Joel Brooks: This morning, we are continuing our study, through the gospel of Mark. And so I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 2. As we look at the story of Jesus calling the tax collector Levi to come and to follow him. And, we'll just say that it was an unusual choice. I don't know about you, but I have taken many personality profile tests over the years.
Myers Briggs, the Enneagram, CliftonStrengths Profiler, the High 5 test, the emotional intelligence quiz, the disc profile, the style of influence, and even the Minnesota people don't know what to do with me, and so they just keep saying, well, just take another test, and we'll try to figure you out. Maybe you've had to take a bunch of these tests too. Maybe for work, some team building exercise, whatever organization you're in, or maybe you're just one of those weird people who loves taking these exercises or these tests. All of them are designed basically so you can learn a little bit more about yourself and how you fit in with a team. The last test I took, I had to sit down with a guy who was looking at all my profile, and in first, you know, 30 seconds, he looks at me and goes, from what I can read of this, you don't really care what I'm about to say, do you?
And I said, yep. And he's like, what do you wanna do for the rest of the 59 minutes we have together? But I'm an Enneagram 8, so that should make sense to some of you. But there is some benefit to those things because if you if you're forming together a team, if you're forming together a group, we all know that there could be this this one person thrown in. It just throws everything off.
It just kinda kills the group dynamic that you are looking for, which makes me think of Jesus' choice of Levi, or actually Jesus' choice of all of his disciples. I mean, what the heck is Jesus doing, when He pulls together this group of followers? If you were trying to pull together a dynamic team whose task is nothing short of changing the world, What type of people do you recruit? I mean, you're you would go looking for bright, virtuous, well respected people, people with intelligence, well connected, charismatic. That's the type of people you look for.
So far, this is what Jesus has done. 4 uneducated fishermen in a nowhere place of the world, and then one tax collector. What in the world did Jesus see when he picked these people? He didn't see who they were. He saw who they would become by the transforming power of grace.
When you are in a room like this and you look around and you see certain people, how do you evaluate them? Are there some people you're like, oh, yeah. I like oh, yes. Some other people you know to avoid, or you can you you dismiss. Why do you dismiss them?
The way we see people shows how powerful we actually believe the transforming power of the gospel to be. Do we see who people are or who, through Christ, they will become? And so that's what this text is about. Mark chapter 2. We'll begin reading in verse 13.
Jesus went out again beside the sea and all the crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them. 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. And he reclined at table in his house, 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. And the scribes and 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?' 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 the word of the Lord. And it is to
Caleb Chancey: be done.
Joel Brooks: You'll pray with me. Jesus, thank you that you are a friend to sinners. We did not choose you, but you chose us and pursued us and called us to yourself. There's not a person who would be in this room following you unless you first were a friend to them. So thank you for being a friend to us, Jesus.
And I pray that as we, read this text, that through your spirit, you would just show us how great of a friend you are and who you have called us to be. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
The first thing that I want you to notice in this story is a really simple point. And that's just that Jesus saw Levi. Levi didn't go go unnoticed by our savior. Jesus sees Levi. He sees the Levi's of the world.
He sees you. Notice that that's how the story begins. It begins with Jesus sees at first he's surrounded by all the crowds Because everybody's flocking to him. That's what happens when you heal entire towns of their sicknesses and and cast out demons. Everybody wants a piece of Jesus.
They all wanna get close to him. And yet, in the midst of all of that, that immense popularity, Jesus sees Levi and is drawn of to all people, he's drawn to him. Jesus will find as we go through the book of Mark, he just seems to be irresistibly drawn to people like Levi, people that the world seems to forget about or the world maybe even despises. You know, we we size up people all the time just with a mere glance. Some of you did that when you walked into this room.
When you came here to church, the first thing you did is you kinda just glanced around and you tried to size people up, and you're looking at, okay, there's a friend. Oh, there's a potential friend. I've heard about that. And another potential friend, do not get cornered by this person. I just, I don't establish eye contact.
And if you don't have anybody like that, it's because you are that person to somebody here. But but we size people up, and we immediately, we put them into categories. And there's some people we're excited about and there's other people we think that that person's just a hot mess, just avoid. How would you have sized up Levi? Because how you view people like Levi reveals once again just how much you believe in the transforming power of Jesus Christ.
