Mark 2:13–17 — The Call of Grace

This sermon is from Mark chapter 2 verses 13 through 17.

Mark 2:13–17

It is called "The Call of Grace," and it was delivered to Ecclesia churches on June 1st, 2025.

So today's passage is pretty short. It's only 13 through 17, so five verses. But there's a rich

context that puts a pretty big theme on display, and it's the theme of grace.

So let's briefly review some of what's led up to this, because it helps us to see

that theme coming out clearly. When we read a short section like this, it's tempting to try

to understand it just on its own. But when we back up a little bit to see what Mark has been

building towards, we start to see a little more clearly what he's getting at. It's kind of like

when you hike a trail that's climbing to a mountain summit, and you go back and forth on

something called switchbacks. It's where you're going up a hill, and instead of going straight

up to the top, you go back and forth, climbing it a little bit at a time, gaining elevation.

And during the journey, especially if you're in Colorado, you're surrounded by trees and can't

really see where the whole thing is going a lot of the time. But when you get to the top, and you

see the path that you took, you understand not only the view that it was leading to, but also

the importance of those pivotal moments on the way up. And scripture is a lot like that, where you

can read a short passage like this on its own and understand basically what's happening and

appreciate some of the view that Mark is trying to show us. But if you really want to be captured by

it and changed by it, you have to buckle up for the journey a little bit. And that's why we preach

one passage at a time in order, because we want to understand the passage in context. We want

to be on a journey with scripture, and hopefully one that is changing us to be more like Christ,

and that the Holy Spirit uses it and works in us along the way. So there's your sub-lesson on

Bible study and reading in context for today. You'll hear me talk about that often because

context is something that I'm passionate about, because it's the only way that you can really

understand properly what scripture is saying. Today's passage is generally about Jesus calling

the next disciple and associating with some not very good in air quotes or holy people, almost

like that was the mission or that it had something to do with people like that, right? When Jesus

started his mission, he made it clear that he was calling unqualified people, but that he was going

to qualify the people that he called. All they needed to do was follow him. That's what they were

called to. Then Jesus did this thing where he welcomed this leper to himself, even going so far

as to touch him, who was the most unclean of social outcasts because of his disease, and he healed

him, showing that he wasn't just calling the unqualified, he was welcoming the unclean. Then

last week, we saw Jesus do something even closer to the heart of his mission, when he forgave the

paralytics sin, causing a stir among the religious leaders in particular. All of this leads up to

this event in today's Five Verses, where Jesus calls another unqualified follower, he welcomes

the socially unclean into close relationship, and again reveals his mission that he came to deal

with sin. In these Five Verses, we see a direct correlation with everything Jesus has been doing

so far, and we see the grace of God is what overflows from every moment. So let's read this

passage together. "He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he

was teaching them. And 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 rose and followed him. 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. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating

with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors

and sinners?' And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, 'Those who are well have no need of a

physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.'" So Jesus is

back to walking along Galilee, along the shore of this lake, and we get the idea that he was kind of

walking on the beach, but that's not necessarily the case. There is some sandy beach, but much of

the shoreline has rocks and reeds and isn't smooth sandy beach. And so what makes more sense as we

look at the setting is also considering that he walks past the tax booth, is that Jesus is traveling

along the road that goes around the lake. So Capernaum is located in a specific place that is not

only right up against the lake, but is also right on the border between the region of Galilee that

they are in, and the region of a place called Golanitis, which is right next door. And so I

want you to think of these as states that are being ruled by different governors. And even

though they're all part of the Roman Empire, they also have their own taxes, particularly on goods,

that are being moved between the states. This is important to understand who Levi was,

and what he was doing there, why he was hated by his people, and why it's transformational

that he left it all behind to follow Jesus. So let's go through those one at a time as we see

this story with Levi start to come together. So first, who is Levi? Levi is a Hebrew name,

and we actually know quite a bit about him because his Greek name is Matthew, as in the Matthew who

wrote the Gospel of Matthew. So we know that he was a Jew, but we also know that he was perhaps not

a very good Jew, actually certainly not by any standard of that day, because he was a tax collector.

