Why Would Jesus Eat With Sinners? | Ken McIntyre

In Mark 2, Jesus does something surprising. He sits down for a meal with tax collectors and sinners.  People society had written off and avoided.

In this message, Pastor Ken explores what this moment reveals about the heart of Jesus. While many systems of religion focus on cleaning ourselves up before approaching God, Jesus moves toward people in their brokenness and invites them to follow Him.

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- Hey, this is Phil kl, lead pastor at Hope City Church. Thanks for tuning into our podcast. My prayer is that this helps and encourages you, gives you some practical ways to live out your faith and ultimately fills you with hope. Enjoy the message.- Who was the last person that you invited over for dinner? My wife and I, we think that we would like to have the gift of hospitality. We would like to be the type of people who enjoy having other people over for dinner. That we, we, we would like to be those type of people, but we are also capital I introverts. And so whenever we do it, it, it's like a thing. It's a, it's a whole thing in our house. Uh, you have to be emotionally ready for what's about to happen. You have to be physically ready. You have to, you have to organize your calendar. You have to decide what food you're going to eat. You have to go shop for ingredients. You gotta go, you gotta go clean everything because you know people are gonna judge you based off, you know, your baseboards, right? And, and, and the, and the dust buns underneath your kids' beds and say, you gotta do all this stuff. You have to get your house in order because you genuinely want people who come into your house to feel loved, to feel welcome. You know, there's research behind this instinct. Uh, Robert Dunbar out of, uh, Oxford is an anthropologist and he found that the single greatest predictor of genuine connection between people, it's not a text message, it's not a phone call, it's not a written letter. It is sharing a meal together. I remember getting an invitation to a dinner with a man named Doug Fields. Uh, I am not star starstruck by anyone. I don't really pay attention to celebrity culture too much. However, Doug Fields was my celebrity and he invited me to come to his house. Now, you probably don't know who he is. He is a famous youth pastor, which is a funny thing to say because being a famous pastor is like being a famous plumber. It's like, who cares? But I cared, right? I really cared. He was the guy who was speaking everywhere and he's writing books left, right, and center and, and he really helped me. Like he genuinely helped my ministry not implode in itself early on, and I was so grateful. And he invited me along with a whole bunch of other youth pastors to his home in sunny southern California to have a meal. In fact, it was at his house around his pool that I met Pastor Matt Baker, who's our Kingsway campus pastor. But we were both lounging on beach chairs around Doug's pool, totally fangirling because we knew we did not belong there. And I was convinced that someone was just gonna see us, just a bunch of nobodies from Northern Canada and say, Hey, I think, I think you're at the wrong party. I think you're at the wrong room. I wonder if you ever feel like you are in the wrong room. Maybe you're here today and you feel like you are in the wrong room. It's that feeling of not belonging, that feeling of not being good enough, that feeling everyone's better than you. That feeling of being unqualified, maybe even unseen. Now, the root of that feeling is an idea called shame. And shame is different than guilt. Guilt says, I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad. And guilt is fairly easy to deal with because you apologize and you just change the way that you do things and you move on. But shame is so sneaky. It just, just gets in there and you don't even necessarily know that it's there and you don't know how it got there. But it's just so hard to get rid of. We're in the series called This is Jesus, where we're looking at who Jesus is through the lens of the gospel of Mark. Now if you're not super familiar with the Bible, this can be confusing because we have something called the gospel. Then we have these books that we call gospels. Now the gospel means good news, and the four gospel accounts contain that good news and the, and the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Now the first four books of your New Testament, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, those are the gospels. And we're looking at Mark. Now, I remember in Bible college, my professor helped frame this for me. He said, imagine you are in a bank with three other people and a robber comes in and he robs a bank. After he leaves, the police come in and they take all four witness statements. Now, it would be strange if all four witness statements were identical that would cause suspicion from the police as if you got together beforehand to try to get your story straight as if you're trying to hide something. The fact that they're different, make them more believable, not less. You are gonna include things that other people don't and vice versa. But what is gonna be in common is the most important detail that someone robbed the bank in the same way the four gospels all tell us the same thing. Jesus rose from the grave. Now here's a poor way of putting it, but if you're going to compare gospels to types of movies, the gospel of Mark is like a Jason Statham movie, okay? If you know who he is, he's that really good looking, 50 something year old British guy. He's like, boy, he's always fighting, right? Like wall to wall action. Uh, it's fast moving. Then you can, you can contrast that to movie the Gospel of John, which is like a Christopher Nolan movie