SIGNAL CHURCH CAPE TOWN
Terran Williams:- Jesus : Jesus The Friend Of Sinners Pt.27
- Yeah, here's my message. We're speaking about Jesus, the whole year we've been speaking about Jesus. And one of the fascinating recoveries that is happening in public individuals, public intellectuals are across the Western world, it's been fascinating the last few years, is the rediscovery in the intellectual domain that the best parts of the Western world, I'm thinking about equality, freedom, human dignity, inclusion, tolerance. You, by the way, you don't know that there are countries that are marked by these things in other countries that aren't. If these are the best parts of the West, I'm not saying the West doesn't have problems, it's got plenty. Where did these come from? So for some reason, the myth took off that enlightenment was the source of these. People saw it in mass stones like the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, or the French Revolution as the genesis of these ideas. Now, these events undoubtedly shaped modern political thought, but the roots of these ideals stretch much deeper, and they go right back to the spread of the Judeo-Christian worldview, with Jesus as the epicenter of this world-changing action. I mean, Genesis chapter one speaks about humans made in God's image, granting them innate value. That was a brand new idea in the history of the world. In fact, these concepts are core teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, for example, is Jesus a manifesto of mercy, peacemaking, humility, urging us to treat one another with compassion and fairness. Jesus is parable of the good Samaritan, highlights the radical notion that all people, regardless of social or ethnic background, are deserving of kindness and dignity. And then, of course, Jesus' revolutionary action of including the included, like no spiritual leader ever done before him in history, has so marked the Western world with these ideas that people don't even know where they came from. Just a reminder, they come from Jesus of Nazareth. So my message today is Jesus welcome sinners. Let's go back to the original action that sparked this revolution in the history of the world. Jesus included the excluded. And I'm gonna read to you, mock chapter two, my passage today, verses 13 to 17. Once again, Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi. Levi, by the way, is another name for Matthew, son of Elphius sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me, Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner that night at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? On hearing this, Jesus said to them, it's not the healthy who needed doctor but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners. So I've got three points to make from this passage. The first one is that Jesus calls us. He calls us, Jesus lived in Capernaum, if you didn't know, and he would go on short-term ministry trips to the surrounding regions, and once again, he goes on a trip to the Sea of Galilee nearby. He had called the lake outside of his town, and while on this ministry trip, he calls yet another person to be his disciples. Levi, Matthew. In the same way that before, in mock chapter one, four disciples had responded immediately, when he said, follow me. Levi decides to follow Jesus, too. And then in mock chapter two, Jesus says, not only come follow me, he speaks about how he came to call sinners. So Jesus can walk up to people and say, come follow me. And he can say, I'm calling you. It's a beautiful thought. One of the main descriptions in the New Testament for a follower of Jesus is somebody who has been called. Calling, by the way, is an area of huge interest in our culture. As a pastor, sometimes people come to me and say, how do I know if I've been called? And usually the question they're asking is, how do I discover my tailor-made mission or service in the world? And it's a brilliant question. In my own journey, it's been mocked by joy and other times confusion, trying to discern and distill the good work that I am uniquely called to do. But when people ask me this question, I usually explain that from a biblical perspective, there are two kinds of calling. And actually the first kind of calling is the most important. See, the first calling is when Jesus comes to you and invites you and summons you to come to him, to trust in him, to follow him. That's the first calling. So my question to you, have you been called? Have you been called? Because somebody can explain the gospel to you, even persuasively. But back behind that, the Holy Spirit is the one who's calling you. I remember the night I became a Christian. If this guy Roy Hawley was explaining the gospel, he was trying to persuade me. But I'd managed to withstand these persuasions before. I'm planning on doing it again. But on this particular night, Jesus came to me through the Holy Spirit and he called me. He summoned me, he invited me. I remember not wanting to respond. He overcame my resistance. If I can put it like that. Do