Jesus. Most people know who He is. Some have even read the stories about Him – but is He real? I mean – in your life, is He real, relevant, here and now? Does who He is and what He’s done really impact on your life now, day to day?

Filled with the Spirit

I remember once in my early in my teenage years, my dad obviously felt that I wasn’t studying hard enough and school and reaching my full potential. Now he worked as a fairly senior manager at the local steel works in particular he was in charge of the coke ovens. Now these massive batteries of huge hot ovens turned coal into coke by heating the coal to very high temperatures. So he took me there for a day. I followed him around and I watched the labourers all day doing this brutally hot, hard work around these big ovens.

At the end of the day he said to me, “Son, if you don’t study harder at school you’re going to end up doing this sort of labouring work here at the coke ovens.” Now, up until that point he talked until he was blue in the face, he didn’t have an impact on me. It wasn’t until I spent a day at the office with him, following him around, seeing myself what he was talking about, that it really hit me in the face. That day at the office with my Dad had a powerful impact on my life. I’ve never forgotten it.

Now just imagine if you and I could spend a day at the office with Jesus. Imagine what a powerful impact that would have on our lives. Well that’s precisely what we’re going to be doing over the next few weeks on the program. That’s why I’ve called this series of messages “A Day at the Office with Jesus”. Because these stories about Jesus in the Bible, they can seem so distant, 2000 years ago, a culture that we don’t naturally relate to, doing things that appear to be so miraculous, well they don’t really seem real.

I don’t know about you but I want Jesus to be real to me. We can kind of read those stories in the Bible, this great book that seems somehow to have been captured and institutionalised and it sounds good on the surface, but it doesn’t feel real. It’s distant. My hunch is that you know what I’m talking about. So how do we make it real here towards the beginning of the 21st Century after Jesus walked on this earth?
Then it struck me, it’s like what my Dad did. He talked until he was blue in the face, but I didn’t really get it. So he decided to take me to work – a day at the office with my Dad – to show me. So I thought, what if you and I went to work with Jesus and followed Him around for a while and looked at the situations He walked through and how he did that, and what happened. All of a sudden this Jesus, instead of being a play actor in some distant fable, all of a sudden He becomes real.

So that’s what we’re going to be doing together over the next few weeks on the program. Following Jesus around through just a couple of chapters of the Book of Luke. So, why Luke’s account? Well, Luke was a physician, a doctor. He’s so precise in the way he recounts the story. We’re going to kick off in Luke chapter 5.

Now here’s what has happened so far. Jesus is about 30 years old by now, and He’s just been down to the Jordan river to be baptised by John the Baptist. And the heavens opened up and the Spirit of God descended down on Jesus and God spoke out. He said, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ Whoa! This is awesome stuff. If I were in His shoes I’d be thinking, “Man, what a baptism. I want to fast track here in my career for God.” Fortunately I wasn’t Him. Because immediately after that Jesus is cast out into the wilderness by God Himself to be tempted for 40 days and 40 nights by the devil. What a huge shock.

If Jesus were my son, if I were God, would I have done that? No way! But before He could commence His public ministry, Jesus had to travel through a great trial. Now we’re not going to spend a whole bunch of time there, because a while back I preached a whole 4 week series on that very thing, it’s called, “Discovering the Hidden Things of God” and that series is available on line at www.christianityworks.com. It’s for anyone who’s ever gone through a time of trial that just doesn’t make sense – “Discovering the Hidden Things of God” and you can listen again on www.christianityworks.com.

Sohere’s the thing, in a world where we value outward experiences, successes and looks, Jesus cast into the wilderness for 40 days doesn’t eat. So by the time He comes out of that trial He’s weak, close to death. He’s vulnerable. He’s tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread, to worship the devil and to put God to the test. And each time He comes back at the devil with what? The Word of God, the Truth with a capital “T”.

So here’s the thing, in a world where we value outward experiences, successes and looks, Jesus cast into the wilderness for 40 days doesn’t eat. So by the time He comes out of that trial He’s weak, close to death. He’s vulnerable. He’s tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread, to worship the devil and to put God to the test. And each time He comes back at the devil with what? The Word of God, the Truth with a capital “T”.

So on the outside, physically, He’s absolutely exhausted and bedraggled and if you and I had been on the selection committee to find and appoint the saviour of the world and He’d applied about that time, there is no way we would have given Him the job. He looked for all intents and purposes like a loser, right? Unshaven, smelly, physically weak and exhausted and powerless.

You and I, we would have been busy no doubt judging the book by it’s cover and He wouldn’t have even made the short list. A day at the office with Jesus. But have a listen to what Luke has to say about the state Jesus was in right at the moment. Luke Chapter 4 verse 14:

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee and report about Him spread throughout all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

I love this. Right here when He was starving and vulnerable, right there at the end of that trial, He is full of the power of the Spirit of God. Filled. He returned from that trial back to the people He’d come to save in the power of the Spirit. Why? A couple of reasons. Because He’d been filled and anointed with God’s Spirit at His baptism. You and I, we give our lives over to God and receive the Holy Spirit. We all do. But oh so few are so full of the power of the Spirit of God. Why? Because that fullness of power depends on something else. On holiness. Maybe a better word for that is obedience.

Right when Jesus was most vulnerable, after 40 days of starvation, close to death, the devil comes and tempts Him and Jesus, does He yield in His physical weakness? “Come on! You’re the Son of God, do some magic, make some bread, end your suffering.” He didn’t fall for it.

When we’re weak and vulnerable, some times that’s when we think we have an excuse to follow after the temptation of the devil. It didn’t feel any different for Jesus. His weakness, His vulnerability, His starvation – it didn’t feel any less real than our trials and our temptations, and yet right in the middle of those He drew on the two things He knew would defeat the devil – the power of the Spirit of God in Him and the Word of God.

You know what I think God is saying? Jesus’ suffering was real. It was the overwhelming reality for Him right at that moment and yet He chose obedience in that place through the power of the Spirit. And it was for that reason that He came back out of that physically weak, sure but spiritually powerful. Ready to save this world, ready to do His Father’s bidding in the power of the Spirit.

Rejected at Home

So He’s out of the wilderness, filled with the Holy Spirit. What happens next? Well, rejection of course. Rejection by the people who mattered most to Him. Now, we’ve all experienced rejection. You have and I certainly have too. And the thing about rejection is, well it hurts. Naturally we want people to like us and to accept us. And the closer we are to these people, the more we’ve let them into our world and shared our lives with them the more it hurts when they reject us. And that’s one of the real things that Jesus experienced. Rejection. Lots of rejection but worst of all rejection by the people of Nazareth, His home town where He grew up. So lets stop here and take a look. We’re beginning at Luke chapter 4 verse 16:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’

Now so far so good I guess. But He’s just made an outrageous claim. He’s just stood up at the synagogue in His own home town and claimed to be the Messiah. The Messiah they’ve all been waiting for. Just imagine how people would react if you or I did that down at our local church this coming Sunday. What would they say? What would they think? Well, Jesus knew so He dived straight into it, He confronts what they’re thinking. Have a listen, verse 23 of Luke chapter 4:

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown….”

Down to Verse 29:

They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

So here we are, a day at the office with Jesus. What’s going on? What’s the reality? There’s some serious strife down at the local synagogue. Probably it was a Saturday like any other Saturday. The Sabbath, the day of rest and worship. Everyone, well just about everyone in Nazareth is going down to the Synagogue. That’s what you did.

