Pharisees, Tax Collectors and Sinners
Luke 15:1-2
Luke’s Gospel was originally written on a scroll. He assumed his readers would always start at the beginning of his Gospel and read through to the end. Thus, in recording what we now know as Luke 15, Luke’s readers would have just heard the preceding 14 chapters. The problem is that today the Gospel is often read and even preached in a random fashion with only just a narrow portion of Scripture used. As a result, we miss some of the larger themes of the Gospels and how they inform the meaning and purpose of individual passages. A key to understanding any Scripture in the Gospels is to know what preceded it.
In Luke 4, Jesus has just returned to Nazareth one weekend. The head of the local synagogue, a Pharisee, honored Him by asking Jesus to read from one of the prophetic scrolls. Jesus chose a very well known passage to Jews of his day, Isaiah 61,which spoke of the coming Messiah. “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight for the blind, to set free those who are oppressed,to proclaim the favorable year of our Lord. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” The word poor does not just refer to just the economically poor but also those who are of low status and considered outside of the boundaries of God’s people.
In Luke 4, Jesus declares that He has come to proclaim good news to sinners that God is willing to forgive all sin and to bring into being a new spiritual community which will includes all those outside God’s will. Forgiveness is a major theme in Luke 15. This wasn’t “good news” to the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day, especially the Pharisees, because extending mercy and compassion to people who are not living like them contradicted their faith and practice. In fact, it ignited their rage (Luke 4:28) to such an extent that first they sought to silence Jesus by first discrediting him and then when that didn’t work to get rid of Jesus by killing him. In their practice of Judaism, where mercy to “outsiders” is often conspicuous by its absence, Jesus declares that the purpose of His ministry will be bringing God’s mercy and compassion to the blind, i.e., those who are physically or spiritually blind. Likewise, He will be proclaiming “Good News” and will be an advocate for social justice for those deprived of it. This is an “in-your-face” challenge to His observant Jewish hometown audience and the Pharisees because it contradicted their view of what the Messiah will do when He comes! Instead, Jesus calls them to compassion and this is central to the parables taught in Luke 15.
There are three groups of people mentioned in our Scripture today, one of whom, the Pharisees, is at odds with the others two, the tax collectors and sinners. First, let’s talk about the tax collectors and sinners. These two groups are often are mentioned together in the Gospels, sometimes with prostitutes as well. Now one thing you need to understand is that people were different back then than we are today. This is so weird but they didn’t like to pay taxes! Back then, they even hated tax collectors. We on the other hand love to pay taxes. April 15 is probably the biggest celebration day of the year. I know most of you have your “Have you hugged your IRS agent today?” bumper sticker on your car. Seriously though, in reality, we’re all the same. Culturally speaking, tax collectors were some of the most hated people in Jesus’ day because they were thought to be crooks. Romans had tax collecting stations throughout Israel. A person would bid to become a tax collector and would have to pay up front the taxes they would collect. The tax collector would then recoup their money by collecting taxes and any collected money over the taxed amount was profit or salary. You can imagine that the tax collectors often took advantage of this to live a very nice life, better than most who struggled and lived in poverty. And it was at the expense of the people in their region. It didn’t help that most tax collectors drove BMW or Mercedes chariots. So the Jewish people hated tax collectors. They were not only considered to be traitors because they dealt with Rome, which made them unclean. They were also thought to be thieves, taking excessive money from the poor.
But what is a sinner? A sinner is someone who breaks God’s law. 1 John 3:4 says, “Everyone who sins breaks the law.” The Hebrew and Greek words for "sin" throughout the Bible revolve largely around two images. The first means "to step across or go beyond a set boundary or limit," like stepping out of bounds on basketball court or football field. The second image is "to miss the mark,” like an archer shooting for a bull’s eye and missing the target. God has defined boundaries, standards, hopes and dreams for us, the playing field on which we are to live our lives and the target we are to aim for. It’s in His Word that God shows us how we are to live and names sin is. Col. 3:5-6 mentions impurity, evil desires and greed. Galatians 5:19-21 names “sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, and wild parties. These are the type of people Jesus hangs out with and why he received the scorn of the Pharisees because they perceived them to be outsiders and beyond God’s grace.
Who are the Pharisees? In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East, bringing Greek culture and philosophy to Israel. By 200 BC, Greek philosophy and its worldview called Helenism were significantly impacting Jewish young men. More and more of them were abandoning the Hebrew faith and embracing the perceived superiority of Greek thought and ways. This created a crisis in Judaism. Would the “faith” and its covenant responsibilities survive in the generations to come? Thus the Pharisees was born in response to this alarming Hellenistic trend. Its two-fold purpose was to call young Jewish men back to the tenants of the Hebrew faith and to a priest-like life.
The first Pharisees had their hearts in the right place. They had a passion for evangelism – bringing Jewish young men back to the historical faith as well as bringing Gentiles into Judaism. They prayed dozens of times each day. They memorized great portions of the OT Scriptures. They had a passion to honor God in everything they did and to fulfill all 613 laws in their lives. But as is true with many movements, factions within the Pharisees slowly began to revise their “theology” as they hardened their hearts towards those dissimilar to them.
