This morning we did not start in the book of John. We'll get back to that next week. We look at the final miracle recorded in John, the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead, and look forward to that. But for this week we looking at Mark chapter 2 and part of this is because is if you paid attention to the opening screen that we have that files through and the like is that we had a slide that came up and just simply said this reaching out across the street and around the world. And that is a theme that I would like to continually come back to. We'll talk about even as a church and personally what we can be doing as we give you some challenges throughout the year for you to do, to be able to reach out around, across the street and around the world and be a part of that. But this passage in Mark chapter two shows the Lord reaching across the street to individuals you wouldn't want to reach across the street to. In fact, some of these individuals were ones that you couldn't imagine ever being followers of Jesus Christ, ever coming to know him. But by the end of the story, you're impacted by the fact that God in human flesh was willing to be a part of these people's lives, to interact with them. to show them the way to salvation. And as we look at this, we read through it this morning, we found this is that Jesus makes disciples of people who have rightfully diagnosed their condition. He can't do anything to save people who haven't figured out where they're at yet as far as their condition, but Jesus can and make disciples of people who have rightfully diagnosed their sinful condition. And as we read this story this morning, you find that Jesus makes disciples from unusual sources and people, okay? And they're always people, but unusual sources, ones that you would not think. And Jesus had already been calling individuals. As you see in verse number 13, it says that he went forth again by the seaside. That idea that he went forth again has already been used in the book of Mark as Jesus has gone out and found individuals like James and John and Andrew and Peter and that. And so it's reminding us of the fact that Jesus has already gone out and found people to be followers of him. And now he's doing it again. He's going back and he goes out and goes by the seaside. And you say, what seaside is this? It's the Sea of Galilee. It's where Jesus spent a majority of his ministry going around that sea and different places, though he was in different regions otherwise, but most of his time was there. But the place that he's at, and we find this from other places, is that he's in the city of Capernaum. Capernaum was on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee, and it was on a very important road. It was called the Via Maris. It went from Damascus all the way down to Caesarea, which was the main port of the Romans on the eastern side of the Mediterranean. It was a major trade route. People would bring goods along this road to either ship to what we would call the Middle East and the Far East. They would start their journey and they would go through Capernaum or the reverse direction would happen is that you would have these people going through the town. And what we find is that you have an individual there that had responsibility to keep track of what was going on there. A man that's called here in verse number 14, Levi. We would know him in other passages of scripture as Matthew. He had two names that he was known by. Matthew had the responsibility, as it says this, that he was sitting at the receipt of custom. You go, what's that? Now, most people would call Matthew a tax collector. He's not quite a tax collector in one way that we would normally think of. Nicodemus and others were tax collectors, and what they would come is that they would come and tax you on the goods that you had in your house. They would come and find you and say, you're required to pay this amount of taxes. And oftentimes those type of tax collectors were the ones that skimmed extra profit off of things. They could because they had the Roman soldiers there to basically enforce what they were doing. And they would collect extra money besides the taxes they were supposed to collect for the Roman government. What Matthew's doing when it says he's at the receipt of custom is very similar to what we used to have here in the city of Chicago in Mass, if you ever traveled on the expressways. So you drive on the expressways now and your money disappears without you knowing it. Well, you sometimes know it, but you drive through the toll gates, but it used to be back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s that you would drive through the toll booths and the toll booths would have either a container where you would throw your money in and you'd find whatever coins you could and throw it into your car and do that, or you would stop by and there was a person there and you would pay toll. That's what Matthew was doing. He was collecting toll for all the people going back and forth on the goods that they were transporting across the Roman Empire. He's a toll booth operator, but on a grand scale. He's got the force of the Roman government behind him, and he could charge whatever he wanted, though, excuse me, for the most part, He would charge the same amount, but the fact is, is no one likes giving up their money. We never are excited when we go through a toll booth and have to pay money. I've never seen anybody rejoice when that happens. But the fact is, is that's what Matthew was doing. But the added thing on this, as far as in Jesus's society, is that people that were collecting tolls or collecting taxes, whatever form, these were individuals that were traders. because the Hebrews that were there, the Jews that were living in the country, weren't ruling their own country. They were under the thumb of the Roman Empire, and they were forced to have rulers that were put upon them by the Romans, and people who helped the Romans out were viewed as Benedict Arnolds. traitors to their country, traitors to their society, that they were merely just doing