Shownotes
Excerpt: Religion assumes that God most loves people who live up to religious demands, but Jesus shows that God values those far from him who come to him with their deepest need.
Talking Points:
- By calling the tax collector Levi to follow him, Jesus revealed a very different standard for leadership than we would expect from religion. Mark 2:13-14
- By criticizing Jesus’ social engagement with Levi and his disreputable friends, religious people demonstrated their scorn for people who don’t measure up to the rules. Mark 2:15-16
- In broadest spiritual terms there are only two kinds of people. Only the second group has any chance at a relationship with God.
- Mark 2:17
Discussion:
- Who comes to your mind when think about a “good person”? How about a “bad” person?
- Read Mark 2:13-14. Who is Levi? Why isn’t he the type of person you would think Jesus would ask to come follow him?
- What does it mean to follow Jesus?
- Who do you know that is most like a Pharisee?
- Read Mark 2:15-17. What kind of person did Jesus come to save?
See Also:
Shownotes:
The Tax Collector
Jesus has different standards than religion
- Mark 2:13-14 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him.
- Jesus is still in Capernaum / along the Sea of Galilee
- Teaching the crowds out in the open along the lakeshore
- That’s where he meets Levi - also known as Matthew - sitting at tax collector’s booth
- Collecting commercial taxes for the Roman Empire
- Based on the business taking place there that day
- Jesus does some scandalous things in today’s passage
- Here’s the first → he invites Levi to follow him / be his disciple
- That’s the definition of a disciple → one who follows another
- Like we saw in ch 1 when Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, John
- Levi got up - on the spot - and followed Jesus
- Here’s the scandal: Jesus didn’t select religious professionals to be his followers
- Went outside the religious mainstream
- He didn’t select his closest followers from rabbi school
- Even more scandalous, he chose a tax-collector
- This goes beyond his surprising choice of 4 fishermen in ch 1
- Fishermen were not a despised group
- Tax-collectors were hated for a couple of reasons
- First: they were in a business partnership with Roman Empire
- Hated / resented conquerors
- “Unclean” / impure Gentiles
- This partnership pushed them to fringes of religious life
- Tax collectors would not have been seen at synagogue
- Though Jewish → very much outsiders in Jewish society
- Second: they typically used shady / violent tactics to collect for Rome
- If brought in more taxes → reaped more wealth
- Often resorted to extortion / cheating to make a profit
- In some ways, closest parallel today might be gang criminals
- We don’t know much about Levi personally
- Was he one of the worst / a more benign version of his class?
- Doesn’t matter → he wasn’t respectable / wasn’t a religious elite
- Jesus would not have met him at the synagogue
- So what qualified Levi for his role as potential leader?
- Basically: willing to follow Jesus fully
- If we were tasked to find a few core disciples for Jesus
- Who would eventually become his closest followers
- Where would we look? Who would we pick? Would we pick Levi?
The Pharisees
Religion is scornful of people who don’t measure up
- Mark 2:15-16 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”
- Second scandalous thing Jesus did: Spent time socializing with disreputable & unworthy people
- In this case, accepted dinner invitation from Matthew
- Text takes note of who was there → an important detail
- There were other tax collectors → Levi’s professional colleagues
- There were also “other disreputable sinners”
- Like who? Basically the rejects of society
- Luke 7:37 = “a certain immoral woman from that city”
- BTW this happens while Jesus was socializing with a religious leader
- Eating at home of Simon the Pharisee
- Luke 19:1-10 = Zacchaeus → another tax collector
- Not only that, Mark notes: Jesus welcomed people like this as his followers
- Look at the response of the religious leaders
- Why is Jesus eating with scum like that?
- Implied: if he legitimately spoke for God → he wouldn’t do that
- He would know what kind of people these are
- Wouldn’t go anywhere near them
- Luke 7:39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw [that the woman was putting perfume on Jesus’ feet], he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”
- Summary: how religion / religious leaders see people
- Disreputable / scum / sinful
- Application: how do I see people who are far from God? Judgmental? Outraged? Think I’m better?
