Luke 5:27-39

Transcript

00:00:01:04 – 00:00:23:24 Clint Loveall Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. After a little bit of a some time off. Glad to be back with you as we continue through the gospel of Luke. Luke this week. Late in the fifth chapter, trying to get all those words out at the same time. We’re in the fifth chapter, verse 12, Ivan, and we we see a couple of them.

00:00:24:41 – 00:00:44:43 Clint Loveall I don’t know if we’ll get to all three of the stories today, but sometimes the gospel chunks, things together. And we mention that Luke does that. Mark tends to sandwich them, Luke sort of puts them together and and we have that happening here. So whether we get to all three stories today or whether we finish up tomorrow, just kind of pay attention that that’s happening.

00:00:45:00 – 00:01:08:20 Clint Loveall Well, jump into the first one here, then we’ll unpack it here when we’re done. Verse 27 after this. He went out, saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, Follow me. And he got up, left everything and followed Jesus. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in this house, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.

00:01:08:58 – 00:01:35:51 Clint Loveall The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus answered, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. And an interesting story. Just a couple of things in the way of background here.

00:01:36:09 – 00:02:08:13 Clint Loveall Levi, we also know, as Matthew saw and you hear the character Matthew, the tax collector, also is known by the name Levi, and more importantly, the nature of tax collector in Jesus Day is a pretty lonely profession. You know, we in our day and age still make jokes, perhaps about the IRS or the tax people. But in Jesus day, a tax person was typically a Jew who kind of worked under Roman authority.

00:02:08:13 – 00:02:34:51 Clint Loveall So they had they had the authority of the Romans to kind of make life a little rough on people. And the general way that worked is that the tax collector could impose some taxes. There was a certain amount they had to collect and within reason, or at least I should say up to a point, the Romans would typically look the other way if the tax collector padded their pockets a little bit.

00:02:34:51 – 00:03:04:42 Clint Loveall So they really were thought of by the people not only as probably crooked, but maybe worse as colluding or working with the Romans, supporting the Romans. So they were not they were not well liked. They were not accepted. They were. When someone said tax collector, it was often an insult. And the the the direct impression, Michael, was that this person was not a good person.

00:03:05:07 – 00:03:17:22 Michael Gewecke Yeah. So we like you said, Clint, only have, I think, vestiges of this image because we don’t have the idea of traitor that there would be in someone in the Yeah.

00:03:17:22 – 00:03:18:22 Clint Loveall That’s a good word for.

00:03:18:25 – 00:03:57:10 Michael Gewecke Being, you know, essentially employed by a foreign adversary to extract money from you and your family. And the way that those individuals made money was to abuse the power that they had been given and to keep extra for themselves. So there there was a multi pole levels of sort of betrayal in this relationship. And the fact that Luke presents this story as a nexus moment, sort of a combining of the Pharisees and the scribes with this idea of the tax collectors and sinners, no tax collectors and sinners.

00:03:57:10 – 00:04:26:06 Michael Gewecke So this kind of language points us immediately to this idea that Luke is showing us that there’s a lot of crossover happening. You’ve got different people, groups who shouldn’t be together, being together. I do think it’s interesting that this is happening at a meal and, you know, commentators point out that there may be some more to the structure of this meal than is immediately apparent to us that there’s some ancient traditions about the beginning part of the meal.

00:04:26:06 – 00:04:52:04 Michael Gewecke In the latter part of the meal and the beginning part of the meal may look more like a fair, say, cycle type meal, and the latter part may look more like a more Hellenistic Greek type meal. And that that is also included in Luke or by Luke here to try to point us towards a further blending or kind of expand the vision of the kind of inclusion which is intended by Jesus Christ in his teaching here.

00:04:52:04 – 00:05:14:54 Michael Gewecke But no matter how deep you want to go down that rabbit trail, I think that there’s a an amazing connection happening here of both calling a person who shouldn’t be called in the midst of a gathering of people who are unlikely to enjoy being together and all of this happening because of Jesus Christ and his larger vision of what it means to serve.

00:05:14:57 – 00:05:41:27 Michael Gewecke I think there’s really this is summarized by Jesus’s final words in 31. Those who are well have no need of a physician, those who are sick. I’ve come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The setting demonstrates the truth of Jesus’s point. The reason that this is happening with all of this kind of different diversity I think demonstrates what Luke wants us to see that Jesus is living out what Jesus is teaching.

