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This is The Oaks Equipped, a podcast from The Oaks Church in Liberty Hill, TX where Pastor Josh Mings talks through the stuff he didn’t have time to say on Sunday, answers the questions people are actually asking, and keeps things way more real than polished. Expect biblical truth, practical takeaways, and just enough humor to keep you guessing whether he meant it.
If you want to follow Jesus with clarity (and laugh at least once), you’re in the right place.
Tax Collectors and Sinners
00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Oaks Equipped podcast, where we highlight the latest Oaks sermons, provide insights to discipleship, and get you excited about reaching your neighbors with the good news of Jesus Christ. Welcome, Josh, to our next exciting episode of Oaks Equipped.
00:00:16 Speaker 2: Hey, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
00:00:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to be here. My name is Glen McGordy and with Josh Mings. So, Josh, we're traveling through Mark. It's been very exciting. It started off very subtle, but it's picking up pace and getting a little louder. I'm just going to use a couple references to TV shows based on some of the things you've talked about. I remember the aliens show Alf, the little character from I forget where he was from, but you mentioned Jesus came to a leper colony called earth, and it's filled with all humanity that needs to be cleansed. Yes.
00:00:50 Speaker 2: Yes. What a beautiful picture. That was a great sermon. And and what a reality. But I, I think now just kind of being entrenched in this. I see this series of theological messaging that that he's trying to show us. So Jesus, Jesus is identifying the whole earth is sick, and this man comes with leprosy. And you see the great compassion of Jesus who who touches the man, heals him, makes him whole. And then the, the beautiful imagery that the Bible uses. Leprosy is obviously a medical condition, but the man's request is to make him cleansed, not to heal him, but to cleanse him, which is completely different. And that really ties into the use of the the Bible uses on leprosy, which is a metaphor or a picture or a living, breathing illustration of the effects of sin. So first he starts with the leper. And I think the message here is, Jesus has come to the leper colony, and everyone on planet earth is sick with the disease of sin, and we need to be cleansed.
00:01:59 Speaker 1: Myself to begin the next show I had was All Creatures Great and Small. This is where Jesus demonstrates compassion and God's power. We see this where the roof is broken into and the the the paralyzed man is lowered into. And they're looking for physical healing. But Jesus goes above and beyond that and blows. It says everyone was astonished afterwards. Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:02:22 Speaker 2: So what a great story. Again, the same it's I think Mark is building on this idea. So first we have the leper colony, earth. And then when they lower the the man into the house because of his faith, Jesus says, your sins are forgiven. Well, hold on, hold on. Only God can forgive sins, right? And this is what immediately sets off the religious leaders. That's. Hold on. You're making a claim here, so we can't we can't pass over that. He is claiming to be God. Um, not a spokesman for God. Not a prophet, not a teacher. This is a claim to divinity. And so he he says, your sins are forgiven. Everyone goes up in arms. And Jesus does something so practical here. He says, um. Oh, is it easy to say your sins are forgiven? Like there's no physical man.
00:03:14 Speaker 1: Anyone can say that. Yeah.
00:03:16 Speaker 2: He goes, so I'll prove that I have the authority to say that by commanding this, this, uh, this disabled man to get up and walk. And that's what happens. Yeah. So the healing serves as a validation of his claim to divinity. Yeah. So let's the big picture is this, number one, the whole earth is a leprechaun. Jesus has come to it as God with the authority and ability to forgive sinners.
00:03:50 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yep. That's interesting. And, and just kind of interesting. It's just an interesting point here is that the miracles always validate the messenger. What is being said? And I think, right, what you said just makes it so ever clear. Absolutely. Yeah. So person of interest is show about people that can only do unique things. And Jesus is the only one who can save us. And the last one, law and order, is that Jesus brings truth and life to the law, to himself.
00:04:18 Speaker 2: That's right. And that's, that's really where it leads us to the beauty of the calling of both Matthew and then Jesus interaction with the religious leaders. Man, I've honestly been taken back. You know, obviously, I've read the gospel of Mark many times in my life, but the I can't read this without seeing the vitriol and, and really the, the hatred of the religious people and how Jesus is not tiptoeing around it. He is going after every one of their sacred cows, their sacred beliefs. he is. He's not even being shy about it. So Jesus comes to the leper colony. He has the authority to forgive sins, and then he has the authority to command what is next. And so he's undoing all of this. It's beautiful.
00:05:07 Speaker 1: Yeah. So Mark seems to be showing the readers of of his gospel about Jesus being more than a prophet or a teacher, but he kind of does it. Interestingly, he goes from maybe a very subtle approach to just a few people, even when he's, he's able to teach in the synagogue. It's just a few people are amazed, but then he's going to a larger audience. And like you said, confronting even the religious leaders around him publicly.
