A Scandalous Friendship

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A Scandalous Friendship
Mark 2:13–17
The essence of believing in Christ is believing, first of all, that you are a sinner, hopeless, not redeemable by any of your own works.
Cultural Comments
The Savior, the Messiah had come into the world in our time, to our country in the year 2022. He had come for the reason that He came then, to be a sacrifice for sin. If indeed He had come at this time in this place, to die, He would have been killed for the opposite reason that He was killed in first century Israel … the very opposite reason.
Then and there in first century Israel, He was rejected, He was despised, He was hated and He was murdered. And the reason? He was not religious enough. That was the reason. By standards of the Jewish religious leaders, predominantly the Pharisees, He was not holy enough … if holy at all. He was not righteous enough, if righteous at all. He was not demanding enough, He was not legalistic enough, He was not condemning enough. He was not tolerable … intolerant enough. He was not judgmental enough. He was not separatistic enough. He was sub-par to a dominantly religious world view.
Now if Jesus came today to our country in our time, He would be way too holy, far too righteous, too demanding, too legalistic, too condemning, too intolerant, too judgmental and far too separatistic, homophobic for sure, a purveyor of hate speech- deny yourself pick up your cross and follow me And our generation would kill Him for that … the very opposite, two different perspectives, two different societies in two different times. Our culture is highly secular and extremely immoral. Their culture was highly religious and extremely moral.
We would hate Jesus for condemning good people. They hated Him for forgiving bad people. [1] or he is reconstructed
Jesus is a Friend of Sinners
Mark 2:13–15 (ESV)
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. 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.
Commentary
In Capernaum, His headquarter town, the town where Peter and Andrew lived and had a house … most likely He had been in that house teaching, doing healing miracles, and there it was that He healed the paralytic who came down through the roof. He went out again by the seashore, again because He did this very, very often. Much of His teaching was outdoors because they couldn’t confine the crowd to a house and that was the reason He left the house on this occasion.[2] … most likely He had been in that house teaching, doing healing miracles, and there it was that He healed the paralytic who came down through the roof.
If you were a tax collector, you were the worst of the worst of the worst. Now this man, his father’s name is Alphaeus, we don’t know anymore about him. That’s a common name. Two of the disciples had a father named Alphaeus, but it’s such a common name, it wouldn’t be necessarily the same Alphaeus. But you don’t know this man is Levi, you know him as Matthew because in the account in Matthew, Matthew writing the account in Matthew, calls himself Matthew.
How did his name get from Levi to Matthew? I don’t know, we don’t have any record in the Scripture. My guess is that Matthew changed his name. I mean, if you had been a tax collector, it might be good for your future to alter your identity. It might save your hide. And if he did choose his own name, he chose well, it means gift of the Lord … for he had been given a gift of the Lord in the gift of salvation.[3]
The way the life of a tax collector worked was Rome offered tax franchises and they were sold to the highest bidder. So you had to have some money to get one and once you got one, it was just a way to make a fortune. Now sitting in this tax booth is a man named Levi, so he’s Jewish, obviously, which means he sold his soul to the Romans for money. The Romans are idolaters, the Romans are hated by the Jews. They are Gentiles, they are unclean. They despise them. There’s a general hatred for Herod Antipas as well because he’s a non-Jew. And here is someone who has sold his soul to these Gentiles, these unclean for the sake of extorting money out of Jews.
This is utterly amazing, for of all the people in Capernaum, Levi was the most unacceptable to be one of Christ’s disciples! Jesus sought out the man no one else wanted, the one everyone else wished would fall under the immediate wrath of God. This, of course, was to become one of the trademarks of Jesus’ ministry, as such notables as Mary Magdalene and many other nameless men and women would attest. Jesus saw a man in Levi, not a category, and he knew what that man could become.
This is a scandalous, scandalous act on the part of Jesus that shows His total disregard for religious, societal sensibilities. What teacher who calls himself the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, who is holy and righteous would ever, ever, ever call into His company a tax collector. One historian says, “The Mishnah and the Talmud, though written later, register scathing judgments on the tax collector,
lumping the tax collector with thieves and murderers. The touch of a tax collector rendered a house unclean. Jewish contempt of tax collectors is epitomized in the ruling that Jews could lie to tax collectors with impunity.[4]
“Follow Me.” And he got up and followed Him.
