One of the joys of being a pastor in church for a long time is you get to see children grow up, own their faith, and use their gifts to glorify God. And that chokes me up when I see it. The three musicians today, I've known you since you were about up to my knee, maybe. And what a delight it is, Owen and Nathan and Rachel, just to see that and to give praise to God. And we do welcome the RUF ministry in a particular way today. But we welcome all of you. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would you choose? Maybe you've answered that question as one of those icebreaker party games I know I have. I remember even in high school talking about that kind of thing with my friends. What I've observed over the years about that question is that, of course, lots of people give the answer, Jesus. Who would you like to have dinner with? Jesus. But I've noticed that that answer is not limited to church people. Lots of secular people, lots of people that wouldn't really darken the door of a church, give that answer too. Yeah, if I could have dinner with a historical figure, I'd choose Jesus. Of course, I get to thinking about that. I'm interested in all kinds of human interest type of things. Maybe you would be too. What does it mean to eat sinlessly? Wouldn't you have loved just to watch him eat at a dinner? I mean, OK, so you know he doesn't eat too much. We know he doesn't eat too little. We know he wasn't a picky eater. He was too grateful for that. So that would have been interesting. Of course, we don't know anything about that really, particularly. But we do know the most important thing. We do know the kinds of people Jesus ate dinner with. In our text this morning, we'll see who they were, Why that was controversial and how that clarifies something vitally important for us about the gospel. So I call your attention to the gospel of Mark as we continue in our study and we'll read verses 13 through 17. He, Jesus, 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 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 the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? And when Jesus heard it, he 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. Let us pray. We thank you for the one who came forth to minister to the sick of soul, the one who came to call sinners, not the righteous. Lord, may we hear your word. May we see ourselves clearly without our defensiveness. May we follow Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. The kingdom of God is pictured often in the Old Testament as a meal. or a banquet. And I'll say more about that later on. But this passage in the end is about this. Who gets a seat at the table? Who is the kingdom of God for? Who gets to enter in? If there's a more important question, I can't think of one. Is it for good people? Or is it for sinners? Is it for the righteous? Or is it for the outcasts? In our text, we really see two very different ways of doing religion. One is unto life, and the other is unto death. May God help us to see that. Notice first, to set this passage up, Jesus hosts a dinner for sinners. Now, it actually ends up being at Levi's house, but there's no question who the host is. Jesus hosts a dinner for sinners. Levi was sitting at his tax booth and Jesus calls him. Levi was an IRS agent. It got me to thinking, can you imagine having that as your job? I go to a party, hi, I'm Brad Evans, I'm an IRS agent, and I picture people just sort of backing away or, you know, you fear for your safety, right? Well, that's part of Levi's being an outcast. That's part of it. Nobody really likes an IRS agent. But it was worse than that. Levi was a Jew who collected taxes for the hated Roman Empire. So in that sense, he was a semi-traitor as well. He would have been seen as not true to his own country. That was true, and that's why I had us read the parable of the Pharisee and the tax gatherer. Same thing there. Zacchaeus, same thing there, the tax gatherer. But it was worse than that even. It was really worse than that. An IRS agent would have a job and get paid a salary. Levi would have purchased his tax collecting franchise. Let's say he was bidding on the Capernaum area. I don't know how big the areas were, but let's just say that that was his area. Well, he would go to the Roman officials and he would say, I can collect this much tax. And maybe there'd be others competing with him. And if he could collect the most tax, he'd get the bid. But it got worse. Levi had every right to make a profit. So anything he could collect above and beyond the bid was fair game. And of course, people knew that. So Levi was part loan shark. And loan sharks have a very unsavory reputation. All of that to say that Levi would have been cast out of the synagogue. He would have had no place in the synagogue. He would have been excommunicated, as would Zacchaeus have been, as would any tax gatherer. So Jesus comes and calls him. and goes to a dinner party at Levi's house at which Mark tells us there were many tax collectors, many people like Levi, and many sinners. So does that mean the tax collectors are being differentiated from sinners? Well, let's not use our reformed Pauline vocabulary here when we're thinking of sinners. That's not what it really is meant. Yes, everybody in that sense was a sinner. But sinners were those who were loosely Jews. Someone told me there's a Bible reading program. It's called the Bible reading program for shirkers and slackers. I like that. These sinners would have been exactly that toward the law of God. They would have been shirkers and slackers. Not particularly strict Sort of worldly, sort of into the culture, but sort of Jewish and maybe trying to keep the big commandments. Something like that. That's who the sinners were. And of course, those who saw themselves as quite righteous would have frowned upon their presence in the