Luke 5:27–39

0:00 Well, it's January the 18th, 2026, which means that we have just embarked upon the 250th anniversary year of the United States of America. So over the next few months, the nation's going to be doing all kinds of things to celebrate the 250th anniversary, because on July the 4th of this year, we're going to be, July the 4th, 2026, 250 years from the time when the Continental Congress in Philadelphia handed down the declaration of independence the thing about revolutions is that when they happen everything is upended everything is changed in a moment i mean you think about those people in and around philadelphia on the morning of july the 5th 2026 and they they woke up and they heard the news of the declaration of independence being held down in the beginning of the american revolution from great britain and all of a sudden you have had this dawning understanding that my goodness the world is different than it was yesterday yesterday we were a colony of the

1:02 british empire today we're a nation yesterday we were under the thumb maybe even under the foot of the king of england and today we're independent citizens yesterday george the third was our king today george the third is just this guy with a funny hat on his head we're Americans now we're not British everything upended everything changed in a moment because of this revolution the other thing about revolutions once you get involved in one is that you realize pretty quickly that there's no going back once you've declared one and Patrick Henry understood this when he wrote his little pamphlet and he said at the end of it give me liberty or give me death He knew that once the revolution was declared, there were only two endings to this thing.

1:50 We were either going to be free or we were going to be dead. The state of New Hampshire has a similar motto. We actually, because my wife is a New Hampshireite, we have a sign up above our kitchen door that has the motto of the state of New Hampshire, live free or die. That's a good motto, right? Live free or die, because New Hampshireites at least used to know that there were only two options here. You live free or you die. Benjamin Franklin had it also, talking to one of his friends that had some second thoughts about the revolution.

2:21 He said, my good man, we will either hang together in this, or I assure you, we shall hang separately. In a revolution, everything changes, and there is no going back. Well, I want to talk to you about some of those things today as we continue our study of the book of Luke. Let me invite you to take a Bible, and if you're using one of these red pew Bibles here that you can find, in the pew racks, maybe under the seat, not sure what your setup is there, but find one of these red pew Bibles and you'll be able to find Luke chapter 5, beginning on page 860. This book was written sometime in the 80s, 60s, AD, like Anno Domini, year of our Lord, 60s, by a man named Luke. Luke was a Gentile doctor, he was a Christian eventually, he was a companion of the apostle Paul, and when he wrote this book, along with the book of Acts, what he was aiming to do was basically tell the story of Jesus in the book of Luke, in the story of the early church, in the book of Acts, in an orderly and intellectually satisfying way. He wanted his book to be able to be read by smart people in

3:26 the Roman Empire. And so he says at the very beginning of it, my goal here is to lay these things out in an orderly fashion so that you can know for certain what happened in and around the days of Jesus. Well, so far we've looked at the first four and a half chapters of it. We've been in this particular series just for one week. So if you're new here, you're coming in at a really good time because we're at the very beginning of this series, at least for this year, in Luke. So we've just started that. But last spring, we went through the first four chapters of the book which tell the story of Jesus's birth and his childhood and some early days of his ministry. And we just saw how Luke, step by step by step, starts laying out these sort of cards of who Jesus is. This is his identity and this is why he's come. This is what he's going to do. Well, the same thing is continuing now as we look in chapter 5 and through the first half of chapter 5, the same thing's happening. Luke is just making the case step by step that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews. He is the great king, the great savior, the great redeemer that the Old Testament promised

4:31 would come to set everything right and save his people from his sins, from their sins. Last week, We looked at some of the very first episodes of Jesus' public ministry in the first half of chapter 5. So we looked at his calling of the first disciples, this miraculous catch of fish when he says throw the net out at this really weird time of day. Throw the net out. All these fish come in and they all stand in awe of him. And he says, come on, I'm going to make you not just fishers of fish, but I'm going to make you fishers of men. So go with me and we're going to catch men from now on. So we saw that. We saw his healing of what would have been an incurably sick leper, a man who had leprosy.

