Well, friends, let me invite you to stand.
Let me invite you to stand as we turn to God's Word.
Our sermon passage this morning is found in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, verses 13 through 17.
That's page 786 in the Pew Bible, and we'll have it on the screen too.
Let me read our sermon text for us, and then I'll pray.
So this is Mark, chapter 2, verses 13 through 17.
He, that is 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 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 of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with tax collectors, 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.
Go ahead and take a seat.
Let me pray for us.
Father in heaven, let us hear what your Spirit is saying to us through this passage.
As we consider Jesus, give us eyes to see and hearts to believe in him,
that our lives might reflect him more and more as a church.
Amen.
So when it comes to becoming a follower of Jesus, how far is too far?
In other words, are there certain sins or flaws or addictions or lifestyles or backgrounds
that put someone beyond the reach or beyond the desire of Jesus and his kingdom?
Now, I think maybe we know the right answer intellectually,
but do we really believe that at the heart level?
And does our life together demonstrate it?
You know, in your head, you might say,
No one is too far gone for the grace of the Lord Jesus.
But at the heart level, maybe you feel like you're too far gone.
The things you've seen or done or the things that have been done to you
or how long you've been stuck, you might think,
Jesus couldn't call me or use me or accept me.
On the flip side, in your head, you might say,
No one's too far gone.
But at the heart level, you might look at other people
or other kinds of people and think,
They're certainly too far gone.
Given the things they've done or seen or been,
you think they could never be called or used or accepted by God.
But all this raises the deeper question.
Who did Jesus come for?
This morning, we're kind of jumping ahead a little bit in our series in Mark,
ahead to chapter 2 here,
and we see a story about just that.
Who did Jesus come for?
As he brought God's kingdom,
as he inaugurated the reign of God on earth,
who is it that Jesus came for?
And we see two things in this passage.
The first point we see here in our short text is this,
that Jesus came for sinners.
Jesus came for sinners.
We see this in the first few verses of the story,
which center on the call of Levi.
This scene immediately sort of reminds us of the calling of Simon and Andrew
and James and John from chapter 1.
Right?
Jesus meets them at their work.
He calls them to follow him,
and they immediately respond.
But of course, the new element here in this story is Levi's profession,
his job.
He's a tax collector.
Now, tax collectors were nearly universally despised in the first century.
Now, I know we have some people who in our community have worked for the IRS before.
I won't point them out.
But, you know, in our culture,
sometimes we have to really work up love for tax collectors.
But in the first century, it was utterly,
they were utterly despised,
especially by the upright, good, believing Jewish community.
Why?
Because on the one hand, what were they doing?
They were collecting taxes on behalf of Rome,
the pagan Gentile empire that held the Jewish people in nearly constant subjection.
And so these Jewish tax collectors,
they were agents of the oppressors against their own people.
But even more than that,
the way that tax collectors made their living
was by charging people more than Rome required
so that they could take that extra off the top and line their own pockets.
In other words, they would sort of get a contract from Rome
to collect taxes in a certain area
and then charge whatever they needed on top of what Rome required to make a fortune.
So they were profiting literally at their fellow Jews' expense.
In later Jewish tradition,
tax collectors would be lumped together
as morally equivalent to thieves and murderers.
A Jew who collected taxes was disqualified as a judge or a witness in court.
They were expelled from the synagogue
and they were a cause of disgrace to their family.
Again, in later Jewish tradition,
the touch of a tax collector rendered a house unclean.
Jews were forbidden to receive money or even alms from tax collectors
since revenue from taxes was considered robbery.
In short, tax collectors were considered the worst of the worst.
If there was anyone who was too far gone,
who had gone past the point of no return,
if there was anybody who had no place in God's kingdom,
no seat at the table of the king,
it was Levi,
the wretched tax collector
and all of those sinners who gathered around his table.
But what does Jesus do?
He says to Levi,
the same exact thing he said to Simon and Andrew and James and John,
follow me.
In other words, Jesus says,
I've come for them too.
There's no sin so bad that Jesus didn't come to rescue.
And that means no matter how deep or dark or stuck you feel in sin,
whether it's addiction or anger or bitterness,
Jesus calls to you and says,
I see you and I love you.
Come follow me.
Come sit at my table
and come dine with me.
If Jesus called Levi
and welcomed him to dine,
then he will and does call and welcome you too.
Jesus came for sinners.
And I think we can apply this in two ways.
First, Jesus came for sinners,
so come to him.
Of course, when you're that deep in something
that's so obviously despised,
one of the great barriers to coming to Jesus is shame.
