going to Matthew, the tax collector, that nobody would want to deal with. That’s why Luke talks about Jesus granting forgiveness to the thief on the cross. These people that nobody else would have stooped to deal with, Luke notices how Jesus reaches out to them.

And if Luke is trying to make the point that to his Gentile readers, that Jesus came even for you, then he’s very interested in these stories where Jesus goes to the lowest of the low and the furthest of the outcasts to make the point that the gospel is for everyone. And so Levi is not the kind of person that a respectable teacher, a respectable rabbi would have gone out of his way to go to and say, come follow me. These teachers were always collecting followings, collecting students who would come and spend their time with them and walk with them and learn from them.

Jesus was doing something that a lot of other people did in that regard, but nobody else was going to somebody like Matthew or Levi and tell him, that guy, follow me. You come be my student. you can be my follower.

Nobody else was doing that kind of thing, but Jesus went anyway. So already we see the incredible love that Jesus had that he would reach out to somebody who was so despised by those around him. But even at this, we need to be very careful as we look at the love and compassion of Jesus because of the modern idea that when Jesus calls out to sinners, that he just accepts us however we are.

That’s true as far as it goes, but that’s not the whole story. Jesus loves we are. But if what we already are is acceptable to God, there’s no reason for Jesus to have come in the first place.

Because Jesus’ entire goal was to go to the cross to purchase our forgiveness. Instead, Jesus came to people where they were. Jesus reached out to people and loved them where they were.

But all throughout the Gospels, there’s a call to change. And the old saying is that He loves us just how we are, but He has no intention of leaving us that way. Instead of going to Matthew you and saying, you’re wonderful just like you are, he says, come follow me.

That doesn’t mean just come go with me. Hey, I’m going to the store. You want to come with me?

When he says, come follow me, he’s saying, come pattern your life after me. Come learn at my feet. And this is what Levi does.

He leaves his entire way of life behind. Everything that he knows, his livelihood, he leaves all of it behind to go and follow Jesus and learn from him. And we see that in verse 28.

And then verse 29, I think this is amazing. Not only that, but he invites others to come and meet Jesus as well. this man’s heart is so changed already something so significant has happened in levi’s heart already that he’s inviting the day it happens he doesn’t he doesn’t go off to seminary and say give me a few years so I can learn enough about you to invite others to you the day it happens he’s going to the other down and outs and saying you’ve got to come meet jesus he’s already inviting people to find what he has found.

And Jesus is still doing this today. He’s still calling people from every conceivable background. He’s calling sinners of every type.

It doesn’t matter what we’ve done in the past. He’s still calling us to follow him and be transformed. Not to come and be affirmed in everything, but to come and be transformed. And this passage provides some of the examples of what this looks like.

He summons us to follow him, but he also calls us to repent. We see this in verses 30 through 32. The Pharisees began to grumble when Jesus called this man to follow him.

And when the other tax collectors began being introduced to Jesus, they were not happy. We were listening to, Jeff and I were listening to a sermon at the State Evangelism Conference on Monday. I am a horrible, horrible multitasker.

I am a complete disaster at multitasking. One of the few things I can multitask about is listening to one sermon while preparing another. That I can do.

I don’t know why, but that I can do. So I was listening to this sermon while I was looking through this passage, and I’m really struggling to come to terms with what’s going on in the passage and how to present it. And I hear this man preaching a different passage and talking about the tendency to find fault.

And my ears kind of perked up because what he’s talking about is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. They were there to find fault. And one of the things that he said is that we should not be so quick to find fault in what other people are doing and what God is doing in other people, because he said it takes no creativity, takes no cleverness, it takes no real effort to find fault and say, oh, well, what you’re doing is not good enough.

Your performance is not enough. You don’t measure up. I think sometimes we will find fault in others because we understand deep down when we can admit it to ourselves.

We understand deep down that we don’t measure up to God’s standards either. But rather than addressing that fact, we’re going to find all the way somebody else doesn’t measure up because that’s more comfortable. And I kind of had a realization I’m guilty of that as well.

I’m also guilty of letting it get to me way too much when I don’t measure up to somebody else’s expectations, because I’m never going to. Jesus didn’t even meet everybody’s expectations. The Pharisees came looking to find fault, because they were exceptionally religious.

Religion is not, I don’t use that as a bad word, okay? Religion is kind of a neutral term. It depends on what the religion is.

But they were very religious. They were very wrapped up in their practices and their rules, because I think they wanted to be right with God. They wanted to be right with God on their own terms. And their practices and their rituals and their performance were never going to make them right with God.

And I think recognizing that deep down in an honest place that would never admit it openly, they recognized that they were not right with God. And it was a lot more comfortable to try to point out the places where somebody else wasn’t right than to deal with their own sin. And so they came looking to find fault with Jesus.