5:06 There's no cure for it. His disease was far gone. And then we saw his healing of a paralytic, whose friends, as we saw, were absolutely determined to get him to Jesus. Well, today we're looking at the second half, or it's sort of the third third or so of chapter 5, where Luke just continues to show us who Jesus is and what he's come to do. But in these stories, it starts to become clearer than ever that Jesus has not come just to do some good things, within the current system. He's not calling people just to do greater things within the current prevailing religious structures, to just sort of improve on what already exists. No, what Jesus has come to do, and it gets really clear for the first time in this passage today, is launch a revolution. He has come to completely overthrow the current system in its entirety and establish something new and revolutionary. So as we read it, I want you to see if you can see what that means

6:09 as we go through this text. Look with me at Luke chapter 5. I'm going to start reading in verse 27. Luke chapter 5, starting in verse 27. So here's what Luke writes. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And leaving everything, Levi rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with him. The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered them, those who are well have no need of 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 fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.

7:06 Jesus said to them, can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days. He also told them a parable. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he'll tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.

7:38 No one, after drinking old wine, desires new. For he says the old is good. All right, now I wonder if you saw in that text the revolutionary nature of what Jesus is doing here. This text today, you can see it really clearly there in your Bible. It's got two parts to it. You've got the calling of Levi, or Matthew is his other name. The book of Matthew, which was written by this guy right here, this guy that Luke calls Levi. The book of Matthew was written by him. And in that book, he tells us that he had another name, which was Matthew.

8:10 So, fair warning. Throughout this sermon, I am probably going to refer to this guy again and again and again, just out of habit, as Matthew and not Levi. Please do not be confused about that. I'm not making it up. this guy is in fact Matthew and Levi. So you'll just have to kind of hold that in mind. So you got that story, and then from 33 to 39, you've got this discussion of fasting and sort of the religious rituals of the day. Now, at first glance, it seems a little bit ridiculous for me to be using a word like revolutionary when it comes to these stories, because of all the Jesus stories, these two might be some of the least interesting, at least on their face. I mean, there's nothing happening here that is really all that interesting on its face. There are no miracles. There are no fights. No one gets healed. Somebody gets slapped down, the Pharisees a little bit, but it's by, it's, it's nowhere near the worst slap down that Jesus ever gives the Pharisees. It's just not all that interesting. It's

9:12 not that spectacular. And yet, I think if you read it carefully, you can see what Jesus is subtly doing here. It's not a kind of declaration of war that everybody understands all at once. But if you're a Pharisee or a religious person of the day, and you're paying attention to his words, you realize, oh my goodness, this guy is overthrowing everything. This guy is subtly overthrowing everything. In fact, he's making it clear that this new kingdom he's come to establish is going to be made up of people that the prevailing religious authorities would never have allowed into it. And not only that, it's not going to just be a kind of improvement of the old system, the old covenant. It's going to be a full-on completion and fulfillment and ultimately overthrow of it. And here's the thing, it is, for you and me, enormously good news that Jesus did this. It is enormously good news that he revolutionarily overthrew the old system, because

10:17 the old system was hopeless for people like us. In fact, there were layers of hopelessness built into it, because it, like every other religion in the world, had been turned into a system that rewarded those who were worthy to be rewarded. You got that? That's what the old system was. It was a system that rewarded those who were worthy of it. But Jesus here comes offering salvation and joy and forgiveness and the kingdom to those who are utterly outside the pale, which is enormously good news for those of us who know ourselves to be outside the pale. So that's the main idea. Every other religion in the world promises salvation to the worthy. Every other religion in the world, think about it, like tick the room in your mind. I'm not just making that up. Every other religion in the world promises salvation in one way or another to the worthy. But Jesus saves those who know they are nowhere near it. Jesus saves those who know that they are nowhere near worthy.

