feasting and fasting (luke 5.27-39)

FEASTING AND FASTING — Luke 5:27-39 —

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth.

— vs 27

And he said to him, “Follow me.”

— vs 27

“a man greedy for dirty money, Nilled with an uncontrolled desire to possess, careless of justice in his eagerness to

have what didn’t belong to him…yet he was snatched from the workshop of sin itself and saved when there was

no hope for him, at the call of Christ the Savior of us all.”

— Cyril of Alexandria

And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

— vs 28

“Nothing can happen to a man which ought to be such an occasion of joy, as his conversion. It is a far more important event than being married,

or coming of age, or being made a nobleman, or receiving a great fortune. It is the birth of an immortal soul! It is the rescue of a sinner from

hell! It is a passage from death to life! It is being made a king and priest forevermore! It is being provided for, both in time and eternity! It is

adoption into the noblest and richest of all families, the family of God!”

— J.C. Ryle

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.

— vs 29

And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

— vs 30

“Grace turns the world of religious people upside down. They think of life as a ladder. Your righteous acts move you up the ladder toward

God. Your sense of well-being comes from your place on the ladder. Nothing makes you feel better than being able to look down on other

people. Pharisees need tax collectors to make them feel righteous.”

— Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus

And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

— vs 30

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.”

— vv 31-32

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus:

‘God, I thank you that I am not like the other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give

tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be

merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justiNied, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will

be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

— Luke 18:10-14

“Our imaginary goodness is more difNicult to conquer than our actual sin. Man can sooner be cured of his sicknesses than be made to

forego his boasts of health. Human weakness is a small obstacle to salvation compared with human strength; there lies the work and the

difNiculty. Hence, it is a sign of grace to know one’s need of grace. He who knows and feels that he is in darkness has some light in his soul.”

— Charles Spurgeon

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.”

— vs 33

“This is the Nirst rule of the legalist. The legalist legislates where God leaves people free. He takes ‘you may’ and turns it into

‘you must,’ and that is absolutely fatal to a healthy Christian life. The Pharisees, who considered themselves the ultimate standard

of righteousness, were the fathers of this kind of legalism.”

— R.C. Sproul

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.”

— vs 33

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.”

— vv 34-35

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.”

— vv 36-38

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the

covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke,

though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD:

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one

teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

— Jeremiah 31:31-34

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.”

— vv 36-38

And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

— vs 39

“You cannot simply patch a little bit of Jesus on to your old way of life. You cannot keep him bottled up inside your old religion. Jesus

insists on giving sinners the new clothes of his righteousness and the new wineskins of his grace, Nilled with the new wine of his Spirit.

If you do not know Jesus for sure, you really ought to try him!”

— Philip Ryken