INTRODUCTION
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Have you ever thought about how many songs, how many movies, or how many books have love as their subject?
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Then think about how many ways we use the word love.
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I love steak.
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I love baseball.
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I love my daughters.
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I love my wife.
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I love my job.
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I love my cats.
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I love you.
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Love is powerful, and it is something we all seek from others.
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Young girls seek love from their fathers, and when they do not think that is happening, they will look for love from someone else, and a young man will use love to get what he wants.
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People have given everything up for love, died for love, killed in the name of love, and changed their life for love.
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Love is one of the most talked about subjects in the Bible.
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What criteria do you use to determine if you love something or someone?
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Depending on what you decide to love, the criteria will change.
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For instance, what criteria do you use to determine if you love a type of food?
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Taste, texture, smell?
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What criteria do you use to determine if you will love someone?
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One would think that Jesus could display love without people criticizing Him.
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Our text today takes place after Jesus forgives and heals a paralytic who was lowered from the ceiling of a home Jesus was teaching.
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The crowd was amazed once again!
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Jesus is heading toward the sea when He comes to a tax booth where a tax collector named Levi (Matthew) works.
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Our text today will reveal the heart of God towards people.
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Regarding the criteria we use to determine if we will love someone, I wonder if our criteria are the same that God uses.
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Who do we value, and what determines if we value and love them?
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In the passage under consideration today, the criticism Jesus receives is that He spends His time with the wrong type of people.
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Big Idea of the Message: Jesus shows us that God values everyone.
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Let’s turn to Mark 2:13-17 together.
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Mark 2:13–15 (NET 2nd ed.)
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13 Jesus went out again by the sea. The whole crowd came to him, and he taught them.
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14 As he went along, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth. “Follow me,” he said to him. And he got up and followed him.
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15 As Jesus was having a meal in Levi’s home, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
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SERMON
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I. Inviting the outcasts.
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Jesus had a large crowd following Him.
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The miracles He performed helped the crowds to grow.
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As Jesus went along, He saw Levi (Matthew), the son of Alphaeus, sitting in the tax booth.
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We have talked about tax collectors before.
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Tax collectors during Roman times were universally despised.
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No one knew the correct amount of tax they had to pay, and the tax collectors earned their income by over-collecting.
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The Greek writer Lucian grouped tax collectors with “adulterers, panderers, flatterers and parasites” (William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, The Daily Study Bible [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], 53).
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Rome would determine how much tax money needed to be collected in a region, and people would bid for the opportunity to collect the taxes, with the understanding they were allowed to add an upcharge so the collectors could pay their collectors and make a profit.
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These men were collecting money for Isreal and passing it on to Rome.
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Rome also had tax collectors who operated booths around major highways so Rome could collect tolls and import and export taxes.
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They would have tax booths in busy fishing areas so they could collect duties from the fishermen and duties collected for transporting people.
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The tax collectors were outcasts, and they were people the RIGHTEOUS people would not give the time of day.
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Have you ever been an outcast, a person that other people would ignore?
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In the 1995 movie Clueless, Cher and Dionne befriend Tai, the new girl at school.
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As they take her around and introduce her to the school, they also—most notably in their eyes—introduce her to the social system.
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They point out the different groups of people and let her know who it is okay to be associated with and who you must avoid if you wish to remain popular (directed by Amy Heckerling [Paramount Pictures, 1995], 23:49).
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As funny as the scene is, it also reflects a truth that seems to run throughout humanity: we think it’s important to associate with the right people.
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Different groups of people define who is okay differently, but for religious groups, many times they want to stay with the “good” and avoid the “bad,” however that is defined.
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The same was true two thousand years ago when Jesus walked this earth.
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There were people to be associated with and people to avoid, and to the dismay of the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus completely ignored those social conventions.
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When Jesus sees Matthew, once again, Jesus will go against the grain of society and invite this tax collector, a man that no self-respecting Jew would even think of associating with, to come and follow Him!
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Exercising unconditional love will require inviting those considered outcasts into our circle.
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I hope as we get older, we do not fall into the trap of treating people like outcasts like we may have done in High School.
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Jesus invites Matthew, and Matthew accepts.
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Things will go from bad to worse for Jesus.
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Jesus and the disciples went to Matthew's house for dinner.
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In one of the parallel passages in Luke 5:29 , we are told that Matthew prepared a great feast in his home for this occasion.
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At that dinner, we were told many people were there.
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Many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and His disciples because Mark tells us that many were following Him.
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If you have ever felt like an outcast, maybe you could imagine the joy Jesus brought into the lives of these people whom society deemed not worthy of spending time with.
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Imagine living your life and having people spit and despise you.
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Imagine not having much, if any, social life because no one wanted to be around you.
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Who are the ones we are told not to give the time of day to today?
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How do you think God sees them?
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So here we are, Jesus eats with the MANY tax collectors and sinners.
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Let’s drop down to verse 16.
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Mark 2:16 (NET 2nd ed.)