11:27 You know, Christianity and Christians and churches, I think, often get tagged as a bunch of people who think they're somehow holier than thou, as they say. You ever heard that? Why are you so holier than thou? Why are you such a goody two-shoes? Why do you think you're so much better than me? You're so holier than thou, you holy roller. We get tagged as people who somehow think we're more righteous than others. But friend, I think if you just get to know a few actual Christians, if you get to know people who actually believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, you'll realize that that could not be further from the truth because once you understand the gospel that we Christians really believe you're going to understand that the whole reason every single one of us is here the whole reason we're in attendance today the whole reason that we are members of this church the whole reason we are Christians is because we have come to know beyond a shadow of any doubt that we are not holy not righteous not worthy of what God has given us and that's why we're here we're sinners we're rebels and we don't deserve anything except God's wrath

12:31 but when Jesus came preaching that it's those very people to whom he is offering salvation it turned the world upside down and therefore here we are so I want to look at this story today these two stories really in two points. Number one, Jesus was creating a revolutionary new people. Jesus was creating a revolutionary new people. And number two, Jesus was launching a revolutionary new covenant. So a revolutionary new people and a revolutionary new covenant. So let's begin to look at it. Number one, a revolutionary new people. That's what Jesus was creating. So last week, if you just look back up to say, you know, verses 17 to 26, we ended with Jesus healing this paralyzed man whose friends literally, because the crowd was so big, they literally sort of tore open the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend through the roof to Jesus. One of our brothers here, Zhang Tran, texted me after the sermon, and he said, you missed a golden opportunity there to

13:32 say that that guy was airdropped to Jesus. I am entirely an android guy, so Zhang had to explain that to me, but he's right, and I'm sure that joke would have been even funnier had Zhang said it. anyway when this guy's airdropped to jesus jesus astonishes the crowd the pharisees even who were there the leaders of the of the people he astonishes them not just by healing the guy though he did that but actually by using the healing to prove that he had authority that he had the right that he had the divine imperium to do something way bigger which is to forgive the man's sins and the whole episode leaves the people astonished and wondering who this man is we have seen extraordinary things today they said and they're wondering who this guy is so when Jesus walks out of that that house after healing the guy and using the healing to prove that he can forgive his sins we know without any shadow of a doubt that we're dealing with somebody here who has the divine

14:34 right the divine authority not only to heal but to restore people to rightness with God that's the most important thing that we know about him so far. He has the right and he has the authority to restore rightness with God. And it turns out that immediately in verse 27, he uses that authority to save and restore a man whom polite society would have said is utterly and completely irredeemable, beyond the pale, off the planet in terms of social acceptability. Look with me at verse 27. After this, he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth.

15:17 And he said to him, follow me. So like I said, Matthew chapter 9, verse 9 tells us that this guy Levi was actually the apostle Matthew. It's the same Matthew that wrote the book of Matthew. And this man, Matthew, or Levi, was a tax collector. The most hated of the hated in Jewish society. The most despised of the despised. In fact, the Jews considered tax collectors in their writings, in their targums, even on the Old Testament, they considered these tax collectors to be on the same level as robbers and prostitutes and murderers. And there were good reasons for that. See, in the first century Roman Empire, especially in the outer provinces, the way taxes were collected is that tax collectors, and those who were called publicans, those were like the tax collectors' bosses, like Zacchaeus, they were just hired by the Romans to collect taxes from the people.

16:12 And the way the Romans did it, in order to sort of minimize, you know, bureaucratic overhead, was that they just said to a tax collector, look, you have this many people in your city, in your province, whatever your area was, at the end of the year, you have to pay us this much money. We don't really care how you get it from the people, but you're going to pay us this much money and anything extra that you happen to collect from the people, you get to keep as your wages. And so around this system of bureaucratic minimalism built up a gigantic system of abuse. And so the tax collectors could do all kinds of things to extort money out of the people.

16:47 They taxed and taxed and taxed. They taxed roads and goods and animals and houses. If you had a cart that was carrying goods, not only would they tax your goods that you were carrying, but they would tax you for the number of wheels on your cart. A two-wheeled cart would be taxed a little bit less than a four-wheeled cart. They could pull people over in the market. They could rifle through their goods. They could tax them on whatever they found. And if the person couldn't pay, to make it even worse, then the tax collector would offer to loan them the tax, which would be immediately paid back to them, at an exorbitant interest rate.

