Mark 2:14-17  Calling of Matthew.  Parallel passages: Matthew 9:9-13; Luke 5:27-32.  Jesus called Matthew, and he dropped everything and followed Jesus.  Not only did Matthew drop everything, he had a big reception at his house and invited all of his friends to meet Jesus.

Let’s hit a rabbit trail for a moment: The New American Standard Bible makes a footnote for “sinners” as “irreligious Jews”. They hit the nail on the head. A sinner by the standard of Torah was one who did not follow the instructions found in Torah. These are the ones who do not keep the feasts and festivals of the Jews. They do not keep the Sabbath holy. They do not observe the dietary instructions. A sinner by Jewish standard means that a person does not follow Torah.

In our day a sinner is one who lives an immoral life. He is one who breaks the standards of society by living in a way that violates the ethics of our immoral nation. This man is one who is more perverted than the normal person in some way. Perhaps he is a pornographer, drunkard, druggie, or in bondage to any number of sins. Ethics, for example, are determined by a people group and these hold the measure for acceptable behavior. Ethics change depending on the people group that you are involved with. Sin is often classified as violating the ethics of a people group. This is not a good definition of sin. Social standards are an entirely different animal since they take into account various agendas found in people groups.

Suppose for example that a woman were to be found on an American beach with her breasts exposed. This would quickly be dubbed as sin and she would be accused of leading people into the sin of lust. However, if you put that same woman into various parts of the world where female nudity is common, no one would give her a second thought. She would be seen as just another woman acting in a normal manner. Societal standards dictate that since she violates the ethics of American society, she is a sinner. She may be committing sin, but it is more of a sin against fellow man. To have a correct definition of sin, we need to divorce it from societal standards and return to the biblical standard.

The only way to determine sin against God is to measure our actions against God’s standard. True sin is failing to follow the instructions of God. A sinner by biblical standards is one who fails to follow the instructions of Torah. Today this definition could be refined a little more to say that a sinner is one who fails to follow the instructions found in the Bible.

This is one of the reasons that the Messianic movement is growing at exponential rates today. People recognize that as we near the return of our Messiah, we need to turn our lives back to the standards that God set. In order to accomplish this, we must take into account all the instructions of the Bible and live our lives according to its standards. This means blending the teaching of Torah with our understanding of the Bible.

Replacement Theology has effectively removed or invalidated the Jewish instructions found in the Bible by saying that they are no longer in effect. If that is the case, we can ignore almost every single instruction found in the Bible. As Christians, since we divorced the Jewish standards, we have attached societal standards to biblical instruction. The biblical instruction then is based upon the standards of society, which are changing constantly. The definition of a sinner changes as the whims of society change. Theology is compromised by allowing outside influence to bend the minds of teachers. The reason for this is simple. We have abandoned the solid base of scripture as he basis for our theology. Therefore, sin and the definition of sin no longer means failing to meet the criteria of scripture. It now means failing to make everyone happy. Alright, enough of my rabbit trail, let’s get back to the study.

Matthew invited many of his friends and they became followers of Yeshua.  Matthew became an immediate evangelist.  He took sinners and led them to the Messiah.

The response of the scribes and Pharisees is intriguing. This is the second objection that they had with Yeshua’s ministry. Yet, it is not unusual. They saw Yeshua leading a group of sinners toward righteousness. He was not immediately leading them to the Temple or Synagogue.  The leaders condemned Jesus for spending time with the tax collectors and sinners. Like many today, these leaders could not see the possibility that these sinners were willing to change their lives in order to return to the truth of God.

When I first began this Bible study many years ago, my pastor at the time encouraged the study. He endorsed the Bible study and was a great supporter. Yet, eventually he gave it an interesting criticism. I was teaching through the internet and had a good portion of the church on the recipient list. There were also many others outside the church who were engaged in the study. His criticism was that through all the effort that I was putting out, he was seeing no growth from the study in our local church. Just like the study today, my original agenda was to encourage people to return to biblical roots and grow where they are planted. The idea is to infect people with the truth of the Bible. Then have them infect their circle of influence. This way, instead of reaching a few recipients with the truth of the Word, I reach many thousands. But, the local church did not see growth from it.

