One enduring question in my youth was one from my parents or someone else who felt as though they could speak into my life. It went something like this: Who did I see you with? Some old sayings were usually added to the question when I was keeping company with people who were of low reputation, such as You are known by the company you keep, Birds of a feather flock together, and You lie down with dogs, you’ll wake up with fleas. These were some of the more memorable ones. There was wisdom communicated to be sure, along with some misunderstandings and misjudgments as well. Some things I listened to and some I wish that I had. So is there a right way to keep the wrong company? We’ll try to answer that question as we look into the Word of God and may find it looking into us.
And He went out again by the seashore; and all the people were coming to Him, and He was teaching them. As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:13-17)
JESUS CAME TO CALL SINNERS.
I. JESUS CALLS US OUT OF SINFUL LIFESTYLES. (14)
He was teaching...as He passed by...He saw... He said...and he rose and followed Him.
Jesus sees us in our environment and loves us enough to call us out of it. A son of Abraham needed to be restored to his place with God. Jews who were tax collectors were generally despised and treated with contempt. He was like an IRS agent on steroids, working for commission and collecting for an occupying government. Why is salvation coming to this man? Because he is one of the people that God had set His heart upon. Consider Zaccheus. His story is preserved for us in Luke 19. Remember he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. The biblical account tells us he was a man of such small physical stature he had to climb a tree to see Jesus. The Bible says that when Jesus passed by, He looked up and invited Himself to the house of Zaccheus. When we are up a tree and out on a limb, God knows who His people are and where they are. He has been hunting them down for ages and calls them down and calls them out wherever He finds them.
Levi was called out of his workplace and he obediently left his lifestyle behind to follow Jesus. We cannot go with Jesus and remain where we are. Jesus gets close enough to our lives that we can hear His call. Levi, or Matthew, had to leave his place to follow Him. Was he an honest tax collector? We don’t know. As a class, the tax collectors were despised by their fellow Jews. They were classified generally as “sinners”, probably because they were allowed to gather more than the government required and pocket the excess amount. Was he a sinner? Certainly, since all of humanity has fallen short of God’s standard of perfection. Was he beyond the reach of Jesus? Absolutely not. As the Pharisees were the respectable and outwardly religious class, so the tax collectors were the vile and degraded. Abhorred by all others, it was a new thing to them to find the Holy One coming close enough to call them to follow. By His attitude toward the tax collectors, Jesus showed that God’s covenant of grace extends to all people-not simply the righteous who observed the Law. Jesus came to call sinners.
The call of Christ is irresistible because it is all of grace. Matthew chose to obey this gracious call. The mission of Jesus was to bring sinners, people like the tax collectors of His day, into God’s presence. Is there ever really a choice to the call of Christ? Consider that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. We will answer His call. It is not a matter of if we will obey…it’s a matter of when and where. It can be here and now. Or it can be in the Day of Judgment. Our only choice is when. Now is a good time to come and follow Christ. Many say they believe. But they do not follow. If we truly believe, we will truly follow.
Christians are called out of the world and into the Word. Have you heard His call to follow and remained in your place? Matthew followed the Word of God Incarnate. He was not only teaching them His characteristics. The Word of God was teaching the Word of God so disciples of all ages can follow the Word of God. We do not follow in His footsteps in first century Palestine. We cannot see the tracks of His sandals in the sand, but we can be disciples of our day following in His steps, so to speak. The world needs to see us walking with the Word and living in the Word.
The church can cultivate an environment of teaching from which sinners are called. The context of the narrative once again is found in the teaching of Jesus. Here is where sinners were called to follow Him. This applies to our day and our church. No matter what activity we use to attract new believers, unless we are teaching what it means to follow the Lord, the method will not be effective. Does this mean we are not to have outreach events? Not at all. We should reach out to those who are on the outside of the church. But unless we can bring them into an encounter with the teaching and/or preaching of the Word of God, men will not come to Christ and grow in His word.
So how do we do this? Let us commit to engaging someone we do not know. Ask God to show you some people this week that needs Jesus. Commit to engage them in a loving way. Spend enough time with them to invite them to our monthly fellowship meal. This may take several encounters. It may take several months. But the precedent applies. Jesus ate with sinners. He called them to the table. They mattered to him. They should matter to us because we are sinners as well.
II. SINNERS CALLED BY JESUS ARE IN GOOD COMPANY. (15)
…for there were many of them, and they were following Him.
