GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 5:29-32
29 Levi gave a large banquet for Jesus at his house. There was a large crowd of tax collectors and others eating with them.
An antecedent is an important part of grammar in any language. An antecedent is the word that a pronoun (“he,” “she,” etc.) stands for. Maybe you’ve heard someone telling a story and have no idea who they’re talking about—that’s because you missed the antecedent (or they forgot to provide one). This is the problem that has caused some commentators to debate about whose house this was. Matthew says literally that “he was having dinner at his house” without clearly saying who either “he” is (Matthew 9:10). Mark says “he was having dinner in his house” (Mark 2:15), and some think he means that Jesus was having dinner in his own house. However, Luke very clearly says that Levi “gave” a large banquet in his house. The house belonged to Levi.
This was probably Levi’s way of saying goodbye to his old friends. He was going to depart and travel around with Jesus, and since most of them were as guilty as he was of sins of stealing, extorting, swindling and coveting, he was bringing them into contact with the Savior. This is an excellent example for us all.
30 The Pharisees and teachers of the law from their sect complained about his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Luke calls the teachers of the law “their” teachers, using “the Pharisees” as the antecedent. This tells us that other sects besides the Pharisees had men trained in the law of Moses, but these teachers of the law in particular were Pharisees.
This incident happened asked later, after the disciples had left the banquet. These Pharisees and their scribes approached the disciples to engage with them in a debate (or to accuse them). They questioned the disciples, but they were really trying to find out more about the teaching of Jesus.
“Sinners” here doesn’t mean people in general who sin, since “there is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:3). They would have had to include themselves and all of Galilee if they had simply meant people who sin. They were talking about people who were undesirable, living in a sinful lifestyle and, in their eyes, people who unworthy of forgiveness. But Jesus reaches out to the unworthy and to the seemingly incurable. Just as he made a paralyzed man walk, he also turned Levi away from his sinful life to a life of service to God. As we have seen before: Jesus draws sinners to repentance and faith, but the Pharisees kept sinners as polluting and undesirable.
31 Jesus answered them, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.”
Jesus shows God’s point of view of mankind. Sometimes Christians adopt a mistaken view of what our churches should be like. They want everything to be perfect, excellent, orderly, and changeless, like a nativity scene on a shelf. They want a congregation to look like a posed wedding picture. But God sees churches as hospitals for souls. Things are often messy, a little disorganized, a little chaotic, and always a work in progress. God looks at man and knows him to be a sinner.
The sinner is a person in real pain, unless he is so lost that he doesn’t recognize that his sin is hurting him. He needs to be shown his sins, and he will realize what a trap he has fallen into. He will feel the horror of being guilty of sinning against the Holy God, and he will hear the shouts in his mind: “Go away! You are unclean! You can’t stay here anymore!” (Lamentations 4:15). The human mind, as clever and creative and resourceful as it is, can find no way out of this pit of despair. We finally ask: What if God won’t forgive my sins? Am I condemned to hell? Is there no hope at all?
But there is a doctor for us. Jesus has had compassion on us, he has and he is the medicine we need. The medicine of the gospel is already at work in us; it has already fought and destroyed the corruption of sin in our lives. It proclaims to us that our sins have been wiped out (Acts 3:19). And the gospel teaches us the incredible truth: “Even though I’m a sinner in myself, I am not a sinner in Christ. ‘Christ is our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption’ (1 Cor. 1:30).”
Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees and their experts wasn’t admitting that they were right. He was being ironic. “So, you think you don’t need my forgiveness? Then I won’t hold out my medicine for you. But you think these sinners over here are hopeless? You’re right about that—and I’ve come to give hope to the hopeless. I’ve come to cure the incurable. I’ve come to save the damned.”
I’m one of the damned. One of the sick. And Jesus is my Savior. Listen to his words and realize that his healing is for you, too. He is your good physician, who heals what is wrong in your soul. Jesus turns your guilt into assurance, confidence, and peace.
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota