Grace and Forgiveness

Our Scripture reading this morning is in Mark chapter 2, beginning at verse 13. Mark 2:13:

“Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

“While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the ‘sinners’ and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and “sinners”?’

“On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

Some years ago, as a church, we took as a statement of purpose the ten words “to see unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ.” And we have tried as best we can to keep that before us, not simply by keeping it in print but also in approaching all of the opportunities and responsibilities that we have as a church in light of the awareness of the fact that Jesus, in leaving his disciples behind, promised them the power and authority of the Holy Spirit so that they might go out into the world and proclaim the good news of Jesus, baptizing people, making disciples, and establishing the work of the kingdom.[1]

And as much as we pay lip service to that, we recognize that there is an inherent danger in thinking that just because that is the phrase that we are able to rehearse and repeat, that somehow or another that may actually be happening, when in point of fact it might not. And one of the great questions that is before us as a church is to look around and to see just how seriously we believe it is important for us to take the command of Jesus to go out into the world and to make disciples. In other words, we face the risk that after a relatively short period of time, the comfortability of being in the companionable relationships with one another may dim our vision, may dent our enthusiasm, for seeing unbelieving people become the committed followers of Jesus.

And that is one of the great advantages in studying the gospel and, in this instance, the Gospel of Mark. Because very quickly in his Gospel, he makes it plain that Jesus is absolutely committed not to putting together a religious club but of reaching out to those who are, quite frankly, the most unlikely people ever to be included in his band of disciples. And the incident that is before us both this morning and this evening here in Mark chapter 2 is a classic illustration of this truth.

It’s not uncommon to hear people complain about how long it’s taking them to see a doctor. I never know whether to make much of that or not. After all, most of the doctors I’ve ever met are incredibly busy, and they seem to be seeing people all the time. So I think some of us need to be a little more patient. Eventually we’re seen, and often, I think, sooner rather than later. We always will be seen. It’s hard to imagine a doctor who worked all his way or all her way through medical school and then decided that she didn’t ever want to see patients. She just wanted to be a doctor, but no patients: “I’d like to be a doctor, but I don’t ever want to see sick people.” It would be a very, very strange thing.

And for Jesus to refuse to deal with those who are despised and disreputable, who are the outscouring of society, would be equally absurd. And that, as we will see as the balance of the day unfolds, lies at the very heart of this incident involving the calling of this man Levi, who’s also known as Matthew elsewhere in the Gospels, to become a follower of Jesus.

It is with this that we’re going to spend our time this morning, looking directly at verse 14. And perhaps I should just read it again: “As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.” It’s almost just one long sentence, and it covers so much material.

Prior to that, in verse 13, you will notice that Jesus is once again out in the lakeside area. The crowds are coming to him. There seems to be a balance here at the end of verse 12: all the people were “amazed”; they’d “never seen anything like this.” And then, once again, Jesus reverts to his prior pattern, and he moves out into an outlying area, away from the crowds. The crowds come to him, and once again, as they sit or stand to hear him, he proclaims the good news. He tells them that the kingdom of God is near, that it is important for them, necessary for them, to repent and to believe the good news.[2] Yes, he touches their lives. Yes, he heals their sicknesses. Yes, he relieves them of demonic oppression. But he hasn’t come as a miracle worker. He has come as a teacher of this good news.

And so it is that in the course of his endeavors, he comes upon this scene. And it is in this little verse, 14, that we have the record of this radical change in the life and circumstances of this gentleman called Levi.

When God calls a man or a woman, his callings never leave that person where they found him. If God speaks to you and calls you and you try and stand still, you will not be standing still; you will be going backwards. The callings of God never leave you where they find you. You will either follow on, you will either believe and obey, or you will be making a forlorn attempt to stand still. You will discover that you’re going in the opposite direction. And this is certainly true in the experience of Levi.

If God speaks to you and calls you and you try and stand still, you will not be standing still; you will be going backwards. The callings of God never leave you where they find you.

