Mark 2:13-17

Last Sunday we saw Jesus claim the authority to forgive sins in Mark 2:1-12. Today in Mark 2:13-17 we look at who are the sinners that Jesus actually forgives.

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Dan Werthman 0:00

Thank you, Jeannie and worship team. If you have your Bibles today, I invite you to turn to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2. Our text today will be verses 13 through 17 of Mark chapter 2. You may or may not have heard of two famous names in church history: George Whitfield and John Wesley. If you've come out of a Methodist background, you for sure have heard of John Wesley's name. Whitfield and Wesley were great figures of church history in the 18th century, both in England and in the United States, and they often ministered together. In 1739, George Whitfield invited John Wesley to come over to England and to join him in something that proper, respectable preachers considered to be improper and disreputable. What was that? Whitfield wanted to go preach to a group of people that he knew would never darken the doors of the churches in England: the coal miners. The coal miners in Bristol, England. Coal miners at that time were known for their vulgarity. They were known for their debauchery. They lived outside of proper, respectable church and religious circles, and there was no witness of Christ to them. And so, Whitfield and Wesley began to go to the fields, the fields in Bristol, around Bristol, near where the coal mines were, and they began to preach in the fields. As they did that, thousands of coal miners came to hear them. And as a result, many of those coal miners responded to the Gospel message and became saved and began to go through life transformation as they began to follow Jesus Christ. Now, while all this was going on, even though the fruit was very evident, Whitfield and Wesley were highly criticized by the church in England at that time. Why? Because the sentiment was if people are going to hear about Jesus, they need to clean themselves up, and they need to come, and they need to sit and be proper just like we do. That was the thinking of that day, and I am so grateful that the Spirit moved Whitfield and Wesley to ignore that popular thinking and to take the message of salvation to this unchurched group of people and to preach it faithfully. And through that, really, the Wesleyan revival began that from England to America and really changed much of the religious landscape in the 18th century. Well, I want you to think this morning: who are, today, the equivalent of the coal miners in 18th century England. Who are-- who is-- makes up that group of what we would call the unchurched? People who live outside of proper religious circles, people who, on their own, probably would never darken the doors of a church, of a church like this. Who are those people? They are not who you might think. Robert Putnam, a Harvard political science and government professor, has done a study of this, a study of who goes to church and who doesn't go to church, and how that has changed. And here is, really, the results of his demographic studies about who it is that currently is the most unchurched. The biggest demographic right now of unchurched people: it's not millennials. It is not college-educated city dwellers. It is not affluent suburban families-- which, by the way, those are the groups that most churches seem to want to target as they seek to grow. The demographic, as studies show, that is the most unchurched today is the working class, the lower-income, non-college-educated folks. A big segment, he writes, of these blue collar workers has just stopped going to church, and they are also, with the personal and family problems that he documents among them, they are arguably most in need of ministry. Think about these people. Think about who might fit this. He writes that so many young men and women in this slice of the culture, they're not getting married. They're showing no interest in marriage. They are being content to live together in serial relationships. The men are fathering children but have little to do with them. The women choose to have children without bothering with a husband, but then they have to work multiple jobs to provide for them while often leaving them more-or-less on their own. This is the demographic Putnam records in which the bottom has fallen out in terms of church attendance and marriage rates and children raised with both parents. This is the group that is now most plagued by opioid abuse and heroin addiction. These are the Americans hardest hit by closing factories, by automation, and by poor job prospects. They never went to college, the social elite looks down on them, and the middle class often finds them embarrassing. He ends: these are the people who tend to be cynical about church. They often feel unworthy of going to church because of their sexual immorality, their drug and alcohol use, and other faults. They don't often realize what Christianity teaches about the forgiveness for sins and that the church is for them. It is for sinners. These are the unchurched. This is where you can find most of the "nones", ones who would say they really don't have any religious affiliation. And he closes with ta haunting question: what is the church doing to reach them? I want you to think about