Well, if we turn back to Mark Chapter 2, we're going to continue in our series just for the sake of our visitors. We're going through the Gospel of Mark. And really, on Sunday mornings, we preach evangelistically. These are evangelistic sermons. And our prayer is that people will hear the Gospel and come to the Lord Jesus Christ. So our verses this morning are verses 13 and 14 of Mark chapter two. And he, Jesus, went forth again by the seaside, and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Ulpheus. sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, follow me. And he arose and followed him. Well, our sermon title this morning is Christ's Effectual Call of Levi the Tax Collector. The story of Levi, or Matthew as he is called in Matthew 9.9, teaches the vital importance of coming to Christ. It is only when a person comes to Christ that they will ever be saved. But these verses instruct us in the question of how do you, or how does a sinner, or does anyone, come to Christ? How does a fallen sinner come to Christ? Of course, there are many answers given by various people in the church to that question. Some believe that we come to Christ through baptismal regeneration, through a form of infant baptism where the soul is regenerated and the infant is entered into the church. Others believe that coming to Christ is purely a matter of giving mental assent to a series of doctrines, that if you agree with a certain number of statements about Christianity, then you have come to Christ. Others believe that you have to have some kind of big experience, some almost mystical experience. Maybe an experience you have in a meeting where you are there is some very visible evidence that you have become a Christian. And many, because of these different views and teachings, grapple with a fearful lack of assurance of whether they have really come to Christ. Are they really converted? Are they really a Christian? So these verses, I think, will help us understand what it really means. to come to Christ, what it really means to be converted. The story itself, I won't spend a lot of time on, it's very simple. In verse 13, we see our Lord Jesus teaching, still preaching, as we've seen many times already, still preaching the message of the gospel. He's teaching by the lakeside here, in the open air. The Lord Jesus often preaching from a fishing boat or on a hillside for a pulpit. It was common for rabbis to teach their disciples as they walked along the paths and the roads and their disciples listened to their teaching and this is what the Lord Jesus did as well. But what was unique about the Lord Jesus was his growing, one could say enormous, popularity with the people. The people were amazed at his teaching and they were amazed at his miracles and they thronged around him as he was teaching here by the lake. It says, and he went forth again by the seaside, verse 13, and all the multitude, all the multitude, resorted unto him, and he taught them. And as the Lord Jesus was walking along here by the lakeside, he saw Levi sitting at the what we would call the tax collector's booth or the receipt of custom in our reading. He was there as a tax collector at his tax collector's station. You have to remember of course that Galilee, which is where we are in this portion of scripture, was ruled by Herod Antipas. He was a kind of client king of the Roman state. He was a puppet, if you like, put in there by the Roman state, the son, one of the sons of Herod the Great. And Capernaum was a frontier town, and therefore it was a customs center. And Levi's job probably was to collect taxes, import and export taxes on goods which were en route between Syria and Egypt. And we all know, don't we, those of us who know the scripture, that tax collectors were as a group, as a profession. They were hated, weren't they, by the Jewish population. They were implicated in the Roman occupation because they were collecting taxes on behalf of the Roman state. They were seen as traitors. They were hated men. None of us like paying taxes today, do we? At least there's an element of fairness, an element of legality around it. But these men, they were dishonest. As a group, they were despised for their dishonesty, for their greed, and they were seen as quislings, which is really a word which means that they were traitors. They were letting their own country down. And they made their money from the surcharges that they put on the taxes that were owed. They added a bit extra onto what was really owed. And they pocketed the difference. Corruption was rampant. And in the Mishnah, the rabbis stipulated that money from a tax collector was dirty money. and could not be used, could not be accepted for alms or for tithes. And therefore it's an amazing thing, it really is an amazing thing that we read here of the Lord Jesus going and seeing this kind of man at his tax collector's station and he says to this man, follow me. He gives the call of discipleship to that man, a hated man from the most despised of the professions. And Levi arose and follows Christ. And Luke adds the detail in Luke 5.28, and he left all, rose up, and followed him. We see the similarity between this response and the response of the fishermen, Simon and Andrew and James and John, who when they had a similar call, come ye after me, they straightway forsook their nets and followed him. But I think there's a difference in that the fishermen, the fishermen disciples, they could always go back to catching fish. The fish weren't going anywhere, were they? And in fact, there's evidence that they did go back from time to time, no doubt to earn a bit of money. But once you left, once you gave up your position as a tax collector, which was a very sought after position, because you could become rich quickly. And there was a big queue of people that wanted your position. Once you gave that up, there was no return. Levi was giving up his job, a job that many people