Who Jesus Came To Earth To Reach ~ Who We Are Still Here To Reach
Mark 2:13-17
Mark 2:13-17
Let’s pray…
There are a lot of familiar aspects of this section of Scripture. In fact, one section of this has been taught on before. When we taught on Mark 1:16-20, we saw a pattern in the way that Jesus chose His first disciples, remember?
The pattern was, “Jesus sees, Jesus calls, we leave our (fill in the blank) and follow Him.”
In that passage of chapter one the Scripture shows the importance of people (Simon and Andrew) leaving their livelihood to follow Jesus. And that’s important because if you are still clinging to the false notion of your career as a true safety net for your life - or if you find your satisfaction primarily in your job - or IF YOU IDENTIFY YOURSELF BY YOUR CAREER…
…If any of those things are true for you, then you will not be able to give everything that you are to God’s mission.
And then in the next verses of that chapter, the Scriptures point out the fact that we must not even make something as wonderful as our family into the MAIN devotion of our life.
The passage is a great and hard lesson that even good things become idols - WHICH ARE SINFUL TO FOLLOW OR CLING TO - even good things become idols IF those good things stand in the way of our devotion to God.
Well in this new passage in Chapter 2, we see a new aspect of what we are called out of. And this is much more universal. Alright, no matter who you are – this passage is a call on your life. Let’s read it again and I’ll show you what I mean:
14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
Now, on first glance, this may only look like another person being called out to leave his career as the primary focus of his life in order to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus.
But, we need to dig deeper and understand that this was not just another career. Levi was a tax collector. Levi was not only defined by a particular job, the same as a fisherman, or a carpenter, or a day-labor field worker, No Levi was a Tax Collector. In the times of Jesus, if you were to mention a tax collector, it would probably be followed with a hiss from the audience or someone spitting on the ground.
Tax collectors were their own kind of social scum in the time that this was taking place. Like prostitutes, tax collectors were always named as a distinct group WITHIN a gathering of sinners.
It was as though most sinners just got thrown together into a junk drawer. But prostitutes and Tax Collectors… To the general population they were seen as their own kind of “bad” they got their own distinction – not a distinction you want. This isn’t the time that you want to stand out as the greatest among your peers.
Remember, tax collectors in that day were hirelings of the Romans. Tax collectors were given the right to collect from their own people and they got their money by adding their own cut on top of the already hefty taxes that the people were forced to pay to the Government – And, the money that the Tax Collectors took in went back to the government so that the government could then USE that money to maintain their oppressive control.
It was one thing to be an outsider hurting the community, but to hurt your own people FOR that government and for your own gain – to be a Tax Collector, Oh!
They were the Lowest of the low. And here’s why I say Levi is a better picture to describe everyone of US – Here’s why he is a better picture for us than the examples in chapter one.
This is the deal. There are millions of us who have jobs that are simply jobs. They are bad jobs or good jobs, but honestly if something better came your way, something like the draw of a universe changing mission like Jesus offers – you might readily and happily leave that job without a care, right? So you might look to the fishermen leaving their nets for Gospel adventure and say, “Big whoop. What’s the big deal? Of course they are going to follow Jesus.”
And likewise, some of us love our families and it might be hard to put them in second place in order to properly honor and follow our Lord, but in the light of His holiness, many people understand this concept and we come to a place where we can do it.
Furthermore, some of you might be leaping at the chance not only to give family less of your heart, but to pick up and run away all together! That’s another sermon.
Here’s the thing, if you look at Levi, what is it – more than a job – that Jesus is calling him out of?
Jesus is calling Levi out of a life full of choices that has defined him, not as an image bearer of God, but as a sinner. And not only a sinner as a TAX COLLECTOR.
I say that we are like Levi because, like that poor tax collector at his table, we were also at one time STUCK in the habits and routines of our sins to the point, where, we couldn’t see how life could be lived without our particular brand of sin. Maybe you are still there, I don’t know your hearts.
But, if you are a Christian, I want you to remember that day when Jesus became your Savior, your Redeemer!
You should remember all to well what it was like to be in the shackles, a slave to the sin that owned you, a slave to the sin that controlled the way you thought and talked and acted and reacted in the world and in relationships and in your own mind.
But! BUT, IF YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN, you should also hold fast to that memory, that call from Christ, that call out of sin!
Now listen, the problem that we have if we have been a long time in our faith is that we tend to forget that wreckage of the past.
Praise God, He has healed your heart through time and love and community with other rescued sinners.
I call that a problem because our life in Christ, if we don’t stay on mission, if we don’t continue to live transparent lives where we are called by our church family to repent of new and indwelling sin that tries to divert us off of the goal – our life in Christ, if we do not remember our sin and our daily and eternal need for Christ, will actually turn us away from Him and turn our hearts toward ourselves and our traditions and our systems and we will become just like these Pharisees, who hate the sinners and refuse to live on mission to lead the sinners to God.