Who’s preaching this week? Who’s on the roster? Mmm. Jesus. That should be interesting. I wonder what He’s going to preach on? Lets head down to the synagogue and find out. We’ll sing some hymns from the book of Psalms and go through the liturgy of the service. And then it comes to the bit where the preacher preaches. And Jesus, Joseph and Mary’s little boy – bit of a scandal before He was born. Mary was pregnant while they were engaged – Jesus, this carpenter, gets up to preach.

He gets up and He reads that passage from the book of Isaiah. Fair enough, but then heresy comes out of His mouth. He says:

Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

It’s just like you and me going to church this Sunday and someone gets up and claims to be the Messiah. Someone we know, someone common like a plumber, a carpenter or electrician, whatever. They get up and say, “It’s me, I am He, the one you’ve been waiting for.”

It’s not exactly the same because in Jesus case this was actually true. But they didn’t know that. They didn’t believe Him. Up until now He’s developed a good reputation, solid, dependable, good lad, good carpenter. They were amazed at the words that came from His mouth. Good preacher, all that. Some had heard about the baptism. Some were even there perhaps. But this time Jesus has gone too far.

Now, what does Jesus do? Does He placate them with smooth words? Does He explain Himself? Does He do some amazing miracle that would prove that He is who He says He is? Does He pander to the crowd? Does He try and convince them? He does none of those things. He doesn’t skip a breath before He launches into a defamatory diatribe. Verse 23:

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown….”

It almost gets Him killed but they want to throw Him off the cliff. If you’ve ever read this passage have you ever wondered why did Jesus do this? Why didn’t he woo them and win them over? Why did he launch into this condemnation of their unbelief? Well, because He knew what was sin their hearts. They pretended to be oh so religious. Synagogue on the Sabbath, follow the rules, all that. But here right under their noses is the Son of God. And it doesn’t matter what He said or what He did, they weren’t going to believe in Him.

So Jesus confronted the evil and the unbelief in their hearts. He dealt with this so powerfully and with authority. Sometimes we want Jesus to be this soft, cuddly saviour who panders to our every desire, but here’s the thing. When we follow Him to the office we discover who He really is. We discover that God sometimes confronts the evil in our hearts. We discover that He calls a spade a spade and tells it the way it is.

Now God is love. Does Jesus love you and me? Does He have compassion on us? Does He want to save us? Yes, yes, yes and yes. All of those things. But if you want to follow Jesus, if you want Him to be the overwhelming reality in your life, then you need to be prepared. Be prepared for Him to confront the evil in your heart. Be prepared for Him to confront the unbelief. You know that’s hard sometimes. Sometimes we would rather that He wasn’t like that.

But when we spend a day at the office with this Jesus, this Jesus we discover in the Bible, you discover who He really is.

Dealing with Demons

Well, indeed what came next in this day at the office for Jesus? Well it was a demon. Whenever I speak about the devil and demons there is always a variety of reactions. Some people are intensely interested, others roll their eyes into the back of their heads and think to themselves, “Surely this guy doesn’t actually believe in this stuff, does He?. I mean, give me a break.”

We live in a world where we want to believe in angels but not demons. We live in a world we can just about anything except in the devil. Do I believe in the devil? Absolutely. Why? Because Jesus did. My trust is in Jesus but I believe in the existence of the devil and his army of demons. And yes, some people are influenced by demons.

Now before we take a look at this encounter between Jesus and the demon, I’d like to take the time to explain the difference between God and the devil. Because it’s kind of easy to get into our heads that God and the devil are these two equal and opposite forces. Well, as we are about to see in this encounter between Jesus and demons, that’s not true.

So let’s read this passage and then we’ll come back to the difference between God and the devil. I’m starting here at Luke chapter 4 beginning at verse 31:

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath. They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ 

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ When the demon had thrown him down before them, he came out of him without having done him any harm. They were all amazed and kept saying to one another, ‘What kind of utterance is this? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!’ And a report about him began to reach every place in the region.

Now we see something here, there is nothing equal about Jesus and the demon. Opposite? – Yes; Equal? – No. Remember, everything that was created, was created by and through Jesus. John chapter 1:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him and without Him not one thing came into being. What has come into being and in Him was life and the life was the light of the people.

The Word being Jesus. So the whole universe and everything in it was created through and by Jesus. Satan was an angel who rose up in pride and considered himself to be equal to God. So God being God, booted him and his followers out of heaven. And there we have the devil and his demons. Now while God is omniscient – He knows everything; omnipotent – He’s all powerful; omnipresent – He is everywhere. The devil is none of those things.

But he is not God. He does not have the power that Jesus has: the power of the cross; the power of love; the power of forgiveness and reconciliation with God; the power of God Himself. So let’s get that straight. That’s exactly what we see here in this encounter between Jesus and the demons.

Jesus goes to Capernaum, a small town on the north west shore of the Sea of Galilee. It’s the home of Simon Peter the Apostle. It’s more than just a fishing village but not the size of a big city as we’d know it today. This is kind of the base of operations for Jesus as He starts off his public ministry. He bases Himself at Peter’s place and ministers across Galilee from there.

So He rocks up to the Synagogue on Saturday and there is a man there possessed by a demon. Now people have already been astounded by Jesus teaching. He had this thing of cutting through all the religious mumbo jumbo and going right to the heart of the things that really mattered in people’s lives. He spoke with authority. You know, sometimes you hear preachers drone on and then half an hour after the sermon you can’t for the life of you remember what the guy spoke about. You know that feeling.

Well Jesus wasn’t like that. He spoke with power, with authority and relevance about God and life in a way they had never ever heard before. They were amazed at that because He was so different to the scribes who had been teaching them all these years. But now He’s confronted by a demon who ironically knows exactly who Jesus is. Something that’s eluded everyone else so far. And He very simply casts the demon out of the man.

Now I had an email from a woman who’s been demonized for a long time and she’d had so many Christians put her through so many bizarre rituals – sitting on her Bible and all sorts of weird things. It’s really tragic. There’s a simple truth here. Demons are not equal to Jesus. They are subject to Him. That’s exactly what we see here in this encounter and at His name, under His authority they have to flee. That’s something the Disciples discover a lot later.

And while there isn’t a demon under every bed or in every sinner, something we do encounter from time to time is the demonic. It’s nothing to be afraid of because if you or I believe in Jesus then quite simply in His name we have the authority to cast the out. It’s not a show or a performance or anything like that. It’s a simple childlike faith in the sovereign power of Jesus Christ.

Were the people amazed? Yes! Should we be amazed? Well, in one sense, no. but in another sense whenever I see God do something powerful in someone’s life I am always in awe of His power. Jesus has the power and authority to cast out demons. No rituals. No performance just simple power. The power of the Holy Spirit that came upon Him and that He lived in through faith and obedience. Jesus has the power to help you and me with sin to help us when we’re confronted with the demonic, to help us with all sorts of things because Jesus is the Son of God.

With life as hectic as it is, it’s easy to get pulled off track, off course – you end up doing all these good and wonderful things, but are they the things God wants you to be doing? Are they things that will have an eternal impact, or are they just dead works? Turns out that Jesus had exactly the same issue.

Healing Pete’s Mum

Does God still heal people today? Well, does He? Heard a funny man, Mark Lowry, he used to be part of Bill Gaither’s quartet of sinners. Talking about this on a DVD of a Gaither concert a while back. As I recall the point that Mark was making was that so many people are out there promising so many different things about healing. They’re promising, some of them, that everyone can be healed. But the facts that Mark set out were these: one out of every one people is going to die.

