Sermon Tone Analysis

A Scandalous Friendship

Mark 2:13–17

The essence of believing in Christ is believing, first of all, that you are a sinner, hopeless, not redeemable by any of your own works.

Cultural Comments

The Savior, the Messiah had come into the world in our time, to our country in the year 2022.

He had come for the reason that He came then, to be a sacrifice for sin.

If indeed He had come at this time in this place, to die, He would have been killed for the opposite reason that He was killed in first century Israel … the very opposite reason.

Then and there in first century Israel, He was rejected, He was despised, He was hated and He was murdered.

And the reason?

He was not religious enough.

That was the reason.

By standards of the Jewish religious leaders, predominantly the Pharisees, He was not holy enough … if holy at all.

He was not righteous enough, if righteous at all.

He was not demanding enough, He was not legalistic enough, He was not condemning enough.

He was not tolerable … intolerant enough.

He was not judgmental enough.

He was not separatistic enough.

He was sub-par to a dominantly religious world view.

Now if Jesus came today to our country in our time, He would be way too holy, far too righteous, too demanding, too legalistic, too condemning, too intolerant, too judgmental and far too separatistic, homophobic for sure, a purveyor of hate speech- deny yourself pick up your cross and follow me And our generation would kill Him for that … the very opposite, two different perspectives, two different societies in two different times.

Our culture is highly secular and extremely immoral.

Their culture was highly religious and extremely moral.

We would hate Jesus for condemning good people.

They hated Him for forgiving bad people.

[1] or he is reconstructed

Jesus is a Friend of Sinners

Mark 2:13–15 (ESV)

13 He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them.

14 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.

15 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.

Commentary

In Capernaum, His headquarter town, the town where Peter and Andrew lived and had a house … most likely He had been in that house teaching, doing healing miracles, and there it was that He healed the paralytic who came down through the roof.

He went out again by the seashore, again because He did this very, very often.

Much of His teaching was outdoors because they couldn’t confine the crowd to a house and that was the reason He left the house on this occasion.[2] … most likely He had been in that house teaching, doing healing miracles, and there it was that He healed the paralytic who came down through the roof.

If you were a tax collector, you were the worst of the worst of the worst.

Now this man, his father’s name is Alphaeus, we don’t know anymore about him.

That’s a common name.

Two of the disciples had a father named Alphaeus, but it’s such a common name, it wouldn’t be necessarily the same Alphaeus.

But you don’t know this man is Levi, you know him as Matthew because in the account in Matthew, Matthew writing the account in Matthew, calls himself Matthew.

How did his name get from Levi to Matthew?

I don’t know, we don’t have any record in the Scripture.

My guess is that Matthew changed his name.

I mean, if you had been a tax collector, it might be good for your future to alter your identity.

It might save your hide.

And if he did choose his own name, he chose well, it means gift of the Lord … for he had been given a gift of the Lord in the gift of salvation.[3]

The way the life of a tax collector worked was Rome offered tax franchises and they were sold to the highest bidder.

So you had to have some money to get one and once you got one, it was just a way to make a fortune.

Now sitting in this tax booth is a man named Levi, so he’s Jewish, obviously, which means he sold his soul to the Romans for money.

The Romans are idolaters, the Romans are hated by the Jews.

They are Gentiles, they are unclean.

They despise them.

There’s a general hatred for Herod Antipas as well because he’s a non-Jew.

And here is someone who has sold his soul to these Gentiles, these unclean for the sake of extorting money out of Jews.

This is utterly amazing, for of all the people in Capernaum, Levi was the most unacceptable to be one of Christ’s disciples!

Jesus sought out the man no one else wanted, the one everyone else wished would fall under the immediate wrath of God.

This, of course, was to become one of the trademarks of Jesus’ ministry, as such notables as Mary Magdalene and many other nameless men and women would attest.

Jesus saw a man in Levi, not a category, and he knew what that man could become.

This is a scandalous, scandalous act on the part of Jesus that shows His total disregard for religious, societal sensibilities.

What teacher who calls himself the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, who is holy and righteous would ever, ever, ever call into His company a tax collector.

One historian says, “The Mishnah and the Talmud, though written later, register scathing judgments on the tax collector,

lumping the tax collector with thieves and murderers.

The touch of a tax collector rendered a house unclean.

Jewish contempt of tax collectors is epitomized in the ruling that Jews could lie to tax collectors with impunity.[4]

“Follow Me.”

And he got up and followed Him.

Now this is an explicit command, and it is immediately obeyed.

The commands assume something.

What it assumes is that Jesus knows his heart, right?

John 2:25, “Nobody needed to tell Jesus what was in the heart of a man because He knew what was in the heart of a man,” omniscience.

He knew it was in his heart[6]

Luke in his parallel description says, “Levi got up, left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:28).

This was a decisive act.

He gave up his business—everything, and there was no going back.[7]

Centuries ago a number of workmen were seen dragging a great marble block into the city of Florence, Italy.

It had come from the famous marble quarries of Carrara, and was intended to be made into a statue of a great Old Testament prophet.

But it contained imperfections, and when the great sculptor Donatello saw it, he refused it at once.

So there it lay in the cathedral yard, a useless block.

One day another sculptor caught sight of the flawed block.

But as he examined it, there rose in his mind something of immense beauty, and he resolved to sculpt it.

For two years the artist worked feverishly on the work of art.

Finally, on January 25, 1504, the greatest artists of the day assembled to see what he had made of the despised and rejected block.

Among them were Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Pietro Perugino, the teacher of Raphael.

As the veil dropped to the floor, the statue was met with a chorus of praise.

It was a masterpiece!

The succeeding centuries have confirmed that judgment.

Michelangelo’s David is one of the greatest works of art the world has ever known.

Christ saw in the flawed life of Levi (tax collector) a Matthew (writer and evangelist).

He still sees men and women with his consummate artist’s eye today.

The Scripture says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10).

He sees in us what no one else sees.

Why the reception?

Obviously, to honor Christ.

That is the natural reflex of the soul which has received his touch, as we see from Genesis to Revelation.

Also, this was a spontaneous celebration of Levi’s new life.

Levi also threw the party to share Christ with his friends.

Luke says it was a “great banquet” (5:29), and our text says “many” were there.

Levi evidently had a big place, and it was packed out.

These “sinners” even consorted with Gentiles.

They were the offscouring of Capernaum—despised, social pariahs.

And there reclined pure Jesus in their midst—eating, drinking, and conversing with these lawless, materialistic compromisers.