By Simon ManchesterSunday 29 Dec 2024Christian Growth with Simon ManchesterFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
Our heavenly Father, we know that our hearts by nature are hard and easily closed. We pray that by grace you would cause our hearts this morning to be open. Receptive. What we know not. We pray you would teach us what we have not. We pray you would give to us what we are not. We pray you would make us for Jesus sake. Amen.
Well, friends, we’re going back to Mark’s gospel for five or six Sundays. I hope you’ll pray for this little section. And if you’d like to turn in your Bibles, we are in Mark Chapter two verses, 13 to 17, just five verses. And I think they’re full of comfort and they’re full of challenge. As we will see, most of you won’t remember when we were in Mark’s Gospel last time. Or at least you won’t remember exactly what was being preached. But we looked at Jesus. Begin his ministry. We looked at the baptism, the call of John the Baptist.
We looked at his priorities to preach the kingdoms, to see people enter the kingdom. And the last sermon which we had was the man being let down through the roof. The paralytic and Jesus. Looking at him, you may remember and saying, You’re forgiven. You expect him to say you’re healed But he says you’re forgiven because it’s forgiveness, which brings a relationship with God, which is more precious than anything in this world.
If you look now at Chapter two, Verse 13 of Mark’s Gospel, you’ll see that we read Jesus was once again, out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him and he began to teach. His interest with the crowd is not to entertain them. It’s not to do miracles just for the sake of miracles, but to tell them who he is, why he’s come and all about the Kingdom of God. He’s beside the lake. The Lake of Galilee, now one of our congregation members, is just back from Israel and has brought me this very fine rock from the Lake of Galilee.
And this may not be right, but I sense it is one of the rocks that Jesus was standing on as he stood by the Lake of Galilee. And if anybody would like to come afterwards and touch this rock and be deeply blessed, you need your head red there we are a little piece of the Lake of Galilee. Uh, I want you to notice, as you get to verse 14 of Chapter two that we really hit the key of Christianity because Jesus calls a man who shouldn’t be in the team of disciples at all. This man in the New Testament tells us, had two names. Levi or Matthew. He’s the disciple who wrote the first gospel in the New Testament.
And there’s plenty of treasure in these verses, which I’m going to divide into two points this morning. I’m sure you’ll be able to remember these two points. The first one is this the people Jesus chooses and the second, the people. Jesus changes the people he chooses, the people he changes. First of all, the people he chooses. Look at verse 14. He saw Levi, the tax collector, and he called him to follow. And Levi did we get very sleepy as we read these verses, don’t we? Because it just sort of washes over us like nothing but just think about what’s happening here. I. I think the more you think the more interesting and the more amazing it is, because by choosing Levi to join the 12. And I’m trying to think carefully how to express this to us in the present age in which we live. It’s like asking Eddie Obeid to be a key leader in the Church of the Diocese of Sydney. And I say that because the public perception is cautious. I’m not making a character judgement.
I’m just saying the public perception is wary. We need to realise that Levi is the sort of person who most people would look at and be wary of. Levi’s a Jewish tax official, he worked for Herod, the Roman governor. He wasn’t collecting income tax or land tax or something like that. Levi was collecting tax on what people carried so he would set up his desk and he would stop people as they move from one place to another, like a customs official. And he would look at what they were carrying and then he would charge them accordingly. And often he charged exactly what he wanted and nobody could answer him because he had the power of Rome behind him.
When you joined the tax collectors as a Jew, you were then excluded from the synagogue and you’re often excluded from your family. You were looked on as a traitor, and you were looked on as an extortionist. If the leper who was cut off from the community by sickness was a kind of an unwilling exile. Levi is a willing exile, he says. I’ll pay the price. I’ll leave the circle. I’m happy to be outside the people of God.
So what’s Jesus doing in picking this guy? Surely there are more lovely fishermen to choose. You know, good hearted, honourable fishermen. But this is the gospel, isn’t it? Jesus doesn’t pick good people. He doesn’t go collecting fine people. I know there are many, perhaps even in your street or your block of units outside the church who think that Christianity is a bunch of people trying to be good enough for God one day. But actually, I hope you know that we meet on a regular basis to thank him for choosing people like us, who we know are not worthy.
