Recreate Church, Pastor Michael Shockley—Service, Sunday, September 18, 2022

God Doesn’t Choose People Like People Choose People!

Today, Pastor Michael is talking about Matthew and how the Lord doesn’t pick people for His use, as we pick people.  We pick up in Mark, Chapter 2 and the story finds us in the vicinity of Capernaum and Jesus passes a tax office.  Not like today’s tax offices, this was a place where folks paid their taxes, so it wasn’t exactly a destination of choice by anyone in those days.  Jesus sees Levi in the tax office and tells him to “Follow me”, and Levi did just that.  Now Levi is also known by his better known name, Matthew.  So Matthew does start to follow Jesus, itself a crazy act from both Jesus’ side and Matthew’s side.  

(CSB Baker Illustrated Bible Study Notes) 2:13–17. Mark 2:13 describes Jesus teaching beside the Sea of Galilee. “Teaching” indicates the essential role that instruction plays in Jesus’s ministry, and the large crowds that attend it indicate the public nature of the gospel.

The Roman tax system functioned, in part, by renegade Jews like Levi receiving a franchise to collect taxes in set regions (2:14). Whatever amount a tax collector obtained in addition to the contracted sum was his to keep. The Roman system of taxation thus attracted unscrupulous individuals. That Jesus would call as a disciple a tax collector was no less offensive than his touching of a leper (1:40–45).

This story repeats and reinforces the truth of 2:1–12: there He forgave sins; here He demonstrates forgiveness of sinners by eating with them (2:15). The scandal of Jesus’s eating with tax collectors (2:16) consists in the fact that He does not make moral repentance a precondition of His acceptance and love of sinners.

The big summary herein is Jesus picks those unexpected folks that we’d never likely even consider.  A tax collector in those days was not a popular individual.  The scribes, Pharisees and other locals were pretty vocal about Jesus hanging with a tax collector.  They were essentially disgusted; guilt by association, if you will.  

Yet Jesus saw something in Matthew that no one else saw.  God does big things with people we wouldn’t necessarily pick.  The Church is made up of people that don’t always have it together; folks that know they have flaws.  If you’re a hot mess, Jesus loves you and so does Recreate Church!

Verses can be found today in Mark 2: 13-17.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.