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"Follow Me"

October 17, 2007

 Bob Bradley

_________________________ 

 

Mark 2:13-17

 

13 And he went forth again by the sea side; and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them.

14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.

15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.

16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?

17 When Jesus heard it , he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

 

As we have been studying through the book of Mark, I was thinking today...I hope...that I can relate just a few things that we have learned down through this week, as we have studied, and as we have read about some wonderful things here.  We have studied about Jesus being baptized, cleansing the lepers, casting out the demons and devils in different people.  We have studied about Him healing Peter's mother-in-law and doing some awesome things.  Here He is at Capernaum.  He is coming back to Capernaum.  The Bible says...that He has preached in the cities around Galilee.  Galilee was a great big area [with] a couple of hundred cities in this region of Galilee.

 

Jesus here has left Nazareth where that He spoke one day and they led Him out upon the hill where the city was built and they were going to cast Him over the hill to kill Him because of the message that He preached.  He comes to Capernaum.  Here He is [and] we know that He dwells and stays here.  No doubt, if we understand things correctly, He makes His headquarters here in Peter's house. 

 

13 "And he went forth again by the sea side..."

 

When you look at that you think sometimes that this has automatically happens right directly after the palsy man that we studied about last week was healed.  It did happen after that, but it didn't happen right directly after that.  Jesus here, His ministry is probably been at least a year and a couple of months since He has been baptized, so many things have been happening.  It tells us that He went forth again by the seaside. 

 

He goes down by the Sea of Galilee.  I was thinking today and yesterday, that many years ago back before Deb and I got married, I lived in Florida.  I lived down around Fort Lauderdale and Miami and West Palm Beach; those areas that back then you could go out on the beach at night and sit.  You didn't have to have a bulletproof vest and an oozie to sit down there.  It was a good place then.  You could sit on the beach and just listen to the waves and smell the salt that was in the ocean.  It was just a very relaxing time.  Sometimes we don't really understand how much and Jesus really got tired.  Even though He was God...yet He got tired. 

 

The Bible says that He goes down here.  He is down here again by the seaside...walking along the seashore.  When you read that in the original, it tells us here that He is down there just walking along the shore.  It was a very relaxing time. 

 

I don't know if you have spent much time at the beach or not, but it is a very relaxing time, just to walk, hear the water and the waves clapping.  ...to walk in the sand and it is just a very relaxing time.  There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus needed times like this because we know that He did.  The Bible says that He did.  Here He is ...down by the seaside.  The Bible says that:

 

13  "...and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them."

 

He is walking along here.  The Bible says that "...the multitude resorted unto Him..."  ...That means that He is down there walking along, His fame has spread greatly here in the several months that He has been teaching, preaching, and healing...here in Capernaum.  His fame has spread abroad and people are hearing about Him.  Here they are people are just flocking unto Him.  When we read here...there were more than just a handful of people around Him.  There were multitudes of people around Him.  The word resort here is a good but it means that they just kept hanging around.  Everywhere that He went, the multitudes just kept hanging around.  Everywhere He went they were there.

 

The Bible says that multitudes that were here...He teaches them.  He taught them, even though that He may have come down here for a little leisure time.  Even though He may have come down here to maybe rest or relax a little bit, when the multitudes came, He taught them.  The reason that He did that is that He loved people.  He came here to planet earth for a mission.  He came here to teach people.  We know that He is going to do that...

 

As He is walking, He stops here and He teaches the people.  I don't know how long He talks.  I don't have any idea, I don't know, but He teaches the people here for a while. 

 

14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.