those, those unchurched and those that you may know that fit within that segment, of those who are outside of proper church circles, because in our text today, in Mark chapter 2, we see a picture of those who are unchurched at that time. And more than that, we see how Jesus reaches out to them. We see how Jesus goes outside of proper religious circles of the time and reaches out to the very people who know, or at least feel, that they are excluded by proper religious circles. We pick it up in verse 13 of chapter 2: "Jesus went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them." "Beside the sea", as you-- that's the picture. There is the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. That's near Capernaum, where that was kind of his home base during the Galilean portion of his ministry. And verse 14, Mark goes on: "As he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he, Levi, rose and followed him." Jesus The tax booth: that was really like a toll booth. There were toll collectors in that area. There was a major trade route called the Way of the Sea, the Via Maris, that ran north-south along the Mediterranean there, along the Sea of Galilee there, rather that-- where people, taking trade, taking products north out of Israel or south down to Egypt. They would have to travel, and toll booths were set up, where tariffs were collected. Goods that were being taken from Israel, north or south, a tariff had to be on it, and all that income from those tariffs, those customs, went to the local governments who are run by elites who cooperated with Rome. So if you had enough influence as a local government official, and maybe, by paying some bribes, you got the right to set up a toll booth, and you had the ability, then, to tax and to collect some tax, some tariff, on all the trade that was going north and south through the area. It was staffed at that point by a man named Levi. Levi, the son of Alphaeus. Now, Luke also calls his name as Levi if you read Luke's account of this. But if you read Matthew's account of this, Matthew calls him Matthew. And what's the-- is that a discrepancy? No, it is likely that this is one of several people in the New Testament that is known by two names. We think of John Mark, we think of Simon Peter, we think of Saul who was Paul, and here we have Levi, who is also known as Matthew. Just one other interesting fact: he's noted as the son of Alphaeus. That is also noted of one of the disciples named James. Not James, the brother of John, but the other James is also noted as the son of Alphaeus, so they may have been brothers. In other words, there may have been three pairs of brothers who made up the 12 disciples. Just an interesting factoid there. He was sitting at the toll booth, so Levi either worked for the man who had bought the franchise from the Roman government, or he had bought the franchise himself, but he was the one there collecting tolls from people going north or south along that trade route. It is to Levi sitting there, as Jesus comes along him, that Jesus extends his call: "Follow me." And by the way, I find it so interesting, even more than interesting, striking, that this is Jesus' customary invitation. His invitation is not, "Ask me into your heart." His invitation 19 times in the Gospel of Mark is, "Follow me." Following describes how Jesus calls people to respond to him, and that is what Levi did. Levi, sitting there with no evidence of any other conversation, Levi responds to his call. He rose and he followed him. What does that tell us about faith in Jesus? It tells us, I believe, that following Jesus is something we do. Yes, it's something we believe. It's something that we think when we embrace Jesus as savior and Lord. There is the intellectual component and maybe even something that we feel, but following Jesus is primarily something that we do. So when Jesus calls you to respond to him, his call to you involves more than asking him into your heart, and I'm not saying we can't use that phrase. For many people, that is where it begins: when you pray a prayer and you embrace him as savior and Lord, asking him in your heart or whatever words there may be, but it cannot end there, because Jesus has invitation is, "Do something; not only believe in me, but follow me." And following is an act that involves risk, and it involves cost. That was true of Levi. Levi picked up, and, whether he was an employee and he left his job, or whether he was the owner of that toll franchise and he left that, he abandoned the security of that. He abandoned all that he knew about that in order to respond to Jesus' call and follow him. And usually with us, there is some call, if not initially, into our our life with Christ, where we are called to follow him in laying something down. We are called to follow him involving risk and cost. Jesus challenges us as part of being a Christian, of part of following him, he challenges us to step out of our comfort zone. Sometimes, he asks us to leave old ways of life. Sometimes, he asks us to give up the things that we are holding on that give us security that would rise above him, but following him is an act that always requires risk and cost. Verse 15: "And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him." Where is this taking place? Where is his house? Well, again, if you read the parallel