Jesus The Controversialist Series

A. Let me begin with a question: when you try to picture Jesus in your mind, how do you picture Him?

1. Do you picture Him being gentle, meek and loving? Certainly, He was all those things.

2. But Jesus also had other characteristics and other sides to Him.

3. When we read the Gospel accounts, we also see that Jesus was bold and powerful, confrontational and controversial.

4. But Jesus was not controversial or confrontational for the sake of being those things, rather, He was only controversial and confrontational when necessary.

5. The times when Jesus got the most confrontational was when He encountered legalistic, self-righteous religion and those who practiced it.

6. Legalistic, self-righteous religion missed the point and was not and is not God’s way at all.

B. Allow me to read a short excerpt from a little, old book called “God is No Fool” by Lois Channing: Once I saw a little boy proudly show his mother a painting he’d made at school. She looked at it, and turned it this way and that, and looked some more. “It’s lovely, just lovely,” she murmured. Suddenly, she exclaimed, “Oh! I see what it is! It’s a house and a tree, and there’s a big sun, and…” The little boy grabbed the paper and bunching it all up he hollered, “That’s not what it meant!”

Did you ever, oh so carefully, lay out just how things were, and how they worked, and why they worked, and then sat back satisfied? Then you heard someone repeat what you’d said, oh so carefully, and you hardly recognized it, and your brain screamed, “That’s not what I meant!”

Sometimes, When I’m talking about God, When I’m praying about God, When I’m working for God. Sometimes, When I’m very busy in the church, about the church, around the church, I wonder if God isn’t sighing, or whispering, or saying, or hollering, “That’s not what I meant!”

C. When Jesus came to this earth, He encountered a religious atmosphere in Judaism that was contrary to God’s will, and therefore, He confronted it “head-on.”

1. Sometimes we see Him provoking certain Jewish religious groups as He tried to wake them up and move them away from their self-made, self-righteous teachings and practices.

2. Today in our study of the Gospel of Mark, we are going to examine four incidents of controversy that Mark grouped together in Mark 2:13-3:6.

3. I want us to notice how strongly and clearly Jesus addressed those questions and controversies, and I want us to examine ourselves and make sure we aren’t falling into the same religious traps or missing the same spiritual truths.

I. The 1st controversy is what we might call “The Association Controversy.” (Mark 2:13-17).

A. This first controversy begins: 13 Jesus went out again beside the sea. The whole crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. 14 Then, passing by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him. (Mk. 2:13-14)

1. Mark introduces us to another of Jesus’ chosen followers, and his name is Levi or Matthew.

a. The use of two names was so common then that we almost expect everyone in the Gospel accounts to have two names.

b. Levi was apparently his given name, but it is possible that Jesus gave him the name of Matthew, which means “gift of God,” perhaps that’s how Jesus viewed Matthew.

c. Interestingly enough, the Gospels of Mark and Luke both initially refer to him as “Levi,” but the Gospel that is written by Matthew himself, uses the name “Matthew.”

2. Matthew lived and worked in Capernaum where Jesus had already made Himself known.

a. Matthew was a tax collector and must have heard Jesus speak and may have witnessed Jesus’ miracles prior to receiving the call to follow Jesus.

b. Jesus made surprising choices with all those He called to be apostles, but Matthew had to be one of the most surprising, perhaps next to Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot.

c. If you think we American’s don’t like paying taxes (which we had to do this week) and if you think we don’t like IRS agents, our dislike is nothing compared with the dislike of Jewish tax collectors at the time of Jesus.

d. Tax collectors were known for inflating their commissions and were hated for cooperating with Rome.

e. They were considered sinners, extortionists and traitors by the common people.

f. Needless to say, tax collectors usually became rich because of their professions.

3. For those reasons, it was very surprising that Jesus would choose Matthew and that Matthew would accept the call and leave his business behind.

a. Jesus saw something in Matthew, and Matthew certainly saw something in Jesus.