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Mark 1:40-2:17
Do you
ever wonder what it would be like to live in the first century and to
physically follow Jesus of Nazareth? Jesus had loads of followers,
not just the 12 disciples. The 12
disciples had a kind of access-all-areas pass to Jesus, they were the
closest to him. But there were
many other followers. Scores and
hundreds and, at times, thousands of people followed Jesus.
Look at
the last sentence of chapter 1 there:
The people still came to Jesus
from everywhere.
Or read
on into chapter 2.
A few days later, when
Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2
So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door,
and he preached the word to them.
Or look
on to verse 13:
Once again Jesus went out beside
the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.
Huge
crowds flocking to Jesus. No
doubt they were flocking to Him because they’d heard of the remarkable
things He was doing. Jesus was in
great demand. Look back to
chapter 1:36
Simon and his companions
went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they
exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!" 38 Jesus
replied, "Let us go somewhere else--to the nearby villages--so that
I can preach there also. That is why I have come."
Mark wants
us to know that Jesus’ priority was to teach these crowds. And so chapter 2:2 we read that Jesus
“preached the word to them.”
Again in chapter 2 and verse 13, what does Jesus do when He gets a
large crowd? He teaches them.
So
imagine yourself as one of the people flocking to Jesus. Imagine hearing His teaching. What would you hear?
Well let
me read out to you a selection of Jesus’ teaching from Mark’s gospel, put
yourself in the crowd and imagine Jesus saying these words direct to you:
Then Jesus called the crowd to him along with his disciples and
said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel
will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole
world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in
exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be
ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy
angels." (Mark 8:34-38)
42 "And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in
me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a
large millstone tied around his neck. 43 If your hand causes
you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than
with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. 45
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to
enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. 47
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to
enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown
into hell, 48 where "`their worm does not die, and the
fire is not quenched.' 49 Everyone will be salted with
fire. (Mark 9:42-49)
29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this:
`Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this:
`Love your neighbour as yourself.'
(Mark 12:29-31)
13 All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the
end will be saved. (Mark 13:13)
That’s
just very typically the kind of thing Jesus teaches as the crowds gather
around. He is totally
uncompromising, pure. No double-standards, no tolerance for
double-standards.
And He’s
walking the road to crucifixion and there’s only one way you can follow
Him. You have to take up your
cross and join Him. On the way, Jesus commands you to confess His
name to the world, to stand behind His words, to own Jesus to His
deadliest enemies. We must love our would-be killers, pray for our
persecutors. If we’ve got money? Give it away. If we’ve
got possessions? Sell them. Let nothing hinder you.
Follow.
That’s
the teaching. Now look around you
at the crowd. Who’s in the crowd
following along this road to the cross? The serious religious
types? The holier than holy. No chance. This is what is so
surprising. Jesus teaches the
hardest line on good living the world has ever heard. He even says at one point “Be perfect
as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”
Jesus raises the spiritual temperature up to nuclear – and who
flocks to hear Him? Not the
priests? Not the religious
types. Not the goody
goodies. Those guys, in their
long flowing robes are standing on the edges of the crowd, arms folded
plotting how they can kill Jesus.
So who is
it that flocks to this uncompromising teacher Jesus? Who’s in the crowd with you listening
to the Holy One of Israel? Who
finds themselves running to the Judge of all the earth? Our passage tonight answers the
question: Who comes to
Jesus? Answer: Lepers, the
paralyzed, tax collectors and all their spiritual equivalents. In other words, the followers of Jesus
are the unclean, the untouchables, the weak, the outsiders, the shamed,
the guilty, the sinners.
Isn’t
that astonishing? When God shows
up and lays down the law – the good guys keep their distance. The bad guys run to Him. Jesus
reverses all our expectations.
The LORD
Almighty walks around 1st century Palestine, the Son of the
Living God, and who is His entourage?
Unrighteous, low-life outcasts.
