Dan Werthman: Thank you, Jeannie and worship team.
Dan Werthman: If you have your Bibles today, I invite you to turn to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2.
Dan Werthman: Our text today will be verses 13 through 17 of Mark chapter 2.
Dan Werthman: You may or may not have heard of two famous names in church history: George Whitfield and John Wesley.
Dan Werthman: If you've come out of a Methodist background, you for sure have heard of John Wesley's name.
Dan Werthman: Whitfield and Wesley were great figures of church history in the 18th century, both in England and in the United States, and they often ministered together.
Dan Werthman: In 1739, George Whitfield invited John Wesley to come over to England and to join him in something that proper, respectable preachers considered to be improper and disreputable.
Dan Werthman: What was that?
Dan Werthman: Whitfield wanted to go preach to a group of people that he knew would never darken the doors of the churches in England: the coal miners.
Dan Werthman: The coal miners in Bristol, England.
Dan Werthman: Coal miners at that time were known for their vulgarity.
Dan Werthman: They were known for their debauchery.
Dan Werthman: They lived outside of proper, respectable church and religious circles, and there was no witness of Christ to them.
Dan Werthman: And so, Whitfield and Wesley began to go to the fields, the fields in Bristol, around Bristol, near where the coal mines were, and they began to preach in the fields.
Dan Werthman: As they did that, thousands of coal miners came to hear them.
Dan Werthman: And as a result, many of those coal miners responded to the Gospel message and became saved and began to go through life transformation as they began to follow Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: Now, while all this was going on, even though the fruit was very evident, Whitfield and Wesley were highly criticized by the church in England at that time.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: Because the sentiment was if people are going to hear about Jesus, they need to clean themselves up, and they need to come, and they need to sit and be proper just like we do.
Dan Werthman: That was the thinking of that day, and I am so grateful that the Spirit moved Whitfield and Wesley to ignore that popular thinking and to take the message of salvation to this unchurched group of people and to preach it faithfully.
Dan Werthman: And through that, really, the Wesleyan revival began that from England to America and really changed much of the religious landscape in the 18th century.
Dan Werthman: Well, I want you to think this morning: who are, today, the equivalent of the coal miners in 18th century England.
Dan Werthman: Who are-- who is-- makes up that group of what we would call the unchurched?
Dan Werthman: People who live outside of proper religious circles, people who, on their own, probably would never darken the doors of a church, of a church like this.
Dan Werthman: Who are those people?
Dan Werthman: They are not who you might think.
Dan Werthman: Robert Putnam, a Harvard political science and government professor, has done a study of this, a study of who goes to church and who doesn't go to church, and how that has changed.
Dan Werthman: And here is, really, the results of his demographic studies about who it is that currently is the most unchurched.
Dan Werthman: The biggest demographic right now of unchurched people: it's not millennials.
Dan Werthman: It is not college-educated city dwellers.
Dan Werthman: It is not affluent suburban families-- which, by the way, those are the groups that most churches seem to want to target as they seek to grow.
Dan Werthman: The demographic, as studies show, that is the most unchurched today is the working class, the lower-income, non-college-educated folks.
Dan Werthman: A big segment, he writes, of these blue collar workers has just stopped going to church, and they are also, with the personal and family problems that he documents among them, they are arguably most in need of ministry.
Dan Werthman: Think about these people.
Dan Werthman: Think about who might fit this.
Dan Werthman: He writes that so many young men and women in this slice of the culture, they're not getting married.
Dan Werthman: They're showing no interest in marriage.
Dan Werthman: They are being content to live together in serial relationships.
Dan Werthman: The men are fathering children but have little to do with them.
Dan Werthman: The women choose to have children without bothering with a husband, but then they have to work multiple jobs to provide for them while often leaving them more-or-less on their own.
Dan Werthman: This is the demographic Putnam records in which the bottom has fallen out in terms of church attendance and marriage rates and children raised with both parents.
Dan Werthman: This is the group that is now most plagued by opioid abuse and heroin addiction.
Dan Werthman: These are the Americans hardest hit by closing factories, by automation, and by poor job prospects.
Dan Werthman: They never went to college, the social elite looks down on them, and the middle class often finds them embarrassing.
Dan Werthman: He ends: these are the people who tend to be cynical about church.
Dan Werthman: They often feel unworthy of going to church because of their sexual immorality, their drug and alcohol use, and other faults.
