This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day five, chapter five of our look through the book of
Luke. And as we're beginning our survey of the life of Christ through Luke, I
know you can see what's happening. Each successive miracle that Jesus works and
teaching that he gives, the news is spreading wider and wider.

And that message changes everything. When people hear the message of Christ, it
changes their lives. And because change is happening, the inevitable happens.

People begin to divide. The promise of genuine change always divides people. It
divides them into two groups, those who want to change and those who do not want
to change.

If I want to change and Jesus comes and offers me change and he can genuinely
work that change, I embrace what he's saying. If I don't want to change, if I'm
comfortable where I am and Jesus offers me change, I reject that change. I want
to chase him as far away as I can.

And in this chapter, Luke chapter five, we meet those who want to change and
those who do not want to change, his followers and his enemies, the changed and
the unchanging. In fact, we're going to go back and forth between follower and
enemy, change and unchanging throughout this chapter. We begin with a follower,
a story about Peter, one of the first followers of Jesus Christ.

Beginning in verse four of Luke chapter five, when Jesus had finished speaking,
he said to Simon, Simon Peter, put out into deep water and let down your nets
for a catch. Simon answered, Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't
caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets
began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and
help them. And they came and they filled both boats so full that they began to
sink.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus's knees and he said, go away from
me, Lord, I am a sinful man. Now here is the promise of change. There's this
powerful picture of a frustrating life.

They'd worked hard all night and caught nothing. They're trying harder and
harder and they're coming up empty. If you've ever felt that way, you understand
how Simon Peter and all the disciples, early disciples felt in this moment.

Then Jesus comes and he says, put down your nets on the other side. Well, he's
not a fisherman. How would he know where to put the nets?

He's the Lord of life. He knows where the fish are because he made the fish. And
Peter's first response is, it's not going to work.

But then his second response is, Lord, because you say so, because you say so,
I'll do it. That changed his life. He puts down the net and so many fish, it
almost sinks two boats.

Peter sees this and his response is to be scared to death. He did not see how
that kind of change could fit into his life. I'm a sinful man.

You're working these kind of miracles. How could that happen? Verses 10 and 11,
then Jesus said to Simon, don't be afraid.

From now on, he will catch men. So they pulled their boats up on shore and they
left everything and they followed him. Here are the changed.

Here are those who are following Christ. They see a miracle. They see that he
can do something different.

And instead of rejecting him, even though it scares them, even though they're
afraid, they choose to follow him. They don't live life by their fears. They
begin to live out a new life of faith.

If only that had happened with everyone. We go from the changed to the
unchanging, to a group that's so stuck in their traditions that they can't see
the truth when it's fully on display in front of them. In verse 20, we hear the
end of a story where some men had brought to Jesus a paralyzed man on a mat.

You might remember this story. They couldn't get to Jesus. They had to go up on
the roof of a house and lower this man through the roof, taking the shingles off
the grass that was on the roof off and lowering Jesus down through.

Jesus saw the faith of this group. And listen to what happens in verse 20. When
Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, who is
this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone? Their
immediate response is to question Jesus.

Now, Simon Peter's immediate response was to question himself. How could I be
related to Jesus? Their immediate response is to question Jesus.

And Jesus gives them an opportunity for faith by answering that question. In
verse 22, Jesus knew what they were thinking and he asked, why are you thinking
these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or
to say, get up and walk.

That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He
said to the paralyzed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home. And
immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and he
went home praising God.

Jesus shows them he is God. He is the one who forgives. They thought this man is
claiming to do what only God can do and they rejected Jesus.

So Jesus does something that only God can do. He heals a paralyzed man and they
still reject him. For Peter, it took only a few extra fish in a net for him to
believe.

These religious leaders would not believe even in the face of a miracle of a
paralyzed man walking home. Why? Because they determined not to believe.

It wasn't a matter of the evidence, it was a matter of their hearts. Changed and
unchanging. It's not a matter of the evidence that I've seen or haven't seen.