It’s a tremendous shock but it’s at the heart of what Jesus came
to do. Look at the last sentence
of our passage, chapter 2:17: When God comes among us He says “I have not
come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus is the abolition of religion. All human religion says “God calls the
goodies not the baddies.” Jesus
says “I call the baddies not the goodies.” Jesus is the abolition of religion.
As you
stand in the crowd listening to Jesus, the religious types are on the
fringes plotting to do away with Jesus.
But Jesus is at the centre doing away with religion.
Right
here we see a fierce battle between Jesus and religion. Religion is working to kill Jesus but
Jesus is working to kill religion.
In each
of these three stories before us Jesus does the very opposite of what
religion expects. Religion
expects Jesus to accept the goodies and repel the baddies. Jesus does the very opposite.
Let’s
dive into the first story. A man
with leprosy comes to Jesus.
A man with
leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are
willing, you can make me clean."
Leprosy
is a crippling disease in the first century. It disfigures you, you lose fingers and toes. This man would have looked a complete
mess coming to Jesus. Part of why
he would have looked a mess is because the Old Testament law required
lepers to look a mess.
45 "The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn
clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and
cry out, `Unclean! Unclean!' 46 As long as he has the
infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside
the camp. (Lev 13:45-46)
Leprosy
made you a spiritual and social outcast.
You were unclean – and if people touched you, they became
unclean. So you were commanded to
live away from towns and cities.
You were destined to be a spiritual and social outcast and there
was really no hope of cleansing.
Leprosy has been incurable up until the last century. Leprosy in those days was a life
sentence. It was perhaps the
equivalent of AIDS in terms of life expectancy and the social stigma
attached.
So what
would happen when the unclean man approached the Holy LORD Jesus
Christ? The religious types would
have expected Jesus to drive this man away – to drive him back outside
the camp. To shout out ‘Unclean!
Unclean!’, to reject and shame him.
But what does Jesus do?
41 Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his
hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be
clean!" 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was
cured.
This is
the very reverse of religion.
Religion expects that this man’s uncleanness will transfer from
the unclean man to Jesus. That’s
how religion works. There’s bad
stuff out there, and you have to keep it at bay because if the bad stuff
comes near you, you will be infected.
Jesus turns that on its head.
Jesus infects the man – He gives the unclean man a good
infection. He reaches out and
touches a man who almost certainly had not felt human touch in a very
long time. And far from the man
infecting Jesus, Jesus infects the man with cleansing. And immediately the leprosy left him
and he was cured.
Do you see how
religion has been turned on its head.
The leper comes to the LORD (surely the leper should have
been cast away from the LORD).
And the LORD Jesus infects the man (it should have been the other
way around). But Jesus is the
abolition of religion.
And as if to rub it
into the religious types, Jesus orders the man in v44 to go and show
himself “to the priests and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for
your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
As a testimony to the religious types, Jesus wants this man to go
to the temple and show them that the unclean has been made clean. What should have happened when Jesus
touched the leper is He should have said ‘Oops, touched a leper. Silly
me, I’ll have to go off to the temple for some ritual cleansing.’ Instead Jesus touches the leper and
it’s the leper who comes to the temple to show them he’s been
cleansed.
And this would have
been an incredible testimony to the priests. In the Old Testament there’s a place in 2 Kings 5 where a
king is asked whether he can cure leprosy and he says “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life?” (2
Kings 5:7). Curing leprosy is a
divine miracle, it’s like resurrection.
This testimony to Jesus was extremely powerful. Is this God? Is this the One who can kill and bring back to life?
But there’s something
that the leper was supposed to do once he’d shown himself to the
priests. The law of Moses
commanded that on the off chance that God worked a resurrection-like
miracle and cured a leper there ought to be a sacrifice made. And the leper would present two live
birds, one of which was killed and the other was released into the open
fields. And it was essentially
saying that Yes, cleansing leprosy does require a death and a new
life. But in the law of Moses
these birds were provided instead.
The leper didn’t have to die for his uncleanness, the sacrifice
died instead and he received new life through the death of another.
