Ep. 3 | Mark 2:13-17

In this episode of the Pastors Corner podcast, Chance Humphreys and Senior Pastor Oren Connor explore the call of Jesus to Levi, the tax collector, as depicted in Mark 2:13-17. They discuss the cultural implications of Jesus dining with sinners, the nature of grace, and the call to discipleship. The conversation emphasizes the need for believers to engage with those outside the church and to extend grace to all, reflecting on their own experiences and the ongoing need for grace in their lives.

Takeaways 

• Everyone is equally undeserving of God's grace, that is foundational to understanding the scandal of God's grace. 
• The call to follow Jesus is a call to transformation. 
• Believers must reflect on their own need for grace. Grace is essential for both salvation and sanctification. 
• Engaging with sinners is essential for sharing the gospel. Jesus modeled that in this story. 
• The church must actively engage with the community. Our neighbors, coworkers, strangers need to know we see them and want to help them. 

Transcript

Greenwell Springs (00:04.974)
Hello and welcome to the Pastors Corner podcast. The Pastors Corner is a ministry of Greenville Springs Baptist Church that seeks to help people walk faithfully with Jesus from generation to generation. I'm your host, Chance Humphreys, here today with Senior Pastor Oren Cobb.

Greenwell Springs (00:23.97)
Well, Pastor, we're back in the Pastor's Corner for another episode of our podcast. And today we're looking at the call of Jesus towards Levi in Mark chapter 2 verses 14 through 17. And so if you're tuning in to listen, thanks for listening. We relook at Pastor's sermon on Sunday, and if you want to find that sermon,

that's on our website, which is in the pastor's corner page there. And you can access that through the link down in the show notes or go to our YouTube page and find that. Pastor, before we jump into the text, I wanted to ask you about the title of your sermon. Yeah. And this scandal of grace. speak a little bit to that. So I asked the church Sunday, who's ever heard of this? And no one raised their hand. And I guess I just assumed that people have heard this before. The word

for offense or stumbling in the New Testament is the word scandalon. And so when Paul quotes Isaiah in Romans 9, he's quoting a passage from Isaiah 8, which says that the Lord God is laying a rock in Zion, a rock of stumbling. And what that refers to is that the religious

are gonna stumble over Jesus, right? Because he's bringing, and we'll see next week and week after, Jesus is bringing new wine skins and new wine, right? And the old wine skins aren't gonna be able to handle the new wine. The Jews stumbled over Jesus because he said and did things that they were not anticipating. And so that was scandal on, he offended them. He offended the religious people whenever he,

extended grace to sinners. And so the Bible describes the Messiah, Jesus, in this way as a rock of stumbling or a rock of offense. The one reference I didn't make was probably the biggest one, is when John the Baptist was in prison and he was waiting for Jesus to come rescue him. And so John sent his disciples to Jesus and said, are you the one we're waiting for? And Jesus said, go back and tell John this. He talks about healing and blessing.

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and giving war to the thirsty, but he doesn't say anything about rescuing the captives from prison. And he said, blesses the man who's not offended by me, not scandalized by me, basically. And so the idea of grace being scandalous is not from an English Western perspective of what a scandal is. Grace can be offensive in some cases, because on the one hand, and I mentioned this kind of in the beginning of the message, some people believe Jesus is almost too gracious.

He welcomes all these types of people into the kingdom who don't deserve it and who haven't earned it. Well, no one deserves it or earned it, right? And so grace is scandalous because it causes the legalist to stumble over his kindness. And then there are others who believe he's not gracious enough. He doesn't welcome more and more people in like he requires them to believe in him and trust in him as Lord and Savior. Well, grace becomes a scandal then because it's almost like, well, you say you love me, but then you require me to follow you. Yes, that's the way to life.

So even those that want more grace stumble over Jesus. And so the scandal of grace, the idea is until we come to a biblical understanding of what God's grace really is, we're gonna have a hard time dealing with Jesus because He changes everyone's expectations. The legalist and the hedonist. He didn't come to satisfy either one. He came to heal the sick, the sick of the soul, which is what we see here in this passage today. Yep,

With that, go ahead. I'm going to read this passage and then we'll answer a few questions and dive in a little bit more. Here in Mark chapter 2, starting in verse 14, this is what we see. As he, that is Jesus, passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting in the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he, Levi, got up and he followed him. And it happened that he was reclining at the table in his house.