It's a matter of my heart. We're going back and forth. We've gone from changed
Peter to unchanging these Pharisees, these religious leaders.

Now we go back to someone who's changed, Levi or Matthew, you may know his name
by. In the Gospels, we get both the Greek and the Hebrew names for some of the
apostles. Sometimes it can be confusing because of that, but Levi is Matthew.

He's the tax collector. In verse 27, "After this, Jesus went out and he saw a
tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus
said, and Levi got up.

He left everything and he followed him. Now tax collectors were the most hated
of all people in Israel with good reason. They were Jews who worked for the
Roman government, making a profit at the expense of their friends and neighbors,
and oftentimes making an illegal profit.

The Roman government said, "This is the amount of tax that we want. If you can
get anything more out of the people, you can keep it for yourselves. " So they
had aligned themselves with this foreign power that had come in and invaded
Israel, was occupying the country, and they were working with them just to make
a financial profit.

Levi realizes the error of his ways, the error of the direction of his life, and
when Jesus offers him a better life, he knew a good offer when he heard it. He
got up and he followed him. Not only did he follow him, he wanted his friends to
follow him.

So in 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 him. But," here come
the unchanging again, "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's not the healthy who need a
doctor, but the sick.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. ' They said to
him, 'John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of
Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking. ' They just didn't get it.

" Here are the unchanging again, completely unable to understand why Jesus would
meet with those who needed him the most. Now as we walk through the book of
Luke, we're going to learn more about the mindset of the Pharisee, but it's good
to remember that it's held today by more who would call themselves Christian
than by those who come from a Jewish heritage. Most of the Pharisees in the
world today are people who call themselves Christian.

And I don't mean Pharisee in terms of the sect that they belong to, but the way
that they think. It is the mindset that tries to build a relationship with God
on a sense of spiritual superiority over others. It is the need to feel that you
are closer to God than other people are.

I know a lot of people who struggle with that. I know I've struggled with that
at times, maybe you have. Jesus has an answer.

Jesus has an answer for the changed and the unchanging. In verse 36 he told them
this parable, "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old
one. If he does, he'll have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new
will not match the old.

" Verse 37, "No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine
will burst the skins. The wine will run out and the wineskin will be ruined.

New wine must be poured into new wineskins. Wineskins in those days were usually
made of animal skins, and when wine was poured in it would ferment and it would
expand the animal skins. But then an old wineskin had been out in the sun, it
would have been hardened.

So if you poured new wine into an old wineskin, when it tried to expand, when it
tried to grow, it would just break the skin. It would be useless. It wouldn't
work.

You've got to be new in order to change. That's what Jesus is saying here. And
he wants to do something new in our lives.

Change comes because of the new thing that only Jesus can do. New wine must be
poured into new wineskins. If you've been trying to live a new life, just based
on your old habits, based on your old things, if you've been trying to live a
new life on your old power, it doesn't work.

It's frustrating. Now you need the new thing that only Jesus can do, the new
life that only Jesus can give. I don't want to be a Pharisee.

I don't want to be unchanging. I want to grow the rest of my life. But only God
can encourage and challenge that.

And the only way he can do it is by doing something new in me through him, his
power, his love, the rest of my life. Let's pray together that he'd do that
today. Lord, if I'm to live out the new life that you have, changing instead of
being unchanging, it's got to happen today.

It can't be something that I look forward to next week or next year. It's day by
day. So today, help me to change.

Help me to change in the way that I talk and the way that I respond to
circumstances. Help me to live out this changed life based on the new life that
you've given me. Forgive me for those times when I try to become a changed
person, living out the old life that I already had.

Now it's the new life. So help me to live the changed life based on the new life
that you've given me today, Jesus. I pray this in your name, Amen.

Next week we will continue together to look at the ministry of Jesus and the
lessons for life that you and I can learn from the way that Jesus ministered to
people.