Supper with the Savior

I invite you to turn with me again to Mark chapter 2, and we’ll read again this section that we read this morning and to which we now return. Mark 2:13:

“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’”—you will notice there are inverted commas there. These are not sinners who have broken the moral law of God. These are the people who are regarded as “sinners” because they do not comply with the Pharisaic standards of moral purity and a commitment to externals. He “saw him eating with [these] ‘sinners’ and tax collectors,” and “they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and “sinners”?’

“On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It[’s] not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” (You’ll notice there’s no inverted commas there.)

Father, with our Bibles before us, we pray earnestly for your help. It’s the end of the day. So much has demanded our attention, and so much now fights for our attention. Even the very weariness of our bodies mitigates against our ability to really seek you and find you. And so we pray for that supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, that divine dialogue that takes place when the Spirit of God speaks deep into our lives and we know that even though the sermon may be marginal, the speaker may be average, that this is none other than the voice of God. And for this we listen and long. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Now, the incident that we’re considering here, as recorded by Mark, clearly made a strong impact on the early Christians. I say that because not every incident that you find in Mark is also found in Matthew and in Luke, but this particular incident is. It’s not unique in that, but it is one of a number that fall into that category. And it would seem that verse 17 had registered itself, as we might have anticipated it so doing, just because not only of the pithy nature of the statement but also because of such a clear expression of Jesus’ purpose and his mission.

And to verse 17 we will come, but first of all, we must notice that these verses, 15 and following, follow on from verse 14. You don’t have to be brilliant to recognize that, but it is important to realize that there is an obvious progression here, following upon this dramatic encounter with Levi at the tax collector’s booth. Jesus had commanded him to become his follower. Levi had got up and had now become his follower. And the inference at least appears to be—and this is what we suggested to one another this morning—that Levi had then determined that he would bring together a company of his friends and work associates. Perhaps this was a standard practice. Perhaps people knew that the dinner parties at Levi’s house were not to be missed, and he simply continued his pattern, with a twist—and a twist that was about to become apparent as a result of the guest whom he had invited.

The guest list is really the bugaboo here, because the guest list does not really comply with the expectations of the religious Jew. Most religious people would have regarded it as a very unexpected list of invited people, and that because they had come to the conviction that the real essence of living for God was to make sure that you lived in isolation from all who were clearly not for God. So, you shouldn’t eat in a home where the bread had not been prepared properly; you should not eat that which had not been consecrated; you should not eat where the normal temple requirements of cleanliness for the washing of the dishes and so on had taken place.

And what Mark is telling us here is that Jesus has really made a kind of provocative move in accepting this invitation to the home of Levi. Because we are now finding him in the company that any respectable Jewish leader would have felt duty-bound to avoid. And this, of course, is just exactly what we would expect—that the Pharisees then, on looking at this, found it very, very difficult to understand and certainly could not accept what Jesus was doing.

Now, if you think about it, there is some justification for their concern, because eating a meal with someone is significant. We sometimes talk about a young man who, in dating a girl, has managed to “get his feet under the table.” At least, we say that in Scotland. And what it means is that he’s actually taken it up a couple of notches, and he’s moving very close to the point where he might manage to snatch this girl away, because he has managed so to engage himself with the family and to be one with them in fellowship.

And to sit and eat a meal with someone in this context was in some measure to express a sense of identification with those individuals. Jesus understood that and was clearly doing it with purpose. For example, remember in Revelation, in the often-misquoted verse from Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if [anyone] hear[s] my voice and open[s] the door, I will come in to him.” And do you remember in the words of the King James Version, what does it then go on to say? “And [I] will sup with him, and he with me.” In other words, the fellowship around the table will be an expression of our communion and our identification with one another.

Now, what you really have in this incident is essentially a question that is posed by the Pharisees and an answer that is given by Jesus. So we’ll essentially just look at that, and then we’ll be through.

The Pharisees’ Question

The background is important once again. You will notice how these people are identified: that the teachers, they’re identified, verse 16, as “the teachers of the law” (which is another way of saying “the scribes”) “who were Pharisees.” In the King James Version, I think it uses the phrase “the scribes of the Pharisees.”[1] And the NIV is trying to make sense of that. It says “the teachers of the law,” the people who were involved in the grammatical nuances of the law who were themselves part of the Pharisaical group.

We might just say in passing that this is a reminder to us, isn’t it, of how a good thing can become a bad thing—of how a deeply held and a well-held conviction, if pushed to an unhelpful and unbiblical extreme, may actually turn around and bite you. And we don’t have time to pause on that.

But what we discover is that by this time, by Jesus’ time, they had developed an intricate and comprehensive system of laws. They had ended up with some 613 commandments. Moses had been given 10; they were now up to 613.