like Inception or in Interstellar. It's poetic. It's layered. It you, you, you watch it and it's like, I'm, I know I'm watching a masterpiece, but I'm gonna have to go watch it a few more times. That's like the gospel of John. And so we're in the gospel of Mark. It's, it's fast paced. It is a lot of action. Um, so think of, think of Jason Statham minus all of the swear words. Okay? Matthew, uh, mark chapter two starting verse 13 says this, once again, Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi's son of Alius sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me. Jesus told him. And Levi got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples. For there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? On hearing this, Jesus said to them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners. The gospels consistently lump tax collectors and sinners into this one category, which sounds strange to us. And so we gotta dig a little bit. Uh, tax collection then was not like it is now and we're in tax season. So, uh, I mean it's been described that back in the day, tax collection was like organized crime with government approval. Okay? That's what it was like back in the day. I know some of you're thinking it's the same thing today. It's very different. It is very different. Okay? So Rome, which was the invading nation, uh, would auction off rights to collect taxes. And the person who bought those rights was expected to deliver a certain set amount of money to Rome and everything else above that, the tax collector got to keep for themself. So essentially the tax collector made their money by overcharging their own people. So to a Jew, if another Jew became a tax collector, they're guilty of a triple offense. The first one being, they're extorting their own people. Secondly, they were colluding and collaborating with the enemy, the invading nation with Rome. And thirdly, they were permanently unclean because they're always touching money and in contact with Gentiles, they were so despised that rabbinical literature would lump tax collectors in with murderers. They didn't belong in any room. They were the moral lepers of their day. And so Levi wasn't just unpopular, he was the designated villain of this area. Nobody is inviting him over for dinner. He's written off in every possible way. And Levi knew it. He knew it. He was filled with Shea. He knew he just didn't do bad things. He knew and was reinforced. He was a bad person. And Jesus walks up to him and says, follow me, follow me. I like to contrast the Christian faith against other religious and philosophical worldviews for clarity's sake because they're so, so different. The Canadian instinct to lump all ways of thinking about God and life and meaning into one homogenous lump, right? This idea that all roads lead to heaven, it's untrue, it's unhelpful and it creates confusion. And I know that what people long for right now maybe than ever in my lifetime is clarity. The last decade has produced chaos in people's moral life, in their thinking. And they long for truth. They long for a solid foundation. They long for clarity. And God in his kindness is drawing people unto himself to his church where people can get that truth, that solid footing. And it really is a beautiful time in that sense. Now, every major religion, every philosophy, every self-help system hands you a code to follow, right? A set of principles, something Jesus hands, Levi, none of that. He doesn't say Follow this. He doesn't say follow that. He says, follow me. He doesn't give him something. He gives them someone. Jesus is the only religious figure in the history of religion to make himself the point. He doesn't say, follow me and my teaching and you'll find God. He says, follow me. I am the way. He doesn't say obey my principles and you'll find life. He says, I am life. Every other teacher, every other religion pointed towards something beyond itself. But Jesus points to himself and he says, I'm what you're looking for. I'm the gate. I'm the good shepherd. I'm the bread of heaven. I'm the resurrection and the life. I am the light of the world. I am the living water. It's me you're looking for. He points to himself, which means Christianity is not chiefly a belief system to assess or admire. It is firstly a person to know. And that matters enormously for this invitation to Levi. And here's why. And maybe this is you today. People can be curious about the Christian faith and what the Bible has to say. They want to evaluate the teachings of Jesus before committing to him. And that makes sense and that, uh, seems normal and that that's not, maybe not even a bad thing, but it is in the wrong order. Because here's the thing, if Jesus is who he claimed to be God in the flesh, then his agenda, his teachings, whatever it is, is life for you. You have to settle the question of who Jesus is first. And everything else flows from there to evaluate the teachings of Jesus before evaluating the authority of Jesus. It's backwards. Imagine you go to a doctor, a world renowned expert and they give you a diagnosis and a treatment plan, but you don't like what you hear. Listen, if they're not truly a world renowned expert, if they're not even a doctor, it's like go find another doctor. Who cares what they have to say? But if they are that expert and if they are a doctor who cares what you have to say, their treatment plan is life for you. Imagine saying, well yes, I believe Jesus is God, but I don't like his viewpoint on X, Y, and Z. It's like, who cares what you think? It's God, his agenda, his teachings, his coat, it's life for you. Levi didn't stand up from that booth because he evaluated uh, and assessed what Jesus had to say and thought, you know, that agrees with my conscience. No, he recognized who was saying these things and