 

The multitudes are no doubt following Him.  When He gets through teaching, He starts walking along.  The Bible says, "...as He passes by...” he sees something.  "...he saw Levi..."  As Jesus is passing by here, walking along the shore of the sea He gets down to the place...where there were some docks.  There were some buildings and different shops along this way.  It had to be a main thoroughfare here because Levi is sitting here.  "...Levi the son of Alpheus sitting at the receipt of custom..."  Levi is a tax collector. Levi is sitting here.  When you look at the word sitting, it means that he is sitting on an elevated place.  He is sitting beside the main road that comes in here.  It was an area where they had docks.  It was an area where they had a marina where  big ships would come in and unload their ships of their grain or merchandise (whatever it may have been)  Levi would have been sitting here upon an elevated place, platform or bench, way up above the road so that when they unloaded their merchandise or whatever they had.  He was a tax collector.  He worked for the Roman Government and he would exempt (?)  In other words he would tell the folks that owned the material, he would tell them how much tax that they owed the Roman Government.  Most tax collectors were rich.  They were crooked people.  They were people that were dishonest. 

 

If you owed ten dollars in tax on your merchandise...he might tell you that you owe fifteen dollars...he would take the ten dollars, give to the Roman government, take the other five dollars, and put it in his pocket.  Many of these tax collectors got very rich.  Many of them bought their jobs to be able to become rich. 

 

Here Levi sits.  There are many things that we don't know about him.  This is Matthew that we are talking about here.  The fellow that wrote the gospel of Matthew; this is Levi.  This is whom we are talking about.

 

He is sitting here collecting taxes from people.  The Bible says that Jesus walks by on the seashore and Levi is sitting up here on the elevated place up here.  Jesus sees Levi.  I want you to remember something about tax collectors.  They were people that were hated...They took money from their own people, Jewish people; (Levi was a Jew) they took money from his own Jewish people and gave it to the Roman government.  His own Jewish family would have hated him.  They classify publicans or tax collectors with the ungodly, with sinners and those that had no religious background at all.  That is how the Jewish people classified tax collectors.  They were hated people.  Most generally, they were excluded from the synagogue.  Most generally, religious people had nothing to do with publicans because most people hated them.

 

In thinking about this today, I don't know why we are like this...that we look at people the way that we do sometimes.  The Jewish people looked at Levi here and hated him.  However, here comes Jesus and He doesn't hate him.  What I am getting at is this.  When we look at someone, it may be their position, it may be from where they came from, it may the clothes they wear, it may be how they talk, it may be many different things; but we look at people sometimes as outcasts.  The people here are just rejects.  That is what we think sometimes.  Jesus Christ never looked at anybody that way.  He never looked at one soul; He never looked at one individual and said, "Hey, I don't want anything to do with you."  He never ever did that.

 

I wonder sometimes why we get in our minds that we are better than someone else is.  I wonder why that we think we are.  We should never do that.  We should cut our tongues off before we ever run somebody else down.  We have all come from the same mold.  We are all sinners.  We were all born into this world in sin.  The only difference is that we have been saved.  That does not make us better than anybody else.

 

Here Jesus is, he looks up and see this outcast.  He sees something in this guy that not everybody else saw.  Did you stop and wonder sometimes what the Lord ever saw in you?  Do you ever consider, and think, "Why in the world did He ever save me.?"  We should because if we had gone on the way we were going, many of us would be in hell tonight.  We would be waiting upon the judgment to be cast into a lake of fire.  Had not He saved us.  The world that we are living in and those that are living around us could care less about us.  Jesus come along and He saw us even though we may have been outcasts, even though we may have been someone that done a whole bunch of horrible stuff.  Jesus still yet saw us.

 

It is great what He does for us...it does not matter if do not have the best of clothes.  It does not matter whether we have the best car.  It does not matter whether we have the best home or not.  It does not matter.  We don't have to have a suit that cost...$500 to come.  We don't have to have a dress that cost $500 to come.  Do you know why?  It is because Jesus Christ loves us.  I want to say one thing on that while I am here and I am not going to meddle on this fact much.  If you dress better going to Wal-Mart than you do coming to church shame on you. 

 

The Bible says that Jesus walks by and He saw him.  Do you know what Jesus could have done?  Jesus could have just kept right on walking.  He could have just kept right on walking and never stopped to look up at Levi.  However, He did not do that. 

