District Council Monday Night 5/1/2017 - Dennis
Marquardt
basic idea of sermon
contributed by Ricky Ryan
“SUPPER WITH
SINNERS!”
TEXT: Mark 2:13-17;
Lk. 15:1-2
INTRO: We are living in a time when
the Church is trying to define how to deal with our culture without compromising
our understanding of the Bible. How
does God’s people act in a culture adrift as ours currently is today? These are serious questions that need
serious answers.
Too many times the church is known for what it stands
against, instead of what it stands for.
The world often defines us by our views of morality which we know are
honestly out of touch with their own views, and so they despise us. So do we shut down, withdraw from them,
seek to protect our ability to be different? Or do we discover what it means to be
the body of Christ in a world that desperately needs the healing power of Jesus
Christ in their hearts and lives?
PROP.
SENT: This passage of
Scripture will teach us that the work of evangelism rarely happens when we so
separate ourselves from the world that they can’t see Jesus in us. Church is not meant to be a country club
for believers, it is meant to be a hospital for the
sick.
I. THE
A.
Reaching The Lost! Mk. 2:13; Mk.
2:2-12
1. No theme in the Bible is more
evident than God trying to reach the
lost.
2. And how did God often reach out to
people? He did it through other
people in most accounts.
a. Passionate Faith: Just before our text we read the story
of 4 men who had a paralyzed friend that they desperately wanted to bring to
Jesus.
b. Forceful Faith:
The crowd was so large they couldn’t get the man inside the house
to Jesus, but theses 4 friends were undeterred, they tore up the roof so they
could lower him down in front of
Jesus.
c. Rewarded Faith:
It took 4 friends to get one man to
Jesus!
3. Almost Jesus’ entire ministry was
outside of the synagogue and temple!
Today, most ministries to sinners are expected to happen inside church
buildings.
4. It is interesting that when Jesus
was in public large crowds ALWAYS came to Him - it was true in the house where
the paralytic man was brought, and now it is true as Jesus goes down by the lake
in Capernaum.
a. The real Jesus attracts people, it
is not Jesus people reject most of the time; it is His people acting badly that
cause people to reject Christianity many
times.
b. I am convinced that this world
would not reject a vibrant Christian witness if we were passionate followers of
Christ, and passionate lovers of
sinners.
B.
Reaching Levi! Mk.
2:14
1. Jesus was walking through large
crowds on the lakeshore, and comes upon the owner of one of the most lucrative
tax franchises in the
2. FACTS
ON JEWISH TAX COLLECTORS:
a. Tax collectors were approved by
b. So, in Israel Jews were given the
right to own a franchise, and they were hated by the Romans because they weren’t
Romans, and hated by the Jews because they were seen as traitors to their own
Jewish people.
c. Levi owned one of the most
lucrative franchises, in a major city like Capernaum with the right to be in the
most populated area, lakeshore.
d. They not only taxed what the
Roman’s said was the tax to be paid; they were given the right to tax about
anything else they wanted and could get away with. Some of the things Levi could
tax:
(1. Taxed fish caught on the
lake
(2. Taxed any goods you were carrying with
you
(3. Taxed slips in the lake, and charged boat
fees as taxes
(4. Taxed use of the
shoreline
(5. Taxed travel routes,
etc.
(6. Thus, Levi’s booth on the shoreline was
the perfect spot since it often had large crowds, with goods on
hand.
e. Owning a franchise was a license
for extortion!
f. Roman soldiers often stood
near the booths in order to arrest those who wouldn’t
comply.
g. A tax collector was allowed to
search anyone except a Roman lady.
Some ancient documents said that some tax collectors in
h. There are even reports that when a
village during hard times heard a tax collector was coming to their village they
would all pack up and leave their village to start a new one somewhere
else!
i. Some people learned to pay
tax collectors bribes in order to be taxed at lower rates and tariffs on goods
they had with them.
j. They along with Shepherds
were the only class of people not allowed to testify in a court of law because
their testimony was considered
unreliable.
k. The ONLY friends tax collectors had
were other tax collectors. It was a
very lonely and empty life. This
may explain the quick response of Levi when Jesus deliberately approaches Him
with an invitation to come and follow
Him.
3. Consequences for Levi being a tax
collector:
a. He was cut off completely from his
fellow Jews
b. He was cut off from his family
since they were Jews
c. He was cut off going to the temple,
thus forgiveness for his sins were impossible since that happened in the
temple,
d. He was cut off from God therefore,
no possible avenue for salvation!
e. He was cut off from Romans who
despised him as well.
* THIS MEANT HE WAS
THE MOST HATED MAN IN
4. Jesus utters only two words to
Levi: “Follow
me”
a. Those two words however said
something powerful to Levi!
(1. Jesus noticed him, and as a fellow Jew
Jesus was not rejecting him!