00:05:41:27 – 00:06:21:09 Clint Loveall Yeah, remember that Luke is very open and very sensitive to the outsider, and we see it here. You know, first of all, it’s a note of it’s a note of accuracy toward the tax collector that who comes to a party, tax collectors house, other tax collectors. Right. And who watches the first season Scribes, they won’t go in. But Jesus, here we forget how often Jesus is criticized for who he spends time with and that he’s with the wrong quote unquote sort of people.

00:06:21:37 – 00:06:47:31 Clint Loveall And at some level that’s accurate. He is with the wrong sort of people. But Jesus point is, it’s those people who need him. And it’s not that the righteous don’t need Jesus, it’s that if they were righteous, then then they don’t need to repent. Now, he’s not saying here that describes and Pharisees are righteous, though they may think they are.

00:06:47:51 – 00:07:16:21 Clint Loveall He’s saying that God is concerned not so much with those who don’t need help, as with those who do. And here in, you know, Levi invites many of them to his house. So this is a very common theme. It is surprising how often in the gospels that the criticism leveled at Jesus is he’s willing to be with people he shouldn’t be with.

00:07:16:39 – 00:07:42:54 Michael Gewecke But just very, very quickly, I think it is different than what we expect because Jesus isn’t here with the underserved, with the poor, with the underprivileged. I think we get that impression that Jesus is, especially in the Book of Luke, seeking out the poor, the homeless, those Disenfranchized individuals. Let’s be clear, tax collectors were among the richest of their people group because of their job.

00:07:42:54 – 00:08:09:46 Michael Gewecke They were loathe because of how they got their money, not the fact that they had it. And I think that it is striking here that Jesus is in a room of people who have done pretty well monetarily at the expense of their reputation, their family. You know, what is off about this encounter is that Jesus is hanging out with people who are enriching themself at Jesus’s people’s own expense.

00:08:09:46 – 00:08:35:31 Michael Gewecke That’s that’s the scandalous nature of this text, is that Jesus, when he takes sinner seriously, he takes sinners seriously. He he includes the people who have done really well at the expense of other people. And he says that he’s for them. I think, you know, many of us would be offended at this if if the people who have gotten their wealth through ill gotten means are the people who Jesus is sitting with.

00:08:35:31 – 00:08:41:04 Michael Gewecke I think we, too, would struggle with an image like this. This is a difficult story.

00:08:41:04 – 00:09:08:34 Clint Loveall Yeah, I think especially if this is one of those stories where the front and the back have to stay together, I think. Right, Michael Because you’ve got verse 28 that Levi got up, left everything and followed him and I and I think that bridge matters that Levi and this is this would be appealing to Luke that Levi turned away from his wealth to follow Jesus.

00:09:08:51 – 00:09:37:03 Clint Loveall And maybe at some level, the implication is he then invites others who he believe May believes may need to have the same opportunity or the same invitation. But yes, it is. It is always humbling to be reminded that Jesus cares about people, that you don’t care about and Jesus loves people that you don’t love. That is that is a struggle.

00:09:37:03 – 00:10:02:43 Clint Loveall And here the Pharisees, unfortunately, they haven’t quite gotten there yet. They their response is to sort of criticize Jesus, which is the theme of these stories. And we go into the next story and we see it again, verse 33 here. Then they said to him, John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.

00:10:03:18 – 00:10:21:37 Clint Loveall Jesus said to them, You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. In those days, he also told them a parable no one tears a piece of new garment and sews it on an old garment. Otherwise the new will be torn.

00:10:22:12 – 00:10:47:02 Clint Loveall And the piece, the otherwise the new will be torn 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 and the skins destroyed. But the new wine must be put in fresh skins and no one after drinking old wine desires the new, but says the old is good.

00:10:49:31 – 00:11:15:55 Clint Loveall Jesus says something like this in all of the gospels. The idea here really is one of new life of celebration. The question is why don’t your disciples have this practice of fasting, of withholding, of self-denial? And Jesus says, You know, there’s a time for that. But the time for that is not now in celebrating the coming of the Messiah.

00:11:15:55 – 00:11:39:54 Clint Loveall That’s the back text here. It’s not said explicitly, but Jesus says when the bridegroom is is at the wedding, it’s a feast. It’s a party. That’s not the time for fasting and grieving and mourning. And then he goes on to these very short parables, the garment and the wine skin, which we see another gospels, and we don’t see them here significantly differently.

00:11:40:37 – 00:12:02:38 Clint Loveall You wouldn’t put a piece of new fabric that hasn’t shrunk yet and hasn’t gone through that cycle on old clothing, or it would tear it when it shrank. You wouldn’t put new wine in in old skin because the old skin would have already been stretched and when the new wine tried to stretch it further as it fermented, it would burst the skin.

