A New Life In Christ- Part #2

This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast. On Finishing Well, we help you make godly choices about Medicare, long-term care, and your money. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Do you feel like you're on a religious treadmill? Do you feel like Christianity is just a system of rules and regulations?

I can do this, but I can't do that. Do you feel like your efforts to reach God, find God, and please God are futile? Do you feel like your faith is dead or alive? Today, Pastor Russ Andrews will walk us through Scripture to answer these questions. Join us on Finding Purpose, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living.

For more information and to connect with Russ Andrews and Finding Purpose, you can visit us online at findingpurpose.net or connect with us on Facebook. Now let's listen to Russ Andrews as he teaches us how to be a Christian without being religious. Today's message is a new life in Christ, and this is the first stage of the Christian life. In this stage, you must recognize two things, who Jesus is, God in the flesh, and who you are, a sinner in need of forgiveness. You have any problem with that one?

I don't, with me. Let's go to the second stage, a commitment to follow Christ. Picking up now with verse 27. 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 him. 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, God forbid?

I mean, give me a break. Jesus answered them, it's not the health, I love this verse right here, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Tax collectors were the most detestable people in Jewish society. They were basically agents working for the Roman government, and their job was to go out and let collect taxes from their fellow Jewish brethren. And most of them were fraudulent in their dealings. What they did, they collected more than the tax bill was. If you owed them $10,000, he'd tell you you owe $20,000, he would give the Roman government $10,000, where'd he put the other $10,000?

In his pocket. And so they became rich, and they were despised. They were worse than a leper. Matthew, by the way, Levi, his name is Matthew, but I'm going to be referring to him as Levi tonight because that's what Luke calls him. Levi was one of them. He was a good for nothing guy.

Good for nothing tax collector. And the text says, look, that Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting in his tax booth. This word saw means more than just see physically. It means that Jesus carefully and deliberately examined Levi. I believe the same way he examined the thief on the cross. He could see Levi's heart. Levi must have been wondering, what do you want with me? And he probably was stunned when Jesus said, Levi, follow me. Levi got up, left everything and followed Jesus. What do you think it means that he left everything? According to Kent Hughes, who's the great, the commentary that's in your lecture notes, it does not mean that he never returned to get his affairs in order. What Luke is emphasizing is that he made a decisive break from his old way of life and began to follow Jesus from that point forward. And guess what? He followed him all the way to the end of his life when he was martyred.

That's called leaving it all behind, including your own life. And then he gave us this wonderful book, the Gospel of Matthew. What did Levi do next? He decided to throw a party. He invited all of his friends, including a whole lot of tax collectors, and they came to his house where he offered food and beverage. Why did he do this?

Because he wanted everybody to know the one that he knew. Listen, there's no more joyful occasion, no more reason for celebration than the salvation of a man's soul. And I don't think we really fathom how great it is. The Bible says it's a great treasure that if you discovered your backyard, you would go and take all the money you had to buy it. Bishop J.C. Ryle had it right when he said it is far is a far more important event than being married or coming of age or being made a noble man 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's been made a king and a priest forevermore. It's been provided for both in time and eternity.

It is adoption into the noblest and riches of all families, the family of God. Do you realize if you're in Christ that everything I just read from Ryle is true of you and true of me? We've been adopted by the creator of the universe, and we belong to him. And we walk around so often like we just don't even realize it.

A lot of y'all don't look real joyful tonight. This is the way we should feel about ourselves. This is the way we should feel about our salvation. So let me ask you, have you ever had a party and invited everybody over and told them that you're following Jesus?

Let me ask you this. Have you ever shared with a single soul that you're following Jesus? Jesus says if you're not willing to acknowledge me before men, I'll not be willing to acknowledge you before my Father's in heaven. But if you acknowledge me before men, I will acknowledge you before my Father.

How would you like to step through death's door and you're standing right in front of Jesus and he says he belongs to me? Did you know that if you have your salvation, if you have your salvation, it's greater than the cure for cancer? There are people right and left dying of cancer.