accounts, it helps. Luke tells us in chapter 5, verse 29 of Luke that this is Levi's home. Luke records that Levi hosted a great banquet for Jesus at his house. Perhaps this was Levi acknowledging, "I'm about to leave behind my old way of life. I'm about to start off on a on a new way of life following Jesus." And who was it that he invited to this banquet? Many tax collectors and sinners were there. And doesn't that makes sense? I mean, if Levi was somewhat of a social and religious outcast, he didn't associate with the scribes and the Pharisees, with proper religious people. He associated with people like him. And so that banquet was full of people just like Levi, and who were these people? Mark gives us the designation "tax collectors and sinners". Tax collectors were people who were socially rejected, feared, and hated. Tax collectors, just very practically at that time, Rome knew that if you were going to have tolls collected, you need to have somebody who knew the people, who knew the area. A Roman soldier alone would not know who really should be asked, who really had tariffs that could be collected and who didn't. And so they looked for Jews. They looked for people from the area. Tax collectors, toll collectors, tended to be people who were ethnic Jews. In other words, they were Jewish by heritage, but they were not religiously observant Jews. They were outside of proper religious circles. Tax collectors were Jews who worked for-- They worked as middlemen for the corrupt local governments that Rome had established. And their take was, as they collected these tolls, these tariffs, these taxes, they got to take a percentage of that. So the more they collected, the more that they profited. And as you can imagine, or, as you may have heard from studying this passage before, tax collectors and toll collectors were hated and despised. Why? They represented to the people everything that people hated about the Romans. Here is this occupying Roman government who is imposing upon them taxes and tolls and tariffs, and these ethnic Jews who staff these toll booths, they were visible reminders of that. And what's more, the people knew that these tax collectors profited off of how much that they collected. They knew that the local government officials who set up these toll booths profited. They knew there was graft and corruption in the system. So everything about the situation was morally repugnant to good Jews. Tax collectors were socially rejected by all people, but particularly observant Jews. You could not go to the synagogue if you were a tax collector. Your family disowns you, a good Jewish family, if you became a tax collector or a toll collector. That's who they were. Now, who are sinners? Well, "sinners" is the designation Mark uses to describe not just tax collectors, although it certainly includes tax collectors, but Mark uses it to describe all of the people of that culture who had given up trying to be religious, who were morally adrift, and that sounds to me a lot like Robert Putnam's description of the unchurched today. These are people who may not necessarily no longer believe in God, but they've given up trying to live under what they understand, at least, is what God calls them to. These are people who have given up on church, the way to learn about God and walk in God. These are people who are morally adrift, outside of marriage and in and out of serial sexual relationships and in and out of various forms of abuse. That term "sinners" fits anybody like that, both then and now. And together, the double designation of tax collectors and sinners-- really, I think, Mark is using it to describe all the people that religious people, both then, in Jesus's day, and religious people now, tend to reject. All the classes of people that we are uncomfortable with. All of the classes of people that we usually avoid. Let me just make this really personal. Who would that be for you? Who would be the equivalent of tax gatherers and sinners for you? Who would you feel uncomfortable with if they came into the doors of this church, and they sat next to you? Who would you feel uncomfortable with if they inquired at work or in some other setting, "I want to hear more about your church"? "I want to hear about what your church does"? Who would you tend to not really want to have that conversation with because they don't really fit here? Those are the classes of people that we're talking about, as Mark uses that double designation: "tax collectors and sinners". Verse 16, Mark goes on: "And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?'" Now, that question, that is not an innocent question. That question, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" That is really a hostile accusation in the form of a question, and you have to understand, or we have to understand, the perspective of the scribes and Pharisees. Yes, there were some scribes and Pharisees who were hypocritical, just like there are hypocrites among all classes of religious people, but basically, the scribes and Pharisees understood that their salvation, their standing with God, was tied directly to whether they were keeping God's law. And so they looked at these people as people who were not keeping God's law, who didn't care about God's law, who were living outside of God's law, and so they were morally unclean. They