[unedited transcript generated by AI]
If you want to turn to Mark chapter 2, we aren't going to spend a ton of time in the sermon portion of the service this morning, but I do want to look at Mark 2 and our text is going to be verses 13-22.
And we're going to see two questions that are asked in this text, and they might at first seem unrelated.
The two questions are, why did Jesus ate with the people he ate with?
Why did he keep bad company?
And the second question is, why didn't his disciples fast?
And to just set those questions out there, they might seem unrelated.
But in all three of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, these stories are tied together.
They're not just both in those gospels, they're there in the same order.
There's actually this whole cluster of stories that we see here in Mark chapter 2 are all tied together in the Synoptic Gospels.
And so there's something that God wants us to see about how they're related, how they're tied together.
The chronology doesn't necessarily flow, so there's something important about these two questions that they need to sit next to each other in our minds as we think about them.
Why did Jesus hang out with who he hung out with?
And why didn't his disciples fast?
So first, verses 13 and 14, we see kind of the setting of the story.
He went out again beside the sea and all the crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them.
And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth.
And he said to him, follow me.
And he rose and followed him.
And so Jesus is back by the sea of Galilee again, just the same place where he had called James and John and Andrew and Simon.
where they had been out fishing.
Jesus is now going out to that same shoreline and he's walking the shore and he's teaching which is a positive turn in Mark's gospel because remember earlier in Mark chapter 1 the people had crowded him but were so concerned with physical healing and so concerned with him performing exorcisms that they'd quit listening to the teaching and that's why he had to leave Capernaum to start with.
Well now he's back in Capernaum and the people are swarming to him
But they're listening to his teaching.
They're listening to what he has to say.
And as he passed by, he sees Levi, the son of Alphaeus.
And as we think about the word here, tax booth, you shouldn't think of some kind of fancy building.
It's like a lemonade stand.
At Christmas time, a lot of churches have these little stables that they put together with ropes and
Sticks that don't look anything like where Jesus actually would have been born but they look a lot like if you put a table up there probably about what this tax booth would have looked like is that little it's just a shanty where it would have been near a thoroughfare where people are passing by frequently and close to centers of commerce so like people coming off the lake and then Capernaum itself it would have been the first major city that you entered into when you came into Herod Antipas' region that he ruled for the Romans.
And so these tax collectors, they would bid on a spot.
Like they, they would go to the higher up, whoever it was in this case, Herod and say, I think I can collect this much in taxes from this area.
And that's how you would bid is whoever said, I can, I can collect the most.
They got the bid is the opposite of how our government does bids, right?
You know, so the bid goes to the highest bidder and, and so he gets it and
And the way that that worked is built into that would, you would get a cut, right?
You would get a percentage of however much you collected would be your salary, but nobody knew how much your bid was.
And so you could collect, if you could collect over what you had told the government, all the rest of that went into your pockets.
And so tax collectors were hated in that society because you have these, in this case, Jewish tax collectors in Jewish areas, but they're working for the Romans.
And so, according to the Pharisees' definition of clean and unclean, nothing to do with the Old Testament laws, but according to the Pharisees' definition, by associating yourself with Gentiles in that way, you have become unclean.
And so you get kicked out of the synagogue, you no longer are viewed by your people as one of your people, you're a traitor, and you are basically, though you might be very wealthy, you are essentially the scum of the earth in everybody's eyes.
And so Jesus, as he's walking along and he's teaching the people, and he's got a couple of kind of interesting people that he's called to follow him already with these fishermen, these guys that work with their hands.
They're not, they're not like the religious people.
But then he's walking by and he sees this scumbag tax collector sitting in his booth.
And he says, Levi, you follow me.
And then Levi does this shocking thing.
He leaves his stuff and he gets up and he follows Jesus, just like Simon and Andrew and James and John had done.
Levi leaves everything and follows Jesus.
And then he doesn't just follow him, he invites him into his home.
Verse 15, As he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
And so the thing that we should picture is basically a feast.
So traditionally, the Jews would sit down around the table to eat.
But one of the things they had picked up from Hellenistic culture and Roman culture was that for fancy occasions, you reclined around the table to eat.