The Difference
Jesus came for people who don’t measure up
- Mark 2:17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor - sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
- How Jesus sees people
- #1: he doesn’t present everyone as being OK
- He never says, “I’m okay; you’re okay”
- “You follow your truth”
- “Just be true to yourself”
- “People are basically good”
- Points out → people are needy / we are broken / spiritually sick
- But while Pharisees saw needy people and scorned them
- Jesus saw needy people and loved them
- #2: in this verse, identifies two kinds of people in the world
- This covers everyone → there really are only 2 kinds of people
- Religion would say, “Yes, there are two kinds of people in the world”
- Good people / bad people
- Righteous people / sinners
- Of course, religious people tend to identify themselves as the first kind
- But that’s not how Jesus sees it
- First kind = those who think they are righteous
- Second kind = those who know they are sinners
- You are either one or the other
- So there are those who are broken and don’t realize it
- To use Jesus’ analogy
- This is a huge problem with religious people
- Don’t usually see → they are broken too
- Their religious activity masks their spiritual need
- Bc they are moral / religiously active → think of themselves as worthy before God / special to him
- Often: as better than others
- Have to say: this is not just limited to religious people
- Lost of secular irreligious people who are broken and don’t admit it
- It’s a person who is coughing up a lung / has a fever
- Can’t walk up the stairs / puking guts out
- Who says: “I’m not sick”
- But it does seem to be a particular problem for religious folks
- It’s a person who has stage 4 cancer
- But hasn’t noticed anything really wrong
- Headache / feel tired sometimes
- But wouldn’t go to doctor → don’t realize their need
- Then there are those who are broken and know it
- They know they are sinners / can’t measure up
- With the first group → next step is to become what Jesus called “poor in spirit”
- With the second group → next step is to turn to the doctor to be healed
- Application: Do I realize, even after I’m saved & sins forgiven, that I’m always deeply needy of what only Jesus can do for me? Or have I become self-righteous / confident in my own righteousness?
- Let’s zero in on Jesus’ response to needy people
- Jesus says to critics → let me help you understand WHY I came in first place
- I came for this second kind of person
- You might as well ask: why does that doctor spend so much time with so many sick people?
- So he entered their world to call them to himself
- To invite them to find healing for their brokenness
- He wasn’t just hanging out / partying / buddying up
- Wasn’t enjoying some light-hearted revelry
- He wasn’t like he didn’t care about how they lived
- Engaged them in their world to teach them God’s heart / God’s ways
- Forgave them when they repented
- Embraced them when they followed him
- Application: Am I willing to engage lost people to invite them to Jesus? Get on their turf? Do I only hang around with “safe” Christians?
- Application: On the other hand, do I hang around with lost people, but I mostly just follow their ways and never represent Jesus to them?
Transcripts
Speaker 1 00:00:53 That's how most people would frame it, for sure. In society today. I mean, you think about, people talk about their buddy or somebody they know works, and man, he's a good guy. He's a good dude. Or, or, or thinking, man, man, that guy's bad. So, I mean, that's how people frame it, right? What, what's interesting, you know, these pharisees that you mentioned, Eric, they had their perspective on who was good and who was bad. And we have our perspective today in American society about who's good and who's bad. I mean, what are the traits that make us say, oh, that he's a good guy, or that's a, that's a good person, you know, maybe, maybe they serve in the community at the soup kitchen, or maybe their kids are well mannered and behaved, or, or maybe they've been successful at work. Um, you know, or maybe they're, they, they haven't ever gotten trouble with the law or something like that. We have these, these ideas about, about who, what constitutes a good person. And we have ideas about what constitutes a bad person, too. I mean, what do you think about that?
