The Call of Levi

As Jesus walked along the road he called tax collector to follow them. 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 for the four Gospels of the New Testament because Levi's other name was Matthew. Few people more hated and despised in first century Israel than the tax collectors they were considered traders who took advantage of their own people in like Levi stole from them, but today will see that his immediate response after encountering Jesus was to leave his ledgers behind and follow the Savior was 1964 I was walking by myself down the streets that was called the father house lawn in the ancient walled city of Martin in the Netherlands I was returning it to the house where we had rented rooms from our landlady during our graduate studies there in the hall and and just as I approached our house. I saw an elderly lady coming from the other direction. She was carrying a bag of groceries that I smiled to her and greeted her and she stopped suddenly, and her face lit up like a lightbulb and she spoke to me and it was like she wanted to hold on to me and not let me go and so I spoke to her for about five minutes and then later goodbye and she went on her way and I went into the house where we were lodging in this.

I walked in the door. I was met by our landlady who was livid with fury and she was screaming at me asking me how I could possibly speak to this terrible woman that I had met on the street and I didn't understand what was behind all of this intense fury, and she explained to me that during the war, which it only ended 19 years previous to this that this woman had been a collaborator. She was a traitor to our own people. She gave comfort and help to the occupying Nazis in the town. Then the woman went on to tell the story how the Germans were taking the sounds, the young men from the village and shipping them back to Germany and putting them to work in slave labor camps there to help in the military production effort and this woman together with her next-door neighbor had conspired to dig a safe place under her living room floor where they put a bed in the fan water and food and some flashlights. So if the Germans came near, they could hide these two sons first found in the next-door neighbor's son under the floor and she told the story how one day the Gestapo came into her house carrying machine guns and asked the woman. Do you have any sons.

She said no. They ran to the bedroom and felt the bed and looked in the closet of the street there was any evidence of young men and to fulfill their examination. They came back to the living room and the leader pointed his gun at the floor and they started to shoot into the floor were the two young men were in the hiding and while they were shooting into the floor.

They were watching the woman to see what her reaction would be. And when they were finished and satisfied that there were no young men there. The Germans left this woman had just about had a heart attack during this and she rushed over to the trapdoor that been concealed and went down into this cubbyhole that they had dug out of discovered to her delight that neither one of the young man had been hit by the bullets. Can you imagine that can imagine hiding your own son in your house and having somebody come in with a gun and start shooting up the floorboards of that's the kind of stuff you see in movies and you can imagine how they could actually happen.

And when I heard that story. Then I can understand the intensity of her hatred that had lasted for 19 years, of the other neighbor woman who would give out than divulge the names of those who were in hiding.

The same sort of thing that happened to Anne Frank and her family and Amsterdam during those years, I tell that story have told you before, but I thought for a reason. This kind of hatred that the woman had for the trader. The collaborator was how the Jewish people felt about tax collectors and Israel.

The term center and publican were virtually synonymous terms because the worst sin that the people felt was that send of collaboration with the Romans who so severely oppressed the Jewish people and the perhaps most miserable way in which they oppressed the most with their taxation. The burden of the taxes that the Roman government imposed upon captive Israel was incredible. Romans were able to discover attacks for just about everything taxes on weights, taxes on all of us taxes on grades, taxes on wind taxes on chariots taxes on capital know that wasn't the room 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 that he was collecting a toll tax or a tariff of some sorts, keeping a percentage of what he collected for himself, so that the pious Jews who prayed for their deliverance from the Romans every day.

Couldn't stand to look at this man name Levi who was lining his own pockets by means of the oppressive confiscatory taxes levied by the Roman government. You look in the Old Testament and you see how God structures a nation there was a distinction between the priests and the kings between what we would call the civil government in the religious establishment in God imposed a tax, as it were, upon his church in Israel was called of ties and every Jew was required to bring of his firstborn. 10% of his you 10% of his gross for those of you who try to evade it and, in addition to the ties and the offerings that the people brought to support the priests and the Levites, the religious life in the educational life of the people. God also impose a head tax that was given to support the civil government and the same principle is given the implicit way to governments throughout the world and we are told us Christians that we are to pay our taxes, to whom taxes are due. And yet at the same time God holds governments responsible for only raising those taxes that are legitimate in God's sight, and chiefly through the imposition of a head tax where everybody pays the same. There is no progressive tax. There is no class warfare. There is no politicization of the economy in God's order of thing and government is established by God and is responsible to God to seek the welfare of the people and to do their diligence and concerning righteousness and safety and peace and justice.

But what happens. Historically it happened in Greece.

It happened in Rome. It happened in Babylon. It happened in all of the nations that became large became his work to big for their britches is that government said instead of becoming satisfied with doing the things that they were ordained to do by Almighty God became obsessed with becoming world powers having global influence colonial domination and every one of them in order to accomplish that use the tax system to bleed their people and their subjects out of every dime that they could in order to sustain a larger and larger and larger and larger and larger central government for 70 years. In this country. The policies of the founding fathers represented chiefly by Thomas Jefferson prevailed, but not without dispute or debate. There were never whole time. The followers of Alexander Hamilton. Men like Henry Clay and the party of the Whigs sought yearly to construct a huge national federal government, and they failed for the first 70 years in 1860, you could take all of the federal buildings in Washington and put them on the property that is shared between St. Andrews and the Bible college across the lake and few weeks ago in Philadelphia. I listen 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 found that the Templeton foundation in Jack Templeton lectured on thrift and generosity as biblical virtues and he talked about the connection between thrift and generosity, said you won't have anything to be generous with if you're not first thrift date and as I listened to his lecture. I had an epiphany because he went on to say that in 2007 right before the great recession that were stolen in that year. The average savings of working people in the United States was -3%. And I heard that and I said no wonder we collapsed that the average person in America was living 3% beyond their main, that is, they were spending on average 3% more than they were taking in a Boulevard that is a recipe for economic disaster.