17:24 All in all, historians estimate that the Romans taxed their people at something like 5% of the entire GDP of the empire. Now, because I know that in the next couple of minutes all of you are just going to look down at your phones and Google it anyway, America's effective tax rate floats somewhere between 25% and 30% of the nation's GDP. Talk about revolution. So these guys, like Levi, were absolutely despised by the people.

18:04 And yet Jesus is walking along, and he sees him sitting at the tax office, and he says two words to him, follow me. Now, I want to pause there because you've got to understand what a revolutionary action those two little words were. they just crushed one of the most well-established and frankly well-deserved social barriers in Jewish life just absolutely raised it to the ground this was a guy who had chosen not only to betray his people in order to work for the Romans but actually to get rich by extorting his people on the Romans behalf you can see the results of all of that if you look down at verses 29 and 30 Levi throws this party after he after he decides to follow Jesus he throws a party for all of his tax collector friends, all of whom are outcasts, just like him. He throws a party for all his friends to meet Jesus, and the Pharisees say basically what everybody around them would have been thinking. These are a bunch of lowlifes, Jesus. These are a bunch of losers. These are a bunch of traitors and snakes who betrayed their people. They're sinners. They're tax collectors.

19:11 What are you doing? So you see the point? When Jesus walks up to this guy and offers an invitation two words, follow me. It's revolutionary. He's breaking through one of the tallest and thickest and deepest walls that exists in Jewish society. He's reaching essentially into the very bottom of the barrel and showing that his power of forgiveness, his power to make somebody right with God is not limited by the size of the sin. That's what he's showing. He's going right to the bottom of the barrel to say that his power to forgive, his power to make right is not limited by the size of the sin. He can save anybody. In fact, that's the whole point of Jesus's response to the Pharisees in 31. Look what he says when they question, why do you eat and drink? He answers them, look, those who are well have no need of a physician. It's those who are sick who have need of a physician. That's why I'm among these sinners. It's because they're the sick ones. They're the ones that need me. You guys think you're righteous. You think you're well. You think

20:16 you're healthy. Why would I hang out with you? You don't need me. They do. That's what he means. I have not come, this is 32, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. You see his point? The whole point of his coming was not to congratulate those who have done the best, or at least who think they're the best. His point there is actually deeply ironic. And when he says, I've not come to call the righteous, what he's saying there is not, you are in fact righteous. That's not what he's saying. You don't need me. You actually are righteous. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, no, no, no. You think you're righteous.

20:55 You're the ones who self-righteously think that you're in the good, and you think you don't need a physician, so I'm going to go to these who know they do. It's deeply ironic. They think they're righteous, and therefore he has nothing to offer them. But to those who know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are sick, to those who know that they need a Savior, Jesus offers everything. Healing, forgiveness, rightness before God. Friend, you need to hear that loud and clear this morning.

21:32 Not so much from me, but from Jesus himself and from Luke, who's trying to drill it into your brain. You need to hear that loud and clear. The power and right and authority that Jesus has to forgive and make you right with God is not limited by the size of sin. It's not limited by the grossness of sin. It's not limited by what people think of the sin. Jesus can and does save anybody who comes to him in faith. Somebody once said that Christianity is the only club in the world.

22:05 It is the only club in the world whose very first qualification is that a person recognized that they're not qualified to be in it. That's true. The very first step to becoming a Christian, the very first step to your heart being in the right place to receive what Jesus has to offer is to know that you are sick. And it's astonishing to see how often people get that wrong. I mean, people again and again and again will be standing on like square one, ready to move, ready to go toward the gospel. They'll look down and they'll see, I am suddenly understanding myself to be a sinner.

22:39 And what I want to scream at them is, then friend, you're on the first step. Take another one, take another one, take another one. But they go, no, no, no, no, no. Now that I know I'm a sinner, I'm not worthy of Jesus. And so I'm backing off. It's exactly the wrong move. If you're standing on step one and you are understanding yourself maybe the very first time in your life to be a sinner, to be spiritually sick, you're in exactly the right place. And Jesus would part heaven and earth to come to you and save you. Put your faith in him.

23:12 Look at verse 28. It's exactly what Levi does. He responds to Jesus' call in faith, full-on faith. You see that in 28? He left everything and followed him. Now, I want to unpack that response a little bit because I think it's one of the clearest and most pointed pictures in the entire Bible of the response that is called for from us when we hear the good news of the gospel. There is a response that's called for from us.

