“Jesus and the Pharisees” – Part 3 – Hanging Out with Sinners – Mark 2:13-17

It was a summer in the mid-1980’s. I had driven a group of youth from our church to Plainview, Texas, to attend a youth rally at Wayland Baptist University. I had dropped them off around noon and had driven back to Lubbock to catch a flight back to DFW. Someone else would stay with the youth and bring them back to Tyler.

As I got to the Lubbock airport, I was really thirsty. I began looking desperately for a place to get something to drink. The only place open at the airport was a bar. I had never been to a bar in my life, and I didn’t exactly look forward to entering this den of iniquity. I slunk into the bar and sat at a table. Fortunately for me, the place was empty except for the bartender and a waitress. Nonetheless, I felt extremely uncomfortable. I curtly asked the waitress for a coke, and drank it down as soon as she brought it to me. She also brought me some popcorn. I told her I didn’t want it, but she said it was complementary, so she left it, but I refused to eat it. I did order one more coke before I was able to leave the sin-filled room, knowing that I would be marked as unclean if anyone saw me.

That was then. I would like to think I have grown some since then and would no longer feel such discomfort, but I know me well enough to know that I would be conflicted about entering a bar, particularly if it had patrons in it.

In today’s passage, Jesus is at a place where He is surrounded by sinners and the like. How Jesus responds to the questions of the Pharisees tells us another difference between Jesus and the Pharisees.

Background

To be a good Pharisee, a person had to keep themselves ceremoniously clean. That meant that they could not and would not allow themselves to come into contact with anyone or anything that might cause them to be unworthy and incapable of observing all the laws they believed were necessary to stay in God’s good graces.

One of the ways the Pharisees kept themselves clean was to avoid contact with sinners. “Sinners” for them were not just people who wantonly flouted the laws of God, but even people who didn’t carefully observe such laws were considered sinners. In the next passage of Mark, Jesus’ disciples are observed picking heads of grain on the Sabbath. More than likely, the disciples did it without thinking anything about it. It probably wasn’t the first time they had done it. It’s not that they were intentionally violating the Sabbath, but in the eyes of the Pharisees, such acts were acts of sinfulness and had to be condemned.

If we asked the typical Pharisee if they loved the sinner and hated the sin, they would probably have agreed with the sentiment. They understood that it was sin that separated us from a right relationship with God. For the Pharisees, though, it was difficult to separate the sin from the sinner. Yes, they believed that God could and did save repentant sinners, but for the Pharisees, repentance meant getting your act together and make yourself worthy of God’s acceptance. As a result of their understanding of what it meant to repent, they were willing to condemn the sinner as much as the sin. It’s a practice that is all too common in our evangelical world today. It’s hard to love the sinner while condemning the sin when we view the places and the people of sin as needing to be condemned for their sin.

As we look at today’s passage, we see Jesus and the Pharisees reacting to the presence of sinners in very different ways.

Central Truth: How we view Scriptures is seen in the way we relate to others not like us.

Jesus and the sinners

1. Jesus chooses a sinner (13-14)

Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to Him, and He began to teach them. As He walked along, He saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow Me,” Jesus said, and Levi got up and followed Him.

I don’t think the Bible is clear on how and when Jesus chose His disciples. Each of the gospel accounts seems to show a different way of calling them. Certainly, Jesus could have simply called them when He first met them, but it seems more probable that they were Jesus’ followers before they were called to become disciples.

Regardless how Jesus chose His disciples, there is a commonality between the calling of the first four apostles and Matthew. In each of the instances, Jesus was walking along the shore of Lake Galilee when He spotted each of the men. When Jesus saw them, He called them to follow Him, and they immediately dropped what they were doing and followed Him. It was true of Peter and Andrew, James and John, and it’s true of Matthew.

Matthew was a tax gatherer, probably working to collect taxes for goods entering and leaving Galilee. He probably worked under Herod Antipas as opposed to the Romans, but the idea was the same. Matthew had paid for the right to become a tax gatherer, and he was tasked with the idea of raising revenue for the kingdom. A large part of his income was through raising the tax rates to a higher level than required. In this way, he and the other tax gatherers made a very nice living, but they paid a high price for it. Tax gatherers were social outcasts, in part because of their constant dealing with Gentiles and in working for governments that the Jews—the Pharisees in particular—despised because none of the rulers were Jewish.

That Jesus would call one of these tax gatherers was another strike against Him in the eyes of those sent to investigate Him on behalf of the Pharisees in Jerusalem. It may not have been such a bad thing that Jesus’ first disciples were from the relatively unschooled fishermen who followed Him. After all, Jesus seemed to gather the untrained and theologically challenged to Him. While the Pharisees would have preferred other Pharisees and religious people to be called to become Jesus’ disciples, they could probably accept men like Peter and John.