And so it seems like Levi has said, I'm so excited about following Jesus, I'm going to throw a party for all my friends, all of his tax collector and sinner friends who also were interested in Jesus and wanted to follow Jesus.
come to him.
But then the scribes of the Pharisees, verse 16, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and with tax collectors, said to him, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?
And it's easy for us, who've read this story maybe many times, to see that and to think, what is wrong with those Pharisees?
But I think probably the way we should read the story is to think of who is the person that you hate most.
Who is the person that maybe, oh, I don't hate anybody, but who is the person that like, if they were to walk through that door right now, your stomach would kind of go.
Who is the person that if you heard that I was hanging out with them, you'd be like,
I'm not, what's wrong with you Will?
Why would you spend time with them?
Who is that person?
And then think, that's exactly who Jesus is hanging out with here.
He is hanging out with the people that you would think, that's not really the kind of society you should be hanging out with Jesus.
The Pharisees, they had built up, when it says sinners here, it doesn't necessarily mean like the most scandalous people.
Jesus hung out with some of the most scandalous people too.
But here though, the Pharisees had, they had not just like the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and then the other Old Testament laws that basically just explained the Ten Commandments.
They had added on to that another 613 laws, because what God gave them apparently wasn't enough.
To keep as separate, as far away as they could,
from any suspicion of sinfulness.
And though we can look at that and scoff at it, so often as Christians, we think the same way.
That the way to be different than the world, the way to be extra Christian is to not... Mr. Grinch, I wouldn't touch you with a 29 and a half foot pole.
And we think about sinners
as the Grinch, and we wouldn't want to even come close to them and touch them.
Nobody in this room.
But I've had people say to me, well, you wouldn't let that kind of person come into church, right?
And I don't know how well I control my face.
My thought process is, are you stupid?
Like, this is who Jesus came for.
Jesus came for...
Now, I know what my life would be apart from Christ.
It would be an ugly mess.
I know what my heart is.
Even having the Holy Spirit in my life is an ugly mess.
And Jesus died for me.
Why would I think somebody else doesn't deserve that?
And so when we read this, I think we should see Jesus, why did he hang out with these kind of people?
Well, he says, it's interesting that the Pharisees don't ask Jesus, why are you hanging out with these guys again?
Could you explain this to us?
And of course, you've got again, picture the scenario.
So like Levi's invited all of his friends over and so
He's had a lot of money.
He's probably good at throwing parties.
And this is probably like some kind of outdoor setting because obviously the Pharisees, they would feel, since he is unclean, if they go into his house, they would become unclean.
So they're not actually at the party, but if it's kind of in an open courtyard where you can walk by on the street, like, so look, they're having the waffle supper or waffle breakfast this morning over at the empty buildings.
Like they're walking around, walking down the middle of Fulton Street.
Close enough they can see who's in there like, now why is he in there with them?
They're right on the edges of this thing, and they're close enough to see Jesus is in there with people who he shouldn't be, and they can kind of get to the disciples and say, why is he in there?
Why is he sitting with these people?
And what happens is that Jesus doesn't, you kind of wonder, maybe the disciples have the same question, because the disciples don't answer them.
Jesus answers them.
And Jesus says, when he heard it, said to them,
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
And he looks at them and he says, well, you guys are so healthy.
You guys are so put together.
You obviously don't need me.
I'll go to the people who do need me.
And we know spiritually that there's no such thing as a righteous person, a put together person.
Paul's verdict on that in Romans 3 is there's none righteous, no, not one.
There's no one who understands.
There's no one who seeks for God.
Together they have turned aside.
All together they've become worthless.
Like our hearts are wicked and so we all need Christ.
But we're only going to hear his call to repentance if we see ourselves as sinners.
And so Jesus goes to those who already know that they're sick.
I was listening to one preacher on this text and he shared a story of a woman who worked in a
in a doctor's office as a receptionist.
And she wrote a letter to the editor just furious that all these people come into the doctor's office coughing and hacking and they're there and they're spreading sickness and they should just stay home if they're sick.
And I think how often as believers do we have that same mindset?
Don't bring that ickiness close to me.
But Jesus was just the opposite.
And this is the same thing we see in the story with the leper, right?
