Mark - Not the establishment

Not the Establishment

Question of the day: What did you have or what will you have for breakfast this morning?

Good morning class.  What I really wanted to ask you this morning was, "What news events or events in your life impacted you and why? Yet when I thought about my answer I could feel the anxiety rise and the hopelessness start creeping in.  This has been a rough week.  I hope it wasn't for you.  I pray that your week was different.  There were blessings this week too, even things I can say were bright spots. Yet this morning I am still battling with an overwhelming sadness at the state of our country, our church, and so much more.  

With that said, I would like for us as a class to spend some more time this morning in prayer.  Instead of one person just praying, I would like to ask that several of us pray.  We can just unmute ourselves and have a season of prayer.  Those of us who can, praying.  Prayer is so important.  

In todays lesson we are going to look at three stories, looking for one overarching theme. As we read these stories I want you to ask yourself these questions.

1. What does this tell me about who Jesus was?

2. What does it tell me about what was most important to Him?

3. How does this direct our lives?

READ:  Mark 2: 13-28

Jesus Calls Levi and Eats With Sinners

13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

15 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. 16 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?”

17 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.”

Jesus Questioned About Fasting

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”

19 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.

21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” 

Jesus calls a tax collector.  Wow.  

What were tax collectors like? 

What was Jesus asking Levi to give up?

Who were usually chosen to be disciples? Or what type of person did the rabbi's choose? 

Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors.  

Why when we read these stories do we often say, "Yes, but..."

What makes us so uncomfortable about all these stories?

Jesus and the disciples don't fast.

What was Jesus' answer to the complaining Pharisees? 

I want us to read here what Ellen White writes in DA.  

Nor could the principles of Christ's teaching be united with the forms of Pharisaism. Christ was not to close up 

the breach that had been made by the teachings of John. He would make more distinct the separation between the old and the new. Jesus further illustrated this fact, saying, “No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.” The skin bottles which were used as vessels to contain the new wine, after a time became dry and brittle, and were then worthless to serve the same purpose again. In this familiar illustration Jesus presented the condition of the Jewish leaders. Priests and scribes and rulers were fixed in a rut of ceremonies and traditions. Their hearts had become contracted, like the dried-up wine skins to which He had compared them. While they remained satisfied with a legal religion, it was impossible for them to become the depositaries of the living truth of heaven. They thought their own righteousness all-sufficient, and did not desire that a new element should be brought into their religion. The good will of God to men they did not accept as something apart from themselves. They connected it with their own merit because of their good works. The faith that works by love and purifies the soul could find no place for union with the religion of the Pharisees, made up of ceremonies and the injunctions of men. The effort to unite the teachings of Jesus with the established religion would be vain. The vital truth of God, like fermenting wine, would burst the old, decaying bottles of the Pharisaical tradition. 

 She also writes....

A legal religion can never lead souls to Christ; for it is a loveless, Christless religion. Fasting or prayer that is actuated by a self-justifying spirit is an abomination in the sight of God. The solemn assembly for worship, the round of religious ceremonies, the external humiliation, the imposing sacrifice, proclaim that the doer of these things regards himself as righteous, and as entitled to heaven; but it is all a deception. Our own works can never purchase salvation.

What does all this say to us today? 

Jesus breaks the Sabbath.

At the beginning I asked that we think about these questions.

1. What does this tell me about who Jesus was?

2. What does it tell me about what was most important to Him?

3. How does this direct our lives?

How does this lesson challenge how you live? 

I would like to ask that you take this lesson and keep working through this passage all week. Read DA chapter 28.  Then ask the question in prayer, "Lord, how do I need to change my life so that I am LIVING as radically as you."   

We are not called to safe ministry. 

We are not called to the establishment.

We are called to be Christ followers and that is not a place where we act and live in a way that is expected or even culturally acceptable.  It is radical!  It is bold!