00:12:02:38 – 00:12:31:21 Clint Loveall So new wine goes in new skins. What’s fascinating, Michael, is that only Luke adds this this very interesting verse at the end. No one drinking the old wine desires new, but says the old is good. And I think this does something to the text that we don’t expect. In other words, we tend to read this in the other gospels as saying You can’t put the new faith into your old life.

00:12:31:39 – 00:13:06:52 Clint Loveall You can’t just take your old life and add Jesus to it without changing it. It takes a new life to contain the new gospel. But here I think that if the commentators can be trusted and I assume they can, the message is just the opposite. That old wine, the old way, the old purpose of God is coming through, and that the scribes and Pharisees have actually tried to innovate and change and do new things that are less palatable, less appealing, less right, less correct.

00:13:06:52 – 00:13:25:30 Clint Loveall But then the old way, the old is good. And by old here Jesus means, I think, the established purpose of God from the very beginning, and I don’t know of another gospel that puts that twist on it. Luke. Luke takes it a different direction here.

00:13:25:44 – 00:14:04:03 Michael Gewecke I think a through line that we could see in this entire section we’ve been over today is Jesus is consistently making the point which is being lost on the Pharisees that he is accomplishing God’s purpose that has been in existence for this whole time, for the whole era that God has been planning this effort, that Jesus says the fulfillment would be the theological language and the Pharisees, they don’t understand how this disciples could be with this teacher and not practicing the stuff that disciples are expected to practice.

00:14:04:03 – 00:14:28:01 Michael Gewecke The idea is, if you’re a fervent Jew, if you’re a fervent religious person, you should be doing these things. And Jesus, his point is, hey, they’re not going to participate in these things because they’re enjoying God’s Messiah. They’re enjoying God’s Savior while He’s here where the Pharisees missed the point, in other words. So they missed the point that Jesus has changed everything.

00:14:28:13 – 00:14:58:12 Michael Gewecke The landscape is now fundamentally different, is what Luke wants us to see. The Pharisees don’t see that right now. They’re looking at Jesus and really they’re not hostile at this point. Really like we’re going to see at this point in the story, the Pharisees are really puzzled. They’re bewildered why a religious teacher would speak this way, act this way, allow this kind of behavior amongst his disciples, because they’re thinking in their own old frame.

00:14:58:12 – 00:15:22:39 Michael Gewecke They’re kind of bringing their own impressions and the way that things have been expected into this conversation, what Jesus demands is instead for them to look back and see know that old story. God’s old intention is different than what we expected. And if you knew that, then that would be good enough. But they don’t. They make assumptions about what they do and don’t know.

00:15:22:39 – 00:15:29:56 Michael Gewecke And because they’re wrong, this is Luke’s point. I think because they’re wrong on what they’re expecting, they don’t see Jesus for who he is.

00:15:30:14 – 00:16:07:08 Clint Loveall I think we bring a bias with us that tends to celebrate the new and in other gospels, I think perhaps that’s even supported. But here I think it’s very interesting. Jesus says, you know, the new piece of fabric will not match the old. It is the new that is out of step with what God has always intended. And he is, I think, inferring that it is the Pharisees that are doing something new with the with the legalism, with the judge mentalism.

00:16:07:22 – 00:16:30:39 Clint Loveall They are the ones who are missing what God has always been about. And and in Luke, we see Jesus not so much doing a new thing as reverting to the original thing. And I think, you know, we can read this and think that Jesus would be the one doing the new stuff, but I don’t think that’s how Luke wants us to see it.

00:16:30:39 – 00:16:49:15 Clint Loveall If you if you were in Matthew. Yeah, maybe. But. But not here. I think Luke wants it to be clear that Jesus is the one connected to the old thing. And the Pharisees have missed. They’ve been on the wrong path, and. And they’re not helping.

00:16:50:00 – 00:17:13:40 Michael Gewecke So if you’ve got your Bible out, you might see, you know, my Bible here has a little footnote here that makes note of the fact that 39 is translated slightly differently in some manuscripts and then in other ancient manuscripts, it’s not included at all. But now clearly the nivi, which is the translation or no, sorry, no. S.V. Which is the translation we have in front of us.

00:17:14:05 – 00:17:34:49 Michael Gewecke It includes this because the they believe that there’s enough of those original documents to support the conclusion. But your point clear, I think is only strengthened by that to say that even some of those folks who were transcribing the Bible to give us the Bible are aware of how this story is told a little differently in the other Gospels.

