Grace and Forgiveness (Part 1 of 2)

0:55 Mark chapter 2 and verse 13. 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 told him. And Levi got up and followed him. 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?' 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.

1:50 Some years ago as a church, we took as a statement of purpose the ten words to see unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ. And we have tried as best we can to keep that before us, not simply by keeping it in print, but also in approaching all of the opportunities and responsibilities that we have as a church in light of the awareness of the fact that Jesus, in leaving his disciples behind, promised them the power and authority of the Holy Spirit so that they might go out into the world and proclaim the good news of Jesus, baptizing people, making disciples, and establishing the work of the kingdom. And as much as we pay lip service to that, we recognize that there is an inherent danger in thinking that just because that is the phrase that we are able to rehearse and repeat, that somehow or another that may actually be happening, when in point of fact it might not. And one of the great questions that is before us as a church is to look around and to see just how seriously we believe it is important for us to take the command of Jesus to go out into the world and to make disciples. In other words, we face the risk that after a relatively short period of time, the comfortability of being in the companionable relationships with one another may dim our vision, may dent our enthusiasm, for seeing unbelieving people become the committed followers of Jesus.

3:34 And that is one of the great advantages in studying the gospel, and in this instance, the gospel of Mark, because very quickly in his gospel, he makes it plain that Jesus is absolutely committed not to putting together a religious club, but of reaching out to those who are, quite frankly, the most unlikely people ever to be included in his band of disciples. And the incident that is before us here in Mark chapter 2 is a classic illustration of this truth. It's not uncommon to hear people complain about how long it's taking them to see a doctor. I never know whether to make much of that or not. After all, most of the doctors I've ever met are incredibly busy, and they seem to be seeing people all the time. So, I think some of us need to be a little more patient. Eventually, we're seen, and often, I think, sooner rather than later. We always will be seen. It's hard to imagine a doctor who worked all his way or all her way through medical school and then decided that she didn't ever want to see patients. She just wanted to be a doctor, but no patients. I'd like to be a doctor, but I don't ever want to see sick people.

4:44 It would be a very, very strange thing. And for Jesus to refuse to deal with those who are despised and disreputable, who are the outscouring of society, would be equally absurd. And that lies at the very heart of this incident involving the calling of this man Levi, who's also known as Matthew elsewhere in the Gospels, to become a follower of Jesus. It is with this that we're going to spend our time this morning looking directly at verse 14, and perhaps I should just read it again. 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. It's almost just one long sentence, and it covers so much material. Prior to that, in verse 13, you will notice that Jesus is once again out in the lakeside area. The crowds are coming to him. There seems to be a balance here. At the end of verse 12, all the people were amazed. They'd never seen anything like this. And then once again, Jesus reverts to his prior pattern, and he moves out into an outlying area away from the crowds. The crowds come to him, and once again, as they sit or stand to hear him, he proclaims the good news. He tells them that the kingdom of God is near, that it is important for them, necessary for them to repent and to believe the good news.

6:11 Yes, he touches their lives. Yes, he heals their sicknesses. Yes, he relieves them of demonic oppression. But he hasn't come as a miracle worker. He has come as a teacher of this good news. And so it is that in the course of his endeavors, he comes upon this scene. And it is in this little verse 14 that we have the record of this radical change in the life and circumstances of this gentleman called Levi. When God calls a man or a woman, his callings never leave that person where they found him. If God speaks to you and calls you and you try and stand still, you will not be standing still. You will be going backwards. The callings of God never leave you where they find you. You will either follow on, you will either believe and obey, or you will be making a forlorn attempt to stand still. You will discover that you're going in the opposite direction. And this is certainly true in the experience of Levi. Now, when I read this this week, and I have read this passage many times, and many of you will have done the same, I said to myself, you know, I think a little background would be helpful—helpful first to me, and then helpful to you. Because we read that he was sitting at a tax collector's booth, and frankly, it doesn't really mean very much to us. After all, have you ever been in Capernaum at a tax collector's booth? I bet there isn't one in a thousand that have been anywhere close to it, and even if we were in Capernaum, we wouldn't have known the booth if we had tripped over it. So, we read it, but what does it really mean, and what was the job that he was doing. Well, as best as I can understand—and, of course, there are limits to my understanding, as becomes very clear week by week—but as best as I can understand, Levi was a Jewish tax official, probably working in the realm of customs and excise. So you ought not to think of him as the IRS. You should think of him more as a kind of