Dan Werthman: They don't often realize what Christianity teaches about the forgiveness for sins and that the church is for them.
Dan Werthman: It is for sinners.
Dan Werthman: These are the unchurched.
Dan Werthman: This is where you can find most of the"nones", ones who would say they really don't have any religious affiliation.
Dan Werthman: And he closes with ta haunting question: what is the church doing to reach them?
Dan Werthman: I want you to think about those, those unchurched and those that you may know that fit within that segment, of those who are outside of proper church circles, because in our text today, in Mark chapter 2, we see a picture of those who are unchurched at that time.
Dan Werthman: And more than that, we see how Jesus reaches out to them.
Dan Werthman: We see how Jesus goes outside of proper religious circles of the time and reaches out to the very people who know, or at least feel, that they are excluded by proper religious circles.
Dan Werthman: We pick it up in verse 13 of chapter 2:"Jesus went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them.""Beside the sea", as you-- that's the picture.
Dan Werthman: There is the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Dan Werthman: That's near Capernaum, where that was kind of his home base during the Galilean portion of his ministry.
Dan Werthman: And verse 14, Mark goes on:"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, Levi, rose and followed him." Jesus The tax booth: that was really like a toll booth.
Dan Werthman: There were toll collectors in that area.
Dan Werthman: There was a major trade route called the Way of the Sea, the Via Maris, that ran north-south along the Mediterranean there, along the Sea of Galilee there, rather that-- where people, taking trade, taking products north out of Israel or south down to Egypt.
Dan Werthman: They would have to travel, and toll booths were set up, where tariffs were collected.
Dan Werthman: Goods that were being taken from Israel, north or south, a tariff had to be on it, and all that income from those tariffs, those customs, went to the local governments who are run by elites who cooperated with Rome.
Dan Werthman: So if you had enough influence as a local government official, and maybe, by paying some bribes, you got the right to set up a toll booth, and you had the ability, then, to tax and to collect some tax, some tariff, on all the trade that was going north and south through the area.
Dan Werthman: It was staffed at that point by a man named Levi.
Dan Werthman: Levi, the son of Alphaeus.
Dan Werthman: Now, Luke also calls his name as Levi if you read Luke's account of this.
Dan Werthman: But if you read Matthew's account of this, Matthew calls him Matthew.
Dan Werthman: And what's the-- is that a discrepancy?
Dan Werthman: No, it is likely that this is one of several people in the New Testament that is known by two names.
Dan Werthman: We think of John Mark, we think of Simon Peter, we think of Saul who was Paul, and here we have Levi, who is also known as Matthew.
Dan Werthman: Just one other interesting fact: he's noted as the son of Alphaeus.
Dan Werthman: That is also noted of one of the disciples named James.
Dan Werthman: Not James, the brother of John, but the other James is also noted as the son of Alphaeus, so they may have been brothers.
Dan Werthman: In other words, there may have been three pairs of brothers who made up the 12 disciples.
Dan Werthman: Just an interesting factoid there.
Dan Werthman: He was sitting at the toll booth, so Levi either worked for the man who had bought the franchise from the Roman government, or he had bought the franchise himself, but he was the one there collecting tolls from people going north or south along that trade route.
Dan Werthman: It is to Levi sitting there, as Jesus comes along him, that Jesus extends his call:"Follow me." And by the way, I find it so interesting, even more than interesting, striking, that this is Jesus' customary invitation.
Dan Werthman: His invitation is not,"Ask me into your heart." His invitation 19 times in the Gospel of Mark is,"Follow me." Following describes how Jesus calls people to respond to him, and that is what Levi did.
Dan Werthman: Levi, sitting there with no evidence of any other conversation, Levi responds to his call.
Dan Werthman: He rose and he followed him.
Dan Werthman: What does that tell us about faith in Jesus?
Dan Werthman: It tells us, I believe, that following Jesus is something we do.
Dan Werthman: Yes, it's something we believe.
Dan Werthman: It's something that we think when we embrace Jesus as savior and Lord.
Dan Werthman: There is the intellectual component and maybe even something that we feel, but following Jesus is primarily something that we do.
Dan Werthman: So when Jesus calls you to respond to him, his call to you involves more than asking him into your heart, and I'm not saying we can't use that phrase.