Now fast-forward to
the end of Mark’s Gospel and what do you see? A bloody sacrifice. Jesus on the cross. And He was considered unclean. He was dying outside the city gates –
outside the camp, just where the lepers were expelled to. He was, in the words of Isaiah, ‘like
one from whom men hide their faces.’
Jesus died the death of the unclean, the spiritual outsider, the
lonely, the despised, the ugly.
He was the sacrifice – the ultimate sacrifice – and by His wounds
we are healed.
In religion, the gods
stay far away and we mortals work towards them, trying to be good. Jesus is the abolition of
religion. He comes down among us
to touch the untouchables and to become the unclean One, so that He can
bless not the good, but the bad.
Let’s look at the next
story in chapter 2. Four friends
are desperate to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus, (v3). Verse 4: they dig a hole in the roof
and lower their friend down in front of Jesus. Verse 5:
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son,
your sins are forgiven."
Now we get shocked by
that verse, but not for the same reason as the religious types got
shocked. We’re shocked because
we’re thinking that Jesus should really be healing the paralytic and
leaving out all the sin stuff.
That’s what we’re inclined to think. But no, Jesus will deal with the paralysis but He says
there’s something more important than walking. There’s something more important than your health, more
important than money or getting a job or a spouse – all of which would
have been rendered virtually impossible through his paralysis. But no – even more important is the
problem of sin. The man’s sin is
his big problem, because if his sin remained unforgiven it wouldn’t
matter if he had the finest health, could run the 100 in under ten
seconds, had the best job, loads of money and a great family. If this paralytic walked away from
this encounter with only a clean bill of health, if his sin
remained unforgiven, he might have a terrific life and a horrendous
eternity. Jesus knows what’s most
important. Forgiveness is the
priority. But as soon as Jesus
pronounces forgiveness, the religious have a problem. It’s there in verse 6:
6
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7
"Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can
forgive sins but God alone?"
This is the really
shocking thing. How can Jesus
offer forgiveness?
Imagine if, after the
service, Ben comes up and hits you in the face. Then imagine I go up to Ben and say ‘I forgive you’ – what
would you say? You’d say push off
Glen, you’ve got nothing to do with this. I can’t forgive sins if they haven’t been against me. Well then what’s Jesus doing forgiving
this man’s sins. The teachers of
the law are right – only God can forgive sins, because ultimately our
sins are against God. So then if
Jesus forgives sins, who does He think He is??
Well to prove who He
is, Jesus does heal the paralytic.
Verse 11, Jesus says to the religious types:
10
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to
forgive sins...." He said to the paralytic, 11 "I
tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 12 He got
up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed
everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything
like this!"
God comes down among
His people and starts forgiving people their sins. And He doesn’t even consult the
religious types about who they think He should forgive. Instead He determines to forgive those
who have faith. That’s what
prompts His forgiveness in v5.
And what does this faith look like? Is it a strange mystical sensation? A funny feeling in the stomach? A state of consciousness which only
the very spiritual can attain? No
faith looks like tearing a hole in a roof because you want to get to
Jesus. That is the faith that
Jesus sees, that is the faith which prompts Jesus to forgive. Faith is simply a determination to get
to Jesus even in all your weakness and sin. That’s what faith is and it’s the polar opposite of how the
religious types respond to Jesus.
The religious keep their distance and remain unforgiven. The outsiders run to Jesus and are
forgiven. Jesus is the abolition
of religion.
Let’s look at the last
story of the three. From verse 13, we find Jesus teaching again and then
in v14 He sees Levi sitting at the tax collectors booth.
Now when you hear the
word “Tax collector”, think arms dealer.
In the 1st century, if you were a Jew, you were working
for the Roman occupying force – the enemy. You were taking far too much money from your own people and
giving it to the hated Romans.
Which is why the people of the day could lump “tax collectors” in
with that mass of people called “sinners.” They belonged to the wrong crowd – the baddies.
