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I wanted to share with you two memories of my grandfather. My grandfather was called Freddie. He was brought up in Belfast. And I have two strong memories about him. The first was football.

He used to take me each week. He bought a season ticket to our local team, Rushton and Diamonds. They now bust. But it was good times. That memory is almost irrelevant to anything I need to say today, but I just thought I'd share it with you.

And the second memory was that he was a doctor. He was an RAF doctor, and he spent a lot of time travelling the world, time in Cyprus, time in Kenya. And I knew he was a doctor because. Well, various reasons. There were lots of photos up, photos of some of his time in service, and he talked about some of them.

Apparently something kicked off in the Congo at that point or something, and he was flying into the Congo and doing all sorts of things like that. So there were pictures up of him looking like a doctor. He also.

His chair was here and there's a little cabinet here. And he would always keep two big bottles of medicine there. One said white and Mackay and the other one said Bush mills. And I always ask, I said, what are those bottles for? And he would say, well, they're medicinal.

Well, of course, he was a doctor, so I just assumed they. Medicine bottles. The other reason I knew he was a doctor was because every week, literally every week, sometimes multiple times a week, he would go to the local doctor's surgery and he would go and sit in the waiting room every week without fail. And what he'd do is he'd be looking around the room. It was a kind of square room and the doctor's doors, probably four different doctors around the room.

And when one doctor had finished with a patient, without waiting for anyone to be called, he would sneak in to the doctor's room to go and see the doctor. And then after a few minutes, he'd come out and then he'd wait for the next one. And he was probably there a good hour in all to get around all those things. The thing was, he wasn't unwell. He hadn't booked an appointment and he wasn't going to see the doctor about anything.

No. He'd come in each week with that week's copy of the Spectator magazine under his arm. And what he wanted to do was go and share the spectator cartoons with the doctors, I think, just to brighten up their day. I think as a retired doctor, he thought doctors must get very bored of seeing all these ill people. So he come in and brighten up their day.

He was always the one person in the waiting room who didn't actually need to see the doctor. Now, this little passage in Luke concludes with Jesus making that statement about who it is who needs to see a doctor. It's there in verse 31. It is not the healthy who needs a doctor, but the sick. Now, for context, we've been looking at these early chapters of Luke's gospel, Luke's account of Jesus life, and Luke was himself a doctor.

And we've already seen lots of different miracles and healings. Perhaps Luke is particularly concerned with that. But here Luke has been presenting Jesus as the doctor, the one who's able to cast out the demon, the one who can heal the man with leprosy, the one who last week, as we saw, strengthened, smashed legs. And in that he showed power not only to heal physically, but to forgive sins and heal hearts. Now, if the story last week, you remember the story last week of the friends bringing the paralysed man and lowering the man through the roof so that Jesus might heal him, if those friends last week were characterised by their great faith, their great perseverance, then the man we meet today would be characterised not by his great faith, but by his great sins.

Because, of course, the man we meet today is a tax collector. And those words alone should be enough to almost want to boo and hiss. Ooh, tax collector, when we hear these words, we know this is not a good man, this is not a man of great faith, this is not a man whose example we're supposed to follow. So meet Levi. Verse 27.

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.

Jesus meets this man and he catches him in the act of doing what he does. It's a bit like when Guy fawkes was caught under parliament with. I don't think it happened quite like this, but you imagine he's got a bag of gunpowder in one hand and a torch in the other. Anything? Yeah, we know what's going on here.

You've been caught in the act. And so it is with Levi. He's been caught at his booth raising taxes, one hand on the dodgy scales, one hand in the pocket. Here he is cheating people out of their money. And what does Jesus say as he catches this thief, this robber, this bad man?

Verse 27. Follow me. That's all Jesus says, follow me. He's caught him in the act, the tax collector, who everyone hates, who everyone knows is up to no good. Jesus says, follow me.

There's a number of different callings in Luke chapter five. And they're very much unlikely callings. At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus calls the fishermen. And the one thing we learn about the fishermen is they can't catch any fish. He then calls a religiously unclean man and heals him.

A man who can't walk. And now he calls a cheat, a thief, a hated tax collector. Jesus is not calling the bright, the beautiful, and the bold. No, he's calling the failures, the feeble, and now the fraudster. Jesus is not a headhunter picking the best.

He's the doctor healing the sick.

Now, earlier this month, HBO, the american film tv production company, announced an open casting for their upcoming filming of Harry Potter. Yes, it's being done again. So if you happen to have a child or a grandchild aged nine to eleven next April, they can be entered potentially to be the next Harry, Hermione or Ron. It's quite the call, isn't it? That could really change a child's life.

