WWUTT 2141 Jesus Came to Save Sinners (Mark 2:14-22)

In Mark 2, Jesus said those who are healthy do not have need for a physician, but only those who are sick.

I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Those who know they are sick and need a Savior, Jesus will heal, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ, that we may press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.

Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. As we are studying the Gospel of Mark, we've been in Chapter 2, and we're going to come back to where we left off last week.

So I'm going to pick up here reading in verse 14, and we'll go through verse 22 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting in the tax office.

And he said to him, Follow me. And he stood up and followed him. And it happened that as he was reclining at the table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

For there were many of them, and they were following him. And when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they were saying to his disciples,

He is eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. And hearing this, Jesus said to them,

Those who are healthy do not have need for a physician, but only those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

And John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And they came and said to him, Why do

John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?

And Jesus said to them, Can the attendants of the bridegroom fast when the bridegroom is with them?

So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, otherwise that patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost in the skins as well.

But one puts new wine into fresh wineskins. Now this section can be broken up into two parts.

You have, first of all, Jesus calling Levi and then going to Levi's house and eating with tax collectors and sinners.

And this, this stirs up the disgust of the scribes of the Pharisees and saying,

How is it that this man is eating with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus responds to them with this illustration.

Those who are healthy do not have need for a physician, but only those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Then in the second part, John's disciples come to Jesus and say, Why is it that your disciples do not fast?

Why are they feasting and not fasting? And Jesus gives them another illustration, talks about the bridegroom, but then he gives this reference to, uh, to a cloth and to a wineskin.

Now, ultimately what we are recognizing here in this particular section is that people cannot fathom what

Jesus is doing in his ministry. They don't recognize what it is he is doing from beginning to end.

Jesus tells them, but they won't really understand it until all is said and done. So they keep these things.

They ponder what it is that Jesus has said, and later on it will make sense to them as it should make sense to us, which we will consider as we go through this text again.

So let's come back to verse 14. Jesus passed by and saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting in the tax office and said to him, follow me.

And he stood up and followed him. Now in Matthew's gospel, this account takes place in chapter nine.

We're reading here in Mark two. It was in chapter nine when Jesus called Matthew, whose name is also

Levi, to get up from his tax office and to follow him. So you get an idea here of how much faster

Mark is going through these events than Jesus did. Like I said at the beginning of our study, this is a lot more rapid fire.

We're covering a lot more ground and a lot more, a lot shorter period of time. The way that Mark tells this story, as opposed to the way that Matthew did.

And once again, there's nothing wrong with that. Matthew had his audience and was showing them a certain thing with regard to how

Jesus was fulfilling the scriptures. Mark has done that somewhat, but he doesn't spend as much time in it.

Instead, he is pulling together more of what Jesus did in a smaller space so that Gentiles, because Mark's audience was primarily

Gentile, would know that Jesus is the Christ, the savior, the one who has come to save sinners, as said here in this particular section.

Now we know something about Levi as being a bad guy. Even as we read this here, if Levi had been a good

Jew, then he would not have been partnering with Romans to collect taxes. So this is showing that Levi is quite a wretched man to have betrayed his own kin like this and have partnered with Gentiles so that he can make a buck.

He can make quite a bit of money off of this. And yet it's Levi that Jesus goes to and says, get up from your tax booth and follow me.

And Levi does it. So we see demonstrated here that Jesus has mercy on even the greatest of sinners, who the

Pharisees would consider to be the greatest of sinners, right? Because the Pharisees later on say he's eating with tax collectors and sinners.

So tax collectors are traitors. They're not even thought of as brethren, as part of the

Jews. And yet it's this man that Jesus calls to follow him. There is great mercy.

There is great pardon for even the greatest of sins in Christ.

And by his grace, he even changes the greatest of sinners. It's not that he's calling

Levi and then Levi is going to go back to his tax booth and continue to be a liar and a cheat. It is by the very fact that Jesus has called him that Levi will be made into something new.

And we're meant to understand and we're meant to recognize that because it was earlier that Jesus had called the first disciples,

Peter and Andrew, and said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

So remember they were fishing and Jesus called them from their fishing boat to follow him and he would make them fishers of men.

So what's being implied there is that Jesus is going to change them and he's going to make them into something else. And so the same is with Levi.

You won't be lying and cheating people anymore. You're going to be speaking the truth and you are going to be showing love.

That's what Jesus is going to do in the life of Levi, transforming this man to become a faithful follower of Jesus in so far is that Matthew becomes the author of the first book of the new

Testament and not just the first book that we have in order of Canon, but it could very well have been that Matthew did write the first book chronologically.

The earliest book written of the new Testament was Matthew. That's not commonly said. Not a lot of skeptics would agree with that.

Certainly they believe that a lot of Paul's letters were written first and then the gospels came along later on down the line.

You've heard me talk about that and Becky and I had even discussed it on one of the Q and a's a few weeks ago, but Matthew may have been the very first book of the new

Testament that was written. That's how much Christ had changed the heart of this man, that he would become a truth seeker instead of one who lies and cheats and steals.