:Speaker 1 00:02:26 Yeah, people
:Speaker 0 00:03:45 And he walks by this guy called Levi. Let's look at these verses in verses 13 and 14. It says, then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son Ofia, sitting at his tax collector's booth, follow me and be my disciple. Jesus said to him, so Levi got up and followed him. So this guy's a tax collector
Speaker 1 00:05:47 You know, number one is, um, they were hated for in, in Israel for a number of reasons. Number one, they were in this business partnership with Rome. And so Rome was these hated resented gentile conquerors. They're impure unclean, and these are local Jewish people who said, yeah, I'm gonna make money off of the, off of a relationship with our hated, um, oppressors. And so that partnership pushed them to the very fringe of religious life. Tax collectors are not the guys you'd meet in the synagogue. Um, they're still Jewish, but they're very much outsiders in Jewish society cuz their partnership with Rome. And then the second reason they were hated is cuz many of them probably typically, they used all kinds of shady and violent tactics to collect for room. So they, they're subcontractors. So Rome says, look, here's how much you owe us. If you collect more than that, it goes in your own pocket.
:Speaker 0 00:07:26 Yeah. He's like the, the ultimate sellout, you know? Yeah. If you can think about, you know, someone in your life that was, was on your team, but decided to do something shady to jump to the other side, basically that's, that's what he's doing. I heard something interesting about why Mark's calling him Levi, um, when we know him as Matthew actually mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 00:09:00 An enforcer in a way. And if you think about what kind of positions and people that would put him around, he was probably hanging around with all kinds of different, uh, other sinners. As a matter of fact, in the Bible, when they talk about tax collectors, it's always like, it's always like they, they're coupled with tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes, you know? And so they were looked at as kind of the worst of the worst. Um, yeah. And so, so I guess the question for us, as we, you know, talked about in our open, um, what, what, what kind of people nowadays would we equate with this tax collector? I've already talked about maybe a, a mob enforcer, but what other kinds of people I would, would apply to this day and age of people that we would, we would really just have this scorn for?
:Speaker 0 00:11:26 Yeah. And maybe, maybe some of these people that we've seen, you know, get arrested over the years for like made up pyramid schemes. Totally. Things like that. Um, yeah, these are probably, you know, immoral, immoral type people. Uh, we've seen movies about, you know, wall Street and kind of the, the bad side of that. I'm not saying that all, all people who are in money and trade and finance are evil at all, but certainly there is a propensity for that to happen because, uh, I guess there's, there's a sin in the Bible called greed. And, and usually this love for money, the Bible says is, is the root of all kinds of evil, right? Right. Yep. And so, so in a tax collector's heart, this love for money has, has led them to do all kinds of immoral things, even to sell out their own people.
:Speaker 0 00:13:37 We, we saw something, uh, I think recently where Yeah. Where Jesus called the other four disciples, we saw, yeah. His, uh, Simon, Andrew, James, and John. And when he walked up to them, now, they weren't, they were lower class, lower middle class guys, uh, who made their living off of fishing and, and guys that you wouldn't have thought that Jesus would use to start the core four, the core team, right. Um, because maybe they didn't have all the, the business aptitude or the, uh, all the different education, right? We looked at that in chapter one. Exactly. Now we're in chapter two, and Jesus calls this other guy, Matthew, who's called Levi, here to be a disciple as well. Now he's, he's a little bit different than the fisherman. He's hated not just really looked, looked down on or forgotten about, but he is hated, right? And yet Levi gets up and says, okay, I'm gonna, I'll leave my tax booth and follow, they left their nets, right? I'll leave my tax booth and follow him. And I think
:Speaker 0 00:15:57 Yeah. And I definitely think that we're gonna get to that in this lesson, and I think that's the same question that the religious people of the day are going to ask. Let's get into the, the next part of the text in verses 15 and 16, it says, later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. There were many more people of this kind, among Jesus's followers. There's a hint. But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with such scum? You're exactly right. The so, so Jesus is being watched mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:17:49 Yeah, that's
:Speaker 1 00:18:26 That's a, that's a good point. We wanna really understand who these people are, um, because when we see 'em in the New Testament, they're usually the bad guys. Uh, because, because the ones that we're seeing are the, are antagonistic toward Jesus. But that's not necessarily typical of all Pharisees, um, the Pharisees. So after, um, Israel went into captivity, uh, several hundred years before they came back, God brought them back in the times of Ezra, Nehemiah and reestablished, uh, presence, but they in Jerusalem again. But they were never an independent kingdom from that point on. Um, they were ruled over first by the kingdom, the kingdom of Alexander the Great, and later his successors, um, and then eventually the Romans. And in that, in that timeframe, and the couple hundred years before Jesus came, there was, there were certain reform movements in Judaism. The Pharisees were one of 'em.
