Jesus' Life Verse - [Matthew 9:1-13]

Do you have a favorite verse in the Bible? Some people have life verses.

It's their favorite all -time verse and they write that down or they want it on their tombstone.

Do you have a life verse? I think Jesus had a life verse. I don't know if it was really a life verse, but it was one of his favorite verses.

At least it was a verse that he quoted all the time. Let's turn our Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter 9.

We're taking a minor deviation from 1 Corinthians, but it's tied in and you'll see today as we go through Matthew chapter 9, 1 to 13, what the connection is.

Certainly after we've been looking at the love of God found in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, even though it doesn't explicitly say this is the love of God or this is the kind of love that God exercises, we know it's true.

And so what we'll see today in Matthew chapter 9 is a variety of things. You'll see the compassion of God. You'll see the forgiveness of God.

You'll see how he confronts false teachers and takes them to the proverbial woodshed. And you'll see how his miracles affirm who he is.

How did you know Jesus was who he was? Lots of reasons epitomized by the resurrection, but while he was on earth, he did signs and wonders.

And as Peter said in Acts 2 .22, he was a man attested by God to you by doing signs and wonders and miracles.

So we're going to look at Matthew chapter 9, 1 to 13, and we're going to have a variety of other passages woven in to this.

For instance, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called what kind of gospels? Synoptic gospels.

And if you think of the word similar, you'll get synoptic. That is to say, they're all very close in the way they're portraying

Christ, different than John. But Matthew, Mark, and Luke are synoptic, and so I'll have a little bit of Mark bleed in and a little bit of Luke come to light.

Typically, Mark's shortest, but now Mark is the longest passage, but we're going to go into Matthew 9 where Jesus is portrayed as the

King. When you think of Matthew, big picture, you say Jesus is the

Messiah King. Somebody should write a book on that topic, by the way. That'd be a great selling book in the mind of the author, at least.

Everything about this book speaks King. Kings have genealogies. There's a genealogy, right?

There's all kinds of stuff going on behind the scenes where other people who aren't the King try to kill the baby

King. That's actually happening here too. The King goes and tells His manifesto on a mountain and says, this is what

I require for entrance into My Kingdom. Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5 -7. And then to show you that the

King has power, Matthew arranges chapters 8, 9, and 10 topically to show you demonstrations of the power of God that only the

King would have. So 8, 9, and 10 are arranged topically, but they're also arranged in this progressive fashion where every miracle builds upon the next.

And you just think, there's nobody like this. He has to be the Son of Man. He has to be the

King of the universe. It's a fast -paced story. It's one that you should probably know about, but fasten your seatbelts nonetheless and let's look at Matthew 9.

The first round as He fights the false teachers is found in verses 1 -8, and then round two will be found in verses 9 -13.

So if you're looking for an outline, I'm just gonna use round one and round two, or you could talk about forgiveness one and forgiveness two, however you'd like to do it.

Matthew 9, verse one. And getting into a boat, he crossed over and came to his own city.

So of course, we're talking about the Sea of Galilee, and now he goes to his own city, and the city of his is

Capernaum. That's his headquarters. That's home base. That's mission control center in this little town on the north side of the

Sea of Galilee, Capernaum. That's a base camp for his ministry. And most likely, it's

Peter's home, his mother -in -law's home. And Mark says it was noise that he was in the house.

People were talking about it because wherever Jesus went, he healed and taught, and then there was the scuttle, and then there was the talk.

If you go back to chapter eight with me, to verse one, I want you to see what he's done because everywhere he would go, he would compassionately heal people and preach.

Chapter eight, verse one. Came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. Behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him saying,

Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Obviously you have the power of God to do it, but if you will.

And Jesus stretched out his hand and did something that people wouldn't do to lepers and touched him saying,

I will be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Then if you go to chapter eight, verses five and following, verse six, it says, there was a servant that was paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.

And what did Jesus do? Jesus healed that man. Verse 14, and when

Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother -in -law lying sick with a fever and he touched her and the fever left.