And listen, kids of church folk. Some of you will THANKFULLY never have the same kind of “life in the gutter” testimonies that a lot of us late in life converts have. Again, Praise God if you were saved in your youth, but also cling to Jesus so that you don’t fall into the Pharisaical trap.
No matter when you were saved, take a look at this next part of the passage to see where you are in your walk with Christ:
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
Where was Jesus? WITH the Tax Collectors and WITH the sinners. And, Jesus and the church (His disciples) weren’t just in the same area as the sinners and the tax collectors. They were eating together!
Jesus wasn’t still just passing by, He was sharing life and sharing one of their culture’s most intimate times with the sinners – He was eating with them. Jesus partied with the sinners.
16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Now, we don’t hear a response from the religious folks – from the Pharisees after this confrontation, but based on the rest of the Gospel of Mark, I don’t think they joined Jesus after that.
Here’s what we need to see. Of course we are Levi, but in one way or another, everyone of us is also the Pharisee.
Here’s what I want to do: I am going to have you close your eyes, I don’t want you to sound off, I just want you to think about your HONEST and candid response to these words.
Again, just think of your HONEST reaction. I’m not going to have you fill out a card. I’m not going to have you come up and tell us your churchy response. This is between you and your heart, and this text and the God of the Universe.
Okay, close your eyes and listen and in your heart gauge your honest response:
Politician - Republican - Democrat - Tea Party - Barack Obama - Nancy Pelosi - Rand Paul - George Bush - Bill and Hillary Clinton - Glenn Beck
Let’s move out of politics and move around to other areas:
Meth addict - Meth cook - Neglectful parent - Abusive parent - Animal abuser - Animal lover - Cop - Immigrant - Women - Men - Homosexual - Homophobic - Racist - Liberal - Fundamentalist - Baptist - Pentecostal - Presbyterian - Lutheran - Catholic - Jew - Mormon - Jehovah Witness - Corporate leader - Preacher - Atheist - Professor - Bartender - Prostitute - Pimp - Murderer - Child Molester - Traitor - Cheater - Teacher - Mother - Father
Now, while several of those are outright sinful, others are simply unacceptable to you if your culture and your own sinful heart has put up walls around us and “our people” from “those people”.
But, regardless of the group or the individual, what is our mission? When we come up next to the people who raise our anger and set us off, what are we here to do IF we are followers of Christ? What is our task, our calling, our reason to live IF we are The Church?
If we are simply modern day Pharisees, our mission is to poke and scorn and demean or even simply ignore and avoid the people we see as unfit our broken or lost or unclean on that list.
But if we are THE CHURCH, if we are In Christ and we actually believe what this Bible says, then we are Agents of Reconciliation!
And, who are we here on Earth – now – in this place and in this time, who are we here on Earth to reconcile through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel proclamation and by our Gospel intentioned living?
SINNERS. Which Sinners? Which ones do we share with? Which ones do we love? Which ones do we pray for? Which ones to we pursue and fight FOR?!
Jesus didn’t say “this kind of sinner” or “that kind of sinner”. He said he came to call the sinner and that is you and me and everyone else apart from Christ. He didn’t come to call the righteous to Him because there were no righteous ones to call. Amen?
Now we are almost done, but let’s move on to our big announcement. It relates perfectly to tonight’s passage.
Listen, Since the day we launched the Church in the Grass, starting with our first service in early 2009, we have tried to consistently state and restate and call one another to our central mission as the church.
It is a mission, on which we have striven to:
Present God’s message of salvation, the importance of a church family, and the proper expression of God’s love into the world.
Put another way:
- We are here to promote the Gospel for salvation,
- We are here to build a church family for our sanctification. By sanctification, I mean our growth toward the perfection that God has called us to as individuals and as the church.
- And we are here to call every Believer to missional living as a result of the Gospel and as a result of the Church – we are here to call every Believer to Missional Living that includes drawing others into the family of God through love, and the clear presentation of the Gospel.
In tonight’s passage, we saw all three aspects of our mission in the way in which Jesus lives out His ministry.
Let’s look at it again in the text:
- We call people to turn to and follow Christ as part of our Gospel preaching: Jesus calls Levi to Himself in v. 14.
- We stress the need for the church family in the life of every believer: In v. 15 we see Jesus living life with the church. Remember the word church literally means an assembly of the “called out ones” (For Jesus, this would include the disciples, whom Jesus CALLED OUT of their old way of life to walk in a radical fellowship of followship to Him {see Chapter 1:16-20 and, again 2:14}).
- And finally, just as we Call every Believer to missional living as a result of the Gospel and the Church – Missional Living that includes drawing others into the family of God through love, and the clear presentation of the Gospel: We also see Jesus’ influence on Levi, who didn’t avoid his old friends after he started following Christ, but instead entertained them and provided a way for them to get close to Jesus.
Of course it is not that Jesus was trying to minister according to the Church in the Grass’ mission statement, right. Instead, we have done everything that we can to shape our mission to conform to Jesus’ mission.