Jesus came to bring the best of God to the worst of men. God gives us a picture of how He has pursued sinful man all through the story of salvation history. He has revealed Himself to the descendants of Abraham in marvelous ways. The time of the Judges is a fascinating study of the habitual cycle of God’s people and how they behaved through the centuries. They would abandon the covenant God of the Bible and begin to worship idols until they were subjected to oppression by foreign powers. They would cry out to God for deliverance and God would send them a judge, or deliverer to lead His people. These judges were often a type of the Savior, who came to deliver His people from sin. The day had now arrived where God’s true Savior had come. He is contrasted with the Judges, in that they were flawed in their humanity. Jesus was perfect in His humanity and His deity. God sent His best. He sent Himself. And He came to the worst of men. The sinners of that day were no different than the sinners of our day. We are the worst of men. Jesus has come. And many still follow Him.
Authentic caring relationships can be attractive to those who have been shunned and rejected. Have you ever been abused and mistreated by people? Remember when you were hurt and humiliated and you longed to be loved and accepted? This is the plight of humanity. We are a lonely people, even in a crowd. Because we are alienated from God, the best of our relationships still leaves us longing for more. The crowd that followed Jesus was a detail that Mark continues to give us. It was a significant group of people. Why would they follow Him? He loved them. And it was authentic. People can tell if love is only a farce. And they know when love is real. Real relationships in caring communities are what the non-Christian world is hungry for.
Christ has a huge table for hungry disciples. Sometimes if you come to our home, we have to get creative in our eating arrangements. Our dining area is too small for the table and the table is too small for those who share our meal. The good news is that Christ has set a huge table for hungry disciples. Following Christ makes one hungry for His word. Walking with Him creates an appetite for His teaching. Wherever the Bread of Life is broken, there is room at the table. And we need to invite more sinners to eat with us sinners.
Disciples cannot be used to call sinners if we don’t get close enough to know any. A community food bank I am familiar with used to get many calls within a certain community during the year to help people who were struggling to make ends meet and feed their families. It was interesting to see that as Thanksgiving approached, some of the local churches would call and want to know if they could volunteer and help feed some families during the holiday. One of the church pastors actually stated that his church did not know of any families hungry in their congregation or in their community for that matter. Is it any wonder that the hungry people did not make themselves known? Sometimes we don’t seem to see the needy among us…because we probably don’t spend a lot of time looking around. Sinners look a lot like us.
It is humbling to know we share a common table with the common sinner; the church is full of sinners! If this statement is offensive to you, then you are in the company of those who thought it appalling to see Jesus eat with the tax collectors and sinners. I would rather that Jesus see us as appealing. He found the company of sinners appealing over the company of the self-righteous.
III. JESUS WAS CRITICIZED FOR KEEPING THE WRONG COMPANY. (16)
Why is He eating and drinking with tax-gatherers and sinners?
Jesus offended religious elitists by boldly demonstrating the grace of God. The grace of God is provocative. Jealousy, envy and covetousness are among the ugliest things that humanity has to offer. Very early in human history we see sinful conflict run its course of death and destruction in the story of Cain and Abel. These two sons of Adam brought offerings in worship to God. Cain’s offering was rejected and Abel’s was accepted. Cain envied Abel’s favor with God and sought to even the score. Any time we humans sit in judgment of one another based on our idea of fairness it will be a disaster. We do not know how to be just. We are sinners. The grace of God is demonstrated to this murderous brother just like it was shown to Cain’s father and mother. He covered the shame and sin of Adam and Eve and He banished Cain as well. He did not carry out an immediate death sentence. God gave them better than they deserved.
To follow Jesus requires a healthy sense of one’s unworthiness to receive this gift of grace. These folks that followed Jesus knew who they were. They knew their lives were so far from God’s standard of holiness they were unworthy to come to Him on their own merit. Here is grace in action. God came to them. They followed. When He called, they came. They wanted what God offered. Do you want what God has to offer? Or do you think you deserve His favor?
Christ is often maligned the most by those who communicate with Him the least. Pay attention to questions that religious people ask about Jesus. In the previous passage about the forgiveness of the paralytic they ask, Why does this man speak this way? The implied question is, Who does He think He is? In our text today the scribes of the Pharisees ask, Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners? Implied in that question is Who does He think they are? The prevalent thinking of that day was These people were not worthy of human contact, much less a candidate for communion with God’s people. The better question that would have been the right question is, Why is Jesus not spending time with us?
Being used to call sinners is the right reason for keeping the wrong company. God uses instruments to grace to show grace. We are instruments of grace because we have received it. We are trophies of grace, forgiven people, and restored people that God is pleased to show as models of what a human can be when used by God. When I want to know about good food to eat, I ask someone who knows where to go get it. When people begin to ask questions about God, who better to ask than someone who knows God? If you have the privilege of being asked about God, you are one sinner telling another sinner where to find the Christ who calls. Listen for spiritual questions. It is not an accident or coincidence that people ask you these things. It is God’s planned encounter.
