Following a New Life in Righteousness

Luke 5:27-39

Matthew the Tax Collector

27 After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, "Follow Me." 28 So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.

29 Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. 30 And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, "Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"

31 Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

Jesus Is Questioned About Fasting

33 Then they said to Him, "Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?"

34 And He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days."

36 Then He spoke a parable to them: "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. 39 And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'"

Jesus went to enlist a tax collector named Levi and Matthew from the Roman tax office.  Tax collectors were Jewish men who worked for the Roman government and therefore were not popular of loved by their fellow occupied nations citizens.  Some might argue that Matthew left his job and followed Jesus to not be hated so much, yet this would also have consequences with the Romans.  The real reason he followed Jesus was that the Lord called him to come and he responded in faithful obedience to the calling.  He left everything he knew and had to go wherever Jesus would lead him.  That is a true disciple, a follower of Christ.  This Levi afterwards gave a feast in his house with other tax collectors and those who the Pharisees and scribes looked down on with their self righteousness of disdain and disapproval.  They complained to the disciples how their Master could eat with such a crowd of sinners and Jesus heard and answered for them.  He told them directly that sinners needed the gospel of the kingdom of God to be made well in body and soul.  He called sinners to repentance, not those imagining they were righteous and not knowing their spiritual maladies that also needed healing.  These same religious leaders continued their condemnation of Jesus Christ by asking how His followers dared to indulge in eating while the followers of John the Baptist often were observed fasting and in prayer as if to implicate Jesus as misleading His disciples in unrighteous behavior.  Jesus responded with their love for Him that drove them to spend their time in His presence whom they did not yet realize was the Divine Lord to whom they prayed and gave up more than food for; they left everything they had to follow and worship then son of God and Man, the most complete form of fasting and prayer in conversation with Him.  Jesus left them with another parable as an answer and explanation which eluded their hardened minds.  He spoke of new patches on new clothes instead of on old and new wine in new skins and not in old brittle ones.  These things were meant to be object lessons in a change of life and thinking to enter the kingdom of heaven as a description of the new birth (John 3:3, Matthew 18:3, Acts 3:19) out of a repentance from old sin by faith to a new life in Him.  The old is not better and the new life does not match the old sinful one.  We are to find a new way of living in pursuit of righteousness which is so much better than the fallen sinful one we were born into!  This is following a new life in righteousness.