But what we have is far greater. If you were cured of cancer, would you keep it to yourself or would you stand on a mountaintop and announce it to the world, I've been cured of cancer? Well, when your soul is cured of sin and you stand before God righteous and holy, we should shout that to the entire world. I heard tonight from George Cunningham that in our that he's had three friends recently, two over Christmas, whose 20-year-old sons committed suicide. It's an epidemic.

I did the funeral service of a 23-year-old a few years back who committed suicide. You know why they're committing suicide? Because they don't have hope. Do you know why they don't have hope? Because we're not telling them about Jesus.

When a man knows Jesus, it's a game changer. Jesus answered them after they said, why do you eat with and drink with tax collection centers? Listen, they were standing out on the sidelines. They wouldn't even come into Matthew's house.

Do you know why? Because he was a gentile and they did not want to be polluted. So they just stood on the outside and then they grumbled to the disciples. Instead of rejoicing over the fact that they were not going to be able to be saved, over the fact that just recently a man was healed, the paralyzed man. They're grumbling now that Matthew is eating with sinners.

Jesus answered them, it's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Do you know why this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible? He just shows you how much God loves sinners. You know where Jesus would be hanging out if he were here today? He'd be hanging out with us. He'd be hanging out with sinners, prostitutes, homosexuals, adulterers, alcoholics, druggies.

I remember Chuck Colson years ago, if y'all don't know for me with Chuck Colson, he's dying to go to heaven, but he was a great sinner who got saved on his way to prison and then came out and God sent him back in to save prisoners and he started prison fellowship. But one day he was preaching out in California, this beautiful church with marble columns and beautiful floors and all the rich beautiful people were there. The day before he'd been in a prison, you know what he said to them? He said, I wonder where Jesus would be more comfortable, here today or where I was yesterday.

He didn't invite him. He did not get invited back to that church, by the way. Jesus got down into the gutter to save people. You see, the truth of the matter is that we're all sinners. There's no one righteous. Paul makes this clear in Romans 3 10 through 12 where he says, there's no one righteous, not even one. There's no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away.

They have together become worthless. There's no one who does good, not even one. Do you find your name in there somewhere? I mean, it says all of us from Billy Graham and Mother Teresa all the way down to the worst criminal that's ever lived. We're all sinners.

But here's the good news. Jesus came to save sinners. However, he can't save anyone who thinks he's already righteous because of their so-called good deeds. And this gets to the problem of religion.

A religion attempts to make you feel good about yourself because it's a work-based religion. Join the church. Live a good moral life. Be kind to others. Love everyone. And God in turn will love you. It's all about love, love, love.

You know what this does? When you begin to think like that, you're making God a debtor. You're putting God in a position where he owes you something. Look at God. Look at the wonderful life I've lived.

Look at all the things I've done. This is, in essence, what the Pharisees believed. And this is the essence of the religion that I call churchism. Once again, Jesus lays down another gauntlet. He's declaring war.

Here's what he's doing. He's we serve a warrior God. When he came to this earth, he came to do battle. He came to defeat the enemy. And the enemy comes disguised as an angel of light. These Pharisees look good on the outside, but Jesus said they're full of dead men bones and everything. He compared them to a grave, a white monument, but inside underneath that dirt are dead men's bones, full of all kinds of sin and hypocrisy. And yet they're standing out there saying, well, you've got to wash your hands. You can't do this on the Sabbath.

Give me a break. You see, not only did Jesus claim to be God, but he also said he did not come to save so-called righteous men. I'm sure he was looking at them. He came to save sinners. John 3 16 and 17 declares this truth. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that who have believed in him shall not perish, but have what? For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.

Did you all know that? He didn't send Jesus into the world to condemn us. He came to what?

Save us. Here's the essence of biblical Christianity. Stage one, you recognize Jesus as your God and Savior. And in so doing, you confess that you are a sinner. As you look into the mirror of scripture and you say that you're a sinner. And then you as you confess your sins, you also repent, which means you turn away from them and all this, all this wild that's taking place here. He's forgiving you. Second stage is you hear Jesus say, follow me, Terry, Bill, Wes, Jeff, Bill, Robert, John, Neil, Wayne.

I could go all around the room. He said, Russ, Stefan, follow me. And he would turn you into a fisher of men.