Then in chapter eight, verse 23, the storm is calmed. Chapter eight, verse 28, he heals men with demons.

And now we come to chapter nine. Crowds here, crowds understand, crowds crowd around Jesus.

They wanna go where Jesus goes. Some for the right reasons and a lot of false teachers, they'll follow too.

Wherever you see Jesus, you'll see the crowds and you'll see the false teachers. So he got in a boat and went over to his own city.

Mark says, many people were gathered together so there was no longer room, even near the door and he was speaking the word to them.

So Mark gives us extra information. It's crowded inside and it's crowded by the door and what was

Jesus in there doing? Now he'd just been healing a lot of people and now he's preaching to them. How's that for a good home group?

Jesus preaching. What does this verse mean to you, Jesus said to the crowd in the home? Well, not quite.

What was he talking about? Well, we don't know exactly but I think, and I'll tell you why

I think this in a moment, I think he was talking about salvation forgiveness, reconciliation, how to be right with God, your

Creator who's a judge but thankfully is also a Savior. Now there weren't security guards back in those days and wrought iron fences.

People were just jammed in there and the Eastern culture, the Oriental culture basically said this, you can invite yourself to people's houses.

As a matter of fact, some of you come from Eastern culture and I know because you've told me

I can come to your house anytime I would like. It's fascinating.

People thought I was from the East when I first got here 15 years ago because probably three times a day people from Bethlehem Bible Church or Baptist Church at the time would show up my house and say, hi, how are you pastor?

It was a fascinating time. Making sure I was doing the right thing. Many were gathered.

Scribes were there and Luke says some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there who had come from every village in the

Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem. So now they're following Jesus. The big shots come and they want to see what

He's doing and of course they don't want to praise God for what He's doing. They want to try to find a crack in His armor so they can discredit

Him. The religious leaders come from far away and now here's this house.

Just imagine all the people and all the sweat and all the dust and all the noise.

In our day, you would look up and probably see a helicopter and all kinds of people taking pictures because this was the major happening.

Mark says there's no longer room even near the door. No privacy inside, no privacy on the outside and Jesus is preaching to them.

By the way, Mark says it was an ongoing sermon in perfect tense, preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching.

Certainly we've learned before that there are more important things than physical healing.

Because you can be physically healed and still not go to heaven. So Jesus is preaching to them.

Verse 2, look at your text in Matthew 9. Behold, some people brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed.

Matthew likes to use that word, behold. He's trying to say to you, just take a look.

Just imagine you're there. So all the dust and all the noise and all the people and behold, just imagine there's a paralytic being brought by people.

Another Gospel tells us carried by four men. Mark 2, verse 4 says, being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying.

Luke says they couldn't find a way to get in. How do you carry some pallet with a man?

It's like carrying a casket practically through the door. Through all the people. There's too many people.

They can't get out of the way. They were determined though to get Jesus' attention by bringing this man in.

Where there's a will, there's a... First congregation, first service, they all said way.

They were very kind. But it's not right. It's more where there's faith it will persevere and they weren't going to stop.

They had to get Jesus in. Excuse me, they had to get Him into Jesus. And so what did they do?

Well, you can't get in through the door. So let's dig through the roof.

Now, how do you get up to the roof? Well, back in those days, by the way, they were flat roofs and they would be house by house by house by house.

Isaiah 5, Isaiah blasts them saying you're building house by house by house. So they probably went to somebody else's house, got up on the roof and then now come over to the townhouse that is

Peter's. Flat roof. And they removed the roof and dug an opening.

Now, if you are a contractor, these roofs back in those days had five layers.

Wooden supporting beams, stone slabs that were like tiles, reeds and branches is the next layer, thatch to get rid of the rain.

And then at the very top, what would you put on the top? You'd put soil. You'd put sod on the top.

It would last for the year. You'd have about two feet thick of a roof.

I don't know how they picked the exact spot right above Jesus, but they did. Now, let's move from the outside of the house to the inside of the house.

By the way, just for a second, what if we could start hearing noises on the roof right now? What would we do?