The church needs to engage the public with answers for questions they are asking. Too often we are giving answers to questions no one is asking. The church must be relevant to the culture. We must be thinking about answers that people are seeking. Do you know who we can trust with our families, with our money, with our souls? Can you give a credible testimony that you are trusting Christ in our day?
IV. DENIAL OF DISEASE HINDERS OUR HEALING. (17)
I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Jesus came to give His life to those who knew they were dying. I heard it said the other day that we all know that everyone will die. But we don’t really believe it will be us. The realization of the certainty of death is one that we will put off as long as we can. We deny its reality and pretend that we are not in a terminal condition. If I asked you the question, would every one who is dying please come to the altar would you come? Sinners are dying people. They have been from the beginning. God said so. But some still deny the illness of sinsickness and thinking they can escape the death that it brings.
Someone who is truly suffering from a terminal illness needs to know the danger of their condition. Are there doctors who hide a patient’s terminal condition from them? Possibly so. But the best doctors do not hide this condition. This would often be cruel, even when we think it is kinder and gentler. A dying man needs to know he is dying. There are priorities to reassess and reorder. Some things won’t matter anymore. And some things have eternal ramifications. The most dangerous position for a dying person to be in is in a place of ignorance. They need the truth. If you are lost today without hope of heaven, you know that your good works cannot get you there. You know that the fact that you have gone to church all your life is not enough. You know that even being baptized without being born again is insufficient. I have good news for you. You are a candidate for God’s salvation solution.
Christ did not come for those who believe they are good enough for God. God is so holy that we cannot approach Him. Holy people do not become holy by their own self-help efforts, no matter what we want to believe. Holy people are not self-made people. They are made by God. Christ came so unholy people can become holy through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Christ did not come for people who think the Holy Spirit is finished with them in their lives. I am not God. But even I can see that God is not finished with every Christian I encounter.
Christians have a trusted family doctor who is continuously treating our sinsickness. Like some cancer patients, the sin of sinners undergoes an aggressive treatment. The cross is not a passive treatment of sin. The cross is where the Son of God became sin for us so God could kill it!! Our sin can be forgiven, all past, present and future stages of its contamination. But we must desire to be treated aggressively by God. When sin is exposed, it must be killed. Amputated. Confessed. Repented of. Our sin may be in remission, but never totally eradicated as long as my earthly life lasts.
Does our community see the church as sick and in need of Jesus or do we come across as hypocrites? The best way is to ask them. What would I hear in the community if I asked, “What do you think about Mount Olivet Baptist Church?” Some would be outright hostile. Some might be oblivious to our existence. Some might be curious enough to come so they can form an opinion. As we come to a close in the message, consider what some people have determined about the relevance of the life of a church in the life of a community from the book Comeback Churches by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson.
We know that Jesus came to seek and save people who are lost—He told us that in Luke’s Gospel. He told three stories in Luke 15 that demonstrate how passionate He is about this. And the question for us is: Are we really willing to love those pagans, those heathens, those lost people who are often not very lovable? Actually, the issue probably comes down to the fact that we often want God “clean them” before we “catch them.” The need to reach them in whatever condition we find them often requires us to make changes in the way we do things. We have to find ways to love lost people the way they are, and that is hard work.
Think about what Jesus did when He picked Zaccheus out of that crowd in Luke 19. Old Zack was not exactly the most popular guy around town. Jesus not only spoke to him. He also asked to visit his house. You can almost hear the collective gasp. How could Jesus go over to the house of someone like Zaccheus, much less talk to him? As the Scripture says, “All the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.’”(NIV) Are we making people mutter about the lost people that are being reached in our churches? If so, rejoice! You are in good company…
…Vibrant faith and strategic prayer, which connect with the power of God, have often resulted in practical acts of Christian grace and love. When believers obey the Scriptures and truly forgive others who have offended them, unbelievers are influenced to receive Christ. When churches lovingly serve the communities around them, the unchurched very often are motivated to come to Christ. (Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, 62, 64)
We have a lot of work to do. But we do it with the One who came to call sinners. Let’s continually answer His call, remembering who we were, knowing who we are, and believing who we will be.
Our So What for today is:
The treatment for our lives with Christ is a daily regimen of Christ’s righteousness.
Our sinsickness is not treated by denial of our condition and self help therapy.
JESUS HAS AUTHORITY OVER THE LIVES OF SINNERS.
Jesus came to call sinners to Him.
That’s our hope. Aren’t you glad of that? Repentant sinners can hear His call to follow.
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