And what we need to do is the same thing Levi did. You know what he did when he left everything? He was leaving his old way of life to follow Jesus. And that brings us to the third stage, which I call a new life in Christ.

I want you to think about what does it mean to have a new life in Christ? Look at verses 33 through 39. They said to him, they said to him, John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking. By the way, that drinking there, it's not talking about water, it's talking about probably wine. So they were they were eating and drinking wine back then. And Jesus turned water into wine. I believe he drank wine with them. He never sinned. OK, that's the big thing.

He never got a buzz. He just would have a glass, I guess, of wine or two. And that was it. But he was not a teetotaler. OK, by the way, this will make some Baptists uncomfortable. We get to heaven. First thing we're going to do is drink wine with Jesus. That's what he's waiting to do after the last supper. He said, I will not drink a new again until I drink in the coming kingdom.

I'm not drinking the vine again. Jesus answered, Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he's with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them. He's talking about the crucifixion, the cross.

In those days, they will fast. He told them this parable. No one tears a piece out of a new garment to to patch an old one. If he does, he will make he will have that he will he will have torn the new garment and the patch from the new will not match the old. And 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 wineskins will be ruined. No new wine must be poured into new wineskins.

And no one after drinking old wine wants the new for they say the old is better. That's a proverb I'll come to at the very end, because that's kind of confusion when you first read it. Now, according to Matthew's account, the people the people that came, the men that came and questioned Jesus here were not the Pharisees. It was actually the disciples of John the Baptist. They weren't testing Jesus.

They were just confused. Remember, John the Baptist was a Nazi. He took it the Nazarene vow. So he was a teetotaler, no alcohol. But Jesus's disciples found a new freedom in Christ, not to sin, but to live, but not to live by regulations that have nothing to do with salvation. Okay, that's the point. In response to John's disciples, Jesus teaches two very important principles about what it means men to be a true Christian.

Are you ready for this? This might be the most important thing I say tonight. Christianity is a relationship with God. It's not a man-made religion. All men-made religions are men trying to work their way up to God by earning his favor. Christianity is about God coming down to this earth and rescuing sinners who are lost and drowning in their sin and need a savior. So that's the one. Christianity is about a relationship with God through Jesus.

Do you have that? Secondly, Christianity is all about a brand-new life in Christ. In verses 34 and 35, look at that again. Jesus says, can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them.

In those days, they will fast. So here's the deal. You know marriage, I tell any couple I'm getting ready to marry, that marriage in the Bible is something that you can do. Marriage in the Bible is a picture, it's an intimate, I mean it's a very intimate relationship. Well marriage, which is why it's to be between a man and a woman and no other kind of relationship. Man and a woman, one man, one woman.

Can you believe we have to teach that in America today? One man, one woman. By the way, God designed marriage. Since he's the author of marriage, I think he gets to tell us who can get married.

It's that simple. But I tell them that marriage is a picture of the kind of relationship that God wants to have with you and me. An intimate, personal relationship. So when you say I do to Jesus, what's happening in that moment when you make that commitment is he becomes your bridegroom and you become a part of the universal invisible church. Fasting was a practice found in the Old Testament.

Not that, I mean, Jesus said when you fast, so you still do it today, but back then it was really a ritual and it was a common practice among the Jews when they were mourning. They said the overall effect of this religious practice, according to Hughes, was to view true religion as solemn, joyous, and gloomy. There should be nothing gloomy about it.

Marriage is anything but solemn or gloomy. It's a joyous occasion. Remember, Jesus's first miracle was at the wedding in Cana where he turned water into wine. Wine is symbolic of joy. Our relationship with Jesus should be the most joyous possession that we have in this world. And this is what Jesus was trying to explain.

To further explain this, he told them this parable. No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wine skins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins. The wine will run out and the wine skins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wine skins.

Here's the deal. Judaism was a worn out garment. The law was never meant to save anyone. It did have a purpose. But the reason God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses was so that we would look at them and see our sin and it would drive us to who?

Jesus. So it's like the law comes along, tells you you're a sinner, and then points you to Christ. That was the only purpose of the law. But they couldn't even keep the first commandment. Which says thou should have no other gods before me. I'm talking about the Pharisees. They were inwardly and outwardly worshiping other gods.