He was someone who willingly put himself in the employment of Rome, and perhaps even worse,

was profiting off his own people through dishonest taxation of them. So how does this

tax collector or taxation thing work? So just like the United States, Rome would have received

certain taxes from every province and territory in the empire, and from individuals as well. However,

the individual provinces which were sub-ruled by people like Herod Antipas, who ruled

Galilee, and Herod Philip, who ruled Golanitis. Now, why were they both named Herod? Because

they're named after their dad, Herod the Great, the same Herod the Great who tried to kill Jesus

as a baby and then died a few years later. So they were rulers under Caesar, and they had to make sure

that their people paid taxes to Rome, but they also wanted to profit off of the people, which they

did primarily through taxes on goods and trade. So anytime fish, grain, pots, oil, fill in the

blank were brought across the border from one region to another, like at a place like Capernaum,

there would have been taxes collected on the value of those items, and the way that they

collected them was kind of genius and also a little sinister. So as an occupying force,

right, Rome is an occupying force in this area. How do you get your relatively unwilling subjects

to willingly collect taxes on your behalf? Well, you find people who are motivated by money,

and then you hold their money hostage. So you say to someone like Levi, this would be the agreement.

Okay, we think that there is approximately $50,000 of taxes that can be collected in Capernaum this

year at that crossing in between Golanitis and Galilee. And the collector, the tax collector,

would say, okay, I'll give you, Governor, that $50,000 now for the contract to collect those

taxes myself over the course of the year, plus a little extra for myself. So the benefit for the

governor or the ruler would be he gets his taxes upfront right away. The benefit for the tax

collector is I get to collect those taxes plus more. And so these tax collectors would bid

on those contracts to collect taxes at that location. I remember when I worked at Best Buy,

we would occasionally send somebody, especially during the holidays when things got crazy,

to go pick up lunch for us. We would be busy on the floor with customers. We'd say, okay,

hey, go pick up lunch. Here's what everybody wants. And they would go buy lunch for everybody,

and they would pay for it. And then they would come back and they would tell us how much we owed

them. And there were certain people who we didn't ask to do that job after a while, because they

would always tell us that the $5 meal was actually $8 now and come away from lunch with a little

profit on the side. And this was what the tax collectors did, but on a huge scale. So instead

of collecting a $10 tax on $100 of oil being transported, they would say, well, actually,

that oil is worth $200. Therefore, you owe me $20 in tax. Now, it wasn't actually worth $200,

right? But they got to collect taxes, though it was because they decided what the valuation was.

As a result, people hated the tax collectors. They were Jewish traders who were stealing from

their own people. They couldn't be trusted to the point where they couldn't even serve as witnesses

in Jewish courts. If you were a tax collector, your word wasn't worth anything. They weren't welcome

in synagogues. And so with this new knowledge about Levi, let's reread verse 14 with the appropriate

reaction. And 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 rose and followed him. Levi was wholly unqualified

to come to Jesus, the Son of God. By every single measure, he was greedy, selfish,

untrustworthy, a traitor who had sold his people and his integrity for momentary financial gain.

He was indebted to Rome, and the only way to make his money back was through continued dishonesty.

He was a sinner living in sin, deeply indebted when Jesus called him.

You thought the calling of the first four guys was miraculous, the fishermen, right? At least

they were trying to make an honest living. The other disciples had to just be grinding their

teeth at this calling of Levi. And even worse, that the guy actually came with them. But in reality,

none of them were qualified to be called by Jesus. None of them had earned nearness to the Son of

God through their merit, through their work, whether it was dishonest or honest. Their invitation

to be near to Jesus was an invitation of grace. It was an invitation based on the unmerited,

undeserved favor of God for every one of them. And Levi suddenly finds himself called and qualified,

not by his own merits, but by the merits of Jesus who called him. Suddenly, this man,

with a hopeless debt before God, is called near by God himself. Do we realize that this is us,

this is the position we're in when we're called by Jesus? That the very invitation of the Savior to

follow me is an invitation already loaded with the undeserved grace of God.

