Sermon Tone Analysis

CPT: Jesus came to heal people from their sins.

Purpose: To urge the church towards an outward evangelistic focus.

CPS: Jesus came to heal people from their sins.

Jesus’ power to heal people from sin deserves your humility.

Jesus’ power to heal people from sin deserves your urgency.

Jesus’ power to heal people from sin deserves your awe.

Introduction

Attention

We live in a world that is very distracted.

There is a lot of noise, a lot of information that is constantly being thrown at us.

We certainly don’t have a lack of information.

We have so many voices giving us so much information that it’s overwhelming.

Everyone wants you to believe that their topic, their thing, is urgent.

But what happens is that, when there’s one voice telling you that something is urgent, and another voice telling you that something is urgent, ultimately at the end of the day, nothing seems really urgent.

I think what’s happened is that, because of all of the information, all of the noise, people have lost a sense of what truly matters, what’s truly urgent in their lives.

People get wrapped up in all of the temporary issues, but their souls are dark.

Their souls are corrupted and broken.

Their souls need the healing power of Jesus Christ.

I’ll give you an example of all the information.

This week, we had a spy balloon floating over the country, and they had to shoot it down with a rocket.

And if you weren’t paying attention to that, there we a lot of talk about classified documents showing up everywhere, and I started to look for them in my house.

If it wasn’t that, maybe you were on Facebook seeing that your friends are hanging out in all these places, and you wondered why you weren’t doing the same thing?

You felt like your life was lonely.

Or if it wasn’t that, maybe you’re into football, and saw that Tom Brady retired for the second or third time, whatever it is.

Or maybe your favorite show came on Netflix or Hulu or whatever you have, and you started to binge watch.

There isn’t something necessarily wrong with each of these pieces of information, but when all of these pieces of information start to crowd up your mental space and take you away from what’s truly important, what truly matters, there’s a problem.

Sometimes we need to step back and look at the things that we consider important.

How can we as a church, as a body of believers, keep our eyes on what truly matters?

We will look at that as we continue our series in the Gospel of Mark.

Turn to Mark 2, starting in verse 1.

Scripture Reading

Pray

In these verses, we are seeing the power of Jesus to heal people from their sin.

There are a couple of things we see about Jesus’ power to heal people.

First,

Jesus’ power to heal people from sin deserves our humility.

We will start with the latter half of these verses.

Jesus is teaching near the Sea of Galilee.

What’s beautiful in these verses is Jesus is teaching in both instances, in the healing of the paralytic and the call of Levi, which is probably another name for the apostle Matthew.

Jesus is teaching a crowd by the sea, and he sees a tax collector.

He tells Levi, also called Matthew, to follow him, and Levi follows him.

Jesus is then found in the house of Levi, and that’s where we pick up in verse 15.

Jesus is reclining at this table, which is how they would eat in the first century.

They would lie down, probably on cushions, and have a table in front of them where they would eat.

There are many tax collectors and sinners eating with Jesus.

Basically, these are the unsavory folks in the Jewish neighborhood.

It’s interesting that the Gospel is using the term, “tax collectors and sinners.”

He really describing the Pharisees opinion of these individuals.

The Pharisees were a strict group.

a ruling group in Jewish society who would carefully teach Jews how to abide by the Jewish laws.

In fact, you can say that the Pharisees believed that the pathway to living a right life before God went through them.

So if you didn’t follow their laws, you were kind of worthless.

You were a castaway.

Now tax collectors, they were the worst!

This a group of people who sided with the enemy Rome to extract an exorbitant amount of money from their own people.

In fact, the Pharisees might have considered these other people sinners just because they were hanging out with tax collectors.

This group of people were certainly not the type of people that the Pharisees would approve of.

Which brings us to Jesus.

Why was Jesus hanging out with tax collectors and sinners?

These castaways, this riff raff.

Doesn’t he know who they are?

That’s what the Pharisees were thinking.

They must have been confused.

Certainly, for the Pharisees to ask this question, they realize there is something different about this rabbi.

But the rabbi Jesus is not doing ministry in their approved places, among their approved people.

What’s interesting is that, when the Pharisees ask, “Why is Jesus eating with these folks,” they don’t ask Jesus directly.

No, instead, they ask his disciples.

If you’re a bit intimidated by a leader, you try to peel away some of his followers.

All you need to do is cast enough doubt.

They had authority among the people, and they could use that to say, “Is Jesus really the one you want to follow?”

We see that same tactic today.

People who have influence and authority, but are frustrated that Christians don’t think the way they want them to think.

You’ll see this in our education system, you might see it in your work place, a message that says, “You don’t think the way we want you to think.

Is Jesus really the one you want to follow?”

But isn’t it good that Jesus protects his flock?

Jesus protects his people.

He steps right in.

It says in Mark 2:17, that when he heard what the Pharisees asked the disciples, and stepped in to answer.

You know, sometimes we’re not ready to answer the questions the world throws at us, but Jesus is.

That’s why we need to walk closely from hin, learning from him in his Word, so that we can have ears to listen and be ready to answer when the time comes.

Jesus tells the Pharisees, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick.

I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick.

And really, who among us is perfectly well?

We need the healing touch of the Lord every day.

We need to be with him, listening to him, communing with him.

But we need to know that we need healing.

Those unsavory folks that were hanging out with Jesus were exactly where they needed to be.

It takes humility to know your need for healing.

How many of us don’t like to go to the doctor?

They say that you should go for a check up with your doctor at least once a year.

I know for years that I avoided going to the doctor.

See, I struggle with my weight, and I didn’t want to go in and hear the same thing.

Now, if you’re in good shape you may not know this, but when you have some extra pounds, the doctor is going to come in and say, “Jason, you need to lose some weight.”

I would think to myself, “I know!

I knew that before I came in here.

This is why I’m at the doctor, for you to tell me that I need to lose weight?

I could have looked in the mirror for that.”

But then, one day, I got on a health kick.

I started jogging, I start watching what I was eating, you know, diet and exercise - who knew?