And many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many of them, and they were following him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with the sinners and the tax collectors, they said to his disciples, Why is he eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners? And hearing this, Jesus said to them, It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but it those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but to call

Greenwell Springs (05:11.852)
centers. And so first, as we go through, tell us a little bit about we're introduced to Mark here to a new character. And this character, Matthew Levi, interchangeably, is a tax collector. So what is a first century tax collector? We don't in our modern society, we don't like paying taxes, but we don't typically interact with people that collect our taxes. It's all done through mail or through the computer or whatever.

In this time, tax collectors were people who sat at a table, booth, an area, and they collected taxes. There were probably some guards, some Roman guards or whatever the enforcement agency was, and people had to pay certain taxes on goods and services and trade and all this type of thing. But what made this so scandalous was that Levi was a Jew who was working for King Herod.

who was technically the Jewish king, although he was sort of the undesired, unwanted Jewish king. And it's likely that he was probably collecting taxes for the Romans as well. And the Romans were the enemy of Israel. They were the occupiers, they were the oppressors. And so Matthew was working for the bad guys, essentially. And so he was sort of cut off from the Jewish religious culture, which meant that all of his friends would have been other

so-called tax collectors and sinners, people that were unclean, that were unwelcomed in the general Jewish community. It was almost as if they were, not almost, they were outcasts. And similar to the way we saw the leper who was forced to leave the community because he had this illness, he was physically forced to leave, these tax collectors and sinners, particularly Matthew, were figuratively in some sense, they were still part of the culture, part of the society.

but they were ostracized, they were shunned, they were hated and despised because they were robbing their own people to pay the enemy. And so he was a despised man who Jesus sees and calls to follow him. Okay, so we know that Jesus has a couple followers at this point. He has a couple disciples. Four. Four, primarily. The fishermen. Before he calls Levi, what is their...

Greenwell Springs (07:36.656)
idea of Levi. How did they feel towards Levi? So these fishermen, and we explored this when we started the study of Mark, when Jesus called Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John, we talked about how they probably weren't impoverished fishermen. They probably had a fairly successful business. It's probably somewhere subtly in the middle class, if you will, in that culture. So when they went fishing and they caught fish, they brought them to the market, they had to pay taxes.

on their business. Well, if Jesus is walking by the seashore, the Sea of Galilee, and he finds Levi sitting in a tax booth by the seashore, it's safe to assume that the disciples, former fishermen, parked their boats at the same seashore and paid their taxes to this man Levi. It wasn't as though he went somewhere else to find this man. He was right there where those four fishermen would have been forced to pay their taxes. So you can imagine the tension.

And how much these men probably hated Levi. And Jesus has the audacity to walk up to this tax collector and say, follow me. And those four guys are probably standing there going, what in the world? Like this guy, this guy following you now too? There's no way. He's the enemy. He works for Rome. He takes our money, robs us. And so there was probably, again, this is speculation. The Bible doesn't say this, but we'd see the same sort of situation with.

Paul or Saul when he's welcomed into the early Christian community, there was some fear of him because of what he had done. It's safe for us to assume, I think here, that these four fishermen probably would have seen Levi as unworthy to follow Jesus, which again, shatters all of our expectations of who Jesus is. Absolutely. So let's deal first with Jesus and his address to Levi, and then we'll move on to, I kind of think the...

what expounds this calling with these sinners. But so Jesus is walking by as it says, and he says to Levi, follow me. What is wrapped up in this statement of follow me? There's a lot there. How do we view it in the sense that, okay, Christ comes, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And so Christ came because he loves people, and he calls people to follow him. And so where's the connection of

Greenwell Springs (09:59.928)
receiving the love of Christ, but yet he still demands a response. Like you have to do something. So what is wrapped up in this calling of Levi, but essentially a calling to all people to follow Christ? Yeah, so it's a call to be a disciple. That's what a disciple is. It's a learner and a follower. Someone who would willingly put themselves under the instruction and the teaching of someone else. So when Jesus called the four fishermen, he said, come follow me and I'll make you fishers of men.