the second calling refers now to the specific ways that Jesus might direct you to serve in the church and the world, but it's the first calling. That's infinitely more important than the second. You may not be clear on your specific calling, but there needs to be no doubt whatsoever about your first calling. The second calling flows out of the first. You see, our eternal relationship with Jesus leads into our evolving service of Jesus. In the first call, we're given ears to hear. The second call relies on those ears to hear because now you've been given a God-given ability to hear him speak. If you received your calling, maybe some of you today is the day Jesus is calling you to trust in him, to follow him, to come to him. And then I pray that as you've responded to that first calling, your second calling will come clear and clear its ears. So that's my first point. My second point is that Jesus spends time with and he calls non-religious people, if I could put it like that. Jesus spends time with and he calls non-religious people. It says that when the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? And on hearing this, he says, it's not the healthy you need, a doctor but the sick. See, the irony here is that the Pharisees actually thought that they were quite fine. The Pharisees were some of the most committed, conservative Jewish followers of the Torah at Jesus' time. They thought they were quite fine. They thought the tax collectors and sinners were rotten to the call. What these Pharisees didn't realize is that they were quite proud, even self-righteous, and their pride blinded them just to how sick they really were. So when Jesus says, I haven't come to call the righteous, you've got to imagine him almost putting that in inverted comments. 'Cause none of us is righteous. They do two broad categories of sinners. So there's the respectable or maybe religious, not there's the respectable or maybe religious sinner. And then there's the not so respectable, often, irreligious sinner. C.S. Lewis, imagine the scenario where a person walks out of a church feeling very good about themselves and they walk out of church and look across the road as a prostitute exits a brothel. This is imaginary scenario. And the church person goes, what a disgusting creature. So C.S. Lewis asks, who is more like the devil? Who is more like the devil? There's two kinds of sinners. There's respectable sinners, non-respectable sinners. We're all sinners. In other words, it's not good people that get to heaven. It's for given people that get to heaven, none of us. Oh, good enough to get to heaven. Sometimes when I invite people to church, they say, oh, you don't want my kind in your church. Well, I need to sort something out before I put a foot in church. I always think to myself, you're exactly the kind of person I hope comes to church. What's interesting about Levi is that he was a tax collector. It was his job to take tax from people, usually keep a portion of it, made him and give a bit of it to Herod and the Romans. This made him very unpopular, especially with the most Jewish people in Israel. But he was more than just unpopular. He was to use the terminology of the day. He was unclean. There's this collection of ancient rabbinic rulings known as the Mishnah. Some Orthodox Jews still use it today. We learn what happens when tax collectors thieves or Gentiles into your home. I'm gonna quote this, ancient document. If thieves enter your house, only the place trodden by the feet of the thieves is unclean. If a tax collector enters your house, the entire house is unclean. If a Gentile enters your house, the house is unclean. And what do they render unclean? The foods and the liquids and the clay utensils which are open, but the couches and the seats and the clay utensils which are sealed with a tight seal, they're still clean. You didn't want a tax collector or a sinner in your house. You didn't want them in synagogue, sharing meals with sinners and Gentiles even if you were Jewish was especially objectionable. In ancient societies, eating and drinking were powerful symbols of human fellowship. To share food and drink with someone was to identify with them in a sense to endorse them. One scholar says sharing a meal with a friend today is often no more than a convenient way of consuming food. But in the ancient world, eating food with another person was far more significant socially. It indicated that the invited person was being accepted into a relationship in which the bonds were as close as a family relationship. When normally invited to meals, only people you considered social or religious equals. So in the first century Jewish sitting, then dining with sinners would be tantamount to endorsing their behavior and sharing their status. What's so radical then is that Jesus, the onlyest person who ever lived, flattered these centuries old customs. He regularly wined and dined with those considered moral and religious art costs. In fact, he became famous for this, maybe infinuses, infinuses the right word. He was