so he left his tax booth. Now, from there the story transports us from the tax booth to Levi's home where Jesus is sharing this meal with this what could be scribed as a motley crew of people, right? These, these tax collectors in these sinners. And I love this scene 'cause this scene is so bizarre. It's so unlikely because this is again God in the flesh, the one through who all things are created, the one we learned, angels bow down and worship. And he's here of all places. He's at the table that no one else wanted to be associated with. Here he is. He is right there. There's this theological idea called kenosis. It means to empty oneself. The core idea of kenosis is what Jesus voluntarily gave up to become human. Paul speaks of this in Philippians two says this, speaking of Jesus, he says, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God. Something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness. This is kenosis, the eternal son of God set aside every divine privilege that he had. He voluntarily set them aside without abandoning his divinity. Wild. It's like a parent who gets down on the ground to play with their kid. They're still the parent, but they choose proximity over position. And so Jesus, he lays aside his eternal glory, his divine privileges, his godness. He took on flesh, he entered our mess. He showed up in human history. And this is where we find him of all places. It's just so funny to me and the Pharisees that I guess they get a hint of this'cause they're like, why is he eating with them? And they're not very discreet about it. It seems sort of rude. You know when you're out in public and something bizarre happens, just maybe you're in Walmart.'cause that's the place where bizarre things happen and people wear bizarre things. Okay? So imagine Walmart and imagine you're so appalled at what someone is wearing and you turn to your spouse or your friend, whoever you're with, and you say, I can't believe they're wearing that in public, right? You're discreet about it. The Pharisees were not discreet about it. Why is he eating with them? And again, it seems rude, but it also makes a lot of sense. The Pharisees were applying a consistent and coherent theology of holiness that was validated throughout their life. Here is the principle. An infection always moves towards the healthy person. That's the principle. You don't cure a flu word by sending in healthy people. Do you? Why? Well, the infection always moves towards the healthy person and not just physically. We know this morally as well. You take a kid from a good home, you put them in a bad peer group and watch how that group reshapes that kid. And so the Pharisees, they built this entire system around this idea that separation from what was bad was this mechanism of holiness. And so they had the dietary laws, the purity codes, the social boundaries. It all acted as this firewall for them. And it worked for centuries. Israel was able to maintain its distinctness all the while being enslaved and conquered by these dominant nations precisely because of this line of thinking. So they see Jesus, this apparently righteous person who's reclining at a table of society's worse. And they run the calculation, well, if Jesus is clean and they are unclean and then Jesus is prolonged contact with them, then he is the healthy person in the flu ward and he is going to get sick. And Jesus replies to their concern with these beautiful words. He says, well, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but it's the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners and they're beautiful words. But there's sort of a problem that Jesus doesn't solve in these words because doctors get sick. That's why they have PPE. That's why they have quarantine protocols. The point is the proximity with the sick can make a doctor sick as well. So the Pharisees could have just said, exactly, that's what we're saying. Like get out of there because then, then you might become sick. But Jesus is claiming something that breaks their categories. See the Pharisees assume that holiness was something that you maintained or you or you can lose it and getting too close to the wrong people and your and your holiness would erode. But Jesus doesn't say what he says because he's better at maintaining holiness than the Pharisees. He says what he says because he is holy. It's not something he has, it's something he is. And this again, is what makes Jesus unlike every other religion ever constructed. Because every other religion is based on this Pharisee logic, purify yourself to approach God. We become holy through separation. And it's not even just religion. The very underpinning of secular Canada in our national mindset is this, the self-improvement industry says what? Optimize yourself. Fix your mindset. Fix your diet. Be the best you separate yourself from anything negative. Separate yourself from those bad habits. Social media, which is not a word, but I feel like it should be. It feels like the religion of social media. What does that say? Curate the right image. Associate with with the right people, signal the right virtues, right Distance yourself from anything that can contaminate your reputation. Online therapy culture, which is sort of taken the world by storm, says this, like do the work, heal your wounds, process your trauma. It's like all good stuff. But the underlying assumption is that you have to fix you. And this is so normal and so pervasive that we wouldn't even think of challenging that. But then Jesus challenges that and he goes to Levi's house and he pulls up a seat at Levi's table and he doesn't wait for the tax collectors to get their act together. He doesn't wait for them to optimize their morning routine or clean themselves up. He doesn't wait for the pro uh, prostitutes to, to