What would you do if you had a blind man behind the wheel of your car and he kept wrecking your car? Here he goes into the ditch. There he goes into the other lane. And again he collides with inanimate objects. And yet again, he goes through the stop sign. What would you do? Would you say, “Oh, my car just needs a new coat of fresh paint.”? Or would you say, ‘My car needs a tune up”? Or maybe even, “My car needs a new set of tires?” For most of us, the answer would an emphatic and irrevocable “NO”! Most of you would say, “My car needs a new driver.”
Let me rush to say that many of us keep crashing in life. If we are honest with ourselves, we keep making the same mistakes. We keep rolling into the same ditch. We keep trying and failing. And sometimes we may come to the beginning of a New Year, and we say, “I’m going to make a New Year’s Resolution. I’m going to patch things up. I’m going to get a new start. I’m going to apply a new coat of fresh paint on my old car.” But what we really need is a new Driver behind the wheel. And the new Driver we need is Jesus Christ. And that is essentially the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. According to Luke 5:33-39, we see that the gospel begins with a new start; it births a new self and it builds a new structure; it brings in a new seat.
I. THE GOSPEL BEGINS WITH A NEW START
London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior. As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage. "Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I'm going to build something completely different. I don't want the building; I want the site." (Ian L. Wilson, sermonillustrations.com) Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God's, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17). He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build.
Luke is pre-eminently the gospel of the individual. It is full of real stories about real people. In Luke’s gospel we see Jesus dealing with a tax collector up a tree and with a prostitute who washed his feet with her tears. We see him with the rich young ruler who went away sorrowful and with the woman who touched the hem of his garment. We know that Luke was a physician. It has been said that a minister sees men at their best, a lawyer sees men at their worst, but a physician sees men as they really are. Luke saw men as they were and loved them all. His gospel is the story of Jesus written by a kind and compassionate family doctor. To my mind, he has given us the most appealing picture of our Lord. If you want to see Jesus as the Messiah, read Matthew; if you want to see Jesus as the powerful Savior, read Mark; if you want to see Jesus as the Son of God, read John. But if you want to see Jesus as the man for all men, read Luke. It is little wonder that someone called Luke “the gospel of the underdog.”
Luke chapter 5 presents Jesus as the God of close encounters. He shows us that He is not just the God Who is some distant Deity way off in cosmic space in the celestial heavens; but that He is a God Who is up close and personal. And this is good to note because it touches down with the heart of the gospel. In showing forth the gospel in its uniqueness, Dr. Luke shows Christ not only in His deity and divinity as God, but also in His humanity as a man. And you will find that in Luke we are given a clear view of the heart and mind of Jesus Christ; and the heart of God in the gospel. Luke gives to us a picture of Jesus, not only as the Teacher; and not only as the storyteller; but Jesus Christ as a man among men and the masses. And it is in Luke, more than any other gospel writer that we see Jesus Christ up close and personal.
In Luke we see Jesus with unusual and unscripted encounters with unlikely people. We see Jesus with unusual backgrounds, unusual occupations, unusual circumstances and unusual needs. In verses 1 – 11, we see Christ’s encounter with Simon Peter who couldn’t catch fish for the day. In verses 12 – 16, we see Him touching an outcast and unclean leper who is made whole. In verses 17 – 26 Jesus is teaching and four men bring their crippled friend on a palette to Him and heals the man and makes Him whole. And in verse 27 – 32, we have the report of a man named Levi. Levi is a tax-collector and a member of the IRS. He is a citizen of Israel but he’s an employee of Rome. Nobody likes him because he was deemed a hustler and a crook. Jesus see him at the tax booth and simply says to Levi, ‘come and follow me’. This is an unusual twist because in scene #1, He’s employing unlearned fisherman like Peter and giving them assignments in the kingdom. In scene #2 He’s touching outcast lepers, healing them and making them whole. In scene #3 He’s raising up crippled man; and the Jewish ideology suggested that the man is crippled for one of two reasons – either his parents sinned or he sinned; and he should be left that way, lest one go against God. And now Levi (who is a publican; a tax-collector; a fraud and a hustler) is asked to follow Jesus and Levi obliges and follows Jesus. His name is no longer Levi but Matthew. He is no longer a publican but a disciple.
Think about how many people in the Gospels were changed forever by the Stranger of Galilee. There was Mary Magdalene, who had been tormented, perhaps for years, by seven demons. She became sick and tired of living like that, and, coming to Christ, she put Him in the driver’s seat of her life, and was changed forever.
Think of John Mark, a wealthy young man who was searching for something significant to do with his life.
Think of Nicodemus, the most popular teacher in Israel and a member of the Jewish ruling council.