Unless Jesus comes back first we’re all going to die at some point. At some point my body is going to stop functioning and give up my spirit and so is yours. Of course Jesus may return before then, I hope He does. But He may not. He may have another time plan for that. Now that puts all these unrealistic promises about healing into perspective. We live in a fallen world, a sinful world where everyone is going to die one day sooner or later. So if God healed everyone, would we all die?

The other mistake we can make is this: we can behave as though God isn’t in the healing business anymore. We can behave as though no healing takes place at all and that just isn’t true either. The very first time I ever prayed for someone to be healed, this an older woman who had knee problems, I avoided her for weeks, I felt so embarrassed. Anyway she eventually cornered me at church. She said, “After you prayed for me my knees were healed.” You could have knocked me over with a feather.

So what’s the truth about healing. Well lets have a look. Today we are continuing in our series that I’ve called, “A Day at the Office with Jesus”. We are in Luke’s gospel account of Jesus life and ministry. And I guess through this account we’re kind of tagging along behind Jesus to see what He went through and see how He reacted and what He’s like. See it’s so easy for Jesus to be this distant figure in the pages of some stuffy old book.

The point is He’s not. He’s risen. He’s alive. He’s sitting at the right hand of the Father. He’s passionately interested in your life and my life and wants to make a difference. So it seems to me that it makes an enormous amount of strength to discover what He’s like, for the reality of Jesus to become the overriding reality of our lives. Don’t you think?

And today we’re going to continue on in Luke Chapter 4 just looking at each story of what Jesus did. So here we are. Jesus has been kicked out of His home town of Nazareth for claiming to be the Messiah. They actually tried to kill Him as we saw last week. He’s then gone on to Capernaum, the home town of some of His disciples, which becomes the home base of operations in His early ministry. He’s cast the demon out of a man and now after preaching and casting out this demon, pretty exhausting ministry time, He comes to the home of Simon Peter, one of His Disciples.

Let’s have a listen to what happens next. Beginning at Luke chapter 4 and verse 38. If you have a Bible grab it:

After leaving the synagogue he entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them. 

As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them. Demons also came out of many, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Messiah.

Now at this point Jesus hasn’t yet chosen the Twelve Disciples. That comes a little later, and we’ll have a look at how He did that next week on the program. The word ‘disciple’ literally means a follower or a learner. Back then there were scribes who would start up their own kind of following, half way between a church and a bible college.

Now some were more prestigious than others, so people would pick the one they wanted to follow because they liked his theology or they thought the prestige of hanging around with some of the beautiful people in that group would help them in business or social climb and they would become disciples of that scribe. They would follow him and all the rules he invented on top of the scriptures so they could work their way into the Kingdom of God. It’s called religion. It’s not what God wanted but it’s how people lived.

So here’s this amazing Rabbi teacher, Jesus. He not only speaks with power and authority and amazes people with His Godly wisdom that makes a real difference in their lives, He’s casting out demons, He’s healing people! So a whole bunch of people started following Him. It wasn’t long before He started drawing crowds of many thousands of people. Don’t you think the other scribes loved Him for that? Not!

So Jesus is visiting this guy’s house, Simon Peter, who one day in the not too distant future is going to become one of the Twelve Disciples, the inner circle of leaders in the Jesus flock of followers. And right there a need presents itself. I guess they were going to Pete’s place for a bit of a feed and a rest from the crowds and some solitude.

Imagine poor old Pete. He tells his family in the morning, ‘Hey you know that rock star rabbi, Jesus who everyone’s talking about, He’s probably coming over for dinner tonight so cook something really special. And He finally gets home with Jesus at the end of a hard day’s ministry, walks in the front door expecting to smell some nice dinner roasting in the oven and there’s silence and there’s no food cooking and His mother-in-law is in bed sick.

Fantastic! My one time to impress Jesus and she has to get sick! What a blow. We’re not told any of that of course in the text, but put yourself in Peter’s shoes. It was all about impressing the Rabbi so that you might end up as one of the inner circle. That’s how things worked back then. And Jesus, Jesus leans over Pete’s mother-in-law, rebukes the fever and immediately she gets up and cooks them a meal. Immediately!

Have you ever had a high fever. It’s completely debilitating. I remember having one on a Saturday and Sunday. I was supposed to preach on the Sunday and unbeknown to me it was the one morning that the woman who is now my wife would be visiting our church from interstate. If I hadn’t fronted that morning we wouldn’t have met and we wouldn’t have married. Pretty life changing.

Saturday I could barely get up off the bed. Sunday morning came. I was leading worship and preaching, that’s an hour and a half on my feet, but I could barely stand up. So I dressed myself slowly, somehow I knew God wanted to get up there that day. I had no idea why. But I drove ever so slowly up the hill to the church building. I was slumped in a chair in our pastor’s office when one of the women of the church came and laid hands on me, Kim was her name, and I felt the fever leave me. I led worship, I preached, I met Jacqui that day, and the rest as they say is history.

Jesus can heal. He did back then, He does today. But here’s the thing. He didn’t heal everyone back then. We are going to see that on the program shortly. There was such great need but not everyone was healed, not everyone had demons cast out of them. God is sovereign. God chooses who and when and where. Invariably He heals people for a reason. Sometimes it’s not obvious to us, sometimes it is. Sometimes He lets people die who we think deserve to live and heals people that we think don’t deserve it.

The point is, God is sovereign. He chooses whom He will heal and whom He won’t. That’s the truth. And as we see in this story that healing brings such great glory to God. It draws people to Jesus. And you know, my hunch is that’s kind of the main game.

Staying on Course

One of the easiest things in this world is to get distracted. To be drawn out of the game we’re meant to be playing by all the other good things out there that need doing. After all, in this day and age there are so many, many distractions. I’m a pretty focused person, I pray, I figure out the objective, then no matter how hard it gets, I try hard to reach the goal whatever it is. That’s in my nature, my personality type if you will.

But for someone like that the easiest thing in the world is to take on too much. But I see so many good things out there that need doing. So people that need a hand with this or with that. And I’m kind of addicted to the joy of helping other people, not because I’m some fantastic guy, not that at all, but because in the last decade and a half of walking with Jesus I have discovered how much fun it is to help people along the way. It gives me such a buzz.

So whoever we are, however we’re wired, whatever our motivations are, it’s easy to get distracted. So imagine how it must have been for Jesus. Preacher, healer, such a great need out there, so many people who needed healing and teaching and so many people who tried to lead Him off course.

Right now we’re going spend another day at the office with Jesus. And it’s a powerful lesson here for you and for me in how He dealt with these competing pressures. Now let’s pick up things from where we left off. We saw how Jesus had a really torrid time of ministry. He’d been preaching at the synagogue, He healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and probably planned to have a quiet night, but the crowds came to Simon Peter’s house and He healed more people and cast out more demons.

Now I haven’t quite done that sort of thing in the same way, but I can tell you, when you’re visiting a large church and preaching and meeting people, and praying for the sick and listening to their stories and you pray some more with them, and as rich and as satisfying as that is, I’ve got to tell you it’s exhausting. I come away from that sort of a day delighted that I’ve had some small part to play in people’s lives, awestruck many times at how God’s moved in peoples lives but just plain flat out exhausted. Let’s take another look at Jesus’ day. Luke chapter 4 verse 38:

After leaving the synagogue he entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them. 

As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them. Demons also came out of many, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Messiah.