wanted and which he would never be able to return to. He left all, the Gospel of Luke says. So that's the basic story in these two verses. But what lessons can we learn from it this morning? Well, the first thing I believe that we see is that Jesus loves sinners and no one is beyond his mercy. Jesus loves sinners. How grateful we should be for that. And no one is beyond his mercy. See here we see Jesus offering salvation to a man no one else wanted. Maybe some of his colleagues perhaps, we see him inviting some of these colleagues to a meal later on. But for the most part he was an unwanted, a hated, a despised man. And Jesus loved a man that everyone else hated. Jesus wanted a man that no one else wanted. Perhaps Levi had already come to hate himself. Perhaps he had already come to hate his job. Perhaps he'd already heard Jesus, some of his messages from the outskirts of the crowd. We don't know. But what we do know is that now he hears the call of discipleship from Jesus, the one who said that he came into this world to seek and to save that which was lost. And this is a wonderful truth, dear friends, which is true as much today as it has always been, that Jesus Christ loves sinners, and no one is beyond his mercy, even those who sit at the receipt of custom, even those who have sold their soul, as it were, to all sorts of wicked things. Jesus loves sinners, and no one is beyond his mercy. In 1 Timothy 1.15, the apostle Paul, who really was the most unlikely of persons to become a Christian, because he was a persecutor of the church, wrote, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. You see Paul, I think we romanticize Paul sometimes, he was responsible for the death and destruction of thousands of people. Children were growing up without their fathers because of him. Widows were grieving their husbands because of him. He was a proud, narrow, bigoted, dogmatic Pharisee who was legalistic to the core of his being. Yet Christ called him the chief of sinners, the most unlikely person. Of all the people that deserved a thunderbolt from heaven, if you like, surely it's the one who's killing all these lovely new Christians. And yet, what does God do? He makes him the apostle of the apostles, the apostle to the Gentiles. Christ calls Levi, he calls men like Levi, who had sold his soul for money. You see, the truth of the gospel, the message of this wonderful book is that no one's sins are too great to be forgiven. Last time we spoke of the story of the paralytic man. And that's really the story which gets across the message that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. But this story today about Levi speaks of the limitless mercy of Christ's forgiveness. No one should ever think that they are beyond the hope of salvation. No one should ever think that they've sinned themselves out of any hope of salvation. But you may say to yourself, well, you've never seen the real me. And we can all say that, can't we? You've never seen the real me. I probably haven't ever seen the real you. and would say, well, if you saw the real me, you'd be horrified. Well, the gospel, you see, doesn't put a measure on how sinful you can be before you are disqualified from gospel mercy. The gospel is for those with great sin. David cried unto the Lord in Psalm 25.11, For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great, it is great. people feel like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress. He had the book in his hand, didn't he? And he had this great burden on his back, and every time he looked into the book in his hand, it seemed like the burden of the guilt of sin on his back was getting heavier and heavier. And he was desperate to get rid of the weight of this guilt and this sin. You see, for those with enormous sin, there is enormous forgiveness. The hymn writer says, come ye weary, heavy, laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. Let not conscience make you linger, not of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requireth, is to feel your need of him. Well, I wonder this morning whether you feel your need of him. It's good to feel your need of him, but don't ever despair, because the gospel is for you. It's for sinners. It's for those with enormous sin. We say, what if I've backslidden? What if I used to, at least outwardly, walk like a Christian, but now I've sinned grievously? I've gone away from all the things I used to do and I used to believe. You see, some won't come to Christ because they think they've disqualified themselves. They think that they have committed the unforgivable sin. And you say, well, I may have been saved once, but now I'm lost, and there's no way back. I've sinned so terribly. I'm cast off forever. I've met people like that. All we can say is that, and we can say this from scripture and experience, that Christ is ready to forgive us when we come to him. He that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. If you're backslidden, if you're backslidden terribly and you've been backslidden for a long time, my advice to you is don't waste time analysing whether you were a Christian or are a Christian. Things have obviously gone wrong, very wrong for you. You come as a sinner to Jesus and seek his mercy and his salvation. The Lord promises in Jeremiah 3.12, return thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord. And I will not cause my anger to fall upon you, for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever. And in the New Testament, the one John says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just. To forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I've had to rely on that verse many times. Christ has always forgiven me, always set me back on the path. He's a merciful savior. But the thing is yet you must leave your sins. You must leave them. For whatever our professions of faith, The Bible is clear that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. If