You would try not to be rude. You would try to look straight at me and then you're like, but yeah, something's going on right there.

Pretty soon the tile starts falling down. Pretty soon that chandelier falls down.

Pretty soon we all, and finally I just say to you, go ahead and look. This is in the middle of Christ teaching.

Maybe you'd hear the footsteps on top of the roof. Then a little bit of shoveling. Mark says they were actually scooping, that was going on.

Then the dirt starts flying. Huge hole, you can see the sun if you look up. Poor Peter, if this is either his house or his mother -in -law's house, you're thinking, there's my project.

That's the to -do list after this is all done. It's got to be big enough to get the paralytic in too because you can't, if it's like this, the paralytic is laying on some kind of bed, you can't just make a small opening and just dive bomb him in.

Or slowly lower that down. I said to the first service folks, so I'll say it to you.

Side note, not related, not exegetically driven, authorial intent. But what does this do, by the way, to your open door theology that you use?

Well, there's an open door, I might as well go through it. Oh, there's a closed door, God doesn't want me to do that.

Friends, open doors simply mean open doors and closed doors simply mean closed doors. There's an open door, hmm, maybe

I should go through it. Maybe wisdom says don't go. Closed door, hmm, maybe

I shouldn't go through it. Maybe I should dig through it. So we have to be very careful when it comes to open door or closed doors.

It's not a good way to make decisions. We want to use our minds. Verse 2 it says, it goes on to say, and when

Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, take heart my son. I mean,

He saw their faith. Now Jesus can see invisible things because He's the omniscient God. And Jesus can also see their faith because faith what?

Works. They obviously believe because they're digging, they got on the roof and now they're digging the hole.

So either one is fine by me or both. He sees their invisible faith or He sees the effect of their faith.

And I bet this man who is the paralytic also had faith because you would have to have faith to let these four guys do that.

And Jesus said, take heart my son. Healed in chapter 8, healed in chapter 8, healed in chapter 8, healed in chapter 8.

And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, take heart my son. You're healed from your paralyzation.

That's what they were expecting. That's what everybody would think. That's what you would think if you read chapter 8.

And what does He say? Take heart my son, your sins are forgiven. That's surprising.

I think that's why Jesus was preaching on forgiveness in the house.

Certainly, He would regularly talk about forgiveness. But now Jesus is preaching on forgiveness. He knows all this is going on because He's ordained it all.

And now in the middle of His message on forgiveness, Jesus has a perfect object illustration for forgiveness.

This is a wanna -counsel time on steroids. Your sins are forgiven.

Now, our ushers probably would have done the opposite. They probably would have saw that going down and they would have said, this is inappropriate, this is wrong, we're going to escort you out, there's a right thing to do here, and they would have rebuked them.

Perfect knowledge of Jesus. He knows it's going to happen and then He pronounces, do you notice the text?

Singular or plural sins. Your sins are forgiven.

My son, tenderly, gently, compassionately, Luke said Jesus called him friend.

Your sins are forgiven now. Not later, not through purgatory, not through an indulgence.

Your sins are forgiven now. Can you imagine God proclaiming, your sins are forgiven, certainly based on Christ's death in anticipation of that, but now

God says your sins are forgiven. By the way, congregation, if you could have anybody in the world or universe just look at you and say, all your sins are forgiven, you'd want to hear that from God, wouldn't you?

And that's exactly what we have in Christ Jesus. He has every one of our sins forgiven.

The deepest need that this man had was not better health, was not more money, was not a better job, a wife and kids.

The deepest need was he needed forgiveness from his sins.

And actually the Greek is forgiven's passive. That means it has to be done to you.

You can't forgive yourself. You can't have other people forgive you. Ultimately, for sins against God, it has to be granted from God by divine, sovereign initiative.

I looked up. I found six Hebrew words for sin. Missing the mark. Breaching relationship.

Perverseness. Error. Godlessness. Mischief. I found six

Greek words for sin. Offense. Lapse.

Unrighteous deeds. Transgression of the law. Godlessness. And lawlessness.