Do you see who they are? Do you see who they will become with Jesus? Levi, let me tell you who he would go on to become. He's also known as Matthew. He's known as Matthew in the other gospels, but Levi, he would go on not only to follow Jesus.
He would eventually give his life as a martyr for Christ. He would also become the person who penned the very first book you have in the New Testament, the gospel of Matthew. The Lord would use this man to do extraordinary things. Knowing that Levi would go on to write the gospel of Matthew, one of the things I did when I was studying for this passage is I immediately went to Matthew because I wanted to read his own account of when Jesus called him to follow him. You know, is there gonna be some unique little personal details?
Is it gonna be like, and Jesus looked at me, and I gaze into his eyes. Is it gonna be, what is it gonna be? And so, I go there and I read about it, and honestly, I was disappointed because Matthew gives no personal details in his own account. It's pretty much exactly like Mark. But then I noticed something I never noticed before, where Matthew includes this story.
He includes it in the section of Matthew that's known as the miracles of Jesus. And it's when in chapters 89, Matthew just records miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle of Jesus. And so when you read through chapters in 89, what you find is, first Jesus heals the centurion's servant. And then He heals Peter's mother-in-law. Then He casts out a bunch of demons.
Then He calms the storm. Then he casts out more demons. Then he heals out the paralytic. And then the climax of them all is the call of Matthew. That's where Matthew sees it.
He's like, the calling of Jesus upon my life is the pinnacle of the miracles that Jesus did, that He would call me, that He would transform me to be a follower of Christ. I hope you see your conversion the same way. I hope you see the calling of Jesus the same way. It's a miracle and that one that you can never get over the fact that Jesus pursued you. Of all people, He pursued you.
Matthew is a tax collector. Tax collectors are not highly appreciated in that day. They they certainly, you know, they're not highly appreciated in our day. Anybody a tax collector? Anybody here work for the IRS?
You might, but you're not dare gonna let people know it because you want friends. 1st century tax collectors, they were social pariah. I mean, they were the lepers, social lepers of the day. And that's not an exaggeration because they actually have many things in common with a leper. If a tax collector were to come into your home, your home was declared unclean.
If you were to go into the home of a tax collector, you were considered unclean. If you became a tax collector, you immediately were forbidden of going to the temple. You were not even allowed to go to the local synagogue for worship. To be a tax collector was to remove yourself from the Jewish faith. Now, to understand why these people were so despised, you do have to understand a little bit about the 1st century tax collecting world.
I spent this past week just doing a deep dive into 1st century tax collecting. I did it so you don't have to. But if you have any questions about it, that was my world for a while. And so, there's 3 types of taxes that were collected in this day. First, you know, you had your just general census tax.
That was just a day's wage. Nothing big. You had a property tax. That was 10% of your earnings. And then He had something that was called a customs tax.
This was a tax for anybody who wished to use a Roman road and use it in order to take some goods from one village to another village in order to sell in the market. If you did that, you had to stop. It was essentially a toll booth. And you had to to pay a certain amount of taxes depending on how many goods you were taking on that road. Now the Romans, they didn't wanna do that themselves because people would hate them even more if they set up these booths everywhere, so they outsourced this.
They got Jewish people to do it to themselves, to be these tax collectors. And what they did is they would say, they'd look at a place like Capernaum and they would say, Capernaum for this size, we need to get about a $1,000,000 worth of taxes from Capernaum. And they would just open it up for a bid. Who wants to collect taxes for $1,000,000, like, and give us $1,000,000? And you'd have these really wealthy people or a group of wealthy people who would essentially act as some kind of like investment firm.
And they would go in together and they would say, we bid 1,200,000 for it. The Roman government says, great. And they would, upfront, give 1,200,000 to the Roman government. And then in turn, the Roman government would say, here's your license to collect taxes. Do what you will.
And so, of course, these people, they would want to cover their losses. They would want to make a profit. They would set up booths, these toll booths everywhere, but they were run kinda like mafia organizations, in which they would just extort people of ridiculous amounts of money. And so, what you would have is a situation like this. You could have, you know, maybe you're a fisherman in Capernaum, and you're just made a hole out of the Sea of Galilee, and you need to take it to another village to go sell your fish, and so you've gotta use a Roman road.