It would, wouldn't it? If a child became one of those stars on a film that is known by millions and it's going to be watched by millions more, that's going to change their life forever.

But that's nothing on the change that Levi and gays here look at the transformation that takes place. Look at the calling that Jesus places on his life and how that changes him. You see, it's important to know, if you didn't know already, that in Greek, Levi's name is Matthew. And traditionally he is believed to be one of Jesus twelve apostles and the author, or at least the source of Matthew's gospel. You see, this tax collector will go on to build the church, will go on to write a gospel.

What a transformation from tax collectors booth to taking the name of Jesus across the world. But what happens next is no less extraordinary. Look at verse 28.

And Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

He left everything. As we just sang earlier, he counted everything. A loss compared to following Jesus. But what is it he left? Says he left everything.

Well, he left his booth, he left his job, he left his money, he left his power, he left his future, he left his security, he left everything. And there's no indication anywhere in the gospel that he ever went back. He didn't go back to being a tax collector. It says the same thing at the start of the passage when the fisherman left everything to follow Jesus. I think they did go back to fishing.

They didn't leave everything forever. But Levi did leave everything because he was so changed. He left everything to follow Jesus. The boob the job, the money, the power, the future, turned his back on it to follow Jesus. It's a wonderful picture of repentance, isn't it?

That's what repentance means, to turn around. That's what Levi does. One day he's in the booth, the next day he's turned around to follow Jesus. That's repentance, leaving everything to follow Jesus.

This week I was hearing some of the stories that were coming out of the Lausanne conference happening last week in South Korea. And I heard the story of a man called Farshid Fati. He's a pastor from Iran. He was arrested in 2010 and placed in prison for five years. I thought, well, what happened?

Why did he go to prison for five years? Well, what happened was he went to a previous Lausanne conference, and that was in part what tipped off the authorities about his work as a pastor. He went to the Lausanne conference, went home and was put in prison for five years. And now he's back at Lausanne, he's back there telling the Congress of all the wonderful things that Jesus is doing in his country, how he's changing lives. There's a good chance that when he goes back, he'll be put in prison again.

And yet, for him, it's worth leaving everything behind to follow Jesus. It's worth giving everything up, facing the cost, facing suffering, because it's worth following Jesus. Now, sometimes we tell these stories, especially of missionaries of old who literally left everything to go to other lands and take the gospel. And sometimes we think, well, you know, perhaps their stories are a little romanticised. You know, it's a different world today.

But I suppose the question that we all need to ask is, well, what did you leave to follow Jesus? What did you leave behind to follow Jesus? It might not have been something enormous, it might have been something quite small, but it seems to be the pattern, isn't it? When people follow Jesus, they leave something else behind. What changed?

Surely something must have changed. That's what following Jesus does, doesn't it? It changes our lives. That's what repentance is, turning away and following him. What changed for you?

Perhaps as we meet in connect groups this week and we chat, maybe that's something we could share. What was it that changed for you?

But the story continues. The change hasn't finished. You see, when we think about repentance, when we think about turning away from the old and following the new, we don't tend to think of repentance as being a happy word. Often talk about repentance and mourning for sin. But look what Levi does next.

Verse 29. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house. And a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. I wonder if you were going to have one of those historic dinner parties. You know, the one where you can.

You can invite any person from history to come and join you for dinner. You can have a chat. You can ask them all sorts of questions. You can get two unlikely characters sitting next to each other and see how that plays out. I wonder who you might invite.

I imagine for many of us, and perhaps even for many, even beyond the church, Jesus would be pretty high up the list. We love to sit down with Jesus and chat and have him as a dinner guest.

I imagine Levi would be fairly low down the list. Yeah, his story is interesting, but we wouldn't have him around for dinner, would we?

And yet, here's a party. Levi's throwing it, and Jesus is there. He seemed to rub up against it, doesn't he? On the one hand, he's left everything behind, and now he's having a party.

I think what we're seeing here is Levi is enjoying his newfound freedom in following Jesus. The old is gone, the new has come. And the new life in Jesus is so much better than the old used to be. Tied to that booth, tied to those scales, tied to making that money.

Now he's free to follow Jesus. And he feasts like the paralysed man who leaps up with joy to praise Jesus. This tax collector feasts in celebration. Because he knows that Jesus has changed his life forever. The old has gone, the new has come.

He's free now to follow Jesus.