Now this tax collector
was called Levi. And we actually
learn from Matthew’s Gospel that Levi is Matthew – one of the 12
disciples. So Jesus calls this
tax collector to be not only a follower but also one of the 12 disciples
– one of the 12 apostles of the church!
In the midst of his sin – sitting there on his tax collecting
booth. He doesn’t wait for Levi
to clean up his act first He just commands him there and then, this arms
dealer, come follow me. His recruitment
policy is like nothing seen on earth.
Jesus actively seeks out the ungodly, the sinful, the despised and
draws them in. Jesus is the abolition of religion.
Then v15 – here’s a
party that is every Pharisee’s nightmare. Tax collectors and sinners everywhere. The unclean contaminating everything.
But think about the
seating plan. Jesus is at the
centre – the life of the party.
Tax collectors and sinners are around him. Then on the outskirts of this party we
read v16:
16
When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the
"sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples:
"Why does he eat with tax collectors and `sinners'?"
Now we could probably
have predicted this grumbling from the religious. But think about this: Why are they asking Jesus’ disciples
this question? Could it be that
the disciples themselves are hanging back from the centre of the
party? Is it perhaps because the
disciples are also a bit wary of mixing with sinners? Isn’t this a challenge to us – are we
mixing with sinners like Jesus, or do we stand aloof like the religious. It’s something to think about.
But the real turning
point in this story is verse 17 where Jesus answers the question of the
religious. The room goes quiet
and Jesus says:
17
"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not
come to call the righteous, but sinners."
The Pharisees had it
entirely wrong. They thought of
the Messiah as someone who had come to reward our goodness and punish the
badness. But Jesus says ‘I’ve
come for the bad types.’Because He’s come to heal our badness. Jesus is a doctor for sick
sinners. So as a doctor He spends
His time with patients who at least know they have an illness. Jesus parties with sinners because
sinners know they need a Saviour.
The righteous, on the other hand, don’t come to the Saviour. They have nothing to do with Jesus,
and Jesus has nothing to do with them.
This is such an important truth about Jesus – He is the Doctor for
sick sinners. We should meditate
on this.
I am a male,
so I never go to the doctor. I
complain about every little cough and cold, but I don’t go to the
doctor. When I do I like to save
up all my little niggles and sicknesses so when I go I have a decent list
of ailments. Why? Because you don’t want to go to a
doctor when you’re healthy.
No-one sits
down with their doctor and says, ‘I’m a picture of perfect health, I
thought you’d be impressed.’ They
won’t be impressed, you’re wasting their time. Doctors are for sick
people. And Jesus is for
sinners. Jesus is for the person
who wears the T-shirt – ‘Sinner – and I don’t care who knows it.’
Jesus here
asks us to think about sin as a sickness. Sin’s not really about the individual bad stuff that we do
or say or think. Instead sin is a
chronic fatal condition that we have.
And the symptoms of our sickness aren’t really as important as the
fact that we have it. I mean your
symptoms will be different from my symptoms. My sickness comes out as lust and pride. Yours might come out as greed and
gossip. And there will be some
people who have really gross obvious symptoms – like the tax collectors
and sinners at this party. But we
all have the same disease. I
spoke with a man on Friday, who said ‘Physically I’m ok, mentally I’m fine. But I can feel a real spiritual
illness in me.’ He’s just facing
up to reality.
We all have
a spiritual illness. And it’s not
in our hair or we could shave it off.
It’s not just a skin complaint or we could buy an ointment. It’s just in our hand or our leg or we
could amputate. No we have a
sickness in our bones, in our blood, in our brain and heart and
soul. We have a chronic, terminal
illness called sin.
A Christian
is someone who knows that they are sick.
And that’s why they love the Doctor very much. People misunderstand Christianity so
much because they don’t understand that Jesus is a Doctor. Instead they think of Jesus like He’s
the Health Police, enforcing wellness and punishing sickness. He’s the Doctor. He’s the one you eagerly come to
because you know you’re sick.