Well, see it was a pretty flat out sort of a day. He was tired, He was exhausted and as the sun was setting and He was hoping for a quiet night watching the news on TV, early night to bed, good night’s sleep, all these sick people and these demonised people turn up on the front door step. It’s easy to get the impression that this was no big deal. This was Jesus. But man, healing the sick, dealing with demons was exhausting work. So the next morning what does Jesus do? Does He sleep in? Sunday morning does He head down to the local café for a latte and pancakes? Let’s catch up with Him there. Luke chapter 4 beginning at verse 42:

At daybreak he departed and went into a deserted place. And the crowds were looking for him; and when they reached him, they wanted to prevent him from leaving them. But he said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.”

So he continued proclaiming the message in the synagogues of Judea.

Jesus often went to a deserted place early in the morning to pray, to be with Dad, to recover, to recuperate, to recharge His batteries spiritual and physical. How many of us every consider that it’s in that deserted place alone with God that we recover. There’ve been times in my life where I’ve chased for that peace and rest and cafes and holidays and all sorts of places only to discover I only find it in the very presence of God in a deserted place.

If that’s you can I point you to a recent teaching series that I’ve produced here at Christianityworks. It’s called “Oh God I Need a Rest”. If you need a rest you’ll find that series at our website, www.christianityworks.com For anyone who really, really needs a rest.

So here’s Jesus resting with His father early in the morning, instead of sleeping late because He knows that this is where His rest and replenishment is to be found. But even here the crowds come after Him and find Him in this deserted place, (it used to be a deserted place until all the crowds showed up) demanding more and more and more. And what were after? They wanted to prevent Him from leaving.

Now God may well love Him, but they all had a plan for Jesus life. And that plan was to hang on to Him. Sure there were all these other towns and cities that hadn’t yet heard the good news. Sure there was need everywhere, but they wanted Him to stay with them and start his own rabbinical school in their midst. “Jesus, have be got a plan for you. Let’s set up a mega synagogue in our midst. Imagine how good it would be.” They knew a good thing when they saw it. They wanted to hang onto it.

But what did Jesus say? No, my job’s to go and proclaim the good news of God in the other cities too, that’s why I was sent. So off He went and He did what He was sent to do. His Dad in heaven had placed a call on Him to preach, to preach the good news across all Judea. Not just here in Capernaum but right across the land. And as tempting as a permanent place of residence and ministry probably was, the call of the Father on the Son’s life ended with a cross. It involved pain and suffering and nothing, nothing was going to divert Him from Dad’s plan.

Friend can I tell you the number of times people have approached me with all kinds of tempting offers. Come and pastor our church, come and settle down here with us, a safe regular income and a congregation and all that. But the call of God on my life is to be here with you right now. It’s a harder road. It’s out on the edge walking by faith. It can be a lonely place sometimes, a challenging place. But it’s the course God’s set for my life and I need to stay on that course.

And it’s Jesus that inspires me to do that. He knew the plan for His life and His death and His resurrection and His ascension. He knew it by God’s Spirit in Him through faith because He laid all His glory aside to become one of us. He had to lay hold of it by faith the way that you and I have to lay hold of God’s plan for our lives. By faith.

Friend, the focus of our Lord Jesus Christ, not all the things He was capable of doing, not all the thing He could have done, not all the things that other people wanted Him to do, but on the journey that His Father had laid before Him, that focus is what inspires me. It’s what keeps me going and my hunch is, it’s exactly what God intends.

Now in the next section I want to pause with you to examine the focus of your life, what you’re doing with your life. Are you where God means you to be? Are you doing the things, living the life, heading in the direction that God means you to go? How do we stay on track? How do we stay focussed on God’s calling for our lives in the hectic world with all sorts of distractions and all sorts of noise and all sorts of competing demands in our lives? That’s exactly what we’re going to look at now.

On Course, On Course

Jesus staying on course. Just as well He did, you know. His course took Him on a hard road to the cross. Where would you and I be if He hadn’t stayed on course. Doesn’t bare thinking about, does it? I really relate to how He was pulled every which way. People wanted Him to do this and to do that. There was so many good things that He could have been doing but instead of allowing Himself to be crucified after just three-and-a-half years of public ministry in His early thirties, He could have seen the need and built the Rabbi Jesus mega church and lived happily ever after.

It is easy to imagine that the course that God has planned for our lives is about the sort of success that we would expect in a worldly sense. I mean, forget what you know about what happened to Jesus, if God gave you the opening part of the plot, “I’m sending my Son into the world as a man … ” And asked you to finish the story, would you have finished it the way God did? Probably not.

But see we kind of imagine that staying on course means ever upward, ever forward, ever bigger, better, brighter. There are so many things that could pull me off course. People often offer me this opportunity and that opportunity, pastor this church even though I’m not called to pastor a church, sit on this board, become involved with this marketing campaign. It’s so easy to get pulled off course. It’s not just a problem I have. It’s a problem we all have.

How do we stay on course? It’s not easy. My course involves getting up in the morning, 4.00 am often. Preparing radio programs, its involves tracking to a drab little radio studio, it involves a whole bunch of things that in the world’s eyes don’t constitute success. But here, here’s how it works for me. Every morning I get up and first – first things first – first I spend some time with God in quiet prayer reading the Bible, often just short passages. I’m not one for reading 3 or 4 chapters at a time. Sometimes, like this morning, it will be just a handful of verses then I’ll just quietly sit quietly with God and think, ‘God what are you telling me? What do you want me to hear in this today?’

I can’t tell the number of times He’s shown me something that I needed just for today. The number of times He’s nudged me back to the centre when I was heading off to the right or to the left. The number of times I’ve experienced His Spirit speaking through His word saying, “Yes” to this and “No” to that. Giving me a new idea. Something I needed. I can’t tell you how many times that it’s happened. I just can’t tell you.

And the easiest thing in the world when we have a busy life, the easiest thing, is to compromise. To say, “No, no, no. I’m too busy. I just can’t sit there for half and hour with Jesus today. I have things to do. I have a long commute. I have kids to get off to school. I have all these things.” And do you know why we’re too busy? Because yesterday we didn’t while away that half an hour with Jesus and so today we flat out doing a whole bunch of things He never meant for us to do. Hello?

The Bible calls those things “dead works”. They may well be good, they may well be admirable, but if they are not from God, then they have eternal purpose. They’re just dead. A whole bunch of God’s people are absolutely killing themselves doing dead works. Does that make sense to you? Do you think that’s what He wants us to do?

Jesus went to Simon Peter’s house. He healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and He healed a whole bunch of other people that found Him. A tough day at the office. Hard yakka. And then He drew away. He’d often go to that deserted place to be with His Dad, His Father in heaven, to praise, to pray, to draw strength, to receive guidance, to know what Dad wanted Him to do today, to make sure that He wasn’t pulled off course by other people who presented such admirable, such worthy things for Him to do.

Amongst all the good things that are out there today, Dad, which are the ones that you want me to do? John 5:19 when He’s only healed one man out of the many that He could have healed that day, Truly I tell you, the Son of Man only does what He sees the Father doing.

Let me say that again. Jesus said of Himself – l this is the Son of God, this is the Son of God that has so much power, who could do so many things, He said – Truly I tell you, the Son only does what He sees the Father doing.

I once heard an American preacher translate it this way, he said, “Do what Dad’s doing”. You know, I couldn’t say it better myself. So let me ask you this. Is your life on course? Are you doing the things that Dad’s doing? Are you? Or are you racing around exhausting yourself, chasing after, chasing after that, letting other people dictate what you should be doing. Friend, if Jesus only did the things the Father was doing, my hunch is we need to do the same.

Well, in the middle of our day-to-day lives, this Jesus they talk about isn’t always what we perhaps expect Him to be. That’s nothing new. Back in the 1st century AD – He was just about the most radical person who’d ever walked the planet. Seriously.