So the Old Testament way that cleanness and uncleanness works is that if uncleanness touches you, you are defiled.
But in the New Testament conception of holiness, it's the holiness that's contagious.
It's Jesus touches the leper and the leper becomes clean.
Jesus doesn't become unclean.
The leper is healed.
And in his high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prays that the Father would keep his people holy, but not that he would remove his people from the world.
No, he's leaving them in the world.
And we're here to be, Matthew 5 says, salt and light, preserving, flavoring, making people go, Oh, what is different?
Our holiness has to be seen, and for it to be seen, it has to be in with other people who don't have it.
It's only in relationships with unbelievers, with people that maybe your Christian friends would say, why do you spend time with that person, that you actually have the opportunity to share Christ.
You know, people often mock the idea of a holy huddle, but maybe we should just redefine what a holy huddle is.
A holy huddle, not where we just hang out with other people who think like us and act like us.
But in football, a huddle is where you get together and talk about the play, and then you go engage.
You go run the play.
I mean, this analogy breaks down pretty quickly because then you're viewing the world as your other people in the world as your enemy, and that's not it.
But the idea of a huddle in football is you huddle up and then you go act.
And it's like,
In worship, we come together and we hear God's word and we're encouraged by the fellowship and we're encouraged as we sing to him together and we go vertical in worship and then we go out into the world and we have six days a week to run the play of tell people about Jesus and live lives that are distinct from the world.
So that's why Jesus hangs out with sinners because that's who needs him.
And that's good news, right?
That Jesus comes for sinners because we're all sinners.
The second thing we see, the second question we see is in verse 18 and following.
Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and they came to him and said, why do John's disciples fast and the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast?
And we actually find out in Matthew's gospel that it's John's disciples, John the Baptist's disciples who ask this question.
Now their fasting and the Pharisees' fasting were different.
The Pharisees fasted because they thought it made them more religious.
Twice a week they fasted.
They, and they, even though in the Old Testament, there's only one fast every year that's prescribed the day of atonement, there's a fast associated with that.
It's the only fasting that God commands in the Old Testament.
But fasting is seen very often as a positive thing.
Like Jesus isn't, Jesus isn't about to criticize fasting, but.
The Pharisees thought, well, if you don't fast, if you don't do this the way that we do, where we take our two times a week and say, I'm not going to eat or I'm not going to eat this thing, well, then you're just, you're not doing this whole following God thing correctly.
John's disciples, John, John was an ascetic, right?
He, he lived in the wilderness.
He ate locusts and wild honey.
Probably to fast from that every now and then wouldn't be too bad, but his disciples here are probably fasting because he's been taken to prison.
Jesus' ministry starts in Mark 1 after the arrest of John.
And so his disciples are probably fasting and praying that he would be released, that he would be freed from prison.
So there are different kinds of fasting, but both of them are participating in this practice of, we're going to abstain from food for a time.
We're going to abstain so that we can focus on prayer.
which again like that kind of fasting is not commanded but promoted in places like first Corinthians where it's okay to stop eating so that or to stop from any particular thing so that you can focus your mind on God for a time that's not wrong but Jesus says at that time it would have been inappropriate for his disciples verse 19 Jesus said to them can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them as long as they have the bridegroom with them
They Cannot Fast.
And Jesus is doing two things with this.
Number one is he's the bridegroom in this story, which is a really subversive way.
It doesn't seem that people grasp it, but it's a subversive way of associating himself with God.
Because in the Old Testament, God is pictured as a bridegroom and Israel is his bride.
And nowhere else, nowhere does the Messiah get called the bridegroom.
Nowhere is
Anyone else called the bridegroom but God himself in the Old Testament, other than when it's talking about obviously a literal wedding.
But here Jesus, he centers himself and calls himself the bridegroom.
And that language of bride, bridegroom, and bride is picked up in the New Testament and Jesus is the bridegroom and the church is the bride.
And we see that really fully in the book of Revelation.
That same language is used in Ephesians chapter 5 as well.
And Jesus says, okay, there's these, the verse here, verse 19 says wedding guests, and in Greek that's literally the sons of the bridegrooms, like the family, the sons of the bridegroom, it's a metaphor here for wedding guests, probably like his bridal party, his, what do you call that?
