Jesus Came For Admitting Sinners

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