Well, there was a requirement that they would have to leave behind what they were doing formerly to now take on a new identity and a new mission, which is following Jesus, learning from him to become catchers of people, right? So the same thing's happening here with Levi, Matthew. He cannot stay in his tax booth if he's going to follow Jesus. When Jesus calls a person to follow him, it requires

the former person to go away and a new person now is born with a different life, a different mission, a different purpose, and that is to follow Jesus. Now this does not mean that you have to just go quit your job, right? That's not what it means. What it does mean is who you were, how you were identified formerly is now gone. But there's a requirement for discipleship to follow Jesus, okay?

I've given this illustration before, really an illustration, but an example. When I ask people, I did this with a group of college students one time years ago, is God's love unconditional? Yes, praise God it is. There's nothing that you and I can do to earn or deserve God's love. He loves us. Okay. The second question is, is discipleship unconditional? And they all said yes. I said no. Discipleship is conditional.

And this is why Jesus many times starts to sentence with the word if. If there are conditions for discipleship, and that condition in this context is you have to get up and go. You can't say, Jesus, I'm gonna follow you, but I'm gonna stay here in my tax booth and keep doing what I'm doing. When he calls us to follow him, what he's saying is you are leaving behind your former life to take on a new life. And what that means is you take on a new worldview, a new identity.

Greenwell Springs (12:23.972)
You're in Christ now. You have a new mission, which is you are a follower of Jesus to glorify His name, to make disciples, to share the gospel, to love people like He loves. You are under His command, under His Lordship. So you cannot live life however you want. You're now living life by His command. And so when He called Matthew, Matthew saw an opportunity, at least how I read this, to leave behind this life that got him nothing but to be ostracized and cast out of society.

This may be his way back into being accepted. And Jesus was the only one offering him this. No one else was offering him life but Christ. The beauty of it is that he got up and did it. Yeah, absolutely. see so many times we see this through data and statistics. even personally, we see examples of this. A lot of people want the love of Christ. I mean, who wouldn't? People want the love of Christ, but they don't want him

telling them what to do with their life, how to live. Don't mess with my life, Man, I love you, I'm grateful for your love, but I don't want to do all those requirements and type stuff. And that's just not the case. That's not what a true follower does. And let me make this point too. I didn't do this in the sermon, but when you go to Matthew's gospel, he tells the same story, but he calls himself Matthew. He doesn't call himself Levi. Because Levi is who he used to be. Right. Everybody in that day would have known him as Levi the tax collector.

So when he writes in the third person, he doesn't say, Jesus called me and I followed him. He says, and Jesus called the tax collector Matthew, and he got up and followed him. Matthew, when writing his gospel, refers to himself with his new name as a follower of Christ, which shows us he understood he was a new person in Christ, that the old tax collector Levi was gone, now Matthew was alive in Jesus. That's a good point. Really good.

Okay, so he moves on, so Matthew leads everything behind, the tax booth, tax collecting, probably not easy. I'm sure at some point the Roman guards, Herod, his job is gonna be looking, where did Matthew go? Why is he not doing his job that we were paying him to do? And so he knew there was some risk, some consequences possibly.

Greenwell Springs (14:42.254)
But man, to follow Christ, he was all in. He got up and he went. There's probably a line of people waiting to take his job, too. It was a profitable endeavor. He was taking a cut off the top. He was probably doing really well for himself. Well above average, right? And so there's probably another guy that just slid right over and sat in their seats. OK, I'm the tax collector now. Because there were probably some eager takers. But he knew he had to leave it behind. So once he starts to follow Jesus, they

go to his house, and now here we have a scene that is very different than anything you would have expected in their culture. And so, tell us a little bit, you mentioned this in the sermon, what it means that they're reclining at the dinner table and dining. What does that look like in first century Jewish culture? Yeah, so in this culture, particularly in the Jewish culture, you didn't just sit down and eat a meal with anyone.