Recruitment Drive

This week we’re continuing in our series, “A Day at the office with Jesus”. Now, this is something we kicked off a couple of weeks back, just following Jesus around, day by day through Luke’s Gospel. Seeing the sorts of things He faced and how He handled them. And what we discovered is that Jesus faced some real challenges.

The more you read, the more you see the opposition He came up against. From the devil and his demons, from his own home town, Nazareth, where the people rejected Him, and if fact they tried to kill Him. From the religious leaders, the scribes the Pharisees, and the thing that really strikes me is the faith that Jesus showed in each situation; each confrontation; each trial, each temptation.

So this week we’re going to meet some people who encountered this radical Saviour, this radical Jesus, and my prayer is that as we do that, you and I, too will meet a radical Saviour, Jesus.

Now I guess we never much think about Jesus having to have faith, but He did. He needed it. Sure He was and still is the Son of God, the Creator of everything that was ever created. But He laid that glory, that power, He laid His omnipotence, his omniscience, His omnipresence, all that He laid aside to become a man, a human being with the same physical constraints and limitations and feelings and needs as you and me. And all that He did, He did in faith knowing who God made Him to be and what God made Him to do, and it was that faith that released God’s power in Him.

Now, today we’re going to pick up the story at a time when crowds had been following Jesus around. I mean, huge crowds. But it was time for Him to gather some closer disciples. The disciple was a learner, a student, and normally the way it worked, common folk like you and me, we’d see all these different scribes and teachers of the law and we’d weigh them and think, “Wow, you know I wouldn’t mind following that one, I’d like to be one of his disciples.” Why?

The more prestigious your scribe the better social position you’d have. The more impressive the people, the disciples that you’d be rubbing shoulders with. Think of the business connections, the opportunities for your kids if you can get into this particular scribe’s tribe. So you applied, and not everyone was accepted and sometimes they’d put you and your family through some tests. That was the deal.

But it wasn’t Jesus way, He, as He’s prone to do, turned that whole system on it’s head. Shock, Horror! He went on a bit of a recruitment drive. He actually went out and invited people to follow Him. And the people He chose, well, they weren’t exactly the sort of people you’d really want in your scribe’s tribe. Let’s have a listen, Luke Chapter 5 beginning at verse 1:

Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on Him to hear the Word of God, He saw two boats there at the shore of the lake. The fishermen had got out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats that belonged to Simon and asked Him to put out a little way from the shore. And He sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water and let out your nets for a catch’. Now Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked all night long but we’ve caught nothing, but if you say so I’ll let down the nets’. When they’d done this they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and to help them. And they came and filled both boats so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees saying, ‘Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they’d taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Don’t be afraid. From now on you’ll be catching people’. When they brought their boats ashore, they left everything and followed Him.

So you’ve got the picture. This huge crowd’s pressing in on Jesus. If only our churches were like that – people knocking down the doors to hear the Word of God. I wonder why? That’s a whole other message, we won’t go there.

Now there’s no audio system, there’s no sound system so He thinks to Himself, how do I make it so that they can all hear me? I know, there’s a boat if I get in on the water they will be able to hear me because water’s fantastic for bouncing sound. When the water’s still you can hear someone speaking from quite a distance away. So to get the acoustic working in His favour Jesus commandeers Simon Peter’s boat. As far as we know this is the first time He’s met Simon Peter. He preaches to the crowds and the whole miracle with the fish, a carpenter, not a fisherman, a carpenter by whose Word this amazing miracle of this HUGE catch happens.

The thing that strikes me here, well there are two things. The first is this: both what Jesus had to say and the way He behaved had a huge impact on the crowd. His word and His deeds cut into their hearts. They knew He was for real. That’s why the crowds were following Him. This guy was amazing. He spoke with such power and authority and He healed and then this whole thing with the fish. So many fish that two boats almost started to sink. These expert fishermen had been out there all night, they were exhausted. They caught nothing. Then Jesus the carpenter comes along. So this first thing is the huge impact that Jesus had on people.

And the second thing is how the people responded. The crowds flocked after Him. They couldn’t get enough. And look at the response of the fishermen, when they brought their boats into shore, they left everything, everything to follow Jesus. They left this amazingly huge catch that must have been worth a bundle, they left their boats that were worth even more. They left their business as a fishermen, no doubt the businesses had been handed down to them through the generations because they knew, they just knew what they had been looking for. They knew that this Jesus was the real deal.

Look at Peter: he falls down on his knees and says, “Jesus get away from me, I’m not worthy, I’m a sinful man.” That’s what happens when we meet Jesus. He doesn’t have to say anything, we just know our sin by looking at Him. And they left everything to follow Jesus.

Friend, have you ever had an encounter like that with Jesus? Have you met this radical, outrageous Saviour? Have you seen Him for what He is? Have you heard Him speak into your life? Have you experienced His healing power, His miraculous touch? Because it is time, it is time to leave the past behind and follow Jesus. It is time to take that step. And if that’s something you want to do today, then let’s take that step right now.

Touching the Leper

The next person who meets this radical Jesus on His journey as recorded by Luke, is a leper. Back in Jesus’ day one of the worst of all diseases and sicknesses was leprosy. It started off with the numbness and then white patches on the skin, and then eventually can become so bad that you’d lose fingers and toes and have open, weeping, puss-filled sores all over your skin. And instead of putting these people into hospitals and caring for them as best they could, given the state that medicine was in, in the first century AD. Instead they ostracised them.

Lepers were unclean under the Jewish law of the Old Testament and so they didn’t get to live with their families in houses, safe inside the walls of the city, under the protection of the city like everyone else. They lived in leper colonies outside the walls of the city. They were completely cut off from their families and friends.

So one day you could be a high ranking official or a scriber or a priest or a farmer or a successful businessman or a fisherman or whatever. And the moment those white patches appeared you were out on your backside. Everyone you loved – gone. Your husband or wife, your kids, everything you’d worked for – gone. Your career, your business, the comforts of home such as they were back then – all gone. And when you come into town, you couldn’t go anywhere near the rest of us. You’d have to shout out ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ and not come within 70 paces of another person.

Let’s just stop and thing about that. What it meant for a leper in the 1st Century. Not just the sickness but the complete loss of your life and everything that mattered and being booted out of town to live alone or with other lepers in abject poverty. Do you get the picture here?

So one day Jesus wanders into town. Remember last week and again this week we’re spending a day or two at the office with Jesus just kind of wandering around, following Him through Luke’s gospel and what we’re seeing, this Jesus now has rock star – megastar status. People have figured out that He’s an amazing preacher. He preaches like no-one else, with power, with authority, with relevance to everyday life. And what He says hits home.

And they’ve seen His miracles. Who could miss the miracles. Man, this guy’s amazing, we’d better see for ourselves. We’d better take Aunty Martha down to see if He can heal her bad back. Come on, let’s go! So the crowds are following Him around. He’s quite the celebrity. He’s up in Galilee and has just met some of the disciples by the lake and now he wanders into one of the cities and He meets a leper. Let’s take a look. Luke Chapter 5 beginning at Verse 12:

Once when He was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged Him, ‘Lord, if you choose You can make me clean’. Then Jesus stretched out His hand, touched him and said, ‘I do choose, be made clean’. Immediately the leprosy left him.

And He wanted him to tell no-one. ‘Go’, He said, ‘and show yourself to the priest and as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing for a testimony to them’. But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad. Many crowds would gather to hear Him and to be cured of their diseases.

