Jesus Came For Admitting Sinners
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
12/18/2011 PM
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Text:
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Mark 2:17b
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Psalters: |
227, 230, 63, 110 |
- Calling Levi.
- Jesus calls, ?Follow Me? to Levi taking him away from his road-side booth collecting taxes for hated Rome.
- He is identified as ?a publican? (14).
- Jesus stops suddenly before a booth and simply calls Levi to follow Him.
- Levi welcomed Jesus and many fellow-publicans to a great feast in his house (Luke 5:29).
- The scribes and Pharisees (the religious leaders) muttered quietly against Jesus to His disciples.
- They wrongly judged those sitting with Jesus.
- They wrongly judged Jesus, concluding that His fellowship with sinners made Him a sinner.
- Jesus gives one of the purposes of His coming into the world.
- He equates Himself to a doctor, a soul doctor.
- This implies a negative: He did not come for the ?whole,? i.e., for those who believe that they are well.
- The scribes and Pharisees compared themselves to others they judged to be worse (Luke 18:11).
- Jesus is NOT saying that the Scribes and Pharisees did not need salvation.
- Rather Jesus came for those who know themselves to be ill and cannot heal themselves.
- Jesus saw Levi as someone who knew he was sick (a sinner) and thus wanted and needed help.
- Only those who (by God?s grace) keep seeing themselves as sinners can know salvation.
- When Jesus called Levi, it was to repentance.
- Repentance is a change of mind (literal) consisting of a confessing and a forsaking of sinfulness and sins.
- One repenting sees himself as needing the Savior, the Savior from the punishment of sin.
- Levi saw himself as guilty of covetousness; and he saw that Jesus was compassionate.
- Do you hear Jesus call to you, ?Follow Me??
- Jesus came to call and save sinners, not the self-deceived righteous.