Church Hurt: He Eats with Sinners

Introduction

Being a part of the church is messy. Once we become Christians and we are trending in the right direction it is easy to get side tracked. It is easy to think that for other people to follow Jesus they need to act the way we think they should act. It is often amazing how much Christians expect lost people to behave like saved people. For some reason it is natural for Christians to create a frame of mind where we classify people into those we think can follow Jesus and those who can. If you are hear I am willing to bet that you have heard something that resembles John 13:35 “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”” We know that and we agree with it, but what happens when the person at work that gets on our nerves just need to talk about the difficult things that he is dealing with? What happens when the person from your office who is part of the LGBTQ+ community just needs a hug? What happens that person you know on facebook who always posts the political opinions you disagree with needs some prayer? It is easy to think we don’t struggle with being self-righteous, until we start looking like the guys opposing Jesus.

but this is nothing new, the church was always going to have problems. In fact if you open your Bibles to the New Testament you will notice that every single letter written after the book of Acts was written to a church or church leader about problems in the church.

I am going to be honest, I wanted to teach this entire series because this may be one of the topics I have dealt the most with. I jokingly told Rob earlier this week that I wasn’t going to speak on anyone topic I was just going to fill in all the gaps that I thought he missed in his last three sermons.

Tension

I know there are people here this morning who are like me. Where the majority of the stress came from situations at church. There were people who have felt overwhelming anxiety to the point that you didn’t want to go to church. I know there are people who struggle with church because there are people or leaders of the church who have been the central oppressors in your life. I can honestly say that this has been the case in my life. I have attended church for as long as I can remember. My family has attended religiously since I was born. Even when my parents divorced each side of my family went to the church anytime something was going on. I have even heard it said over and over again that as Christians we will face trials and tribulations. We will be persecuted because of our faith, but I didn’t hear was that it could come from the church. So far I have faced trials in my life, but the majority of Satans haymakers came from inside the church. Even crazier still is that more often than not it has come from the church’s leaders.

I know that some of you can relate, I know that there are people here who have felt the same pain. What can you do? What should you do? I have family members who have been afraid to attend churches in the past because they felt looks of condemnation the moment they stepped into the building. The world around has really started to paint Christians in a negative light. How can we correct that image? How can we make sure that Elevate Christian church is a welcoming place for everyone? Maybe the best question, how can we the best representative for Jesus for everyone we come in contact with? I think you will find These answers all from our story today.

Today we will be reading from the Mark and story that some of you have probably heard before.

Bible

For reference, Jesus is in the middle of calling his disciples. The Disciples are this group of 12 men who would follow Jesus through every journey and teaching that Jesus would go on. He is recruiting these men from around his home and the base of ministry around the sea of Galilea. I also, want to be clear that before we begin reading, You will notice in Mark that the Guy Jesus is calling is named Mark but in other gospels he is named Matthew. Ti was very common in those days for men to go by more than one name, and it was especially common when they took on a new identity, like some who chooses to follow Jesus.

English Standard Version (Chapter 2)

13 He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. 14 And 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 rose and followed him.

I want you to notice right away something different that Jesus is actively doing that is not common in the modern day church. Jesus is spending his time out in the community actively seeking people who would choose to follow him. Will Good into the character of those who will choose to follow him, but first notice the place. Don’t you think that if this was the perfect time for Jesus to start a ministry where he would call people to follow him that the place to start and pretty much camp out would have been the synagogues? The most religious people and the best teachers would have all been there. People actively trying to seek God would have been there. Yet, we do not find any story of the Bible were Jesus specifically called someone in the synagogue.

