FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Mark 2:1-3:6

What Does He Think He Is Doing? – Continued

Please read Mark 2:13-22 for the background to this section.

In the next instance, Jesus is having dinner at Levi’s house. It seems likely that he has thrown a party for his colleagues and associates to come and meet this amazing man who has broken through the triple barrier of religious prejudice, politics and morality and has asked for his company. However, we must not, there are spies at the party, Pharisees. If anyone is going to object to Jesus’ consorting with undesirables, it will be the Pharisees, who now make their first appearance in Mark’s Gospel. They represent the party who are the most passionate about following the Jewish law and all the extra regulations that tradition has added to it. Within that Pharisee group, their legal professionals, “the teachers of the law,” are the ones who actually make the rules. “Sinners” is what they call anyone who does not take the rules as seriously as they do. They are watching Jesus closely and, frankly, they don’t like what they see. No true Jew, still less anyone who claims to be a teacher, a rabbi, should have anything to do with these common people, these “people of the land” (in Hebrew, the am ha’aretz), as they dismissively title them, let alone these tax collectors, who are corrupt, unclean and serving the enemy.

But now Jesus lays His cards on the table; “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Clearly, Jesus is not saying that there is nothing wrong with the Pharisees. In other places (such as Mark 7:6-13) he makes it abundantly clear that the Pharisees’ religion is very sick. Jesus is adopting their own language, which divides people into “righteous” and “sinners,” those “OK” and “not OK.” In other words, “If you think you are fine, if you think you are so healthy, all right . . . but kindly let Me get on with looking after the sick.” Jesus has come for those who know they need Him. Most of the people at the party may not feel that, but Levi certainly does. He knows he is a sinner, and Jesus has come and found him. The Pharisees have missed the point. They think they are simply dealing with someone who is breaking their rules. In fact, Jesus is doing far more than that. This meal with Levi points to something much greater.

Look closely at verse 15, and you will see that it is Jesus, not Levi, who is the focus, even the host, of the party, and here are the ordinary people of the land, the undesirables, the rejects, gathered together to celebrate His coming. There is a strong hint here of something the Old Testament prophets look forward to: in the future time when God breaks into history and establishes His Kingdom on earth, one way in which it is described is as a banquet, a party which God will throw for His people, the “messianic banquet,” as it was known. You find this theme in various places in the prophecy of Isaiah, especially in Isaiah 25:6-8. This is one of many occasions when Mark’s narrative alludes to Old Testament themes without saying so explicitly. In this he is unlike Matthew, who usually points out to us the ways in which Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies.

So here is the Messiah, hosting a party not for the elite, but for all comers, the sign that God is breaking in, that His Kingdom is coming to earth, and we have just a foretaste of the golden age which is still to come.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 2:1-3:6

What Does He Think He Is Doing? – Continued

Please read Mark 2:13-22 for the background to this section.

From Last Lesson: We have seen Jesus meeting outcasts before. We saw that Jesus is not bothered about the barriers that cut people off, not in the least.

But now the picture is worse. In this story, Jesus meets a tax collector named Levi and, astonishingly, He holds out His hand to him as well. Elsewhere (see Matthew 9:9-13), Levi is known as Matthew. That isn’t a mistake; it simply reflects the fact that people often had more than one name, even in those days, in fact we have examples from inscriptions which list both first names and surnames. Whereas the man in the earlier story had no choice about his leprosy, it was hardly his decision to become an outcast, Levi has made exactly that choice for himself. He has volunteered to do the dirty work, knowing full well what the consequences will and would be.

We need to see this from the point of view of an ordinary Jew in Galilee. Levi is in the pay of Herod Antipas, who rules Galilee under Rome’s overlordship. So, unlike Zacchaeus, that other famous tax collector down south in Jericho (see Luke 19:1-10), Levi does not work directly for the Romans. Most likely, Jesus encounters him on the edge of Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Lake of Galilee, at the point where people coming in from the neighboring territory enter Antipas’ realm. There they will come across Levi collecting customs duties on whatever they are carrying. Now that may sound innocent enough, until you realize how these tax collectors actually operated. Levi will have paid a fixed fee to buy the tax franchise for that spot. It was a bit like paying to run a burger stand at a carnival or state fair, only rather more sinister, because he was now free to charge people whatever he could screw out of them in order to increase his profits.