8:21 border patrol, and you couldn't make the transition from one region into the other without paying tax either on your movements as a toll booth collection or, more likely, as a result of the materials that you were carrying from one place to the other. I remember well the delight of the customs gentleman in Newark when he asked me if I brought in anything that was over a certain amount of money, and I said, yes, I brought in my kilt. And he just couldn't wait to get his hands on that and charge me a dreadful amount of money for an outfit that had already cost me a dreadful amount of money. Well, that's exactly the kind of thing that Levi was doing. When Herod the Great, the miserable Herod the Great, whom you remember from the massacre of the children in Bethlehem, when he died, he divided his territory largely between three of his sons. Each had the name Herod, Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa, and Herod Philip. And Herod Philip and Herod Antipas had regions that essentially bordered one another. They were separated by the Jordan River.

9:33 And the point of departure into each community, the thoroughfare, if you like, the most obvious a normal one, would be through the town or the city of Capernaum. And there in that tax collector's booth would be people who were fulfilling those responsibilities, and in this particular instance, this man by the name of Levi. Now, this position, this job, was absolutely despised. These individuals were detested. His role would have been to secure the privileges of the region, presumably a Roman official, usually known as a publican, would have purchased the tax base for an area. He would then hire under him tax collectors or customs collectors and so on. As long as he got his price for what that region was worth to him, he really didn't care from that point out whatever those tax collectors charged.

10:38 So, it was a wonderful opportunity for the tax collectors to charge whatever they liked. They knew the number they had to make in order to fulfill their responsibilities, and they were then able to devise elaborate ways whereby they could operate essentially two sets of books, one that was going back to the officials and the other one that was going under the table. And Levi, as a result of that, was actually as much an outcast socially as the leper was, whom we saw just a couple of studies ago. If we doubt this, then let me affirm it for you that as a result of his willingness to fulfill this role to be sitting in his tax collector's booth, number one, he would have been regarded as a disgrace to his family. His mother would not have been going out for coffee in the morning and letting everybody know how well young Levi was doing in his new position at the tax collector's booth. Indeed, she would have done everything she possibly could to explain his job in some way that would relieve her of the despicable nature of what was going on. A disgrace to his family. Secondly, he would be disqualified from ever serving as a judge or even being part of the judicial system as a witness. And thirdly, he would have been disbarred from the synagogue from the opportunities of worship that would have accrued to him otherwise as a normal Jewish male. So if you rehearse that for a moment, you get the picture. He can't go essentially to church. He can't show up on jury duty and his family regard it as a complete disgrace that ever one of their children was involved in such a dreadful engagement. Now, when I read a little more, I came across a variety of things that intrigued me, and this fits in the realm of intrigue. I think you know me well enough now to know what we're saying in terms of main things and plain things, and what is authoritative from the Scriptures, and what is merely observation. If it is helpful, you go with it. If it is unhelpful,

12:44 you exit out. But many of you exit out a lot of stuff in any case, so there's nothing particularly really difficult for you in that. But what I came across was inscriptions, ancient inscriptions, that had to do with fish. And so, for example, one inscription described individuals in the region of Capernaum who were concerned with the toll on fish. So apparently, there was at least at some point—and it may not have been at this point, but it could have been at this point—some kind of toll on fish. So then that got me thinking, do I know any fishermen? Have there been any fishermen so far in the story that would have had to engage with this character or with his colleagues because of their work with fish? And of course, yes. We've got Simon, and we have Andrew, and we have James and John. We have the initial four that Jesus has called to be his followers. And then I said to myself, Maybe Levi even knew the four of them. Maybe they were, as a result of their business practices, moving through his region. And maybe, as a result of the contact, he would have heard something of the words of Jesus and may even observe something of the works of Jesus. Oh, you say, it doesn't say that there. I understand. But it doesn't not say it either. In other words, it is possible that Levi had a knowledge of Jesus before this encounter took place. In fact, I think it is likely that he did. I don't imagine that somebody in a place like Capernaum could be in Capernaum with somebody, namely Jesus of Nazareth, casting out demons, healing people, transforming the community in many, many ways without that buzz running right through the community. And as you know, the person in the local newspaper office, or the newsagent store, at least in Britain, or in the average Starbucks, let's say, or Caribou, or whatever it might be, or the person that takes your ticket when you leave Hopkins Airport,

14:52 those are the people that pick up all the bits and pieces, the buzz of the day, what's going on, did you hear so-and-so, just pleasantries. Sometimes beyond the weather, sometimes only the weather. But it may well have been just as this, that one of the people said to the other, I haven't seen Simon and Andrew coming through here for a while. And somebody else said, No, you probably won't see them. And someone else says, Yeah, and I'll tell you two more you won't see. You're not going to see James and Andrew. And Levi said, Why not? And someone said, Well, the four of them have become followers of Jesus of Nazareth. They pulled their boats up, folded the nets, left it in one case with their father, left the family business behind, and they've gone off as followers of Jesus. And Levi might have sat there and said to himself, Wow, I wonder what that's like. I wonder what that's like.

