Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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Introduction
Following the forgiving of the paralytic in the passage before, Luke now focuses on the question of just how far Jesus’ forgiveness extends.
Sure, it would extend to someone helpless like a poor paralytic in need of mercy, but [INTER] could that merciful forgiveness extend to the worst of the worst, the vilest of sinners?
The answer to that question is found here in Jesus’s call of Levi (a.k.a.
Matthew).
[CIT] In this passage, Jesus—to everyone’s astonishment—called a sinful and despised tax collector to follow him because the forgiveness of Jesus is for broken sinners rather than the self-righteous.
[Illus] Wayman Tisdale was a professional basketball player who retired in 1997 to focus on his career as a jazz musician.
His music career took off, and life was great until he fell down some stairs.
In the fall, Tisdale broke his leg and the doctors discovered that he had cancer in his knee.
The images are printed out and escorted with you back to an examination room.
The dental hygienist asks you to take a seat while she looks at the x-rays.
She doesn’t say much, but you notice her note a few places for the dentist to look at.
The cancer was removed, but the first attempt at chemo therapy was unsuccessful, so the doctors concluded that the only way to ensure that the cancer wouldn’t return was to amputate his leg
above the knee.
He comes in, asks how you’re doing like he really cares, and then looks at your x-rays.
The surgery was a success.
“I see a few places we need to keep an eye on,” he says.
“And one place that needs attention today.”
He adapted quickly to his prosthetic leg.
He went on 21-date concert tour.
You’re thinking he’s going to fill a cavity, but then he says, “I don’t know how you’ve been living with the pain, but one of you molars is completely dead.
It has rotted through and through.
We need to pull it.”
You’re shocked but he shows you the x-ray, explains what he sees, and there’s no denying it.
You should have flossed!
But sadly, Tisdale died on May 15, 2009 after complications arose from his radiation treatments.
The tooth is bad down to the root and the only healthy option is to have it removed.
One moment we feel good.
Now, imagine that God is the dentist and the teeth are us and the x-ray is the examination of our hearts—an examination of what’s going on inside of us.
The next we’re diagnosed with a fatal illness.
Just like when we have our teeth x-rayed, we think to ourselves, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Perhaps at worst there’ll be some areas that I need to keep a watch on.”
But then God says, “No.
You’re dead inside.
You’re rotten through and through with sin.”
“Your old heart will have come to out.”
If only we knew we were sick before it was too late.
If only we knew we were sick while there was still time for a doctor to help us.
Perhaps you’ve experienced something similar with a family member or friend.
Maybe you’ve experienced something similar yourself.
Or maybe you will in the future.
That’s sometimes true physically.
It’s always true spiritually.
It’s scary to think about going to the doctor only to hear him say, “We’ve found something, but I’m afraid its too late.
If we had known sooner, perhaps we could’ve helped.”
It’s scary to think about that kind of thing related to our physical condition.
Even more so when its related to our spiritual condition.
The Bible is clear: we are all sin-sick.
God exists.
He is the Creator.
He is the Ultimate Authority over us.
He is good.
And he is holy (i.e., there is nothing bad in God and he has never done, thought, or said anything bad, false, or impure.)
But we have.
We rebelled against the authority, goodness, and holiness of God with bad thoughts, false words, and impure actions.
We worshipped false gods instead of the One True God.
We’ve created idols for ourselves, the biggest of which is ourselves.
We’ve treated God as if he were meaningless; as if he doesn’t exist.
We’ve given every waking moment to the world and the things of this world.
We’ve treated our parents like garbage.
We’ve hated people so intensely that we could’ve murdered them in reality.
We’ve lusted after people so intensely that we’ve had affairs with them in our minds.
We’ve stolen.
We’ve lied.
We’ve coveted.
We’ve sinned against God and neighbor in countless ways, and for some of us it’s not past tense—we are still sinning against God and neighbor in countless ways.
We are sin-sick through and through.
But someone might say, “But I feel fine.”
Wayman Tisdale felt fine until the doctor said, “It’s cancer.”
One day we will stand in judgment before Jesus, the Great Physician, and he will state the diagnosis—”SIN”—and then the prognosis—”DEATH.”
If you’re standing before Jesus in that moment perhaps you’ll think to yourself, “If only I had realized how sin-sick I was, I would’ve come to Jesus sooner and perhaps I would’ve saved.”
And
[Prop] That’s the point of our sermon this morning: If we would be saved by Jesus, the Great Physician, then we must recognize that we are the sick in need of the Doctor; we are the sinners in need of Jesus.
[TS] We’ll see this as we look at three SCENES in this passage...
Major Ideas
Scene #1: The Call ()
[Exp] Before Jesus called Levi (i.e., Matthew), he saw him.
He saw him as a tax collector.
v. 27a “After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth.”
v. 27a “After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth.”
“After” - after the healing of the paralytic
“saw” - literally “gazed intently at;” choosing Matthew was no mistake; Jesus knew the one he was calling
“tax collector” -
Capernaum was the largest city on the Sea of Galilee and was a east-west and north-south crossroads for trade, which means that Matthew likely had a lucrative business collecting taxes.
The Roman occupation of Israel meant that Israel was subject to Roman taxation.
Taxes gathered by collectors in Galilee would forward those taxes to Herod Antipas (the ruler Rome appointed to govern the region) who would then forward those taxes to Rome.
Along the way there was ample opportunity for greed in all its forms—larceny, extortion, exploitation, loan-sharking, etc.
Herod Antipas sold tax-collecting franchises to the highest bidder.
He required them (because the Romans required him) to collect a certain amount in the poll tax, income tax, and land tax—but the tax collectors often collected more than required making additional collections on the transport of goods, letters, produce, using roads, crossing bridges, and whatever else they could dream up.
When people couldn’t pay, the tax-collectors would loan money at predatory interest rates, which ensured that people rarely escaped financial and sometimes physical enslavement to the tax collector.
The tax collectors even employed henchmen to collect by force when someone refused to pay.
There were two types of tax-collectors, which we might refer to as in-the-office tax collectors and in-the-field tax collectors.
The in-the-office tax collectors were the ones who won the bids to collect taxes.
They were the employers.
The in-the-field tax collectors were the ones like Matthew; the ones employed by the in-the-office tax collectors to actually sit in the tax booths and collect from the people.
However, because the in-the-field tax collectors had face-to-face contact with the people they collected from, they were often the more hated of the two.
Matthew was a hated and despised in-the-field tax collector.
His fellows Jews would have seen him as a traitor to his own people; they would have seen him as one getting rich by taking advantage of them while working for the enemy of the Jews—the despised Romans.
For this reason, Scripture often mentions tax collectors as examples of the worst sinners.
Many self-righteous people probably looked at Matthew that same way.
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