process their trauma. He pulls up a chair and says, I've come to you as you are. You don't have to fill yourself up with good things to come to me. I have emptied myself to come to you. There's absolutely nothing like that in the marketplace of religion or ideas in the Pharisees. They don't have a category for this. And we still don't have a category for this. See what's happening at Levi's table is just a microcosm of something much, much bigger. The incarnation, which is Jesus Christ, the son of God, taking on flesh. This is the ultimate expression of Levi's table because Jesus doesn't just enter an unclean house. He enters an unclean world and he touches the untouchable and he calls the least likely and he eats with the wrong people. And he says it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but it's the sick. Now, I wasn't there so I don't know how Jesus said it. The Bible doesn't tell us. So I'm taking a little bit of poetic license, but this is how I read it. I read Jesus saying this and he has a little bit of grin. Just, you know when you say something funny, but you don't want to like smile too much, right? But, but you can't help it. So you got a little bit of a grin going when you're about to, when you're about to have a got you moment with somebody. This is how I feel, Jesus. This is happening because the Pharisees hear this and they think, oh, well, Jesus might think we're healthy because not eating with us. So we're the righteous ones. And so they pat themselves on the back. But it's a backhanded compliment, isn't it? Because indeed Jesus knows that they're sick. And the Pharisees, they actually know it too. Their own literature that they would've memorized says that very thing. Isaiah begins his letter saying this, this is about, this is God to Israel. God saying, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there's no soundness, only wounds and welts and open source, not cleansed or bandage. He said, listen, you are really sick. And that's why Paul would later go on to say that there's no one righteous, not even one, no one's hands are clean, everyone has an angle. Everyone is trying to get ahead and is willing to lie or cheat or cut corners if the stakes are high enough. And you know that because it's happened to you, you've been on the receiving end, maybe on the giving end one or two times. We are not basically good people who occasionally make mistakes, the self-improvement industry could fix that, but that's not the problem. The problem is we have a deep universal problem that no amount of therapy will ever fix, which means every single person at Levi's table, the tax collectors, the Pharisees and the disciples, they all needed a doctor. They all needed Jesus. And the only variable was who knew it and who didn't. I wanna bring up something that the Bible scholars in the room kind of already know. And it's this, Levi goes by a different name in a different gospel. His other name is Matthew, the one who opens a New Testament who wrote that book. So why does Mark call him Levi? And why does Levi call himself Matthew? Well, Levi was his birth name. And so when people would see him at the his tax booth, they wouldn't think, oh, there's Matthew. They'd think, well, there's Levi. But Matthew is who he became. Levi is who he was, but Matthew is who he became. See, Matthew means gift from the Lord. The man who spent his life taking from others is now defined by what God gives him. I mentioned before that shame, it works itself so deep into who we are, right into our identity. And it constantly reminds us that we're a bad person. It's like, well, how do you deal with that when you become a new person? And that is what Jesus offered Levi. Not a code, not a set of principles. He offered 'em new life. The follow these ideas, follow these code religions, the self help routine, the therapy culture, all of those are ways that you try and improve yourself. That is not on the table with Jesus. He is not looking for moral improvement. He's not trying to make your life just a little bit better. He's not offering improvement. He's offering brand new. That's what he offers. And that's why Levi calls himself Matthew. And so there's two ideas here. One is, uh, the first one is regeneration. This is the secret act of God, which he imparts new life to us. In John three, Jesus is conversing with a pharisee named Nicodemus. And Jesus tells him that you have to be born again. You have to be born again. Another way to translate that is you have to be born from above. And Nicodemus is confused, . He goes, how can a grown man climb back into his mother's womb? Great question. Disturbing visual. Don't sit there too long. Okay? Nicodemus was a leading Pharisee. I mean, this guy was smart and he couldn't understand this. He didn't have a category for it. But I want you to think about your first birth. You didn't choose it, you didn't earn it, you didn't cause it. It was a gift. And the gift was a new life and a new nature that you didn't have before. The second birth works a lot like that. You didn't earn it, you didn't create it. God gives it to you. And you get a new life and a new nature that you didn't have before. Suddenly you can relate to God, you pray. And it's not just the, the, your prayers aren't hitting the ceiling and bouncing back. All of a sudden you're, you're reading the Bible. And it doesn't, it's not just advice. One of many different sources to go to. It's words of life to you, you worship because all of a sudden God feels near the very center of your life, shifts from you to God. You didn't have to jump on the latest self-help, help trend. You didn't have to pay a dime to therapy. God just reached into what was dead and breathe new life into it. The Book of Eki talks about God, this promise that one day he's gonna restore your