Breaking Bread with Jesus: Open Houses at Open House

It's been an interesting year for the Trump family. I've mentioned this before, maybe more than a year, eighteen months. In the space of that eighteen months or so, we've had three weddings where we've added, and I say this absolutely with genuineness, three of the most lovely, godly sisters-in-law and a brother-in-law. But it's also been very interesting in these eighteen months to watch how they have sort of acclimatised to the Trump family. Having come from very different family cultures and coming to react to the very expressive, very noisy Trump family as adopted sons and daughters and brothers and sisters.

At the heart of our family is a big kitchen table. A big kitchen table. It's still there. I don't know how we're going to move that if Mum and Dad ever downsize, but at this table, it remains to this day the space of endless talk, of speculation, of heated debating. And for these new additions to the family, it's been a baptism of fire where they've sometimes had to sit very quietly, uncomfortably as the ball of energy around them was starting to swirl.

And yet the interesting thing about this kitchen table is that it's provided a space that brings unity and togetherness. It's one thing that our family members, our new family members have learned. Despite the noise and even the heat, there's been an atmosphere of love, respect and connection around the kitchen table. In His gospel, Luke describes a very characteristic side of Jesus along with hospitality. Jesus is shown to be the master of hospitality.

In fact, you could almost label Luke as the gospel of hospitality. Even though Jesus never owned a home or seemingly cooked a meal for anyone, we see Jesus around the dinner table with people all the time in Luke. We find Him there being approachable, being relatable, being warm. And it's a particular emphasis of Luke's gospel. Luke specifically highlights Jesus' ministry happening in people's homes.

Surrounded by friends, surrounded by listeners, people who are curious to find out what He's all about. It's intimate, these scenes. If you stopped and you read between the lines just depicted here, you would say almost with the Dutch or the Afrikaner word, Gezelligheid, which is sort of like a word of cosiness or warmth, but also mixed with this idea of something that is engaging and sweet, something that draws you. It seems like Jesus was regularly in people's homes, eating and drinking with them, discussing and debating and answering questions. In fact, on one occasion, the Pharisees made this accusation to Jesus.

He sums it up in Luke 7 Himself. And Jesus says, the Son of Man has come eating and drinking and you say, look at Him, a glutton and a drunkard. A glutton, of course, is someone who eats too much. A drunkard is someone who drinks too much.

In other words, Jesus was so commonly found among people's homes around a lunch or a dinner table that His enemies accused Him of eating and drinking to excess. Isn't it a refreshing angle or insight in Jesus? This idea that Jesus is the dinner party animal. His missional strategy was a long meal stretching late into the evening where He spoke and He taught and He handled questions. He did evangelism and He did His disciple-making around a table full of friends.

In fact, the gospel of Luke records no less than nine distinct scenes where Jesus is found around a meal. But for Luke, these meals of Jesus represent something far bigger. They represent a new world. They represent a kingdom, a new outlook on life. These meals, however, aren't just symbols.

They're also application. They're not just pictures. They are lessons in and of themselves, these meals. Food is tangible. It's not just ideas.

It's not simply theories that are being shared here. Food and meals in themselves communicate something in and of themselves. This is found very strikingly in the passage we're going to look at this morning in Luke Chapter 5. Let's turn there. Luke 5:27.

Luke 5:27. After this, He, who is Jesus, went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. And Jesus said to him, follow me. And leaving everything, he 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 a table with them.

And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at Jesus' 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. 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 will 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. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, the old is good. So far the reading. It wasn't easy being Mister Unpopular.

Levi, who would later become known as Matthew the apostle, was never really accepted in town. He was a successful businessman, probably well off, probably quite comfortable. But Levi couldn't help but feel isolated, mistrusted. Why? Because he was a tax collector.

But Levi or Matthew wasn't your average tax collector. He was a customs house official. Tax collectors collected the regular real estate and income taxes of the citizens of the Roman Empire. Customs house officials, the word mentioned here in the Greek, collected tax on imports, on exports, on tolls for roads, tolls for bridges, harbours, town taxes, and a host of other small things.

That's why he had his little office, his little booth that people would have to come by. What this meant was there were plenty of opportunities to abuse the system to line their own pockets. The very word mochos was associated with oppression and injustice. And the Jewish community living under the thumb and the rule of the Roman Empire classed these particular tax collectors in the same category as prostitutes, gamblers, and petty criminals. Now according to the teachings of the rabbis of the time, there was no hope for a man like Levi.