:Speaker 1 00:20:28 Whether it was an internal attitude that had crept in, as we see here, an attitude toward other people, or whether it was that they, that they had a tendency to add things to what God had already said. They were so zealous for preserving the wor the, the law of God that they, that they kept adding, um, more and more detailed prescriptions to keep anybody from possibly even, uh, violating the law of God. They, they, they looked at it as like building a fence around the law. And so, you know, these guys, their, I think a lot of 'em, their motive was really to honor God, but they, I think went about it maybe in some ways that missed the mark,
:Speaker 1 00:21:34 Not all the Pharisees, not all the Pharisees were leadership roles. Some of 'em were just, uh, ordinary Jewish people who adopted that approach. But then you take the ones that are mentioned here, the ones who are teachers of religious laws, scribes, as you mentioned, that those would be the ones who have an elevated position of, of spiritual authority in people's lives. So all the Pharisees, not all of 'em were teachers of the law, or, or, or mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:22:49 And
:Speaker 0 00:23:52 But in doing so, they actually are sinning against God by adding things and, and really misrepresenting the nature and character of God. And I think that's what, that's what Jesus is, is coming to do. This is like his, this his object lesson to the, the religious leaders of the day, to the religious organizations of the day. And I, and I think about how this applies to us again, um, when it comes to religious leaders mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:26:09 And likewise, even in society today, there are people who are acknowledged as being the good ones, but they're not always popular. Right. Um, but the religious people today, and, and so what happens, it's a human nature. I think it's human nature, that whenever we start measuring ourselves by those external standards you mentioned, then we also start measuring other people by those standards too, is something about human nature that we feel like we have to compare ourselves, or that we have to somehow we're all gonna try to find somebody that, um, I can be better than, you know, to boost my ego or whatever. Um, and so what really the issue that, that this is addressing right here is, is when, you know, uh, they saw Jesus eating with these tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. They labeled those people as, you know, scum. And maybe on one, maybe from a outward perspective, you know, that that's, that was accurate. But there's much more going on here than just the outward perspective, right?
:Speaker 1 00:28:27 Right. That'd be number one, probably in most people's mind. Yeah.
:Speaker 1 00:28:51 Right. Yeah.
:Speaker 1 00:28:54 This one? I will, I fulfill all my required religious duties, you know, and in different religious systems have different ideas of what those duties are, um, whether it, whether it be in Islam, your, you, you're, you're gonna pray five times a day mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:29:47
Speaker 1 00:30:28 Yeah, for sure.
:Speaker 0 00:31:39 Because I think, right, we're getting to this, this last part of this lesson that Jesus measures people by a different standard. And it's those who actually know their need for Jesus, um, are the ones who he's gonna come to, otherwise, these other ones, the, the, the Pharisees, they're not gonna, they're not gonna accept his message because they have their own self-righteousness. They, they think they've done more good than they've done bad. They think that they've earned their way. And so in a sense, they're saying, I don't really need the Messiah for spiritual salvation. They're probably thinking more of a physical reward from the Messiah to like, make their life better, right. For all the things that they had done. Right.
:Speaker 0 00:33:41 Yeah. So let's get to that verse. It's verse 17. It says, when Jesus heard this, he told them, healthy people don't need a doctor. Sick people do. I have come to call those who, who think I have come to call, not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. And I think that really answers the question. Like, that's where he turns it up on its head, is he's, he's really, um, making a, a dig at them a little bit. I haven't come to call those who think, you know, quote unquote think that they are righteous. He's not saying those that are righteous, he's saying, or, or maybe in some other translations it might be some kind of a, um, what's, what's, what's the word? Sarcasm. Exactly.