To sit down at a meal with a person meant you accepted them, you weren't afraid to be associated with them, you loved them and cared for them. So you didn't just sit down with anyone and you didn't accept just any invitation. And so the belief in this time was if you went into the home of a sinner who had not been to the temple to make sacrifices, who was cleansed by the word of the priests, you were unclean and you couldn't associate with anyone that was unclean.

Well, Matthew and all of his friends were the filthy tax collectors. They were all unclean. So for a good Jewish person to walk into that man's house was as if they were saying, accept Matthew as he is. You can't do that. Not in the Jewish culture. And so to sit down at a table with this man meant you accepted him. And it's almost as if you approved of his life and his lifestyle, his decisions.

So the religious of that day would have had a huge problem with this because you can't sit at the table and fellowship with people who are dirty with sin. And that's exactly what Jesus does. And so Jesus is turning the whole thing upside down on this point. And what we see in this encounter is the realization, I think, of his disciples, but also of these priests and these scribes that this guy's different. This guy's different from anything we've seen before.

Greenwell Springs (17:06.224)
Yeah, and he's proven that story after story after story through Mark. The grace of Christ towards your life, towards my life, towards Matthew's life, demands that we be gracious towards others. And Jesus is setting the example of this, but it's really cool how Matthew invites all of his buddies to say, need to come meet this guy because I've given up everything I have to meet this guy, so why don't you come?

hear him, meet him as well, and he invites all these tax collectors and sinners, which you made a good point. Jesus calls them sinners. Yes, yes. And so Matthew has invited Christ into the dining room of sinners and tax collectors, and you made this statement and connection, and I would like to talk about a little bit more of how is it that we sometimes as Christians do not invite God into

those parts of our life that we think, God doesn't need to be involved in this part. This is the messy part. This is the sinful part. That's exactly where Jesus is going all throughout the gospels where he's needed. And so what would you say to believers or even a non-believer who says, man, Jesus can't save me. I'm a sinner. And here Jesus says, but that's who I've come to see. Like, don't push me away from that. Invite me in to that.

And so I just wondered about those hesitancies of Christians that try to keep their sinful life kind of private, like God doesn't need to see it. But until you invite Him into it, He can't work in it. But He sees it. He sees it. He knows it. You're not hiding anything. I think when Jesus called Levi, it's possible, likely, that Levi knew that Jesus knew him. Because if Jesus didn't know him, He wouldn't have called.

If all he knew that he was a tax collector and he was just like every other rabbi, he wouldn't have called. He wouldn't have a word to him. He'd have walked right by. But the fact that Jesus stopped and looked at him and said, follow me, Levi knew he was known. Like you don't just call this guy to follow you unless you know who he is. And so Jesus stopping to call Matthew, told Matthew, I can still follow you even though you know what I've done. Yeah. Yeah. And so then he goes to his house, which again is a no-no.

Greenwell Springs (19:33.467)
and sits down at his table, which again is a no-no. So Jesus is redefining what grace looks like in that culture, right? But we have to remember, and you made the point, I made the point in the sermon, that Jesus doesn't shy away from calling them sick people. He says, came to heal these people. It wasn't physical illness, it was spiritual illness. So he wasn't pretending like there wasn't a problem in the room. I'm coming to fix the problem is what he's saying, right? But you have to remember,

that when Jesus moves in, he's moving all up in there. Like the whole house is his. So there's no hiding anything from him. Jesus knew Levi's heart. He knew everything. He knows your heart, everything. So you could say you're hiding something from God. You're not hiding. I gave this illustration before. It's like when dad comes home and Junior is hiding behind the curtains, but you can see his feet sticking out. And he's giggling and laughing. thinks he's hiding from dad, but dad sees.

And he may act like he doesn't know, but he knows right where that kid is, because his feet are hiding. I mean, his body's hidden, but his feet are exposed. This is what it's like. We think we're hiding from God, but we're not. We're already known. The power in grace, the power in the gospel is, I know you, Jesus says, and I love you. And I've often said before, if everybody knew everything about you, you wouldn't have any friends. Jesus says, I know everything about you, and I love you.