And so you go on it and the tax collector stops you and says, I see $1,000 worth of fish. Like, I've got 10 fish. And he's like, yeah. Exactly. You got $1,000 worth of fish, And there's nothing you could do about it.
Absolutely nothing you could do about it other than pay or go to prison. And so these these toll booths, they were everywhere. And Matthew or Levi, well, he's one of these tax collectors. Now keep in mind, who are the first four followers of Jesus? What was their profession?
Fishermen. They had likely had to pay Levi many times. I'm sure that they're wondering what the heck Jesus is doing in this moment. Levi worked for, you know, one of these tax collecting firms. There's another famous tax collector in the Bible, Zaccheus, who was a We little.
We little man. Good. I just I just wanted to hear you say it. Zacchaeus, he was You remember, says he was a chief tax collector, which meant he was a CEO of one of those companies. Levi, he's not a CEO of this investment firm here, but but he still would have been a wealthy person.
He still would have been a thief. Still would have lied. Still would have been been considered a turncoat for leaving the Jewish faith and going in work for the Romans. So befriending him would be like befriending Benedict Arnold. You just you just don't do it.
He was despised. Jesus looks at Levi and goes, just the person I'm looking for. Just the person. Come and follow me. We read that Levi instantly, he rose and he followed Jesus.
I doubt this was their first encounter. He's probably working at a booth, you know, maybe he could hear Jesus teaching every day. We're not really sure, but obviously, had to have some kind of familiarity with Jesus. But at some point, Jesus sees Levi and decides He's going straight there. And He goes, today's the day.
Follow me. You either keep your old life, or I'm gonna give you a new one. But you have to decide today. And it's a decision that Jesus offers each one of us. Do don't ever think of Jesus as like a a stop sign in the road.
He's not a stop sign in the road that you just pause and listen to. He's a fork in the road. And at some point, he's gonna tell you you have to decide, Follow me or go and do your own life. But you can't just forever just stay here listening. And here is Matthew's call.
Follow me or get on with your own life. And we read that Matthew followed Jesus. And there's no turning back for a person like Matthew. I mean, the other disciples right now, if this following Jesus thing doesn't work out, they go back to fishing. Not a big deal.
Well, I guarantee you that Levi, his his position was filled the next day. You you can't go back to this. There's no turning back when he left his job. But, he has no regrets. He leaves it, and the first thing he does is he has this big meal.
It looks like it's a celebratory dinner in which he invites Jesus to. He invites all these tax collectors, all of his friends to this feast. And I love it because you can really see Levi's transformed heart here. Jesus changed his life, and he wants Jesus to change the lives of his fellow workers and his friends. And I love this.
He didn't think inviting Jesus to a rowdy feast would be a killjoy. Let me tell you, pastors get very few invites. I mean, especially to like feasts like this. I mean, if somebody is, you know, is they're planning a wow, crazy party, There's drinking, there's dancing, there's CBD gummies, you know, being passed around. They're not thinking, you know what we need.
We need to invite the local pastor here. They they don't think that. But Jesus was the Lord of the feast. That's how He introduced Himself. Remember His first miracle in John 2?
This is how Jesus launches His public ministry. He goes to a wedding. He turns water into wine. He takes a mediocre party, and he turns it into a great party. He's the Lord of the feast.
Is that how you think of Jesus? Or do you think of Him as a killjoy? The reason that Jesus I mean, He would just light up a room. He would light up a party when He came into it, is because He actually seems to genuinely enjoy being with sinners. I mean by sinners here, I I don't mean people, just so you know, who occasionally sin.
That's not sinners. You you know sinners. Sinners. They're the irreligious, irreverent, low class, rowdy group of people. They go to NASCAR races.
Sit in there like the inner track. Come out with a bathrobe and a cigarette. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like those people, them Well, Jesus loved those people. Loved being with them, eating with them, hanging out with them.
But last night, I had a UCF reunion. That was the college ministry, University Christian Fellowship, that I used to be the director of. And it it was a great time. It was 25 years ago is when we had our 1st college bible study. And so I I just thought, 25 years is great.
I would love to do host this reunion. And so we had it. And it was so fun seeing everyone. And I made a point to call up a few people, here in Birmingham. And a number of you were at this last night, but I called up in particular a few people who I wanted to make sure they knew they were welcomed.
And they said they would not come. They said because they felt they no longer belonged. Just a few people, they said, you know, one person in particular said that they made a mess of their life. And they just they didn't want to they didn't wanna feel the the the glare of the people in the room. Like, this room's Jesus is a friend to sinners.
That's who Jesus is. Christians, we should be a friend to sinners. Jesus loves sinners. Hear me. If you want to avoid Jesus, avoid being around sinners because that's where Jesus tends to hang out.
Just just avoid sinners, put up a good moral front, act like your entire life is together. You do that, and you're likely never to encounter Jesus. But if you're open about the mess you are and the mess you've made with your life, Jesus is gonna come running. Because He loves sinners. In Matthew 11, Jesus says this about Himself.
He says the son of man, which remember we looked at all last week. He calls himself once again, He says the son of man, He came eating and drinking. And they said, look at him. A glutton. A drunkard.
A friend of tax collectors and sinners. I've been called a lot of things in my life. I've actually never been called a friend of sinners. The last conference that I spoke at when I was introduced, of course, for some reason, you have to introduce a person and and say all these like glowing things about them. And so, I'm introduced and you're like, you know, the founding pastor, Redeemer, the the the founding director of UCF.
And they go on to tell these other things. And and then, they end with and and and we've all been impacted by his preaching and teaching. This really glowing introduction. But you know what they didn't say? Here's Joel, a friend to sinners.
Actually, everything they said, and it dawned on me as they were saying it, every introduction they had to me could have been said of a Pharisee. Man, I would've given anything, but like, if if that's what I could be known as Joel, a friend to sinners. That's what Jesus. That's who He was. He was irresistibly drawn to those people.
And I hesitate to say what I'm next gonna say, because I don't want you to lose the shock value of who Jesus is and what he's doing. But I do feel like I I need to say this. Jesus didn't go to, you know, just party with sinners. He didn't go to just hang out with sinners. He went to call them to Himself, to call them to repentance.
His message to the tax collectors and to the sinners, it was the exact same as it was to everyone else. Repent and believe the gospel. Same message to everyone. Repent and believe the gospel. He did not preach, hey, I accept you just as you are.
You never need to change. No. He would say, I accept you as you are and I love you so much though, I want to change who you are. I want to change you. I love you so much, I will not leave you in the position you're in.
Come follow me. Luke's account of the story, makes it a little clearer. In Mark here, it ends with, you know, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. And Luke's account says, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. To repentance.
So Jesus, he's not just hanging out. He's calling these people out of their sin. He's calling them to himself. So so once again, yes, it's true. Jesus loves you just as you are, but it's also true that He loves you so much, He's not gonna leave you as you are.
He loves you, the sinner, but He does not love the sin that is absolutely killing you. He's gonna call you out of that. And I I say that, I hesitate to tell you this, to tell you that because I I don't want you to immediately go into that mode. Oh yeah. That's what I need to be doing.
I need to be pointing out people's sin. And I I don't want you to lose the shock value of what Jesus is doing, that he's hanging out with sinners. He's eating with them. And as followers of Jesus, we need to be doing the same. We need to be friends with people who are living lives that are offensive to us.
Are you are are you friends with people who are not just different from you, but friends with people who are living lives that are offensive to you? Once again, you You're not compromising your morals here, but you are showing them the love of Jesus. And is that what they feel when you're with them more than anything else, the love of Jesus. It's a hard line. I recognize, it's a hard line to be friends with with people who live lives that are offensive to you.
It's a it's a hard line to go to those gatherings in which sin is all around. Because what do you do? I'll tell you this, the primary thing once again that they need to feel is love. They likely already know how you stand, where you stand. The primary takeaway that they need to feel is love.
You don't have to point out every sin. As you're leaving the party, you don't have to say, hey, before I go, I just want you to know, you used the f bomb 55 times. Just wanna point that out, and don't think I didn't catch your 2 uses of the Lord's name in vain. And the whole gummy, you know, CBD gummy bear thing, it's a gateway drug, people. And I just I mean, I gotta say something.
Yeah. You don't have to do that. What you do need to do is as you are pursuing sinners who don't know Jesus, you're praying. Spirit, how would you have me love them? Is it is it just to enjoy being with another image bearer of God?