Attendance, the wedding attendance.
They are with him and
If your buddy's about to get married, you don't go say, Hey, let's all go fast and pray together.
Right?
No, you're joyful.
You're, you're, you're not like, Oh, I'm so sorry.
This is, you might think, I'm so sorry this is happening to you, but you're not going to say that you're not going to act like that.
You're going to be participating in rejoicing.
And Jesus is saying, Hey, I'm here.
These guys aren't going to act sad.
They're not going to act sorrowful.
That wouldn't be appropriate for the moment.
And then he looks for, like he doesn't specifically spell it out, but when we look forward to the future, Revelation 19 pictures when the bridegroom returns and there is a consummation, a wedding supper of the lamb as the bride is presented to the bridegroom.
And there's this supper of God that we are all invited to.
Jesus is going to use other parables throughout the Gospels that point to that.
In between,
There's this time where the bridegroom has gone away before he's come back for the consummation of the wedding.
And verse 20 says, the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them.
They will fast in that day.
There's an appropriateness.
In the church age, Christ isn't physically with us now.
There are times to mourn.
There are times to set aside for prayer and fasting.
But that was not the time then.
While Jesus was physically present was not the time.
Verse 21 says, No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.
If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and the worse is made.
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.
If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins.
But new wine is for fresh wineskins.
So what Jesus does with both of these metaphors is he's saying, When I have come, when the bridegroom is here, there is something fundamentally different.
So they have this religion of Judaism.
Now, like at its core in the law, it's given by God, right?
It's, it's not, it's not a bad thing.
These, these are good genes that Jesus gave them, but they've become tattered and worn through, through the way that they have practiced their, their religion and they've added things to it.
And you can't take Jesus and just like try to patch up your religious system.
You can't take Jesus and try to patch him onto your life and make it work.
You have all of Jesus or you have none of him.
You can't just patch him onto whatever else you're doing.
The picture with the wineskins is so like they would put, my Bible's goatskins, goatskins fairly soft and supple.
You would put new wine into a fresh goatskin because that soft leather would expand as the wine fermented.
But if you tried to take an older goatskin that had already expanded and then put fresh wine into it, especially if it hadn't had any liquid in it and it started to get brittle and that that wine started to ferment and expand, it would blow up the wineskin and you've lost both your vessel and all your wine.
Not great.
And so Jesus says, what I am doing here is fundamentally different.
It's fundamentally new.
It's building on the foundation of the law and the prophets.
But there's something new here with the spirit.
And if you try to just dump it back into this old system, it's going to blow it up.
The way this ties into that previous point is if the Pharisees are just looking for a Messiah to add on to all of their current expectations and their current way of doing religion, it's not going to work.
Their rigid system that wasn't actually built on God's word
was not compatible with a Savior who had come to seek and to save the lost.
Their way of pursuing God by separating from everybody else was at odds with Christ coming to seek and to save sinners.
And it wasn't appropriate for Jesus' disciples to fast while he was there because the fact that he came to seek and to save the lost should bring us joy.
It's something that is a
The more we reflect on it should overwhelm us with his grace and his mercy.
The fact that he has saved us.
And if we think about that, then the dominant note in our life, even in the church age, where there are times that it's appropriate to mourn and to fast and to set aside time for serious reflection and prayer.
But the dominant note of our life should not be dour fasting.
The dominant note of our life should be joy.
Because on the basis of what Christ did in his first incarnation and seeking and saving the lost, we have been saved.
And on that basis, we have hope, a certain hope in the future of a coming wedding feast when the bridegroom returns.
And so in between,
We should be inviting others to borrow from one of Jesus' other parables.
We should be going out into the highways and the byways and inviting people to that feast because Christ has come and accomplished salvation for all who will trust in him.
And so that's our job, right?
Our job is to invite them to that feast, invite them to drink the new wine of life in the spirit, life forgiven by Christ, life with a hope of a future.
Would you pray with me?
Father God, we thank you for your goodness to us.
We thank you for how richly you bless us in Christ.
And we ask that you would give us boldness to speak of him.
We pray in Jesus name.
Amen.