Jesus is a
doctor and churches are hospitals for sinners. What a revolution there’d be if we truly saw ourselves and
the world saw us as sick people who have found the Doctor. Church is not an awards ceremony for the
righteous. This is
treatment. And just like
Alcoholics Anonymous opens up their meetings with ‘My name’s Glen and I’m
an alcoholic’ we could say ‘My name’s Glen, and I’m a sinner.’
Jesus said:
‘It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I’ve not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance.’
Written
across the gateway of heaven could be the sign: ‘Sinners Only! The righteous need not apply.’
The
religious seem so close to God but actually they are far, far away
because they don’t acknowledge their sickness. The sinners seem so far from God, but there they are
flocking to the Spiritual Doctor.
Where are
you this evening?
You’ve heard
Jesus’ words, you’ve seen what He’s done, you’re in the crowd. Are you
like the religious, do you think you’re not really as needy as the people
in this story? Jesus says you
are. He forgives the sins of the
paralytic before He heals him – our problem of sin is deeper than the
problems of the leper, the paralytic or the tax collector.
Do you see
yourself as sick? As
paralysed? As unclean? Do you see yourself as an outsider to
God’s life. That’s where we all
stand but we’ll never view Jesus right unless we identify with the leper,
the paralytic and the tax collector.
But once you
know you’re sick, will you please remember that Jesus is a Doctor and
that Doctors want sick people in their surgery. When I stuff up majorly in the
Christian life, I usually spend the best part of a week trying to avoid
the Doctor and trying to cure myself.
Jesus is the cure – come to Him in the midst of your sin, come to
Him at the height of your horrible sickness, come to Him and say ‘I am
desperately sick. I am
desperately sinful.’ Jesus is the
friend of sinners.
You see
yourself as sick – do you see that others also desperately need the
Doctor? If your friend fell into
a coma, you’d get them to the Doctor wouldn’t you? You’d move heaven and earth. If I see my friends as healthy, I’m
not too bothered about introducing the Doctor. But we must trust the Doctor’s diagnosis: our friends
desperately need Him.
What can we
do? Well the Levi story shows us
the way forward if we want our friends to meet the Doctor. It’s a revolutionary thought: Spend time with non-Christians. Seems an obvious thing to say when
you’re thinking about evangelism but it needs saying. We need to mix with unbelievers and
not just bumping into them at the photocopier. Even the Pharisees had to mix with tax collectors in a work
environment. No, we need to mix
with non-Christians in social settings like this party. It is a mark of the religious that
they separate from sinners. It is
a mark of Christ-likeness to mix with sinners. What choices do we need to make to be more like Jesus than
the Pharisees? Could we put on
parties like this one where unbelieving work colleagues can meet with
believers and through this, get to know Jesus?
Another line
of application: I mentioned some of the uncompromising teaching of Jesus
at the beginning. How do we, the followers of Jesus, respond to His
extremely hard call? Well if we
know Jesus as the Doctor and then we hear Him speak about the way of
discpleship, here’s what I’ll think.
I’ll think:
1) Yes, what
Jesus says is right. That is the
way.
2) I have no
chance of living that way. There
is no health in me… But…
3) I know the
Doctor and even as He sets the discipleship bar infinitely high I will
come to Him, not claiming my health but His healing. I will take my complete inability and
inadequacy to Him and trust that He can turn my natural inclinations
(desertion!) into discipleship.
Finally,
what will we as a community be like if we take these three stories to
heart. We will shun the way of
the religious. We will hate to
look down on others but instead will gladly acknowledge our weakness and
sin. Jesus is not pleased
with so-called ‘goodness’.
Instead He is filled with compassion for the out-and-out badness
of anyone who comes confessing their need. We are the community of the broken – we are the lepers, the
paralytics, the tax collectors.
We are the unclean, the powerless, those who should be ashamed of
ourselves. But we’ve found the
Doctor. Is there sin and weakness
that we need to confess to one another even as we confess it to
Jesus? How can we go about
becoming the hospital for sick sinners?
A moment’s
quiet, then we’ll pray.
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