Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Please take your Bibles and open them to Mark 2, Mark 2. It is a joy as always to have all of you with us this morning.

We’ve had so much going on here and none of it could be accomplished without your continued participation and support.

We know that God is the One Who is in control and that all that is happening is for the accomplishment of His plans and designs but He has chosen to move through His people to work here in Spokane Valley and we greatly appreciate your continued willingness to fulfill what He has put on your hearts.

If you’re joining us online we are so thankful that you have and we are privileged to be worshipping with you this morning.

Jesus has started to turn a little bit of a corner in His ministry as Mark has recorded it for us.

He’s starting to get Himself into a bit of trouble.

Christ’s ministry had been going pretty well and being well received until He returned to Capernaum and had the audacity to heal a paralytic.

It really wasn’t the healing that ruffled to establishment’s feathers so much as Christ had the audacity to do what, up until that point, only God could do - He pronounced the man’s sins forgiven.

In so doing He put Himself on the same level as God.

Really this is the root of all the conflicts that He would have with the Pharisees and the other religious leaders up until the time they will crucify Him.

Today we’re going to come to see the face of the conflict - and not really so much the face in the singular but rather the faces of the conflict because there will be many of them.

The question we’re going to see addressed through this text this morning is really “who can be saved” or is there anyone who is beyond saving.

The question wasn’t really all that original to Jesus day.

The Old Testament book of Jonah is a corpus on the salvation of a people who the prophet didn’t really want to be saved or didn’t want salvation offered to.

In chapter 4 of that book he complains to God

Jonah wanted to die himself rather than to see the salvation of the city of Nineveh.

The same attitude is evident in our day as well.

Maybe you can think of someone in your own life who you might think - there’s no way that person could or should be saved.

How often have you been witnessing to someone and the question gets asked - and they always think its such an original question - “Well could Hitler have been saved?”

Or “Could Charles Manson be saved?”

I’m just going to let those questions linger for a few minutes as we turn to the text.

You already have your Bibles open to Mark 2, let’s take a look at verses 13-17.

Mark 2:13-17.

If you don’t have a Bible they’ll be up on the screen behind me.

I’m sure that you probably didn’t need me to read the text to give an answer to the questions that I posed just a moment ago - but I’m still not going to answer them.

We’re going to see several distinctions in this text this morning that will lead us to the answer to an even more fundamental question than “Could Hitler have been saved?”

And we’re going to see this in three contrasts that this text lays out for us.

First we’re going to see the contrast between the crowd and the called in verses 13-14.

Then we’ll see a contrast between the pharisees and the publicans in verses 15-16.

And finally we’ll see a contrast between the sick and the saved in verse 17.

The Crowd and The Call

Jesus is back out by the sea shore, teaching as He goes along.

This would most likely have been the same general location where He had called Peter, Andrew, James and John.

And as usual His presence has gathered a substantial crowd.

As we continue to explore and study the book of Mark it is instructive to us to note the prevalence of a crowd around Jesus.

Thirty nine times in thirty six verses in Mark he mentions the presence of a crowd.

The majority of these are passages about Jesus teaching, healing or feeding the crowd.

Also in many of those passages we see Jesus moving from ministry to the crowd to ministry to an individual - almost as if Mark is trying to drive home the point that John will bring out later in his Gospel

The crowd’s reason for looking for Jesus was genuine.

They were genuinely in awe of Him and His teachings, they were genuinely in need of His healings but they never seem to move beyond the awe struck stage or the needy stage.

The crowds give us an illustration of those who are just after what Jesus can give them rather than actually seeking Jesus Himself.

Most of the instances that Mark highlights the ministry of Christ to an individual, that individual is a part of the crowd or is brought to Christ in some way.

The incident that immediately precedes this one involving the paralytic - he is brought to Jesus.

This morning’s incident is brought about completely by the will of Jesus.

Look with me at the text.

Jesus went out again beside the sea.

The whole crowd was coming to Him, and He was teaching them.

Many times rabbis would teach as they walked along from place to place.

This seems to be what Christ is doing here - somewhat like a doctor makes His rounds through the hospital teaching residents as they go, Christ was walking along the sea shore and through Capernaum teaching as He went.