heart, put a new spirit in you. This is the promise of regeneration. Shame tells you that you are a bad person, but regeneration makes you a new person. And it's a gift, but there's an even better gift. That's the second theological reality. And it's called adoption. This is God's act of taking those who are outside the family and making them part of the family. See, before faith, you were God's creation, but you were not God's child. But through faith, your relationship with God changes categorically. See, in regeneration, we are made spiritually alive. But it's very possible that God could have made us spiritually alive without going so far to make us sons and daughters. Yet that is what he did because he doesn't just erase our old identity, he gives us a new one. And John thinking about this in his gospel says, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God. And so we are. So, yeah, Levi changed his name to go with his new identity and he becomes Matthew. The story in Mark two is zoomed in on one person's story in one point of history, but it's so much bigger than that. And you are included. The last book of the Bible, it's called Revelation chapter three. This is Jesus speaking. And he says this. He goes, here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and I will eat with that person. And they with me. The phrase I stand at the door is in perfect tense. We don't really have a frame for this in English. We don't really use that tense. And so the tense means it's a completed action in the past that has ongoing ramifications. And it's happening in the moment. It's in perfect tense. So the one way that you can translate this is Jesus saying, Hey, I've taken my stand and I won't stop standing here. Okay? I stand at the door and then he says, what's he doing? And I knock, which is present, active, continuous, which means it's, it's going on and it's not gonna stop. So literally, it's Jesus saying, I'm here and I'm not going anywhere and I'm gonna keep on knocking. And I want you to let me in. And sooner is better than later. You need to know this. If you have never put your faith in Jesus, you do not have to get your house in order. You don't have to clean the baseboards, you don't have to get it all ready. Jesus, right now, as you are, is knocking at your door because he wants to come in and eat with you. Now, to those in the room who have already opened the door, you're not off the hook because Revelation three 20, these words here, they're actually to the church. So Jesus is saying, I'm standing at your door and I'm knocking not for salvation, for, for intimacy.'cause maybe you remember being a Levi and you're thankful that now you're a Matthew, but maybe, maybe you're turning into a Pharisee, maybe the heart's cold. Maybe you see other people enjoying the relationship with Jesus at the table, and you're far off. And Christ's kindness today, he's standing and he won't stop standing and he's knocking. He's gonna keep on knocking. And he wants to open the door to share a meal.'cause he says, I wanna come in and eat with you again. The greatest predictor of genuine connection is sharing a meal. And God wants to do that with you today. Let's pray. God, I thank you for this invitation in your word, not just for Levi, but for us. God, I pray for my friends in the room who came in today feeling like they don't belong in this room. Maybe there's fear, maybe there's shame. I don't know their story, but you do. God, I pray that as they knock, they would not be afraid as you knock Lord, that that, that your love would be poured into their heart and that they would open that door and receive you through faith just as they are. And we thank you, God, that you do not leave them there. You make them new. You change them from a creation to a child. You restore what was stolen from them. They have a new identity in you. And so God, I thank you for doing that, even in this place right now, regenerating their hearts and adopting them into the family through faith. And Lord, I pray for those in the room who a long time ago they opened that door, but maybe they haven't in a while. And there's a coldness, there's a deadness, there's a lack of of spiritual life. God, I pray right now that you would convict those in love. Draw them back unto yourself that there'd be a genuine love and connection and fire in their heart for you. Once again. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. You know, if you're here today and either you decided just, I mean, a moment ago, here's the thing. Here's the beautiful thing. Regeneration happens in an instant. Adoption happens in an instant. It's a beautiful thing. So if you pray that it's like, welcome, you are spiritually alive. That is God's grace, and I wanna encourage you to get baptized, that is the next thing. This is how it works in scripture. Repent to me baptized, bam, bam. Sometimes there's some delayed disobedience in the room, people who have became Christian, but it's been months or years since they've been baptized. Listen, that delayed obedience is disobedience. Get baptized. I want to encourage you and I wanna prod you towards that. It's happening at the end of this month and you can sign up for that today. Today if you are here, and, um, maybe you are in the danger of turning into Pharisee. Maybe the heart's a little bit cold this Saturday night. We have our engage, uh, worship and prayer that I wanna encourage you to come to. It's such a special time now, of course, 24 7, Monday through Sunday. You can always, uh, nurture that, that, that relationship with the Lord. But it really is a special place. And so I'm gonna encourage you to come to engage. Thank you so much for being in church today. If you'd like prayer for anything, we'd love to prayer with you here at the front left. Have a great week.