Dan Werthman: For many people, that is where it begins: when you pray a prayer and you embrace him as savior and Lord, asking him in your heart or whatever words there may be, but it cannot end there, because Jesus has invitation is,"Do something; not only believe in me, but follow me." And following is an act that involves risk, and it involves cost.
Dan Werthman: That was true of Levi.
Dan Werthman: Levi picked up, and, whether he was an employee and he left his job, or whether he was the owner of that toll franchise and he left that, he abandoned the security of that.
Dan Werthman: He abandoned all that he knew about that in order to respond to Jesus' call and follow him.
Dan Werthman: And usually with us, there is some call, if not initially, into our our life with Christ, where we are called to follow him in laying something down.
Dan Werthman: We are called to follow him involving risk and cost.
Dan Werthman: Jesus challenges us as part of being a Christian, of part of following him, he challenges us to step out of our comfort zone.
Dan Werthman: Sometimes, he asks us to leave old ways of life.
Dan Werthman: Sometimes, he asks us to give up the things that we are holding on that give us security that would rise above him, but following him is an act that always requires risk and cost.
Dan Werthman: Verse 15:"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." Where is this taking place?
Dan Werthman: Where is his house?
Dan Werthman: Well, again, if you read the parallel accounts, it helps.
Dan Werthman: Luke tells us in chapter 5, verse 29 of Luke that this is Levi's home.
Dan Werthman: Luke records that Levi hosted a great banquet for Jesus at his house.
Dan Werthman: Perhaps this was Levi acknowledging,"I'm about to leave behind my old way of life.
Dan Werthman: I'm about to start off on a on a new way of life following Jesus." And who was it that he invited to this banquet?
Dan Werthman: Many tax collectors and sinners were there.
Dan Werthman: And doesn't that makes sense?
Dan Werthman: I mean, if Levi was somewhat of a social and religious outcast, he didn't associate with the scribes and the Pharisees, with proper religious people.
Dan Werthman: He associated with people like him.
Dan Werthman: And so that banquet was full of people just like Levi, and who were these people?
Dan Werthman: Mark gives us the designation"tax collectors and sinners".
Dan Werthman: Tax collectors were people who were socially rejected, feared, and hated.
Dan Werthman: Tax collectors, just very practically at that time, Rome knew that if you were going to have tolls collected, you need to have somebody who knew the people, who knew the area.
Dan Werthman: A Roman soldier alone would not know who really should be asked, who really had tariffs that could be collected and who didn't.
Dan Werthman: And so they looked for Jews.
Dan Werthman: They looked for people from the area.
Dan Werthman: Tax collectors, toll collectors, tended to be people who were ethnic Jews.
Dan Werthman: In other words, they were Jewish by heritage, but they were not religiously observant Jews.
Dan Werthman: They were outside of proper religious circles.
Dan Werthman: Tax collectors were Jews who worked for-- They worked as middlemen for the corrupt local governments that Rome had established.
Dan Werthman: And their take was, as they collected these tolls, these tariffs, these taxes, they got to take a percentage of that.
Dan Werthman: So the more they collected, the more that they profited.
Dan Werthman: And as you can imagine, or, as you may have heard from studying this passage before, tax collectors and toll collectors were hated and despised.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: They represented to the people everything that people hated about the Romans.
Dan Werthman: Here is this occupying Roman government who is imposing upon them taxes and tolls and tariffs, and these ethnic Jews who staff these toll booths, they were visible reminders of that.
Dan Werthman: And what's more, the people knew that these tax collectors profited off of how much that they collected.
Dan Werthman: They knew that the local government officials who set up these toll booths profited.
Dan Werthman: They knew there was graft and corruption in the system.
Dan Werthman: So everything about the situation was morally repugnant to good Jews.
Dan Werthman: Tax collectors were socially rejected by all people, but particularly observant Jews.
Dan Werthman: You could not go to the synagogue if you were a tax collector.
Dan Werthman: Your family disowns you, a good Jewish family, if you became a tax collector or a toll collector.
Dan Werthman: That's who they were.
Dan Werthman: Now, who are sinners?
Dan Werthman: Well,"sinners" is the designation Mark uses to describe not just tax collectors, although it certainly includes tax collectors, but Mark uses it to describe all of the people of that culture who had given up trying to be religious, who were morally adrift, and that sounds to me a lot like Robert Putnam's description of the unchurched today.
Dan Werthman: These are people who may not necessarily no longer believe in God, but they've given up trying to live under what they understand, at least, is what God calls them to.