Shame works in a lot of ways.
We feel shame because we've done something wrong.
We feel shame because others have told us we've done something wrong.
We feel shame sometimes because something wrong has been done to us.
Is it so hard to imagine Levi sitting at his tax booth,
seeing the disgust on his neighbor's faces as they passed him,
and feeling in the pang of his own heart what he's doing?
Is it so hard to imagine Levi sitting there gripped by shame?
It's not hard to imagine if you've ever been somewhere like that in his shoes.
But how does Jesus approach Levi?
The same way he approached everyone else.
He called him and he communed with him.
Jesus sat down at his table
and ate his meal with his friends
as if to say,
I love you, Levi,
no matter what you've done.
Let me cover your shame.
Now, does Jesus approve of Levi's sin?
Is the point of this story that tax collecting
and wronging other people
and cheating others is okay in Jesus' eyes?
No.
Jesus didn't come to approve sin,
nor did he come to judge,
but to heal.
He's a great physician.
You know, if you go to a doctor,
if you go to a doctor,
they're not going to say,
you know, you have cancer.
Congratulations!
Just be yourself and you'll be okay.
Right?
But nor will they say,
you have cancer.
How dare you get out?
You have no place here.
Instead, they'll say,
here's the news.
You have cancer.
Let's begin the process of healing.
It's the same with the great physician, Jesus.
He's looking at you and me and saying,
let's begin a journey
of grace-fueled recovery
from all of sin's chains.
Jesus came for sinners,
and if that's you,
then come to him.
But I think we can apply this point
in a second way.
Briefly, Jesus came for sinners,
so we should go with him.
We should be willing to meet people
where they are with the love of Christ.
Does that mean we should join people
in their sin in order to win them for Christ?
Well, notice,
Jesus is eating with Levi and his friends.
He's not sinning with them, right?
Jesus didn't start collecting taxes
in order to call and commune with Levi.
He didn't start frequenting brothels
to call and commune
with the so-called sinners
around Levi's table,
but Jesus did find ways
to connect and call
and commune with us.
He wasn't afraid to be seen with us.
He wasn't afraid to engage with us,
even in our sin.
And if you look at your life,
I'm sure you can see many ways
to follow Jesus
in his loving pursuit of the lost,
whether it's at the local gym
or the local school
or the roommates right under your roof.
How can you be showing
this love of Jesus
to those around you?
Jesus came for sinners,
so we should come to him
and we should go with him.
But, you know,
there's another important piece
of our passage.
We see in the calling of Levi
that Jesus came for sinners,
sinners, but we see in the second half
of this passage
that Jesus came for sinners
and only sinners.
Jesus came for sinners only.
Let's look again at verse 16.
Mark says,
the scribes,
that is the legal experts
of the Pharisees,
you know,
those Pharisees
who were legal experts,
when they saw that Jesus
was eating with tax collectors
and sinners,
said to his disciples,
why does he do that?
Why does he eat
with tax collectors and sinners?
Now, the Pharisees
were sort of like a movement
in first century Judaism,
a movement that valued
the law of God
and sought to keep it
as best they could.
So what they did was
they developed traditions
about things that you should
or should not do
so that you wouldn't get anywhere
even close
to breaking God's law.
They would put sort of
this hedge of rules
around the law,
extra requirements,
so that if you kept
those extra requirements,
then you wouldn't be anywhere near
to breaking God's law.
Then you would be set apart.
Then you would be pure,
which is maybe
where the name Pharisee
comes from,
the separated ones,
the pure ones.
And when they hear
that Jesus,
this popular teacher
who himself is getting
quite a movement
of his own,
when they hear
that he's eating
with tax collectors
and sinners,
they're offended.
They're scandalized.
That is not what good people
and good teachers do,
they think.
You don't welcome
and commune
with people like that.
Those people
are the very problem.
They're the very people
we're trying not to be like,
according to the Pharisees.
But this Pharisaical heart,
it wasn't just a problem
in the first century.
It lives on,
doesn't it?
Some people are afraid
to come to church
because they think
they'll be judged.
But some people
are all too ready
to come to church
because they think
they get to judge.
Of course,
Christians are called
to holiness of life.
But it's very easy
for pride to creep in.
We catch ourselves thinking,
if I raise my kids right,
they won't be like that.
I've worked hard
to get where I am.
They must just be lazy.
If that person
really believed,
they wouldn't be
struggling like that.
The heart of the Pharisee,
if we're honest,
creeps in the corners
of all of our hearts.
And what does Jesus say to us?
Verse 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.
Now,
what's Jesus' point?