Now, when I read this this week—and I have read this passage many times, and many of you will have done the same—I said to myself, “You know, I think a little background would be helpful”—helpful first to me, and then helpful to you. Because we read that “he was sitting at [a] tax collector’s booth,” and frankly, it doesn’t really mean very much to us. After all, have you ever been in Capernaum at a tax collector’s booth? I bet there isn’t one in a thousand that have been anywhere close to it, and even if we were in Capernaum, we wouldn’t have known the booth if we had tripped over it. So, we read it, but what does it really mean? And what was the job that he was doing?

Well, as best as I can understand—and, of course, there are limits to my understanding, as becomes very clear week by week—but as best as I can understand, Levi was a Jewish tax official, probably working in the realm of customs and excise. So, you ought not to think of him as the IRS. You should think of him more as a kind of border patrol, and you couldn’t make the transition from one region into the other without paying tax either on your movements, as a toll booth collection, or, more likely, as a result of the materials that you were carrying from one place to the other.

I remember well the delight of the customs gentleman in Newark when he asked me if I’d brought in anything that was over a certain amount of money, and I said, “Yes, I brought in my kilt.” And he just couldn’t wait to get his hands on that and charged me a dreadful amount of money for an outfit that had already cost me a dreadful amount of money. Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing that Levi was doing.

When Herod the Great—miserable Herod the Great, whom you remember from the massacre of the children in Bethlehem[3] —when he died, he divided his territory largely between three of his sons. Each had the name Herod—Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa, and Herod Philip. And Herod Philip and Herod Antipas had regions that essentially bordered one another; they were separated by the Jordan River. And the point of departure into each community—the thoroughfare, if you like, the most obvious and normal one—would be through the town or the city of Capernaum. And there in that tax collector’s booth would be people who were fulfilling those responsibilities, and, in this particular instance, this man by the name of Levi.

Now, this position, this job, was absolutely despised; these individuals were detested. His role would have been to secure the privileges of the region. Presumably, a Roman official, usually known as a publican, would have purchased the tax base for an area. He would then hire under him tax collectors, or customs collectors, and so on. As long as he got his price for what that region was worth to him, he really didn’t care from that point out whatever those tax collectors charged. So it was a wonderful opportunity for the tax collectors to charge whatever they liked. They knew the number they had to make in order to fulfill their responsibilities, and they were then able to devise elaborate ways whereby they could operate essentially two sets of books: one that was going back to the officials and the other one that was going under the table.

And Levi, as a result of that, was actually as much an outcast socially as the leper was whom we saw just a couple of studies ago. If we doubt this, then let me affirm it for you that as a result of his willingness to fulfill this role, to be sitting in his tax collector’s booth, number one, he would have been regarded as a disgrace to his family. His mother would not have been going out for coffee in the morning and letting everybody know how well young Levi was doing in his new position at the tax collector’s booth. Indeed, she would have done everything she possibly could to explain his job in some way that would relieve her of the despicable nature of what was going on. A disgrace to his family. Secondly, he would be disqualified from ever serving as a judge or even being part of the judicial system as a witness. And thirdly, he would have been disbarred from the synagogue, from the opportunities of worship that would have accrued to him otherwise as a normal Jewish male.

So, if you rehearse that for a moment, you get the picture. He can’t go, essentially, to church; he can’t show up on jury duty; and his family regarded as a complete disgrace that ever one of their children was involved in such a dreadful engagement.

Now, when I read a little more, I came across a variety of things that intrigued me. And this fits in the realm of intrigue. I think you know me well enough now to know what we’re saying in terms of main things and plain things and what is authoritative from the Scriptures and what is merely observation. If it is helpful, you go with it. If it is unhelpful, you x it out. (But many of you x out a lot of stuff in any case, so there’s nothing particularly difficult for you in that.) But what I came across was inscriptions, ancient inscriptions, that had to do with fish. That had to do with fish.

