Jesus Calls Sinners
Transcript
Good morning. Grab your Bibles, go to Matthew chapter 9. We are working our way through the book of Matthew. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. And excited to see y'all this morning.
If you are new, if this is your first time hanging out with us, one of these blue Bibles will be on page 475. If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you. That's our gift to you. We want you to own a Bible. Charles Spurgeon, who's a pastor in England, about 100 years ago or so, he said, the legalist in us is older than the Christian. That for all of us, the legalist in us is older than the Christian in us.
Meaning that the legalist being the person who wants to adhere to and follow the law. Wants to be good enough. That's the default mode of our hearts is that we approach the world with, I've got something to prove and I've got something to earn. And that I want to earn what I get and I want to have value in my own labor and through my own work and through myself being able to accomplish my salvation and my value. And so we approach God that way. We approach religion that way, which is what am I supposed to do?
What do I need to do to be one of the good ones? What do I need to do to adhere and be good enough? And so as Christians, we preach and proclaim grace, which is the opposite of that. Which is that Christ has done for us what we could not do for ourselves and that he has given us what we did not deserve. And we sing songs like Amazing Grace, which, if you're unfamiliar with the song, is about grace and how amazing it is. And we celebrate this, but there's part of us that rejects grace, that is uncomfortable with it.
That even after we place faith in Jesus and even after we've sung that song and even after we've celebrated grace, there's part of us that still doesn't quite feel comfortable with grace. We don't like it. There's still part of us that wants to have like, yeah, okay, but there's like a minimum standard you have to reach. And these people underneath it, he didn't save those people. Those people are the worst. We still kind of have that creep in.
Or when we're dealing with God and when we've sinned and we've run, we feel like, oh, even though we're a Christian and we would say, oh, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that he would redeem, save a wretch like me. We sing that. But when we actually feel wretched, when we actually are face to face with our wickedness and our sin, do we burst into song? Or do we feel overwhelmed and we want to beat ourselves up and we want to atone for our own sin? One of the ways that we see this practically show up so often is that when someone tries to, when we're in need, when we're weak, when we need help and someone tries to help us and we don't want to accept help, we don't want to accept the money they would give, we don't want to accept the help they would offer, we'll accept help when we don't really feel like we need it.
Man, it's super nice that you'd help me move. But when we actually really, really need it, it's harder for us to accept it. And that's because there's part of us that does not like grace. Doesn't like neediness. Well, we're going to read a story this morning where Jesus is interacting with people just like us. He's interacting with some terrible sinners like you.
And he's interacting with some people who reject and fight against grace and have some questions about it. And this is a really, really hope-filled, joyous story where Jesus is just amazing. So let's pray and let's study this together. God, we think of this time we get to spend together this morning studying your word. And we ask that each of us would take one step further into understanding, resting in, celebrating, and praising your glorious grace. In Jesus' name, amen.
Matthew 9, verse 9. And Jesus passed on from there. So he's been teaching, he's been healing. And he saw a man called Matthew. I want to ruin it for you. He becomes one of the disciples.
He later writes a gospel called the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 9, verse 9. Matthew 9, verse 9. Matthew 9, verse 9. You're reading his book, you guys. It's going to go well for Matthew.
Jesus passed on from there. He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he rose and followed him. What just happened was amazing. Earth shattering.
We don't quite understand this. We're going to take a second to try to dig into this a little bit. First of all, Jesus consistently, if you've noticed, walks up to people at work and demands that they follow him. And just a basic principle is that Jesus is not opposed to inconveniencing you with his presence. So some people are sometimes like, now's not a great time for me to follow Jesus.
He doesn't care. Now is the best time. Start now. When I get some of this stuff sorted out, he's like, no, now. So he walks up to him while he's at work at the tax booth.
But here's the thing. We maybe don't appreciate the IRS. Maybe when you have to deal with the tax man and he comes to you to audit you or whatever, you're upset with that person. But in general, you're upset with the role that they're fulfilling, not them as an individual. We don't just hate tax people. We dislike the organization they work for.
Well, this is different. Tax collectors in Israel were the worst. Absolutely hated. And here's why. The Romans were occupying Israel at this time. Tax collectors worked for the Romans.