He does preach there and he does heal there, but what the gospel narratives show us is that once Jesus leaves the synagogues he begins to find his disciples. He called Peter, Andrew, James and John by the sea of Galilea while they were fishing. He ran into Philip who later told Nathanael. Then we find here that he calls Levi or Matthew in much the same fashion. In fact the gospel authors tell us that once he begins calling his disciples who goes out into the towns preaching and healing. So it would not shock me if the people who chose to follow Jesus were actually the people who were not religious who maybe even rarely darkened the door of the synagogue. It is possible that the thing they should have been seeking was hard to find there. Much like the main criticism of people today about the church. Now more than any other time people are seeking answers to the biggest questions in life. People want to know if there is a God. The problem is that when people attend church they rarely see him there. They may come seeking Jesus, but he is hard to find because the people in the seats and on the stages look nothing like him. To be more like him, we need to start by looking for people outside of the church.

Teaching Point: Jesus sought followers outside of the religious institutions.

Mark 2:15 “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.”

Recognize that Levi was no ordinary man, he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were the arm pit of society in the Jewish world. Modern day they are the equivalent of people who call you to ask about your cars extended warranty. These men volunteered to collect taxes on behalf of Rome. Rome would take their cut, but the tax collector could take up any amount that he wanted based on his own greed. These people were often put in lists with robbers, thieves, adulterers and murderers. Literally the worst.

How Jewish people viewed tax collectors

Anyone who touched a tax Collector was unclean

Meaning they could not worship until they sacrificed, explain more.

Tax collectors were considered lower socially than lepers.

It may be that contact with Levi was actually more offensive than contact with a leper since a leper’s condition was not chosen whereas a tax collector’s was.

Jews believed that it was not sinful to lie to a tax collector.

Teaching Point: The first followers of Jesus were outcasts.

Mark 2:16-17 “And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.””

This is where the self righteousness kicks in. The Pharisees, which are the some of the primary religious leaders of the time were angry that Jesus would eat with people like this. Jesus according to their standards was willingly becoming ceremonially unclean. We have to take note though that he is not unclean because of what the Torah teaches, is unholy because of the extra laws that the religious elite made. So Jesus is doing nothing wrong! Even still, people are mad because Jesus is doing something that is outside of their own social laws. It only gets worse from here. While tension probably existed between Jesus and the religious leaders up to this point, it grew because Jesus continued to press on their traditions like Rob spoke about last week. He pressed extra hard when these laws were made about people.

Yet this entire story is littered with irony. Jesus is the messiah, the one the jews have been waiting for. Yet, the people who were looking for him missed and the ones he went looking for found him. The righteousness of God escapes those who seek to establish their own righteousness; whereas those who are too far off to hope for the righteousness of God are graciously granted it.

Upon reading this story I feel convicted because I know at while one point I connected with the tax collector, but more often since then I look more like the Pharisees. From the time I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior until now, my mind has slowly shifted in the other direction. There are times when I have met people and my mind instantly thinks there is no way they will ever follow Jesus. I see what people post online and think there is no saving them. I wonder if any of you can identify with the same thing? I want people to come to know Jesus before I invest in them. I want to see change for some reason before I take a step.

That is not what happens in this story. The scandal of this story is that Jesus does not make moral repentance a precondition of his love and acceptance. Rather, Jesus loves and accepts tax collectors and sinners as they are. If they forsake their evil and amend their lives, they do so, as did Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10), not in order to gain Jesus’ favor but because Jesus has loved them as sinners

Application

So if you have not accepted Jesus I have the best news for you this morning. No matter what you have done Jesus still loves you and he is seeking you. His only hope is that you will choose to follow him. It does not matter what you have heard from stage before, it doesn’t matter what you have seen from Self-righteous Christians online, or what the American media tells you. Jesus chooses to love everyone regardless of any of the classifications we humans make. Really, even if other Christians have given you all these steps before you can follow him they are wrong. Follow him now and seek him and the rest will take care of itself. But there is nothing you must do first other than choose to follow him.

Illustration - Something that is easy but that we make very complex.