And so, for example, one inscription described individuals in the region of Capernaum who were concerned with the toll on fish. So, apparently, there was, at least at some point—and it may not have been at this point, but it could have been at this point—some kind of toll on fish. So then that got me thinking: “Do I know any fishermen? Have there been any fishermen so far in the story that would have had to engage with this character or with his colleagues because of their work with fish?” And, of course, yes. We’ve got Simon, and we have Andrew, and we have James and John; we have the initial four that Jesus has called to be his followers. And then I said to myself, “Maybe Levi even knew the four of them. Maybe they were, as a result of their business practices, moving through his region, and maybe, as a result of the contact, he would have heard something of the words of Jesus and may even observe something of the works of Jesus.”

“Oh,” you say, “it doesn’t say that there.” I understand. But it doesn’t not say it either. In other words, it is possible that Levi had a knowledge of Jesus before this encounter took place. In fact, I think it is likely that he did. I don’t imagine that somebody in a place like Capernaum could be in Capernaum with somebody—namely, Jesus of Nazareth—casting out demons, healing people, transforming the community in many, many ways, without that buzz running right through the community. And as you know, the person in the local newspaper office, or the news agent’s store, at least in Britain, or in the average Starbucks, let’s say, or a Caribou, or whatever it might be, or the person that takes your ticket when you leave Hopkins Airport—those are the people that pick up all the bits and pieces, the buzz of the day: “What’s going on? Did you hear so-and-so…” Just pleasantries—sometimes beyond the weather, sometimes only the weather.

But it may well have been just as this—that one of the people said to the other, “I haven’t seen Simon and Andrew coming through here for a while.” And somebody else said, “No, you probably won’t see them.” And someone else says, “Yeah, and I’ll tell you two more you won’t see: you’re not going to see James and Andrew.” And Levi said, “Why not?” And someone said, “Well, the four of them have become followers of Jesus of Nazareth. They pulled their boats up, folded the nets, left it, in one case, with their father, left the family business behind, and they’ve gone off as followers of Jesus.” And Levi might have sat there and said to himself, “Wow! I wonder what that’s like!” “Wonder what that’s like!”

There may be some here this morning, and that’s exactly where you are. You’ve heard the story. Maybe even a family member, a friend, or work colleague has told you that he’s become a follower of Jesus. And there’s evidence to suggest that that has actually happened. His words have changed; his lifestyle has changed; she’s become altogether different from what she was. She’s still the regular person with the same DNA. She still has the same personality: she’s still melancholic, he’s still effusive, whatever it might be. But no doubt that he’s become a follower of Jesus, and you find yourself saying, “Wow! I wonder what it would be like to be a follower of Jesus.”

Do you really? Would you like to become a follower of Jesus? Nobody who ever wanted to be a follower of Jesus was turned away. You can never want to be a follower of Jesus and find that he tells you you can’t.

Well, Levi’s about to find out. And just as the leper had probably had no one other than another leper touching him for a very long time before Jesus touched him,[4] so Levi would have grown accustomed to people despising him and saying things about him that weren’t exactly commendatory. After all, he was not a member of the sort of ruling class. He was not a member of the acceptable people in society. He was despised. He was rejected. He was an outcast. He was socially unacceptable. In fact, he would have been perfectly used to people telling him where to go. They put their money in for the excise, and he said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Benjamin,” and Benjamin says, “Hey, Levi, you know where you can go, don’t you?”

Nobody who ever wanted to be a follower of Jesus was turned away.

He’d come home at the end of the day with abuse ringing in his ears, people calling him out: “You murderous creature. You stinking cheat. I hate you. I despise the fact that you work for the Romans. You are despicable, the way you steal from your own people.” Those would have been the words he heard. The people didn’t go by and say, “Thank you very much for doing such a wonderful service for the Roman authorities. We all appreciate it very much indeed.” No. No.

