Realized About four o'clock this afternoon That I missed a golden opportunity on March the 16th to preach from John 3 16 But we're not going to do that tonight. There's probably a lot of churches today preaching on John 3 16 on March the 16th But we're not going to do that. I want to ask you to turn to Mark chapter 2 Mark chapter 2 And the section that we're going to read is just a short little event in the early part of Christ's ministry where he gives a call to Levi. who you all know to be Matthew, to come and to follow him. So we'll read these four verses, starting in verse number 13, five verses, I guess. Mark chapter two, and beginning in verse number 13. And he, that is Christ, went forth again by the seaside, and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the receipt of custom and said unto him, follow me. And he arose and followed him. And it came to pass that as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many and they followed him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, how is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he said unto them, they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. to repentance. Amen. We'll end right there, just at the end of that little section with the calling of Levi and Christ eating there in his home. Let's seek the Lord in prayer and we'll come to consider these verses more. Let's pray. Our Father this evening, we do ask that you would come and meet with us. We pray for strength and help, both in preaching and in hearing. that your spirit would take up your word, that you would encourage us with the scriptures tonight. Help us as we seek to continue to walk with you. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. We see through the scriptures many different illustrations of the grace of God at work. There are many passages where we see grace permeating through the entire tenor of the story, the whole aspect of a psalm, etc., but yet the actual word grace is never used. This episode that we have before us in the calling of Levi is one such of those examples where We see the grace of God in action. We see the grace of God on display in calling Levi or Matthew to follow him. And so this evening, I want to preach to you on this passage and show you what I'm just going to call an illustration of grace. an illustration of grace. Many people have defined grace as God's riches at Christ's expense. Maybe you've heard that acronym before, G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense. Well, as a Christian, we are told in the scriptures that we have all the riches of God in Christ Jesus. And all the riches of God that we know that are available to us in the gospel are earned by Christ and they were really at Christ's expense. Christ is the one who has done all the work for us in redeeming us. And this does emphasize the fact to us that grace is free. We talk very often of the language of the Catechism where it talks about free grace, and we say that that's a redundancy, because grace by its very definition is free. And so to call it free grace is really just redundant language, but you have to understand the context of the the document, the Confession of Faith in the Catechisms, was written as really the crowning jewel of Reformation theology, and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church were really in view in that language. And while they would talk of grace, they do not know of free grace. They understand a grace that is earned, which is not grace at all. but we understand grace to be free. And so, as I've already said, you look in these verses in Mark 2, and you don't see the word grace, but in Christ calling Levi to follow Him, we see an illustration of the grace of God at work. And I trust as we go through these illustrations, you will see in your own heart how the grace of God has been on display in your own life. And so four things I want to point out to you this evening. The first one is that grace seeks out even the very lowest of sinners. That's one of the first things we see about grace. It seeks out even the very lowest of sinners. The acronym, God's Riches at Christ's Expense, is convenient enough for us to use as a definition of grace, but I think you all understand that grace is much more than that. Grace is God's favor that's given to those who are completely undeserving. We can go another step forward. Grace is not only God's favor to those that are undeserving, but those that are actually ill-deserving. It's not that we have done nothing and God has been gracious to us, though we have done nothing. No, we have actively sinned against Him. We have actively broken His law. We have been actively in rebellion against Him, fighting against Him, enemies of Him. Yet He still has demonstrated grace. We see in the scriptures grace put in distinction from a wage. A wage is something that you earn by your work. And so you know the verse in the book of Romans, the wages of sin is death. Death is that which you earn by your own sin. But grace, as we've already seen, is something that is freely given. There is no merit on your part in the giving of grace. Every man born from Adam is a sinner and is by nature a rejecter of God. Now, that rejection of God manifests itself in different ways in different people, and you have a whole category, a whole spectrum of rejecters of God, all the way from what we would stereotypically think of the atheist that is a rejecter of God, in the