a job to make themselves money, regardless of what their neighbors might think of them. And so when Jesus goes by and he sees this one, this tax collector, what most people would do is this. They'd go on the other side of the road. they would avoid as best they possibly could going past an individual like this because they were afraid they might get called over to pay toll. But what you find with Jesus is his reaction to seeing this man was not to run from him, but actually said, why don't you get close to me? Don't run from me, but look in verse number 14, he just simply says this, follow me. This is the regular statement that Jesus is making to individuals throughout the early part of his gospel where he is trying to make what we would call disciples. We're gonna see the term used for the first time in Mark here later on in the story, but you say, what are disciples? Disciples are ones who follow somebody to learn about them. There would be people, as we find with the disciples of Jesus, that give up their whole livelihood and their work so they could follow Jesus to know him better, to know what he was like. And what Jesus says is this, I want you to follow me on a regular basis, and I want you to know who I am so that you can eventually be one who can tell others about what I'm like and who I am. You say, well, what did Matthew do on this? Just like Andrew and Peter and James and John, they left their nets behind to follow Jesus, you have this Matthew, you find he does the same kind of activity. He arose and followed him. He left behind his job. And he was willing to do this. And what one has said this, An unprincipled tax collector, heaven forbid, is joining the band of the followers of Jesus. Or as another one has stated this, the disciple is but a called sinner. When we think about that, we talk about this for people who follow Christ now that believe on him and are followers of him. We call them just simply this, they're saved sinners. It's not that they are ones who can leave their past behind. They are sinners, they still are, but you have this with Matthew. He's a called disciple, but yet he's still a sinner. He's a called sinner to follow Jesus. And so you see right from the start of the story that Jesus is willing to reach out to the individuals that no one wanted to be around, didn't think would be worthy of the kingdom of heaven. But you also see in this that Jesus makes disciples of those who are just plain old out and out sinners. I mean, it's not that people are uncomfortable around him. They're just people who are not obviously right with God. They're doing their own thing. See, what happened, and we find this from the other gospels, is that Jesus came and sat at meat in his house. He goes to Matthew's house and he sits down for a meal. And what Matthew does is he invites all of his friends that are in the same category as him, outcasts in society, people with whom no one wants anything to do, and he invites them to come and meet this Jesus that he's now starting to follow. He wants them to know them. And when Jesus comes here, he's at the house. And as you look at the cast of characters here, you have in verse number 15, as Jesus sits in this house, many publicans and sinners. The word publicans is the word for tax collectors. Those are the people who would come to your house and take your money from you. Those kind of tax collectors. But then you had this term used to describe individuals who are sinners. And as you read how that term is used throughout the scripture, the word sinners could be described as individuals who would be extortioners, extorting money. So, you know, the tax collectors would be in that category. People who are unjust, adulterers, harlots, and even individuals who were Gentiles. You go, what does that mean? They're not a part of the nation of Israel. They were outside the nation of Israel. And so they were people who were ones of the Jews that have nothing to do with because they were foreigners. You have other people in the scripture that could be sinners just by the work that they did. You had people that would be considered unclean in Jewish cultures because they would have to be ceremonially unclean. They would have to work with things that weren't necessarily clean. People who were, we would say this, are ones who worked with leather, and we would call them tanners, or weavers who would have to work with dead skins and these type of things in some of their products and the like. You would have people like that that would be in the category of sinner. We have an example of that in Acts 9 of Simon the Tanner, who's a kind of an outsider because of the work he does, but yet Peter comes and visits him. But sinner also refers to people who are just bad, thieves, blasphemers, murderers. These are people that are all in that category of sinners. So what Jesus comes to is he's got a house full of individuals who either by their job are outcast in society, by their nationality outcast in society, or by their lifestyle in the sense of how they live their life, they've clearly rejected God. They're the outsiders. And Jesus comes in and sits down to eat with them. I mean, to eat with individuals is to fellowship with them, to have the relationship as far as with one another, to converse with one another. And so when Jesus does this, he is there and there were many. And what you find in verse number 15 is Jesus is interacting with them and talking with them and giving them a description of who he is and what he's like and what he's looking for individuals. He has many here that follow him. They believe what he's saying. that he has come into the world to save sinners. As John had already pointed out earlier on in the book of Mark, was that Jesus was the Son of God, the Lamb of God, who would take away the sins of the world. John was pointing to him and saying, this is a person that people need. He can solve your sin problem that you have. And so when these individuals have the opportunity to sit down with Christ and converse with Him and He talks with them, they suddenly realize that God is