23:43 It's not just that you hear it and then you sit there. The gospel, the good news is, here's the good news. Jesus saved sinners. Now you need to do something with that. And this is a very clear picture of what that response is supposed to be. Matthew here responds with faith and repentance. Both of them. Let me show you. So first of all, faith. I think you can see that in those. The word itself is not used right here, but I think you can see it in leaving everything. Leaving everything, he followed him.

24:14 That's faith. That is full-on faith. Now, let's talk about that for a second because in our world, in our age, faith is a weak word it just is the way our media uses it the way we use it sometimes it's just a weak word it's the same in the greek it's the same as as the word belief and belief also in our world is a weak word we use it weekly we use the we use the word belief which is a synonym for faith to say things like i believe in santa claus or i believe in the easter bunny or i believe in the tooth fairy, or I believe in the power of healing crystals, or believe in yourself even. It's a weak word, and when we use it to say we believe in those things, we don't actually mean it.

24:58 We just use it as a kind of fairy tale, but in the Bible, faith is not a weak word. Faith is a strong word in the Bible, because what it means is to rely on something that is reliable. It's to rely on something that is reliable. It's not to, it's not to believe in something without evidence. Like you just, you say, well, I know there's no great evidence for Puff the Magic Dragon, but I still believe that there is such a thing. That's not what it is. Belief is to rely on something that's reliable. It's to size something up and say, you know what, I think this thing can hold me up. I think it can support me, right? So it's, it's a, you know, a good, a good image that you can use is leaning on something, putting your weight on something, right? But you don't do that with just anything. I mean, right, you know, I can size up this microphone stand over here and I can walk up to it and think about it for a second and say, well, you know, what if I stand right here and I put my arm out and I just, I start tilting until I lose my balance and my hand hits right there. Is that microphone stand going to hold up my weight? Is it reliable? No, but I can see that

25:58 by sizing it up. What about that pulpit? That's a very different thing. I mean, I can look at this pulpit and I can bang on it a little bit and I can see that, yeah, I literally could stand here on the edge and move, you know, I can lose my balance and hit that pulpit and it's not going anywhere. It's reliable. I can lean on it. I can press on it. And it's got the strength to hold up my weight. That's what faith is. When you put your faith in Jesus, you're not saying, okay, fine, I will believe in Jesus despite the fact that there's no good reason to.

26:34 It's not what you're doing. You're sizing him up. You're seeing if you really believe that he is who he says he is and can do what he says he can do. And you're saying, yeah, according to the evidence, that guy is strong enough to hold me up. And you're just kind of jumping off the cliff and saying, Jesus, if you don't catch me here, I'm done. I mean, you realize that's what Matthew did, right? That's what Luke means by saying he left everything. And he was relying on Jesus completely to be who Jesus said he was.

27:05 Because for him, there was no going back to the Romans if this Jesus thing didn't work out. He was a traitor to his own people. Now he's a traitor to the Romans. And his only hope is for Jesus to work out. He had no backup plan. Friends, your faith in Jesus has to be like that too. When you put your faith in Jesus, it's not that you're saying, Jesus, I trust you to save me. I really do. But if you don't come through, at least I've got my church attendance to show to God.

27:41 At least I've got my spotless thought life that I can show to God. No, you leave everything to follow him. And that's what we mean by that Reformation motto, sola fide, in Christo solo. We are saved by faith alone in Christ alone. There is no other way. Matthew knew that, and he acted on it. But there was another side to that coin, too. By leaving everything and following Christ, Matthew was also turning away from a life of sin, a life of betrayal, a life of deceit, a life of extortion.

28:17 He was turning away from all of it. And if you look at the end of verse 32, Jesus calls that turning away repentance. Now, I don't know how often you use the word repentance in your daily life, but just definitionally, it just means to turn. Like it's a normal word, right? So if somebody was just going the wrong way to Rome, and you knew they were going the wrong way, you might just say, hey, friend, you need to repent. Rome's that way, right? It's just a normal word. And it just means to turn around and go the other direction, right? A very normal Greek word. Turn around and go the other direction.