sense that he denies that God even exists, and so rejects his very existence, all the way to the self-righteous that would claim to be a lover of God, would claim to be one who serves God, as the scribes and Pharisees that we'll see in our passage in just a moment, but yet still were a rejecter of God. And you have that whole spectrum and everybody in the middle. And each one of you, when you were converted to Christ, you were somewhere on that line. I don't know the testimony of anyone here who claims that they were an atheist before they came to Christ, but you were somewhere on that spectrum, but yet still a rejecter of the God of heaven. And when it comes to the grace of God being displayed, the Lord does not factor that spectrum in, if you will. He does not only look at that spectrum of those that have rejected Him, and look at those that are still moral, and good, and in the eyes of the world, and choose that category, and leave the other half off. No, we see in the grace of God that God chooses even the very lowest of sinners. In the opinion of the Jews at that time, especially in the opinion of the scribes and Pharisees that we're introduced to in this text, there was nobody more despised than the publican, the tax collector. I don't know if much has changed to this very day. I don't think any of us are, you know, really buddy-buddy with the IRS man, but you understand the tongue-in-cheek statement there. But in the Old, I'm sorry, in the New Testament time, in Israel, in Jerusalem, in this area, the tax collector was the enemy. These people that were publicans were considered to be traitors to Israel. They were Jews. Levi was a Jew. He worked for the enemy. He was employed by the Roman government. And we see here in the passage that when Christ called him, he was sitting at the receipt of custom. And most identify this and understand this to be, in our context, what you would think of as kind of a toll booth type place. where it's not someone, it's not a place where people would have as the destination to go and to pay their taxes. It was more of a toll booth kind of thing on the road coming in and out of Capernaum where he was. And as traders would come in and out of the city, they would be stopped at this toll booth and they would have to give an account of their goods and what they had or whatever, and they had to pay their taxes. on things that were coming and going in and out of the city. But what made it worse about these publicans, not only were they tax collectors and they worked for the Roman government, but for the most part, they were all thieves. And so I don't know what the numbers were, but to illustrate the point, if the tax rate was 10%, they charged you 15 and they would put five in their pocket and they would give 10 to Rome. They were always siphoning off the top. And being a tax collector was the easiest pathway to wealth if you were a Jew. But it was also an easy pathway of being hated by anybody that was respectable in society. Because as we find in this passage, Christ at Levi's home, the only friends that he had were other publicans and people who had a reputation in town of being sinners. and those were his friends. And that's who Christ sought out. That's who Christ called to follow him. For Christ to talk to Levi, but even worse, to go to his home and to sit down and to partake of a fellowship meal with him was scandalous in the eyes of the religious establishment, the scribes and the Pharisees. And so you see in verse 17, Christ put these men in their place And he said to them, they that are whole have no need of the physician. It's only people that recognize themselves to be sick that realize they need to go to a doctor, that they need to get help. And Jesus said, I didn't come for you. I didn't come to call the self-righteous. And we understand what Christ is saying in that passage. He said, I didn't come to call the self-righteous. Instead, I came to call sinners to repentance. Christ was not gracious to these scribes and Pharisees in the same way that he was gracious to Levi. Now, I say he wasn't gracious in the same way. Christ was gracious to them. It's a sin to not be gracious. Christ was gracious in telling them the truth. in putting their sin before them. You are self-righteous. You need to repent of your self-righteousness. Christ was faithful with them, in shooting straight with them. And if I can use the phrase, calling a spade a spade. And he was honest and faithful, and in that sense, gracious in his dealings with these scribes and these Pharisees. But their problem was they didn't perceive their need of a physician. They didn't see themselves as being sick. They didn't understand themselves as being sinners in need of repentance. They thought they were perfectly fine. But yet here we see an illustration of the grace of God going to the very lowest of sinners, at least perceived in the eyes of the world at that time in going to Levi. This will show you that Jesus Christ not only seeks sinners, but he seeks the very lowest of sinners. And that's encouragement for us all. It's an encouragement for you if you're here tonight and you're not saved. While you are still breathing on this side of eternity, if you are alive in this room, I don't think we have any dead people here, but if you're alive in this room, there is hope for the salvation of your eternal soul. Come to Christ, repent now. Many, I know, have prayed for a long, long time for unsaved