And so there was power in the call because Matthew understood, yes, I have to leave this behind, but what he's offering me must be better because he knows me and he's calling me anyway. There's power in that, But we have to always consider what Jesus calls you and you choose to follow him. You're inviting him into every part of your life. Every thought, every word, every deed, everything belongs to him.

And that's scary in our life, like person to person, like you said, but you can't have true fellowship. And ultimately you can't have true freedom until you invite Christ all the way in and say, look, Lord, I know I'm a mess and I know I need your grace, not just in salvation, but in sanctification. And I need you to come into my life, into my house and fix this and offer. And so I...

Greenwell Springs (21:56.419)
You know, I always, I think about this throughout the story as I've read through this, I never truly stopped and thought about the perspective of the disciples too much of the other disciples, the four, and until you made that point in the sermon. And so I was thinking their perspective and their ability to show grace to Matthew and our responsibility to show grace. Sometimes we

Sometimes we think that we may be better and who is deserving of grace, but Christ lays out the example that is everybody. It's the sinners. And we know throughout the Gospels that Jesus is always correcting the disciples. I mean, it's not like Peter and James, John, Andrew had it all together. I mean, they should know that they need grace too. They've chosen to follow Christ. And so they shouldn't have had the attitude of, you know, why Matthew?

You know, he's not a good person. He's not a good person. But we also know that what Jesus says, did not, the healthy need no physician. Jesus did come to call the righteous, which is good news because Paul tells us in Romans 3, there's none that are righteous. You're all sinners. You're all part of this group. And so this way to show others, man, we're recipients of grace and we got to share grace with others.

And so I think about their perspective and how, you know, Christ is changing their life in this story as well. And there's just so much happening there. You made a statement in the sermon that, and I think you bring it up here and tell a little bit maybe more about it, is that you grew up in a good Baptist boy in a Catholic town. But there was a moment when you realized that you needed the grace just as much as the

the cross. And so speak to that a more, because that was powerful. I've told the story before, and part of my testimony is growing up in a Baptist church, very, very Baptist. I tell people my family was so Baptist, Southern Baptist had a cereal, my famous picture would be on the box. We did everything, right? We were so involved. And so I grew up in an age in the evangelical church where it was really important to separate yourself from the evil world.

Greenwell Springs (24:25.369)
And so I tried really hard to do that to the point at which I began to think that I was better than the people that were doing all the things I knew I wasn't doing. And I became a legalist. And I didn't understand the grace that had saved me, right? I was operating on behavior, on deeds. I was a legalist, a lot like these scribes. Well, when I'm reading through the Bible, especially the New Testament, and I see grace after grace after grace after grace,

God just slapped me, and it's like, Orrin, you're just as in a much need of grace as any of these other people. So why not be gracious to them? And these scribes, standing outside the door, they wouldn't have gone into Matthew's house. It would have made them unclean. They're standing outside. It's probably the disciples probably went in with Jesus, but were probably very uncomfortable. They're in Matthew's house. They're not supposed to be in there, at least not according to the religious leaders.

And it's probably a little awkward. But what Jesus is showing them in that moment is what grace looks like. There are those that are inside, and there are those that are standing outside in judgment. There are those that went into the house to fellowship with Jesus, regardless of what it may seem like to those on outside. And then there are those who stand on the outside judging. Those are the religious people. Those are the righteous people, supposedly, who are looking at Jesus and his people and judging.

And you have to kind of come to grips with reality, well, where are you standing? Are you standing outside with the scribes or inside with Jesus? Everybody wants to be inside with Jesus. Okay, well, what evidence is there in your life that you're with Jesus? Or do you stand in judgment of other people because you think you're better? I had a hard time with the thief on the cross story because this was a rebel, an insurrectionist, a murderer who was a sinner, and he didn't live a righteous life at all.

And then in the last moments of his life, Jesus saved him. I felt like growing up, I felt like that was unfair because I worked so hard to be righteous and he gets the same thing I get until I realized I deserve to be on that cross instead of Jesus. Wait, I'm just as vile as that thief is. I may not have done the same things he's done, but my sin is just as condemning as his. And that's when I began to really, God really began to work in my heart to help me understand what grace really looks like.