A tax collector was to be excluded from all religious fellowship since he was both immoral as a follower of God, but also a traitor to God's people, a traitor to the Roman Empire. His money was considered tainted, no good. You cannot accept his services or rather if he was to buy services from you, he couldn't serve as a witness in the courts.

He was that distrusted. He was a second-class citizen by all standards. Yet Levi is invited by Jesus to follow Him as a disciple. And it's not just following Him or inviting him for a meal, it's to become a central disciple of Jesus. Jesus says to Levi, follow me.

And we see Levi leaving everything. It says everything to follow. The booth, the coins, the money. I don't know. It's seemingly just left.

That night, to show just how much this invitation meant to him, he throws Jesus and all his friends a massive party. Now you could assume there would have been a few work friends invited there as well. Tax collectors are dotted all over the house. Here is Jesus in this scene partying with tax collectors. Everyone's obviously doing their taxes at the moment.

Can you imagine inviting all those ATO workers to your house? Especially if you have to add to your tax that you have to pay. For a well-to-do Jewish person of the time, this is scandalous. Absolutely scandalous. Meals play a massive role in the ancient Near Eastern context, more so than it does now.

Meal times meant far more than just consuming energy. Being welcomed to a table to eat with someone is a ceremony of friendship. It is an act of intimacy and unity. The term to break bread together carried deep meaning for people. And so in the verse we read, verse 29, Luke describes Jesus' dinner companions as tax collectors and others.

That's how Luke describes them, tax collectors and others. But in verse 30, it's the Pharisees who call them tax collectors and sinners. The message is clear. These others don't measure up to the standards of purity. Now the central issue for people in the time of Jesus was with whom do I eat?

How do I show who I associate with by eating with certain people and not with others? Your religious stature, how you sit in relation with God was bound up with this question, can I eat with unbelieving Gentiles? We see a clash between Peter and Paul later on after Jesus ascends and as the gospel starts spreading where Peter is uncomfortable with this idea of eating with Gentiles, and Paul rebukes him. Paul rebukes him because the gospel is to go out to everyone, and Peter still lives under the old idea of associating with Jews over Gentiles. Can I eat with unbelieving Gentiles?

Can I eat with Jews who have wandered away from the faith? Should I go to a tax collector's house even though he claims to be a believer? And Jesus feels inclined to give an answer to this question. In fact, he rather, he doesn't. He, in fact, he completely undermines its whole premise.

He renders that question, with whom can I eat, irrelevant? We can have sympathy with the Pharisees, however, and perhaps we do. Jesus eats with the enemies of God. He eats with enemies. These people, most of them, were cheating, greedy thieves who robbed people, who skimmed off the top.

I mentioned this a few months ago. There was a Roman historian by the name of Tacitus who wrote that there was a certain town in the Roman Empire that built a statue for the one honest tax collector they had. That is how much it was an unusual thing to find a good tax collector. And perhaps we can understand the Pharisees' question here. Jesus enjoys time with the so-called enemies of morality.

Surely a man making claims that he is the Son of God, that he is a speaker, a messenger on God's behalf. How can a man of God be eating with these people? How can a holy man dirty himself with such worldliness, such non-Christian lifestyles? And we are quick to throw the Pharisees under the bus, aren't we? We sit back and we smirk and we think, how foolish can you be?

Can't you see the golden character of Jesus? But how much then do we try to rise up out of the grubbiness of the people around us? How careful are we about who we let into our homes and into our lives? I want to suggest to us that we are probably closer to the Pharisees than we might like to believe. The Pharisees' disdain for dirty sinners makes sense to us, and we might have said the same things perhaps in order to protect God's honour.

In order to show that, no, the Christian life is different to this life. To protect God's reputation for him. Yet Jesus, the Son of God, sits with these tax collectors, breaks bread with them. Why? In order to live out the grace He was on the way to the cross to die for.

Jesus is the revelation of a God who is so gracious it takes us by surprise. And we can see this from what's happening around this passage in Luke 5. In verses 12 to 15, Jesus reaches out to a leper and touches them, commonly thought of as the untouchables. Jesus, instead of becoming unclean, which was the common idea, oh, now Jesus is infected by this disease, instead of becoming unclean, the leper becomes clean. In verses 17 to 26, Jesus not only heals a paralysed man, but he forgives his sin.