Sometime I would like to go through the Gospels and make a list of everyone whose life was changed forever because their path crossed that of the Master. My grandmother used to sing an old song that says:
One sat alone beside the highway begging
His eyes were blind, the Light he could not see
He clutched his rags and shivered in the shadows
Then Jesus came and bid the darkness flee
And there are people in this very room today have the same testimony, and millions all around the world. The Lord Jesus Christ is in the life-changing business, and He can change you life if you’ll let Him. He says the same thing to you that He said to Levi: “Come, follow Me.”
But verse 29 records an interesting thing that Matthew does. He invites Jesus to his house to celebrate his new life hooking up with Jesus. Let me park here long enough to say that real men invite Jesus into their house. Jesus is at the house; but not only is He there, but Matthew’s old friends, the tax collectors, showed up at the celebration. And Jesus doesn’t leave the celebration just because publicans have shown up; He stays there. But you do know, that no matter how much you are cool with Jesus and relationship is established with the Father, you can always count on the devil to dispatch one of his imps and employees to rain on the parade. In this instance, we call them the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptizer. Interestingly, they don’t present their case and argument; they just start asking questions because they are upset by their own miserable reality of works-based theology that has failed them. They want to know, first of all, ‘Why does Jesus drink and sit with tax collectors and sinners?” (v30) And, second of all, ‘Why don’t fast as often as the disciples of John or the disciples of the Pharisees?’ (v33) To the first question Jesus says He’s a physician Who came to save sinners. And to the second He’s a bridegroom Who came to bring joy.
II. THE GOSPEL BIRTHS A NEW SELF
Read verse 36.
It was very common in the culture of that day, because of pervasive poverty, to patch up old clothes and garments that were worn out and wearing thin. Some of you are from the country and you can remember how Mama would find old patches and use them to patch up socks, coats and other garments when they got holes in them. Interestingly, today people just throw them out and buy new ones; and for others they call it “distressed” and label it the new fad and style, giving it a 21st Century twist. As Jesus often did, He used ordinary images that were familiar to everybody in that day in order to teach and postulate spiritual truth. It could even be, as I look at Jesus in my sanctified imagination, that he held up a new garment and an old garment while He ministered on the scene to the masses. Eugene Peterson offers a helpful paraphrase on Jesus’ words here: “No one cuts up a fine silk scarf to patch old work clothes; you want fabrics that match.” Jesus says, it doesn’t make sense to take a pair of scissors to a precious and priceless silk scarf just so you can cover over a hole in your overalls. First of all that only ruins the good garment and provides a patch that doesn’t match the old one. It leaves both the old garment and new cloth useless and defunct. Not only that; but when the patched up old garment is washed, the new patch will shrink and tear away from the old, making it worse than it was before.
Tragically, the Pharisees in their arrogance, conceit and self-righteous demarcation wanted Jesus to conform to their religious way of thinking and to practice their customs and traditions; but Jesus made it clear that this would never work because you can’t take from what is new and stick it on what is old. The patch that was supposed to solve the problem would create an even bigger problem. And Jesus wasn’t interested in reviving their old, out-of-date religion that falls short by patching up people; rather, He was interested in hatching something completely new. Incidentally, the Bible often uses garments, clothing and garb to signify character and conduct. Paul fosters this ideology in Colossians 3:12 when he says “…clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Isaiah refers to righteousness as a royal robe that we are to wear. And that is why it an interesting nuance that when man falls in the garden, he runs and hides himself because, he reasons, ‘I saw that I was naked and needed to be clothed.’ And unfortunately, many people have a patchwork and a Raggedy Ann approach to Christianity – a little bit here and a little dab there is good enough to qualify for God to be pleased with me. And so we come to church wearing our religious rags of rote religiosity to perform a two and a half hour spiritual experience and stint; only to go back out to the parking lot and search for our own, self-inflicted, I’m-going-to-do-it-my-way garments. But it doesn’t work that way. We can’t just “add” Jesus to what we already have because we must get a brand new garment. Jesus is not an “add on” or an amenity; He is everything. And the whole message of the gospel is this – we need to trade in our unrighteous rags for Jesus Christ’s robe of righteousness. This is stated best in 2 Corinthians 5:21 where Paul says, “God made Him Who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
You better be careful because there is the danger of mismatched religion and lopsided theology. And Jesus expresses through this parable and story that the gospel is unique in that it does for us what no other religion can do - it doesn't just patch up; it changes and transforms. Lest you think I'm not talking to you, I invite you to think about what Paul said: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12). Don't skip over "spiritual wickedness."
That wickedness that wear church clothes.
That wickedness that wears badges and choir robes.
That wickedness that knows how to speak to you in an unknown tongue but can readily curse you out in good English.
That wickedness that knows how to dance a hole dance and how to speak church talk but won't say "Good Morning" to the person sitting on the same pew.
That wickedness that knows how to carry a Bible, quote a little scripture, but will not read it. Knows how to lift up "Holy Hands" but will not lend a helping hand.