Now, the first few times I read this story, you can read it in Mark’s gospel too, Chapter 1. The first few times I read this story, I skimmed over it fairly quickly. Oh yes, okay, Jesus does another miracle, ho hum. It’s just what Jesus did, miracles. But then, then I learned about what it meant to be a leper. And then I looked at this leper through the eyes of someone who was never in a million years called to be a doctor, this pitiful man with stinking, rotting flesh. See Luke was a doctor, he was a physician and he’s chosen his language very carefully and precisely. Have a listen again to what he says about this man’s leprosy. Luke Chapter 5 Verse 12:

There was a man covered with leprosy.

Literally the original Greek there means, “this man was full of leprosy”. So this wasn’t in it’s early stages. He was covered with smelly, puss-filled sores, weeping sores. Possibly he’d already lost some fingers and toes. He’d been sick and isolated and living outside the city for years. He comes to Jesus humbly, “Lord, if You’re willing You can make me clean.” If You’re willing.

See it’s humble faith. Jesus doesn’t heal everyone. God heals through His love and His compassion but also through His sovereign will and Jesus, Jesus was moved with compassion. That’s what Mark tells in his gospel. He Reaches out and does the one thing He shouldn’t have done. He touches the leper. The one thing this leper hadn’t experienced for … well, it must have seemed like a lifetime. The touch of another human being, and immediately, immediately the leper is healed.

And instead of making some big show about it, instead of using this amazing healing and the PR machinery of “brand Jesus” taking “brand Jesus” to market, Jesus commands the man to tell nobody, and show himself to the priest as commanded in the Old Testament law so the Priest could pronounce him to be clean, so that he could be reunited with his family and become part of the society and community again and go to worship God on the Sabbath in the Synagogue with everyone else.

See the thing is, when Jesus heals, He heals the whole man, body, soul and spirit. This is a complete healing. And of course this wasn’t something you keep under wraps. Word got out and more and more people flocked to Jesus. Friend, Jesus is in the healing business. I don’t care what deep hurt you’ve been carrying around, whatever. Does always heal every disease? No. But He’s filled with compassion and He reaches out and He touches us no matter how revolting we may appear to everyone else. He does things in us and for us that no-one else can do.

You see, I am that leper, you are that leper. Our sin stinks up into heaven, just like those vile, puss-filled sores all over the leper. And when we come to Jesus and we say to Him, “Lord, if You’re willing, You can make me clean.” He is moved with compassion. He reaches out, He touches us, and after that nothing, nothing is every the same again.

A Man and His Mates

Now we’re going to pick things up again with the next part of Jesus’ journey with Him teaching in a house. He’s spoken wherever people were and as usual the place was packed to the rafters. Not just with people who were enthralled with what Jesus had to say, but with the religious leaders who were frankly trying to entrap Him. Why?

Because all of these crowds who were following Jesus were their crowds, their congregation members, the people who traditionally filled their coffers with cash. So Jesus was drawing their people away from them and in so doing, He was seriously threatening their power base. And not only that, He stood completely against a lot of the things, these religious leaders, these scribes and Pharisees, taught.

As we saw last week on the program, they’d come up with a bunch of rules and regulations that they had heaped on top of the Old Testament law, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – the first five books of what we now call the Old Testament. That was the Law, God’s Law. But by the first century the scribes and the Pharisees have completely perverted that and added all these ridiculous rules to oppress the people. And who Jesus was and what He did not only threatened their power base, He offended them to the core.

So these guys were sitting right up there in the front row, ready to find fault, pick an argument and ultimately to entrap Him. These were the guys who, at the end of the day, plotted His crucifixion. So let’s pick up the story, if you have a Bible. Luke Chapter 5 beginning at Verse 17:

One day while He was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the Law were sitting nearby. They’d come from every village in Galilee in Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Him to heal. Just then some men came carrying a paralysed man on a bed. They were trying to bring Him in and lay Him before Jesus, but finding no way of bringing Him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus.

You have to love this. This is outrageous. They come to Jesus carrying their friend, they can’t get in, and so they climb up on the roof and rip the roof off. And just think about the physical practicalities of this. They tie some ropes around the stretcher, lower this paralysed man down, trying not to drop him along the way. And they plonk him right at Jesus’ feet, right in the middle of the scene of Jesus preaching to this packed house and the religious leaders, the scribes, the Pharisees, they’re ready to pounce.

Jesus loved it … He love it. And He knew exactly why the scribes and Pharisees were there.

So when He saw their faith, He said to the man ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven’. Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, ‘Who is this who’s speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God?’ When Jesus perceived their questionings, He answered them, ‘Why do you raise such a question in your hearts? Which is the easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say “Stand up and walk?” So that you may know that the son of Man has authority on this earth to forgive sins.

He said to the one who was paralysed, I say to you Stand up, take your bed and go to your home. Immediately the guy stood up before them, took what he’d been lying on and went to his home glorifying God. Amazement seized all of them and they glorified God, they were filled with awe saying, We have seen some strange things today.

That’s an understatement isn’t it.

Does Jesus shy away from confronting this situation? Here’s a man who’s paralysed and needs healing. That’s how Jesus healed – by faith. Faith that His Dad in heaven that He physically as a man was incapable of doing. Does He shy away from the threat of these plonking religious fanatics. He deliberately uses this to do two things.

Obviously to heal the paralytic man who’d come before Him through great faith and perseverance, not only of the man, but his friends who’d been carrying him on the stretcher. But Jesus does something else that’s very, very important. He actually claims to be the Son of God. God Himself. The Pharisees asked the right question, “Who can forgive but God Himself?” the answer is “No-one”. So either Jesus is blaspheming which is their religious view, or He is who He says He is. He’s the Son of God.

I’ve heard people say that Jesus never claimed to be God, He was a great teacher but He never, ever claimed to be God. That is just plain force. He did and He was. And in particular this phrase He used of Himself “The Son of Man” you hear Him use it time and time and time again is in fact a claim to be the Messiah. It harks back to the Old Testament, the book of Daniel Chapter 7. Have a listen, Daniel Chapter 7 verse 13:

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being, literally the Son of Man, coming through the clouds of heaven and He came to the Ancient One and was presented before Him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all people, all nations, all languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away and His kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

Jesus was clearly claiming to be the Messiah. No if’s, no but’s, no maybe’s and he was making a powerful point. Out of His great compassion He healed this paralytic man.

It was amazing. What a huge impact. But even more powerful, more amazing, is that he forgave the man’s sin. And in doing so he was saying to the Pharisees and the scribes and to all who were assembled there and to you and to me, through His Word, through His deeds I am the Son of God and I have authority to heal your diseases. I have authority to forgive your sin and if you don’t believe me, then watch this man get up and walk.

That miracle was a powerful sign that attested to the truth of what Jesus was saying. Friend, no religion, no denomination, no bunch of religious rules heaped up on top of the Bible, can contain this Jesus. Whatever you and I have been told we need to discover this Jesus … this Jesus of the Bible, the Son of Man, the Son of God, this radical Saviour, because when we encounter Him face to face, through faith, He cuts through all the religion. He heals us, He forgives us, that’s where it’s at. Jesus and not religion.

And I want to encourage you, wherever you are in your walk, it’s time to meet this Jesus, not just once, not just in a passing way, but to walk every day with Him. Because this same power, this same forgiveness, this same compassion, this same ability to cut through all this religious nonsense to the heart of the issue is what Jesus wants to bring today, tomorrow, the next day, for the rest of our lives. Into your life, into my life.