And it's like Jesus takes those 12 words, Hebrew and Greek, balls them all up and says, every sin you've ever committed, you're forgiven.

Every standard that you've broken against me, forgiven. Could not be a better word in all the

Bible. And the Greek word means to just dismiss or to release.

Casting all his sins behind God's back. Ephesians 1 says, in Him we have redemption through His blood.

The forgiveness of our trespasses. Colossians 1,

He delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Colossians 2 says, and when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, and which was hostile to us.

He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Jesus didn't say, no, you just have a syndrome.

You've got an illness. You've got a disease. You've got to have some kind of disorder. You've got to feel better about yourself.

Forget your guilt. You deserve better. Look into your inner self. Look at your inner child. Were you spanked as a kid?

I remember in seminary, in theological education, they would always say this.

Someone comes into your office and says, I'm a filthy, rotten, horrible sinner.

You are to never say, no, you're not. But in our society, that's what you feel like you want to say.

Someone comes in and says, I'm a wretch of a man or a woman. I'm filthy. I'm disgusted with myself.

And I am just unclean. You're never to say to them, no, you're okay. You know what you're supposed to say?

Well, there's a Savior greater than your filthiness. There's a Messiah who's more wonderful than you are sin.

Because people, when convicted, they need to feel the guilt, so then they try to get out of that guilt through the only atoning sacrifice that's available to them,

Christ Jesus. This man was a sinner, and Jesus said, your sins are forgiven.

Now, when you're at a baptism service here, or you have a friend call you, did you know so -and -so got saved?

What do you usually think? Hey, great, they got saved. They don't have to go to hell. God's still saving people.

And you think, yes. How do you think the scribes reacted to this situation here? Verse three, and behold, see that kind of language again?

Just put yourself there. It's vivid language. And behold, some of the scribes, these theological scribes, said to themselves, this man is blaspheming.

The text elsewhere says they were seated. Why would they be seated, and all these people around?

Because they get honor. And so they say, you know what, this man's blaspheming. Certainly, they're jealous, and with a contempt, they say he's blaspheming.

He's speaking irreverently. Why is he speaking irreverently? Why is he speaking impiously?

Because only God can forgive sin. Jesus is calling

Himself God. That's divine prerogative only. Isaiah 43, I, even

I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Only God can ultimately forgive sins because only God can ultimately pay for our sins, provide salvation.

Jesus is God. People say, well, Jesus isn't God. Friends, there are about 30 ways for me to approach this, but let's just approach it this text.

No one can forgive sins against God except God. Jesus is

God. He does only what God does. Verse 4,

I'll show you something else that God does as it reads people's minds. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, why do you think evil in your hearts?

This isn't intuition, friends. This is divine knowledge. Can you imagine? What if you could think of everything that everyone was thinking right now simultaneously in this room?

I mean, I can just hear the chatter. Chachachachachachachachachacha. It drives me crazy after 10 seconds.

The noise! Stop it! Now, just imagine 6 .8 billion people.

God knows exactly what they're thinking and can have it all in His mind because He's eternal and omniscient, and He knows what these people are thinking.

He knows all their thoughts. Why are you thinking evil in your hearts,

He says. Jesus knew what was in a man, John 2 said. Verse 5, for what is easier to say?

Your sins are forgiven, or to say rise and walk? Now what Jesus does not mean is, it's just as easy to say both, because both are easy to say.

Sins are forgiven, rise and walk. Which one's easier to say? Well, they're both easy to say, because I just said them both. But which one's easier to say and keep credibility?

Which one's easier to say and then have them validated? Well, if I say your sins are forgiven, it's an invisible transaction.

How do I know that their sins are actually forgiven, that God forgave, propitiated all wrath, and all that? I can't see that, because forgiveness is invisible.

It's easier to say your sins are forgiven, harder to do, but easier to say. Can you say sins are forgiven, or say rise and walk?

And by the way, which one's easier for God to do? Both just as easy, because everything's just as easy for God.

Omniscient God, omnipotent God, can do anything as easily as anything else, A .W. Tozer said.