And then look at verse 14. He hears something very, very different. Here in the place of his dubious business practice stands Jesus. And Jesus is not telling him where to go; Jesus is telling him where to come. Jesus is actually issuing to him a command, a different kind of command. It’s not “Get out of here.” It is “Come here.” In fact, it is straightforward: “‘[Come] follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.”

Notice both the brevity and the authority of this word from Jesus. There’s no great speech, no great elaborate diatribe, no great explanation—just a striking command: “Follow me.” Because, you see, the word of Jesus is not like the word of any other person. The word of Jesus in this instance is not only marked by brevity; it’s also marked by authority. And that word of Jesus is recorded for us in the Bible, and the Bible is marked by the authority of Jesus himself. That’s why we pay attention to the Bible. That’s why we talk about the Bible as being authoritative in and of itself. That’s why when we read the Bible, we often discover that it almost speaks out to us in our lives. It’s as though it is actually speaking to us in a way that is marked by authority.

Who else can walk up to somebody in the middle of their day, especially in a context like that, and simply walk up and say, “Excuse me, I’d like you to just come and follow me.” Person says, “I’m not going to follow you. I’ve got to be here at least until five or six o’clock. What do you mean, follow you?”

But no, the brevity and the authority is marked both by the immediacy and the totality of Levi’s response: “‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.” There’s no gap. It is instantaneous. That’s what makes it so amazing, what makes it so striking.

And the reason I use “totality” is because in Luke’s version of this event, as he records it, he gives to us one phrase that Mark does not use. And in Luke 5:27–28, you will see the missing phrase. It’s the same record: “After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, and Levi got up”—now here’s the phrase—“[and] left everything.” “[And] left everything and followed him.”

He turned his back on his illicit business. He realized that if he was going to follow Jesus, he couldn’t follow Jesus and stay the way he was. He couldn’t follow Jesus and continue to dupe all his fellow countrymen. He couldn’t follow Jesus and continue to be a cheat. He couldn’t follow Jesus. He realized that this was a crossroads for him, that this was not somehow or another Levi the cheating tax collector adding Jesus to the sum of his life so that he had, if you like, a religious component to his life that filled in the gap for what was missing in his inability to attend the local synagogues. Here was a chance for him to get involved in “spirituality.” Here was an opportunity for him to add this dimension to his life. No, it’s not that at all. The command is clear, the response is immediate, and it is total: “And leaving everything, he went out to follow him.”

One of the reasons, I think, for so many people’s disinterest in the claims of Christ is because they never hear the claims of Christ. Now, you may be wondering about Christianity, and you’re here today, and one of the things that’s put you off is, frankly, it just seems like such a soft option. And you find yourself saying, “I don’t really know why there’s much to bother about in relationship to it. I mean, I don’t know if I want to be involved or I don’t want to be involved. It seems so trivial.”

Well, forgive us if we’ve suggested that in any way, or if your friends have done so, trying to make it more attractive to you—trying to, as it were, lower the barrier so that you can come in at your own level and on your own basis. That would be like qualifying for the Olympics in high jump by making your own rules about what the Olympic qualifying height was, you know. So if you want to make it, you know, twelve inches, hey, you just qualified for the Olympics! But if you want to actually deal with the standard qualifications for the Olympics, guess what? You’re not coming.

If the church, in endeavoring to win people, takes the message of Jesus, dilutes it, minimizes it, compromises it, so that people may see it as a soft option, it is no surprise when the people look at it and say, “Who cares?” “Levi, follow me.” “When?” “Right now.” “But, but…” “Follow me.” “And Levi got up and [he] followed him.”

Now, the impact of this I think is fairly obvious. There first of all must have been an impact on the fellows who were his colleagues in the tax collector’s booth. We don’t have it written down. We know only that they are coming along later on in the week, or whenever it was that he had his big party. But you can imagine his friends saying to one another, “What in the world got into Levi?” “What? Levi left?” “Yes!” “Is he coming back?” “Apparently not.” And the next morning, they probably said to themselves, “Oh, he’ll get over that. He’s done a lot of funny things in his life. But I’m sure by Tuesday he’ll be back.” Tuesday comes, and his place is still empty. And suddenly it dawns on them: he’s become a real follower of Jesus.