28:47 Now, when the Bible gets a hold of that word, it means turn away from sin and start following Jesus. Do a U-turn away from the direction you're going, which is a pursuit after sin and death, and follow Jesus. So you're going towards sin, right? And you do a U-turn, and you turn around, and you start following Jesus. That's repentance. Now, here's what I want you to understand. Faith and repentance are not two different things. They are the same thing looked at from two different perspectives.

29:20 So sometimes conversion to Jesus Christ in the New Testament is called turning to God. Other times it's called turning away from sin to follow Jesus. So sometimes it's this, it's turning to God, right? Other times it's turning away from sin. Now, what's different between those two things? To turn to God and to turn away from sin are the same movement looked at from two different perspectives. I mean, in fact, try to turn to God without turning away from sin, right?

29:55 You just, you can't do it. It doesn't work. And theologically, that makes sense too, right? Because when you have faith in Jesus, when you say, yeah, Jesus, I believe that you are who you say you are, what you're essentially saying there is, Yeah, I believe, Lord, that you are the king of kings and the Lord of lords. I believe that you are the creator of the universe. I believe that you are the redeemer. I believe that you are the savior. You are the king. Well, how can you say that?

30:29 But then say, and yet you can't be king over me. You can't be king over this part of my life. well you can't you can't have faith without repentance becoming a christian is a decisive break with sin it's not that you never sin again that's not what it means not what repentance means but it does mean that you declare war on sin so instead of living in sort of friendly relations with it or maybe even pursuing it as your best friend you declare war on it and no matter how many times it knocks you down you get up and declare war again because you're following after Jesus. Becoming a Christian means a decisive break with sin. In the name of King Jesus, you declare war against the enemies that Jesus came to destroy and you never again live as friends with them. That's what Matthew did. He left everything and followed Jesus. So Jesus was

31:30 creating this wall-breaking, barrier-crushing, revolutionary new people who were going to put their reliance in him and declare war on sin that's what he was doing but he was also point number two launching a revolutionary new covenant he was launching a revolutionary new covenant now we're going to look at verses 33 to 39 now you look at that conversation that happens in 33 to 39 uh that that may not be obvious at first glance but this second story in those verses is is really very much about the new covenant the very one that was promised by jeremiah and the other prophets the one that was going to be established a few months later and sealed by Jesus' blood when he dies on the cross.

32:12 Now, Jesus doesn't use the term new covenant in these verses, but that's unmistakably what he's talking about. And what he's doing, without getting into all the theological language or even all the Old Testament language, is that he's just taking this idea of the new covenant and laying out for anybody who's really listening some fundamental simple truths about that new covenant, and at the same time, what that new covenant means for the old one. So let's look at it and see what he has to say about it. So this verse 33, this story, starts in the immediate aftermath of this party. Matthew, Levi threw this party for all of his tax collector friends. Jesus attends it, and that just incenses the Pharisees. So they press him about it once, and he comes back at them with this, you know, The sick are the ones that need the physician response.

33:00 And they press on him again about it. So look at 33. So they said to him, look, Jesus, the disciples of John fast often, and they offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Yours, on the other hand, eat and drink. The point is, Jesus, the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees are good old covenant guys they do it right they keep the calendar they do what the pharisees say now it's interesting to pay attention to the details here it's not that jesus and his disciples never fasted and it is certainly not that they never prayed luke makes clear at various times that they do both but as was their way the pharisees had taken what in the old covenant in the law were kind of simple heartfelt instructions in the law regarding fasting and prayer. And they turned those simple heartfelt instructions into this crushing ritualistic system. And that system

34:07 is what they're accusing Jesus and his disciples of not keeping. The Pharisees have said, Jesus, that you're supposed to fast two times a week and you're supposed to pray so many times a day at these appointed times. Your disciples aren't doing that. You're not keeping the system. In other words, we, we, the Pharisees' disciples, we, John the Baptist's disciples, we're all good little Old Covenant boys. You guys are menaces. You're not doing what you're supposed to do. You're eating and drinking and having fun. But Old Covenant holiness would demand that you stop that right now.