Just like we do still do today. John Calvin famously wrote, Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. The old covenant Judaism could not be patched over with a few things taken from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Something altogether new.

Had to come, and you know what? This new thing that was coming was prophesied in the Old Testament by both Jeremiah and Ezekiel. I want you to listen to what Jeremiah says. It's Jeremiah 31 if you want to turn there. And I'm almost done.

Just bear with me. Because this is so exciting, Jeremiah says, and he's looking way into the future, about six or 700 years. He says, The time is coming, declares the Lord. He says, The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It would not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers. That's the old covenant. When I took them by the land to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant, there was a husband of them, declares the Lord. Then he explains the covenant. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.

He's declaring it. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor or man his brother, Satan, nor the Lord.

And catch this. Again, this is Jeremiah speaking 700 years before Christ. Because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

Did you hear that? They will all know me. And this brings us to the fourth stage, a personal relationship with Christ. You see, this new life in Christ, guys, and I want to end with this climax, begins when you place your trust in the gospel of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

In that, and I just had a friend of mine, a 40-year-old guy that just did this. In that moment, your relationship with God through his Son, Jesus begins. It's a new marriage.

You come to know Jesus in a personal relationship, and God becomes your Heavenly Father. Your what? What's another word for father? Abba.

What does it mean? It means daddy. I remember watching the news one night, and it was in Jerusalem, and they were interviewing this man, and right behind him I could hear this little child going, Abba, Abba.

He was just calling out to his daddy. In Romans 8, it says, We call our Father Abba. Do you go to your Heavenly Daddy in the morning and ask him to help you? In John 10, 14, and 27, Jesus confirms this idea of knowing him personally when he says, I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me. My sheep listen to my voice.

I know them, and they follow me. I mean, this is what it means to have eternal life. You know Jesus, and here's a warning. If you don't know Jesus, you'll never see heaven. In Matthew 7, 21 through 23, Jesus said there are going to be many, many religious people who will stand before him one day, and they're going to list all the things they've done, and he's going to say, Depart from me, because I never knew you. Do you know Jesus personally?

I'm going to have to end here because of time. That proverb, by the way, when he says, And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says the old is better. Well, you know what that means? It's just a proverb, and what Jesus was saying is that when people become set in their ways, they like it really an older person who, which is a lot of us in here, who have been going to church all years, but never really understood what it means to know Jesus. When they hear the gospel, they just aren't interested because they like the old way. They don't want change.

According to the Billy Graham Association, the average age, because they can look at millions and millions of decisions, the average age when most people become a believer is in your teenage years, 18, average age. The older you get, the longer you've been out there listening to the gospel from people, and you kind of just give it a stiff arm or don't even listen, the harder your heart becomes. And you think, well, the old is better. I don't want this new way. As for me, personally, I've tried the old way. I've tried the old way. And ain't no turning back. I've tried the new way.

There's no better way. So if you've not experienced, if you've not truly experienced this new life in Christ, I invite you today, just as Jesus invited Levi, leave your old life behind. Follow after Jesus and listen. He will lead you through this life day by day, step by step, verse by verse. And He will bring you to the end of your life safe and secure in Him. I believe this with all of my heart. If you don't believe it with all your heart, I'm going to be right here afterwards. You come up and talk to me, okay? And I'll be glad to have a cup of coffee with you and explain to you why it's so important.

Okay? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the truth therein. Thank you, Lord, that faith comes from here in your word, that you've left us such a great treasure, your word in the Holy Scriptures. Lord, we need you. We love you.

We thank you for all that you've done for us. We pray, Lord, that you'll come soon. In Jesus' name, amen. Being a Christian is not about being religious, it's about having a dynamic, alive relationship with Jesus Christ. You've been listening to Finding Purpose with Pastor Russ Andrews, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living. You can discover more about finding your purpose in life by checking out the resources at findingpurpose.net or connect to Finding Purpose on Facebook. Pastor Russ would also like to extend a special invitation for you to join him and over 300 other local men to study God's Word together every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in downtown Raleigh. Find out more at findingpurpose.net.