The problem we face is not in the world, it is in the church. Because we've sought to patch up our new life using old legal systems that can only give us a failed attempt to cover the problem of our spiritual wickedness.
Dellas Linaman - Religion and the Gospel
There is a great difference between the two.
Religion is man made, the gospel is God-given.
Religion is what man does for God, The gospel is what God does for man.
Religion is man trying to climb the ladder of his own self-righteousness, with the hope of meeting God on the topmost rung. The gospel is God coming down the ladder of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and meeting us as sinners at the lowest rung.
Religion is good views, the gospel is good news.
Religion is good advice, the gospel is a glorious announcement.
Religion takes a man and leaves him as he is; the gospel takes a man as he is and makes him what he ought to be.
Religion ends in an outer reformation.
Religion whitewashes, the gospel washes white.
Religion often becomes a farce; the gospel is always a force, the power of God unto salvation, to everyone who believes.
There are many religions, but only one Gospel.
Jesus says that the gospel, and only the gospel, and no other religion starts from the inside out.
III. THE GOSPEL BUILDS A NEW STRUCTURE
H. B. Charles, Jr. tells the story about two men who stood in line downtown to get building permits for they were both preparing to build a new house. And as they were chatting away, they realized that not only were they building a house, but they were building across the way from each other. They were going to be neighbors. They began their building projects around the same time but they went about it in different ways. One man showed up with nails, and a hammer and wood, and all of the things you would need in order to build a new house. But the man across the way just showed up with a shovel and started digging a while. The man with all of the equipment began to lay the foundation while the other man across the way just kept digging a hole. The man with all of the equipment set up the frame of the house, and the walls along with the roof of the house while the man with the shovel just kept digging a hole. The man across the way was putting the finishing touches on his house while this man with the shovel just kept digging deeper and deeper in this hole. One day, the man with the shovel's wife showed up to barging him lunch as she did every day, but that day she announced it would be her last. This is embarrassing, she complained. The family across the way there, they are about to have a housewarming party tonight. Avid here you are in this hole digging. And as she turned and walked away, her husband hit something hard in the ground. He said, hole up baby I think I found what I was looking for. And having found something firm in the ground, he then began to build his house. And, as God would have it, on his first night in his new home, as storm broke out. The rains descended and the floods came and the winds blew. And as he slept, his wife awakened him, baby come to the window and see that the house across the way is toppling over. He grunted something unintelligible to her as he turned over and went back to sleep, and slept throughout the rest of the night with his house still in tact because it was founded on a firm foundation.
The first parable teaches that we need a brand new self. The second illustration from the Master Teacher makes that same point and also adds that we need new structures. Follow along as I read Mark 37-38: “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.” To understand this parable like those in the first century would have, we need to go back in time. Wine was made by walking on grapes in a wine press. The juice flowed through a channel into a lower vessel, where it was strained and eventually poured into a wineskin.
Jesus has not come to add the new wine of religious zest to your old life. This is what the Lord goes on to say, “And no-one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no-one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, “The old is better,”’” (vv. 37-39). Wine was kept in sheep skins. They were worked off the body of the animal without cutting into the skins, so that the only apertures were the orifices where the feet and the head had been. These openings were bound shut and the skins cured. Such a wineskin possessed a certain elasticity when it was new so that when the new wine fermented the skin could expand. An old skin lost that suppleness and finally cracked or it even might explode.
IV. THE GOSPEL SETS DOWN A NEW SEAT
Levi is using a banquet to launch an evangelistic campaign for Jesus. He feels, If this is that good to meet the Savior, I'd better have some of my other friends, tax collectors, and sinners, join me. That's the first instinct.
When Jesus gets there, he's comfortable with sinners; and, obviously, they feel attracted to him. Some of us feel that "the holier you become the more repulsive you become to sinners." I've got problems with Christians who are so holy they can't attract sinners. Churches ought to attract sinners. As long as we're judgmental and look down our noses at people, we won't attract sinners; but when we have love and when we have compassion, we will attract sinners.
They criticize him saying, "Now, why is it that your master eats with publicans and sinners?"
Jesus, in a way says, "I didn't come here for folks who think they are healthy. I came for folks who know they're sick. And I didn't come for folks who think they are righteous. I came for folks who know they are sinners and need to repent."
One of my points of desperation is when I come to a church and hardly find any sinners. We are all right. Everyone has made it. We're on the top of the world when it comes to our spirituality. I don't see much conviction of sin. I see people who have already arrived.
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk said, "We have two selves. We have the public self, which is the false self that we project and want people to see." We put our best foot forward, and we want to impress individuals about our public self. Merton says, "God sees that as a foreign self. God doesn't even know that self, and God can't have a relationship with that self because that self is too pretentious and too feign."
God invites sinners to bring their problems to him.