Now this is an explicit command, and it is immediately obeyed. The commands assume something. What it assumes is that Jesus knows his heart, right? John 2:25, “Nobody needed to tell Jesus what was in the heart of a man because He knew what was in the heart of a man,” omniscience. He knew it was in his heart[6]
Luke in his parallel description says, “Levi got up, left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:28).
This was a decisive act. He gave up his business—everything, and there was no going back.[7]
Centuries ago a number of workmen were seen dragging a great marble block into the city of Florence, Italy. It had come from the famous marble quarries of Carrara, and was intended to be made into a statue of a great Old Testament prophet.
But it contained imperfections, and when the great sculptor Donatello saw it, he refused it at once. So there it lay in the cathedral yard, a useless block. One day another sculptor caught sight of the flawed block. But as he examined it, there rose in his mind something of immense beauty, and he resolved to sculpt it. For two years the artist worked feverishly on the work of art.
Finally, on January 25, 1504, the greatest artists of the day assembled to see what he had made of the despised and rejected block. Among them were Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Pietro Perugino, the teacher of Raphael. As the veil dropped to the floor, the statue was met with a chorus of praise. It was a masterpiece!
The succeeding centuries have confirmed that judgment. Michelangelo’s David is one of the greatest works of art the world has ever known.
Christ saw in the flawed life of Levi (tax collector) a Matthew (writer and evangelist). He still sees men and women with his consummate artist’s eye today.
The Scripture says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10). He sees in us what no one else sees.
Why the reception? Obviously, to honor Christ.
That is the natural reflex of the soul which has received his touch, as we see from Genesis to Revelation. Also, this was a spontaneous celebration of Levi’s new life.
Levi also threw the party to share Christ with his friends. Luke says it was a “great banquet” (5:29), and our text says “many” were there. Levi evidently had a big place, and it was packed out. These “sinners” even consorted with Gentiles. They were the offscouring of Capernaum—despised, social pariahs. And there reclined pure Jesus in their midst—eating, drinking, and conversing with these lawless, materialistic compromisers. [8]
Matthew now is filled with gratitude. He is thrilled about what the Lord has done in his life and he’s going to have a banquet. This is a lavish, long, drawn-out, big-time feast to honor Jesus Christ. He has a big house so even as a little mokhes, you can make a lot of money. Luke 5:29 says it was his house, large house. And they reclined. That’s the posture for a long, relaxed meal. We don’t know about that. We eat fast, standing up, moving. This was another world, another time.
So they all reclined. Literally on an elbow eating with the other hand, feet away from the table. A lavish feast to honor Jesus and to hear Him and to hear the story of forgiveness and to have Matthew give his testimony to all his friends.
And, of course, those were the only people who would come because those are the only people he could associate with because he was an outcast. He invited them all. So what you had here was all the dishonorable, despised rejects of Galilee, everybody in the tax world. And you know what’s happening?[9]
This is a defining characteristic of Jesus, the sharing of table fellowship with those whom the rest of society has rejected.[5]
Jesus, The Enemy of the Self-Righteous
Mark 2:16
16 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?”
today- we have a right to our body; to abort a baby; to change our sexual idenity- to define right and wrong as we wish and as we please
The scribes who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees were just shocked beyond words, stunned.They couldn’t believe it. Eating symbolized acceptance, welcome, even more, friendship. They wouldn’t eat with anybody who was a sinner and they would pride themselves on that being because of Psalm 1:1, they would go back and say, “How blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners … sit in the seat of mockers.”
Everything about it is wrong to them: the food not cooked properly (called “kosher” today), the setting not according to protocol (Jesus having table fellowship with unacceptable people), the scene and the people impure or unclean. Jesus cared little for such ritual issues when they impinged on his kingdom ministry to the “sick.”[10]
They refused to do that. How can Jesus do this? How can this be the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord of heaven, the Savior when He doesn’t even come to the standard that we established? This is wholly below the acceptance of the standard of God in their minds.[11]
To them, it was an unforgivable disgrace for Jesus, who claimed to be a teacher of the Law, to disregard their time-honored customs.8
Perhaps none of us espouse such Pharisaical beliefs. In fact, we loathe them. But many of us live them out nevertheless.
