A Time for Every Matter

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good’” (Luke 5:27–39).[1]

Reminding us that Luke’s orderly account to Theophilus was originally written as one, long narrative, our passage begins today with the words, “After this,” tying the passage to the previous. Before, Jesus was teaching, and the crowds grew larger and larger. Jesus witnessed the heroic efforts of a paralyzed man’s friends. Jesus witnessed faith and forgave sins. Jesus confronted the unbelief of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus healed the paralyzed man, commanding him, “rise, pick up your bed and go home,” and “amazement seized [the crowd] and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today’” (Luke 5:17-26). All of this was before, but after this, Jesus went and found a tax collector named Levi and said, “Follow me.” And he did.

We do not know if Levi was present when Jesus forgave and healed the paralytic, or if he had any prior knowledge of Jesus. Perhaps he had heard his teaching or had witnessed his works, but Luke reveals nothing other than the essentials. Profession: tax collector; location: tax booth. But this is all we need to know, because when Jesus calls him, Levi is living his life and carrying out his despised vocation.

But before we go further into Levi, I want us to think back to Jesus’ encounter with the paralyzed man in the previous passage. When Jesus first encountered the paralyzed man on his stretcher descending through the roof, he could have healed him instantly, as he had done before for so many, but he didn’t. Instead, witnessing his faith, he said to the man, “your sins are forgiven you” (Luke 5:20). It’s not what we expected to hear, probably not what the man and his friends expected to hear, and certainly not what the Pharisees and scribes expected to hear, which is likely why Jesus said it. Israel’s social conservatives, scholars, and theologians were indignant, questioning Jesus’ identity and accusing him of heresy, which of course would have been true for anyone else but Jesus. Only God can forgive a sinner’s sins, and when he does, it is not heresy but glorious grace. And then to validate in their presence that he did have the authority to forgive sins, Jesus only then said to the paralyzed man, “rise, pick up your bed and go home” (Luke 5:24). Think about it: Jesus was teaching that there was a greater purpose in his miracles, a purpose that could be easily missed by those who did not have ears to hear. Why did Jesus first forgive the sins of the paralyzed man? Because, Jesus came into the world to save sinners, like the paralyzed man, like his friends, like the crowd who witnessed it all, like you and me, and like Levi, the tax collector.

Tax collectors were often thieves and opportunists. According to the Roman tax collection system, a tax collector would bid on the estimated taxes for a municipality and, if awarded the contract, would then collect taxes from the people under the authority of the Roman government. Everything he collected above his awarded bid was profit: Bid low, collect high. You can imagine how unpopular this person was, almost as unpopular as the government itself. So unscrupulous were their practices at large, “tax collector” became a synonym for sinner. And one of these sinners, Jesus sought, found, and called to be his disciple, a tax collector named Levi, or known better to us as Matthew.

A Time to Believe

In the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

            a time to be born, and a time to die;

            a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

            a time to kill, and a time to heal;

            a time to break down, and a time to build up;

            a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

            a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

            a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

            a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

            a time to seek, and a time to lose;

            a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

            a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

            a time to love, and a time to hate;

            a time for war, and a time for peace (Eccles. 3:1-8).

Everything has its time, and this was Levi’s.

Luke tells us that Jesus said to Levi simply, “Follow me,” and immediately he left everything and followed Jesus. Whether what Jesus said was this brief and direct, or Luke is summarizing, what happened in that moment was nothing short of miraculous: the sovereign grace of God in the salvation of a sinner. Actually, according to the first chapter of Ephesians, Levi was chosen well before that day, before the foundation of the world.[2] When Jesus said, “Follow me,” the Holy Spirit was supernaturally at work in Levi, convincing him of his sin and misery, enlightening his mind to the knowledge of Christ, renewing his will, and persuading and enabling him to embrace Jesus Christ.[3] How do we know all of this? Because Scripture tells us this is how God works in the salvation of sinners but also because we see its evidence in Levi’s actions.

Theologically, we refer to this as “repentance unto life,” “a saving grace by which a sinner has a true sense of his sin and realization of the mercy of God in Christ and then with grief and hatred of his sin turns from it to God fully intending and striving after new obedience.”[4] Someone who claims to be a Christian but doesn’t consider himself first a sinner, someone who claims to be a Christian but doesn’t hate her sin, someone who claims to be a Christian but has no intention or desire to obey God is no Christian at all. You can claim the name, but where there’s no smoke, there’s no fire. While we are saved by God’s grace through faith, as a gift from God not a result of works, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10). Or, put simply, we are saved by faith alone, but that faith is never alone. Levi was not a “Christian” in name only but exhibited saving faith.

A Time to Share

We see Levi’s faith in action immediately: “Levi made him a great feast in his house.” This is the response of a man who was so captivated by the reality of what Jesus had done for him that he wanted to celebrate, and in celebrating he wanted to share Jesus with others. I don’t think he was worried about what other sinners would think about him. I don’t think he was concerned with how offensive it might be to the religious. I don’t think he cared how this might look for Jesus’ reputation. I think he was throwing a party, celebrating the reality that Jesus could save anybody, if he could save a sinner like Levi.