we're actively living a worldly sinful life, we won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We can say, well, I had an experience, or I put my hand up, or I even went to church. If you die in active sin away from God, the Bible says, the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. We have to leave our sins. We have to come to Christ. Which brings me on to the second lesson from this text. Secondly, we see the necessity of coming to Christ. The necessity because Levi was lost in his sin. Jesus didn't choose Levi for any goodness in Levi, did he? In Luke's account, in Luke 5.27, he describes Jesus observing Levi. He uses a different Greek word than the one used in Mark and Matthew. The Greek word in Mark and Matthew implies that Jesus sort of spotted him at his booth, but Luke uses a different Greek word. which is often translated as to behold, to look upon, to view attentively. So according to Luke, Jesus was observing Levi. He was studying Levi. He was beholding Levi. I believe the Lord Jesus was looking deep into the heart of Levi. For as John says in his gospel, Jesus knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man. Just think of what the Lord Jesus must have seen as he looked, as he was beholding Levi there at his tax collector's booth. I believe Levi was the equivalent of a first century Scrooge, like a Christmas carol, Charles Dickens' Christmas carol. Levi was a first century version of Scrooge, who Dickens describes as a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, covetous old sinner. That's what Levi's heart was like. because he had sold his soul for money. He'd sold his country for money. He had opted for a life of loneliness and he was willing to be despised for the sake of getting rich. That was Levi's heart. And the Lord Jesus is observing him and he's looking into him and that's what he's seeing. He's seeing a sinner. He's seeing a sinful, covetous, greedy heart. It was a deceitful heart. It was a hard heart. It was a treacherous heart. It was a worldly heart because he He put more value on money than he did on people, more value on money than he did his family. 1 Timothy 6.10 says, for the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Well, we all have different Hearts, we all have different tendencies. It may be that greed is not your main problem. It may be a different one, maybe lust or something else. It doesn't really matter. The point is that, as Jeremiah said, that it's true of every single person outside of Christ that the heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately wicked. Our hearts are desperately wicked. The truth is, dear friends, that the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, looks at you every day of your life. He looks at you at your desk, or in the field, in your van, in your office. He sees you at home. He sees you in your bedroom. He sees you with your family. He sees you with your friend. And he's beholding you. And he sees everything about you. And he knows exactly what's in your heart. He knows the worst about us. He knows our every secret thought and motive. We may think we're not too bad compared to other people. Other people may have quite a high view of us, or so we think. But as the prophet Samuel once said, the Lord seeth not as man seeth. For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. King Solomon said in Proverbs 15.3, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. You see, there's one thing, and this is what people don't understand in the world, is that you cannot avoid the gaze, the divine gaze of God. No one can avoid it. The writer to the Hebrews in 4.13 said, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight. but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. We cannot pull the wool over God's eyes. We can't find a dark corner and evade the sight of God because he sees you. The Lord God seeth you. And so I wonder this morning as the Lord Jesus sees you, what does he see in your life? The truth is that unless you have come to Christ, you are lost to God because of your sin. You are utterly ruined by sin and totally under its control. And I don't deny, I'm absolutely sure it's the fact that there's some temporary enjoyment in a life of sin. But in the end, it will result in death. It's got a price to be paid. And it will end in eternal conscious torment in hell for everyone who refuses to come to Christ. So that's your choice really in life, isn't it? A temporary life of the pleasures of sin and even that's not consistent. People are miserable as sin as well as sometimes having pleasure in sin. But the reality is that you can't have that and you can't have that with heaven. You either leave your sin, come to Christ and go to heaven or you remain in your sin and in the end you go to hell. That's the biblical choice. That's the biblical reality about all life. And the only way to be saved is to come to Christ. This is what the Bible teaches so clearly. And this was why it was necessary for Levi to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I wonder if you're following Christ this morning. How are you following? Are you Christ or are you still living in sin? Are you still living your own life? Well, the call that Jesus gave to Levi or to Matthew is the call of the gospel. It's to follow Christ. Well, finally, the third lesson we see here is the power, the power of Christ's call to Levi, follow me. see the power of it because Levi immediately got up and left his tax collector's booth and he followed Christ. He immediately left everything and followed Christ. It was a powerful call of the Lord Jesus into this man's life. Well in the Bible there are two aspects to Christ's call to sinners. There is his outward universal call and there is his inward effectual call, his personal call. Firstly, Christ's call to come to him and to follow him is a universal call. It's a call to the whole world. It is addressed