And if you think the preacher’s job on Sunday is to get you to lift your game so that God will pick you one day for the ultimate team in the sky, I must remind you that Jesus chooses people like Levi, people who are really outside the circle and therefore, if we could get in a time machine and go back and help Jesus choose his team, his team of 12 apostles or disciples, we would probably be no help at all because we would be looking for all the people who we think have got potential or have got a good track record or a good CV or something like that. And Jesus is really not interested in that at all.
This is the clearest reminder. I think 214, that Jesus calls people who don’t qualify and every single person in the world is a non-qualifier for God’s kingdom. Every single person in the world is a non-qualifier for God’s kingdom. The Bible says that we have all disqualified ourselves. We have chosen a course or a path like Levi, which excludes us from the people of God, and therefore we need somebody who will bring us in to the Kingdom of God since we are not able to come in ourselves, and the reason that we are able to come into the Kingdom of God is because of his mercy, not our merit.
A friend of mine sent me a sermon during the week. Uh, and it was a good sermon, but in the course of the sermon, it was a draught. He wanted me to look over it, uh, which I thought was a very humble thing, because he’s a very able man. He doesn’t go to this church, and he was going to preach it at another church. But in the course of the sermon, I was reading it through. He wanted to explain what hypocrisy was and to explain what hypocrisy was. He actually identified a number of people who we would know who have sort of fallen or failed, and pointed out that this was hypocrisy.
So I thought about this and I wrote to him and I said, Brother, if I was you, I wouldn’t encourage your congregation to look out and point the finger or point their guns at somebody else. As a hypocrite, I’d have a good look in your own heart and see the gulf between what you know and what you do help your congregation to understand there is a big gulf between what we know and what we do, and therefore we’re very grateful for a Saviour called Jesus that will cause us to be deeply thankful, not proud and superior.
So why are we glad when we read of Jesus choosing Levi? Well, it’s what if he was choosing perfect people, we’d be disqualified. What hope would we have if we exclude ourselves from the people of God, unless someone comes along who can include those who don’t deserve to be there?
Well, if you think Levi’s an exceptional person, look at verse 15. You see in Verse 15 that he then goes to a dinner at Levi’s house, and he joins an absolute house full of tax collectors and sinners. And although this seems to be at Levi’s house, it certainly seems to be at Levi’s house. The original language, if you were studying the original language, gives the impression that Jesus somehow is at the head of the table. And so this is a kind of a meal where Jesus has been given some prominent place at the table, and he is kind of fulfilling what the Old Testament said would take place, which is that there would one day be a banquet where the Messiah would pull people together from all different stages and ages and places and backgrounds, Jews and gentiles North, south, east and west and bring them together at the banquet.
And this is a little preview of what Jesus will do in glory now. As I read this again, I think to myself. First of all, it’s a shock that Jesus chooses Levi because he’s just not obvious potential. But then it’s a shock that Jesus likes a whole house full of these guys. He actually likes the people in this house and my reaction because there’s enough Pharisee in me.
You may be the same. My reaction is to say, How does he mix with these people? Does he like their language? Does he like their conversation? Does he like their priorities? And how do these tax collectors and sinners like Jesus, Mr Holy. I mean the holiest man the world has ever seen? How do they like his company? And this, I think, is where we have much to learn and at the same time recognise. We may never really get to the bottom of how Jesus was a genius at mixing with the world, but he does teach us that, Holiness at its best, Real Holiness. Not not sort of pious fraud, holiness, but real holiness is not unattractive. And it’s not annoying. It’s actually very attractive, and it’s very compelling somehow, as I look at Chapter two, Verse 15, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the bottom of this, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to implement anything that I’m reading here. Jesus mixes constructively with sinful people.
Now I think it’s our typical pattern to polarise with outsiders. We either completely blend in so that no feathers get ruffled or we’re con confrontational and awkward. So things are just difficult and, uh, set back. But here is Jesus, mixing constructively with sinners. He obviously loves them, and they feel the love that he has for them. But he never compromises the standards of God. This is the son of God. He’s a genius.
He’s amazing. The word Pharisee in verse 16 because there were Pharisees there in the house as well. I don’t exactly know how this works, but there were Pharisees there. The word Pharisee comes from the Hebrew word to separate. Pharisees were separatists, there is a kind of excellent separation, you know, separate yourself from sin. But then there is a an unhelpful separation where you separate yourself from the world and you become so superior and so different that you’re of no earthly good. And these Pharisees had a kind of a negative separation where they looked down on the world and they built between themselves and the world, a gulf or a chasm.