synagogue or anyone else. Please understand that Jesus preaches the gospel in many different ways. He preaches it straightforwardly with words, repent and believe the gospel. He preaches it with healings. He preaches it with exorcisms. We've talked about those, but he also preaches it by what we might call dramatic actions. By actually acting out what the kingdom of God looks like, and that's what he does by attending this dinner party, he is dramatizing what the kingdom of God is. It is a feast, a meal with God where sinners are welcome. It was one of the sweet descriptions of the Kingdom of God in the Old Testament. It's interesting that you can look it up later if you want, Exodus 24, 11. Moses and the 70 elders are on the mountain with God. And one of the things they do is they eat and drink with God. That's very much Kingdom of God language. Psalm 23, one of the beloved psalms. What does the psalmist say? Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. That's Kingdom of God language. That's what the Jews expected when the Kingdom of God fully was realized. They would eat and drink with God. And even had some foretaste of that in their annual Passover. And we read it this morning in Isaiah 25. He will prepare a feast of fat things for all people. The kingdom of God was a banquet. It was a place where you had personal, enjoyable, nourishing fellowship with God. By calling people like Levi. By having dinner with people who were sinners. Who were shirkers and slackers. In other words, who hadn't earned their way to the table. Jesus is making a profound sermon. He's saying, this is my way of doing religion. This is my way of doing the kingdom of God. Pay attention, look and learn. So Jesus hosts a dinner for sinners. Now the controversy starts. Now the righteous criticize Jesus' guest list. The scribes of the Pharisees say, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? And you can gather from the context there was a sense of offense, a sense of being angry at that. Now, something very important for you to understand if you're going to appreciate this passage. When Jesus talks about the righteous, he's not talking about those who are justified by faith. He's not talking about those who truly obey God's commands, which is a fruit of grace. No, he's talking, he uses the word righteous. I have not come to call the righteous. He's using it in the way that popular religion used it. So in that sense, the scribes were the righteous. They certainly saw themselves that way. They saw themselves the way Paul talks about in Philippians 3, before he was a Christian. He said, as to the law, I was blameless. As to righteousness of the law, blameless. So Paul would have said, yes, I was among the righteous. And I would say that even Jesus concedes that point. If you mean righteous in the popular religious sense, yes, because Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. It says that in Matthew chapter five. So Jesus is saying, OK, for the sake of argument, I grant it. You have a kind of righteousness. And you certainly see yourselves in that way. It's not a saving righteousness. But it is a kind of righteousness. So notice then what these scribes air asking. So why does he eat? With sinners. In other words, why is he doing religion backwards? Why is he doing this kingdom of God thing backwards? If you would ask anyone in that day, just about anyone. If you were going along and you just ask someone, so, so who will sit at the kingdom of God? You might have even gotten a duh. And the answer would have been the righteous, of course. Everybody knew that. Everybody thought they knew that. And so these scribes are asking, so why is he doing it backwards? We know that those who get a seat at the table are those who clean themselves up by the law with God's help. But those who clean themselves up, they get a seat at the table. Why is Jesus doing it backwards? He hasn't told these people to wash for dinner. He's welcoming the unclean to his kingdom table. Scribes. only the strictly observant get into the kingdom. Now, I think one of the things that's difficult about preaching about some of the controversies that Jesus had is that we know enough of the Bible and we view ourselves as hopefully gracious people. I think we have a hard time seeing these scribes as anything except sort of aliens. These people are just sort of weird. I mean, I'm not like them. How could he be so narrow-minded as to care who someone ate with, for one thing? And as soon as you ask that question, let's be honest here. I would say that 99% of the time, all of us, including me, eat our meals with people we like and people who like us. Is that not true? So, we do care about who we eat with, just by our practice. And so these scribes were really asking the question of why does he eat with tax gatherers and sinners? And we might think that they are some sort of alien creatures. But let's think about how often in the history of the church, very subtly, the idea of merit gets into the discussion of being right with God. The idea that's in our human nature since the fall that we need to put ourselves right with God. We know we're not right with God. We need to put ourselves there. We need to fulfill some kind of covenant of works. We need to do some kind of merit in order to come before God. But you know, this is in human nature. You don't even have to have a religious background to think that way. Modern people still hold the crazy idea that it's good people who go to heaven. Maybe not people who go to church necessarily, but just good people. That is to say, it's self-made good people who get a seat at the table. As the little old song Diddy says, all good children go to heaven. That's deeply rooted in us. And Jesus says, I'm doing the kingdom of God differently. Well, Jesus has hosted this meal for sinners. He has taken criticism for his