Jesus has a desire that is hard for us to understand and it is hard for us to replicate. Jesus wanted everyone he came in contact with to put their faith in him. That is why he did preach in the synagogues. They should have been the first to recognize him, but they were so lost in their religion that they could not recognize him, because he did not fit what they wanted. He was what they needed. The people who would choose to follow him were not the religious people, but the outcasts. The people that no one would expect. So it is just as likely that the people we see every day that we think would never accept Jesus might actually do so with the proper approach. To do that we have to do two things.

Teaching Point: We have to see people differently and we have to change the way our mind operates.

Unconditional love, we need to see people around us like a grandmother sees their grandchildren. To my grandmothers I did no wrong and I was the best at everything. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make my grandmother think less of me. That is why I never had a problem talking to either of my grandmothers. I thought they were the best. I remember when I was a like eight years old I went over to my grandmothers house. We were talking in the kitchen and my grandmother could tell something was off. I was kind of moping around the kitchen not smiling or anything, because I had a guilty conscious. Earlier on the bus, before she picked me up, I had said a word I knew that I shouldn’t have. So, I admitted to her, “Mimi I said a bad word on the bus, I said the F word.” The strangest part was she didn’t have a horrified look, she didn’t get upset, really nothing changed because nothing I could have said changed the way she saw. She still asked, “What word is that honey?” I responded, “Well mimi I said…fart.”

Some of you all thought I said something else. Some of y’all thought I was going to say it on stage. The truth is I could have said it my grandmother would have still loved me the same, my Mimi actually may have loved me a little more after that to be honest. I am sure many of you have felt that kind of love in your life. Maybe it was a grandparent, your spouse or someone else. That is unconditional love, it is the type of love where the other person can do nothing that will change the way you feel about them. it is that kind of love that we must have for others. We need to see people with this kind of love. Even if their annoying. Even if they disagree with you!

Part of the way you do that is by changing the way you think. We also have to make a mindset shift. Instead of only worrying about our relationship with Jesus and our families we have to transform our mind to thinking everyone deserves to live in heaven. I know there are probably people you don’t like that you come into contact with every single day, but no one deserves to suffer eternally and everyone deserves to experience what the love of Jesus is really like.

Need scripture or story?

Key point - Only the sick need a doctor, and everyone is sick.

Transition question: Who are the people you have deemed “too sick” to follow Jesus?

Closing

Is there someone you have thought about as we have gone through this story? Is there someone you think is too far gone that would never accept Jesus? If so that might just be the person Jesus wants and it might just be who would accept him if you only loved that person. The apostle Paul who wrote half the New Testament will forever be the best example. In the first part of his life he killed Christians then after choosing to follow Jesus he planted churches. He raised up new leaders and wrote letters to many churches. Those letters now comprise a large segment of the new Testament. Many would have probably said in those that he was the least likely person to ever follow Jesus. Again I ask, “Who is too sick?”

What would it mean for you to show compassion towards that person? Would it mean if you started praying for that person until God opened up the door?

There is a couple that my wife and I came into contact with with several years ago. The couple said that were not religious and did not believe in God. I have not been able to create a lot of interactions with that couple but I have prayed for them ever since. Hoping that would open up their hearts to accepting Jesus. They haven’t done so yet, but one of them attended a Bible study this past year. I still pray for them because I know a lot of Christians would never expect self proclaimed atheists to accept Jesus, but the God I serve is bigger and he can change the heart of any man or woman.

But if you are here this morning and you identify with the tax collector. If you have never accepted Jesus as your Lord ans savior then we are especially glad you are hear. No matter what you have heard from Christians or the church in the past I hope this morning you feel loved and appreciated. More importantly I hope that you recognize that there is nothing that you have done that can separate you from the love God. If you would choose to follow him it will be the best decision you have ever made. It will absolutely change your life! Don’t get me wrong I am not saying your life will suddenly get easy. You will have freedom. You will have peace, and maybe most importantly you will have hope.

Elevate Christian Church is a church full of sick people who recognize we need a doctor. I am thankful that God would accept me, a modern day tax collector. He will accept you too, I only hope that when you choose to follow him that you put off all forms of self righteousness and seek others that would open their hearts to him.