15:55 There may be some here this morning, and that's exactly where you are. You've heard the story. Maybe even a family member, a friend, a work colleague, has told you that he's become a follower of Jesus. And there's evidence to suggest that that has actually happened. His words have changed. His lifestyle has changed. She's become altogether different from what she was. She's still the regular person with the same DNA. She still has the same personality. She's still melancholic. He's still effusive, whatever it might be, but no doubt that he's become a follower of Jesus, and you find yourself saying, wow, I wonder what it would be like to be a follower of Jesus. Do you really? Would you like to become a follower of Jesus? Nobody who ever wanted to be a follower of Jesus was turned away.

16:44 You can never want to be a follower of Jesus and find that he tells you you can't. Well, Levi's about to find out. And just as the leper had probably had no one other than another leper touching him for a very long time before Jesus touched him, so Levi would have grown accustomed to people despising him and saying things about him that weren't exactly commendatory. After all, he was not a member of the sort of ruling class. He was not a member of the acceptable people in society. He was despised, he was rejected, he was an outcast, he was socially unacceptable. In fact, he would have been perfectly used to people telling him where to go. They put their money in for the excise, and he said, Thank you very much, Mr. Benjamin. And Benjamin says, Hey, Levi, you know where you can go, don't you?

17:36 He'd come home at the end of the day with abuse ringing in his ears, people calling him out, you murderous creature, you stinking cheat. I hate you. I despise the fact that you work for the Romans. You are despicable the way you steal from your own people.

18:00 Those would have been the words he heard. The people didn't go by and say, thank you very much for doing such a wonderful service for the Roman authorities. We all appreciate it very much indeed. No, no. And then look at verse 14. He hears something very, very different. Here in the place of his dubious business practice stands Jesus. And Jesus is not telling him where to go. Jesus is telling him where to come. Jesus is actually issuing to him a command, a different kind of command. It's not get out of here. It is come here. In fact, it is straightforward. Come, follow me, Jesus told him. And Levi got up and followed him. Notice both the brevity and the authority of this word from Jesus. There's no great speech, no great elaborate diatribe, no great explanation. Just a striking command, follow me.

19:07 Because, you see, the Word of Jesus is not like the Word of any other person. The Word of Jesus, in this instance, is not only marked by brevity, it's also marked by authority. And that word of Jesus is recorded for us in the Bible, and the Bible is marked by the authority of Jesus himself. That's why we pay attention to the Bible. That's why we talk about the Bible as being authoritative in and of itself. That's why when we read the Bible, we often discover that it almost speaks out to us in our lives. It's as though it is actually speaking to us in a way that is marked by authority. The brevity and the authority is marked both by the immediacy and the totality of Levi's response. Follow me, Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. There's no gap. It is instantaneous. That's what makes it so amazing, what makes it so striking. And the reason I use totality is because in Luke's version of this event, as he records it, he gives to us one phrase that Mark does not use. And in Luke chapter 5, and in verse 27 and verse 28, you will see the missing phrase. It's the same record. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.

20:31 Follow me, Jesus said to him. And Levi got up—now here's the phrase—and left everything, and left everything and followed him. He turned his back on his illicit business. He realized that if he was going to follow Jesus, he couldn't follow Jesus and stay the way he was. The command is clear, the response is immediate, and it is total. And leaving everything, he went out to follow him. One of the reasons, I think, for so many people's disinterest in the claims of Christ is because they never hear the claims of Christ. Now, you may be wondering about Christianity, and you're here today, and one of the things that put you off is, frankly, just seems like such a soft option. And you find yourself saying, I don't really know why there's much to bother about in relationship to it. I mean, I don't know I want to be involved or I don't want to be involved. It seems so trivial.

21:36 Oh, forgive us if we've suggested that in any way, or if your friends have done so, trying to make it more attractive to you, trying to, as it were, lower the barriers so that you can come in at your own level and on your own basis. If the church, in endeavoring to win people, takes the message of Jesus, dilutes it, minimizes it, compromises it, so that people may see it as a soft option. It is no surprise when the people look at it and say, who cares?