00:05:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's a really interesting. And then you throw on top of that, the only thing I would add to that is when the demons encounter him. Um, you know, they announce who he is. So yeah. So on one hand, you have a very public baptism where God.
00:05:51 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:52 Speaker 2: Then you have the the demon that Jesus encounters. Um, but then Jesus silences him. Um, and then, um, his ministry, as soon as it starts getting effective or big or the crowds grow, we see Jesus leaves.
00:06:09 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:06:10 Speaker 2: And actually here in the next couple of weeks, we're going to get to a sermon where I think I have the answer to this in a good way. So just let me leave it excitement for it. I think this is what's going on. I think what we're going to discover is that there will always be a crowd who wants the benefits of, you know, they didn't have hospitals, right? They didn't have er they didn't they didn't have a, a Walgreens or an HEB pharmacy. So if you had an ailment, you had an ailment. And so Jesus comes and word gets out that he's healing. So the crowds are coming for healings. The crowds are coming to have their felt needs met. You know what? The crowds are not coming for? To learn about the kingdom of God. Yeah. They're not coming to to, um, learn how to be a disciple of Christ. And so in this unique way in which this ministry is unfolding, every time it gets big, Jesus retreats, every time it gets to be too electric, Jesus pulls himself away. Um, and it's a really, it is not the approach that you build a ministry on today.
00:07:16 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the opposite of what you would do today, right? Signs and miracles are very popular with, with some of the, some of the groups out there. So Jesus encounters Matthew Levi, um, who's a tax collector. And it's interesting you said it's a call to grace. And you point out that Matthew was not looking for Jesus. He was in his booth, heads down doing what he was doing. And you pointed out that he was probably likely seen as worse of all sinners, like he was on the bottom of the list. I think he even used the term like he might be what we would call mafia today. Like he's a bad guy, right? So why don't you talk a little bit? What do you mean by call to grace? And the fact that if you go back, does it go back to what you taught in Ephesians?
00:07:59 Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
00:08:00 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:08:00 Speaker 2: Listen for the for the listener. This is an important thing for you to see. Not one of the disciples came to Jesus, not one. As we continue in Mark, you're going to see this in the next coming weeks. Not one of them, even Judas, not one of them. All of them were called by grace to come and follow Christ. And that's what's true of today. The affectionate call of grace is given through the gospel. From him we are dead in our sins. Ephesians one. And so this is this is the consistency of how the gospel of grace works. Matthew is in his tax booth. He's working. He's doing his thing. He's not on his way to the synagogue. He's not looking for Jesus, but Jesus is looking for him. And if that's lost on you, please pause. Pause this recording. Take a second and think about that. Um, the New Testament says it like this. Uh, when we were weak at just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Like he came first. His his love initiated the call first. And that's what we find in Matthew. Now when we say tax collector, um, we, we all pay taxes. We all know the IRS guy. Um, we all know about that every, um, fifteenth of April.
00:09:27 Speaker 1: Yep.
00:09:28 Speaker 2: Uh, but this isn't the same thing. So on one hand, it's a betrayal because Levi or Matthew, as he's later known, is a Jewish man, but he's working for an occupied, uh, government, an army, uh, that is oppressing, abusing his own people, and he has the freedom and liberty as long as he sends Rome the amount of taxes that they need. He's allowed to take as much for himself from people as he can. But then I think what most people don't realize, because these people were such outcasts, they kind of congregated with other outcasts. And because they had resources, um, in what is most likely an impoverished part of the world, they were also connected to other things like human trafficking. Uh, ironically, for, for good Jewish Hebrew people, they were involved in smuggling swine, you know?
00:10:26 Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Um, yeah.
00:10:27 Speaker 2: Uh, and other nefarious things.
00:10:31 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:10:31 Speaker 2: So, you know, we hear, oh, he's a tax collector. Why do the people hate them? Well, it's because he's a traitor, and it's because he's in the underbelly of the worst of the worst. And this is Matthew. And this is important because I think there's been a lot of modern ways to try to help us understand what's going on. And all of them fall short because it doesn't show the the nasty side of the tax collector profession. Um, but nevertheless, this is who Jesus comes to and calls, which is good news for all of us, because no one is beyond the grace and the mercy of Christ.
00:11:09 Speaker 1: Yeah. So all these tax collectors and other nefarious characters get together at Matthew's house, which is kind of interesting. And you would think, and I'm thinking too, this is probably the elite. These guys are not just sitting around, but they probably have the best of the best, right? So everybody's looking on saying they're really bad characters, and then Jesus joins them. Will you call the table of grace? And the Pharisees are outraged that he would be spending time with basically mobsters and, and, and criminals. Uh, But Jesus shows that he's not contaminated by sitting with sinners one hundred percent.