family members. You have children, you have brothers, you have aunts, uncles, sisters, whatever, in your family that you have prayed for, maybe for years, years and years, that they would come to Christ. You watch their life, and it seems that they're going further and further and further and further from the Lord, rather than any progress at all toward Christ. Well, there's hope and there's encouragement here. The grace of the gospel will seek out the lowest of the low and bring them to them, and Christ will bring them to himself. Keep praying for your loved ones. Because does the Bible not tell us where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. So that's the first thing we see as an illustration here, that the grace of God goes even to the very lowest of sinners. But the second thing we can see in this illustration of grace is that grace always changes the heart. Grace always changes the heart. There's a very real sense in which when we talk about the grace of God, we are also speaking of the power of God. Now, they're not equal signs, one and the same, but yet we have places in scripture where the grace of God is identified as being an aspect of God's power. Turn with me over to 2 Corinthians 12. This is a passage you know very well. but maybe you've never saw the distinct connection here. 2 Corinthians 12. So the context here, what you're turning to is the passage of scripture speaking of the apostle Paul's thorn in the flesh. And when Paul prayed for that to be removed and the Lord's response to him was, my grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is made perfect in weakness. And we read that my grace is sufficient for thee, But look at what's put in parallel there. His strength is sufficient. His strength is made perfect in weakness. There's a parallel between the grace of God being sufficient and the strength of God being made, being perfected in his weakness. Be it he goes on, he ties the link even more. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Well, in the early part of the verse, what was it that was resting upon him but the grace of God that was on him that was sufficient to meet his need? But yet he, in parallel language, is identifying that grace of God that is resting upon him as strength that is made perfect in his weakness and power of Christ that is resting upon him. It is the grace of the gospel that gives us the strength to go forward and to meet the needs of this life. And what grace does is that it is powerful to change the heart. Grace does not leave a person where they were. In Paul's situation, when he came to understand that the grace of God was sufficient for him, that there was a power from Christ that was resting upon him, it changed his entire attitude toward the situation that he was facing. He was in great consternation of this thorn in the flesh. But when he came to understand the grace of God, his heart's attitude was changed. Now that's for someone who was already redeemed. But look at it in the case of Levi. In Levi's case, he was changed from the inside out. Everyone, everyone who experiences the special saving grace of God is changed or transformed. Take a look at Levi here for a moment. It's safe enough for us to assume that Levi was a lover of money rather than a lover of God. As a publican, that was the nature of the publican, they loved money. It's safe to assume from everything that history and the Bible tells us about these publicans that they were guilty of extortion by obtaining money either by force or by illegal means, lying about what was owed, lying about what was paid, lying about the whole thing. Becoming a publican, as I said before, is the surefire way for a Jew to become rich. But Jesus comes by this man, he's on this road going, and he sees Levi, and he says two words, follow me. And Levi was changed. Now, I don't think we have to understand that those are the only two words that came out of Jesus' mouth. I think it's very reasonable and perfectly right for us to understand that Christ spoke more to this man simply than just these two words, follow me. But yet, even if that's all he spoke, his heart was changed. He heard divine, irresistible call of the gospel and he was changed and he came and he began to follow Christ. So you look at Mark 2 14 and what happened after the follow me at the end of the verse and he arose. And followed him. He just got up. Left his stuff. And follow the Lord. How do I know he left his stuff? Well, there's a parallel passage in Luke 5 Luke 528. If you're taking notes, jot it down. There we read in Luke's account. And he left all. rose up and followed him. He left the receipt book. He left the bag of money. He left his little stool he was sitting on. He just left it. And he's following Jesus. He was a man who was instantaneously changed. And from that day forward, he never went back to that life. He was forever changed. by the grace call of God. And now Levi was a man with a different focus of life, an entirely new set of priorities in life. And that would make us stop to think in our own hearts. What has grace done in your heart? Now, many of you in this church Rejoice now to the day you die you were saved when you were children many of you in this church you have a testimony of conversion and You weren't drug addicts you weren't you know strung out on alcohol you you weren't into all that you you were in church since you were born and You've grown up in church You've