This mornings lessons would provide a very intriguing subject.

Then, passing by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the toll booth.

The location of Capernaum on the north eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee made it a prime location for tax collection.

There was a major thoroughfare that ran from the Decapolis to the East and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.

It would be much like I-90 running from Seattle to Idaho - everything has to pass through Spokane, everything had to pass through Capernaum.

The Roman tax system had taxes for many different facets of life.

There were poll taxes that every man and woman was required to pay, income taxes, sales taxes, land taxes as well as custom taxes or taxes on transporting goods from place to place.

Unlike our tax system that is managed by the state or the IRS, the Romans would sell tax franchises to individual - especially in the area of sales or customs taxes.

They would prescribe a certain quota that each franchise was required to make but that was only a minimum.

There was no maximum set for how much a particular toll collector could charge and so anything that he chose to exact above the minimum prescribed was his to keep.

The men who chose this profession were very unpopular with their neighbors.

In a sense they became functional lepers - they weren’t allowed to attend the synagogue, they couldn’t serve as judges or witnesses in court.

In fact most self respecting Jews wouldn’t even speak to a toll collector.

And really most of these men probably didn’t care much.

Levi was sitting at his toll booth much like Scrooge of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” busily counting his money and he may or may not have even noticed the crowd or the rabbi that was coming towards him.

Even if he did notice them he would have rightly expected them to just pass by without even taking notice of him as they always did.

But this time was different.

Jesus stops.

Jesus, who wasn’t concerned with touching a leper, stops to address a social leper.

Jesus is surrounded by a crowd - and while most of them didn’t understand His real mission or much of His teaching, their very presence showed a desire to be near Him and to be a part of whatever it was that He was doing.

And yet He stops at the booth of a toll collector who, up until this particular moment, could care less about religion, Jesus or what this new rabbi was doing.

He wasn’t in awe of the events that had been happening around Capernaum.

They were remarkable events - a woman with fever healed, unclean spirits cast out, a paralytic not only healed but his sins were forgiven and here is Levi sitting as he always had at his toll booth ready to exact his next tax from the next traveller who came along the road.

If he had taken time to look at the approaching crowd, he probably would have dismissed them because there was no financial gain opportunity for him.

But, Jesus stops.

And more than simply stopping He speaks - “Follow Me.”

We’ve heard these two words before.

They were issued to Peter and Andrew, to James and John on the very same sea shore only weeks before.

The implications of these words have lost none of their weight in the intervening time.

In fact in this instance their weight is even heavier.

Follow Me - this is not a request this time any more than it was last time but the consequences for Levi are much graver than they were for Peter and friends.

You see, the tax collection business was a profitable enterprise that once left would be impossible to return to.

If Levi gets up from his table, if he abandons his booth to follow Jesus there is no coming back.

The other disciples can always go back to fishing (John 21:3), but not so a toll collector who abandons his post.

More than just that there wouldn’t be a whole lot of other employment opportunities for someone who had once been viewed as a traitor to his own nation.

When I was in the military we were often told about the consequences of getting a bad conduct discharge or worse a dishonorable discharge.

There was a code entered into your DD-214 and according to one source this has dire consequences for your employment opportunities.

Individuals with these types of discharges can expect to experience considerable prejudice shown by future employers due to the nature of their discharge and once again they are generally precluded from receiving veteran's benefits of any variety.

Yet we see no internal debate, no delay, Mark tells us simply that Levi gets up from his desk and follows Jesus.

The disinterested is now interested.

This is a living example of what Paul would write later in his letter to the Ephesians

Levi was a dead man sitting there on the sea shore collecting tolls for Rome and cheating his fellow citizens.

He had zero interest in the Jewish religion or religious system but instead was serving his god of money.

Christ comes along and issues a command - Follow Me - and Levi’s life is instantly, completely changed.

And there is no going back.

So what do you do when you take a torch to your entire livelihood?

You throw a party of course....well in Levi’s case it was a banquet.

The Pharisees and the Publicans

Mark moves the text on to tell us that Jesus is reclining at the table in Levi’s house.