slanted in public about it. Luke 7, Jesus's detractors say, "Here is a gut and a drunkard, "a friend of tax collectors and sinners." See, the various excluded people that deemed unworthy of synagogue attendance, the licentious, the drunks. They superimposed the teachings of Moses to avoid unclean foods onto the kinds of people that they could accept. That's what was so surprising to Levi and his dubious friends. While the religious community were judgementally rejecting them, Jesus spent time with them. The unexpected acceptance from him and this new friendship with a figure like Jesus must have shocked them to the core. I think the big idea here is that no one is beyond the scope of his grace, nor beyond his power to reach. Sometimes I chat to people and you kind of inviting them to follow Jesus and they say, "First, I need to sort my life out." I always say, no, come as you are. You don't change before you meet Jesus. You change when you meet Jesus. It's like a bath. You're in clean in order to get into the bath. You climb into the bath to get clean. I love the words of Ananias who baptised the Apostle Paul. He says, "What are you waiting for? "Be baptised, washing away your sins." Baptism speaks of many things. It's a public commitment that demonstrates an invisible bond between you and Jesus. But it's also just a perfect picture of washing away your sins. The blood of Jesus washes away your sins. The water washes away. The dirt of your body. It's a beautiful picture of trusting in Jesus. For those of you that haven't been baptized yet, can I repeat the words of Ananias to Paul? What are you waiting for? 27th of October, it's coming. And the third thing I've got to say for you, say to you is once Jesus is in your life, once he's in your life, he looks for bridges of relationship to walk across to others. Once Jesus is in your life, he looks for bridges of relationship to walk across to others. You know this because he calls Levi in the morning. And in the evening, he has a dinner with Levi's friends, other tax collectors, other sins. It's a beautiful picture. Once Jesus is in your life, he looks for bridges of relationship to walk across to others. I remember when I first became a Christian, I used to go to this church down the road. It was kept on baptists. It's an arguably church, an amazing church. And there was a book show, you could pay books out. Once I started taking these books out, I just haven't stopped reading Christian books since then. I mean, if you're not a reader, can I encourage you to become a reader? But I remember reading the story of the Muslim man who becomes a Christian. And he tells his face story at church and he says, well, he points to a guy in the second row and he says, this guy, and I've been working together for 10 years and he's become one of my best friends. When my brother died, he was there for me. He's been such an encouragement when I've gone through hard times. And he says, you know what happened? The bridge was being built from his heart to my heart and when that bridge was finally complete, Jesus simply walked across that bridge from his life into mine. See, once Jesus comes and lives inside of you, he looks for bridges of relationship to walk across to others. What is this tax collector named Matthew, having common with a demon-possessed man in Luke 8, a greedy swindler named Zacchaeus in Luke 19, a centurion named Cornelius in Acts 10, a businesswoman named Lydia in Acts 16, and a Philippian, daily in Acts 16. All of these stories tell of an individual coming to faith in Christ, step one, step two, they introduce their friends and their families and their neighbors and their colleagues to Jesus. When Jesus comes into your life, he immediately lifts his gaze to all the people in your circle of relationship. Now they are all in reach of his grace. You know why? He has a missionary in the midst of them. You. I think we're meant to be intentional about this. The people who have the most opportunity to reach others for Christ are those who have recently received Christ themselves. I remember the beginning of last year, a young woman who started to come to church, walked in, you know one, literally walked into our church, and then brought her sister, if I recall, and her boyfriend's mom, something like that, and as I chatted to them, I just thought of this story, that Jesus had come into one person's life and I was starting to move into the lives of others. I was talking to the person in whose nightclub there this week and he was telling me, he's like, you know, she comes, and her boyfriend, and her sister, and her sister's fiance, and her sister's fiance's mother, all coming to nightclub. When Jesus comes into one person's life, he looks around, who else can I reach now? I think you're meant to be intentional. Who are the people in your life, your neighbors, your friends, your family members, your colleagues? Jesus has put you in their life. Now I don't want to pressurize you. I've heard people say, how many people have you saved? It's a terrible question