were morally, and even religiously, polluted. So they, the scribes and Pharisees, believed that they, wanting to keep themselves clean before God, right before God, they believe that separation from uncleanness, separation from sin, required them to separate themselves from sinners. And they applied this to Jesus. Jesus claims to be of God. In their minds, if Jesus really claimed to be of God and claimed to care about what God cares about, then Jesus should have disassociated himself publicly from such people, or at least he shouldn't have spent time with them until he first called them to clean up their lives and to start living according to God's law. So these men were scandalized that Jesus would accept such people, that Jesus would love such people without first requiring them to repent. And that's the picture we get here. Mark does not give a lot of detail, which is very characteristic of Mark, but you know, we look at what he does say, and we don't know how many people at this banquet actually did respond to Jesus in repentance and faith. Mark really doesn't tell us. I mean, some did, because Mark records in verse 15 that there were many who followed him. But we don't know that all did. All we know is that Jesus was among them, that Jesus was in the midst of tax gatherers and sinners, and he was loving them. And again, I want to make this really personal. How much are we, in our actions and our attitudes, more like the scribes than like Jesus? How much is it, when we think of the unchurched, whether it's Robert Putnam's description of the unchurched or other unchurched, people that you think of, do we really have that same kind of fear that somehow if we are close to them, if we are associating with them, we become polluted? How much do we have an expectation that, "Well, you can come to our church, or I'll invite you into my home if you clean up your life first, if you deal with these big, glaring areas of sin in your life"? Well, how did Jesus respond? Jesus responds to their accusations in verse 7: "And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.'" Here, Jesus gives us this picture, this word picture that I really believe should shape how we think about ourselves, and it should shape how we think about other people, particularly those people who fall into categories that we would consider unchurched and outside of proper church and religious circles. And I think this picture should even affect and shape how we think about our church, how we think about how we do church, how we think about what church is for. Let me break down this word picture for you. First of all, notice how Jesus presents himself. Jesus presents himself as a physician. That's what's implied here, and how fitting, because what does the Old Testament say is one of the primary identities of God? Jehovah Rophe, "God who heals". He is the Healer. He is the Great Physician, and as the Great Physician, Jesus wants to heal your soul. There is no greater desire in Jesus, as he came in the form of a man, than to reach out and touch your and my sickness of soul and to cure us from that soul sickness that, like a cancer, is eating us away and killing us. Jesus perfectly diagnoses like a good physician. He perfectly diagnoses our souls' sickness. He has the ability like no other one to look down deeply, to look inside each one of us, down into our heart, and see the sin and the corruption and the hardness that is there. He knows in each of us the unique circumstances of life and how sin has twisted that. He knows the unique ways in which each of us are tempted. He knows the way that sinful things done to us and sinful choices we have made have bent us in certain ways. He perfectly diagnoses us, and he offers the only cure that can save you and me. He offers his blood, which purifies and heals all of those who turn to him in repentance and faith. He offers the cure that no one else, nothing else, can offer to our soul sickness. And as a great physician, he is willing to heal anyone who turns to him. He's not distant. He's not aloof, as this picture shows us. He is a kind and compassionate physician. He is present. He is willing and ready to receive all who call on him. Among the many ways that we should think about Jesus our savior, we should think about him as the Great Physician, the Great Physician to us, and the Great Physician to those that we encounter all around us in our lives. Yet Jesus tells us that even though he's the Great Physician, there were people who will not turn to him as the Great Physician. Why? Because they believe they are well. Let's say you discover that just down the street from you, where you live, in a house on your street, in your neighborhood, lives the most famous expert doctor in all of the world, who has a reputation of being able to cure anything and everything. That does you no good if you know that he lives on your street if you, because you don't think you're sick, never go to him. But that's the picture of many people: they know who Jesus is. They would acknowledge, you know, he is Savior. He is the son of God, but they don't turn to him because they don't believe that they are really sick. They believe that they are well. Who are those who are well? Those who are well, in Jesus' word picture here, or "healthy", some of your Bible versions may say, are those who