But tax collectors were Israelites who had paid for the opportunity to levy taxes on their own people so that the foreign Romans could occupy them. So Israelites didn't like Gentiles, didn't get along with them, but those people were born into their Gentileness. These tax collectors were a part of Israel who were supposed to be people who fought for the promised land, defended the promised land against evil oppressors, and they had paid money to become tax collectors so that they could help oppress you. It gets worse. Not only were they traitors, they got rich doing it. They were a traitor with a nicer car than you have.
And a swimming pool. They were... The way it worked was they had a certain quota they had to reach for the Romans. So they had to get a certain amount of taxes, tolls from the area they were in. Anything more they took was theirs. The system was designed for them to be so hated that they loved the Romans and wanted to keep oppressing the people around them because if the Romans suddenly were out of power, they were in trouble.
So they cheated, they overtaxed, and they were quite wealthy doing it, and they had the Romans backing them up. And they were supposed to be people who fought against the Romans, defended against the Romans. They were supposed to be your blood, your people. They were hated. And this was universally understood. This is why Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5, verse 46, says, For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same. Jesus uses them as a sermon illustration for the worst people possible. They're universally understood to be awful. He's like, Garbage people do that. I'm not talking about like trash collectors. I'm talking about people who are human garbage.
That's the way he uses them in this sentence. A way that we would all, like if we structured any sentence, you can put any people group in that. If we use that sentence on stage, people would be upset with us. When I walked down, they would be like, Really? Doesn't matter what people group you picked. I'm tempted to just pick five just to annoy people right now so you can feel how it was understood.
Does that make sense? He's just using them as like, this is a whole group of people we agree are terrible. And everybody's like, yeah, they're the worst. If they can do it, shouldn't you do more? That's the way he structures this. So, it's not like Jesus didn't know.
He walks up to Matthew at the tax booth and calls him to follow him. It didn't like he ran into him at the market and they struck up a conversation and Jesus didn't know who he was. Didn't realize his occupation. Was just talking to him. He's like, you know, son, I like the cut of your jib. Do you want to be one of my disciples?
And then later it's like, oh, you're a tax collector. No, he walks up to the tax booth. Now, he's in his own city. That's what the beginning of chapter nine told us. We didn't read that this morning, but it's in there. Matthew, which would be Capernaum.
His hometown is Nazareth, but in chapter four, it tells us he moves to Capernaum. So, he's in his own city. So, he's well known. He's been healing. He's been doing these things. Matthew would have known who he was, but as far as we know, this is the first time he's ever talked to Matthew.
Maybe he's paid taxes to Matthew. Jesus walks up to him, says, come follow me. And Matthew does. It says, he rose and followed him. It gets worse. Or better if you're Matthew.
And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, this is verse 10, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Okay, so there's a decent amount we've got to unpack to try to understand what's going on here. Jesus goes to Matthew's house. We get that from Luke, tells us that it was Matthew's house, not Jesus' house. Jesus goes to Matthew's house, so he enters a house of a tax collector, which would have made him unclean.
Nobody would have done this. No Jewish people would have really had any interaction with Matthew as a tax collector other than to pay their taxes. They definitely aren't going to his house. Jesus goes to his house. Matthew invites all of his horrible sinner friends, his tax collector buddies, and just regular run-of-the-mill sinners. Now, we use the term sinner as in like, well, we're all sinners.
We're using the more further down the line Christian understanding of the word. But when it's used here in a Jewish understanding, it's a whole class of people who are also the worst. Tax collectors and sinners is how it's phrased sometimes. Sometimes it'll say tax collectors and prostitutes. The way it's understood is that it's people who have just absolutely rejected the notion of following God and being a good Israelite. They're the people who just have just kind of said, this isn't for me.
They're just doing what they want to. So they're Jewish people, but they're Jewish people who aren't good Jewish people. That's how they would have understood it. They've rejected God. They've rejected following him. Now, also in the class of sinners would be people who had physical ailments.
There's a group of people that would have fit in there as well just because they were understood to be struck by God, harmed by God, that they had done something bad or their parents had done something bad. But this is the worst collection of rabble. And Jesus is reclining at the table with him, celebrating with them, sharing a meal with them. So Jesus goes from the tax booth, calls this person to follow him. Jesus chooses Matthew. It's not like Matthew came to Jesus all repentant.