Tonight we are announcing what most of you already know. We are continuing that mission, and we are continuing through new methods so that we can be more effective in advancing the Kingdom of God in this City by following Christ’s mission to call sinners to Him.
And, since we see need everywhere, but we also understand that we have to focus on the lost somewhere in particular, we will continue to seek to serve Christ in the Walnut and East Street areas as well as spreading out to shine the light throughout downtown Madison.
And, we are not planting in a competition to the churches that are already Downtown. We will be a Partner in the Gospel with the churches that are still alive with Christ in our area. We will partner with them because the work of reaching the lost cannot be done by a single local congregation.
The truth is that we have a lot of steeples and a lot of really nice buildings, but the people that Jesus came to reach, the people that we have been called to reach do not only reside within the walls of pretty buildings.
What all this means in this moment, what changes you will see right away are these: we are going to transition Wednesday nights into a very focused and Gospel saturated kids and Youth ministry called Hyper for Christ.
Paul and Lori are going to head that up and honestly we are going to figure that out as we go. There are wonderful youth programs for the church folk, but we are still trying to figure out how to reach the kids who have no family connections to the body. As we build that ministry, we would encourage you to be here every week, just as you have been, but we want you here to serve at that point. Bring your kids and serve the kids of the neighborhood to the Glory of God.
As far as teaching and preaching, communion and baptism and the rest of what you think of when you think of church.
For those weekly gatherings, we are transitioning that gathering to Sunday, with a very deliberate new emphasis on being ALL that the church is seen to be in the Scriptures, instead of simply a once-a-week spiritual recharge.
It will be an emphasis on church as a real family living life on life together for the Gospel.
It will be an emphasis on church as the body in which each and every member, or better said – every partner – is doing his or her part as God has designed it in order to do what? To Reach the sinners and to deal honestly with our own sin, so all God's people can find - and so that we can all share the Freedom that is only found in Jesus Christ.
Now, again we say transitioning very deliberately. Before we actually launch the “church” as we and our culture tend to think of “church”, we are going to gather as a core of believers to build a frame of solid Christians on which we can build a local church that truly reflects God’s design.
Now, if you have read the New Identity Church vision packet, you know what direction we are headed. (If you haven't read the vision Packet call Ken at 265-4827 or by email at churchinthegrass@gmail.com and we will get one to you right away).
But, just to put it out here in general, To answer the question of What’s Next? We are going to begin Core Group gatherings for New Identity Church on Sunday, November 14.
We will start these gatherings at our house, 2124 Wilson Ave., until we outgrow it and find a new building downtown (I am pursuing possible gathering sites now).
If you’ve called this your church then that’s where you will find us gathered. And I want you there.
Also, if you are a new believer that is not connected to a church, or if you are not at a local church where the Gospel is not preached, or if you are at a church that is so concerned with maintaining existing buildings, structures and programs that they are unable to focus on equipping you and the people to live on mission, then you are welcome too.
We believe that the most effective form of evangelism is the planting of new churches.
The first stage of our gatherings are not going to be a guy in the pulpit, with everyone sitting in rows. Though we see the value in that and though we will eventually move to a time where we gather for that kind of service a a PIECE of our Christian life, it cannot be seen as the whole of the Christian experience if we are truly following the Scriptures.
We learned from the Church in the Grass that there is a basic need to build the family of believers first. Jesus didn't give a great commission of "Go and lecture people in rows", but that's all we in our culture think of when we think of church.
Instead, Jesus - with FULL AUTHORITY said:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”(Matthew 28:19-20 ESV)
Ultimately we are on mission to bring others into a fellowship of Christ followship - not just church attendance.
As we begin, we will sit in circles instead of rows. We will interact as a community, we will share dinner, we will pray together, we will very deliberately unpack the basic tenets of our faith based on the truth of the Scriptures (who is God, who are we, what happened at the fall, who is Jesus Christ, why did He have to die on the cross, how is a person saved, what does the Bible unpack as the life of a believer, etc...).
There will be Q&A time and discussion. This will also be a time for the core group to begin forming into a model of what it looks like to live out what the Bible actually calls us to be the Church. We will begin to really get to know one another and be known by one another.
And listen, in that time,
- if you are serious about making the mission of Christ in the world your mission,
- if you are serious about really living life on life with other believers,
- if you are really interested in growing in your faith and in your effectiveness as an ambassador of Christ, to reach out to the world with Christ instead of closing in away from the world and huddling with other Christians...
Then New Identity Church may be for you.
And listen a Core Group is NOT a Holy Huddle. A Core Group is a Gathering Group. So begin gathering tonight and this week. Start inviting people this week to our first meeting. Again we will meet in our house, 2124 Wilson Avenue, Sunday, November 14 @ 6 p.m.
And we will meet there until we are too big for our house, or until we find the house that we can move into on Walnut or East Streets. Then we’ll be downtown in our mission field.
Let's Pray...