to the whole world, to every human being. The Lord Jesus Christ sends us as his people, the church, to preach the gospel to the whole world without discrimination. Sometimes that call in the Bible is couched in terms of an invitation, and other times it's couched in terms of a command or an instruction. Latter example being in Acts 17.30 where it says, and the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. Not some men, not some respectable men, but all men, everyone is instructed to repent. And Mark presents Christ as the only true king who has authority over all nations, all places and all persons and everyone, every single, it doesn't matter whether you're on the throne of England or whether you're sweeping the streets, it doesn't matter, you are called to submit to Christ and to serve Christ. Why? Because men and women have intelligence, they have personality, they have moral accountability, and they have an understanding, and they have a will. The Puritan Stephen Charnock said that a sinner is not a beast, and we shouldn't treat sinners as beasts. They're rational human beings, and we call on them to believe the gospel, to repent, and believe the gospel. Man said, Stephen Charnock hath a faculty to understand, and a will which makes him man. Therefore, he writes, the commands and exhortations are suitable to our nature. And that's why it's right for us as a church to evangelize men and women, to remind them of their responsibility, not only for their own actions, but their responsibility to believe the gospel. The call of the Gospel is universal. It goes out to everyone. And it's a sincere and genuine offer. There's no deceit over it. It's a genuine call. The fact that so few come to Christ is not a fault in the invitation. It's a fault in those invited. The blame lies in those who refuse to come. Christ's parable of the marriage supper illustrates this general call of the gospel. There's this great marriage supper. It was prepared, and a servant is sent out to say to those who were bidden, come, for all things are now ready. And what happens? And they, all with one consent, began to make their excuses. There was nothing wrong with the invitation. There's no insufficiency in God's willingness to save sinners. He's willing to save all who will come. So we have to start with that aspect of the call of Christ. It is an outward, universal, genuine, sincere call to everyone. But secondly, and we see this illustrated in our text today, In addition to God's outward, universal call, there is his inward, effectual call. Now, to understand the doctrine of effectual calling, we have to go right back to basics. We have to go back to the basic teaching of the scripture regarding man's inability to respond to God rightly because of the fall of Adam. Put in the most simple terms, though the call of the gospel is to everyone, the reality is that no one is able to come to Christ without this inward effectual call of the Holy Spirit. The universal calling is not sufficient to draw people to Christ. And we know that when we go and preach in the town, we're struck by the fact that there are hundreds of people coming forward. John Flavell, the Puritan in his The Method of Grace wrote, but yet all the preaching in the world can never affect this union with Christ in itself and in its own virtue. except a supernatural and mighty power go forth with it. So we need, with the outward preaching of the gospel, there has to be this supernatural, mighty power going forth with it. This is the effectual call. So here we have, going back to Levi, here we have Levi with his covetous, greedy, miserly heart. Could a man like that, could a person like me or you, outside of Christ, ever have come to Christ just through a sheer willpower or some kind of lifestyle choice? No. Deep within his heart the Holy Spirit drew Levi effectually using the Word of Christ to work faith in his heart and making him both willing and able to obey the command of Christ. You see, man's inability to respond to Christ without this effectual call prevents him from fulfilling the conditions attached to the promises of the New Covenant. Now when we say that the New Covenant has conditions, these are not works that we have to fulfil. But it is the fact that in order to become a Christian, you have to have faith and you have to repent. You have to believe and you have to repent. These are the covenantal conditions. The Bible makes it clear that faith is essential for coming to Christ. The Bible makes it clear that repentance is essential for coming to Christ. You cannot become a Christian without faith and repentance. The promises of salvation are, in that sense, conditional. Mark 9.23, if thou canst believe all things, all things are possible. Now if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth as a condition. But the reality, dear friends, is that without the effectual call, no one is able to fulfill the conditions of the New Covenant. No one can have faith and no one can repent. By nature, man is impotent spiritually and is unable to believe and is unable to repent. If you think that you can believe and repent through any kind of human natural tendency, some non-supernatural tendency, then you might as well be a Roman Catholic, because it's a work. Put simply, man cannot receive Christ apart from grace. Thomas Hooker, the great American, British American Puritan said, for such is that helpless condition and nothingness, and to which Adam had brought himself by his rebellion, that as he hath no sufficiency of his own to do anything that may redeem himself by his rebellion, so neither hath he ability of his own to apply that to himself which is done for him. So not only can we not become Christians through good works, we cannot even apply to ourselves the benefits of Christ's salvation because we cannot work up within ourselves the necessary faith and repentance which is required to become a Christian. By nature, we are totally unable to produce faith and repentance. And this is why effectual calling is so vital in coming to Christ. The general call of the gospel tells of Christ's willingness to save sinners. Effectual calling speaks of his ability to save sinners. Or perhaps the verse that helps us the most in this respect is John 6, 37, 44, and 63. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. And I will raise him up at the last day. It is the spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. So in this spiritual, inward, effectual call, God gives to the sinner, God gives to those that come to him unconditionally what the conditional promises require. I'll give you an example. Let's take the example of faith. The conditional promise in Acts 16.31 is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. You have to believe first. Believe and you shall be saved. But in effectual calling, faith is unconditionally promised by God to his people. Ephesians 2.8, for by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Acts 5.31 demonstrates how Christ himself fulfills the conditions he requires of us when we come to him. We must repent to become a Christian. Well Acts 5.31 says, Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a saviour for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sin. He gives us repentance as a gift. He gives us faith and repentance as his gifts in that effectual call which he gave to Levi. John Bunyan spoke a lot about this in his works. And he put it slightly differently, but he explains how the conditional promises, which call for faith and repentance, are given or provided in the unconditional, or as he called it, the absolute promises of God. These are his words from his works. He says, the conditional promise calls for repentance. The absolute promise gives it. The conditional promise calls for faith. The absolute promise gives it. The conditional promise calls for a new heart. The absolute promise gives it. The conditional promise calls for holy obedience. And the absolute promise giveth it and causeth it. Do you understand that? It's a wonderful thing, dear friend, because if it wasn't for this, we would never generate the strength, the spiritual life to fulfill the obligations of the New Covenant. And they are conditions, but conditions that we could never meet, and can only meet by way of a gift, through effectual calling. So you see it is true for us to say that salvation is a total gift from first to last. Some people can't bear that. They feel that they have to make some kind of contribution. You can make no contribution. It is a gift given you, the gift of salvation. What we see demonstrated in the call to Levi is not only Christ's general call to everyone, but the divine overcoming of human inability to respond rightly to God. Christ is there observing him, watching him at his tax collector's booth. He has a heart of iron. His heart is dead cold. There's no life in Levi's heart. He's dead in his sins. But the Lord Jesus Christ, you see, is seeking Levi. He's seeking, like he sought Zacchaeus. He didn't just see him up that tree. He beheld him. He saw him. There was no escape from the eyesight of Christ because he was seeking Zacchaeus and he was seeking Levi. He was seeking Lydia, wasn't he, that successful businesswoman in Thyatira, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. You see, this morning, I'm not saying you have had to have understood everything I've said, but have you felt the personal call of Christ in your life? See, that's the most important thing. If you heard His voice, if you feel the draw of Christ calling you to Him, that's His personal call to you, His effectual call to you, and He will give you the faith and the repentance to come to Him. Psalm 110.3 says, these are the words of David, Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauty of holiness, from the womb of the morning. This has the Jew of youth. You see, when you're saved by Christ, first of all, he makes you willing, because you're not willing. No one's naturally willing to come to Christ. But the first thing he does in his call to you is he makes you willing in the day of his power in your life. And a new day begins, a day of youth. And whatever your age, you can be 100 and become a Christian, and the day of youth begins for you. And the beauty of holiness enters into your life. And you're made a new creature in Jesus Christ. Well, as we come to an end, and as we've considered Christ's call of leave, I wonder if you've seen the condition of your own heart. Have you understood the gracious call of Christ to sinners? A call that goes out to the whole world, and the Lord graciously draws to him those whom he wills. And no one who ever comes to him is ever turned away. And Jesus called Levi by name, didn't he? He said, follow me. He calls you by name. It's a personal call. It's a call that can change your life. It's an urgent call. Jesus didn't say to Levi, I'll come back next week after you've considered it. He says, follow me. Repent from your sins and believe in me and follow me. Well, that's the call to you this morning from the gospel. It's a call to believe in Jesus, to follow him, to repent, to become baptized, and publicly confess Him as your Saviour and Lord. That's the narrow way that leads to life. It's the gospel call. It goes out into the whole world. Most won't hear it. Most of it will go right over their heads, but there'll be those for whom it hits home. It hits their hearts and it changes their life forever. And if you've heard the call of the gospel this morning, then come to Jesus Christ like Levi came. Leave all and follow him forever. May you do so for his sake. Amen. Feel free to contact us at Sovereign Grace Church in Tiverton. Email us at grace2seekers at gmail.com. That's grace2seekers at gmail.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website at www.sovereigngracereformedchurch.co.uk. you