Greenwell Springs (26:52.067)
It's not smoothing over and pretending like your sin doesn't matter. He doesn't do that here. No, he doesn't say Matthew and his friends their sin doesn't matter. He says they're sick. I'm the doctor that's come to heal them. He's acknowledging their illness. Diagnosis is sin. I'm come to healing them. And so we have to be able to be willing to accept and confess that we are sinners. I struggled with that for a while until God got a hold of me with grace. Wow. And the statement that you made in the sermon.

was you had a problem with a thief on the cross because it was unfair. And then say, you know what's not fair? That the son of God would die for me. And that was just a, that's absolute. We have to self reflect every day and think, man, we're just in need of graces, everybody else. And we can't be judgmental towards that. Okay, so let me ask you this. On that same line of thought, you've got what, 30 years of ministry experience nearly in churches, church life.

and growing up in church, your whole life is... 28 years. years. your whole life has been around the church. Yes. So in what ways have you seen, or maybe still see, and I'm thinking specifically in our context of Cremal Springs Baptist Church and how we don't fall into this pattern, in what ways might we as Christians, church members, act like the scribes and Pharisees? And we unknowingly, we put up barriers that are...

Their barriers to extending grace like they would have done with with Levi. Hey don't associate with this guy. He's a rebel. He's he's the enemy In what ways might we diagnose ourselves and say hey be mindful of these barriers as Christians that could get in the way of showing grace Yeah, that this is a this becomes a really hard one for a lot of Christians if I were to say Let's say a friend at work who is just the most rotten kind of person

Cussing, drinking, sinning all the time, you know? And they invite you over to their house for dinner. Where'd you go? Right? Where'd you go? And sit down with them, knowing the environment you're gonna be in. It's gonna be rowdy, and it's gonna be sort of free of restraint, if you will, right? Do you go? Yeah, go, leave the kids at home. Yeah, leave the kids at home, yeah.

Greenwell Springs (29:17.243)
And then the next question would be, would you invite them to your house? Would you sit down with them and have a meal? This is a big one, I'm gonna stir up some stuff here. Let's say you have a family member, let's say you have a niece or nephew who comes out and says that they're homosexual, they're gay. Would you have them at your table for a meal? Here's the deal, you're not gonna catch something from them. Jesus wasn't gonna catch something from these tax collectors and sinners.

He was extending grace. Would you have them to your table and have a meal together? There's nothing wrong with that. You're not endorsing their sin. I said that in the message. Jesus was not endorsing Matthew and his friends' previous lives. He's calling them to something new, which meant they had to leave it behind, right? So if you have someone to your house or you're invited to someone's home, to their table, what they're saying is, I want to fellowship with you.

If I wasn't interested, we could just meet in the front yard and have a quick talk. To invite someone to your table is a sign of fellowship, even in our culture now. We invite people that we love and care about to eat a meal with us. So if someone went out of their way, someone that you may agree with, invites you, it could be a Democrat, a Democrat, or a Republican, oh no, clutching your pearls, I can't be, what's the harm?

Are you gonna become a sinner by sitting down with sinners? Right? No. Like you're not gonna catch something. So there's a kind of grace that we can extend to people to say, I love you. Let's have a meal together and talk. I wanna tell you about Jesus. This is what Matthew was doing. He didn't know what else to do. I have all these friends who have been cut off from the temple, from the worship, from sacrifices. The priests won't let them in because they're outcasts.

But now this rabbi comes along who's offering a new life. I've got to invite everyone I know to come meet this guy, right? Matthew didn't know what was coming. He had just started following Jesus. He had no idea. But he was so moved by the grace of Jesus, he wanted someone else to experience that grace. So he invited them at a party and made Jesus the guest of honor so he could tell all of them how much he cared for them and how they could have new life. The scribe standing outside with scowls on their faces.