The reason I think this is because it was the same sentiment of the apostle Paul, who confessed, “‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’—and I am the worst of them!” (1 Tim. 1:15 NET). It is the same sentiment that leads sinners like you and me to share the gospel with others. Sometimes we call it witnessing, but really it is celebrating. If “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10), if “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), if “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23), then we have something to celebrate. And who wants to party alone? Levi certainly didn’t.  

In contrast, the Pharisees and scribes were troubled by the company that Jesus kept, grumbling to Jesus disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” The implication was that to associate with sinners, to share food and drink, is to share in their sin, guilty by association. Sound familiar? In the mind of the Pharisee, godliness is gained by subtraction, so you’d better stay away from sinners. But such an attitude, then and now, does not yield godliness but does reveal a calloused heart to the things of God.

“[W]hat the Pharisees show us,” Michael Reeves explains, “is that Pharisaism is not just the crankiness that comes with a hardening of the spiritual arteries. ... [They] were as they were and acted as they did because they denied the gospel. Their mercilessness, love of applause, and trust in themselves all flowed from a refusal to listen to Scripture, a refusal to receive a righteousness not their own, and a refusal to see their need for a new heart.”[5]

They had no concern for sinners, because they could not see their own.

This truth makes Jesus’ response to their criticism all the more poignant: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Indeed, the Great Physician did heal the sick, but here he meant the greater disease of sin, the condition that comes with an eternal death sentence. This, Jesus clarified with a touch of irony: His house call was not for the well, the clean, the righteous but the sick, the unclean, the sinner. But who is the righteous, if none is righteous? Who are the righteous, if all have sinned? Jesus came to call sinners to repentance, but when the scribes and Pharisees heard Jesus reference the “righteous,” they wrongly presumed that their self-righteousness made them well, clean, righteous.

A Time to Feast

This explains why the scribes and Pharisees were so confused by Levi’s party. When they heard Jesus’ distinction between “righteous” and “sinner,” they heard acceptable and unacceptable, and when they heard “repentance,” they thought of outward accompanying expressions, such as fasting, not the inward repentance of a broken and contrite heart. To them, it didn’t look like Levi was repenting of his sins but instead partying like a sinner. As if to justify their perspective, they point out that even John the Baptist and his disciples fasted. Why not Jesus and his?

To be clear, the Pharisees were not wrong in pointing to the importance of fasting in connection with repentance, and John the Baptist’s practice was right and faithful to the practice of his fellow-prophets before him. But “For everything there is a season,” Solomon teaches us, “and a time for every matter under heaven.” And Jesus had ushered in a new season, a time to feast. “But when the fullness of time had come,” the apostle Paul explains, “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4). Like preparing for a wedding, everything up to this point had been planned and prepared, with the wedding party awaiting the bridegroom with anticipation. As we walk through Scripture, from the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15 to the Abrahamic Covenant to the Mosaic Covenant to the Davidic Covenant, from the Pentateuch, the Poetry, and the Prophets, everything in our Old Testament canon of Scripture was pointing to One. And in his presence is fullness of joy![6] And so, Levi threw a party, and Jesus and his disciples feasted, because the Savior of the world had come not to call the righteous but sinners like you and me, and a tax collector named Levi, to repentance.

To explain such a season, such a time, Jesus provided two examples: a new patch of cloth on an old garment and new wine in old wine skins. In the case of the cloth, the new patch is not yet shrunken and so will tear away when the garment is washed. In the case of the wine, crushed grapes naturally ferment from the yeast of the grape skins, and fermentation means expansion requiring flexibility. Old wine skins don’t flex but will burst under pressure. So, if you need to patch an old pair of jeans, patch it with an old piece of denim. And if you’re making homemade wine, make sure your bottle has lots of extra room. The point is, whether clothes-patching or wine-making, you know that timing matters, and you respond appropriately. Likewise, when God incarnate entered time and space to save sinners from their sin, it was the season, the very time, to recognize it and respond appropriately. In other words, Levi was right to throw a party, because salvation had come in the person of Jesus Christ.

This is not to say that Christians are not to fast today. On the one hand, we live in the “already,” as the bridegroom has come, and through faith in him, we are ushered into the feast that is the kingdom of God. But there is also a “not yet” aspect to our faith, in which we fast, longing for his second coming, and the consummation of our salvation. There is a time for every matter under heaven, a time to fast and a time to feast. But in our fasting and in our feasting, we do not fast like the Pharisees nor do we feast like unbelievers. Rather, we look with anticipation for the return of the bridegroom, and the call of the angel to all who believe: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

            We will feast in the house of Zion

            We will sing with our hearts restored

            He has done great things, we will say together

            We will feast and weep no more.[7]

[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).

[2] Eph. 1:4

[3] WSC 31[3] “The Shorter Catechism” Q&A 31, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 374-375.

[4] Q. 87, Andrew Green, Sasko Nezamutdinov, Ben Preston, The Illustrated Westminster Shorter Catechism (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2022), 75.

[5] Michael Reeves, Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy (Wheaton: Crossway, 2023), 15.

[6] Ps. 16:11

[7] Joshua Moore, Sandra McCracken, “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” (Nashville: CMG Publishing, Integrity Music, 2021).