You see what they say in verse 16? Very critically looking across to Jesus and the people who are around him. Uh, why is he mixing with such terrible, terrible company? Now? The reason is because Jesus is not a separatist, he’s a joiner. He spontaneously loves people. He wants willing fellowship.
He builds bridges. He builds links to people you notice in verse 15. Already, many of the tax collectors and sinners were following him. Now I wish we had hours, perhaps all day today to think about this issue of how the light of the world mixes with the darkness and how we who have been called to be light in the world mix with unbelief and darkness. I wish we had a long time to think about this.
I simply would say this to you that most of you have normal lives. You need to pray for us clergy who have weird lives. We mix much too much with believers, believers, believers, believers. But you have normal lives and you go to work with normal people. And you need God’s help on a daily basis. And I hope you’re asking for this to somehow mix with normal people who don’t know Christ and to wonderfully accept them without approving everything they think, say and do.
If you can get that right and Jesus got it right and he will help us to get it better. That is a wonderful contribution. You remember This came up in the book the Biography, The Autobiography by Rosaria Butterfield, uh, a lady who was professor of English at New York University and an absolute leader in the lesbian movement in New York. And she started to correspond with a pastor, a Presbyterian pastor, a conservative Presbyterian pastor. And in the course of the correspondence, he said to her, I accept you 100%. I will always accept you 100% but I don’t approve of what you think, say and do in certain areas.
And she felt the acceptance and acknowledged the non-approval. And it is a great and perfect necessary tension If people feel the first Oh God, help me to love these people. I don’t want to be a Pharisee. I don’t want to blend in and have no effect whatsoever. Help me to accept these people even if I cannot and won’t approve everything they think, say and do. And, uh, you must know how much you need his help to do that. Because if you’re going to mix with people at work who’ve got very different views of life and religion and morality, you need to know that it’s possible by the grace of God, to grow in acceptance and to grow in approval. No sort of non-approval of the position which Jesus models here in Chapter two, verse 15. And we need his help in following. We also need to do some homework on this so that we know how to speak sensibly about our position.
And I want to underline again what John Lennox said to us a couple of years ago when he came and said It’s just no help at all. If you’re growing into a giant in your work area. But you’re staying in kindergarten or preschool in your spiritual life, there needs to be some good reading, thinking through what’s the Christian position of this? How am I going to articulate it in a way that’s very clear and, of course, very loving. So don’t fall into the Pharisee position where you reject people because their words and deeds are not palatable to you. And don’t fall into the opposite position of saying, Well, nothing matters. I’m just gonna blend in. Neither of those positions is loving, but Jesus sets us a very wonderful pattern here in the people he chooses now. Secondly, let’s think about the people he changes, because let’s go back to 214 and you’ll see something really astonishing.
And again, I think we read this so carelessly and we miss what’s happening. But do you notice in 214 that Jesus says to Levi, the businessman, Leave your business and follow me, and what does your Bible say? Levi says. I’m sorry. This is an incredibly profitable business. No, Levi gets up and follows. I think that’s astonishing. as we’ve heard at our business lunch this particular Wednesday, we’re going to hear from Richard Bourgoin, who goes around asking CEO S in various companies in London if they would like to read the Bible with him. Non-Christian CEOs. And he has meetings all over the week to read the Bible with people in positions of very influential leadership
and many of them. He’s been reading the Bible with for months, even years, and are not yet Christians. But he’s meeting with them now. Who’s gonna get a secular businessman like Levi to surrender his business to Christ? Who could do that? It’s humanly impossible, isn’t it? I can’t do it. I’d love to see it happen. I have seen it happen over the years. Somebody becomes a Christian. Everything suddenly goes under the leadership of Christ.
It’s absolutely wonderful. But the world, as we know, is full of businessmen, where business is in the driver’s seat of their life, and some kind of domesticated Christianity is in the passenger seat of their life. Who can get this person to change the seats like that? And the answer is Jesus Christ, just like that and everything, of course, improves when this takes place. So I want you to notice in 214 that when Jesus speaks to Levi, it isn’t just talk. It isn’t just hot air.
