October 14, 2015 (Wednesday)
This evening at Bethel Baptist Church, Ingleside, we will continue our study of the Gospel of Mark. We will look at the verses from 2:13 through 3:6.
Last week we saw how Jesus healed leprosy and paralysis. Afterwards he called Levi (Matthew), a tax collector, to be his disciple and went to his home for dinner. Many tax collectors and others known to be “sinners” were at the meal. Pharisees who saw this asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Mark tells us, “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.'”
As churches of today state their objectives, create their task forces, work toward their goals, this statement of Jesus should guide them.
Some people asked why Jesus’ disciples did not fast, like the disciples of John and the Pharisees. Jesus replied that new wine calls for new wineskins. He did not condemn fasting; he only asked that people avoid legalism when they practiced it. Fasting has more to do with our relationship with God than with the law and its legal requirements.
He made much the same point when discussing observance of the Sabbath, asserting that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. When he healed a man on the Sabbath, the legalists began plotting to kill him.