:Speaker 0 00:34:37 Have not come to call those who are righteous,
:Speaker 0 00:34:41 Yeah. Uh, the n lt kind of helps to explain it a little bit better. But I've come to call those who know that they are sinners. You think you're righteous, but this guy knows he needs me. You think your own self-righteousness will make you right with God, while this other guy knows that he's done more bad than he has good mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:36:05 And they're saying, look, everybody's okay. I'm okay. You're okay. You know, nobody's, nobody's a sinner. Don't call me a sinner because that's offensive. That's not how Jesus sees people. It's Jesus is not just like, okay, I look around at people and oh, everybody's, everybody's wonderful and I'm good with these, um, with hanging out with the tax collectors and the disreputable people cuz they're just wonderful. No, he points out that people are needy and, and we're broken and we're spiritually sick. And but you, so the, the Pharisees looked at broken, needy people and scorned them. Jesus looked at broken, needy people and loved them. So, so I think that's the first thing that I think Jesus is not just condoning the, the sin and the, and the lifestyle of these people, but he, he's also not scorning them. And, and, uh, yeah, I
:Speaker 0 00:37:52 And now I'm willing to, the Bible says, take up my cross and now follow him. That means that my old life, as we see him following the first disciples, they were willing they had something, whatever it was that that, that they had. Maybe it was the, the, the humility. God knew that these were the ones that were actually gonna get up and follow. And it's so hard for a self-righteous person to see their need for, for forgiveness in a savior. And, and that's really a, a huge part of this lesson and maybe for an application for all of us, is, is even though you say that you're a Christian or you've been going to a church for a while, um, number one, do you look at people, uh, as if you're better than them, or, uh, God loves you more than, than he loves them because of your own deeds.
:Speaker 0 00:39:58 But I always have to reem mind myself in prayer in the morning, I take that time to reflect and repent and look on my day. How many times did I fall short? Yeah. How many times did I not love the people in my life around me? How many times was I tempted to, to sin and, and, and, and did that in my heart even if I didn't do it in an action, an outward action where I, I used to do all my sin and a lot of outward action. Now as, as a someone who's, you know, been a Christian for a while, I think a lot of my sin now happens in my own heart and my own mind. And I'm still battling that and I mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:41:46 That's a great way to capture it. I mean real, really. Sometimes I'll come to faith in Christ, you know, a Christian comes to faith in Christ, initially acknowledging our spiritual brokenness and need and sin. And then God starts to do a work in our life and begins to transform and sanctify us. And, and we get around these other people of faith that sometimes they're kind of religious and we get around those people. It can be really easy to forget where I was. And as I see God begin to change my character and change my habits and so forth, it, it's not that hard for me to start thinking that somehow, you know, I am, uh, I can start to become confident in my own righteousness and start to forget that, you know, um, I'm a I'm a sinner and I'm always deeply in need of what Jesus can do to me. So, you know, these two kinds of people, you know, the world says there's good people and bad people, but, but Jesus says no, there's really two kinds of people. There's people who think they're good and people who know they're bad, right. Who think they're righteous, people who know they're sinners. I I came to faith with an acknowledgement that I'm a sinner, but I don't want to su I don't want over time following Jesus to suddenly morph into the person who thinks they're righteous. I always need, always need him every day.
:Speaker 0 00:44:02 Um, now for the people that, that are believers here, but struggle with going back and forth with being maybe even, uh, uh, you know, a sinner or a Pharisee, I think Levi's example is great. He got up, left the tax booth and followed Jesus. Have you left behind your old life if you struggle with sin as a Christian? Well, I think that's something that all of us need to do on a daily basis following Jesus isn't just a decision that happens once a long time ago, but it's every day. And then we're also called though not to, to become Pharisees either and start thinking that we're earning our way. He helped us get there. And now, now we're, we're doing everything in our own merit, in our own works. And so can a pharisee be saved? I've been thinking about this and I I think of Paul, Paul and the, the new Testa.
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