Jesus speaks to Levi and makes him into a brand new person. Just as God spoke into the void Genesis one and made a brand new universe, Jesus speaks into the void of Levi’s head and heart and makes a brand new person. That’s what gets him up. It isn’t that Jesus says to him, Are you up for a challenge? He says, Follow me and he transforms him because Levi UC doesn’t need a new challenge. Well, he may need a new challenge, but he he’s not. He’s certainly not able to meet the challenge of following Jesus. It’s impossible.
He doesn’t need some kind of program of religion. What he needs is a new heart, a new soul, a new life, and Jesus speaks to him and says, Follow me and he changes him. He converts him. When the conversion takes place in a person’s life, they immediately see Christ as Lord. It’s as if you have lifted the soil away from a giant nugget gold nugget in their Garden. You’ve just brushed the soil away and they see this huge gold nugget in the garden. Everything changes.
I mean, not not even the house is worth that. And that’s how it is. When people see Christ in his greatness and his goodness, they say, That’s it. Everything else comes second place I was reading recently of a man called Sir Jack Haywood, who was the chairman of the Wolverhampton Wanderers football team. And he was once at the game. And there was a reporter from The Guardian newspaper quite near him.
And the Guardian reporter heard Sir Jack Haywood say our team must be the worst in the world and they reported this in the paper. And Sir Jack Haywood had a terrible time trying to live down this terrible sentence as the chairman of the of the team. Actually, he just been given a hot drink and he’d said, in a sort of a small rage, our tea must be the worst in the world. It’s good to get it right, isn’t it? When Levi gets up and follows Jesus, is it because he’s a brilliant listener?
It’s because Jesus is a brilliant caller. It’s because Jesus is a brilliant caller. You may fall into the trap, you see of thinking Well, nobody’s listening to Jesus today. He must be so depressed. He must be so helpless. He must be so friendless. No friends. When Jesus speaks to somebody with all the power of God, they respond. He knows exactly how to do his work, and those people who respond begin to follow. And the reason is because his call the call of Jesus is not a natural call. Like a parent calling a child in from the garden.
You know that may work or it may not work. Jesus call is supernatural. It’s divine. The call of Jesus is not external. You know. My voice is going out into your ears. For good or ill. It’s an external call. I can make it loud. Make it soft that it’s just external. The call of Jesus is internal. It converts. The call of Jesus is not religious, you know. Come and I’ve got some rules for you. The call of Jesus is power. I have a life for you. You think of how the Lord Jesus called Paul for example Paul, who’s utterly against Jesus and then utterly for Jesus and turns his heart from stone to flesh. That’s the power of God. That’s the work of Jesus.
That’s what he’s doing here. So he sees Levi gives him new life, a new supernatural, eternal life begins, which of course, is going to cost Jesus everything that life doesn’t come freely. It comes at the cost of Jesus death. But that’s what changes Levi. And without the transformation worked by Jesus in a person, we just stay in our idolatry. Now, I want to ask you this morning. I don’t think I should avoid asking you this morning. Has this call come and changed you?
I’m not asking you whether you’ve heard the call to turn up a church occasionally or regularly. I’m asking whether you’ve heard the call of Christ to follow him, to believe in him, to belong to him, and to behave for him a transforming call. Because if you have heard the call, you will be following him, and you won’t just be following him by coming here on a Sunday from 10 till 11. You’ll be following him from Sunday to Sunday. You’ll be following him all through the week and you won’t need to be prodded by somebody all the time. Come on, come on. And you won’t need to be called again all the time because you have been transformed.
You’ve got a life inside you, which nobody can stop and will never stop. If you don’t think that this transformation has taken place. And my guess is as a pastor of the congregations here who I greatly love, there’s probably 20 or 30 people who are still in the dark. That’s my guess. And if you think you’re still in a fog spiritually and still in the dark, do come to the Christian explained course. Explored course on Tuesday. Be welcomed, Be loved, be listened to have things, explained the best possible decision in eternity.
Now our last verse 217 as we finish this morning, which is a very tremendous and climactic verse. You see, Jesus has heard the criticism of the Pharisees in 216. Why is he eating with this riff raff? I mean, if you’re really holy, if you’re really the Messiah, you wouldn’t be with such sinners. And Jesus says it’s not the healthy who need a doctor. I’ve not come to call the righteous but sinners. This is a beautiful and wonderful verse, and I want to spend our last minute getting it, and I want to ask you to concentrate because we’re really coming to the end. If you think about what Jesus is saying, he’s obviously telling us there are two kinds of sickness.