But the private self, the self that's covered up with layers of embarrassment and shame and anger and frustration and failure and misery, that's the self God says, "Come on. Bring it to me. That's what I want. You don't have to suppress it any longer. You don't have to impress anyone. Bring it to me.
"Come to me. If you labor and you're heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Come, now, let us reason together," sayeth the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be cleaned. If you're thirsty, come to the water, then drink. Come on.
In the church, we need to come before God with our private selves because all of us have been Humpty Dumpties. We have sat on a wall, and we've had a great fall. And all the king's horses and men could not put our Humpty Dumpties together again. And some of us have fallen off of , , walls; but though the king's horses and the king's men couldn't put us together again, nothing was said about the King. I know a King that can put you back together again no matter how many pieces you may be broken into.
Your degrees, your positions, your are not enough to keep you together. We need to come to the Lord just as we are. The new wine and the new cloth of joy stretches to the breaking point. The old wineskins and the old garments are of false piety.
"Master, why is it that your disciples don't pray and fast like John the Baptist's disciples and our disciples?" They did it legalistically. On Monday and Thursday from sunrise to sunset they fasted. Every day at noon, three p.m. and six p.m. they went to the temple and prayed. Everyone knew they fasted and prayed because they did it on street corners and made a fuss about it.
Jesus said, "How can my disciples fast and pray when I'm the bridegroom and they're guests of the bridegroom (in those days, the reception went for a whole week). How can they fast and pray? But there's a moment coming, the scandal of the cross, when I'll be taken away; and then they will fast, but until that time forget about the funeral. Come on, wedding!"
Every funeral that Jesus intersected or every situation that took the shape of a funeral, he disrupted. A little girl, who was the daughter of Jairus, was dead. He said to her, "Talitha kum. I say unto you rise." She got up with a brand new life.
The widow's son, who was on his way to the cemetery, touched the coffin and got up with a brand new life.
It's not good pastoral etiquette, but Jesus showed up four days after the funeral and called Lazarus from his tomb. "Lazarus, come forth."
I think we have this thing mixed up. Christianity is not a funeral; Christianity is a wedding. We have something to rejoice and to be excited about. Oh, brothers and sisters, sometimes we think there's incompatibility between good sense and good religion. We have a lot of cranial Christianity, and we detach it from cardiological Christianity. We not only need to think good. We need to feel good and not divorce any of this.
He said, "I came that you might have joy and that my joy in you might be complete." What is best? The old or the new? I think it's the wrong question.
The question is not "What is old, what is new?" but "What is true?" Does Jesus anticipate Pilate's question in the eighteenth chapter of John: "What is truth?" By responding to Thomas's inquiry, "Lord, we don't know the way," he says, "I am the Way, the Truth.."
What is truth? I'm concerned about people who have gotten to the point where they believe anything. What is truth about the trajectory of our theology? We have a theology of the think theologically. But we don't have enough theology of the do theology. Jesus not only thought taught in boats, he taught on he did theology, for he healed the sick, and he gave release from the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind.
What is truth? What is true about the complexion of our churches as they reflect the kingdom of God? Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "the 11:00 o'clock hour on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour during the week." I want to tell you, not much has changed.
There's a lot of cosmetic changes, but the interiorization tells me that not much has changed. We need to return to Howard Thurman's and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s beloved community. There is a powerless conscience and a consciousless power. Until all of us recognize, regardless of our racial stripes, that we are made in the image of God. There is no hierarchy; there is no superiority; but we are made in God's image; we're all God's 'll never have new wine in new wineskins.
What then is the nature of worship? Worship, in terms of truth, is not for humans; it is for God. God is the audience; we are the actors on the stage, and whatever we do, whether it's done in a blended fashion or contemporary fashion or traditional fashion, is done to glorify God. It's not for us; it is for God. But God is so good that he lets me get a little bit out of it as well.
Worship is not so much an event; it's an encounter where I come into the presence of God, and something happens to me because I'm there. I love popcorn, but I could never understand the gospel of popcorn. You can put it in the microwave oven; those kernels of corn will be exposed to the same radiation, have the same butter solution mixing up, but when it's all over, some kernels never pop.
Brothers and sisters, when we come in the house of God, we ought to "pop" sometimes. We ought to give God some glory for what he has done. Don't be ashamed to let the world know you love the Lord.
Worship, according to Harold Best, is not so much a verb as it is a noun. If I get my together, my will follow. If you get my attitude right, then the actions will follow. Are you really tired of a leaky wineskin that won't hold the new wine of the new experience God wants to give you? Are you really tired of a patched up Christianity that keeps pulling away from your spiritual maturity?
God wants to do something totally revolutionary and radical in you and in me.
I’m pressing on the upward way,
New heights I’m gaining every day;
Still praying as I’m onward bound,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Refrain:
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
By faith, on Heaven’s tableland,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