Dan Werthman: These are people who have given up on church, the way to learn about God and walk in God.
Dan Werthman: These are people who are morally adrift, outside of marriage and in and out of serial sexual relationships and in and out of various forms of abuse.
Dan Werthman: That term"sinners" fits anybody like that, both then and now.
Dan Werthman: And together, the double designation of tax collectors and sinners-- really, I think, Mark is using it to describe all the people that religious people, both then, in Jesus's day, and religious people now, tend to reject.
Dan Werthman: All the classes of people that we are uncomfortable with.
Dan Werthman: All of the classes of people that we usually avoid.
Dan Werthman: Let me just make this really personal.
Dan Werthman: Who would that be for you?
Dan Werthman: Who would be the equivalent of tax gatherers and sinners for you?
Dan Werthman: Who would you feel uncomfortable with if they came into the doors of this church, and they sat next to you?
Dan Werthman: Who would you feel uncomfortable with if they inquired at work or in some other setting,"I want to hear more about your church"?
Dan Werthman: "I want to hear about what your church does"?
Dan Werthman: Who would you tend to not really want to have that conversation with because they don't really fit here?
Dan Werthman: Those are the classes of people that we're talking about, as Mark uses that double designation:"tax collectors and sinners".
Dan Werthman: Verse 16, Mark goes on:"And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples,'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?'" Now, that question, that is not an innocent question.
Dan Werthman: That question,"Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" That is really a hostile accusation in the form of a question, and you have to understand, or we have to understand, the perspective of the scribes and Pharisees.
Dan Werthman: Yes, there were some scribes and Pharisees who were hypocritical, just like there are hypocrites among all classes of religious people, but basically, the scribes and Pharisees understood that their salvation, their standing with God, was tied directly to whether they were keeping God's law.
Dan Werthman: And so they looked at these people as people who were not keeping God's law, who didn't care about God's law, who were living outside of God's law, and so they were morally unclean.
Dan Werthman: They were morally, and even religiously, polluted.
Dan Werthman: So they, the scribes and Pharisees, believed that they, wanting to keep themselves clean before God, right before God, they believe that separation from uncleanness, separation from sin, required them to separate themselves from sinners.
Dan Werthman: And they applied this to Jesus.
Dan Werthman: Jesus claims to be of God.
Dan Werthman: In their minds, if Jesus really claimed to be of God and claimed to care about what God cares about, then Jesus should have disassociated himself publicly from such people, or at least he shouldn't have spent time with them until he first called them to clean up their lives and to start living according to God's law.
Dan Werthman: So these men were scandalized that Jesus would accept such people, that Jesus would love such people without first requiring them to repent.
Dan Werthman: And that's the picture we get here.
Dan Werthman: Mark does not give a lot of detail, which is very characteristic of Mark, but you know, we look at what he does say, and we don't know how many people at this banquet actually did respond to Jesus in repentance and faith.
Dan Werthman: Mark really doesn't tell us.
Dan Werthman: I mean, some did, because Mark records in verse 15 that there were many who followed him.
Dan Werthman: But we don't know that all did.
Dan Werthman: All we know is that Jesus was among them, that Jesus was in the midst of tax gatherers and sinners, and he was loving them.
Dan Werthman: And again, I want to make this really personal.
Dan Werthman: How much are we, in our actions and our attitudes, more like the scribes than like Jesus?
Dan Werthman: How much is it, when we think of the unchurched, whether it's Robert Putnam's description of the unchurched or other unchurched, people that you think of, do we really have that same kind of fear that somehow if we are close to them, if we are associating with them, we become polluted?
Dan Werthman: How much do we have an expectation that,"Well, you can come to our church, or I'll invite you into my home if you clean up your life first, if you deal with these big, glaring areas of sin in your life"?
Dan Werthman: Well, how did Jesus respond?
Dan Werthman: Jesus responds to their accusations in verse 7:"And when Jesus heard it, he said to them,'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.'" Here, Jesus gives us this picture, this word picture that I really believe should shape how we think about ourselves, and it should shape how we think about other people, particularly those people who fall into categories that we would consider unchurched and outside of proper church and religious circles.
Dan Werthman: And I think this picture should even affect and shape how we think about our church, how we think about how we do church, how we think about what church is for.
Dan Werthman: Let me break down this word picture for you.
Dan Werthman: First of all, notice how Jesus presents himself.