We come to Christ, and in our desire to be godly we seek out people “like us.” Ultimately we arrange our lives so that we are with nonbelievers as little as possible. We attend Bible studies that are 100 percent Christian, a Sunday school that is 100 percent Christian, prayer meetings that are 100 percent Christian. We play tennis with Christians and eat dinner with Christians. We have Christian doctors, Christian dentists, Christian plumbers, Christian veterinarians, and even our dogs are Christian. The result is, we pass by hundreds without ever noticing them or positively influencing them for Christ. None of us are Pharisees philosophically, but we may be practically.
Do we despise the very people that Jesus loves because of our self-righteousness- because we are pursuing our own good life?
We need to reach out to the people with whom we work—go to dinner with them, attend sporting events together, have them over. We need to extend ourselves to those we know are hurting—provide a room for an unwed mother, minister to the multiple cultures around us, volunteer in the local prisons, get involved in the community, even if it means resigning a church job to do it. Jesus said, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15).
The Pharisees were scandalized. So, brave men that they were, they approached Jesus’ disciples, saying, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?[12]
Jesus Defends Himself and His Social Practices
Mark 2:17 (ESV)
17 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 was a supremely common-sense answer which was known in both secular and religious proverbs.9
The doctor needs to visit the ill; the whole should go to the fractured, the joyful to the mourning, the strong to the weak.
Christ completed his answer with a statement of his overall purpose: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus spoke ironically and truthfully. The Pharisees were just as needy as the publicans and sinners, but tragically did not know it. Jesus was saying in effect, “To people who think they are righteous, I have nothing to say. But to those who know they have need, I have come.”[13]
So it is today, this church, the church of Jesus Christ is not made up of good people, it’s made up of bad people. It’s not made up of people who think they’re righteous, it’s made up of people who know they’re not. It’s not made up of the people who have attained to a certain acceptable degree with God, it’s made up of people who know they could never attain to an acceptable place before God.
The church is not made up of people who think they’re good, it’s made up of people who know they’re wicked. It’s not made up of people who have achieved righteousness on their own, it’s made up of people who have received righteousness from God as a gift. This is the gospel.[14]
Human prejudice has no place in God’s kingdom, and Jesus proves that by centering on the outcasts in society and showing the divine acceptance of all who come to him in faith. The only criterion for salvation is belief, and that becomes possible only when the self-righteous humble themselves before God and open their hearts to Jesus. There is no place for ministry that favors one segment of society over another, and there is no path to God except that of faith.[15]
What do we learn from Christ at that party?
Two things:
1. Christ and his followers did not (and still must not) isolate themselves from a needy world, nor did they assimilate it. They went out with Christ in mission. The Christian’s life is not to be one of isolation, nor assimilation, but mission.
2. Christ sat down (and sits down) with sinners. He dined with them and they with him. And he met their need.
“The first link between my soul and Christ is not my goodness, but my badness; not my merit, but my misery; not my standing, but my falling; not my riches, but my need.”
Kent Hughes
[1]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [2]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [3]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [4]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [5]Osborne, G. R. (2014). Mark (M. L. Strauss & J. H. Walton, Eds.; p. 44). Baker Books. [6]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [7]Hughes, R. K. (1989). Mark: Jesus, servant and savior (Vol. 1, p. 69). Crossway Books. [8]Hughes, R. K. (1989). Mark: Jesus, servant and savior (Vol. 1, p. 70). Crossway Books. [9]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [10]Osborne, G. R. (2014). Mark (M. L. Strauss & J. H. Walton, Eds.; p. 44). Baker Books. [11]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. 8 8. Lane, p. 104. [12]Hughes, R. K. (1989). Mark: Jesus, servant and savior (Vol. 1, pp. 71–72). Crossway Books. 9 9. Ibid. [13]Hughes, R. K. (1989). Mark: Jesus, servant and savior (Vol. 1, p. 72). Crossway Books. [14]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [15]Osborne, G. R. (2014). Mark (M. L. Strauss & J. H. Walton, Eds.; p. 45). Baker Books. [16]Hughes, R. K. (1989). Mark: Jesus, servant and savior (Vol. 1, pp. 72–73). Crossway Books.
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