If you've doubted whether you are deserving of the grace of God, let me just clear that

right up for you right now and say, "You're not, and neither am I." And that's why it's called grace.

That's why it's such good news. We didn't earn this invitation, but we can certainly answer it.

We don't deserve to stand near the Lord, but through the invitation of Jesus, we are called to.

I want to encourage you to do what Levi did and to rise to follow Jesus. Leave your history behind.

Leave your investments in temporary things. Leave behind the things that will never bring you

a single step closer to God, and leave those behind, and answer the call of Jesus, just like

Levi did. So after Levi leaves his booth and his contract and his old way of life behind,

they don't actually go on the road right away, verse 15 says, "And as he reclined at the table in

his house," that's Levi's house, "many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus

and his disciples, for there were many who followed him." Imagine Levi's surprise when Jesus says,

"Follow me," and then leads Levi back to Levi's house. I don't know why that just strikes me as

funny. For the record, when Mark uses the word "follow," he's always referring to a person

becoming a follower. He's not just saying that Levi followed Jesus back to his house for a hot

minute. He's saying that Levi left his life behind and became a follower of Jesus. That's

the connotation, and it says that he's not the only one. In fact, many sinners and tax collectors

were responding to Jesus in this way. These people who were once sinners, or in other words,

not rule following Jews, that's who that phrase or that word is referring to, even worse, tax

collectors, have left that behind and are following Jesus. What's interesting here is that Jesus doesn't

call them and then keep them at an arm's length. He doesn't call them out of their life of sin and

then say, "I'll see you at the synagogue next week." He calls Levi and then he reclines at table

with him and his friends and associates. Now, reclining at table would have been the custom

of the day and time, and it's a little different from what we picture when we talk about eating a

meal together. If you were in the room with us when this was preached on Sunday, we had a few of the

kids help us to visualize what this was like. But if you can picture a room of people sitting around

a low table on the floor or on small cushions and then all leaning over the same direction to

recline, propping yourself up on one elbow with your feet angled away from the table and stretched

out behind the person next to you, that's what reclining at table was like. I had the chance

to eat a meal this way once and it really drives home just how intimate the eating of a meal

in a Jewish home in the first century was. Because this isn't like sitting across the table at

scooters or Starbucks from somebody and ordering your separate beverages the way that you wanted

and still having three or four feet in between the two of you at least. You're eating from communal

dishes, laying on the ground close to the chest of the person on your left with someone else

likewise close on your right. There's a sense of being mutually vulnerable with one another.

And that's what Jesus is choosing to do with these people. These people that the religious

community in particular wanted no part of. The other interesting thing is the way Jesus comes

into the home of Levi. But the table in Levi's house becomes the table of Jesus. Look at how

the picture we're given by Mark isn't of people reclining at table with Levi and Jesus just happens

to be there. It's as if Jesus has become the host when he takes up residence in Levi's home

and it is the table of Jesus now that these tax collectors are being invited to.

When we answer the call of Jesus to follow him, we receive an invitation to the table of the Lord.

And in fact throughout the Old and New Testament, we see this picture of being invited to the table

of the Lord. In Isaiah 25 verse 6, there's this picture of this messianic banquet and

Isaiah 25:6

he writes, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food,

a feast of well-aged wine." Jesus will later tell parables about the bridegroom inviting in those

that were ready for a wedding feast and then even more pictures of that in Revelation. This picture

of the table throughout Scripture is an important one because it is a place that only the insider

is invited in close to eat with the King. And here we have a picture of the outsiders

becoming the insiders sitting at the table with the King himself. There's a lot of space for

application here. And we'll probably get into some of that in the midweek gathering this week,

but I want you to see the effect of grace on this. The grace of God available through Jesus alone,

not only calls us, but welcomes us to the Lord's table. The religious leaders are going to voice

their concerns in a moment about how Jesus is being made unclean by the way he's welcomed

these dirty sinners into fellowship with himself. But Jesus is unconcerned by that.