think they are healthy, or at least those who think they are not very sick. You know, if you don't think that you have a disease, if you don't think that you have an illness, you'll never go see a doctor, will you? But what if you don't understand the disease that you have? What if you're really one mass of infection, but you ignore or you explain away all of your symptoms? You've got another answer for those symptoms, or you look around, and you say, "Well, he or she is more sick than I am. I'm really not that sick compared to him or her." That is our picture. That is the picture, the natural condition of all of us apart from Christ, and the very fact that we deny that our soul is really sick is the worst symptom of the disease, because it keeps us from seeking out the Great Physician. Those who are well are those who do not think they need a physician, and they rely on their own remedies. Those who are well are those who may realize I have a little discomfort in my conscience because of areas of sin in my life. "I know I do things that aren't so good and, and I make mistakes, and I fall," but they think they can treat themselves. They think they can treat themselves with self-effort. "I'll just try harder. I'll just be a better person." They think they can treat themselves by counterbalancing the sickness, with health. "I'll do all these good things, and somehow that'll balance it all out." And all those efforts only add to their sickness, the complications of pride, because then I become prideful of myself, thinking that somehow I have made myself better, when really, I actually have complicated my sickness and contributed to my demise. Jesus leaves the scribes to come to their own conclusions about whether they are those who are well, and you notice he doesn't drive the point home, but he sends them off thinking about it. But what is true of the scribes is also true of you and me. If you don't think that you need Jesus, if you don't realize that you really are in a life-and-death battle for your soul, if you don't believe that you are terminally ill and that your only cure is Jesus, then you probably fall into the camp of those who are well. Those who are well obviously includes those who have not yet been saved, who have no interest in Jesus, the Great Physician, right now, but you know what? Those who are well include many, many people who would claim the name of Christ, who would call themselves Christians but really not rely on him, really not understand the depths of their souls' sickness. Jesus goes on in verse 17 to say that those who need a physician are those who are sick. Who are those who are sick? Those who are sick are those who acknowledge that they are sick. They admit it, and they acknowledge that they need to be healed. Samuel Davies puts it this way: "The sick are those who acknowledge that they are really guilty, really corrupt, really sinners, in extreme need of a savior. Those who are sick are those who are alarmed by their condition." If you really believe, if you know and come to believe that you have a serious form of cancer, you will go to whatever lengths it takes to seek out a cancer doctor. And those who are sick seek after Christ in the same way, and with that same sense of urgency, as you would seek after a great cancer doctor if you learned that you had contracted a very serious form of cancer. The sick, those who are sick, are not only who seek out a physician, but they put themselves under the physician's care. Physicians often prescribe things, forms of treatment that we don't like to take, medicines that we don't like to take. Somebody who knows they're really sick takes those, follows that. Physicians often require us to make changes in the way that we are living in our lifestyle, in order that we can be healed, and maybe there are changes that require us to sacrifice things or make changes in our lives that we don't want to make. But if you know you're really sick, if you know you're terminally sick, and this is your only hope, you listen to the physician. That is those who are sick. It took me many years to acknowledge that I was sick. I started out my Christian life like one of those calling on the name of Christ, thinking, "Yeah, I know I'm ill. You know, I know I've got areas of sickness. And I appreciate that Jesus has forgiven me. But I'll help him heal me. I'll try harder. I'll make moral changes in my life. I will contribute in some way to my own healing." And that only revealed I did not understand the depths of my sickness, and I was looking more at the symptoms, the external symptoms of my sickness, instead of the real, the heart-consuming nature of sin in my life. I did not even understand what grace, which we sang about in three songs this morning, what grace really was, until I came to the place where I saw how sick my soul was and how unable I was to save myself. So when Jesus says, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick," it's really as if he's saying an answer to their accusations. Where should a physician be, and who should he associate with? With the well, who think that they have no need of him? No. Shouldn't a physician be among the sick who need him? Why would he be anywhere else? You won't find Jesus with people who think they have no need of him. You won't find Jesus with people who may claim they are