If he’d been back on a Tuesday, he wouldn’t have been a follower of Jesus—if he had responded to Jesus the way some of us have responded to Jesus, when somebody either manipulated us emotionally or stirred us up into some form of aggravation and they told us, “What you need to do is put up your hand right now, and you will become a follower of Jesus,” and we put up our hands, and we said, “I guess I’m a follower of Jesus,” but by Wednesday of two weeks later, we weren’t anywhere close to following Jesus. We never followed him at all. We didn’t go to church. We didn’t read our Bible. We didn’t tell anyone about him. We didn’t thank him for forgiving our sins. All we had done was just put up our hands and said, “I think I would like to be a follower of Jesus.” But that only lasted about five minutes. The reason you know you’re a follower of Jesus is you’re still following Jesus. You see? You may be a wretched sinner. You may feel yourself to have had a horrible week. But you’re still following Jesus. That’s one of the signs of being a follower of Jesus: you follow! This is almost too straightforward to… We could miss it, couldn’t we?

I was just talking to a boy. I said, “How old are you?” He said, “I’m five.” I said, “I used to be five.” And he looked up at me, and I said, “I was five. Fifty-two years ago I was five!” But I was five when my father led me to Christ—when I knelt down by a chair in our living room and I said, “I am a sinner. Forgive me. I hate my sister, and that’s why I do bad things to her. Forgive me. If I’ve no other sins, that’s enough to get me into hell for sure, so forgive my sins, and come and live in my life, and make me the kind of boy you want me to be.” Fifty-two years ago! Now, “through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come,”[5] but I’m still following. And the reason that they knew that Levi had been changed by Jesus is because he was following. Don’t miss the obvious. “Come and follow me.” Are you following Jesus? Don’t say, “Am I following him perfectly?” because you’re clearly not, and neither am I. I’m following him.

And his friends must have met him in the street and said, “Are you coming back?” He said, “No, I can’t come back. I’m following Jesus.” And they said to him—so many of them must have said—“You know, can you sometime or another just tell me what it means to follow Jesus?” And he said, “You know what, I’ve got a great idea. You know those big barbeques that I was doing, with that really funky Jewish music? Well, I’m going to do a big barbeque. You’re all coming over. I’m going to give you the story all together, I’m going to have Jesus there, and he’s going to do the thing, and me and Jesus—it’s going to be great if you want to come.” And they said, “We’re in.”

It’s a wonderful picture, isn’t it? It’s a reminder to us, isn’t it, of the place of our homes, our apartments, in the cause of evangelism. Many a person came to Christ through their tummy. It’s not very theological, but it’s true.

“Mrs. So-and-So, how do you make these pies like this? This is fantastic! It was so good I could die and go to heaven.”

“Oh, wait a minute now. Do you think if you died, you would go to heaven?”

“Oh, I think probably. I mean, I’m a pretty good person, and I figure that a good God is looking for nice people who are trying their best.”

“What if he isn’t?”

“Give me another one of those pies.”

But you see, that’s where we go.

The impact on his friends; the impact on Jesus’ immediate followers. It’d be nice to think that James and John and Simon and Andrew immediately said, “Oh, what a great idea! Levi, the latest member of the disciple band. What a terrific deal. How wonderful to have Levi! Nice that you’re branching out, Jesus, and not just going for sort of middle Judaism—not just going for the small family business owner, but you’re reaching beyond the territory, and what a nice idea to bring Levi.” What do you think? I don’t know. We can check later, but for now, I don’t think so.