 

14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.

 

Here Levi is sitting up here on this platform way above the road, up here eight, ten, or twelve feet in the air...here comes Jesus, the Son of Almighty God, someone that has never sinned, nor will ever sin, that is holy and righteous and here is a guy up here that is a tax collector, that everybody hates.  However, here comes Jesus, and here he is...and Jesus stops and talks to him.  Jesus saw something in Levi that He could use.  Jesus looked beyond the tax collecting part.  He looked beyond the prejudice.  He looked beyond many things that Levi may have had in his life.  He looked beyond that and He saw someone that He could use for His glory, someone that was not afraid to work and to labor, someone that was going to be willing to stand and to carry and to bear the cross because he was going to have to (not the literal cross).  He saw something in Levi like that.

 

Jesus Christ never calls us to repentance, or to follow Him just so that we can escape hell.  It is more than that.  That is great, that's a wonderful thing that when we get saved that we are not going to go to the lake of fire; that's wonderful.  He expects more than that out of us.  He expects something out of us.  These next two words that He says to Matthew or Levi are two little words that carry a lot of weight that means so much when we look at what these two little words really mean.  Jesus looked up at Levi, a tax collector, someone that was hated, someone that nobody saw any good in…him.  Here Jesus comes along looks up, sees him, and makes this statement, "...Follow me..."  Here comes a guy, probably Jesus wouldn't have been dressed very well, probably as far as being groomed just right, wouldn't have been...but I want to tell you this much, He doesn’t look like a lot of pictures that we have hanging around either.  He wasn't a hippy...

 

Here he was walking down the shore.  He sees Levi.  He looks at Levi and calls him.  “Levi, follow me....”  Levi was a wealthy guy.  If you read Luke's gospel chapter five about this same event, there is no doubt in my mind that Levi had a huge house.  He had a big place because of all the multitudes that were going to come there and eat with Levi, Jesus and some of these others…he had a humongous place.  He probably was a very wealthy fellow.  He got that probably by being a tax collector.  Probably...had the nicest things that money could buy, as far as, clothes and the furnishings in his house were probably the nicest things that money could buy.  Here comes Jesus of Nazareth. 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that Levi has heard what this guy has been doing, what this guy called Jesus of Nazareth has been doing because it was all over the whole place here at Capernaum, all over Galilee.  Therefore, I know that Levi here had heard about Jesus.  Here is the thing...he is wealthy, he has a great job...he was going to have a whole lot to give up just to follow Jesus Christ.  He was going to have a whole lot to give up.

 

He says here, "...Follow me..."  The word follow me means many different things...  [1] It is a Greek word that means, "to walk the same road."  These two words together, actually, there were three words in the Greek, which meant, "Follow with me."  The words meant, "to walk the same road."  That means if Levi was going to follow Him, he was going to have to walk the same road that Jesus Christ was going to walk. 

 

If I am following Jesus Christ today then I am walking the same road that Jesus Christ walks.  If He is Holy, righteous, and He is God then I cannot be following Him and live in sin. 

 

[2] The word means, "follow one who precedes one."  In other words, following one that is leading.  We want to do the leading and expect God to follow sometimes.  It says here, when Jesus made the command to Levi to follow Him, Levi was going to have to follow Jesus Christ… 

 

[3] Also, it means something else here; it means, "to join to Him as an attendant."  Come and join to Jesus Christ as an assistant, or as an attendant, someone that will attend, or serve and worship Him.  I wonder sometimes when we come and say that we are following Him, if we would just examine our live sometimes.  We may figure out that we are not following Him at all.  The enemy is very shrewd, he is very cleaver, and he is very deceiving, there are many folks today whom I believe that he has slipped them a counterfeit.  I believe that the enemy came along and put something in their mind, well, this happened, or that happened, and I'm just going to go to heaven, but if we are not following Jesus Christ, then we are not on our way to heaven.  He is the one that is leading the way to heaven.  That shouldn't be hard for us to understand.  That shouldn't upset us, should it?  If He is leading the way and if we are going to heaven then we have to follow Him, that shouldn't upset us at all.  If He is leading the way and I am following Him, or walking with Him; then I don't have one thing to worry about. 