Christians, but really live without any ultimate dependence upon him. You find Jesus, like here, you find Jesus among the sick, with those like Levi, who have come to the point where they know they are infected with sin. They can do nothing to save themselves, and their only hope is Jesus. Is that you this morning? Do you acknowledge that you're sick? Do you acknowledge that you need him to save your very soul, to save your very life? By the way, just in counter to the Pharisees' thinking about "you don't go where the unchurched are; that would be polluting", Jesus models for us the truth that separation from sin does not mean separating yourself from sinners. He was with them, and yet he didn't let their sin rub off on him, but neither did he let their sin keep them away from him. He separated himself from sin, not from sinners. And he calls us, as we follow him, to do the same, to separate ourselves from sin, but not to separate ourselves from sinners. How will sinners hear, how will the unchurched hear, if we separate ourselves from them, like the people of England churches at that time wanted to separate themselves from the coal miners? Finally, Jesus ties it all together with that last phrase of verse 17: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." And by now, you've probably put this together: the righteous, they're not really righteous. They're not really people who stand right before God, who don't need any forgiveness, because we know, Romans 3: none of us are righteous, not even one. The righteous are those who think they're well, who think that they're okay, or at least not as sick, not as unrighteous as other people, so they do okay by comparison. Jesus, he says, comes to call not those people, but sinners, those who know they are sick. That was his mission then. That is his mission now. That is his mission for you and for me, and so let me leave you with three applications. Some of you this morning, I don't know who, but some of you, no doubt, this morning are here, and you are still under the self-deception that you are well. You may know that you're a little sick. You may see some symptoms in your life, but you look around, and you see other people who, morally, religiously, like we're talking about here, are much more sick than you are, and you think you're okay by comparison. Or you at least think, "You know, I can try a little harder. I can make some moral changes, and I can make myself healthy." And here is my call to you from Jesus: acknowledge your soul sickness. Turn to the Great Physician, and let him heal you. You are dying. You are perishing. You are spreading the infection of your sin. You cannot cure yourself. Only the Great Physician can, and he stands with open arms, willing and ready to do that today. Secondly, if you are here this morning, and you have done that, you have turned to the Great Physician, if you have embraced Jesus as savior and Lord, here would be my application to you: open your eyes. See the sick and dying people all around you. They're perishing everywhere. Tell them about the Great Physician. Tell them how he has healed you. Tell them that he is ready and willing, with arms open wide, to heal them. Don't keep that good news. If you learned of a cure for cancer, if you learned of a cure for you-name-the-disease, you would not keep that to yourself. Take the care that the Great Physician offers for our soul sickness to the world, to the people that you know. And finally, if we really believe that Jesus came for those who are sick, then we need to change the way that we look at church. Church is not a country club for the healthy. Church is not a community center where, "What programs do you want? We're going to offer them because we want to keep you happy." No. According to the model here, according to what Jesus says here, church is a hospital for the sick, and we need to align ourselves, our view of church, with that and the Great Physician: his church is to be a hospital for the sick. So if you are worried about where you sit, if you are worried about whether they serve good enough coffee or don't serve coffee, if you are worried about the programs, you have a country club, community center view of church. Jesus says that we ones that we should be worried about are not yet here. The ones who are sick, the ones who are perishing. Jesus says the space we should be creating, and the ministries we should be doing, should be targeting and reaching out to those in great need. Jesus says the activities that we should be involved in should involve going out to those who will never come here in reaching them and equipping people to do so. Jesus came not to call the righteous, those who think they are well; he came to call sinners, those who know they are sick and in the need of a Great Physician. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you, those of us who have come to that place of acknowledging our sickness, that you are the Great Physician. You have healed us. You have healed us of sin and the stain of sin, and you continue to heal us by growing us in your likeness. Give us a heartbeat, Lord God, for for those who are lost, for those who are sick, for those who are perishing, give us a proper way of looking at our church: a hospital for the sick. We pray this Jesus, that you would be lifted up and glorified. Amen.