And it's through this testimony, even of Levi, that many come to follow Jesus. So going on to verse 15, it happened that as he was reclining at the table in his house, many tax collectors and centers were reclining with Jesus and his disciples for there were many of them and they were following him.

And it's meant to be implied here that all of them are changed. All of them have been forgiven by Christ and have now been given new lives.

Of course, their reputation is still as tax collectors and centers, and that's what the

Pharisees are going to remind them of and Jesus disciples of. These are tax collectors and centers.

How can Jesus whom you regard as holy, how can he sit and eat with them? These people are unclean.

The Pharisees wouldn't even walk on the same side of the street as a tax collector. And yet it is

Jesus who has made them new, who has given them righteousness as all of us who are followers of Jesus have been given

Christ's righteousness. Now when we become followers of Jesus, our repentance isn't perfect.

We don't perfectly repent from our sins and begin following Jesus. But there there is some sort of change that has to take place.

It can't just be that you're bringing Jesus in to all the other sinfulness and wretchedness that you do in your life.

No, you turn from that to Christ. You no longer love those things that are in rebellion against God. You love

Christ and you desire God. And God will draw you to himself and away from those desires that previously you were in the desires of your flesh and even the temptations and the things that were offered to you by the world.

Instead, your desire is Christ who will not leave you as you are. He will change you into something else.

As the apostle Paul says, I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives within me and the life

I now live. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

And to the Corinthians, Paul said, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old is passed away and the new has come. In Colossians chapter three, take off the old self and put on the new, which is being renewed after the knowledge of our creator.

And so Jesus calls these disciples to himself and makes them into something new.

There were many of them, it says, and they were following him. And when the scribes of the

Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they were saying to his disciples, he's eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners.

And hearing this, Jesus said to them, those who are healthy do not have need for a physician, but only those who are sick.

I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Anyone whom

Christ calls to himself is a sinner. And in fact, the call has gone out for all people to repent.

This is what the apostle Paul preached at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17. Now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

So everyone has been instructed to repent. Why? Because everyone is a sinner and God is going to come and judge the sinners.

But those who have turned from sin to the Lord Jesus Christ will not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3, 16. All sinners have been told to repent, but only those who are aware of their sickness are going to repent and turn to the great physician who will heal them.

Those who are healthy do not have need for a physician. And Jesus is speaking metaphorically.

He's speaking somewhat, what would you say, sarcastic here, tongue in cheek? I'm not sure.

Because as he says, the healthy do not need a physician, but only those who are sick.

Because really what's being implied here is nobody's healthy, everyone's sick. Everyone has need of a physician. But only those who know they are sick are actually going to seek out the physician.

Some of you out there might have the temperament that I do whenever I get sick, that I'm fine,

I can take care of myself and I don't go see a doctor. Well, one of those days, this is going to catch up with me and I'm really going to need a physician and I'm not going to want to acknowledge that I need to go see a doctor.

I'm kind of stubborn like that. Maybe you are too. Then there are others who just have to see a doctor about absolutely everything.

But unless a person acknowledges that they are sick and they need serious help, they're not going to go see the doctor.

And so that's the point that Jesus is making here. Not that there are already people who are righteous and I didn't come for them.

No, there are people that think they're righteous. They don't think there's anything wrong with them. Well, for them, they consider themselves righteous.

That's not who Jesus came for. But those who recognize their sin and need for a savior, that's who

Jesus calls to himself. And again, as I stated in the beginning, the scribes of the

Pharisees do not understand what it is that Jesus is doing. Maybe his own disciples don't even understand what it is that he is doing.

But Jesus is saying things here that are going to make sense once his ministry is completed and the gospel is going out into all the world.

It is through the call of the gospel that sinners will be called to him and not just among Jews, but even among the

Gentiles. I did not come to call the righteous, Jesus said.

But sinners, the righteous don't have need of anything. They don't need to be helped for anything.

But as we come to understand and know from what the scripture says, and even looking within ourselves, we are not righteous and we need a savior.

And Christ is that savior who has been given for us. We go on into the second portion here with John's disciples coming to Jesus and saying, why do

John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast.

So we see here that Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners. There's feasting going on. That's part of what would have made the scribes of the

Pharisees so upset. They're fasting and they're probably grumpy because they're hungry. And they're seeing this.

And not only is Jesus in the company of tax collectors and sinners, but he's even rejoicing with them.

There's fun going on. These people are having fun. And so that's part of what makes them angry.

But even John's disciples are confused by this. So we don't have any indication here that John's disciples are upset, but they certainly don't understand it.

And so they come and they say to Jesus, why do John's disciples and the disciples of the

Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And what do we mean by fasting?

We mean by abstaining from food and drink. So there are periods in which

John's disciples will enter a fast and they won't eat anything so that even within their bodies, they feel the ache and the pain of their own limitations and they would have a strong desire for God.

It would cause them to seek God. It would also be a petition before God, look upon your servant and satisfy us with yourself is the appeal that one is making when they fast.