never really had opportunity to get into sin that is life-altering and destructive. And the Lord spared you from all that. Rejoice in that. But the question is still valid even for those of us saved when we were young. I was saved when I was seven. What has grace done to change me? What has grace done to change you? How are you different from the rest of the world? How do you think differently? How do you act differently? How do you do differently than those of this world? Grace changes things. If your answer to that question in your heart of hearts is, I'm not different, well then tonight you need to have a long thought. about whether or not you have ever experienced the grace of God in reality in your heart, if you are not different. If your answer to that question is, well, I don't know that I'm different from anybody. Well, you need to have a long talk with the Lord and repent of sin and cry out for grace to change you to follow him. Grace changes things. A third illustration that we can see here is that grace resists the proud. We come back to these scribes and Pharisees, verses 16 and 17. There was probably not a more proud and arrogant group than the scribes and the Pharisees, these religious leaders of the day. But yet they were in many ways the biggest sinners of all. Their sin was not the same as the sins of the publican, not the same as those that had a reputation in town as being sinners. Their sins were, if we can put it this way, perhaps much more sophisticated, kind of like ours, much more sophisticated sins. They were self-righteous. Spiritual pride is probably one of the biggest problems that faces the conservative, Bible-believing church. Spiritual pride is a cancer. It has been a cancer in fundamentalism for generations. Spiritual pride If I could take just a moment, I recommend a book to you. Chris Anderson, we sing many of his songs. I think the song that Kyle requested tonight, Try You In Prayer, is that what it was? Written by Chris Anderson. Chris Anderson has a book, the title of the book is Schism, The Scandal of Schism. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time. Everybody go buy it. Get it on Amazon. Buy it tonight. Read it during the week. You'll be thankful for that. But in that, he talks of spiritual pride that was in his own heart. His story, my story, is very much the same of dealing with a pride a spiritual pride that has to be put down. Pastor Kimbrough quotes it often. I'm not going to quote it exactly right. You'll all recognize the quotation. I don't remember exactly how he puts it, but it's basically that pride is the sin that grows with the growth of other graces. Or if I'm not quoting it right that way, basically the point is pride is the sin that grows as other sins die. And so as the sin of covetousness in your heart dies off, well, you become very proud of yourself that you're not covetous anymore. Another sin would, you get victory over this sin over here, and you become very proud of yourself that you're getting victory in this area of your life. And pride grows, that sin grows as other sins die off. You understand? But it's exactly right. We become proud when we do so well spiritually. And that's where these Pharisees were. And that attitude is really obnoxious in the nostrils of God. We can very easily begin to think that we are spiritually superior to other people because we have this standard or that standard, or I don't do this, and, well, these other people do this, and, well, I mean, how proud are we? We don't have a drum set. So obviously God likes us more than the church down the road that has the drum set. And our music is this, and God favors us, and God is more pleased with us because we do it this way, we do it the holy way, and they do it the unholy way. And what is that? but a spiritual pride, a self-righteousness. Does God choose us? Does God love us because of us? We're not Catholic, right? We're not Roman Catholic. God loves us because of sovereign grace, because of grace. And that is the only reason. And Christ was quick. to put these proud Pharisees in their place. And he says to them, in essence, you have no idea. You have no idea. You're mocking me for sitting and eating with people that are in need of grace, and you think you don't have any need of any of it, and you could not be more wrong. You don't even realize how sick you are. You don't even realize how self-righteous you are, how in desperate need of grace you are. And they did not receive the same kind of grace because of the rebellion of their heart against a display of grace to a lowly sinner. One last illustration. And that is that we always see through the scriptures that grace is Christ's to give. Christ is the giver of grace. Of all the people that Christ could have chosen to call, why Levi? So if we're right, if the historians and people are right in telling us that where Levi was sitting was something on the order of a toll booth kind of thing, and Jesus was walking along this way, how many people did he pass? How many people were coming and going on that road that he passed? And you didn't say a word to him. You just, you know, hi, and move on. But he comes to this man. And he says to this man, follow me. Why Levi? Why did he pick him? Was Levi a great writer? Did he know? You know, this guy, man, when he writes stuff, it's awesome, and he's gonna, I'm gonna use him to write the first gospel, and this is gonna be tremendous. Well, the answer to