All his acts are done without effort. He expends no energy that must be replenished. His self -sufficiency makes it unnecessary for him to look outside of himself for a renewal of strength.

But what is happening here? Jesus is going to authenticate his claim that he is the

Son of Man, that he's the Son of God, that he's God in the flesh, by doing something. And what does he do that they can see?

They can't see forgiveness of sins, which has already been granted, but they could see if this guy can stand up and walk out of there.

Verse 6, why are there miracles and signs that Jesus could do? A. Because he's

God, but B. Because he's attested by God that he is the Son of God by what he does.

Verse 6, but that you may know that the Son of Man, Jesus loved to call himself that, has authority on earth to forgive sins.

He said to the paralytic, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.

Verse 7, just simply, plainly, shortly, curtly says, he rose and went home.

Jesus authenticates his declaration of forgiveness and verifies his claim of Messiahship by making the man get up and take his bed and go home.

I wonder why Jesus said, pick up your bed and go home. I probably would have liked to get rid of that nasty old thing.

And by the way, he rose and went home. You can't get into the house. It's too crowded in the house.

It's too crowded by the door. And Jesus says, your sins are forgiven. Pick up your bed and walk. And it's like the parting of the ways of the

Red Sea. People just stand back, probably with their lips hanging down to about here, and their mouth open.

And the guy just walks out. Hard to get him in, but it was easy to get him out.

Jesus wasn't just a big talker like the scribes and the Pharisees. And verse 8 says of Matthew 9, and when the crowd sought, they responded rightly at least.

They were afraid. Why? Because God's in my midst and I'm sinful. He's God. It's like Peter on the boat.

It's like Isaiah before the throne of God. And they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

Took up his pallet and walked, and they respond correctly. The other accounts added that they were amazed.

The word amazed in Mark is out of their minds, out of their gourds. It's where we get the word ecstasy.

They couldn't wrap their mind around it. And they're glorifying God. We've never seen anything like this.

And he took what he had been lying on, verse 25 of Luke 5, and went home glorifying

God. And they were seized with astonishment and began glorifying God. And they were filled with fear, saying, we have seen remarkable things today.

Well, there's another round here. Round 2, found in the next set of verses, verses 9 through 13.

And here's why this is strategically located after that last section. Jesus, in the first section, had authority to forgive sins and heal people.

But I wonder, is there a limit to Christ's forgiveness? Just how much would

Jesus be willing to forgive? I mean, this was a paralytic. He was a sinner, yes. He was dead in trespasses and sins.

But he wasn't nasty. He wasn't notorious. He wasn't nefarious. He wasn't horrible.

He wasn't way down on the pecking order of people. And so,

Mark will tell us with Matthew and with Luke gloriously that there are no limits to Christ's forgiveness.

By the way, as I read this, if you're not a Christian today because you think in your mind,

God can never forgive me because I've done the unthinkable, this is going to be good for you because Christ can save the worst.

I think it was Jeffreys who would always, maybe he quoted somebody, but Jesus saves.

There's a passage in the Scripture about, he saves to the uttermost, but he also saves from the gutter most.

And I like that. Before I read Matthew 9 .9,

there's something that's in between there that's found in Mark only. And he went out again by the seashore and all the multitudes were coming to him,

Mark 2 .13, and he was teaching them. So now we're back on this ministry, teaching, preaching.

Out by the seashore, out by the Sea of Galilee, very common thing. The rabbis would walk and speak and the followers would just follow right behind.

Preaching, teaching. We don't know what the message was, but we do know it was from Christ and it was an extended message.

Verse 9 of Matthew 9, it says, and Jesus passed on from there, saw a man called

Matthew sitting at the tax booth. By the way, the way the

Greek is, the word Matthew is kind of minimized. Matthew wrote Matthew and he minimized that himself.

Sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, follow me. Now first passage we had somebody that got up, rose, and glorified

God. And now there's somebody not getting up out of a sick bed, but of a sick bed of sin. And he rose and followed him.

Matthew in the Aramaic means gift of God. And now the gift of God just got the ultimate gift of God.