because no one can save anyone. Only Jesus can save anyone. But you can participate in somebody coming to Christ, but I put it like this, don't count conversions, count conversations. Have conversations where your goal is not to lead someone to Jesus, but just to lead them a little towards Jesus. Point them in the right direction. Did you ever hear about Hansel and Gretel, the story of the two children who dropped breadcrumbs to guide them back home? It's my favorite metaphor for spiritual conversations where the assumption is that over months and years, you'll have many spiritual conversations with this person who you love and they love you. And each time you hope, it just points them in the right direction. Most people who come to faith will be able to tell of several of these spiritual conversations they had with one or more people. At the time they didn't realize that that each of these conversations was nudging them in a direction. And there comes today where they do trust in Jesus, they look back and they go, "Wow, a lot was happening "before this moment." I became a Christian when I was 16, but I looked back at little breadcrumbs before that. When my dad was still alive, he died six months before I became a Christian. We were walking in the parade and there was this fire and brimstone preacher. We went to church going family and I said, "Dad, how crazy is that man?" And my dad says, "We might not like his method, "but who knows, maybe what he's saying is true." My non-Christian dad said those words to me. Got me thinking, "That crazy man, "maybe he said telling the truth." My uncle told me that he'd been praying for me and believed God had a huge plan for my life. My best friend at school asked me what I thought heaven was like and whether I believed I was going there. Later, I argued with him and another friend about the dangers of fanaticism. Some I got in in my head that I was a proper Christian and they were fanatics, even though I didn't read the Bible or pray or God in church. You guys are fanatics. I think I had reflected on the stupidity of that conversation. I remember telling Nathan not to worry about me because I believed and he quoted a verse that even the devil believes and yet doesn't know God nor he's going to heaven. The difference between believing a little bit about Jesus and trusting in Jesus and having a personal connection with him. Each of these conversations God was using different people, even non-Christian to drop crumbs in front of me. My advice to you, don't count conversions, count conversations. The more of those you have done the line, the more people come to Christ. And my advice, especially with friends and family members, don't preach at them. Don't come on so strong that you break the bridge. If they are in your life and you're in their life, then you've got time. Take it easy with these people. But share a little bit, share a little bit there. Remember they're looking at your life. They want to see if your faith is having a positive effect on you or something they deem a bad effect on you. Let them see it making you a sweeter, kinder, humbler, more courageous, more authentic person. Can I really be a friend of sinners without sinning? This question was really big for me as a teenager. In fact, Julie and I were having breakfast yesterday morning and she said when she was a teenager, she wanted to go to a nightclub. So she asked her youth leader, "I want to go." And the youth leader says, "Will you be having more influence "on your friends or them having more influence on you? "Do you want to go because you can reach out to your friends "or just have fun?" And Julie said to me, "Oh, yikes. "I think she'd hope to meet boys, right? "Something like that." Did Jesus sin when he spent time with sinners? He never endorsed sin in anyone. But he had a way of separating the sinner from the sin. He had a way of enjoying their company even when he didn't enjoy their lifestyle. He had a way of being liked by people even when he was not like them. The variouses feared condemnation by the undesirables. Somehow by being with you, "Your uncleanness is going to jump on me." But Jesus held the opposite belief. He believed by spending time with sinners. He's cleanness, he's honediness. We'll jump on them. Going out of his way to connect with the morally compromised, the excluded, irreligious, Jesus turned outsiders into insiders. Who knows how many people, bridges Jesus will cross from your heart to others? So my advice to you, if you're a follower of Jesus, I know hanging out with fellow followers of Jesus is an awesome thing. You do need community. Be part of a nightclub. Build relationships with fellow followers of Jesus. If something is wrong, if you're only people in your life are followers of Jesus, 'cause your love for Jesus should drive you out to put yourself out there for people you love. If you don't have any of those people in your life, time to join a running club. Time to make friends with your neighbor. Remember what I said? Jesus changed his lives. He also