There is physical. There is spiritual. He’s talking about spiritual sickness. Nobody in the world is spiritually well. Everybody in the world by nature is spiritually sick. Romans 323 We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. There are two kinds of people. However, there are those people who are not well and know they’re not well, who are prepared to say I’m a sinner.
And there are those people who are not well and insist they are well and want to call themselves righteous with the first group. Those who are not well know they’re not well prepared to call themselves sinner. Jesus has tremendous news for the person who’s not well pretends they are well and says, I’m righteous. Jesus has nothing to say. Of course he can transform, and that’s why we’re so thankful. And this, I think, is one of the remarkable things about 217 is that Jesus doesn’t say I’m a spiritual doctor, you know? And I wait for people to wake up to themselves and then call me. And then I come and save them. No, he says. I call sick people. I do house calls. I do street visits. I go out for the people who are not well. So he doesn’t sit at home waiting for people to call him. Of course, if anybody does call him. The Bible says in repentance and trust you will be saved.
But here is Jesus telling us a very great secret, which is that he goes after sick people just as he went after Levi. Isn’t this wonderful? I was thinking about somebody this week. I was looking at their name on a particular list and I thought, I don’t think they’ve understood anything. They don’t go to this congregation. I thought to myself, I don’t think they’ve understood anything. You must know these people, people in your family, friends, and you’re saying to yourself they haven’t got it. They don’t understand it.
And then I thought to myself, How am I? How am I going to make sure this person knows that they’re unwell, spiritually unwell. How will I do that? And then I thought to myself how wonderful that Jesus can take the initiative and call the person and transform them. So I’m praying that the Lord will call them. And if I’ve got an opportunity, I’m going to try and persuade them. But in the end, it’s got to do with the genius of Jesus, the initiative of Jesus, the sovereignty of Jesus.
So there are no spiritually, well, people. We’re not going to meet any spiritually, well, people this week who are outside of Christ, all people are spiritually sick or dead. This is deeply resented by the world. That’s why, uh, the German philosopher Nietzsche hated Christianity. He said the church exists to make people sick so that it can then bring in its business of religion.
Now we want to strenuously say that we are not in the business of making people sick. We want people to be aware they are sick, and it’s so obvious we’re dying, we’re perishing, and we also don’t have a business. It’s not a profitable business. What we’re trying to do is to say to people there’s a great need and there’s a great piece of news and it’s Christ go to him.
The person therefore, who keeps telling themselves or keeps telling others I’m pretty good. I’m pretty good. They are unaware of their problem and they are cut off from Christ. The person who knows that they are not good and looks for mercy will find it and will find new life.
So behind this awareness, which God has caused so many of us to realise and appreciate that we need a Saviour, as we heard earlier in the service behind this awareness is this wonderful initiative of Jesus coming and calling us. And I hope this morning you’re very grateful for the Call of Christ. I hope it’s deeply comforting that you have been changed by this call.
I hope you’ll also be challenged by the fact that the one who is called Look at Levi puts everything under Christ and begins to follow and follows and follows and follows and follows. And when the decision comes, I want to go down the road of adultery, says I must follow Christ.
I want to go down the road of dishonesty. I must follow Christ. I want to go down the road of pornography. I must follow Christ. I want to go down the road of stupidity. I must follow Christ. That’s the challenge, isn’t it? Because if you’ve not heard the call that shows itself in that kind of following did you hear the call?
Let’s Pray,
Father, We thank you this morning for this very wonderful segment in your word where we see the Lord Jesus fixing his love on somebody who’s completely unworthy and bringing him into the very centre of his purposes. We’re so thankful this morning. So many of us here that you have done this for us. You’ve brought us from outside to inside through your mercy.
We ask that you would also stir us as we think of this challenge of living in the world as your representative to do it well, not separating ourselves, not blending in harmlessly. And we also ask that you would help us in the great privilege of following Christ, to turn away from what is disobedient and to pursue what is faithful. So hear our gratitude, Heavenly Father for the comfort and hear our prayer for the challenge in Jesus name. Amen.