 

[4] Not only that but it means… "to join sides with His party."  That doesn't mean a political party that is not what it is talking about.  I have heard people say that Jesus was this denomination or that denomination...that is stupidity.  I would hate to make a statement like that.  I would hate to think that I would bring God down to some man-made organization.  It means that we side with what He is doing.  In other words, what He is doing, we agree with.  If we don't agree with what He is doing then we can't be on His side.  Can we? 

 

We use to play ball all the time and we would choose sides.  You had this side and that side.  This side didn't try to win for the other side and vise versa. 

 

If we are following Him, and if we have joined to His party then that means that we agree and we associate with those things that He is doing. 

 

[5] In addition, it means something more than just following Him for a week, a month or a year.  It means when Jesus looked at Levi and says follow with me, He means to make it a habit of life, or to habitually follow Jesus Christ.  We see many times people who come for a week, two weeks, or a month then we don't see them again because they just quit coming.  I wonder sometimes whether they ever got saved or not.  When we really are saved--don't misunderstand, I know that we mess up, and we wonder off a long ways sometimes--but not everybody that comes to this altar makes it a habit of life to follow Jesus Christ.  I choose to do that.  You have to choose to do that.  Everyday that I get up, I choose to follow Jesus Christ.  Everyday that I get up, there is sin that lies out there in front of me that I could participate in and you could too.  I choose to habitually everyday follow Jesus Christ.  Does that mean I'm perfect?  No.  It doesn't mean that at all.  It does mean that I am following, that I have joined myself to Him, I am walking the same road that He is walking, I have joined myself to His party and I'm not sinning habitually everyday.  If you are, you need to get saved. 

 

Now we put on shows and put on acts, many times, we have people fooled with our sin that we commit sometimes, but we don't have God fooled for a minute and we don't have people fooled for very long.  I don't care who you are, if we are committing sin, if we are a child of God and we are committing sin--habitually sinning--it is going to come out.  God is going to see to it that it comes out.  You are going to be embarrassed.  The sad part about this is that many times your co-workers already know about it.  The people that you come to church with already know about it.  Your family already knows about it, but you are the last one to admit it.  If I am following Jesus Christ then I am habitually following Him that means that day by day...I am following Jesus Christ.  That is awesome! 

 

When I was little, I could run like a deer.  I can't do that anymore, but when I was a kid, I could run...run up and down hills.  I could run off, leave my brothers, and leave them in the dark and they would be scared.  They would scream, holler, and carry on.  Jesus Christ will never run off and leave us.  If I am walking the same road that He is walking, He will never ever run off and leave me. 

 

[6] Levi is someone that is an outcast.  Nobody loves him, but Jesus Christ does.  Not only does follow me mean that but it means here that Levi was going to have to walk the same road, a road of separation, a road that was going to be separated from sin.  Levi, if he was going to follow Jesus Christ, his act was going to have to be cleaned up.  If I am going to habitually following Jesus Christ, then my act is cleaned up.  Not only that, but it is going to be a life of self-sacrifice.  What I mean by that is this; Levi could not change his life.  He could not save himself.  He could not clean himself up but there were things that Levi could not do.  There were things that Levi was going to have to have some self-control over, some things that he was just not going to do.  There is going to be some discipline in his life and there was going to be some self-sacrifice.  He was going have to give up a lot of his wants and desires and his ambitions to come and follow Jesus Christ.  That is self-sacrificing, giving up what we want to come and follow Jesus Christ everyday. 

 

I promise you folks--I know you have jobs, kids and all kinds of things to do, to work and to labor--but you will never ever be sorry for what you sacrifice of self and put self aside and give more time to follow Jesus Christ, you will never ever be sorry.  Not only that, but it was going to be a life of suffering.  Levi was going to suffer because he followed Jesus Christ. 