The more I read about Jesus – the more I realise that in the context of day to day life in the 1st century, He did some really strange things. At least they were strange from a human standpoint. Not from God’s. And it’s this very same Jesus – who wants to spend each day with you and me. Strange really.

The Scum of the Earth

There are some people on this planet that can best be described as, well – it’s not a nice term but I’ll use it anyway – the scum of the earth. These are people who so abused others, whether physically or emotionally or mentally, they so abuse others that in our human estimation they just don’t deserve to live. The man who sexually abuses a child! Now child abuse, particularly in the church, is becoming so frequently reported in the news that we can kind of become desensitised to it. It washes past us with all the other misery on the news and so we disengage.

But just imagine it’s your child that’s being abused; imagine it’s your mother whose meagre life savings have been stolen by some conman; imagine it’s your house that’s been burned down by an arsonist. You know, that sort of thing is the absolute lowest of the low and in our human judgement, those people are absolute bottom dwellers – the scum of the earth. Imagine a traitor in a war, someone who betrays his own people. You see, the list goes on and most of us have a line that we draw in the sand and say, “You know, I know that I should forgive but that rapist or that child molester or that traitor or that extortionist doesn’t deserve to draw air anymore on this earth.”

So today, I thought it would be really amazing, as we spend another day at the office with Jesus, to see how this Jesus – this Son of God – dealt with one of these bottom dwellers, one of these “scum of the earth” type of people. Today we are going to meet a tax collector called Levi. Now, we spoke briefly about Levi the other week but today we are going to get right into his story because it’s an amazing story.

Now, I know that paying taxes is not our favourite thing to do. I remember a really high profile Australian businessman called Kerrie Packer, one of the richest men in the country – dead now – but a few years ago he was hauled up in front of a senate committee because of his allegedly aggressive tax minimisation strategies. He was a man with a big heart but a pretty gruff and tough exterior. He was known for calling a spade a spade.

When one of the senators asked him a question, he answered something along these lines. He said, “Lady, I pay all the taxes I am legally obliged to and not one cent more. Besides, I don’t like the way you people spend it.” It made pretty good television, I have to tell you and I guess we all relate to that a bit. I loved the way he put it. But most of us understand that if we are going to have schools and hospitals and a police force and essential infrastructures, all those things that are absolutely necessary for a country, well, someone has to pay for that and that’s us, through our taxes.

But imagine a set of circumstances where the taxation system is completely and utterly corrupt. Where your country’s been invaded and taken over by another world power – bunch of foreigners with totally different values and religion and culture and it’s a brutal occupation of the land. They rob the people blind, they cart that money off to another country and worse still, the way they collect their taxes is by taking some amongst our own people and allowing them to bid on the right to collect taxes and then turning a blind eye to the extortionate behaviour of these people in collecting the tolls on the taxes.

Now that would be utterly delightful, wouldn’t it? As if paying taxes to a foreign occupying power weren’t bad enough, now you have to do it through a crook, a criminal who is no less that a traitor to his own people. There is a bottom dweller, this tax collector – complete scum of the earth, don’t you think? Well, that’s Levi! That’s exactly who he is and that’s exactly what everyone else, all the other Jews, thought of him.

So let’s take a close look at Jesus’ response to meeting this man Levi, because in the context of the day, it was truly outrageous – I mean, really. We are looking at Luke chapter 5, beginning at verse 27 – so if you have a Bible, grab it and open it up – Luke chapter 5, verse 27:

After this Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me’. And so Levi got up, left everything, and followed Jesus. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.

The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners to repentance.’

Now, if you were with us last week on the programme you will have heard me talk briefly about how Rabbis, teachers of the law and religious leaders managed to get their disciples. A Rabbi would become a scribe, a leader, like the leader of the church and people would look around and decide, “Well, you know, if only I could become one of Rabbi So and So’s disciples, that would be good: prestige, business contacts, opportunities for the kids … ” And so people would then go and apply and the more prestigious and well known the scribe, the harder it was to become one of his disciples.

Now, sure Jesus was pretty unconventional, He wasn’t building Himself a mega-church with a two thousand car park and all that sort of stuff. He was itinerant, travelling around Galilee and then later Jerusalem preaching and teaching and healing. But He clearly had the potential to have an amazing gathering of disciples and so what was unexpected, ultimately, even though at thirty something He was a bit young, was that He conformed to the norm and that given He had mega-star status drawing huge crowds, people would apply to join His tribe.

But here again He walks up to this bottom dweller; this “scum of the earth” guy, Levi and says to him, “Follow Me!” And such an impact does this radical calling have on this outcast Levi, that not only does he throw a massive party for Jesus but he leaves everything – just like the fishermen we saw the other week – everything, his lucrative business of extortion to follow Jesus.

Later on in the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul writes – in Romans chapter 2, verse 4:

Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience. Don’t you realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

That’s exactly what happened to Levi! Jesus’ kindness leads to Levi’s repentance. He turns his whole life round completely and utterly – and the religious leaders, all they can do is scoff. See, these Pharisees are religious separatists who live in cloistered, closed, legalistic, cultish communities. ‘Pharisee’ comes from the word “parash” which means “to separate”. Their idea was that if we separate ourselves from the world; if we keep away from all these sinners, we won’t get infected by their sin. So imagine how horrified they are at Jesus wading in amongst the muck and the stench of this scum, the tax collectors.

Totally different approach! And what’s His answer to them, these oh so pure, oh so holier than thou religious nuts? “Well, I didn’t come to heal the healthy ones, just the sick ones. I came for people just like Levi and all his mates. These are the people who need their lives turned around.”

You see how radical Jesus is? How awesome! He didn’t come for Mr and Mrs Super-Christian – those people we know that we would never be like. Friend, He came for you and for me – the Levis of this world – US! And when the healing is underway He doesn’t call us to cloister ourselves off into these pure religious communities that can’t help to be blind to the hurt and the need around them. They can’t help it because they get so caught up in their religiosity that they completely … completely miss the point.

His call is for us to wander out into the muck where He went, to come and get us to take the healing, to take Jesus to those who are sick. Completely and utterly radical!

The Lord of the Sabbath

Now we are going to head from one end of the spectrum to the other. From the scum of the earth, Levi, to the supposed cream of the generation, the scribes and the Pharisees – the religious leaders who were so high and mighty until they met Jesus. Now, it never, ever, ever ceases to amaze me how we can take something as simple and as straight forward as the love of God – the saving love of God; a love so great that He sent His Son to die on a cross for you and me – how we can take something so rich and profound and twist it and pervert it and produce out of it a bunch of rules.

I remember when I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to eat for an hour before the start of the church service. Really? What was that all about? Centuries ago there were pole sitters, people who believed that in order to please God they had to deprive themselves of things. They sat up on platforms, on poles, for days, for weeks, for months and some of them, even for years. This rule, that rule. And this is nothing new. This goes way back and you can read about it in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

In Jesus’ time the Pharisees made a whole living out of this. The Old Testament Law, the Torah, the first five books of what Christians now call the Old Testament – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy – this was the law written down by Moses – six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions. But then the religious cults like the Pharisees got a hold of it and added layer after layer after layer of religious rules, many of them so ridiculous, so far from the Scriptures, that it completely begs belief.

See, they held on to not only the Torah, God’s Law, but to an oral tradition, something that was invented by human beings. They added to the Bible, in other words and the incredible detail of the minutia they got involved in is unbelievable. It covered every conceivable area of human conduct – do this, don’t do that – ridiculous to the extreme. And all along they thought that by tithing their herbs, for goodness sake, this was bringing them closer to God!