00:17:34:49 – 00:17:58:51 Michael Gewecke And it makes sense that they might have thought not sure why this is there. And so the fact that they’ve worked to preserve what is a distinctive in Luke I think is really interesting because it helps us learn, I think, at a very much deeper level that even the disciples, when they heard Jesus, they heard multiple levels of meaning and teaching and that that shows up in their in their tellings of those stories.

00:17:58:51 – 00:18:15:50 Michael Gewecke You know, here Luke is able to say, you know, that there’s a meaning from this wine skin story that that maybe Matthew’s not emphasizing. And I think that’s a beautiful kind of thing that you can discover in the midst of Bible study that sometimes there’s more there and you can plumb a lot as you go.

00:18:15:50 – 00:18:40:55 Clint Loveall Yeah, I want to be I want to be very careful with this because I, I don’t want to suggest that we can read whatever version we like. But it’s interesting that this exact text in another gospel can sort of be read to say that Jesus comes to do a new thing and that it takes a new life to contain the new thing.

00:18:42:12 – 00:19:13:06 Clint Loveall But when you read it in Luke, it is, you know, the old wine is good or some translations say better and new wine is not good. I mean, that continues to be true today. Those who know something about wine old tends to be better and that idea here that Jesus is preserving something good that others have tried to change into something new and or something different at least.

00:19:13:26 – 00:19:32:58 Clint Loveall And it’s fascinating that depending which gospel you read and how you read it, both of those messages, I would say equally true, if properly understood, come through Jesus words. So I think Luke has given us something to think about here by putting the spin on this.

00:19:33:25 – 00:19:59:38 Michael Gewecke My final comment here is we sometimes we fail to keep in mind some of the original first generation Christian struggles. And one of those struggles is that the faith is being born and growing in a time in which there’s real significant rivalry and questions and struggle between this cultural really battle between Hellenism or, you know, Roman culture and Jewish culture.

00:19:59:47 – 00:20:26:34 Michael Gewecke There’s this real struggle to maintain a national identity while this this armies occupying and controlling your country. And there’s a lot of debate happening amongst the Pharisees about how they’re going to preserve their faith. And they think of that through a very structured lens. They want to keep the laws, they want to keep the observance. They want to have very, you know, very clear kind of social markers.

00:20:26:34 – 00:20:51:27 Michael Gewecke This is what it looks like if you’re a person of faith. And when Jesus encounters them over and over and over again, Jesus calls the Pharisees to an openness that they’re uncomfortable with. He reveals God in a way that that calls them out of their their very rural, moral focused lens into a radically different lens. And it happens consistently.

00:20:51:27 – 00:21:10:42 Michael Gewecke And I think that when we see this story, this idea of the old, I think we can see Jesus making the argument that the Pharisees have have created a new order, they’ve created a new understanding of faith, and that he is calling them to a deeper identity. And we’ll see that teased out. We don’t need to say much more about that.

00:21:10:42 – 00:21:24:30 Michael Gewecke But what Luke has done here makes sense in the culture in which that both he lives and then the the earliest church and their own understandings of the struggle. And and I think it’s important we know that as we go.

00:21:24:50 – 00:21:50:29 Clint Loveall Yeah. And just you know, there’s not always time to get everything that’s in here. But just quickly, I want to leave with make sure that we correct on the other side as well, because in on a day when we have a story about a party and then Jesus people not fasting and withdrawing from some of the fun stuff of life, it’s worth saying that Jesus doesn’t say they don’t need to do that.

00:21:51:00 – 00:22:19:26 Clint Loveall He says there will be a time for that. And that’s not now. Luke is not suggesting that disciples or that discipleship is all fun stuff and is not ever a static and withdraw thing from the world in the pleasures. He’s not saying there’s no place for fasting and for sacrifice. He’s saying that in the midst of Jesus being present, it’s not that time.

00:22:19:26 – 00:22:43:28 Clint Loveall But he’s not denying that there is a time, as Jesus says himself there. So in a modern world, we want to make sure we’re probably more likely to hear the Pharisees struggled with, right? You mean we don’t do this? We probably struggle with why would we? Jesus doesn’t say we’re off the hook for those kind of things. He simply says that it’s not that time for the disciples.

00:22:43:28 – 00:22:47:15 Clint Loveall So just a little bit of make sure we stay in the middle of the text.

00:22:47:15 – 00:22:59:18 Michael Gewecke I think that’s a helpful word. Thanks for being with us. Definitely give this video a like on your way out that helps people find it later when they’re doing their own study. Subscribe for more videos like this and we will see you tomorrow as we start. Luke Chapter.

00:22:59:18 – 00:23:00:16 Clint Loveall Six. Thanks, everybody.