This may be what was going on with the scribes and Pharisees. They saw the sinners congregating around Jesus. Yet, they did not believe in true change in the “Torah breakers”. They decided up front that these people were beyond hope.  Why waste your time on them. Yeshua called a “tax collector” from this group of people to be one of his disciples. By association, Matthew was categorized as a “sinner”. Maybe he was. When he was called, he redirected his life to return to God with a full heart.

Instead of asking Yeshua about His ministry to the sinners, the leaders tried to undermine His ministry by going directly to His followers. Notice Yeshua’s response, He stated the obvious, He came to save the sinners, not the righteous.  It was a play on words.  Very few men at the time were able to completely follow the instructions of Torah, the scribes knew this, that was why a sin offering had to be made.  Jesus turns the tables on them, calling them righteous, in that they were standing as judges, therefore they were positioning themselves as righteous.

Yeshua plainly stated that he came to heal the sick, not the righteous. We discussed earlier that the better translation for sinner in this passage was “irreligious Jews”. Those who were sick were the ones who had stopped or never had followed the instructions of Torah. We will see as we progress forward in this study that Yeshua taught Torah exclusively. He never taught any new thing in the New Testament that was not already taught in the Old Testament. With one exception. The “extra mile” is the only teaching that is not found in the Old Testament. His goal was to draw people to God by teaching them how to walk according to the instructions of God. The way to heal an irreligious Jew was to turn that irreligious Jew back to God’s instructions.

The scribes and Pharisees had already set themselves up as “righteous”. The definition of righteous according to the Jewish standard was one who faithfully followed the instructions of Torah. A righteous person was careful to observe Torah in their daily life. The were careful to put into practice all the feasts, festivals, fasts and religious activities that surrounded a Torah observant life.

There were a few results from this. First, they had a closed mind since they felt that they had ultimate truth and nothing could be added to it. Secondly, they judged others by their own actions, anyone found deficient was considered to be “sinners”. Third, since they felt that they were absolutely correct, they were not open to looking at the scriptures from a new angle. This eliminated their ability to learn what God really intended with the instructions of Torah. Fourth, Jesus was considered a potential enemy at this point since He went against their conventions.

They could not see beyond the seed of doubt was sown in the first story regarding the paralytic. The seed grows and the scribes and Pharisees are discussing the possibilities together.  They miss the obvious due to the doubt that has crept into their minds.  They miss the fact that after the paralytic is healed, the people praise God, and they also miss the fact that the irreligious Jews are repenting due to their association with Jesus. Sometimes knowledge can be a hinderance when it sets up a bias in our mind.

I wonder when considering this passage if the same thing is happening today.  Several people that I have spoken with would simply refuse to deal with drug addicts, homosexuals, sex addicts, and sinners of the hideous sorts we have today.  What would Jesus say to us if He walked into our churches today?  We have removed ourselves so much from the world that we may usher out a drunk that staggers in to church on a Sunday morning.  Imagine what it would be like to have a group of tweakers (drug addicts) drop in to a service on Sunday morning. Better than that, how well received would a bunch of gang bangers be if they walked into your home Bible study?  Some of the greater sinners that many of us see and refuse to associate with is the members of cults. Imagine if a Mormon, Jehovah Witness, Wiccan, or any of the recognized “cults” were to walk into our churches and become involved in our Bible studies. These people study the scriptures but often tweak the understanding of them through bad interpretation methods. I often invite them to study with me and challenge them to look at context in passages. Few take up the challenge. Think about it though, we are not very much different than the Pharisees of old.  Try to picture the same scenario that took place when Jesus visited Matthew in his home.

I am going to close here for today, all comments are welcomed.