Dan Werthman: Jesus presents himself as a physician.
Dan Werthman: That's what's implied here, and how fitting, because what does the Old Testament say is one of the primary identities of God?
Dan Werthman: Jehovah Rophe,"God who heals".
Dan Werthman: He is the Healer.
Dan Werthman: He is the Great Physician, and as the Great Physician, Jesus wants to heal your soul.
Dan Werthman: There is no greater desire in Jesus, as he came in the form of a man, than to reach out and touch your and my sickness of soul and to cure us from that soul sickness that, like a cancer, is eating us away and killing us.
Dan Werthman: Jesus perfectly diagnoses like a good physician.
Dan Werthman: He perfectly diagnoses our souls' sickness.
Dan Werthman: He has the ability like no other one to look down deeply, to look inside each one of us, down into our heart, and see the sin and the corruption and the hardness that is there.
Dan Werthman: He knows in each of us the unique circumstances of life and how sin has twisted that.
Dan Werthman: He knows the unique ways in which each of us are tempted.
Dan Werthman: He knows the way that sinful things done to us and sinful choices we have made have bent us in certain ways.
Dan Werthman: He perfectly diagnoses us, and he offers the only cure that can save you and me.
Dan Werthman: He offers his blood, which purifies and heals all of those who turn to him in repentance and faith.
Dan Werthman: He offers the cure that no one else, nothing else, can offer to our soul sickness.
Dan Werthman: And as a great physician, he is willing to heal anyone who turns to him.
Dan Werthman: He's not distant.
Dan Werthman: He's not aloof, as this picture shows us.
Dan Werthman: He is a kind and compassionate physician.
Dan Werthman: He is present.
Dan Werthman: He is willing and ready to receive all who call on him.
Dan Werthman: Among the many ways that we should think about Jesus our savior, we should think about him as the Great Physician, the Great Physician to us, and the Great Physician to those that we encounter all around us in our lives.
Dan Werthman: Yet Jesus tells us that even though he's the Great Physician, there were people who will not turn to him as the Great Physician.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: Because they believe they are well.
Dan Werthman: Let's say you discover that just down the street from you, where you live, in a house on your street, in your neighborhood, lives the most famous expert doctor in all of the world, who has a reputation of being able to cure anything and everything.
Dan Werthman: That does you no good if you know that he lives on your street if you, because you don't think you're sick, never go to him.
Dan Werthman: But that's the picture of many people: they know who Jesus is.
Dan Werthman: They would acknowledge, you know, he is Savior.
Dan Werthman: He is the son of God, but they don't turn to him because they don't believe that they are really sick.
Dan Werthman: They believe that they are well.
Dan Werthman: Who are those who are well?
Dan Werthman: Those who are well, in Jesus' word picture here, or"healthy", some of your Bible versions may say, are those who think they are healthy, or at least those who think they are not very sick.
Dan Werthman: You know, if you don't think that you have a disease, if you don't think that you have an illness, you'll never go see a doctor, will you?
Dan Werthman: But what if you don't understand the disease that you have?
Dan Werthman: What if you're really one mass of infection, but you ignore or you explain away all of your symptoms?
Dan Werthman: You've got another answer for those symptoms, or you look around, and you say,"Well, he or she is more sick than I am.
Dan Werthman: I'm really not that sick compared to him or her." That is our picture.
Dan Werthman: That is the picture, the natural condition of all of us apart from Christ, and the very fact that we deny that our soul is really sick is the worst symptom of the disease, because it keeps us from seeking out the Great Physician.
Dan Werthman: Those who are well are those who do not think they need a physician, and they rely on their own remedies.
Dan Werthman: Those who are well are those who may realize I have a little discomfort in my conscience because of areas of sin in my life.
Dan Werthman: "I know I do things that aren't so good and, and I make mistakes, and I fall," but they think they can treat themselves.
Dan Werthman: They think they can treat themselves with self-effort.
Dan Werthman: "I'll just try harder.
Dan Werthman: I'll just be a better person." They think they can treat themselves by counterbalancing the sickness, with health.
Dan Werthman: "I'll do all these good things, and somehow that'll balance it all out." And all those efforts only add to their sickness, the complications of pride, because then I become prideful of myself, thinking that somehow I have made myself better, when really, I actually have complicated my sickness and contributed to my demise.