that is no. Did he choose Levi because he really had good people skills? He was able to deal with people well. And I'm going to need evangelists. I'm going to need people to go out witnessing for me. He speaks well. He's got a good personality. Surely people will listen to him, and they'll follow me too. And so, hey, he'd be a good one to pick. Was there some quality in Levi that made Levi worthy of grace? Well, you know the answer to that, do you not? Turn with me to Deuteronomy 7. In our Sunday school, we've been a lot in the Pentateuch. And Deuteronomy 7 is one passage that I mentioned very briefly last Sunday in our Sunday school class. But what I'm expressing here in Levi, the Lord actually puts in words when he communicates to the children of Israel. In Deuteronomy 7, look at verse 6. Deuteronomy 7 verse 6, the Lord through Moses speaking to the nation of Israel, for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. And then verse 7, look at this, the Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you because you were more in number than any people. For you were the fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved you and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Why did the Lord choose Israel? Why did the Lord set his love upon this nation? Because they were great and because they were powerful? No, if that was the criteria, he would have chosen the Egyptians. But he didn't choose the Egyptians. He chose Israel. How come? Well, the Lord tells us, I loved you because I did. I set my love upon you. I chose you because I did. Out of God's own sovereign good pleasure and choice. He chose to set his love. Upon Israel. The same thing happened to Levi. And the same thing happened to you. Why did the Lord choose you? No. I don't want to insult anybody, but I don't think we have any Einstein's in here. Right? Nobody in here is a rocket scientist. We do have a doctor. But I mean, who are we? Who are you? What do you have that makes God better? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And so why did the Lord choose you? You children, have you ever asked yourself, how come you weren't born into the home of an atheist? I had a very sad situation about a week ago, a little over a week ago. Had a family come for testing. First time they'd ever come to me. We get finished. The kids did fine. We're talking about curriculum things. Ask them where they live. They live in Clements. I said, have you ever been to Gullions? Nope, never heard of Gullions. I said, well, it's great. It's a Christian bookstore. Go up 52 and King. Get off the King exit. Told them where it was. And I said, it's great. And you can get such and such curriculum that we'd been discussing. And she said, do they have any secular curriculum? We're an atheist household. We don't want any Christian school materials. So here are two children who, without the Lord's intervention, have no prospect of hearing a gospel message. Their parents are actively shielding them from biblical truth. These are the ones that the Bible describes that they need to have a millstone hung around their neck and cast into the sea because they're destroying their children. You children, think for just a moment. You are sitting in church on a Sunday night. It's not Sunday morning anymore. Your parents love you enough to bring you to the house of God twice in one day. What a mercy. What a mercy that you weren't born into that house. What a mercy that you weren't born in some Amazonian jungle rainforest tribe where they eat their enemies. Or some African tribe where they worship everything that would move. Thank the Lord. that you were born into a home with parents that love you enough to read the Bible to you, to bring you to church. What did you do to deserve such? Nothing, absolutely nothing. But it's the result of a God who is a dispenser of grace. And you have been shown grace. Take advantage of grace. They that are whole, they that think themselves to be fine, they that don't perceive any spiritual need, those who see themselves as already righteous enough, the Lord does not deal with them the same way. Pray for grace. Ask for the Lord to change your heart and to bring you to Himself. Levi found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and I wonder about you. You know this same grace. Have you heard those words? Follow me. Have you cast your lot in with Christ and as Levi did, left all and follow the Lord? Is that the testimony of your heart? If it's not, tonight it can be the testimony of your heart. If it is, praise the Lord for the grace that you already have known. Amen. Let's close in prayer. Our Father, this evening, we do thank you for the way that you have worked among us. We thank you that you are a God of all grace, a God who has shown your grace to us. And we pray that as we come to understand more of grace, that you would put the roadblocks in place against pride of grace. That we would, as Spurgeon has said, understand the truth of election to be the most humbling doctrine in all the scriptures. That we would realize how undeserving we are of what we have. And we would live our days in thankfulness to what you have given to us. We pray for this week that's before us. We all have different responsibilities. We all have different needs. We pray that you would give us the grace to meet each one, that your strength would be on display in our weakness. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.