00:11:45 Speaker 2: I don't know a lot. You're right. My hunch is, is that was probably one of the better meals Jesus ever ate. Um, because. Because the tax collectors were very wealthy.
00:11:55 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:11:56 Speaker 2: But you you see the, the table of grace in the sense that here Matthew is called. He doesn't have righteous friends, so so-called righteous friends, but he brings all of his unrighteous friends with him. And the text says that many tax collectors and many centers were there. And I just find that to be so beautiful. Again, tying it back to the leper, you know, Jesus touches, he comes close to the leper. And here Jesus comes close to the tax collectors and sinners. And one of the things we talked about in that message is the difference between mercy and grace and the tax collectors and sinners just like you. And I, just like the Pharisees.
00:12:45 Speaker 1: Yep.
00:12:45 Speaker 2: Where we don't deserve mercy or grace.
00:12:49 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:12:49 Speaker 2: Um, we deserve one thing. Judgment. So be one thing for Christ to forgive. Matthew. You know? Hey, Matthew, I see you in that tax booth, right? I'm gonna stay over here. You're forgiven. But it's mercy to recline at the table with Matthew. It's mercy for Jesus to come close. It's mercy for Jesus to do life with. And that's the power of the gospel is no one is beyond that grasp. And the table of grace is that Jesus will. He doesn't want to just give grace and forgive. He wants to give mercy and come close. MM.
00:13:27 Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned our attitude as believers and our posture towards sinners can fall into at least two camps. I'm going to throw in a third. We have the religious side and we have the rebel side. You want to talk about both groups and their attitude towards sinners, and where maybe they fall short in both sides. And then I'm going to throw a third one in there. Okay. Um.
00:13:50 Speaker 2: You know, the word that the Bible would use is religious or licentious. Mhm. So those are the Bible words. And licentious is just not a word that we would use nowadays. So I say rebellious. Um, I've been transparent. You know, my temperament, my brokenness is that I'm probably a little more religious. Uh, but to some of the listeners, um, they're a little more rebellious. And so you come to a text like this and it's easy because primarily what Jesus is, is coming up against is religious people. Um, you know, the tax collectors and sinners, those are clearly the bad guys. Those are the rebellious people. And so me, as someone who's kind of leans probably a little more religious, it's easy to see that. But I've been at church all week while the tax collectors have been stealing money.
00:14:43 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:14:45 Speaker 2: Um, well, if we're not careful and we're not self-aware of where we land in that, we'll miss the point. Mhm. And so, uh, rebellious people need to acknowledge that they're rebellious and then say, I'm in need of a savior.
00:15:02 Speaker 1: There you go.
00:15:02 Speaker 2: And then religious people, the same. You're not religious enough. You're still in need of a savior. So the idea was, hey, let's let's name those two things as we become self-aware of what we're in our fallenness that we're a little more predisposed to be like. And, um, instead of thinking we can take the day off so the rebellious people will think, oh, this is a good day for tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is just railing on the religious.
00:15:28 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:28 Speaker 2: No. Uh, and the way I illustrated that is to say this. If Jesus came today, we would kill him because we would view him as too holy and strict. Yeah. Whereas in Jesus's day, they killed him because they didn't view him as holy enough.
00:15:50 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:51 Speaker 2: So the, the, the environment in which Jesus came the first time was a more religious environment. If he came now, the environment is not quite as religious. It's a little more rebellious.
00:16:03 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:04 Speaker 2: But the bottom line is we kill them both times. And so but the answer to both of those presuppositions and both of those proclivities in each of us is we need a savior.
00:16:14 Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm going to throw a third group in there. What I would say, really, in response to what you're saying about not being seen as being too religious or too Jesus, uh, being a Jesus freak. And that would be what I call the Bitcoiners, right? Who want to be friends with sinners, hang out with them, and but not necessarily concerned and being concerned about being judgy, but not necessarily in the process of sharing the gospel, but thinking that the gospel is going to come out by their way, that they live out their life.
00:16:48 Speaker 2: Um, so here's what I love. Jesus is given the moniker The Friend of Sinners, and that moniker was given to him as an insult by the religious people. Um, I'm so grateful that Jesus is the friend of sinners. Um, this third option that you're talking about, I think all of us need to wrestle with and be, um, Jesus had dinner with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus didn't participate in human trafficking or extortion or tax evasion or whatever the case is. Um, so, you know, I understand the, the hesitation and really trying to figure out, okay, well, what does this mean in my everyday life?
00:17:44 Speaker 1: Mhm.