It's foolish and not only foolish and sinful.

But he was my epiphany. I had struggle and wondered how it could be that a church is vibrant as St. Andrews could have so many members who don't, let's simply disobey the law of God, and who are guilty as the Lord says of stealing from God committing what the Bible calls us sacrilege against God just don't understand that humming some people have to help me with that. How can you be, there's me I'm stupid. How can you be a Christian. Do you understand it. I really don't want to be more simple than to know that everything that we have belongs to God and everything that we have comes from his and every good and perfect gift. We get from him as the government takes too much of it. And yes, we are over tax and all the rest, but were not doing basic for school moral responsibility. I see why we credit card companies and when a person says me. I can't deprive I hear what they say. Well, I can't find what they say what I translate that it's all what you mean is I cannot live the lifestyle I'm living today and ties 10% of my income to God just doesn't work. I can't ties and pay my government taxes. I can't ties and pay off my credit cards I hear you notice rest and there's a connection.

I think historically when the people of God Rob from God.

God get some nationally he hits the Jews because they were not tithing. There ties and so here come the Romans and takes so much more out of the Jewish pocket and the Jews ever imagined.

The Jews were one of the most heavily taxed people in the face of the earth and all of history at the time that Jesus went up the Levi and said you know if this table stop this nonsense and follow me. Levi was wealthy me and you know he wasn't tithing. 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 for the four Gospels of the New Testament because Levi's other name was Matthew, who wrote the gospel according to Matthew and he said leave this follow me and noted that he packed up his displeasure. Throughways account books knocked on the table and said yes Lord, I'm going with you and not only did he follow Jesus. He threw a party for Chase's. He opened his house and it was a big one.

It wasn't like that house. We talked about last week where they were lowering that poor fella down through the roof. This was a grand houses was a mansion. This was a tax collector's house and he had a party and you know what he did.

He invited all of his friends who were also tax collectors. The only kind of friends he could have he invited all of his tax collector friends over for this party and they reclined and they enjoyed this feast and of course it was known by the Pharisees and the Pharisees were like that woman in the how can Jesus go to a party with tax collectors and thesis responded to them as remember that the Pharisees believed in salvation by segregation by separating themselves from the Ha'aretz the people of the land. Or you could be translated. The people of the dirt that dirty people, the outcasts, the sinners tax countries and if you wanted to be. Say you had to stay safe distance from these people because if you come close to them will become like them and you'll become contaminated. And so when they saw Jesus going to this party with tax collectors. It was more than they could stomach. I heard him say well I do this that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins but isn't he push the envelope a little bit here is that going a little bit too far with this forgiving sins eating and drinking with tax collectors and thesis responded to with very simple wisdom where he said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who were sick.

How I know we get annual checkups are some of us do. And I know sometimes we go to the doctor when were not sick but for the most part we hold off that call until we need the doctor and then when we made the doctor we really need the doctor and we can't wait to see the doctor. We do that when were sick, but people who are well donated doctrine of everybody can continue to be well doctors would be out of business.

Jesus is making the point to. The first is a very simple point so you expect me to spend time with you don't know who I why I'm here, I'm the Son of Man, and I've come to seek and save the lost.

I found one of those people who was lost really lost at that table sitting along the tollroad by the Sea of Galilee last in the drawer in my group and he left everything to follow me. I came for Matthew. I came for tax collectors.

I came for prostitutes.

I came for the people of the land the dirty people there. My people I'm going to shed my blood for those people for collaborators for your enemy and Mr. Pharisee and Mr. scribe. I didn't come to save the righteous or to call the righteous, to repentance. But the call centers to repentance.

Well, maybe you don't think you need to hear my message. Mr. Pharisee, maybe you don't need my ministry because your righteous will become the call centers to repentance, so Mr. Pharisee in your sinless condition. You have nothing to fear from me.

That's what they were thinking. Oh well, at least the man recognizes foods righteous and who wasn't and who needs to repent. The new doesn't foolish.

There was nobody in that neighborhood the night of that banquet who needed repentance more than the scribes and the Pharisees. Nobody needs a physician more than somebody who is fatally ill but doesn't know 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 to redeem us beloved.

This is our Savior, who calls tax collectors to join him who calls. Hi elevators to be who wants his people to be made whole.

The delight in the things that the lights in the delight in the law of is there is sin that we can commit isn't covered by Christ's death and resurrection. I'm sure the Israelites would've included tax collection in their list of worsens. But as we are today. Jesus didn't see it that way. He called Matthew to himself, referred the message of reconciliation.

Today here on Renewing Your Mind as we continue Dr. RC Sproul sermon series from the gospel of Luke were making our way. Verse by verse through the book each Sunday and we would like to help you continue your own study. Contact us today and request Dr. Sproles commentary on the Gospel of Luke to give a donation of any amount will be happy to provide you a digital download of this nearly 600 page commentary offices are close in this Lord's day, but you can give your gift and make a request online@renewingyourmind.org. We hope that what you hear on Renewing Your Mind is helpful in your walk with Christ in your understanding of Scripture, we make every effort to provide you with as much content as possible in one way we do that is through our free app you'll find these daily Renewing Your Mind programs plus articles, videos and digital books. Simply search for linear in your app store. This program is a listener supported outreach ministries. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you will be with the skin. Next time for Renewing Your Mind