Jesus goes and chooses Matthew and then they go have a party. So the Pharisees say, they call some of Jesus' disciples and they ask him, why does your teacher, why does your rabbi, this guy who's been going around and teaching and explaining the law and he's been teaching in our synagogues, why does he hang out with tax collectors and sinners? Now, the Pharisees had taken legalism and they'd gone pro. They're amazing at it. You think your uptight church lady that you grew up with, no, no, no, no. Pharisees would smoke her in legalism.
They had added extra rules that they followed. They were amazing at it. They were the most uptight, well-controlled, in the lines. They knew all the rules and they followed them. And so they taught people. They taught in synagogues.
They let Jesus teach in their synagogues. Most of them were, this was like the main class of people that would have synagogues and would help structure for everybody how we're supposed to follow the Lord. And so Jesus has been teaching. He's a rabbi. He's got a following. He's been healing people.
And then they come and say, okay, hold on a second. What is he doing? What on earth is he doing? Now, to help you understand a little bit more of this, if Billy Graham, in the height of his ministry, went to a party at the Playboy Mansion, if we just heard, if TMZ just came out and Votie Bauckham or John Piper was at a rooftop party with R. Kelly, when you hear that, the way that makes you feel with like, ah, brrrr, where? Who?
The conversations that would happen. People would be sharing links. That would go out. We have a little group chat thing with our pastors. I would send that. You guys, what's up?
Is this good? Bad? Seems bad. Because here's what we would be okay with. Let's just be real.
I'm okay with a tax collector following Jesus if really quickly the tax collector looks like what I think a follower of Jesus should look like. So if they said, he's got a tax collector, and then when they went and they looked, the tax collector, ah, like had dirt on his head and looked sad. Like Jesus had just spent, like, I don't know, an hour shaming him. He'd be like, yeah, look at that. Repentant garbage person who's becoming, Jesus will train him. He'll turn into a, he'll become a disciple.
This will be great. Look at him. He's reading the Torah. He's memorizing it. Okay. Like if you heard that R.
Kelly had been hanging out at Votie Bauckham's church, you'd be like, yeah, okay, all right, R. Kelly. Probably just so you look a little better, but okay. We'll see. Right? Right?
No, no, no, no. Jesus goes to his house. They're having a party. And you walk up on it and you go, oh, I don't feel good inside about this. I'm uncomfortable because it looks like, it doesn't look like a tax collector started following Jesus. It looks like Jesus started following a tax collector.
So the Pharisees are like, point of order. I got a question. Point of personal privilege. I need to talk about something real quick. So they ask, why is he doing this?
What on earth is he trying to accomplish? Verse 12. But when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. for I have come, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Okay, so Jesus says, he hears it and he says, those who are well have no need of a physician.
So Jesus is saying, I'm a physician. And he says, I came to call not the righteous, but sinners. But this isn't how you do this. If you're going to be a rabbi, if you're going to teach people, you pick from the people who've already shown some promise. Matthew has not shown promise. He's done the opposite.
He's derailed everything. He's actively chosen to rebel against God. He's, he's, he's oppressing others. And Jesus says, here's my guy. I'm adding him to the top 12 starting lineup. He says, I came to call the sick.
Those are the ones who need a doctor. Those are the ones who need healing. And then he says, go and learn what this means. And this is a normal kind of rabbi phrase, where they would just be like, good question. Why don't you go study this section and we'll talk some more. So he just rabbis them.
And he rabbis them from the book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet that God told to marry a prostitute. He marries her. It doesn't go well. She runs off. God keeps telling her to chase her down.
He keeps chasing her down. He keeps bringing her home. She keeps running off. It's a big mess. He says, this is a picture of what it's like for me, God, to love you, Israel. That's God's point in the book of Hosea.
Well, in Hosea, he says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Jesus says, go study Hosea. Specifically this section. Come back and we'll talk. That's his answer. No, not yet.
But that is it. That's it. We're going to look at it again later. So, verse 14. Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?
And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. And they were on an old garment for the patch tears away from the garment and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wine skins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed.