No, I think there’s a pretty fair chance that they were going, “Wait a minute. We’re four nice boys. We come from a relatively nice background. But if you start adding people like Levi into this, it’s going to dilute the pot so quickly. I don’t think, Jesus, that you want to have tax collectors and social outcasts in your group.”

You see, Levi would not have been an obvious and a popular choice. That ought to ring a bell with you. It does with me. Do you think you were an obvious and popular choice? If God saved you, do you think he saved you because he found you so tremendously attractive? Do you think, when you trusted in Christ, that the angels in heaven, who were rejoicing over one sinner that repented,[6] just rejoiced, rejoiced, rejoiced? Or do you think there is a possibility that one angel said to another, “Oh no! Look at that! There’s Begg in now. The whole thing’ll go south now. No, that can’t be. That’s ridiculous. Oh! There’s one of his golfing buddies in there as well! Oh, he’s a wild man. Between the two…”

You see, if you think, if I think, that I’m an obvious choice, I don’t understand the gospel. I don’t understand grace. I don’t understand forgiveness. I don’t understand the authority of Jesus. Because what this little thing illustrates is the wonder of God’s grace. The wonder of God’s grace. Don’t you think that Levi would have been just completely overwhelmed by the thought? How could it be that Jesus would look him in the eyes and say what he said?

Well, that brings me, really—and we’re done, aren’t we? But the impact not only on Levi’s colleagues, the impact on the disciples themselves, but also the impact on us today. The impact on us today. Because it doesn’t take very much for some of us to assume the spirit of the elder brother in Luke 15 when the Prodigal has come back and the party has begun. Remember that little encounter? And the elder brother—who represents the Pharisees, whom we’re going to see tonight in the party—the elder brother comes near the house, and he hears the music and the dancing, and he calls one of the servants, and he says, “What’s the party?” And the servant says to him, “Oh, you’re going to love this. Your brother is back! He was lost; he’s found. He was dead; he’s alive. Your father has just… Man, it’s going wonderfully! Come on in! Join the dancing.” Do you remember what it says? “[But he] refused to go in.”[7] “Refused to go in.” Why? Because he didn’t understand grace. “I’m not going to a party that is given for someone like my brother who is a wretched sinner and who has made such a horrible mess of his entire existence. If there should be any parties, it should be parties for me, for people like me and my friends—good guys, keeping the rules, goody-two-shoes people, always there: ‘Ready, sir!’ ‘Yes, sir!’ ‘No, sir!’ That’s who should be having the party. No, I refuse to come to the party.”

And today, there may be some of us here this morning, and the reason that we are far from Jesus is not on account of our badness, but it is on account of our supposed goodness. The reason that we’ve never come and bowed down before Jesus and asked him to be our Savior and begun to follow him is because of our rule keeping, because of our performance, because of our religious duties. In fact, we’re really quite good, and Jesus came to call people who aren’t. So we’re actually still not Christian.

Or some of us are still not Christian because we feel the distance to be too great on account of our mess, on account of our immorality, on account of our deception, on account of our cheating. And when the story of Jesus suddenly dawns; when we realize that his call to follow is based on his commitment to the cross, which is about to take place; when we realize that the message of the gospel is as real for the pharisee as it is for the failure, and indeed, it is as necessary for both; then both self-righteous religious pharisees will bow down and trust Christ, and those who feel that there is no opportunity for forgiveness, or for a fresh start, or for a clean page, or for anything like it at all will bow down and worship him together. And when they all finally get together at the party in the house, they’ll be happy to sing the same songs: “When I was lost you came and rescued me”—one lost in their religious orthodoxy, one lost in their cheating rebellion—“reached down into the pit and lifted me. … O Lord, such grace to qualify me as your own.”[8]

The message of the gospel is as real for the pharisee as it is for the failure, and indeed, it is as necessary for both.

It is only when we realize that we are unqualified and that Christ is qualified on our behalf that we’re able to get ahold of this good news. And somehow or another, compressed, atomized almost in a moment, Levi got it. You say, “Well, that’s not the way it happened in my life.” No, and it’s not the way it happened in my life, but it is the way it happened in Levi’s life.