willing to fellowship with them, to be with them, that God wants them to be with Him, that He desires this. And so you see this, that there are many that are there. And the thing that really upsets people is that there are some that when they see Jesus with individuals that are in the category of sinners or outsiders, they get violently upset that Jesus would do this. You see this in verse number 16, the scribes and the Pharisees. This is the first time that Pharisees have appeared in the book, but the Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. There were basically three major religious groups in the day, the Pharisees being the ones who taught in the synagogues, which were the meeting places, the religious places of every city. You had the Sadducees who were the priests generally in that category who stayed just in the temple area and did their work there. and never were among the people, but the Pharisees were the ones who interacted with people and they were Pharisees by name because Pharisees has the idea of separate ones. They separated themselves from certain things and as you saw their life and what they wrote about and what they believed, they were individuals who by their laws and rules were trying to keep themselves separate from sin and to not do sin. But the problem was in their setting themselves apart from sin and attempting to do that, that they had put a divide between them and sinners. They were separate from sinners. They would not have anything to do with those that might break the law. And these Pharisees come, and when they come, they see him eating with publicans and sinners. They say in his disciples, and this is, you can see the shock and incredulity of these men as they say this, how is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? How could he do this? Who would do anything like that? No moral and upright person would ever be seen with individuals like this, ever. And he's eating with them. I'm thankful for the answer of the Lord in what happens here, because the Lord hears what they're saying. I'm guessing they were yelling pretty loudly. And Jesus just simply says this, they that are whole have no need of physicians. Now understand this, people who are healthy don't go to doctors generally. Now there are some people that do just to make sure that they're okay. But for the most part, people don't go to doctors if they're okay. And if you are seeing that they're not okay and they think they're okay, it's almost impossible to get people to go to doctors. And that's what Jesus is saying is that you can't get people who are, well, healthy to go to doctors. It's the people who are sick that need a physician. As he states this, they, in verse number 17, but they that are sick come to the physician. Why do you suddenly set up appointments with a doctor? Things aren't going well. You know there's things not going well. The Lord, as the divine physician, says, well, there are individuals here that know they are sick. And he makes sure that the Pharisees understand what they are sick with. What's their sickness? It's sin. Because he then changes the picture that he has here. He says this, I come not to call the righteous but the sinners to repentance, because the Pharisees would have come in the category of righteous people, and they were righteous because they followed all the rules. They didn't see themselves as having a core problem of sin. Their outward actions and their outward activities would make them righteous. And so they didn't need anybody to fix their problems. They were good. They didn't need help from God. They didn't need help from mankind. They didn't need help from anyone. They had, in their mind, achieved a right standing with God. They were okay. And what the Lord said is, I can't reach people like that. I mean, I can talk to them, and as you find, the Lord talks to the Pharisees on a regular basis over and over and over again, but he never gets through to them. because they still don't see themselves as sick. But people who see themselves as sinners, the Lord says, I've come to call those to repentance for those individuals to follow me. I'm willing to be with people like that that understand they've got a problem with sin and call them to repentance to come to God and find salvation in the Son. In his case, myself. Jesus didn't come to rescue people who were doing well. He came to rescue people who knew they weren't doing well, and they aren't doing well. I mean, one has made this as a commentator, for Jesus to refuse to associate with sinners would have been as foolish as for a doctor not to associate with the sick. I mean, just think about this. If you had a doctor who never wanted to see sick people, you go, what's his problem? Nowadays, they can do this. They can see you online and go, okay, you're sick, keep your distance. But the fact is, the doctor isn't worth anything unless he's dealing with sick people. I mean, Jesus, and understand this, Jesus wasn't with these sinners because he wanted to be like them though. Okay, doctors don't associate with sick people so they can be sick too. Okay, they wanna provide a cure. So understand this, Jesus did not associate with sinners as their companions, but his purpose was to call them, turn them from their sinful ways. I mean, this is what Jesus is doing is he's willing to come in contact with sinners. He's not like the Pharisees who separated themselves and cut themselves off from sinners. He's willing to be with sinners. and call them to repentance and salvation. And what he does is serves as an example and a reminder to all of us. I mean, in finishing up a passage like this, we need to be reminded of three things. One is this, anybody can be saved. I mean, we can sometimes think there are individuals, oh, they could never be saved. They're just really, really bad. You know what this passage tells us? Jesus goes, nope, there's no one too far from me. He's with the worst of society and they become followers of him. Some of his best disciples were probably these individuals who had been so far from God and now followers of him. They