This system of law was in order to ensure that they would remain hermetically sealed from those who were not the observants and the observers of the law. Of the 613 commands, 248 were dos and 365 were don’ts. You probably should check that: 613; 248 dos, 365 don’ts. And if that were not enough, they had then decided that they would add to the 613 extra little laws, extra little codas and codicils, in order to ensure that the righteous—namely, themselves—would be kept the necessary distance away from sinners, from these people who paid no attention to their long list of regulations.

Now, their concern for purity was actually not positive. Their concern for purity was not the concern of a surgeon who tomorrow morning in his first surgery is there to ensure that he has plenty of time to scrub up, and the reason that he scrubs up is because he is about to be involved with the sick. Theirs was a scrubbing up of isolation, not a scrubbing up of involvement. And Jesus provokes their indignation by entering into the very realm which they regarded as being wrong for their participation. Their concern was self-preservation: no contamination at all costs.

And what they discover is that this Jesus, who has been casting out the demons, who healed the leper, who raised the paralytic, who has been making such a tremendous impact in the region of Capernaum, is now over at Levi’s house, and he apparently is right in the heart of things at this dinner party.

Now, you will notice that these Pharisees, they’re keen on confrontation, but they’re not very good at just taking somebody on straightaway. Back in the last little section, remember, they were talking to themselves in verse 6. They were “thinking to themselves, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming!’”[2] But they didn’t come out and say, “Jesus, why are you talking like that? You’re a blasphemer.” No, they were bold enough to be annoyed about it, but they weren’t bold enough to say anything about it. And here, they’re once again offended by it, but they don’t come to Jesus; notice, they will come to his disciples: “When the … Pharisees saw him eating with the ‘sinners’ and [the] tax collectors,” they didn’t ask Jesus; “they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and [with] “sinners”?’”

Their outrage at what they consider unacceptable behavior is expressed indirectly. And when you go on and read through the Gospels, as I know many of you are doing… And incidentally, we’ve got some wonderful new Through the New Testaments. They’re smaller than before. You can actually get them—you don’t need a separate briefcase when you travel—and you can get them in our bookstore even tonight. We’re glad to encourage you to read them. But when you read through, you will find that the complaint of the Pharisees that is recorded here for us by Mark in 2 is a common complaint.

So, for example, at the beginning of Luke 15, where you have the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost boys, Luke records the beginning, “Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’”—that’s the same group that Jesus is with now—“the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering [round] to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”[3] They’re still on at it. And indeed, when you take, in Matthew’s record, the common conception of Jesus by the Pharisees, it was that this Jesus of Nazareth was a greedy, hard-drinking fellow who had a hard time making good friends. Remember what they said? They say, “John the Baptist comes, and he neither eats nor drinks, and they call him an aesthetic freak. Jesus of Nazareth comes, and they call him a winebibber and a glutton who hangs out with the wrong crowd.”[4] That’s what the Pharisees thought of Jesus.

Do you think Jesus was unduly concerned? I don’t think so, not for a moment. Otherwise, I don’t think he would have gone to this particular party.

Well, I think that’s enough on that. We’ve done enough, haven’t we? Let’s come to the reply of Jesus himself.

Jesus’ Answer

“On hearing this”—either the disciples came to him and said, “This is what they’re saying,” or that he overheard them. It’s interesting to try and figure out what the Pharisees are actually doing here—whether Levi invited them or if they just showed up. Maybe they were like the kind of “Pharisaical police,” or perhaps it’s a more of an outdoor event, as is often the place, and the event could be taking place in such a way that Pharisees could be on the perimeter of things and be observing it and be aware of what was going on. I don’t really know, and when you find out, then you can let me know.

But Jesus then answers, first of all, by way of a proverb with which none of his opponents could realistically disagree. In other words, he says, “It[’s] not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Anybody got a problem with that? That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? It was probably a proverbial statement at the time. So he quotes a proverb, and then he explains his purpose and his mission. First of all, he speaks in the third person with a proverb, and then he speaks in the first person when he tells what he’s doing. “The healthy don’t need a doctor. The sick do.” And here he says, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

In other words, he says to them, “You are here asking if it is permissible for me to do this, and I want you to know it is my purpose to do this. This is my reason for being here. I mix with sinners because they have a disease, and I have a cure.” That’s what he’s saying. Makes perfect sense. “Why would I spend time with religious people? Why would I spend time with the folks who are so sure that they’re in the right and they’re fine? They never listen to me in any case. No, the people I’ve come to spend time with are the ones who know themselves to be in need. I’ve come to spend time with the sick and the sinners.”

And again, you find this throughout the whole New Testament, don’t you? Remember, after the event involving little Zacchaeus, when he has come down from the tree and has gone home to his house, Jesus has entered into his home, the conversation has ensued, they’ve come out, as it were, onto the front porch, Jesus says, “Salvation has come to this house, for truly this man is a son of Abraham,” and then he says, “And just so you remember why it is that I’m here: the Son of Man came seeking to save the lost.”[5] Came seeking to save the lost.