Now, it was their perception of all these religious rules versus Jesus who hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes, that absolutely offended them to the core. They had so become perverted in their understanding of God that they believed that the only way to God was by observing all these ridiculous rituals and rules. And one of the things that they built lots and lots and lots of rules about was the Sabbath.

Now the Sabbath was the day that God set apart for His people to rest and to worship Him. Now “Sabbath”, that word literally means “to rest”. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 2:

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

That word “rested” is the Hebrew word “Shabbath” from which we get the word “Sabbath”. And sure, God had decreed that the seventh day would be the Sabbath day of rest. It was in the Torah, in the Hebrew Law, straight from God to Moses – it’s in the Ten Commandments: Exodus chapter 20, beginning at verse 8:

Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord your God; you will not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and has set it apart.

So, you weren’t allowed to work on the Sabbath but what constitutes work and what doesn’t? Well, ain’t that just a rich and fertile place for making up some rules? Absolutely! And that’s exactly what the Pharisees did – rules, more rules and yet, more rules!

And that’s what this next encounter in A Day at the Office with Jesus is all about. Let’s have a listen – beginning at Luke chapter 6, verse 1:

One Sabbath while Jesus was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them together in their hands, and ate them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which was not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?”

Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is the lord of the Sabbath.”

On another Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see what he would do – would he cure on the Sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him? Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was healed. But they were filled with fury and they discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Now, as I said, some of these rules beg belief. So rigid had they become that they made a rule that you couldn’t pick up some grain off a stock, rub it in your hand and eat it when you are hungry. So what were you supposed to do, go hungry? Or walk five miles to somewhere where they sold food? Which is harder work – picking some grain off a stock or walking five miles? And what about the person who gave you the food at the end of it? Is giving you food ‘working’ any more that picking grains off a stock?

No, no, no, no. These Pharisees had to make rules! And then, the healing of the man with the withered hand. Was Jesus going to heal on the Sabbath or not? “Come on,” Jesus said to them, “if God’s going to heal on the Sabbath, that’s an amazing miracle for God and by the way, I am He. And I am the Lord of the Sabbath, I decree the Sabbath, it’s My Sabbath and as such I get to do good on the Sabbath.”

Do you see how twisted all this rule making is? It completely misses the point – in trying to get closer to God through a bunch of rules, they are actually getting further and further away from Him. Instead of loving and healing, they’re oppressing and that’s exactly what Jesus said elsewhere – Matthew chapter 23, beginning at verse 2:

The scribes and the Pharisees … tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger.

Down to verse 13:

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others go in, you stop them.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you cross a sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Friends, rules and religion lock people out of the Kingdom of heaven. Let me say it again: rules and religion lock people out of the Kingdom of heaven. The more we try the more we become like a child of hell. Jesus was right, you can see, these rules were meant to achieve one thing but they completely achieve the opposite. They replace love and grace with rules and religion; they replace compassion with compliance and that, according to Jesus, completely misses the point.

The only way … the ONLY way into the Kingdom of God is through Jesus. That’s why, when one of His disciples ask Him about which is the way to where He was going, Jesus said – John 14, verse 6:

I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

If there’s just one thing I can leave you with following a day at the office with Jesus, it would be this: Jesus is the only way. It’s not about rules, it’s not about religion. It’s about Jesus. Look at the Pharisees, look at Jesus – blind Freddie can tell the difference.

Jesus at the Office with Me

So, what have you made of this Jesus over these last few weeks as we have spent a day or two or three at the office with Him? It starts off with Him coming out of the wilderness in Luke chapter 4, after He has been tempted by the devil – tired, bedraggled, vulnerable but with a power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Then He goes first to His home town where they run Him out of town, indeed, they try to kill Him.

Then encounter after encounter, seems to be this roller coaster of experiences – hard work in ministry, preaching, healing. Amazing stuff but draining work. Drawing away to be alone with His Father God early in the mornings. The crowds trying to conscript Him to be someone He’s not. Encountering the devil and demons and religious leaders who wanted to plot against Him. Meeting common, ordinary, everyday folk, like you and me, from all parts of the social spectrum.

Or just today with Levi, the tax collector, at the bottom end, the scribes and the Pharisees at the upper end of the social scale – like book ends. Levi and these religious leaders, book ends of everything that lies in between. Yet day after day, people came to Jesus. People who were hurting, people who were needy and He healed them – physically, emotionally, spiritually, even socially.

I don’t know how you found it, but for me it’s been an absolute blast – kind of just, I don’t know, just following Jesus around, day after day, through what’s literally been just a handful of short chapters in Luke’s Gospel. And here’s the thing – the main thing that struck me between the eyes. See, perhaps like me, you have heard these stories many a time before and eventually, the same old ‘sameness’ of them kind of makes them roll past and they roll off you like water off a ducks back. I really think the more familiar we are with something, the less we listen.

I remember one pastor saying to me, he said, “Oh no, I don’t read the Gospels anymore – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I know how they end!” Really! This Jesus is so radical, so edgy, so committed to bring transformation and healing and release to common, hurting, imperfect people – people like you and me.

Back to the thing that’s really hit me between the eyes. The main point is this: that this very same Jesus – not some modified version, not some historically archaic, religious version, not some ‘stained glass window’ version but this very same Jesus whom we have been following around together these last few weeks – that Jesus wants to spend each day at the office with you and with me.

Whatever your office looks like, whatever my office looks like, by the presence of His Holy Spirit within us, Jesus wants to be at the office with us. Let me be more specific – He wants to be at the office with you and with me. And if we dare to step out and follow Him, just as He had opposition and challenges and tribulations – not in some sterile, historical sense, but in a real life, day to day sense – so you and I are going to have those too. We just are. I mean, He was persecuted so much they nailed Him to a cross.

But this same radical, edgy, passionate, amazing, healing, teaching Jesus whom we have followed around on the dusty roads of Galilee over the last few weeks wants to walk our dusty roads with us – every step of the way, every minute of the day.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus said that, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Never! It’s that connection between these powerful stories of old and the day to day reality of our lives that I think is so easy for you and me to miss and to forget. I mean, when we are stuck in the thick of it, when we’ve failed Him, when we’ve strayed away from Him, when we’re sick, when the storm clouds are rolling over the horizon and the distant claps of thunder are rolling closer and closer, when there’s a financial crisis, when someone is sick, when we are afraid – in those places, we forget who Jesus really is; what He’s really like.

You know, I think we even forget in the ordinary, mundane, every day grind of daily life, that this same Jesus we have been following around is the Jesus who wants to live His life with us. And the power of what I saw as I was wandering around, following Him through the office; through His Word over these past few weeks, is that the thing that He is so radical about is cutting through every opposition, every circumstance, every devil, every demon, to set ordinary, everyday people like you and me free from bondage – to heal us, to make things better, to set us free from the demonic. That’s who He is. That’s who we have discovered in the Bible as we have followed Him around.

So I want to encourage you, don’t wander round any more, if you have been doing this, with some religious, sterile, distant view of Jesus. He is not! He is the Son of the living God. He sits at the right hand of the Father. He hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be human. Jesus is not just the radical Saviour way back then; He’s the radical Saviour, here and now.

And if you feel like Levi, Jesus is for you. If you have been caught up in religious rules, Jesus is for you. If you have been led astray and you have forsaken Him, Jesus is for you. If all of a sudden, listening and hearing these stories about Jesus has blown your mind, this Jesus is for you. Not just for Levi, not just for the paralysed man, but for you and for me. This radical, radical Saviour!

I encourage you to spend every day of the rest of your life here on this earth at the office with Jesus.