34:43 Now, Jesus could have answered this in a couple of different ways. So he could have gone after just the man-made nature of their little system. In fact, he does that at various times in other places of the story. But here, he decides to go ahead and cut a little bit deeper. So he lets their little system go ahead and stand for the whole old covenant and basically says, look, the whole old covenant, the whole thing existed not for its own sake. The old covenant existed to look forward to something beyond it, to look forward to someone.

35:20 and I'm here to tell you that what it was looking forward to the whole time what you've been waiting for the entire time is now here and it's me that's his point look at 34 this is what he this is what he says to them Jesus said to them can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? No, you can't. Because when the bridegroom is there and the party starts, they're not going to be fasting and weeping. They're going to be partying and celebrating. And now that the bridegroom, me, he means, is here, all of my disciples are celebrating. That's what he was saying. The whole Old Testament, the whole thing was telling you to be on the lookout, to be on the wait for the bridegroom to come. And that's why you were supposed to fast. That's why you were supposed to be vigilant because you were watching and waiting but the wait is over jesus says i am here see several times in the old testament the messiah is talked about as a bridegroom coming to

36:24 save his bride you can see it in hosea you can see it in ezekiel you can see it in many minutes psalm 45 is one of the most uh celebratory of the places where the messiah is talked about as a bridegroom and jesus is saying in other words look guys the old test the old covenant was looking forward to me and now that I am here the old covenant has come to its end in both senses it's come to its fulfillment and therefore it is at an end now there was still work to be done right I mean Jesus wasn't finished with his messianic work and that's what 35 is all about I mean nobody at the time nobody at this at this party would have understood what he meant by the bridegroom being taken away they would have just gotten some you know furrowed brows and like what in the world was that? What did that mean? Right? We know, and Luke knew, that it's referring to the crucifixion in the future. And it's just signaling to us that, guys, this story of the new covenant being established is just getting started. But it would have gone right over their heads.

37:25 The point, though, of course, is that Jesus is utterly unique. There's nobody like him. Nobody like him in all the history of the world. He's not like the Pharisees. He's not even like john the baptist all of them were still old covenant people and so they were waiting they were fasting they were longing but jesus is radically revolutionarily different he's the bridegroom he's the king he's the savior who has finally come and brought the old covenant to its end and then he drives that point home when two illustrations over the next couple of verses both of these illustrations the the patch of cloth and the wineskins they're making exactly the same point. And the point that they're making is, I have not come. Jesus has not come to just add a little something new to what you already know in your Jewish rituals. I have not come to just make your rituals a little bit better. I'm not here to just make the old covenant a little more spicy for you. What I am here to do is replace it entirely to establish a new covenant all together. So that's

38:30 the point of verse 36. He also told them a parable. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old one. If he does, he'll tear the new one, and the piece from the new won't match the old. See the point? He hasn't come to just add a little something to the old covenant. If you do that, he says, if you try to patch in something new onto the old covenant, you'll destroy both the garments, right? First you'll have to tear this one up in order to get the piece in the first place, and then you'll put it on this one, and it won't look right. It won't fit. In another place, he says that it'll actually shrink and tear the whole thing, and the whole thing will become a wreck.

39:03 Same point in 37, look at that. No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins also will be destroyed. We don't need to go into a lot of detail on, you know, the ancient winemaking and wineskin making, you know, process. But the point is that wineskins were made from the hides of animals. And so when they're new, they're stretchy. So you can put new, unfermented wine in a stretchy wineskin And as it ferments and gases are let off and all the rest, the wineskin can stretch as it ferments.

39:37 And then, you know, you have your wine once it ferments. But if you put new wine into one of these old wineskins that got brittle and hard over time, if you try to do that and then let it ferment, well, it's not going to stretch any. It's just going to break and you're going to destroy the wineskin and the wine is going to pour out on the dirt. So the point, again, it's the same thing, is I'm not here just to put some new spirit in the Old Covenant. I'm not here just to give you some new applications or new dispensations or administrations or even a continuation of the Old Covenant.

