Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The truth about Pharisees and who follows Jesus | Mark 2.13-17

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. I read a story that made me laugh recently. There was a city councilwoman in Seattle who voted for an 18% reduction in funds to police as a part of a defund the police initiative. Now, I'm not trying to be political, but just go with me here for a second. Additionally, she voted that the city would begin to drop charges against certain misdemeanor. crimes. So fast forward a month from all of this, and someone breaks into her house, into her property, and they do so by throwing a rock through a window. So she happens to be home, and she was absolutely terrified as any person would be. And so, of course, the question comes. Does she call the police officers that she wants to defund? Yep. Does she press charges for the crimes that she

Starting point is 00:00:56 voted to remove charges from? Of course. The funny thing about reality is that people, myself included, rarely act in concert with their own beliefs. Again, I am no exception here. People who we expect to do one thing always and often end up doing a totally different thing. In some ways, God's kingdom is actually a lot like that. When God's reign erupted onto earth through Jesus' ministry, people responded entirely unexpected ways. The people you'd expect to usher in the kingdom, they all resist it. And the people you would expect to resist the kingdom, they all usher it in. In first century, Galilee, if you asked the average person, who was going to bring God's kingdom? Do you think it's going to be the tax collectors or the Pharisees? Well, the answer would have been, obviously, the Pharisees.

Starting point is 00:01:45 You see, the Pharisees were a moral pressure group. And there's a common misconception out there that Pharisees believed you needed to do good works to get to heaven. That's historically implausible. The Pharisees weren't interested in going to heaven. Most of their fellow Jews, they were asking, how will God's heavenly rule, down to earth. They believed that God had graciously chosen Israel by no virtue of Israel's own, and he'd chosen Israel to be the means by which his kingdom would come to earth, by which his kingdom would conquer the idolatrous nations and establish an unending period of justice, joy,

Starting point is 00:02:20 peace, and life. But as the Pharisees understood the Old Testament, Israel's own idolatry, injustice, and impurity ends up jeopardizing God's plan to bring his kingdom through them. It kind of makes sense. And so this plan, it ends up getting put on pause. So they believe that Israel could only be the bearers of God's kingdom if they stringently obeyed God's law that God gave them. And so the Pharisees end up adding hundreds of rules to the law, and they use their moral authority to shame and to outcast anyone who wouldn't get with their program.

Starting point is 00:02:53 And the reason was simple. Those people were like the ancient Israelites. The people who wouldn't get with the program were jeopardizing God's kingdom, coming to earth, and the Pharisees wanted that so desperately that they wanted those people who were jeopardizing the plan. They wanted those people to get out. So chief among the outcasts were the tax collectors. They were Jewish traders who collected taxes for the Gentile Romans, the very people that God was going to judge when he established his kingdom, at least according to the Pharisees. Now, the tax collectors, they were thought of as immoral people. They used the muscle of Roman soldiers

Starting point is 00:03:26 to extort tax money from people who were already barely making it. And so here comes Jesus, and he's announcing the moment that everybody's been waiting for. God's kingdom has come to earth. It is just around the corner. So let's see how people respond. Will they respond in the way that we expect? Let's pick up in Mark 2. Verse 13. Jesus 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 Alpheus standing outside a tax booth. And Jesus said to him, follow me. And he rose. he followed him. And as Jesus reclined in Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners

Starting point is 00:04:05 were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes and the Pharisees, when they saw that Jesus 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 for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. This is totally. not what you expect, at least if you lived back in that day. The people who we would expect to welcome God's rule, they begin to gossip about it. They start pouting over it. They think that Jesus is actually jeopardizing God's kingdom coming to earth, because he's fraternizing with all of these sinners who look

Starting point is 00:04:48 nothing like God's kingdom. And the very people you expect to resist God's kingdom, they're the ones who receive it into their own homes with joy. Why is this? Well, Jesus clues us in. It's because the sinners and the tax collectors see that they need Jesus. The Pharisees think that they need nothing. The tax collectors know that they are incapable of bringing God's kingdom to earth, but the Pharisees, they think they've got that one covered. Jesus puts the problem bluntly. Only the sick need a doctor. If you're healthy, then you have no need for him. I can't tell you how true this has been in my own life. I am at my worst when I am at my best. There's something about life going well, you know, my walk with God is feeling breezy, my moral decisions are on

Starting point is 00:05:36 the whole not too shabby. When that's happening, it often bloats my ego and it blunts my sense of neediness. Like the Pharisees, I stop feeling like I really need Jesus. I've kind of got this one figured out on my own. But then it happens. It is rarely the same thing. It might be a sin that I find myself repeating and can't get out of. I find myself gossiping constantly. I find myself becoming proud or unkind to people inside of my pride. Or maybe it's me getting knocked down a notch. Maybe something fails at work. Or one of my kids goes on a month-long sleep strike. Or sometimes I lose something I was desperately clinging to from my sense of worth and control. My reputation with a key person, my health and physical appearance, my intelligence and ability to communicate. But the beauty of

Starting point is 00:06:25 it, whatever it ends up being, is that it always reminds me, I am sick. I do have terrible problems, profound needs. I've got an inexhaustible well of weakness deep down inside of me. And it is precisely in those moments that my need for King Jesus, his kingdom, his love, his forgiveness, his mercy, his kindness, his presence. It's in those moments when that it thing is happening to me, that all of those things snap back into sudden focus. How do you see yourself? How are you responding to Jesus right now? Just because you look like the person who ought to receive him with open arms

Starting point is 00:07:05 because you kind of got it figured out, well, that doesn't mean that you do. It doesn't mean you are receiving him. It might even mean the opposite. But don't let that warning drive you to despair. Let the warning drive you to self-honesty. You are sick. You are weak.

Starting point is 00:07:21 You do bad thing. You can't bring God's kingdom. You have an immense, inexhaustible, well of need at the bottom of your heart. But Jesus is a good doctor, and he's come to heal people like that. He's a good doctor who's come to heal a creation like that, but he only heals people who know that they have a problem, who come to him as their doctor and say, Jesus, I need you, heal me.

Starting point is 00:07:46 So today, I want you to respond to Jesus like the tax collectors and sinners. and admit your weakness and your neediness to Jesus. Ask him to be your doctor, to forgive you, to heal you, to strengthen you. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deep, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The truth about Pharisees and who follows Jesus | Mark 2.13-17

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