What this means is that Jesus is not simply a powerful prophet of God. He has the authority of God to forgive sin. And then in our passage this morning, Jesus explains His mission in these words, verses 31 and 32. Those who are well have no need of a physician. Instead, those who are sick do.

I have not come to call the righteous. I've come to call sinners to repentance. The Pharisees were asking Jesus to behave like a doctor who avoids sick people. But a doctor like that doesn't do his work. Jesus, the Saviour, can't do his work unless he is with broken people.

And it's the same for those who follow Jesus. Luke writes to Christians in his gospel. Remember, he doesn't write this for Jesus. He doesn't write this for God, and he doesn't just put it out there as some sort of disassociated text. He's writing to Christians, showing them the example of Jesus in order to live like Jesus.

I think this is why Luke makes this point of showing Jesus eating with these sorts of people. Luke is wanting to convince us of something. And this is the one point that he wants us to make, that we can't do our work of pointing people to the great doctor unless we are also spending time with them. The meal table which Jesus shared with tax collectors and sinners is an outreach of His grace. The doctor has come to visit the sick.

The doctor is in. Jesus went right into the midst of the hearts of these people in order to bring forgiveness. And over the last year, we've done two series on evangelism. We've spoken about how we can do this and what the motivation for evangelism is. And we've talked about some practical things here and there, but here's another angle on personal outreach: our homes.

Our homes are places of grace. Our dinner table can be the symbol. It doesn't matter where you're at, you are loved and you are welcomed. The lesson which Jesus is communicating to the Pharisees are fundamental principles for the Christian life. It shows what we are to do as Christians. And so the striking point here is if we are to penetrate our society with the gospel, the good news of Jesus, then we must learn to have contact with unbelievers in such a way as they are, that they can be comfortable with us and us with them.

That doesn't mean that we conform to every choice that they make, or that we are silent on every statement that they utter. But this is what our Lord did. He got close to people, and he broke bread with people. And he reasoned and he encouraged them and he corrected their thinking and he pointed them back to God. And he was not apologetic about that, and we don't have to be either.

But it is a mark of His attitude that was so attractive. And so Jesus also warns us in this passage that we in the name of separation from sin could very well be sinning by not showing compassion to unbelievers. We could be sinning by not showing compassion to unbelievers, by not having contact with them in order for us to share the gospel. And this is what Jesus is talking about in His parable when it comes to the old and the new wineskins. The old cloth and the new cloth.

New wine, Jesus says, needs new wineskins. New wine continues fermenting. If you don't know, new wine continues fermenting, and this is the idea of pouring new wine into old, unflexible wineskins. They push. They swell.

The gases form because of the fermentation process, and those old, hard, unflexible wineskins burst. But new wineskins are stretchy. They are pliable. And Jesus is saying that these Pharisees are old wineskins. The gospel of grace that he was sharing and talking about needed to go into new wineskins.

And Levi is a new wineskin. Now we might say, I'm pretty sure that I'm a sinner, so I guess I'm a new wineskin. I know that about myself. But we need to have a closer look at our heart because we often do things in a far more subtle way. It might not be religious pride, but it could be an us and them mindset.

These non-Christians are out to get us. And how much am I seeing that on Facebook at the moment with Izzy Falau? These guys are getting us. We need to fight back. Or it could be, I don't want their lifestyle choices to rub off on me or my family.

If I invite them in, how are they going to influence me or my kids? Or it could simply be the very subtle idea that how much of a healthy lifestyle I have, or how much admiration I have from other people, respect I have, or how secure my future is, or how good I look with the clothes I wear, or the body I have, or the happiness of my family. These are all showing that I am closer to God. All of these forms, however, according to the Bible, are issues of self-salvation. Self-salvation, feeling whole, feeling fulfilled if I can achieve these things, or if I can protect myself from these other things.

But the grace of God exemplified in the gospel is radically subversive. Grace turns the world upside down. Why? Because in our human nature, we think of life as a ladder. It's what these Pharisees were doing as well.

You move up in your life on this ladder towards God, up, or away from him, down. And your sense of closeness to God comes from how far up the ladder you are. Have you ever caught yourself thinking, don't feel very close to God because I have done this. I have been such and such. I haven't been a very good Christian.

I feel very distant from God. And yet, Psalm 16, at Your right side. You've invited me already. I am there. There are pleasures at His side, but this is the sinister thing about this self-salvation idea that was on display in the Pharisees.

Nothing makes you feel good about yourself more than by looking down on those next to you in this imaginary ladder. That's what the Pharisees are doing. They're thinking, Jesus has just gone down a few rungs in my esteem because he's eating with these guys. I would never. I would never find myself there. I would never place myself there.