Dan Werthman: Jesus leaves the scribes to come to their own conclusions about whether they are those who are well, and you notice he doesn't drive the point home, but he sends them off thinking about it.
Dan Werthman: But what is true of the scribes is also true of you and me.
Dan Werthman: If you don't think that you need Jesus, if you don't realize that you really are in a life-and-death battle for your soul, if you don't believe that you are terminally ill and that your only cure is Jesus, then you probably fall into the camp of those who are well.
Dan Werthman: Those who are well obviously includes those who have not yet been saved, who have no interest in Jesus, the Great Physician, right now, but you know what?
Dan Werthman: Those who are well include many, many people who would claim the name of Christ, who would call themselves Christians but really not rely on him, really not understand the depths of their souls' sickness.
Dan Werthman: Jesus goes on in verse 17 to say that those who need a physician are those who are sick.
Dan Werthman: Who are those who are sick?
Dan Werthman: Those who are sick are those who acknowledge that they are sick.
Dan Werthman: They admit it, and they acknowledge that they need to be healed.
Dan Werthman: Samuel Davies puts it this way:"The sick are those who acknowledge that they are really guilty, really corrupt, really sinners, in extreme need of a savior.
Dan Werthman: Those who are sick are those who are alarmed by their condition." If you really believe, if you know and come to believe that you have a serious form of cancer, you will go to whatever lengths it takes to seek out a cancer doctor.
Dan Werthman: And those who are sick seek after Christ in the same way, and with that same sense of urgency, as you would seek after a great cancer doctor if you learned that you had contracted a very serious form of cancer.
Dan Werthman: The sick, those who are sick, are not only who seek out a physician, but they put themselves under the physician's care.
Dan Werthman: Physicians often prescribe things, forms of treatment that we don't like to take, medicines that we don't like to take.
Dan Werthman: Somebody who knows they're really sick takes those, follows that.
Dan Werthman: Physicians often require us to make changes in the way that we are living in our lifestyle, in order that we can be healed, and maybe there are changes that require us to sacrifice things or make changes in our lives that we don't want to make.
Dan Werthman: But if you know you're really sick, if you know you're terminally sick, and this is your only hope, you listen to the physician.
Dan Werthman: That is those who are sick.
Dan Werthman: It took me many years to acknowledge that I was sick.
Dan Werthman: I started out my Christian life like one of those calling on the name of Christ, thinking,"Yeah, I know I'm ill.
Dan Werthman: You know, I know I've got areas of sickness.
Dan Werthman: And I appreciate that Jesus has forgiven me.
Dan Werthman: But I'll help him heal me.
Dan Werthman: I'll try harder.
Dan Werthman: I'll make moral changes in my life.
Dan Werthman: I will contribute in some way to my own healing." And that only revealed I did not understand the depths of my sickness, and I was looking more at the symptoms, the external symptoms of my sickness, instead of the real, the heart-consuming nature of sin in my life.
Dan Werthman: I did not even understand what grace, which we sang about in three songs this morning, what grace really was, until I came to the place where I saw how sick my soul was and how unable I was to save myself.
Dan Werthman: So when Jesus says,"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick," it's really as if he's saying an answer to their accusations.
Dan Werthman: Where should a physician be, and who should he associate with?
Dan Werthman: With the well, who think that they have no need of him?
Dan Werthman: No.
Dan Werthman: Shouldn't a physician be among the sick who need him?
Dan Werthman: Why would he be anywhere else?
Dan Werthman: You won't find Jesus with people who think they have no need of him.
Dan Werthman: You won't find Jesus with people who may claim they are Christians, but really live without any ultimate dependence upon him.
Dan Werthman: You find Jesus, like here, you find Jesus among the sick, with those like Levi, who have come to the point where they know they are infected with sin.
Dan Werthman: They can do nothing to save themselves, and their only hope is Jesus.
Dan Werthman: Is that you this morning?
Dan Werthman: Do you acknowledge that you're sick?
Dan Werthman: Do you acknowledge that you need him to save your very soul, to save your very life?
Dan Werthman: By the way, just in counter to the Pharisees' thinking about"you don't go where the unchurched are; that would be polluting", Jesus models for us the truth that separation from sin does not mean separating yourself from sinners.
Dan Werthman: He was with them, and yet he didn't let their sin rub off on him, but neither did he let their sin keep them away from him.
Dan Werthman: He separated himself from sin, not from sinners.
