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.

From Last Lesson: Obviously, Jesus is not giving us His top ten household tips here! He is saying you can’t fit Him into your religious box.

He doesn’t match up to your old, rule-bound religion. You need a new set of clothes, a new set of wineskins to put the new wine in. The Pharisees simply failed to see that Jesus’ arrival changed everything. They saw Him as just another teacher who was a bit out of line. Plenty of people today look at Jesus and still, that is all they see. He breaks a few taboos, offers us some positive values, well, add Him to the mix, put Him in there with Gandhi and Mohammed, and perhaps a guru, or maybe just some wise words from your friend down at the pub, because everyone has useful things to say. As Jesus makes crystal clear, that is not His way. His coming changed everything. He is unique.

The natural way that people think is to live by a set of rules. If they have some sense of God, and nearly everyone does, they feel that if they can keep these rules then God will be pleased. This is a comfortable way to think because it means you know what is expected of you. That is what the Pharisees were doing in Jesus’ time. They had their rules, they were all in the book, and they devoted their lives to keeping them. They knew where they stood and it made them feel healthy and righteous. Today there are millions who do much the same. In Islam, it’s a question of performing five key actions. Say the right words, give away some money, pray five times a day, fast one month per year, go on a pilgrimage at least once in your life, do all that and Allah (God) will be pleased with you. It’s a comfort zone. But people in churches do this too. Go to mass, go to communion, be respectable, say the right words, sponsor charities, keep lots of external rules, and you will be OK.

The story of Levi points in exactly the opposite direction. If ever you want proof that God doesn’t choose people because they are good, here it is. Here is an outcast, a collaborator, and Jesus says to him, “Follow me.” A hundred years later, opponents of the Christian faith were still trying to discredit Jesus because He had associated with people like Levi. But Levi the traitor, Matthew, becomes one of His closest followers, one of the Twelve. His name goes down in history as the writer of one of the four Gospels. Jesus came for the sinners, not the self-styled righteous.

Why Is He Breaking the Rules?

Please read Mark 2:23-3:6 for the background to this section.

Humans, as well as dead animals, can become fossilized! A fossil can look so lifelike that you would think it could walk or swim away at any moment, but in reality it is long dead, hardened, totally incapable of moving, or responding, or of any kind of life. It takes hundreds, or even thousands, of years for dead animals to become fossils. But people are very often fossilized when they are still alive! Not their bodies of course; it is their spirits that are fossilized, what the Bible calls a hardened heart. What could be worse than being fossilized while your body is still alive? Yet, without Jesus in our lives, that is what happens to us, that is what we are . . . fossils. These five opposition stories are about people who are fossilized, people Jesus meets who simply will not respond to His love and grace, even when they see Him in the flesh, when they see His miracles.

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: 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.

The Pharisees don’t see that; they don’t see that they themselves are just as much sinners as the people they despise; they simply see a list of rules which Jesus is shredding. But Jesus has come to make strangers into friends, to build bridges instead of barriers as people join His Kingdom.

The story which immediately follows simply hammers that message home. Verse 18 gives us the challenge. The rules about fasting are a good example of what the Pharisees have done to the law God gave in the first place. The law lays down only one day a year for fasting, the Day of Atonement. But by the time of Jesus, pious Jews are fasting two full days every week, Mondays and Thursdays. In their minds, therefore, Jesus should take the lead and do the same.

Jesus’ answer is interesting. He doesn’t say, “Wait! You have gone a bit too far. I think you should tone it down a bit.” We find His answer in Mark 2:19-20. Fasting in the Bible is generally connected with mourning, or deliberately humbling yourself before God, or else it is a response to disaster. Jesus is saying, “Why should my friends fast at all while I am here? That would be like starving at a wedding!” At the same time, by using this illustration of Himself as the Bridegroom, Jesus is dropping another hint about His true identity. Yes, the time will come when Jesus is taken away, first when He dies; then when He ascends to the Father, and that will be a time for sadness. Fast then, by all means. The kingdom of God is breaking in, but the time for the real party, the never-ending party, still lies in the future. Until then, there will still be times of sadness and pain, time for struggle, time when fasting is absolutely right, not because it’s Thursday, but because sometimes it’s a helpful thing to do. “But for now,” says Jesus, “My friends have Me here. It’s all about Me at this time! Don’t you understand, this is not about keeping your beloved rules, as if God were more impressed with you when you’re hungry?”

Jesus makes the point even clearer with the little parables about patching clothes and storing wine. In those days, people might own two sets of clothes at most; if one of them developed holes it was a calamity. Knowing how to patch those holes was vital. You didn’t take your worn old coat and patch it with a brand-new piece of cloth that hadn’t been shrunk. If you did, you would end up with a bigger hole than you had before. It was the same with the leather bags that wine was kept in, again, not a luxury item, but something you needed in a situation where drinkable water was often hard to find. Suppose you get some new wine, still fermenting, with the gas bubbling out of it. What do you keep it in? Not the stiff, unyielding old wineskins that are on the point of cracking. All you’ll end up with if you patch that is a flood on the floor.

Obviously, Jesus is not giving us His top ten household tips here! He is saying you can’t fit Him into your religious box.

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.

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