Does Jesus' reply here
mean that there are
actually some people
who are righteous,
who are spiritually healthy enough
so that they don't need him?
No,
that's not Jesus' point.
Rather,
Jesus is saying,
if you want to sit
at my table,
if you want to sit
at my table
and dine with me
in my kingdom,
then you have to take
the seat of a sinner.
You must sit
in the seat
reserved for sinners only
if you're going to sit
at this table at all.
Jesus is confronting
the Pharisee
in all of us,
confronting our self-righteousness.
If you continue
to cling
to your own
moral record
as that which
puts you apart
from anyone else,
if you don't admit
that you need
as radical a rescue
as the most obvious
moral failure,
then you will stand
outside the feast
that Jesus has come
to bring.
In other words,
Jesus is asking us
to do something
that is radically
undoing
for so much
of our identity.
You have to admit
you're a sinner
just like Levi
and his friends.
You see,
we like to divide
the world
into the good people
and to the bad people,
don't we?
We're very good at that.
These are the good people,
these are the bad people,
but according to the Bible,
there aren't good people
over there
and bad people
over there.
No,
we're all made
in the image of God
full of dignity
and worth
and we are all
sinful and broken
and in need
of a radical rescue.
But how could a Pharisee
like you and me
ever admit that?
How could we
when so much
of our time
and energy
is spent
trying to bolster
a sense
that if we achieve enough
and have done enough
and have loved enough,
then we are something.
We spend so much
of our time
trying to do that
through our achievements
and what we've done
and who we are
and what we follow.
Would it not utterly
undo us
to admit
that we're sinners?
But listen,
the one who is calling you
to admit
that you need
this radical rescue,
the one who says
you have to admit
that you're a sinner,
you have to identify
with them,
sit down in their seat,
the one who says that
is the one
who himself
has also done that.
The Lord Jesus
is the only one
who is ever truly
without sin.
He was more righteous
than the Pharisees
could ever imagine.
But he puts himself
in the seat
of a sinner.
Don't you see
what's happening
on the cross?
The righteous one
is putting himself
in the place
of the unrighteous.
He takes all
of our sin
and he takes
all of our shame
willingly
on himself
to give us
in exchange
the favor
and acceptance
of God.
He takes all
of our shame
and says,
here is favor.
God's
pronouncement.
It was God's
public
pronouncement
of favor
and acceptance
proclaiming to the world,
this is my beloved
son
in whom
I'm well pleased
and that favor
and acceptance
is freely given
to all
who trust
in him.
So don't you see
what he's done
for you
and for me?
He sat down
in the seat
of your sin
so that you can
sit down in it too
so that you can
admit your need
so that you can
confess that you
too are a sinner
but because of the cross
when you sit down
in that seat
you find that it's
not a seat
in the courtroom.
It's not a seat
of condemnation
but you sit down
and it's a seat
at the banquet.
It's a seat
of forgiveness
and favor
and freedom.
At first
the call of Jesus
sounds like
the very undoing
of our identity.
Wait,
I have to admit
that I'm so lost
that I need someone
to rescue me?
It sounds like
it's going to undo us
but what you find
is that it's not
your undoing
it's your very
liberation.
It's your freedom.
It's the joy
of sitting
at the banquet
with the king
with no more hiding
and no more performing
and no more pretending
surrounded by others
who are also done
hiding
and performing
and pretending.
No longer defined
by their shame
or by their self-righteousness
but defined
by the grace of God.
Could that be us
as a church?
Where the love
of God in Christ
is so real
and powerful
that we're no longer
ruled by shame
or self-righteousness
but we all sit down
at this table together
as sinners
saved by grace?
Where we really
believe in our hearts
that no one
is too far gone
to be welcomed
by the gospel
and where we're
willing to commune
with each other
on this long road
of God's transforming grace?
Could that be us?
Maybe we're not
all the way there yet.
In fact,
we're always going
to have room
to grow.
But that's where
the gospel's taking us
because that's why
Jesus came.
Not for the righteous
but for sinners.
Let's pray.
Father in heaven,
Lord,
I know that many
of my friends
in this room
and many that
I haven't met yet,
Lord,
I know that many
of us are wrestling
with shame.
Lord,
help us to see
the love of Christ
with a fresh clarity
this morning
who comes to us
where we are
and speaks those
loving and embracing
words,
come follow me.
Lord,
and I pray
that by your spirit
we would all
know the reality
of that radical grace
and you would continue
to drive
self-righteousness
from our hearts
to make us
into a community
of real
welcome
and transforming
grace.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.