He had not and he has not come to call those who believe themselves to be righteous but to call those who are outcasts who know that they need to be made whole. The whole of his mission was directed towards the sinful and, to use the imagery here, “the sick.”

Jesus had not and he has not come to call those who believe themselves to be righteous but to call those who are outcasts who know that they need to be made whole.

Now, it’s good just to let that settle in our minds, ’cause I want to make one or two points of application. All right? Jesus accedes to the request to go to Levi’s house. He has seen Levi, called to him. Levi has become a follower. There are many other tax collectors, apparently, who are interested in Jesus and have actually begun to follow. And perhaps Levi’s had a tremendous impact before they even get to the house. The Pharisees are concerned: “He’s not keeping the regulations. This is not what we expected. This is not… He can’t possibly be a prophet of God. He can’t possibly be a genuinely religious man. Because any genuinely religious man would be keeping the 631 commands,” or however many there are, “and he’s not doing that.”

Jesus says, “Well, what do you expect? Doctors don’t need to spend time with the healthy. They spend time with the sick. I have come to the sick and to the needy.” Okay?

Points of Application

Now, one or two points of application and we’re done.

First of all, by way of application, let’s sound a cautionary note. A cautionary note. And the cautionary note is this: Jesus, by his involvement, by his attendance in the home of Levi here, did not and does not condone or excuse sin. Jesus did not and does not condone or excuse sin. It is not uncommon for some people to pitch off from the story of Levi’s party to an explanation of why it is that they believe themselves to have perfect liberty to engage in all kinds of things which actually belong to our preconverted experience rather than our postconversion experience.

Jesus did not go among the people in Levi’s house for any other reason than to save them. He went there, for some had been saved, and others may be saved. And in seeking to follow this pattern, we daren’t use it as an excuse to indulge our own sinful appetites. There is a dreadful propensity in us, even in Christ, to seek for things which we know to be beyond the bounds of that which God has designed and desired for us. So, for example, the sin of gluttony, the sin of drunkenness, the sin of idolatry, the sin of immorality. Let none of us use the story of Jesus going with the tax collectors and the sinners in Levi’s house as some leverage for our own unbiblical behavior.

Now, there is a fine line here, because the boat has to be in the water without the water being in the boat. That’s the hard part. And, of course, it is easy to go the Pharisees’ route for complete and total isolation: free from contamination, wear the mask, stay away. It is hard to be in but not of, but Jesus had that as a plan: “Father, I don’t ask that you take them out of the world—I want you to leave them right here in the world—but that you keep them from the Evil One.”[6] So it is possible to be engaged in this way—indeed, it is vital to be engaged in this way—without using it as a mechanism for our own sinful propensities. That’s just a cautionary note.

Vaughn Roberts, when he was here at our pastors’ conference some couple of years ago now, sent consternation running through the ranks of some when he explained that one of the strategies that they had for outreach from their church in Oxford in England was what they called “church in the pub.” And so they went to the pub, and then in the pub, after everybody was settled down and ready to go, they had a Bible study. Well, you should have seen some of the questions that he got from some of the people. They said, “Well, you can’t be a Christian and go in the pub.” And he said, “Well, I beg to differ. The command is that I shouldn’t be drunk.”

Now, you see this, don’t you, when Paul later on explains to the Corinthians—he says to them, “I have written [to] you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.” Wow! That kind of limits my friends right there. Then he says, “Not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolators. [Because] in that case you would have to leave [the] world. But now I am writing [to] you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolator or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.”[7]

Secondly by way of application, let us not use a professed desire for holiness as an excuse for not cultivating friendships with unbelieving people. Okay? Let’s not fall foul of this idea that now, once in Christ, what we’re supposed to do is just hang around with everybody who believes the same as we believe and goes where we go and does what we do. How in the world are we supposed to reach the gospel? If all the salt stays in the saltshaker, what are you going to do with the mashed potatoes? The salt has to be on the mashed potatoes. It has to be in the mashed potatoes. And Jesus is in amongst the mashed potatoes, and we must be there, identifying with sinners in their need, not identifying with them in their sin. And Jesus is here encouraging by example our involvement, not our isolation.

Thirdly, by way of application, the church is clearly for those who are spiritually sick. The church is for those who are spiritually sick. I met this morning somebody who’s moved to this area to become one of our emergency doctor physicians. And I was saying that’s got to be quite a thing as all those folks roll in, as those sirens go round and round and those large machines come careening into the parking lot, and all of a sudden, there they’re confronted with this circumstance.