were saved, they were changed. I mean, you have to think about what this book is written to. Mark was written not to Jews, but it was written to Romans. Think about this, the Romans were outside of the Jewish culture, the life and everything. For the Jews, they would say, those Romans can't be saved. Mark was writing for a Roman audience and he's simply saying to this, even if you're an outsider, Jesus Christ is willing to save you. And so it may be that you've come in today, you're here today, and you say, well, there's no possible way that I can be saved. A passage like this makes it very clear from the mouth of the Savior himself, that he can save anyone, that he delights in saving anyone that recognizes their sin and comes to him in repentance. So anyone can be saved. But also we're reminded this, everyone must come to grips with the fact that they're a sinner. And the problem for people who don't come to Jesus Christ is they've never fully grasped the fact that they're a sinner and in danger of God's eternal judgment. This is why when you have the great book about salvation and you read it, Romans, you read Romans 1, 2, and 3, it's some of the most discouraging reading you will ever read. Because it tells you if you're just out in the world without God, you're in danger of all sorts of sins that bring you under the judgment of God. You're in danger. Romans 2 tells you it doesn't matter if you're religious. You still do the same sins that you tell other people don't do. You're doing those things. You're just as much as a sinner. And then you get to Romans chapter three, and it has these words in there that are universal, and there's no outside possibility of this. You have words like this, all and none. All have sinned. There is none righteous. No, not one. And you just simply go, there's no person that is right with God. That's why Romans 3 at the end, you find this, that you can have the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ by faith. It's a change that is, you think through, is not possible because there's no hope for anyone. Everyone's under the wrath of God because they all sin, but there's a possibility of hope in Jesus Christ, his propitiatory sacrifice. You go, what's that? His sacrifice that he paid your punishment for sin. If you accept it, it's able to save you, but you don't, you know, most people go, I don't need that until they recognize that they are hopeless, that they're in their sin. And so as you read a passage like this, you're reminded of the fact that everyone has to come to grips with the fact that they're a sinner. They're sick, as it is in this passage, that they are unhealthy in the sight of God, that they aren't right with him, that they're in danger of destruction. And so as you read a passage like this, you have to come to grips with the fact that anyone can be saved. And if you don't think you need to be saved, well, then you've got to come to grips with the fact that you're a sinner. It doesn't matter what your category is. But I wanna give just a thought here at the end of the message here, it's this, is that as a saved person, you should have regular association and contact with unsaved people. You go, I don't know about that, because I'm supposed to be separate from sin, and I don't wanna be around people who sin. And then you go, well, what's the Lord doing here? The Lord's an example for us, as Peter says, that we follow in his steps, that we do some of the same things that he was doing with his life. And for us, as a saved person, sometimes what we do is this, is I've gotta cut myself off from sinners because I don't wanna be like them. I don't wanna do the things that they're doing. And we need to be understanding the fact that what Jesus is doing here by fellowshipping with these individuals, he's not participating in their sin. He's not doing the sins that they're doing. What he's doing is that he's interacting with them and having fellowship with them and getting them the gospel. Because I can almost tell you that during the conversation that went on here that many people followed him. Jesus is not just simply talking about the weather and the local sports team. What's eventually happening here is that he's talking about the good news. He's talking about why he's here, why he's come into the world. What's he doing? And so for us as Christians, there ought to be individuals that we can say, I have regular contact with, that I am with on a regular basis, that I fellowship with, that are unsaved. People I can say that they would call me a friend or they would go, I know him and the like. There ought to be individuals like that. I want to give you one example of this. I was just reading the end of last year and the beginning of this year a book called The Preacher and the Printer. And it's a book about two individuals that most people know about. One was a man by the name of Ben Franklin. He was a printer. and a preacher, a man by the name of George Whitefield. Both of those men had major impact on the history of the United States. George Whitefield was a sinner at one time, the son of a bar owner and the like, but eventually came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And what he did is that he began to preach the gospel to all sorts of people. He left England on multiple occasions to come to the States, and for months, if not years, he would go up and down the East Coast preaching the gospel, trying to establish orphanages for children and the like. But he would do this. He came in contact, because Philadelphia was the major city at that time, with a man by the name of Ben Franklin. We know a lot about Ben Franklin. But do you realize this? Ben Franklin was not a believer. He didn't believe in Jesus Christ. You go, what was he? He was a, well, a deist. You go, what's that? Well, he's a person who believes in God, but he doesn't believe on the son. A deist believes that God will not interfere with the affairs of mankind, especially supernaturally. He won't come into that. God starts everything, but just lays his hands off of everything. And so when it came to Jesus