Nothing makes you feel more good about yourself than by looking down on people on this ladder. It's the idea that if I see people way worse than me according to my subjective standards, then I'm not doing too badly with God. It sort of pushes me up even a little bit towards Him. But this idea of self-salvation doesn't work because it doesn't actually save. It cannot save and it doesn't last.

If your goal is on being good enough or at least being better than the next guy, if you have that, it only leaves you stuck with weak, trembling knees at the point where you fall yourself and you realise, I've lost it. I've lost it. I cannot live up to God's standard. You think God can never accept me. My life is over.

Everything I have has been ruined because I have fallen on this one thing that I said I would never do. If we live according to this latter system, we also die according to that latter system. As a pastor, I hear and see this happening all the time. Perhaps you've even said it for yourself or about yourself. I can't come to church because I've been a horrible person.

I can't live with myself because of what I've done. I can't quite come to Jesus yet because I have to clean myself up a little bit first. Sometimes people do it in a different way. They can deflect the blame somewhat. I've heard this very recently.

I like Jesus, but I hate the church. The church is full of judgment. But if I was to be a betting man, I would wager that the root problem lies with their self-imposed sense of not being good enough. Their own judgment for their own guilt. It is their sense of guilt that is keeping them out.

But this is what made Jesus so appealing. The people who invited Jesus into their homes all felt the burden of this self-salvation. They were crushed by it. They thought that they were very far, too far down the ladder, perhaps because they thought that themselves or because they've been told by people like these Pharisees, these teachers that they were too far gone. But the good news that Jesus expresses here is that He has come for the sick.

He has come not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance. Jesus came to offer true salvation, a salvation only He could achieve. And the work that Jesus came to do on the cross meant that we don't and never will measure up. But instead of condemning us, our Jesus was condemned in our place. And salvation is found not through the strength or the ability of obeying some kind of law or morality, but simply through humble allegiance to Jesus.

I mean, this is the incredible thing. Think about it. Jesus simply said to Levi, follow me. What is that other than just allegiance? Just following Jesus.

When people like Levi eat with Jesus, and when Jesus eats with people like Levi, the message is clear. Jesus has come for people on the margins. Jesus has come for people who've made a mess of their lives, people who are pretty ordinary, which is great news because it means that Jesus has come for you and me. The only people left out are those people who think they don't need God. The people who think that they're pretty okay by themselves.

And we need to be careful that we don't find ourselves in that category. That somehow through our better lifestyle or our improved world view, the way we think about life, we have somehow moved closer to God. In this picture we find of Jesus with the tax collectors, we see what God's kingdom is like. In Jesus, God is doing something so new and so gracious it takes us by surprise. It is so gracious that it causes scandal.

It scandalises us. He chooses all of the wrong people. He invites everyone, not just His friends, not just the ones you would think He would break bread with. He invites the best and the worst, the highest and the lowest on this supposed ladder. But in doing so, He invites us and He now leaves us an example to do the same.

So I am challenged by this idea that we have called ourselves Open House because we have said we want to be like a family that is open to invite, to bring in, to draw. And I want to ask us, are we opening our homes as Open House? Are we living lives that engage with people warmly? Let's speak openly about why we've needed Jesus and why we think they need Him too. Let's show practical love by opening warm homes, offering warm plates, and engaging in warm discussion.

Those who are well have no need of a physician. Instead, those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your clear message this morning.

We thank you for the wonderful example of your Son, Jesus. We pray that you'll continue to encourage us in our thinking about these things. We pray, Lord, that the challenge and the conviction of living honouring lives and being wise about what we expose ourselves to coupled with a deep and lasting compassion and concern and a penetrating grace for those who don't know You, who don't know their right hand from their left. We pray, Lord, that You will keep us on that line. Help us to balance that tension, but even Lord to be courageous to be on the side of grace.

Pray for busy schedules. We pray for lives that may not often think about the deeper things and the eternity that awaits us. But Father, I do pray that You will continue to challenge us and grow us and mature us. Help us to be a church that is hospitable as we already are. Help us to be a church that is open as we already are.

But help us, Lord, to bring in many, many more who need to be healed by the great doctor as we've been so fortunate to have been ourselves. Thank you for Your grace to us. Thank you for the healing that You are starting to do in our lives. And we worship You and we honour You in Jesus' name. Amen.