Follow me. Keep on following me was the command. Not just as a rabbi, but certainly as the

Son of God, follow me. And he rose and followed him. Hopped right up.

This guy was probably employed by the arch villain, the hated

Herod Antipas, the Edomite. That's who he worked for and he collected tolls.

Barclay says there's a saying, Judea is on the way to nowhere, Galilee is on the way to everywhere.

So where do they put tolls? Just before you get to the airport.

Tolls. And the bad news with tax collectors, they were not only dishonest, lying, cheating people, they were

Jews who sold essentially their Judean citizenship to go work for the

Romans to extract money out of fellow Jewish people. They were lowlifes.

Jews despised these tax collectors, not just because they were fraudulent, but because they were traitors.

And here now Jesus says, I want you to follow me as the Messiah. To Matthew, a call to salvation, a call to discipleship, a call to follow him.

And you know Matthew, it doesn't say it. He said, well I've got to go bury my father first. I've got a couple cows in the field.

There have been other excuses that have been given and Jesus had to say to them, let the dead bury the dead. But here

Matthew stands right up. This is what we call the effectual call of God. Follow me.

The grace of God in this command, sovereign authority of Jesus, he had to say yes and by his own volition he says yes.

Luke 5, listen to this, and he left everything behind and rose and began to follow him. How about a lot of money?

How about if I could give you five hundred thousand dollars a year and say, by the way, just say goodbye to it, follow

Jesus. This is a lot of money. It's hard to get another job and impossible to get another job as a tax collector.

This reminds me of Paul when he said in Philippians 3, whatever things were gained to me, those things

I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish in order that I might gain

Christ. Oh, the Jewish leaders are going to love this.

He's got a new disciple, a tax collector. Verse 10 of Matthew 9, let's find out what happens.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, he did that a big feast back in those days in the

East. There's our word again in Matthew, behold, just put yourself there, get a little mental picture of what's going on.

Big feast, who are the people there at the feast? And behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

Luke says it was a great feast. Mark 2 says it came about that he was reclining at table in his house and many tax gatherers and sinners were dining with Jesus and his disciples for there were many of them and they were following Jesus.

Huge meal, Jesus is in the house. How did they all get there? Whose house is this? What's the occasion?

Luke 5, and Levi gave a big reception for him in his house. All right, so Levi says no to his notorious old job, but everybody he used to work with, the other notorious people, he says

I'm gonna have a huge feast, you come over to my house. I have a special guest I'd like you to meet. By the way, isn't this what happens in the heart of a

Christian? When you first get saved, after you're done, are simultaneous with your praise to God that God would forgive you, what do you start thinking about?

Immediately, if other people don't repent, they're not going to heaven.

My mom, my dad, my brother, my sister, my kids, my friends, the people I work with, I've got to tell them.

Matthew gets saved and what does he do? If God's grace can extend to the worst kind of person, then it can extend to other kinds of people no matter what they've done.

And the text here in the original says many, a couple times, many tax gatherers, many of them.

They're just hordes of these people. This is a great thing to do. You get saved, you invite all your cronies in.

This is way better than having a Tupperware party so you can make money off your guests, pampered chef or something.

I know I'm not stepping on anybody's toes. You can have whatever kind of party you want, but I'm saying this is the better party.

When you say, I'm going to invite people over to preach to them. Making money off people in the church?

How about telling unbelievers about Christ Jesus the

Lord? Tax collectors and sinners. Now tax collectors, I talked about just a minute ago, but what does

Matthew mean with the word sinner there? I mean, we say I'm a sinner, you're a sinner, sinners we sin, but what's the technical definition?

The sinners were people who said no to Torah, no to Moses, no to the

Bible, no to the law, and they don't care about law -keeping, they care about breaking it and therefore they were called sinners by these folks.

Everybody's a sinner, but they're specifically sinners because they're just antinomian, running around, no law, no

Torah. They're undefiled, excuse me, they're defiled, they're not clean, and you know tax collectors were great at collecting taxes, and sinners were great at, sinners was a, sinners is a synonym for prostitute, or Gentile, or pagan.