So why would Jesus disciples need to do that when they are in the very presence of God himself?

They don't need to fast. They would not need to fast for a reason to ask

God, fill us with you. Pay attention to your servant. May we be satisfied in you because they are in the very presence of Christ.

They are satisfied with him. And so therefore Jesus says to them, can the attendance of the bridegroom fast when the bridegroom is with them?

So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast because there is much feasting that goes on during a wedding and even in the days leading up to that wedding.

But the days will come, verse 20, when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day.

So when the bridegroom goes away and what's going to happen when the bridegroom goes away is he goes and he prepares the house that he's going to bring his bride into and they are going to live in together.

This is in John, what is it, chapter 14, where Jesus says to his disciples that I go to prepare a place for you.

And that's wedding language that he is using there. And so as Jesus is in heaven above, he is preparing a place for us that we may dwell with him forever.

And so in verse 20, Jesus says, the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away and then they will fast in that day.

As we are waiting until Christ returns, there will be periods for us when we will fast.

It is a good discipline for us to do, in fact. But I talked about that when we went through the

Sermon on the Mount. I won't spend much time talking about that here. Now, here are the last two illustrations that Jesus gives in relation to this.

Verse 21, no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, otherwise that patch pulls away from it, the new from the old and a worse tear results.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins and the wine is lost in the skins as well.

But one puts new wine into fresh wineskins. Now, what does

Jesus mean by this? Well, we need to look at the context. The old cloth is in reference to the traditions of the

Pharisees and the elders, things that pertain to eating and drinking and fasting, which has been discussed here.

And that old garment is the old ceremonial righteousness of the Jews. As long as we do these things, then we'll be new.

That's what they think. But no, that's the old cloth. It's not that it's the old way. Don't think of it that way, because the

Pharisees were not even following the old way. They were changing the law and adding their own laws to them.

And they were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. As Jesus will confront them on coming up in Mark chapter 7.

But Jesus describes them as old cloth, basically like bad cloth, the traditions of man that were taught by the elders of Israel at that particular time.

And you cannot combine them with new cloth, which is good cloth. Because then what will happen if you put a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results.

And so if you put the new in front of those who will not accept the new, because an old cloth will not accept a piece of unshrunk cloth.

That's essentially the illustration. So if you give that which the bad does not want, then they're going to despise it.

And it's going to be worse for them than if they had not even heard the thing in the first place.

So as Jesus comes with the new covenant, as he comes with the message of the kingdom, as he comes preaching the gospel, there are those that are not going to receive what it is that Jesus proclaims.

And so they're not going to be included as part of this feast, as part of this celebration that Jesus is having with his disciples and even with tax collectors and sinners.

And so to illustrate this further, Jesus gives another illustration. Verse 22, no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

Otherwise the wine will burst the wineskins and the wine is lost and the skins as well.

But the one puts new wine into fresh wineskins. So what is the understanding here?

The old bottles, the old wineskins are the scribes and the Pharisees, those that did not think that they needed a physician.

They thought they were righteous just as they were. I keep the law. I do all these commandments. So I don't need anybody to heal me of my sicknesses and diseases.

I'm not sick at all. I'm good. I'm pure. I'm just fine.

And so the new covenant is not given to them. Them who think that they can live by their own carnality.

But new wine must be put into new wineskins into the heart of sinners.

Those who are called to repentance, those who have been renewed by the spirit.

As I mentioned earlier from Colossians three, they have been made new and their minds are being made new.

Their hearts are brand new. They are as newborn babies desiring the pure spiritual milk of the word.

They have been born again into the family of God.

And it's in these that we see God's abundant provision and love.

And it flows into their souls and the word of Christ dwells richly in them.

But those who do not accept the testimony of the Lord Christ. Well, that wine would be put into old wineskins and it would burst and spill on the ground.

And it would all be a waste. Even the good news of the gospel. We are given warning not to give to those that we know will not receive it.

For as said in Matthew chapter seven, do not cast your pearls before swine or give what is sacred to dogs because then they'll just trample on them and they will turn and tear you to pieces.

Do not cast your pearls before swine is the instruction that Jesus gives there. So we do need to be wise and we do need to be careful with who we engage with regarding the gospel.

Some will not accept it at all. And if they don't accept it, turn to one who will accept it.

Turn to the one who recognizes their sin and need for a savior and will put their trust in Christ and so be forgiven and filled with new wine abundantly.

This is the ministry that Jesus came to do. And it is the ministry that continues in the world even now.

Jesus saying, I did not come to call the righteous but sinners and those who recognize their sin and need for a savior.

Christ fills up with good things. Heavenly father, we thank you for what it is that we have read here.

And I pray that we do not think too highly of ourselves, but whatever sins must be confessed, may we bring them before God and that you forgive us and wash us and make us new that we may be filled with new wine, with new abundant provision that comes from God.

And may we rejoice in our savior and long for that day when we will be reunited with our savior in glory forever with God, the promise of everlasting life that has been given to all of us who believe on his name.

It is in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt

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