40:10 I'm here to give you something entirely new. Verse 39 confuses us sometimes. No one, after drinking old wine, desires new, for he says the old is good. Because we think, wait a second, I thought the new was the good and the old was the bad. But Jesus is here saying that nobody who does the old wants the new because he says that the old is good. So what's going on there? We get confused by that because we think Jesus is kind of abruptly changing the metaphor on us. Saying that old wine is in fact better. Old covenant is in fact better.

40:42 But that, friends, is just because we have our minds on the idea that our 1984 Le Chateau de Bolognese Zinfandel is better than the 2026 two buck chuck. That's what we're thinking. but that's not the point what Jesus is saying is look despite the fact that I'm bringing you something brand new there are always going to be some people like you guys he's saying there are always going to be some people out there who are drinking the old stuff and they're fine with it they don't want anything new because they're fine with the old in fact that's what the phrase means I don't know if you're I don't know how your bible translates it it's just the old is good. It's not better. It doesn't say better. It says, they say, the old is good. It's good enough. It's fine. That's what it means. And so they don't even try the new stuff.

41:39 There's a lesson there, right? I mean, some of you are drinking the old wine of your life and your circumstances, and you're standing with God, and you're saying, you know what? It's fine I have a house I have money I have a family I take great vacations it's fine I am here to tell you just as Jesus is if that's what you're saying and that's the reason you are rejecting Jesus Christ you have no idea what you're missing out on in this life and the next i think there's another lesson here too for those of us who are christians see for whatever set of reasons mostly our i think our very human nature of wanting to contribute something anything to our salvation for for whatever set of reasons though we are almost even as christians we are almost zombie-like in our determination to return to the old wineskins

42:44 to return to old covenant ways of thinking about God and thinking about our relationship to God. Even after we drink deeply of the new wine of grace and atonement and justification and sola fide, we will still over and over sabotage ourselves by thinking, and yet God will be unhappy with me if I don't do this or stop doing that. But friends, stop for just a second and listen to me.

43:18 Take a deep breath and listen. You do need to fight sin. You do need to pursue holiness. But God's love for you is not dependent on that fight. Nor is it dependent on that pursuit. It is dependent on the finished work of Jesus alone.

43:51 And so you are secure forever. Look, look, when all is said and done, when all is said and done, and we all wind up in heaven before the throne of God, do you know how much more you are going to deserve to be in heaven than the guy who just kind of bounces in at the last second with the seat of his pants on fire? You know how much more congratulation you're going to get from the angels than that guy? Not one wit. You're going to be the best Christian in the world for 80 years, and you're not going to get one more bit of applause than that guy who comes in on the seat of his pants at the last second. Not one more.

44:31 Because the whole thing is dependent on Jesus, not you. Are there rewards in the jars of the difference? Yes, of course. But your presence in heaven is dependent on Jesus. The father is going to look at you and he's going to look at that guy with his pants on fire and then he's going to look at Levi, the tax collector and then he's going to look at the thief that was on the cross and he's going to say, you all, all of you are here because of my son. Come into the joy of your father.

45:04 Friends, I hope you can see what's happening here. I hope you can see what's happening here in these stories. They're not the most spectacular, at least on their face but Jesus is launching a revolution. He's launching a whole new revolutionary covenant with a whole new revolutionary people. And you know what happens? You know what happens when a revolution is declared? You have to make a decision. You have to make a decision. Do I join in and take off into this new revolutionary world?

45:38 Or do I just sit here comfortably with what feels safe and old? I think you know. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you and praise you this morning that you are the great Savior who came to give your life as a ransom for many so that we might not perish but have everlasting life. Our God, we thank you that you have been so clear about what you require of us and that is to trust in your son for salvation.

46:18 Our Lord, we thank you that you've not put it on us to have a blank slate and fill it out better this time. You've not called us to win your favor by doing more good things and fewer bad things, but you, in your grace and in your mercy and your love, you, Jesus, came and did for us what we could never do. You pay the debt that we could never pay. And so we praise you and honor you for it this morning. Help us, oh God, to think about these things this week. Help us to be encouraged by these things and help us to live in their light.

46:50 We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.