Dan Werthman: And he calls us, as we follow him, to do the same, to separate ourselves from sin, but not to separate ourselves from sinners.
Dan Werthman: How will sinners hear, how will the unchurched hear, if we separate ourselves from them, like the people of England churches at that time wanted to separate themselves from the coal miners?
Dan Werthman: Finally, Jesus ties it all together with that last phrase of verse 17:"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." And by now, you've probably put this together: the righteous, they're not really righteous.
Dan Werthman: They're not really people who stand right before God, who don't need any forgiveness, because we know, Romans 3: none of us are righteous, not even one.
Dan Werthman: The righteous are those who think they're well, who think that they're okay, or at least not as sick, not as unrighteous as other people, so they do okay by comparison.
Dan Werthman: Jesus, he says, comes to call not those people, but sinners, those who know they are sick.
Dan Werthman: That was his mission then.
Dan Werthman: That is his mission now.
Dan Werthman: That is his mission for you and for me, and so let me leave you with three applications.
Dan Werthman: Some of you this morning, I don't know who, but some of you, no doubt, this morning are here, and you are still under the self-deception that you are well.
Dan Werthman: You may know that you're a little sick.
Dan Werthman: You may see some symptoms in your life, but you look around, and you see other people who, morally, religiously, like we're talking about here, are much more sick than you are, and you think you're okay by comparison.
Dan Werthman: Or you at least think,"You know, I can try a little harder.
Dan Werthman: I can make some moral changes, and I can make myself healthy." And here is my call to you from Jesus: acknowledge your soul sickness.
Dan Werthman: Turn to the Great Physician, and let him heal you.
Dan Werthman: You are dying.
Dan Werthman: You are perishing.
Dan Werthman: You are spreading the infection of your sin.
Dan Werthman: You cannot cure yourself.
Dan Werthman: Only the Great Physician can, and he stands with open arms, willing and ready to do that today.
Dan Werthman: Secondly, if you are here this morning, and you have done that, you have turned to the Great Physician, if you have embraced Jesus as savior and Lord, here would be my application to you: open your eyes.
Dan Werthman: See the sick and dying people all around you.
Dan Werthman: They're perishing everywhere.
Dan Werthman: Tell them about the Great Physician.
Dan Werthman: Tell them how he has healed you.
Dan Werthman: Tell them that he is ready and willing, with arms open wide, to heal them.
Dan Werthman: Don't keep that good news.
Dan Werthman: If you learned of a cure for cancer, if you learned of a cure for you-name-the-disease, you would not keep that to yourself.
Dan Werthman: Take the care that the Great Physician offers for our soul sickness to the world, to the people that you know.
Dan Werthman: And finally, if we really believe that Jesus came for those who are sick, then we need to change the way that we look at church.
Dan Werthman: Church is not a country club for the healthy.
Dan Werthman: Church is not a community center where,"What programs do you want?
Dan Werthman: We're going to offer them because we want to keep you happy." No.
Dan Werthman: According to the model here, according to what Jesus says here, church is a hospital for the sick, and we need to align ourselves, our view of church, with that and the Great Physician: his church is to be a hospital for the sick.
Dan Werthman: So if you are worried about where you sit, if you are worried about whether they serve good enough coffee or don't serve coffee, if you are worried about the programs, you have a country club, community center view of church.
Dan Werthman: Jesus says that we ones that we should be worried about are not yet here.
Dan Werthman: The ones who are sick, the ones who are perishing.
Dan Werthman: Jesus says the space we should be creating, and the ministries we should be doing, should be targeting and reaching out to those in great need.
Dan Werthman: Jesus says the activities that we should be involved in should involve going out to those who will never come here in reaching them and equipping people to do so.
Dan Werthman: Jesus came not to call the righteous, those who think they are well; he came to call sinners, those who know they are sick and in the need of a Great Physician.
Dan Werthman: Let's pray.
Dan Werthman: Jesus, we thank you, those of us who have come to that place of acknowledging our sickness, that you are the Great Physician.
Dan Werthman: You have healed us.
Dan Werthman: You have healed us of sin and the stain of sin, and you continue to heal us by growing us in your likeness.
Dan Werthman: Give us a heartbeat, Lord God, for for those who are lost, for those who are sick, for those who are perishing, give us a proper way of looking at our church: a hospital for the sick.
Dan Werthman: We pray this Jesus, that you would be lifted up and glorified.
Dan Werthman: Amen.