Matthew 11, Matthew 18, Matthew 21, Luke 15. Oh, what do you do for a living?

I collect taxes. Oh, what do you do for a living? I'm a sinner, I sin.

By the way, why did I look at this side of the congregation, your tax collectors and your sinners? How does that make you feel?

Better? Outcasts, misfits, rejects, unclean, what you scrape out of the bottom of the privy pot.

Verse 11, Matthew 9, and when the Pharisees saw this, oh good, he's gonna preach the gospel and some more people are gonna get saved.

That is so good, the worst people are gonna get saved now, hallelujah. They said cowardly, by the way, to his disciples, guilt by association.

Why does your teacher eat and eat with tax collectors and sinners? It's like when my kids disobey and I say to my wife, look at what your kids are doing again.

Well, I would never say that. Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Just imagine them putting their lip up when they'd say that word, sinner. Luke 5, it says, and the

Pharisees and the scribes began grumbling at his disciples. This is over the top, this is last resort, associating with these people that are horrible.

They're going to influence you. Pharisee even means separated one, and now Jesus is joining practically these people.

Not because Jesus is joining with them to say, oh we love your sin or I love your sin, but he's going to be preaching to them repentance, just like he did to Matthew.

That's what Matthew wants. Verse 12, but when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician.

You think you're well, don't you, Pharisees? That's what he's talking about. But tax collectors and sinners know they're sick.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means.

Boy, that stings. He's saying this to the leaders. Go back and study your

Hebrew concordance. Go back to your systematic theology Hebrew. Go back there.

Man, that stings. The other day I was riding my bicycle and I actually said to myself,

I've been feeling well, so it was a short ride, and I thought, you know, it was about a year ago I got stung on the bike. I haven't got stung in a year.

I kid you not. And in slow motion, I could see about 20 minutes later, super hot out, right?

I had my jersey just unzipped just a hair, and I see this black hornet. I go, this can't be happening.

Into my jersey and down my jersey. Ow! It's stinging me! And then, you know, if there's a bee in the car, you have to be careful because you're gonna crash.

And now there's a hornet in my jersey, and I'm riding a bike, and you should have just heard me. I was just screaming out.

You know, do you smash the stinger into your chest? What do you do? And with the sting of the hornet, he stings them.

You're supposed to be the teachers. Why don't you go home and learn your ABCs? Because you obviously don't know the

Bible. And now he quotes, just like he does in chapter 12, he quotes Hosea 6 -6, which

I'm calling Jesus' favorite verse. He just uses it often. I don't know if it's his favorite or not.

It's not really a right question to ask. Hosea 6 -6, he quotes, and he quotes it like he's

God because it refers to God back in the Old Testament. I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

He quotes this well -known passage and embarrasses the scribes. He embarrasses the

Pharisees. Go home and learn what this means.

All your religiosity, all your rituals, all your sacrifices mean nothing if you don't have compassion and love.

Thomas Brooks, a Puritan, said for Jesus to refuse to associate with sinners would have been as foolish as for a doctor not to associate with the sick.

Of course Jesus is going to be around spiritually sick people because he's the great physician.

And mark it well, when Jesus is around people that know they're sinful, he's kind, he's gentle, he has a meal with them, he reclines on them in the

Eastern fashion. But when people think they don't need repentance and they think that they're righteous even though they're not, he takes them to school.

And words like woe to you scribes and Pharisees come out 14 chapters later.

The doctor here goes to the sick. This is the grace of God, the sovereign initiation of God.

We call the doctor, I'm sick. This is the doctor making the house call before you call.

I desire compassion and not sacrifice, Jesus quotes. Scathing.

Just as Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, you leaders are unfaithful to God and you're committing spiritual adultery.

Your rituals mean nothing. Your sacrifices mean nothing. Torah keeping without compassion and love mean nothing.

He's condemning the Pharisees. He's condemning the outward religious people. Actually, he's condemning anyone here who thinks they're good enough by their own person, by their own baptism, by their own good works or their own religiosity to somehow stand in God's presence.