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16 When the experts in the law and the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
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II. Inviting criticism.
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Here come the party poopers again!
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The EXPERTS in the law and the Pharisees came on the scene, and they saw that Jesus was having a good time and was eating with SINNERS and TAX COLLECTORS!
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Those HOLY men lovingly approach the disciples of Jesus and lovingly ask why Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners.
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I am sure the HOLY men were uncomfortable talking about this oversight by Jesus.
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LOL!
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Weren’t the righteous supposed to help bring people close to God?
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How can you help people to get closer to God that you despise?
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To understand the criticism, you need to understand the terms tax collector and sinner.
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We already touched on the tax collector question.
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Let’s look at what a sinner was.
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The term “sinner” did not simply mean the person violated God’s law but also the scribal law.
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This meant that the person guilty of murder and those who didn’t wash their hands the required number of times were both considered sinners.
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It was a term used to distinguish those who strictly observed all aspects of the law from those who didn’t (Barclay, Mark, 57).
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Who would they be today?
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Whom can you think of in your life who perhaps profits by exploiting those who have no choice?
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Who doesn’t do everything the way you think it should be done?
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These are the tax collectors and sinners for you today.
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At its heart, the criticism Jesus faced in this passage is this: a righteous person should know better than to spend time with someone so unrighteous.
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Or, a good person should not be hanging out with “someone like that.”
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To put it differently, you might say, “I wouldn’t be caught dead with that person.”
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There was an expectation (and perhaps still is in the church) that a righteous person—that is, someone who does all the right things according to their understanding of God—would not turn around and associate with someone who, either intentionally or through ignorance, lives a life at odds with God.
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When they see Jesus acting in a way that contradicts their worldview, they are confused and critical of his behavior.
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Unconditional love may require us to open ourselves up to criticism.
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For Matthew, accepting the call of Jesus cost him a great deal.
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Everything about Matthew’s life was going to change, from his job, surroundings, and companions.
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How often do people reject the call to follow Jesus because they lack the courage to break from the crowd?
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It was refreshing to see how Matthew faced his situation.
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Matthew threw a party; he did not throw a funeral!
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Matthew invited his crew of misfit toys to come to see, eat with, and hear Jesus!
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All their lives could change from Matthew celebrating instead of mourning his new life!
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Jesus was not worried about what the religious leaders thought; Jesus cared for these outcasts, as society called them, because God loves them all!
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Let’s turn to verse 17 for a final thought.
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Mark 2:17 (NET 2nd ed.)
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17 When Jesus heard this he said to them, “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
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III. Inviting the hopeless.
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Jesus hears the grumbling of the religious leaders, and He quickly goes and apologizes and leaves! 😀
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Unconditional love we require is to invite the hopeless.
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To understand the response of Jesus, we need to understand He is being somewhat sarcastic to the criticism of the religious leaders.
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In their own estimation, the religious leaders were the “righteous,” but they were the whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside but inside full of dead people's bones.
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Jesus infers to these men that "you” think you are so righteous that you do not need God, then there is nothing I can do for you.
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Jesus offers three arguments to vindicate Himself and His disciples.
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First, His office.
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Jesus uses the analogy of a doctor who must visit the sick to help them.
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Jesus is called to help the sin-sick.
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We find this in one of the parallel narratives in Luke 5:32.
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Luke 5:32 (NET 2nd ed.)
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32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
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Second, He says God Himself commended such an act of mercy and preferred it to mere external sacrifices.
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We find this in one of the parallel narratives In Matthew 9:13.
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Matthew 9:13 (NET 2nd ed.)
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13 Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
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Finally, since Jesus was called to call sinners to repentance, Jesus, therefore, must go to sinners!
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None of these arguments can be used to justify keeping bad company for any other purpose than to help them come to Jesus.
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We are called to be the influencers, not the influenced!
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Without Jesus, we all are without hope.
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The religious leaders did not feel they were in need.
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So many people today, religious or not, think they are righteous when they are not.
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Our righteousness comes from what Jesus did, not from what we do.
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Philippians 3:8–9 (NET 2nd ed.)
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8 More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things—indeed, I regard them as dung!—that I may gain Christ,
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9 and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness—a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness.
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CONCLUSION
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As with the other criticisms Jesus faced, we must ask ourselves, “What does this tell us about God’s heart?”
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What becomes clear is that God is a God of compassion.
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He cares deeply about everyone and wants them to be well.
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He cares more about people’s welfare than He does our social conventions or, in Jesus’s case, what people might think of His actions.
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The sicker they are and the less worthy they may seem, the more they need help.
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In God’s sight, they are still precious.
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They are precious enough that God took on flesh, became a human, and faced criticism simply for acts of fellowship with society's “less desirable” elements.
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But that wasn’t enough; He cared so deeply about our welfare that He was willing to die for our sins so that God could fully accept us, forgiven, and made righteous—not because of what we have done but because of what Jesus did.
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