For our ordinary first-century Jew, then, tax collectors were offensive in at least three ways. Firstly and most obviously, they were notoriously dishonest and corrupt. Secondly, they were objectionable because their job brought them into constant contact with Gentiles, who were regarded as unclean; that meant the tax collectors were likely to be permanently unclean as well. The Talmud, that great multi-volume compendium of rules and commentary, lists tax collectors along with murderers and robbers and disqualifies them as witnesses in court. Thirdly, they were “quislings,” working for the establishment, for the Herod’s, who were known as a gang of criminals and were only puppets of the Roman overlords. So anyone with an ounce of patriotism, even if he had no time for religious rules, was still going to hate these people.

This is the man Jesus meets as He makes His way from the side of the lake back home to Capernaum, no doubt still followed by a considerable throng. Levi sits there by the road ready to demand payment from any likely-looking victims; we can imagine everyone shuffling past on the other side of the street. But Jesus is different. He walks up to Levi, this “quisling,” and simply says, “Follow me.” You can almost hear the sound of jaws dropping. But Levi actually gets to his feet and goes with Jesus. Much remains unsaid in Mark’s account. We don’t know what runs through Levi’s mind. We don’t know what else is said. But we do know that Jesus has called and Levi has responded.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 2:1-3:6

Who Is He to Forgive Sins? – Continued

Please read Mark 2:1-12 for the background to this section.

From Last Lesson: The fact that Jesus has healed the man with a word excludes the possibility that He is a harmless madman. The fact that He lives a humble life and accepts the rejects of society excludes the possibility that He is an evil tyrant . . .

. . . (Consider this; even Hitler, an obvious evil tyrant, spoke with authority). The only option left is the hardest one of all . . . that He is actually who He claims to be; He is what the Bible points us to: He is the man who is God.

What, then, is the reaction on the day, as the crowd finds their voice, as the teachers sit there in judgement, as the man walks away and his friends celebrate on what is left of the roof? The law teachers will soon be back. In this story, they have merely grumbled quietly, but the accusation of blasphemy will not go away. Even when they see the evidence with their own eyes, as they do here, most of the religious leaders will never accept the verdict. To them Jesus is dangerous, subversive, a threat to their own position. In the end He simply has to go. This cycle of five stories sees the intensity of opposition steadily mounting; eventually it will lead to Jesus’ crucifixion.

The crowd’s reaction is best described by their exclamation, “We never saw anything like this!” They have seen the healings before, though this is probably the most spectacular yet. They have heard Jesus teach before. What is new is the pointer to who Jesus really is. They praise God because they now see His hand clearly at work and they begin to glimpse that Jesus is something more than a prophet and healer. But do they really make the connection? Sadly, from what follows, it seems that most of them do not.

What Does He Think He Is Doing?

Please read Mark 2:13-22 for the background to this section.

How would you feel if your name became a byword for betrayal? In the years before the Second World War, Vidkun Quisling was a gifted Norwegian diplomat, army officer and politician. But in 1933 he founded the Norwegian Nazi party, and when Nazi Germany invaded his country in April 1940, Quisling attempted to seize power. He betrayed his own people, urging them not to resist the invasion, and managed to delay the mobilization of the army. Later the Germans made him head of state of occupied Norway. Not surprisingly, at the end of the war he was tried and executed for high treason. Now in the dictionary a “quisling” is defined as a traitor who serves the enemy occupying his country. When Jesus was on earth, there was a group of professionals who fitted the word “quisling” perfectly. At a time when their country was occupied by Rome, and the area of Galilee where they lived was under the control of a puppet government, these men made their living by exploiting their own people and helping the occupiers to do their dirty work. Not surprisingly, they were detested. These lowest of the low were the “tax collectors,” and in the next verses we see that Jesus meets one of them.

We have seen Jesus meeting outcasts before. At the end of chapter 1, He meets a man with leprosy; He reaches out across the barriers to touch the man and bring the outcast in. We saw that Jesus is not bothered about the barriers that cut people off, not in the least.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved