Levi Threw a Party

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Luke 5:27-32 "After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. 'Follow me,' Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' 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.'"

Think

Levi got a new life on a Tuesday and threw a party on a Wednesday.

He was a tax collector, which in that world meant he made money by taking money from his own people for a foreign government and keeping whatever extra he could get away with. He was not misunderstood. He was genuinely a traitor and everybody treated him like one.

Jesus walks past his booth and says two words. Follow me. And Luke says Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

Then look at what he does next, because it should reorganize how you think about your friends.

He throws a giant party at his house, and he invites everybody he knows. Which means the room fills up with tax collectors. Other traitors. The people he had been running with for years.

Levi's first move as a follower of Jesus was not to get away from his old friends. It was to get them in a room with Jesus.

That cuts against something a lot of students absorb without ever being taught it directly. There is this quiet assumption that becoming serious about God means slowly separating from the people who are not, and that if you are still close to those friends, you are probably compromising.

Levi did the opposite, and Jesus went to the party.

Now be honest, because there is a real tension here and pretending there is not would be useless. Some friendships genuinely pull you away from God, and there are people whose closeness to you needs to change. That is true and it matters.

But there is a difference between being pulled and being sent. Levi was not going back to his old life. He was bringing his old life to Jesus, and those are two completely different things even though they can look similar from the outside.

The religious people in the story could not tell the difference. They saw Jesus eating with the wrong crowd and they complained about it, and their complaint is one of the great accidental compliments in the Bible. Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Because that is who he came for. That is exactly what Jesus says. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Sit with that comparison for a second. Nobody blames a doctor for spending time around sick people. That is the entire job. A doctor who only met with healthy people would be useless and everybody would notice.

So here is the practical question for your week. Who is already at your table?

You do not have to go find a stranger. Levi did not. He looked at his contact list, the actual one, full of people with real problems, and he used it. The people God has already put around you at school, on your team, in your neighborhood, in that group chat, are not obstacles to your faith. For a lot of you they are the assignment.

Notice too that Levi did not preach at the party. Luke never says he gave a speech. He got Jesus in the room and let Jesus be Jesus.

So who is already in your life that you have been keeping at a careful distance from your faith?

Apply

Use the table you already have – Levi did not give a speech at his own party. He got everybody he already knew into a room with Jesus and let Jesus be Jesus, which is the entire job description for this Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. You do not need different friends. Pick one situation this week where you normally keep your faith separate from the people already in your group chat, on your team, and at your lunch table, and bring it in. Ask the whole table, not just the safe one.

Pray

God, I have been living two lives and keeping them from touching. Some of my friends have no idea this part of me exists. Give me the courage to stop hiding it and to bring the people I already have to you instead of waiting for different people. In Jesus' name. Amen.