(2. Jesus wanted him, a wicked no good sinner
was being asked to spend time with the very Son of
God!
(3. Those words meant Levi had a possible
future other than being hated, Jesus accepted him as he currently
was.
(4. This meant Levi was worth something, God
desired him – he was being valued by
Jesus.
(5. It also meant Levi was willing to walk
away from the amazing wealth and power he had amassed to date to just be with
Jesus! He was more desirous for
meaning than money!
b. I suspect this is true of a lot of
sinners today who pretend to be happy and despise religion. If they met real Christians who
reflected the heart of God toward them they would come to understand how
powerfully attractive the Gospel of Jesus Christ really
is!
ILLUS: If you can
really make a man believe you love him, you have won him; and if I could only
make people really believe that God loves them, what a rush we would see for the
C.
Righteous Leverage! Mk.
2:15
1. Jesus joins Levi and all his sinner
friends for supper – and brings His disciples along
also!
a. This meal was obviously planned by
Levi to allow his friends to meet Jesus the same way he
had.
b. There was no lecture about going to
synagogue to find out about God, or contacting the local priest (besides, as a
tax collector he couldn’t do this
anyway).
c. Jesus sits with him and his friends
deliberately. By the way, this was
no seeker friendly evangelism; Jesus has them identified in the text clearly as
“sinners.”
2. Levi wants to give his friends the
same opportunity and to share with them why he left the tax booth
immediately.
a. This is the way evangelism works
today too
b. Too many long term Christians
however have no sinner friends anymore, hence why in older churches it takes as
many as 60 believers to make one new convert, while in a new church plant it
takes only 2-4 believers, in a new church there are usually new believers who
still are networked to sinful
friends!
ILLUS:
From time
to time we hear statistics about how people first came into church membership.
These figures trace back to the Institute for
c. How can we in the church today make
friends with sinners?
d. It really isn’t the pastors job to
get people saved, it is the church people’s responsibility to do that, “sheep beget
sheep, not shepherds.”
e. Churches today are more like
country clubs that allow “members only” with rights and privileges for those
members. It is however supposed to
be a hospital for sinners.
3. By the way, you can tell which kind
of church you have, a country club or hospital by asking one simple
question: “What do you
love about your church?”
a. Country club answers go like
this:
(1. I love the music; it is just what I
want.
(2. I love the programs; so many good things
for our membership.
(3. I love the pastor – he/she is amazing –
meets all my needs! (ok, you can still love them even in a spiritual
hospital!)
(4. I love our facilities – just feel at home
and so spiritual in this place.
(5. I just love all my brothers and sisters,
just one big happy family
b.
(1. I love seeing people following Christ in
discipleship
(2. I love helping new believers grow in
faith
(3. I love our outreach programs where we
touch real people in real ways.
(4. I love the pastor – he/she is amazing –
challenging us all the time to touch our neighbors and
friends
4. You can bet that Levi’s tax
collecting friends wanted to hear from this Jesus who caused one of their most
powerful and wealthy friends to simply walk away from his tax collecting booth
with only two words, “Follow
Me.”
5. It is noteworthy that vs 15 ends with “for there were
many who followed him” referring back to the tax collectors and
sinners!
6. These sinners were worthy of Jesus’
presence and love. Are we showing
that to sinners today still?
II. THE MESS! Mk
2:16-17
A.
Religious Leaders! Mk.
2:16
1. The so called “spiritual leaders”
in town are disgusted by this display of Jesus eating and fraternizing with
sinners, much less tax collectors.
a. Notice however that they don’t take
their complaint directly to Jesus; they instead take it to Jesus’
disciples.
b. The obvious intent of this was to
get the disciples to doubt they are following a good example, to create discord
among the disciples.
(1. Church people can still do this today,
rather than directly speak to the pastor about some new plan to reach sinners,
they simply question the integrity of the new plan with other members in the
church! They might call it “social
Gospel” as a criticism.
(2. This is the divide and conquers technique
used by so many self-righteous people today
too.
2. These religious leaders were upset
that “good Jewish” men like the disciples were rubbing shoulders with wicked
sinners and participating with defiled food and
drink.
a. Eating with someone was considered
making a binding friendship with them in antiquity. So much so that one ancient writer
recorded that two warriors who had been fighting with each other discovered
during the fight that their fathers had at one time sat down and eaten a meal
together, they immediately ceased all hostilities from that moment. Their families were bound in friendship
because of their father’s shared meal in the past.
b. Even so, they were clearly more
concerned about the appearance of evil than they were of the salvation of wicked
sinners!
c. We can do this today too; become so
concerned about what something might look like that we forget the lost soul we
are reaching out to.