And when I was thinking about this and thinking, “There’s definitely going to be some people who say, ‘Oh, well, you know, that thing in verse 14, and Levi, and Jesus said, “Follow me,” and then he got up and followed him—it’s like, oh, for sure, you know. I mean, what… Who put that in there? Man. Nah! It doesn’t happen like that.’” Well, just when my mind was going all along those lines, I was having dinner with three couples—my wife and I and three couples. And in the course of waiting for it all to begin, I asked one of the fellows, Shannon, how he became a Christian. Well, goodness, he started way back in Indiana, and he worked his way through basketball at high school and off and on and on, and eventually I was starving, waiting for him to get to the point.

But here’s what he told me. Here’s what he told me. After college he got a job, a miserable job, as a door-to-door salesman. I can’t remember what he was selling, but he’d ring the doorbell—make cold calls, ring the bell—and say, “Could I come in and, you know, demonstrate the vacuum cleaner?” or whatever it was. And he said his whole life was like “No!” Bam! “No!” Bam! You know, “Get out of here! You don’t ring my bell! Get down and go on!” So, he just spent his life with rejection.

Every so often, somebody’d say yes. And he told me that on this one occasion, after he’d been down “No,” bam, “No,” bam, “No,” bam, “No,” bam, he got to a door, and the person said, “Yeah, you can come in and show me your stuff.” So he went in to show him his stuff. And in the course of being in this house, he said to the people, “Your house has a real peacefulness. A real peacefulness.” And the man said, “Really?” And he said, “Yeah.” The man said, “Would you like to know how that is?” The salesman says, “Yeah. I showed you my product. Go right at it.”

The man shared with him the story of his conversion and his wife’s conversion. And then he reached to a dresser, and he took a Bible, and he read him this verse: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”[9] And he said to Shannon, “Do you want to be saved?” And Shannon, as surprised as anybody in the room, said yes. And the man led him to Christ. He got out of there, went home, led both his brother and his sister to Christ.

Some of you are not far from the kingdom,[10] but you’re not in the kingdom. Because you’ve sung about hearing the call of the kingdom. Do you hear it? It is a call to repentance and to faith in Jesus. It is a call to be heeded, and it is a call that may be heeded now. So let me ask you: What would prevent you from acceding to Christ’s call and becoming a Christian today? And if that describes you, as a follower of Jesus, can we take the challenge together to be graciously, increasingly bold in risking all, in terms of reputation, by just saying to some of our friends, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” and then to ask them, “Would you like to be saved?”

We might be very surprised by how many yeses we get. But the only way we will ever get a response is if we’re prepared to risk it all to ask the question. But why would we be concerned when the stakes are so high?

We have little booklets through in the prayer room. They’re just called Becoming a Christian. If you would like one, you can come through and get one. We’d be glad to place it in your hands. Don’t forget the chance of being with us tonight as we come to the dinner party—dancing at the dinner party.

O God our Father, we thank you for the Bible, and we thank you for this wonderful incident in the life of Levi. We thank you that it speaks of grace and of forgiveness and of your power and your authority in the lives of those whom you touch and change. Help us to know that no one who ever wanted to come to you was ever turned away. So, Lord, come and save us from our attempts at self-justification, and come and relieve us of the burden of our own mess, so that we might stand up and, like Levi, follow you.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one who believes, today and forevermore. Amen.

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[1] See Matthew 28:18–20; Acts 1:8.

[2] See Mark 1:14.

[3] See Matthew 2:16.

[4] See Mark 1:40–45.

[5] John Newton, “Amazing Grace” (1779).

[6] See Luke 15:7.

[7] Luke 15:28 (NIV 1984).

[8] Kate Simmonds and Miles Simmonds, “When I Was Lost” (2001).

[9] Romans 10:9 (NIV 1984).

[10] See Mark 12:34.