I like to ask the question, how good do you have to be to stand before God on judgment day? Well, I can't do it.

I'm sick with sin. Oh good, let me point you to the great physician of our souls. It says in Luke chapter 5 verse 32 of this account,

I have come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. He's not just saying sinners go ahead and keep sinning.

When Jesus has a meal with a sinner, he has a message for them. And what's the message? There's forgiveness to be found through repentance.

And the positive side of repentance is faith, turning from sin and turning unto

God. There's forgiveness to be found. I love this about Christ.

He hangs out with sinful people, but to preach the gospel of them. Luke 7 says, the

Son of Man has come eating and drinking and you say, behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax gatherers and sinners.

Happened all the time. So let me give you some questions as we have to wrap this up.

Time is gone. Questions to end today. Question one, do you associate with ungodly people?

Do you associate with ungodly people? Here we're up here in kind of white bread West Boylston, white collar.

I'm not saying you have to be dear friends with people who are sinners, but I am saying you need to love them like Christ did because God desires mercy and not sacrifice.

This is one of the many, many errors of the Amish besides their moralistic legalism that has no grace at all.

It's to somehow retreat away from everyone else. When Jesus is the one reclining at a feast, you think of the worst sinner you can think of.

You think of people that are the worst, that have just been convicted, that are at the top of your list of saying, you know what?

These are the worst. And the way

God has ordained it is for you to preach the gospel to them, for you to go to them.

C .T. Studd said, some want to live within a sound of a church or a chapel bell. I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.

Number two, second question, are you like Christ in declaring man's greatest need?

That is forgiveness of sins. Congregation, I know you don't, but just let me remind you, don't evangelize this way.

Come to Christ and you'll have a great marriage. Come to Christ, you'll get a lot of money. Come to Christ, you'll have physical healing.

Come to Christ and everything will be set because that need isn't their greatest need.

By the way, if you ever meet some people, and I've met some people like that, what do I have to offer them? Unbelievers can have money, health, and nice marriages.

So what do you tell an unbeliever who has a nice marriage, who has money, who has nice kids, and lives in a nice house?

What can you tell them? You tell them, just like Jesus did, of their ultimate need, forgiveness against a holy

God found in the substitutionary representative work of Christ Jesus, the risen

Savior. Question number three, don't ever...

that's an exhortation, let me turn to the question. Do you remember

God's initiative in salvation? Salvation certainly is of the

Lord. All the credit goes to Him, and if you've got loved ones who need to be saved, rest in the fact that God will use you as well, but it is

God's sovereign initiative to save. That's what it was here in chapter 9 verses 1 to 8, in round 1 in chapter 9 verses 9 to 13,

Jesus seeking the lost. Spurgeon said, sovereign mercy can dash into sinful places and take captives.

How great is that? Free grace can go into the gutter and bring up a jewel.

Divine love can rake a dunghill and find a diamond. There is no spot where God's grace cannot and will not go.

Pile up your walls, bring up the big stones of your iniquity, but Christ shall yet take your citadel and make you a captive.

Plunge into the mire, if you will, but that strong arm can bring you out and wash you clean.

There is not strength enough in sin to overcome His grace. My last question, number four, do you put anything ahead of Christ?

Particularly, let me ask you businessmen, you career people, career ladies.

For Levi, when he thought of Christ and he thought of his occupation, it was over.

And remember, anything that goes above Christ in your affections, whether it's money, work, pleasure, friends, kids, whatever you have to have above Christ, it's simply called idolatry.

Following Christ Jesus, loving Christ more than success, loving

Christ more than family, loving Christ more than job. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?

So today, we've seen Christ Jesus face to face through His Word. Is there anybody like Jesus?

Have you ever met anyone like this? Who could design such a man, who could fabricate such a man, who does things like this, who teaches like this, and who self -sacrificially gives like this, including forgiveness of sins?

If you're a Christian, you ought to say to yourself, hallelujah, what a Savior. And if you're not a

Christian today, today is the day that you need to repent and follow