ILLUS: Dan
Betzer’s Women’s Ministries Group at Fort Meyer A/G years ago. When strip clubs
opened up near the church some people felt it was necessary to call the local
press to watch them protest with signs and advocate for these clubs to be shut
down, didn’t want this evil near the church. The elderly WM director was asked to
come up with a better plan. The
ladies of the church decided to instead have their WM president go the Friday
night strip show and when the girls were done with their act go back and give
them some expensive gifts with a note that says, “You are loved.” The WM president when giving a gift to a
stripper witnessed the stripper break down and cry on the spot, and she asked
the WM president, “Lady, are you an angel of God?” She of course said, “No, why would you
ask that?” The stripper then told
her this, “I had planned to commit suicide tonight after my act, I’m worthless …
but I had prayed to God and asked, ‘Lord, if you are real would you send an
angel to save me before I kill myself.’ Lady, you must be an angel!” It was long before all the strippers
from the clubs near the church were saved and the clubs closed on their own for
lack of dancers.
d. They had taken their mistaken
concept of spirituality from Isa. 52:11 and
restated in 2 Cor. 6:17 that says, “Come out from
among them, and be ye separate, said the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing;” However, this wasn’t about
spending time with sinners, it was about letting sinners defile you - it was
about when Isaiah prophesied about Israel coming out of Babylonian captivity and
being restored as God’s people. To
quote it about being around sinners is an improper application, Jesus Himself
spent a great deal of time with sinners, but he didn’t become one of them, and
we should keep ourselves clean too among
them!
e. The religious leaders felt like
Jesus was “endorsing sinners and sin” – but that was hardly the case since He referred
to them as “sinners” – but He considered them worthy of His time and love,
genuine love and not coerced love.
f. “THE MESSAGE” version
translates the last part of vs 16 this way, “what kind of
example is this, acting cozy with the riffraff?” Their attitude toward sinners was
horrible! No wonder they had few
converts!
B.
Righteous Love Mk.
2:17
1. Jesus obviously overheard their
comments to His disciples and He quickly addresses their
complaint.
2. Jesus in addressing it clarifies
the motive of why He was doing what He was doing; He had come for those who
needed a doctor, the sick, not the
healthy.
a. Clearly Jesus saw them as sinners,
there was no trying to water down their label as sinners – but He also clearly
loved these sinners and this was proven by the fact He wanted to spend time with
them and give their lives value – something the Jewish leaders would never
do.
b. Most sinners know they are sinners
by the way, Jesus didn’t need to name call them, or refer to them openly as
wicked sinners, their lives were empty and full of self-loathing, they had no
meaning past making money.
c. Jesus was offering them love and
hope, for something much better.
d. Levi got this immediately when
Jesus offered for him to “follow him” –
without hesitation Levi walked out of his booth and followed Jesus. Now Jesus wanted to help Levi bring his
friends down the same path.
e. There was no compromising going on
here, just healing for the sick.
3. The religious people were more
concerned about preserving their purity and rules rather than loving the
lost!
a. What about us
today?
b. Are we more concerned about sinners
winning our culture wars in
c. Are we more concerned about
“rights” we have than the right to life in Christ for those who are still
lost?
d. Aren’t we called to give up all
rights to self to bring the Gospel to the
lost?
e. Are political concerns more
important than spiritual concerns?
ILLUS: A wealthy
university graduate chose to live frugally in a single room, cooking his own
meals. As a result he was able to give two million dollars to foreign missions.
In explanation of his choice he wrote these words: "Gladly would I make the
floor my bed, a box my chair, and another box my table, rather than men should
perish for want of knowledge of Christ." I am not suggesting that all Christians
are called upon to forfeit the normal comforts of life; only, when God calls
them to a life of sacrifice, they be willing to leave all and follow
Him.
4. You will note in Jesus’ answer that
He was not watering down anything about these sinners; they are called sinners
by Him.
a. If you mean by “seeker friendly”
ignoring sin and just getting a crowd, I’m against it, but if you mean by
“seeker friendly” loving sinners and helping them see real Christians being like
Christ, bring it on!
b. Jesus statement about why He came
is set so clearly; He came for the lost, and He feels no shame in going to them
and restoring them by touching their lives in a way that gives their lives true
lasting meaning, and forgiveness of
sins.
5. Heaven will be our Country Club
model for the Church, but on earth it is a healing place, a hospital for sinners
to find healing for their souls, and bodies. The defining power of being a Christian
is our love for people; Jesus said this is how all men would know that we are
His, that we love one another!
CONCLUSION:
So, what are we going to do about all this? Maybe we the Church need to ask
forgiveness for our willingness to be safe in our churches rather than engaging
our culture. Maybe we should take
the initiative in asking God’s forgiveness for behaving badly instead of bad
mouthing sinners for behaving badly.
Maybe the church needs a new heart for lost people, and then do something
about it. Just a few amens to a
sermon or a few moments at the altar won’t be
enough.