To call Matthew, though, was clearly crossing the line. Matthew was identified as someone the Pharisees could never fellowship with, unless he demonstrated his repentance by observing the laws and keeping himself ceremoniously clean. There is no evidence that either Jesus or His disciples followed the laws as strictly as the Pharisees, and so calling Matthew would have been an insult to the Pharisees.

Still, there was more to come.

2. The Pharisees question (15-16)

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. 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?”

It was a peculiar thing about meals in the times when Jesus physically walked among us. People would be invited to the meal, but others were welcome to drop in uninvited and unannounced. It isn’t clear if these drop-ins were allowed to partake of the meal, or if they were limited to being mere observers of the events around the table. The remaining verses of our text take place at just such a meal.

If Jesus had upset the Pharisees at calling Matthew to follow Him as a disciples, He added to the turmoil by accepting an invitation to a meal with other tax gatherers and sinners. Being a tax gatherer, it is reasonable to expect that what friends he had would have similar backgrounds. The Bible tells us that there were many tax gatherers and sinners present at the meal.

This was too much for the Pharisees. I can imagine the indignation in their voices as they asked the disciples, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?” It’s interesting that the Pharisees at this time were unwilling to confront Jesus directly, instead approaching Him through the disciples. It changes soon enough, but at this stage, the Pharisees try to make the disciples uncomfortable in having to defend Jesus.

But that’s the way it is sometimes. There are times Jesus leads us into uncomfortable settings and we are asked to give an account of why we are doing what we’re doing or saying what we’re saying. Jesus tells us in Matthew 10 and elsewhere that we should never worry about what we are to say in those settings. We only need to trust in the Holy Spirit and He will give us the words to say. That’s assuming we are in the uncomfortable settings because we are following the Spirit’s leadership.

In this instance, the disciples are exactly where Jesus wants them, and they find themselves being confronted by indignant, holier-than-thou Pharisees. How would you respond to such a question and challenge?

We see that Jesus responds on their behalf.

3. Why Jesus fellowships with 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.”

In Jeremiah 5:21, the prophet says the following: “Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see; who have ears but do not hear.” It’s frustrating trying to reach out to people who have their minds made up, who those who fail to understand their need. The Pharisees fit into this group. Jesus says as much in His response to their question to the disciples.

Jesus tells them that the healthy don’t go to the doctor; only the sick do. While it’s a good idea for a person to practice preventative healthcare by getting regular annual checkups, it’s a reality that most people who go to a doctor are those who are experiencing a health crisis of some sort.

Jesus uses this illustration to say why He communes with tax gatherers and sinners. He tells them, “I have not come to call the righteous but the sinners.” The entire purpose of Jesus’ ministry was and is to bring salvation from sin and from the consequences of sin. God sent Jesus to save the lost; Jesus preached and ministered to the lost. The calling of the Church in the Great Commission is to make disciples, which includes calling people to repentance of sin.

The fact that Jesus uses a contrast between the righteous and the sinner does not suggest that Jesus thought the Pharisees were righteous. Far from it. Matthew 23 is a chapter where Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and their desperate need for repentance.

Unfortunately, they didn’t understand. As far as they were concerned, they were right where God wanted them. They were obedient to the law and the prophets. They followed their traditions which were built upon the law. They were confident that their defense of the faith was right and consistent with God’s will. That’s one of the reasons Saul of Tarsus was going to Damascus. He was rooting out the heresy of Jesus’ followers for teaching against the Law.

When a person is convinced they are right where God wants them, then it becomes difficult for them to be open to His message when His message is not consistent with their understanding of His message. Jesus came preaching repentance and the ushering of the kingdom of God. The Pharisees rejected Jesus and His message because they knew better.

Conclusion

My experience at the Lubbock airport bar says a lot about me in my younger days. I was a recent seminary graduate, called of God to minister, learned in the Bible and a leader in my church. I was a respected Sunday School teacher and a deacon. I knew what sin was, and I was not going to be a part of it or have anything to do with people who indulged in sin.

I would like to say that I have grown from those days, but I know it’s not so. There was a young reporter at the Trib who was good at her job, but she cussed like a sailor. It was part of her personality, and I saw her as crude. I didn’t try to develop a relationship with her. I was civil to her and I enjoyed talking with her at times, but I also looked down my spiritual nose at her. She died unexpectedly of complications from diabetes, and God smacked me upside the head when I heard she had died. Hearing of her death, I realized that I was so turned off by her use of some words that I failed to love her as Christ loved her, to reach out to her and try to minister to her. I had already judged and condemned her, and that is something I will have to give account of when I look into Jesus’ face.

It’s easy to get caught up in being proper in the eyes of the church, but it’s more important to be proper in Christ’s eyes. When we see “sinners,” are we willing to fellowship with them in order to share God’s love, or are we more likely to condemn them?

If the latter, then we have need for repentance.