00:17:45 Speaker 2: And so a saying that my dad used to tell me was just because you can doesn't mean you should. And so to take that a step further, I'm a free man in Christ. Um, just because I can eat a lawn mower doesn't mean I should.
00:18:04 Speaker 1: Is that good for you?
00:18:05 Speaker 2: No. So, um. So then this is where wisdom has to rule the day. And it's a tension that. It's a tension that's free of law. What people want is a law prescription.
00:18:21 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:18:21 Speaker 2: You can go.
00:18:22 Speaker 1: Here. Yeah.
00:18:22 Speaker 2: You can be with these people. That's what people want.
00:18:25 Speaker 1: This is how you do it.
00:18:26 Speaker 2: And then they know that they're not breaking the law or they're not coming too close, but you're never going to find that in in Christianity or in the scriptures. Instead, what you're going to find are principles of wisdom. What we can't lose is the reality that we are free. We are free to sit and enjoy a dinner, in a meal with lost people. And I pray that it's said of the people of the Oaks that just like our master, we are friends of sinners. And so there obviously is a way to engage in things with people that does not compromise and go into areas of sin.
00:19:06 Speaker 1: Yep.
00:19:07 Speaker 2: Um, and I, I hesitate to even begin to give examples out of fear that the more religious people will hear these as laws.
00:19:16 Speaker 1: Mhm.
00:19:17 Speaker 2: what I see too often in more religious people is like myself, is it's easier to become reclusive and to make all of your friends Christians. The more rebellious people have no problem making other rebellious people their friends, right?
00:19:34 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:19:34 Speaker 2: And so, um, we need to be friends of sinners. Yeah. We need to be. And we need to find a way to engage them, love them and serve them and go to where they are without sin.
00:19:48 Speaker 1: Yeah. And I, and I would just add to that, and I've been reading through the Psalms where David's talking about the idea that he didn't suppress or hide the goodness and the loving kindness and the truth of God, but he spoke to the people. He spoke to the people in the same way. We just need to live authentic lives and whatever you know, when God is doing things in our lives is to share that with non-believers as well as believers, um, and take time to just ask questions and find out where they have particular challenges towards believing and just be patient and be willing to, to dig in and do what you can to help them, but have a dialogue and go through that. Yeah. Okay. So when we think about when we talk about following Christ and you talk about, um, the idea of following right in Jesus calling. Do you think it's harder for us? And we're going to talk about this in our next podcast more, but do you think it's harder for people who have been Christians for ten, fifteen, twenty years to understand what it means to follow Christ than it is when Jesus says, Matthew, follow me, and he talks to the the different apostles that follow me. They, they in their in their day, right, were knowing that they're walking away from their lives. And you talk a little bit more. We'll talk about this more in the next podcast. But you talk about the idea of following me means moving in that direction willingly with passion as well.
00:21:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think my initial reaction to it is yes and no. So is it. You know, I've been married now for twenty. Three years. Hold on. Better get confirmation on this. Um, so is it easier to be married now? In some ways, yes.
00:21:40 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:21:40 Speaker 2: But then there's also things after time that you take for granted and you get.
00:21:44 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:21:45 Speaker 2: Um, become, uh, lackadaisical in. And so I think in some ways there's a comfortability to following Jesus all these years. Um, in some ways it's easier.
00:21:57 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:21:58 Speaker 2: And so, uh, the bottom line is regardless, um, to deny though, that Matthew's calling was unique. He, he gave up more than Peter.
00:22:11 Speaker 1: Yep.
00:22:12 Speaker 2: There's no doubt it would have for him to secure that tax collector booth. He would have had to have paid a fortune for that franchise. And then there would have been a long list of people wanting to get it. And when he abandoned it, believe me, there was someone there, too. Yeah. So at least when Peter left his profession, you know, after the denial of Jesus and the death of Jesus, where is Peter found fishing that backed up?
00:22:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very easy to do that.
00:22:43 Speaker 2: After the death of Jesus, we didn't find Matthew at a tax.
00:22:47 Speaker 1: Write.
00:22:48 Speaker 2: Because it wasn't.
00:22:49 Speaker 1: It's not there that opportunity.
00:22:51 Speaker 2: So he certainly gave up a lot.
00:22:52 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:22:53 Speaker 2: And you have to I mean, that's the that's the compelling power of the affectionate call of Grace. He left it all.
00:23:00 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:23:01 Speaker 2: Which is what we're all called to. Yeah. And so even if you've been following the Lord for a long time to deny that that call to deny everything and follow him is still there.
00:23:09 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:23:10 Speaker 2: Can sometimes be taken for granted. And we just need to be sensitive to that.
00:23:13 Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much. And we're going to head to the next podcast.