But new wine is put into fresh wine skins. And so both are preserved. Okay? Jesus calls Matthew from the tax booth. They go to heaven. Sinner Party.
Now, Jesus wasn't sinning. He's accused of it. Later they call him a glutton and a drunkard. He wasn't sinning. He never sinned. But he was hanging out with sinners who sin.
So he's at tax collector Sinner Party. Pharisees show up. They're the supreme legalists of the day. And they say, what is he doing? Why is he hanging out with these bad people? And then disciples of John show up.
This is John the Baptist who was the precursor prophet to Jesus who called people to repentance. And the disciples of John and John do not get along with the Pharisees. So much so, if you look back at chapter 3, the Pharisees show up to John where he's baptizing in the wilderness and he says, who told you to repent? You brood of vipers. Not a nice phrase. So they don't get along but they come and they say, hold on a second, we fast, disciples of John, who were following after John's baptism and his call to repentance, we fast and the Pharisees fast but y'all don't.
Now, the Pharisees, there were times in the Old Testament where God calls the nation to fast and they would have fasted. The Pharisees added extra times that they would fast. They would fast twice a week. It seems as if the disciples of John were still practicing that. They would fast twice a week. It seems as if Jesus' sinner party is on a fast day.
He's reclining at the table eating money paid for by tax collectors, eating food paid for with the money from tax collectors on a fast day. It's what it seems like. Now, maybe they've just been watching him long enough to know you don't fast but they come to him in the middle of a party and they say, why, why? We're hungry. We're fasting. You aren't.
What's up? And then Jesus gives this answer. He says, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? So Jesus is the groom and he says, wedding party. We're celebrating. He says, the day will come when they will mourn.
That's the connection between fasting and mourning. Fasting is this sackcloth ashes. You don't eat. You would mourn your sin. You would mourn brokenness. A lot of times these people would have been fasting because they were under Roman oppression.
Which they would have seen as punishment by God. So they would be fasting for their sin and for the sin of the nation and asking God to get rid of Roman oppression. And Jesus is hanging out with the Roman oppressor people. He says, they will fast. They will mourn. Not yet.
And then he talks about, nobody, let's read it again. Verse 16. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. For the patch tears away from the garment and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed.
But new wine is put into fresh wineskins and so both are preserved. This is not a cryptic saying where they were supposed to go try to figure this out. They would have understood what he was talking about in general. It's a very straightforward concept. It would be like if I looked at you and said nobody adds diesel to a car that runs on gasoline and you don't go swimming with your iPhone in your pocket. You'd go, right.
That is true. That's what he's doing. He's just a straightforward example. When you have clothes and you wash them and you wear them over time, they draw up. That's what fabric does. So he says, if you get a hole in some old fabric, you don't patch it with new fabric because as soon as you patch it with new fabric and then that new fabric draws up, it makes a bigger hole.
Nobody does that. You patch old fabric with old fabric. They're like, right. Everyone knows that. Then he says, nobody puts new wine into old wineskins.
Wineskins, a big leather pouch, you could put wine in it. That's what it was for. Made out of skin. Following so far? Yeah. If you put new wine in that has not fermented yet, when it ferments, it swells.
Let's off a gas, it swells up. If you put new wine, unfermented wine, into an old wineskin that was made out of leather and has already stretched, when it starts fermenting, your wineskin rips open, you pour out all your wine. Nobody does that. You put new wine in an unstretched wineskin, then when it ferments, it lets off a gas, the leather stretches, and everything stays fine. That's all he's saying. But his point is, I'm doing something different.
I'm not going to be practicing all the practices y'all practice. I'm doing something different. I'm doing something new. And because I'm doing something new, I'm not pouring it into the old system. It's going to be different. It's going to look different.
So you have the Pharisees who are saying, why are you hanging out with these people? And you have the disciples of John saying, why aren't you doing the good stuff, the right stuff? And what you have here is the starter pack for legalism. If y'all want to become a legalist, let me tell you how to do it. Pick a group of people that will be the bad people. Step one, super easy.
Who don't you like? Boom. Those are the bad guys. Usually, if you want to do this well, they need to be people who are bad at a thing that you are good at or that you place a lot of value in. So if you are an amazing mom, pick bad moms.
