Luke 5:27-39

27 Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him.28 So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

29 Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them.30 But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?”

31 Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. 32 I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

33 One day some people said to Jesus, “John the Baptist’s disciples fast and pray regularly, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why are your disciples always eating and drinking?”

34 Jesus responded, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. 35 But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

36 Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment.

37 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. 38 New wine must be stored in new wineskins. 39 But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”

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Here are two more confrontations.  Basically Jesus is saying the old and the new do not mix.  The old:  The self-righteous Pharisees and religious leaders.  The new:  Jesus and the New Covenant.  Here again is the choice of the two paths open to all of us.

If I’d been back there at that time, would I have chosen the old path or the new path?  I would hope I would have been like Levi.

 
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One Response to Luke 5:27-39

  1. Lucas Dawn says:

    Part of the choice was indeed between the old path of the Pharisees and the new covenant of Jesus. For Levi, the choice was between the old path of profitable tax collecting (including its disrepute among most Jews) and the new path of following this poor yet powerful prophet. After Levi decided to repent and turn his back on his source of wealth, he began to share his wealth by hosting a banquet in honor of his new leader. For Jesus’ new covenant calls for not storing up treasures on earth, but sharing generously with the needy (and thus having treasure in heaven).

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