guest list. And now, finally, let's see how Jesus answers this criticism. Let's see how he explains his guest list. Why, says Jesus, do I, excuse me, eat with tax gatherers and sinners? Verse 17, when Jesus heard it, he 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. First, he begins with kind of proverbial wisdom that everyone would concede. Healthy people don't need doctors. Only sick people need doctors. So is he implying then that the scribes were healthy? Well, in the big picture of things, no, of course they weren't healthy. They were on their way to hell. No, they weren't healthy. But here's the thing. They thought they were. They thought they were good people. They thought they were healthy morally and spiritually, and so they kind of lived with a deadly self-denial. And I tell you, it is so hard for people who think of themselves as basically good people to really hear the gospel. It is, in fact, it's impossible, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. One of my seminary professors used to say, if you go to a town to be a pastor, I'd so much rather you go to a town where there are many taverns than many liberal churches. And his point was well taken. Because liberal preaching tends to emphasize the basic goodness of man, and you're good people, and we'll pull together, and we'll be good, and we'll do good. That's kind of the liberal gospel. But where there are taverns and people who frequent taverns, you're much more likely to find people who don't put their hope in their own righteousness, who know they're sinners, who know they're not good, and really are ready to hear the gospel. So Jesus says, I didn't come for the healthy. You guys don't think you need a doctor. I have nothing to say to you. I came for those who are sick and who know it and who welcome a doctor. I remember one time over at Orchard Hill, the senior housing here, and I used to have a Bible study over there years ago. I was going around door to door. I was inviting people to come to the Bible study. I met one man, one elderly gentleman, whom I found out later had really been active in state politics. I think he'd been a state representative and was active in his liberal church and that kind of thing. But here's what he said to me. Excuse me, young man, but I think I know the difference between right and wrong. In other words, he was offended that I invited him to the Bible study. He was offended that I was sort of implying just just gently implying that maybe he needed a Bible study. He absolutely did not like, excuse me, young man. I think I know the difference between right and wrong. Of course, I had a lot more in mind than teaching him the difference between right and wrong. He never showed up. Jesus says, then he goes beyond the proverbial wisdom. And he says, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. In other words, if your hope is basically in yourself, if your hope is kind of a self-made righteousness or goodness, you can't hear what I'm saying. To use a modern phrase, you will never get me. If your hope at the end of the day is basically patting yourselves on the back because you think you've made some contribution, to your goodness and righteousness, then I have nothing to say to you farewell. I came to call sinners, those who are sick of soul, who need a doctor. As Joseph Hart put it in the song that we sang earlier, come ye weary, heavy laden, bruised and broken by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. Jesus comes preaching a gospel for those who are weary, sick, broken, and know it. To put this in the very simplest way, what did Levi and all of those other sinners do? They willingly accepted Jesus' invitation on his own terms. I think of a parallel situation where Jesus took a child and set him in the midst and said, unless you become his little children, you'll never enter the kingdom of God. And I've been in all kinds of complicated discussions about what it really means to be childlike. Folks, it's not that hard to figure out. The child was willing to accept Jesus' leading. That's all it means. The child was willing to accept his leading. Levi and the sinners were willing to accept Jesus' invitation on his terms. That's all. without intellectualizing, without arguing, without debating. They were willing to accept his invitation, which is why our catechism so wonderfully says about saving faith. Saving faith is to receive and rest on Jesus Christ alone as he is offered in the gospel. Not our terms, not our offer, not our goodness, but Jesus. You know, that question I asked at the top of the sermon is not hypothetical. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, you know you really can have dinner with Jesus. You really can have table fellowship with him throughout life, through personal faith, accepting as Levi did his call, through weekly worship, through regularly coming to the Lord's table. Those are all foretastes of God's kingdom. They're all having dinner with Jesus. May God help us to hear the gospel. And I'll summarize it this way. Jesus comes to us and says, I have good news for you. You are much sicker than you think you are. You are much worse than you think you are. You you're not just sort of simple. Oh, yes, Pastor. Everyone's simple. No, no. You are dead in your transgressions and your sins. That's where the good news starts, and it is so hard for good people to hear that and to buy that. But then Jesus goes on to say, I have even better news for you that the Lord himself welcomes you with a generosity that's beyond your wildest dreams. Come and have dinner with Jesus. Come as you are. Jesus will clean us up. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that we would not be hearers of the word only, but doers. Grant us, Lord, that we might receive and rest on Jesus as he's offered to us in the gospel. And in His name we pray, Amen.