Even though there may have been no more than 6,000 Pharisees in the Jesus’ day, there was considerable “theological” diversity amongst them. There’s a saying that “Whenever three Jews get together, there are at least four opinions!” There were differences between the northern and southern Pharisees and even within those two groups there was great diversity of belief and practice. However, when we get to the Pharisees who increasingly stood in opposition to Jesus, we’re primarily talking about the Pharisees in the south, particularly those in Jerusalem who were aligned with the Sadducees and together constituted the Sanhedrin, the Jewish “Supreme Court” ruled over religious matters and controlled the worship and ministry of the Temple.
By the time of Jesus, some of the Pharisees had taken observant Judaism to a place that did not honor God in much of what they did. Collectively, they took great pride in their impeccable behavior. They focused on their idea of doing what’s right in the law and believing their interpretation of the Scriptures and the laws. If you didn’t agree with them, you were perceived and treated to be outsiders. They began to exhibit hard hearts and harsh attitudes toward the “outsiders.” Jesus likened the Pharisees to “white-washed tombs,” clean looking on the outside but dead bones on the inside. In their zeal for God, they gradually evolved into an Insider-Outsider “theology.” They created a category of people called “sinners” to distinguish who was “inside” of God’s favor and who was on the “outside.” They included but were not limited to lepers, paralytics, tax collectors, and prostitutes. The outsider status legitimized the withholding of compassion, mercy and forgiveness when they were the ones who needed it the most. Thus, this was at the heart of Jesus, purpose, mission, preaching and ministry, putting him at odds with the Pharisees. After Jesus touches a leper to heal him, these Jerusalem Pharisees start shadowing Jesus. They’re on the scene in Capernaum (5:17) when Jesus forgives and heals the paralytic. From that point on, their growing opposition is noted by Luke (11:54) and comprises part of the backdrop for Jesus’ Luke 15 invitation (and reprimand) to change their attitudes toward “outsiders” who repent.
Other rabbis subscribed to a “theology” of forgiveness that required repentance and restitution. This requirement kept certain categories of people from being forgiven, e.g., shepherds who could never restore the grass their wandering flocks ate (“robbed”) on land belonging to others, as well as tax collectors who would never again see the caravan merchants they cheated. But it is just these type of people that Jesus came to restore, offering God’s mercy, compassion and forgiveness. And in Luke 5- 8, Jesus does exactly that as He encounters sinners and forgives them, restoring them to God’s family.
For the next few weeks, we’re going to be looking at Luke 15 which contains three parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and two lost sons. This sets the scene and context of these parables. Today, I want to ask you, “Who are you?” If you’ve been a follower of Jesus and a member of the church for awhile, you might very well be a Pharisee. The Church and Christians in general unfortunately have gained a reputation of being both judgmental of others and hypocritical in their faith. Many times, it is well deserved. Maybe you’ve been in the faith for awhile and it’s become easy for you to look down on others who aren’t as committed as you, who aren’t as passionate as you in following Jesus or who don’t serving as much as you at church or who don’t study the Scriptures as often as you. You look at all you do for Jesus and take pride in that or get great satisfaction and you fall into an attitude of spiritual superiority. Or maybe you look at those who are outside the church living a different lifestyle and make judgments about them and whether they are worthy of God’s grace. O, you may not say it but you don’t have the passion and the zeal to reach them for Jesus, when in fact they are in great need for God’s grace. And when they come to church, you fail to reach out to them or you give a glaring look because of their hair color, their piercings or their clothing. And when they come down the isle, there’s a little thought of “O great, here comes another one of those” rather than the attitude of the Father who has great rejoicing that another of his children has been found and returned home. If this is you, then know that Jesus’ call to the Pharisees to repent and have a heart of compassion to those who are lost and far from God is an invitation to you. This is why Jesus came and His heart and His mission is meant to be our mission. His grace and forgiveness is offered to you this day.
Or if you are tax collector and sinner, listen to me very carefully: Jesus came for you. You are the reason he crossed eternity, stripped himself of all glory, became human, endured all of our pains and suffering s well as the resistance and betrayal of the supposed religious faithful of his day, all so that you might hear the Good News of God’s forgiveness and be restored to him. Know this: that “all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” There is nothing you can do which will keep God’s love from you. There is nothing you’ve done that will cause God to say, I can’t accept you. You’re outside my love. Instead, you can come to Him, fall at God’s feet and ask for God’s for grace, and really receive grace and love and peace and forgiveness and hope. Jesus gave his life for you so that you can come before God as one of his children whom he so loves. He gave His life so you could be reconciled to God.
The message of Jesus to the Pharisees and to the sinners is a message for you today. All you need to do is repent, ask for forgiveness, turn from your ways and your attitudes and receive His grace. Won’t you come?