 

If we follow Jesus Christ habitually today, there are going to be people that will make fun of us, we are going to suffer, we may not get the promotion on the job, we may get mocked and ridiculed; a lot of things may happened to us.  Yet we are habitually following Jesus Christ and we know that ultimately that road is going to lead to heaven.  That is all that matters. 

 

[7] It is going to be a road of holiness.  We are going to have to habitually walk and follow Jesus Christ; it is going to be a holy place.  We are going to be different.  The word holy means [a] “to be different.”  That is really all that it means, [b] to be set apart, to be holy or [c] used for Jesus Christ.  It means to be different from the world, [d] to be separated from sinners.  If I am following Him habitually everyday then I am going to be holy.  I am going to be different from what the world does.  Levi is going to have to be different than he was.  Not only that, we are just simply going to have to follow with Him.

 

[8] It was going to be a side-by-side companionship.  When I read this in the Greek, I missed a word in it when I first read it and I read this whole thing and I come back and it didn't make any sense to me.  When I was reading it, it said, "not as Indians would march one by one in a line after one another" I didn't see the word "not."  I looked at that and thought, "That doesn't make much sense to me."  I read through all this and read back through and it said "not" as Indians march one by one, but it says here walking side by side.  Standing side by side, having companionship with Jesus Christ.   That is what it means to follow Him, walking side by side with Him.  Are we doing that today?

 

It goes on and says here:

 

14  "...he arose and followed him." 

 

Levi gets the command.  Jesus makes the command.  Levi follow me.  He gets up and leaves that job in somebody else's hand, he is not thinking about that job anymore because when Levi gets up and quits this day, there is not going to be any going back.  He was not going to get his tax collector Job back anymore.  The Romans were not going to give his job after a few months following Jesus.  He is not going to get his job back.  When he made this step one day to come and follow Jesus Christ it was a once and for all change in his life.  That is what following Jesus should mean to you and I.  That is what it should mean.

 

15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.

 

Many people came.  Many publicans and sinners, the outcasts, those that people just hated those that was not religious and had no religious background.  They came here and sat down with Jesus. 

 

16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?

17 When Jesus heard it , he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

 

I am not going to cover that, because I don't have time to cover all that.  There is one little thought in that I want to talk about.  Levi's house is a big, huge house, probably a mansion like many of us have never been in, huge big place with probably marble and furnishings that we have never saw anything like it.  The whole place was full.  Levi gets saved and he is following Jesus, and he makes a dinner and invites all the other outcasts that are just like him, the publicans and the sinners, the other tax collectors and all the other outcasts that no one would have anything to do with; he invites them all over to come to his house.  Get this.  Here all these folks are [with] sin everywhere.  Some language probably wasn't what it should have been.  Maybe some attitudes may not have been what they should have been with the publicans and sinners.  Here Jesus Christ sits in the middle of them.  He wasn't over there to condone their sin.  He was in there because they had a need.  He didn't come over there just to have dinner with them.  He didn’t' come over there just to recline and have a meal with them, but He came over there because they had a need. 

 

Friend listen, Jesus Christ has come.  He has called us that are saved today.  He is calling people today to come and follow Him.  Self-denial, absolutely, to live a holy consecrated life, most definitely, to live a different life than what the world is that is what it means but it also means this.   It means to habitually follow Him and to habitually walk with Him.  It means hand in hand walking side by side with Him.  I know you think, "I can't do it."  Friend, if you will walk with habitually everyday, you can't help but do it.  He will see to it that you will do it.  You cannot do it by yourself no.  When I habitually walk with Him day by day, when I make it my choice to walk with Him, He is there holding my hand every step of the way.  I may mess up in life, I may do many different things, but if want to go to heaven and if you want to go to heaven, we can go if we will just follow Jesus Christ.

 

 

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