Greenwell Springs (31:40.047)
Go, you can't do that, you can't do that. Jesus says, look, I can't help you if you don't need help. But if you know you're sick and something's wrong, I'm here to help you. And this very well may be what people in your life are looking for. They know something's wrong. They just don't know where to turn and they don't want to go to your church because they're afraid that they may be too judgmental. Okay, well maybe, and I've said this before, maybe the path to the Lord's table is through your dining room table first.

That may be the path to get them to sitting in your worship service at your local church, is maybe sitting down at your table for a few weeks or months, just getting to know more about Jesus because you're being an example. That's the grace of God at work in their lives. And look, nothing may change. There's no record in the scripture that all these people that were gathered that day in Matthew's house gave their lives to Christ and followed him. He did it anyway. He offered it to those that were there. That's our call as well.

We can't be afraid to engage the culture. You can't. And there's a pattern here that you make such a great point connecting back to what we were saying at the beginning of this episode is that Jesus saw Levi where he was and he called him out of it. Well, if we never see sinners where they are, we'll never engage them. And so you can't be afraid like you you're not gonna catch something. And you always want, is your faith so frail?

that you're worried that it's going to shatter by communicating or inviting a sinner rebel to your table. think about the four disciples. Jesus is preparing them for that work. Yep. So after he dies and is raised from the dead and ascends to heaven, he says, OK, guys, I'm sending you out. These are the people. Mm Matthew is the person in all throughout the Jewish and Greek world that need to hear the gospel. So what did they do?

Well, they're transformed by the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. They go out into the world, they share the gospel with all kinds of people. They weren't afraid of it anymore because they saw it in Christ. That's what they were called to. And so if we say we're followers of Jesus, we have to act like Jesus. We're not going to do it perfectly, but that's a real practical way that we can apply these things and see the work of Christ in our lives. Yeah. We have to, as believers, as church members, engage our neighbors, engage our coworkers.

Greenwell Springs (34:03.279)
That is going to... We can't sit around. This is where I feel churches have failed mostly in the last 30 years, 40 years, and maybe beyond, but we can't sit around and expect people to just show up to church. Jesus didn't do it that way, and we can't think that it's going to operate that way. We have to be engaging our neighbors, and unfortunately, we live in a society that is less engaging.

your neighbor. I mean, we have neighborhoods where our houses are right beside each other. But I lived in a neighborhood before moving here, where my next door neighbor, the only time that I saw her was when the garage went up and she backed out to go to work. And when she came in for work, any other time, I rarely ever even saw her. And so now we're living in close proximity, away from each other. But yeah, we don't engage. And so we can't be afraid to engage. We have to find ways to engage and invite.

them in. And so, I mean, it's exciting we're even in talks about how can our church better engage the community. And here's the thing, we can't do it in a way that says, we need you, we need something from you. No, no, no. We do it in a way that says we have something to offer you. We want to give you a change of life that Christ can do. And so, working and doing it that way. So much

here in this text and beyond, and it's going to continue, like you said, with the next couple stories leading from examples, but anything else on this text that you would maybe want to add? I made the point, and I want to make sure at least our church family understands, I used the illustration about receiving the cancer diagnosis, right? Yeah. And if you get a diagnosis from the doctor, you can't say, well, doctor, you're wrong.

despite what the scans say, despite what the blood work says, yeah, I may have cancer, but I don't care. It's not a big deal. And you walk away because you don't like the doctor, what the doctor said. Some people approach Jesus that way. There are others that are in the church, Christians, so supposedly, who have an illness. They're sick. Jesus describes them as sick, right? Who know, okay, I've been diagnosed with cancer. And let's just say they go up to the local treatment center,

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They sit down in one of those chairs, but they never hook up to the IV. They never hook up to the chemotherapy. They just sit there and they talk to the other people that are getting treatment and they act like they're one of them. They get up after they're done or after the, I started about time and they go home and they never receive treatment. Right? That's still a denial in some sense of what's available. Right? For Christians, for those of you listening today, when you come to worship,

You're coming to praise God and worship God and fellowship in his spirit with your brothers and sisters in Christ. But there's a certain kind of treatment that we're giving your soul, right? It's for the good of your soul to continue leaving behind that old life. We don't know a lot about what happened in Matthew's heart after this. fact, the Gospels don't speak much about him at all. But I'm sure there may have been some days we thought,