Christ, deists didn't believe in the divinity or the deity of Jesus. And thus they couldn't believe the fact that his sacrifice was sufficient for everyone because he was the infinite God. But what happened was this, is that Franklin, a couple of occasions, heard him. In fact, on one occasion, Franklin went and heard Whitefield preach, and it was at the corner of 2nd and Market Street in Philadelphia, and he walked some distance away trying to hear Whitefield preach, and he figured out that Whitefield outside could preach to 30,000 people. I mean, the crowd was massive to hear him because he was there preaching, and at that time, Whitefield was entertainment for some, but he was the thing going on at that time, preaching the gospel. But Ben Franklin figured this out. But in the process of coming in contact, he eventually gets to know George Whitefield. George Whitefield starts allowing Ben Franklin to print his material. He's a printer, so he lets Ben Franklin print his sermons, his books, his pamphlets, and do this. And as you find their life, there's a series of correspondence going back and forth between these men. And when they do cross paths, they sit down and have a meal with one another. But Whitefield was always sure, in the middle of conversing about a number of different subjects, because there were a lot of things they talked about, they would get back to the gospel. I was reading that book and I was reading one of the last letters that Whitfield sent to Franklin. It was after Franklin had gotten notoriety from several universities and from Europe for his workings on electricity. Yeah, the kite and the lightning storm. Yeah, that experiment and those things where he began to figure out stuff about electricity. He was receiving honors from people across the globe for what he was finding out. And Whitefield in his letter to Ben Franklin said this, I find that you grow more and more famous in the learned world. As you have made a pretty considerable progress in the mysteries of electricity, I would now humbly recommend to your diligent, unprejudiced pursuit and study of the mystery of the new birth. It is a most important, interesting study, and when mastered, will richly answer and repay you for all your pains. One at whose bar we are shortly to appear has solemnly declared that without it, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. You will excuse this freedom, and then he speaks in Latin, I must have something of Christ in my letters to you. Now did Ben Franklin ever come to know Jesus as Savior? No, but you did have somebody who was a Christian that was constantly giving him the gospel. was willing to interact with a man who was a deist, a good man by some standards by what he would do, but at other times, obviously a sinner by some of the things that he did. But George Whitefield, regular, you know, great preacher, renowned for thousands being saved, good friends with Ben Franklin, always giving in the gospel. So my question for you, do we reflect the heart of Christ by having associations with people regularly who are unsaved and we have meetings and fellowship and meals with them and time with them with a purpose not just to be with them, but to give them the gospel that they, give you a hearing because you've given them a hearing on what the activities of their life are and that you've spent time with them, that they're willing to hear the gospel from you because you're obviously someone who's interested in their life. For us as believers, it's so easy for us to separate ourselves from sinners, not to get close to them, but the heart of the Savior, The testimony of the Savior is for us to be willing to say, I would be willing to be friends with that person, go with them somewhere, go watch something with them, be with them, but yet it's for the purpose of, once again, giving them the gospel of Jesus Christ. We ought to have friends that are unsaved and they ought to be a part of our life. And we shouldn't shy away from them because they're sinners. No, we should be drawn to them like the Savior to give them the good news of Jesus Christ. And so as we look at this year, as we have our challenge reaching out across the street and around the world, may we reflect the heart of the Savior that loves being with sinners to give them the opportunity to hear about the good news. So our heart ought to be that way this year as we enter into the new year. May the Lord use us to at least reach people with an understanding of the gospel, but maybe it will be the Lord's well, gift to us to be able to see someone come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as a result of our time and our effort with them in pointing them to the Savior. Lord, we thank you. You've given us new year, new opportunities. We pray that we would use them fully. We pray for, as individuals in this room, we pray for individuals that we know of that are unsaved, are sinners in need of Christ. I pray that you'd use each one of us to have impact for the gospel, for the testimony of Jesus Christ in those people's lives regularly throughout this year. And Lord, may you work, have your Holy Spirit work in the heart of those individuals, do work that we can't do from the outside, but inwardly may your spirit point these people to the message that we preach and we model. And so Lord, may you draw people to yourself through individuals in this room who are willing, willing to do your work in drawing close to sinners and calling them to follow you. Lord, if there's one here today in this service that doesn't know Christ, may they be one who cannot get away from the fact that they need a Savior, they need rescue from themselves, that they are individuals headed to separation and hell forever from you if they don't accept the Son. So Lord, may you help them to see Jesus and see what he's provided for them by dying on the cross. Lord, help us today as we continue to look at the cross, even in this following time, that we would rejoice that you're a God who saves sinners. And may we rejoice in that. And this we praise you for in Christ's name. Amen.