But not everyone is celebrating, are they? Some are looking on from the outside of the feast and wonder what's going on. This is going to be a repeated theme in Luke's gospel. And we see it really clearly in Luke, chapter 15. You remember the story of the lost son who returns home.

The father throws a feast, and yet there's someone not at the party. There's someone who should be at the party. But is on the outside looking in. Why are they doing that? Why are they having that party for them?

Look at what the Pharisees say. Verse 30. But the Pharisees and the teachers of law who belong to the sect. Complained to his disciples. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

They're addressing the disciples. But really this is aimed at Jesus, their teacher. Why? Why are you sitting and eating with them? It's not that the Pharisees don't like parties.

I imagine they could throw a good party themselves. They just don't like the guest list. That's their objection.

Jesus puts this disagreement into sharper contrast. In chapter seven of Luke's gospel, Jesus says, the son of man came eating and drinking. And you say, here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. You see, the pharisees say to themselves, well, we love God and we want to be like goddesse. So that's why we don't want to have anything to do with those sinners.

I think they actually have a real concern for Jesus. Jesus, don't eat with them or you'll end up being like them. They'll make you unclean.

What does jesus say in response? Verse 31 and 32, Jesus answered them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. So who is it who needs a doctor? Well, I want to suggest that a church, this church, should be a place like Levi's dinner party, where people walk in and think, wow, what are they doing here?

And as I look around, I'm deliberately not making eye contact with anyone. Wow. What are them in here on a Sunday morning? Wow. Now, of course, most of us, let's be honest, we look around and think, well, of course they'll be in church on Sunday morning.

They're good people.

It's been said that the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

Do people come in and think, wow, what are they doing here?

We're back to where we began, aren't we? Who is it who needs a doctor? Who is it who Jesus is coming to rescue? We call this sermon today. It's actually wrong on the sheet, but it's why Jesus can't save everyone.

I wonder if you've ever said that. And perhaps, chaps, this is more for us. We might say, there's nothing wrong with me. I don't need to see the doctor. Certainly I've said that a few times.

What we're told here is that Jesus can't save the righteous. He can only save sinners, which actually is all of us.

Sometimes we're naive, unaware. We stubbornly reject all the evidence that we need help. And that was the Pharisees problem. They thought they were righteous. They thought they were good, like God.

But they'd not realised how far away they were from him. And the big evidence of how far away they are from him is that when God in the flesh turns up they hate what he's doing. And perhaps that's us too. That we don't realise we need God's help, that we can't save ourselves. That for all our middle class trappings we're desperately lost without him.

Jesus comes to save, to heal, to rescue. That's his job.

But you'll need to come and take a seat in the waiting room. You'll need to come and see the doctor. Don't be like my grandpa. Just going to the doctors for a chat and a catch up. They come to the doctor to be made well, to be changed.

You see, if you think you're perfect, you're already righteous. Then you won't come to the doctor for help. Levi knew he was sick and he needed help. And that the best medicine was to follow Jesus.

I had a call this week. Someone's just come out of prison and they want to come to church.

What's your immediate reaction?

My immediate thought was, Goshen, this person might be really different.

Church might feel really alien to them.

And yet as I pondered, I thought, well, this person is just like me, aren't they? A sinner in need of a saviour. You see, when we look at Jesus in the gospels, he's not surrounded by the great and the good. He's surrounded by sinners and tax collectors. People are drawn to him because they need his help.

We all need his help. So friends, there's no one here or outside of here too sick or too broken to be welcomed by Jesus. And there's no one here too well, who doesn't need to come and follow Jesus. And friends, we follow him to the cross. The place where he left everything behind to love me.

But as we close, here's the great joy for all who come. Whether you've lived a tax collector life or whether you've lived a Pharisee life.

We get to feast with Jesus. That was the verse that brought our friend Alastair, whose life we celebrated on Friday, to the Lord. Revelation 320. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open, I will come and sit and eat with them.

It was a reminder that Jesus wants to feast with us. He wants us to follow him. And so like Levi, I wonder, is Jesus calling you to follow him today?

Is Jesus saying, follow me, leave everything behind and come and follow him. Let me close with some words from a song. It's a song called o come to the altar. It says this. Are you hurting and broken within, overwhelmed by the weight of your sin?

Have you come to the end of yourself. Do you thirst for a drink from the well? Jesus is calling. Leave behind your regrets and mistakes. Come today, there's no reason to wait.

Bring your sorrows and trade them for joyous. From the ashes a new life is born. Jesus is calling. O come to the altar. The father's arms are open wide.

Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.