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TITLE: Eating with sinners
TEXT: Mark 2:13-17
PROPOSITION: As we try to reach the lost we face some real challenges.
QUESTION: What?
KEY WORD: Attitudes
SCRIPTURE READING: Same
INTRODUCTION:

1. We face a real challenge.
   
2. We must eat with sinners - friends, associate, encourage, minister
   
3. 19:10 - Seek and save the lost
   
4. We must NOT condone sin, support error, fellowship darkness
   
5. Ephesians 5:11- Have no fellowship with works of darkness
   
6. John 1:10-11 - Do not bid him Godspeed
   
7. Corinthians 6:17-18 - Come out, be separate, touch not unclean thing
   
8. How can we fellowship with sinners and not fellowship their error?
   
9. How can we associate with them and not condone their life?
   

Matthew - tax collector - “Meet my friends”

1. Jesus called him - 14
   
2. Had a dinner with all his tax collector friends - 15
   
3. Cornelius - call friends and kinsmen - Acts 10
   
4. Modern term = Web evangelism
   

Scribes and Pharisees - critical, drunk, glutton, low life

1. Eating with sinners - low life
   
2. Luke 7:34 - Wine bibber and glutton
   

Jesus Response

1. Text - Who needs a doctor, sick or well?
   
2. See Luke 14:12-15 - Invite the poor, lame, blind
   
3. Luke 19:9-10 - Zaccheus - Salvation has come to this house
   
4. Parable (Luke 14:16-24) Excuses - go to handicapped, then hedges
   
5. Matthew 21:31-32 - Harlots enter ahead of you
   
6. John 8:11 - woman taken in adultery - Go and sin no more
   

Missed opportunities

1. Right after conversion - they know more non-Christians
   
2. Longer in the church - fewer non-Christians we know
   

Our challenge

1. Not to associate with each other - only - Matthew 5:47
   
2. To fish for men - Go where the fish are
   
3. Call sinners to repentance
   

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