They don't deserve to be there. That's true, but they are welcomed to the table by Jesus himself.

Jesus doesn't just call us to direct us from a distance and to give us life advice on how to be

better people, generally speaking. Through grace, Jesus calls you into fellowship with himself.

And now you are called and you belong. Maybe that's encouraging to you to hear that those who are

found in Christ belong at the table of the Lord. This is one reason that every week we celebrate

communion together, which is also called the Lord's Supper, because it's a regular reminder to us

that we are welcomed to the Lord's table through the grace of God.

So as we close this passage, the religious leaders are of course going to raise an issue

with the company that Jesus is keeping. The grace of God is on display and there is a certain

scandalous quality to it, isn't there, that Jesus would invite these people in, of all people.

Verse 16 and 17 says, "And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with

sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?'

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those

who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.'" In this exchange between Jesus

and the scribes of the Pharisees, Jesus reveals his mission again. He says he came for the sick,

which must have been confusing because these people weren't lepers. They were sinners, tax

collectors, unclean Jews, but they weren't sick. So why does he say sick? Here's the thing, Jesus

isn't saying sin is like a sickness that we can get better from. He's actually responding to the

Pharisee scribes using their own broken understanding of the sin problem. He's saying, "If sin is like a

sickness, then I am the one with the cure." See, they see Jesus welcoming these people,

entering their homes, eating with them, calling some to be his disciples, and they're confused

and taken aback because their sense of righteousness is being tested, and particularly who they think

Jesus is and how he should be acting around these dirty, rotten sinners. Because in their worldview,

righteousness to them is earned by performing enough righteous deeds, following the right rules,

staying far away from the contagion of people who might make them unclean by getting too close.

The bottom line is they thought they were righteous and that their righteousness was something to be

lost. The reality was that their condition was far worse than they thought because the truth is

they were already sick to the core with sin. Filthy sinners just like the people around the table,

only their condition was worse than the tax collectors because these scribes who are so

concerned about losing their righteousness were actually deathly ill with sin that they wouldn't

see or acknowledge. The tax collectors knew they were sinners. They knew they didn't deserve what

Jesus was offering, which is perhaps why so many of them were jumping at the hope that Jesus offered.

They were sinners in need of a Savior, and they knew that the only way that was going to happen

was by the grace of God. They knew they couldn't earn forgiveness. So see, every part of the mission

of Jesus is undeserved by those who will receive its benefits. Just like the fisherman and the tax

collector called to be Jesus' disciples, we are unqualified to be called, yet Jesus calls us to

follow Him. Just like the leper and the tax collectors, we are unwelcome at the table of the Lord on

our own merit, yet He invites us in through His broken body and shed blood to relationship with

Him to sit around His table. He takes up residence in our home, and suddenly we become these temples

of the Holy Spirit participating in the life of Christ in a way that we never should have been

welcomed to, and yet we are through Jesus. And just like the paralyzed man and the sinners at the

table, we are desperately hopeless without Jesus. We know that we have all sinned and we've fallen

short of God's glory. That the result of that is death and that Jesus alone is the great physician

who offers us life instead. And so if there's one thing that you're going to consider in this moment,

just one thing, consider the grace of God that's available to you in Christ Jesus, and consider

how you will respond to Him. Those of you who have been on the fence, would you consider

choosing to follow Jesus today? Those who have followed Jesus but feel unworthy in some way

of fellowship with the Lord or with His people who are still under the weight of shame,

will you leave that old life behind fully and embrace a new identity as someone who is welcomed

to the table of Jesus? Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Councilbluffs

Iowa and in homes throughout the week. We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching

from Scripture and making disciples of Jesus. You can learn more about our statement of faith

and contact a pastor by visiting ecclaseachurches.org.