They came looking to find, when they couldn’t find fault with Jesus, they start looking at fault among the people that were being drawn to Jesus and those who were already following Jesus. And they wondered how Jesus could associate with those people. And we’ve probably all had those thoughts.

Maybe not how could Jesus associate, but those people or that person. And maybe it’s people outside the four walls. Maybe it’s somebody that just doesn’t measure up to our standards.

We probably all had that thought. How, why that person. But in reality, we’re all that person.

Why in the world would Jesus eat with sinners? That’s all there is. Why would Jesus save that sinner?

Because that’s all there is. He came to reach out to somebody and sinners who’ve fallen short of God’s standard are all there is. And so when they confront him about this, because they don’t want to deal with their own shortcomings.

They want to find and point out the shortcomings of everybody else so they can talk to Jesus about that instead of deal with the conviction that’s on their own hearts. When they come and confront Jesus about it, he compares himself to a doctor. A doctor comes to engage with sick people.

The doctor didn’t come just for those who are well. Now, I know nowadays we’re into preventative medicine and well checkups and all of that. I’m not an expert on the health care system in first century Israel, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have that.

Pretty sure doctors were going to be very expensive. You went to the doctor because you were sick. And when we’re sick, we still want to go to the doctor.

This idea that Jesus would have come to teach and to minister, and he would have done that just to the righteous people, is bizarre to Jesus. He says, you’re asking me why I go to the sinners. Would you ask a doctor why he’s hanging around sick people?

He says, I have not come to heal those who are well. I’ve come to heal the sick. And likewise, he says in verse 32, I’ve not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Jesus didn’t come to deal with those who were good enough. First of all, nobody’s good enough. Not one of us in this room is good enough to measure up to God’s standards.

But second of all, those who think they’re good enough are not the people who are going to come to Jesus for his help. So Jesus said, I’ve come to call sinners to repentance. And repentance is the first step of following him.

Repentance goes hand in hand with this transformation. Repentance is not the transformation. Repentance does not mean that we’ve cleaned up our lives and we’re living perfectly from here on out.

Repentance leads to our sins being cleaned up, but it’s not the same thing. Repentance doesn’t even necessarily mean sadness over our sins. Repentance means a change of mind.

Repentance means that we’ve gone from loving our sin and hating God to now we love God and hate our sin. We’re still sinners and we’re still going to sin from time to time. But if you’re repentant, you hate that sin When you’re repentant, you have that mindset that says god, why did I do that?

Please help me not do that anymore Repentance means our minds have changed and now we recognize that god is right and our sin is wrong and we want to be On his side In this instance repentance means recognizing that what they were doing was not good enough and was never going to be Enough and having that change of mind to recognize they needed god’s mercy And in that regard, both the tax collectors and the sinners that they had identified as sinners, they needed to repent, but so did the religious Pharisees. They needed to repent from the idea that they were good enough. Folks, today Jesus transforms us by calling us to repentance.

If we don’t come to that place of recognizing that God is right and we’re wrong, the rest of this transformation does not happen. So he says, I came to bring sinners to repentance. and that sounds very austere.

It sounds hard, and it is, but that’s not where he leaves us. Look at verses 33 through 35. When they’ve been confronted about him calling sinners to repentance, and he points out, hey, doctors come to hang out with sick people.

They realize they’re not getting anywhere with that particular attack, so they change tactics and try to find fault elsewhere. they’re still trying to nitpick everything where everybody doesn’t measure up except their own selves. And they said, well, John’s disciples, they fast and pray.

Disciples in our group, they fast and pray. But your disciples, yours eat and drink. How dare they?

How dare they eat and drink? In other words, why are you all not as severe as we are? And Jesus says to them, you cannot make the attendance of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?

He’s talking here about a wedding celebration, and he’s talking about the wedding party. When the groom is there, because in their day, I know in our day, the focus is all on the bride, right? In their day, the bride and everybody else made all the preparations, knowing that one day the groom was going to come again.

And when the groom came, that’s when the wedding started. That’s when everybody celebrated. And he’s calling himself the groom and saying, well, the groom is here.

The wedding party is going to celebrate. He says, there’s going to be joy. There is coming a day, he says, when the groom will be gone and they’ll do the fasting.

There’s nothing wrong with acts of religious devotion. There’s nothing wrong with taking spiritual things seriously. But he says, while I’m with them, there’s joy and they’re going to celebrate.

Jesus brings joy with his presence. And that’s part of our transformation. When Jesus comes into our lives, when Jesus transforms us, he brings joy.

His followers are going to live joyfully in his presence because our hearts have been changed. Joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness depends heavily on our circumstances.

There are a lot of things that happen day to day that do not make me happy, but joy is different. Joy is found in things that do not go away. Things like our relationship with Him.

Things like being in His presence. Things like being indwelled by His Holy Spirit. Things like knowing that we have a hope and a future that are secure in Him.