Or is this the time where I call them to a better life? Spirit, would you guide me? There's no formula. But we are trusting the spirit as we enter into those situations. So the Pharisees, though, as Jesus is pursuing these sinners, they have no idea what he's doing.
Pharisees often get a really bad rap from us 2000 years later. We immediately think of them as evil, but they were really trying to do the right thing, many of them. Like, they would study scripture. They were respected for their morality. The people loved them.
And they're looking at Jesus and they're like, what what is He doing? Like, who is He? He's hanging out with these people. I don't get it. Look at verse 16 and 17.
Says, and the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, he 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 of a physician, but those who were sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Let me ask you this. If Jesus didn't eat with sinners, who would Jesus eat with? It was either eat with sinners or eat alone.
But the Pharisees are like, not true. He could eat with us. He's not eat with that riffraff. He could eat with us. The problem with the Pharisees was that they saw other people as sinners, but they didn't see themselves as sinners.
They looked at Jesus and they thought, why is just Jesus eating with them? Why is He eating with those people? But they did not see themselves in the same category as those people, as sinners in desperate need of God's grace. Let me ask you, do you have a us, them mentality? Are there certain groups of people that you look down upon?
Whether it's something as simple as just like a different political party, you look down on everybody who's a part of that party, them. There's certain sins that you you really look down, whether it's addiction or somebody struggling with with a gender confusion or the LGBTQ community. Do you look at them and think, well, them, those sins are less respectable than my sins? Is that how you view it? There there is no us, and there is no them.
There there's no you need the gospel. It's we need the gospel. We all need the, we're all sinners in need of the transforming power of Jesus. There are only 2 types of people. There are those who recognize that they are sinners, and there's those who don't recognize that they are sinners.
But everyone is a sinner. And hear me. Jesus is irresistibly drawn to only one of those groups. And it's not those who refuse to recognize that they're a sinner. He is irresistibly drawn to those who know they're a hot mess.
So if you want to avoid seeing a doctor, what you need to do is just go on pretending like you are not sick. So, pretend you don't have a fever. You don't have any aches and pain. If you're up all night throwin' up, just take a breath mint and just go to work. You know, just just avoid it.
Just just pretend you are not sick at all, and then you'll go through life. You'll never have to see a doctor, but you will have to see a mortician at some point. But but you'll never go to the doctor. But if you want to see a doctor, just be honest about the aches and the pains. Acknowledge, I'm sick.
So hear me. Those who are in small groups or in your home group, if you do not want to experience Jesus, if you do not want to experience Him, then by all means, next home group, go in and pretend to be healthy. I mean, just go in. Come in each week. Maybe talk some sports.
Talk about how you are crushing it at work. How your marriage, it's just, it's beautiful, it's wonderful. Talk about how content you are in your singleness. Just pretend to be healthy and that every part of your life is completely perfectly put together. And then when it comes time to pray, I mean, don't go in deep.
You know, just keep it light. Pray for your great aunt's sick dog. Maybe some traveling mercies for the cool vacation you're about to go on. Certainly don't say, I need prayer for my porn addiction. Certainly don't say, hey, would you would you pray for us?
Our marriage, it's just, gosh, it is in such a hard spot. Now would you pray for me? I am so envious of one of my best friends. Like, I'm just, I'm envious of everything. It seems like everything's going their way and I just hate them for it.
They're my best friend. Would you pray that God would change my heart? You do that and Jesus runs to that room. Jesus loves hot messes. He's irresistibly drawn to people who are not saying hiding their sickness, hiding their sin, but like, this is who I am.
I'm no one apart from Jesus. When you expose your sin and you actually talk with those real things, Jesus says, that's my type of people And I will eat and I will drink with them. He is a friend to sinners. So would you be honest about who you are? And come let Jesus eat and heal you.
Pray with me, church. Once again, Jesus, the only reason we're here in this room is because you are a friend to us. Lord thank you for the way that you've loved us. You've loved us so much, you said, I'm not gonna leave them in their sin. I'm gonna call them out of it.
And you have made us family all through your your blood shed on our behalf. And that's what we go in this moment to celebrate and to remember the cost of our forgiveness, how you have brought the transforming power of your grace to us. Thank you, Jesus. And we pray this in your sweet name. Amen.