That’s what the church is, in part, supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a hospital! That’s what makes it so staggering, isn’t it, when people think that the church is only for religious people and for the insiders and for folks who “like that kind of thing”? The people, when they run up against it, are supposed to say, “We’d better get him to the church! We’d better get him over to Parkside! Those people care! Those people are interested! Those people won’t send him away. They won’t send her away. Sure, she’s confused. Sure, she’s made bad choices. They won’t send her away.” Not unless, of course, the place is increasingly full of Pharisees.

You remember in the parable of the good Samaritan, what did the priest and the Levite do? Nothing. Nothing! Why? Out of a concern for external purity. They couldn’t go near that character without violating one of those laws. Jesus says, “Don’t play that game.” The Pharisees had turned religion into an insiders’ club. And as I suggested to you this morning, every congregation that has doctrinal convictions and distinctives, that cares about being obedient to the Bible and so on, runs a risk that those who hold more loosely to the Scriptures do not so quickly face, and the risk is of becoming increasingly pharisaical in our perspective. It was William Booth, remember, who established the Salvation Army, who wrote the little doggerel,

Some [want] to live within the sound
 Of Church [and] Chapel bell,
I want to run a Rescue Shop
 Within a yard of hell.[8]

Fourthly, the church is a company of saved sinners. The church is a company of saved sinners. So people ought to be able to come amongst the people of God, just as they would have done in Levi’s house, and say, “Oh, well, I didn’t know that anybody in here had ever in fact faced those things.”

Listen to Paul again: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor [the] idolators nor [the] adulterers nor male prostitutes [or] homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And then here’s the great sentence: “And that is what some of you were.”[9] “And that is what some of you were.” Not “That is what some of you are.” “That is what some of you were.” But the grace of God has brought you out of that—not to make us smug, not to isolate us, but to say, “Dear Lord Jesus, how I long that the same grace that has rescued me might rescue my friends!” The church is a company of saved sinners.

Penultimately: there are many, many people who are spiritually sick and dying for want of the Word of God that will heal them and save them. There are many, many people who are in that position. Oh, I know that you run into those who are self-righteous and apparently have no interest in things, but that is not the case in every instance. And one of the lies of the devil is to tell us, “You know, people are basically all right. You don’t need to go to them with that stuff about Jesus and his blood being shed for sinners. They’re nice people. In fact, some of them are frankly nicer than you.” And you think about it, and you say, “You know, they’re right.”

But the answer to that is not to say, “Well, I’m actually a lot nicer than you know.” It’s actually to say, “Yeah, I am a bit of a bad act—which just makes me all the more amazed by the grace of God, that he saves sinners, that he has saved people that still lose their temper, that he has saved people that still know what it is to be jealous and to be proud and to be prayerless and to be self-centered.”

The church is a community of the crippled and the broken and the harmed and the helpless. That’s why it is so distasteful when the tone of a congregation becomes smug, triumphalistic, self-assertive, self-assured, and creates a vibe, unspoken often, that says to people, “You know, if you wisened up and became like us, you would actually be fine,” instead of saying, “You know, the way of salvation is barred to those who are self-righteous, but it swings wide open to those who will admit their need.”

The church is a community of the crippled and the broken and the harmed and the helpless.

And finally, the picture here of friendship with Jesus around the table should point us on to a day that is yet to come when once again we will gather with Jesus—and in some way around a table. Because remember, he has promised that he will drink wine new with us in the kingdom of God.[10] “Don’t hold on to me,” he said to Mary, “because I’m leaving here.[11] But I’m going to leave, and I’m going to come for you. And eventually, I’m going to put together a banquet that will make the feast at Levi’s house seem absolutely nothing. And if you will keep in mind the wonder of that, and if the anticipation of that is before you, then perhaps when you meet together, you will routinely take bread and break it and take wine and distribute it. And you will say to yourselves all over again, ‘My, my! So God really does save sinners,’ and ‘O Lord, what a privilege to be able to look forward to getting my knees under the table with you in the kingdom.’”

Father, as we come around your Table that is by the invitation of your Son, Jesus, we pray that you will hallow these remaining moments in each other’s company. You have pledged that you will meet with us in the breaking of bread and in the sharing of this cup. We want that to be a reality now, and we ask for your help. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] Mark 2:16 (paraphrased from the KJV).

[2] Mark 2:6–7 (NIV 1984).

[3] Luke 15:1–2 (NIV 1984).

[4] Matthew 11:18–19; Luke 7:33–34 (paraphrased).

[5] Luke 19:9–10 (paraphrased).

[6] John 17:15 (paraphrased).

[7] 1 Corinthians 5:9–11 (NIV 1984).

[8] C. T. Studd, quoted in Norman P. Grubb,C. T. Studd: Cricketer and Pioneer(Harrisburg, PA: Evangelical Press, 1933), 170.

[9] 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 (NIV 1984).

[10] See Mark 14:25; Matthew 26:29; Luke 22:18.

[11] John 20:17 (paraphrased).