His presence brings joy that transcends our circumstances, where believers in Jesus, those who belong to him, can be joyful in the midst of some of the most heart-wrenching circumstances we face, because we know our sins are forgiven, because we know we’ve been set free, because we know that he will never leave us or forsake us. And part of the transformation, yes, is this repentance that takes place, this brokenness over our sins, but on the other side of that is joy in the presence of the Lord. And he transforms us by bringing both.

He brings us a newfound joy as we’re free from both the condemnation of sin and the dead works of people like the Pharisees. And then he replaces old life with new. This is the most important, and I wish I had more time to expound on this, but as we go through verses 36 through 39, he gives a couple of examples here where he talks about a patch and he talks about a set of wineskins.

And both of these examples that he gives the Pharisees, they both illustrate that he did not come merely to mix the old and the new. See, a lot of times we have this idea of Jesus that we can just sort of fit him into our old life, that he becomes a facet or a component of our old life. He kind of makes it a little better and we put him over here, but the rest of our life remains unchanged.

I think for some of the Pharisees, they probably thought, oh, here’s another teacher, and we can take some teachings from him maybe, unless we decide to throw him off a cliff, as they’d already tried to do. Maybe we can take some teachings from him and fit them in over here, but basically our system remains unchanged. Jesus said, I did not come to mix the old and the new.

He gives the example that if you take a new patch and you slap it on old garments, that new patch has not been, the cloth has not been shrunk already, and so the first time you go to wash that garment, that patch is going to shrink. It’s going to tear away from the garment, and both of them are going to be ruined. He gives the example of the wine skins, and with the wine skins, when you put, I guess wine skins can only stretch so far, and you put new wine in a new wine skin, and as the wine ferments, goes through this chemical process, there’s a lot of pressure that’s released in fermentation, and the skin stretches with it, and everything’s fine.

But if you go take an old used wine skin, and you pour it full of wine, it’s already been stretched out and that fermentation takes place. There’s no more stretch, no more give left in the wine skin and it bursts and you have a mess. The wine is ruined.

The wine skin is ruined. Jesus is telling them, I didn’t come to mix the old and the new because when you mix the old and the new, you get a mess. In our lives, Jesus did not come to mix the old and the new.

He came to sweep out the old and bring in completely new life. When it came to their understanding of their dealings with God, He didn’t merely come to add some new teachings to their old system. He came to set it back to what it ought to be.

He came to bring something new to them that was really what God had intended all along. He came to give us entirely new life. So part of the transformation of sinners is that Jesus doesn’t just become a part of our life that sits neatly over here, not to pick apart the illustration earlier, but he doesn’t become something we put in our pocket and everything else goes along as usual. Jesus becomes the focus of an entirely new life.

Now, the problem here is what he lays out in verse 39. The complication is that some people will reject the new because of their taste for the old. Now, I am not an expert on alcohol.

I’ve never drank alcohol on purpose, okay? Careful caveat there on purpose. I don’t have any expertise in this, but I do understand that people prefer old wine after it’s had time to age and mature.

Even in their day, they preferred the older stuff. And if you offered somebody the new wine, a choice between the new wine and the old, they’d prefer the old. That’s what Jesus says in verse 39.

He says, no one after drinking old wine wishes for new. He says the old is good enough. Well, that’s one thing if we’re actually talking about wine, but here he’s talking about the life that he gives.

And what he’s saying is that the Pharisees and people like them who are too busy finding fault and too attached to their old way of doing things. They’re doing everything they can do to avoid dealing with their sin before God. He says these people are too attached to the old way to be willing to grab onto the new.

And he didn’t come to mix. He says it’s got to be one or the other. It’s got to be him or the world.

It’s got to be his righteousness or our self-righteousness, and the two don’t mix. And that’s the complication is if we’re too intent on holding on to the old way to embrace Him. If Jesus has come, not just to teach, not just to walk among us, but Jesus came ultimately to take responsibility for our sins and to be punished for those sins in our place on the cross.

He shed His blood and died so we could be forgiven. He rose again to prove it and to bring us new life, and He offers forgiveness. He offers salvation, and He offers new life where he transforms us from the inside out.

It’s available to anyone who will believe, who will trust in him as the one and only sacrifice. The only complication there is whether or not we’re willing to let go of the old and embrace what he brings us, embrace what he offers, what he’s paid for. If you’ve never trusted Christ as your savior before this morning, I want to ask you, is there something that you’re holding on to?

Is there some old wine that you’re holding on to and you’re saying it’s good enough. It keeps you from latching on to what Jesus offers you with all your might. Whatever it might be, whether it’s sin, whether it’s pride, whether it’s a feeling of self-righteousness, whatever it may be, it’s nowhere near as good as what Jesus offers.

And if you’re already a believer this morning, I just want to encourage you not to go back looking for the old wine, not to go back looking for the old way of doing things, but to recognize that Jesus came not to mix the old with the new, but He came to transform you completely and make you entirely new.

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