Fresh Bread

Guest (Male): You are listening to Fresh Bread, Dr. Harry Reeder's daily devotional from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Harry Reeder: We find ourselves in the Gospel of Luke, specifically in chapter five, and Jesus is about to add to his disciples a guy by the name of Levi, but you'll know him as Matthew. Chapter five and verse 27: "After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' After leaving everything, he rose and he followed him."

The conversion of Levi the tax gatherer—you know him as Matthew. Remember what the Bible says: let them be considered to you as a Gentile—that's someone outside the covenant—or a tax gatherer—that would be someone considered as a covenant breaker. That we are to see that tax gatherer as a traitor to God's covenant people. Rome would come in and sustain itself through taxes, and then they would get tax gatherers, and they would choose the tax gatherers not from themselves but from the people they were taxing.

And then those people would know everybody and they would tell them, "Now you collect the taxes and you give all the money to us. And if you want to add a little tax or you want to fudge on the numbers a little bit, that's the way you get your salary, by your thievery and by your deceitfulness and falsification of their tax, and you pad your own pocket." Well, that's what they would do. So here they are, fellow Israelites collecting taxes to give to the Gentiles and stealing from their own people in order to sustain themselves because that would be the source of their salary.

Rome didn't pay them. They had to get the money by charging more taxes than they were supposed to, and whatever they got away with, they could keep. Tax gatherers were not very loved in and around this place called Israel, and therefore Levi would be one of those. Now, clearly he's likely of the Levitical tribe, the tribe of Levi, but instead of being a priest or an attendant to a priest, he's a tax gatherer and is a thief and a robber and an attender unto those who were holding the covenant people of God in oppression, the Romans.

The Romans having followed the Medo-Persians, having followed the Babylonians, having followed the Assyrians, having followed the Egyptians, and of course, don't forget the Greeks in between the Persians and the Romans. And so this is the long list of oppressors who have come upon them. Well, praise the Lord, we get the opportunity to see the converting power of God to get a son of Levi, named Levi, and rescue him from his sins and bring him into the new covenant and to be numbered with the people of God, not only in the new covenant but as one of the pillars—that is, being one of the Lord's disciples that would become the apostles through which we would get our Bible—and this particular Levi, named Matthew, would give us the Gospel of Matthew.

Well, we're going to learn a little bit more about him, but I want to finish up by pointing out to you: Jesus comes to him and what does Jesus say? "Follow me." What does Levi do? He leaves everything and he follows Jesus. Now, that's conversion. Conversion isn't simply knowledge in your head or repeating a prayer. It's certainly a prayer. It's certainly knowledge in your head, but it is a movement of life. Saving faith is not the act of a moment. It is the acquisition of a lifestyle.

And here you see a new life when he says no to his deceitful thievery and abuse of God's covenant people. Instead of being in the depths of his sin, he now rises physically and spiritually. He's born again. And what's the evidence? He now follows Jesus. Praise his name. Now, you be at the Lord's house with the Lord's people and worship this Lord's Day, and I'll see you back here next week for another slice of Fresh Bread.

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