I don't have anywhere to sleep that tax booth man. I could have got me a nice, you know a nice place You know, there's their old lives can creep in and you can begin to think like you used to and act like you used to And we can and we count we need that treatment that the healing that Christ can give it comes by his power It comes through the truth of his word and by his grace to remember since last Sunday From from us a bit. Let me say it this way from Sunday to Sunday

We haven't fallen so far away that his grace doesn't apply anymore. No, you still need that grace week after week after week to be reminded of how good he really is. That he has called you into something new, something different. So you can't go back and live like you used to. You can't look like the world that doesn't know the Lord. You live like someone who does. And what I love about the disciples even is like Peter and John.

in Acts when they were arrested, right, and told to stop preaching the gospel. And they said, you decide for yourselves whether it's right for us to keep doing this, but we're going to keep doing it because we cannot deny what we've seen and what we've heard. And the very next verse, it says that those men, those authorities, recognized them as those who had been with Jesus, right? Well, Matthew here is appearing as someone who knows something about Jesus.

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that He's willing to invite all His friends to come meet Him. And He kept following Jesus all the way to the very end of His life. There's evidence that He knew the Lord by how He lived. But He still needed the grace of God to do that. Absolutely. He never stopped needing God's grace. That's us. As followers of Jesus, we haven't arrived, right? We have life. We're promised eternal life. We're promised heaven forever. And that's a great gift. We should live in that glory every day. But we still have a mission. And that mission

is to grow the kingdom, build the kingdom by our evangelism, by our discipleship, and we need God's grace to do that. God's not gonna give up on you, don't give up on Him. Yeah, sometimes we view salvation, we think about grace in salvation, and we also think about grace in sanctification. But sometimes we forget the importance of sanctification. Like we say, yeah, we received God's grace in salvation, now I'm a believer. But you forget...

That was just one small portion of your life. What are you going to do with the rest of it? You need God's grace. The gospel say, the New Testament say, is grace sufficient for you? He's given you strength. You need that every single day. And I don't know how people make it without it. I mean, when you look at us, we're sick. We need a healer, a helper. man, God is the one. How do I love my wife rightly? And I'm not perfect.

How do you raise your kids rightly? You need God's grace. What is it in you that keeps you from cutting somebody off in traffic, getting road rage? By God's grace in him transforming your life is the path As pastors, we talk to any pastor, for the vast majority of church members are pretty easy to deal with, but every once in a while you get one that just, man, they're just on you. And it's criticism and it's hard to deal with.

And those are the sheep that were still called to shepherd. And you need grace to do that. You need grace to shepherd well, right? But this is not just about pastors, parents, teachers, employers and employees, right? You need God's grace to help you through those moments when it's hard. Because while He has healed you, you still battle the sin cold every once in a while. You need a little healing every once in a while, right?

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And this is what he offers, this is he's come to do for us. And let just make one more illustration. You mentioned that we start with grace and salvation, and then we think sometimes it's kind of on our own. Think about it this way, think about signing up for a marathon. The grace and salvation is you're getting your number. You get your number, you stick it on your chest, I'm number 972, right? And you line up and the gun fires. Okay, that's salvation. Now you gotta run the whole marathon, right? And you're gonna need a lot of help.

to get to the very end. That's what, it's not about just getting in the race, it's about finishing the race. It doesn't matter where you win you finish, it matters that you finish, which is Paul talks about, So think about God's grace in that way. He got you to the starting line, He's gonna get you to the finish line, but you have to get up and run. Yeah, absolutely. Good stuff, great episode. Thanks for tuning in today. I wanna remind you, in the show notes down there, it says the pastor's corner. We're developing a spot on our website.

for the pastor's corner, a page there where you can find these podcasts, you can find other sermons and other teachings. You can also find we're working on putting together some resources that would be beneficial for all sorts of things, church life, personal life, discipleship, pastoral things. And so if you want some extra material and resources, please be sure to click on that, the pastor's corner link down there in the show notes, and you'll be able to access that more and more.

And so, hey, thanks for joining us today and we can't wait to be with you again next week.