changed the world by being a friend of sinners. He released a way of being into the world that has partly led ultimately to things like freedom, equality, human dignity, inclusion, tolerance in the Western world. John Dixon, the scholar, he says, "Jesus is fraternizing with sinners, "heavily influenced the social conduct "of the early church." His stories note that the first Christians overturned the social distinctions and attending discrimination between Jew and Gentile, between pure and impure, between saint and sinner. These first followers of Jesus were utterly devoted to Jesus' ethical standards, which included clear guidelines on marriage and sex and honesty and so on. But at the same time, they were utterly devoted to the social generosity Jesus had embodied. They ate with Gentiles, they ate with people who didn't know Jesus. They insisted that the rich among them should give honor and assistance to their brothers and sisters. They gladly accepted the shame of aligning themselves with people who were weak, sick and imprisoned. They treated women in a way that was groundbreaking, all because of the teaching and the example of Jesus. It's inspiring. It's challenging. I'm not saying the Western world is saved because of the influence of Jesus, but let's just give credit, we credit is Jew. The most important thing is that you make it to Jesus' table. We can just get someone to call the kids down to join us, we're gonna have communion. Let me just say a few things about communion. There's a place for you at this table, but I wanna point out a paradox because, and I'm gonna ask a question, is Jesus the judge of sinners, or is Jesus the friend of sinners? See, Jesus, if you read the gospels, regularly proclaim the coming judgment. Meanwhile, he befriended those, you would think would be the first in line for divine displeasure. So how does that work? How does Jesus denounce wickedness and hardness of heart? And yet still be friends with sinners. How does the judge of sinners also be the friend of sinners? And this paradox, by the way, is resolved in the death and the resurrection of Jesus. When Jesus died in the cross, he bore divine judgment for all who will accept his hand of friendship. Jesus' openness towards sinners then is a deliberate sign of the welcoming grace of God. He preached that grace. He's suffering on the cross, secured that grace. He's scandalous social life, embodied grace in a tangible way. Though he's meals, through his meals with the undeserving, he sought to demonstrate that friendship with sinners is something God eagerly desires. He gave us the communion table as the sign of the welcoming grace. It's at the table that the judge of sinners becomes the friend of sinners. Can I ask you to stand up again with the band on the stage? So we're going to participate in communion. Remember, Dave and Gen are going to stay at the front left if you want to join them afterwards. This table welcomes you. If you haven't yet trusted in Jesus Christ, can I encourage you to trust in Jesus Christ today? Join us at this table. You know, maybe you can even take a one-two jump from communion and get baptized in two weeks' time. That's a pretty cool one-two jump, yeah? But for the rest of us, as we eat at this table, we remember that Jesus is the friend of sinners. It's true, he is the Lord, he is the King, he is great. We worship him, but Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is still the friend of sinners. He loves you, but he also loves the people in your life who are so different from you, don't believe like you believe, and haven't yet discovered him. Have a pray today is heeded at this table. You would also think about some friends and family members, colleagues, neighbors, maybe bring them to God in prayer, start to pray for them. Last week I spoke about this man who leads a church in Cologne, Germany, and I was watching a video of his that he sent me, and he says that he decided to pray for each of his neighbors and to love them like they've never been loved before. And he says that he prayed for them every day, his neighbors. And he says one man in particular was completely unresponsive to him. And he says after praying for him three years, he thought to himself, I think I'm gonna stop praying for this man. But then he thought to himself, if I stop praying for this man, is there anyone in the whole world is still praying for him? He couldn't think, maybe there's not. He decided to keep praying for the guy. Within a year, that man has to follow Jesus in his community. There are people that you think are so far from God. Your prayers cannot last their resistance. Your love can break through their resistance. Don't give up on people far from God. Their time is coming, yeah? We keep praying for them. We keep trusting God. So, let's go. Let's enjoy communion together. The band is gonna sing as you come forward. There's a table at the front, table at the back. Let's enjoy it together. (music)
Jesus, The Friend Of Sinners
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