Boom. Nailed it. You've accomplished step one. What people have liked to do throughout time and history is pick something that people can't control and that you can't control. Skin color. That's a great one because you don't lose your skin color and the other people can't change their skin color.
So pick that. Nationality. People love that one. That's a good one. Pick a whole nationality and say, these are the bad guys. We're one of the good ones because you can't lose your nationality.
It's great. You don't even have to really accomplish anything. Super simple. That's step one. Pick the people who are going to be the bad people. If you work really hard, pick lazy people.
If you're rich, pick poor people. If you're poor, pick rich people. Super easy. If you already picked your person, good. That's step one. You can put a lot of people in there.
Step two. Pick the stuff that you're going to do that makes you one of the good people. Pick the practices. Pick the things that offset you from those people. We've done it. We're legalists.
And you've naturally done this your entire life. This is the default mode of our hearts. That you would have people that you look down on and things that you do that make you one of the good ones. That's what they were doing. The Pharisees were saying, these are the bad people. Why would you hang out with them?
And the disciples of John are saying, aren't we supposed to be practicing these things? Don't they make us good? And I feel for, I connect with the disciples of John. Because the disciples of John also look down on the Pharisees. I'm super good at that. I look down on them.
They're the bad people. Disciples of John. Here's what they were doing. They got called into following through repentance. They started off well. We're going to repent.
We're going to acknowledge our sin. We're going to turn from our sin. And then they started practicing some things as they practiced repentance. And then what they did was it started off so good. We're going to do these things because they're good things to do. And then they went, and because they're good things to do, and because we do them, we're going to become some good people.
That's the temptation. We don't know exactly. They're trying to understand. They're coming to Jesus. They seem genuine, but there's this temptation to say, we practice the right things. Therefore, we're one of the good guys.
And Jesus says, I'm doing something different. What was he doing? Hosea 6, 6. This is what he said. For I desire steadfast love. That word there is translated steadfast love quite often in the Old Testament from the Hebrew to English.
It can be translated from steadfast love to mercy when you translate it from Hebrew to Greek. Jesus is quoting this passage, steadfast love or mercy, work. I desire steadfast love. Jesus says mercy in the Greek and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Jesus said, go read that. Go think about that.
Here's what he's saying. He's hanging out with tax collectors and sinners because what he wants, what God wants, is for us to know him and receive mercy. For us to know him and receive steadfast love. And for us to be people who because we know him, because we have a knowledge of God, we offer mercy and steadfast love to others. Jesus is saying, I'm doing exactly what he, what the Hosea says he desires. Not sacrifice, not work, not prove yourself.
See, that's what the Pharisees wanted to do. They wanted to say, we're the ones who do this, this, this, this, and this. Therefore, we're the good guys. The disciples of John seem like that's what they're asking. It's like, hold on a second. Is there something that we're supposed to do?
Why aren't y'all doing the things that make us some of the good guys? And Jesus just says, mercy. Not sacrifice. It's not what you give up. It's not the debt you pay. That's our mercy.
That's our steadfast love. The knowledge of God that you would just know Jesus. That we would understand who God is and what he's like. Not burnt offerings. Not religious practices. So here's what this means.
This is what Jesus has come to do. He's come to offer grace. Mercy. To people like Matthew. Matthew went from the tax booth to the table with Jesus. Based off of what?
Jesus. Jesus. Jesus just calls him to it. What did Matthew do that made him one of the good ones? He responded to Jesus? Nothing?
What had he done to earn something? What had he done to begin to cut out his position and to make himself lovely and beautiful and lovable? Nothing. He went from the tax booth to the table. And then there's these groups of people sitting outside who can't get around the table with Jesus. And they're going, hold on a second.
Are we supposed to do the stuff? And Jesus says, mercy. Not sacrifice. Not your works. Not your accomplishments. Mercy.
Steadfast love. Come pull up a seat at the table if you're sick. If you're a sinner, you're welcome. If you're sick, wretched, you get a seat at the table. If you think you're righteous, if you think you're well, you don't go to the doctor. If you think you're righteous, you don't need God.
You just need some good rules to follow.