Sermon: The Calling of Matthew - Luke Pierson

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So we are back into Matthew. I'm excited, this passage.

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Joy, can you flip those lights on back there? Thanks, you're the best. I think people want to see their

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Bibles. So we'll be in verses nine through 13 in chapter nine.

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I'm excited to get into this. And I do want to give Claudia a shout out for filling in last week.

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You did an awesome job if you guys missed that. Yes, wherever he's at, he's here somewhere.

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If you guys missed it, I think it'll be up this week on YouTube, so be sure you check that out. So yeah, so like I said, we're gonna be in Matthew nine, nine through 13.

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I'll go ahead and read that passage. As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called

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Matthew sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he rose and followed him.

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And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

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And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

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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.

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I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. I got a quote from Spurgeon, of course

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I do. I can't teach without quoting Spurgeon. He says, our savior king has come to save real sinners.

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He deals not with our merits, but with our demerits. There would be no need to save us if we were not lost.

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The son of God does no unnecessary work, but to those who need repentance, he has come to bring it.

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Before we get into the message, let's pray. Lord, I just thank you again for this opportunity to bring the word to the church tonight.

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I ask that you would speak through me, Lord, that you would use me, use my words,

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Lord, to encourage and strengthen the church. And I ask that you would be glorified in Christ.

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Let me pray, amen. So the first thing

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I wanna look at is the actual, the calling of Matthew. And the context of this section here was after the

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Sermon on the Mount. So it means it was the start of Christ's public ministry. And last time

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Jeff taught, he did, I think it was nine, one through eight. And if you look at verse eight, it says the crowds were afraid and then glorified

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God. And they were afraid because Christ spoke with an authority that was unheard of at that point.

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So just as a refresher, in verses one through eight, because it's been a few weeks, essentially what happened was

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Christ healed the paralytic, not paralytic, paralytic.

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I hope Jeff watches this. But it wasn't just a physical healing, he healed him spiritually as well.

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He saw the man's greatest need even when the man didn't see it. And he healed both.

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He healed him physically and spiritually. We all know that definition of faith is hope for things unseen.

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Christ saw his faith when no one else could see it. And then he made the unseen visible.

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So he made the man's faith visible through Christ's love and mercy on him.

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Christ made his love tangible for people to see so they would believe in him. He also calls himself the son of man, which is a very unique title.

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It's a messianic title. And only Christ referred to himself as that. You probably know it from Daniel 7, 13 through 14, which says,

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I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man. And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him.

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And to him was given dominion and glory in a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him.

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His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away. And his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed.

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So after healing the paralytic, now that I made fun of Jeff, I'm probably gonna say it wrong at some point, so I gotta be really careful.

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So essentially, the context of getting into verse nine then is Christ, it says he took a boat across the sea to his own town.

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So what that means is he was in Nazareth. He took a boat across the Sea of Galilee. See, I already messed up Galilee.

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The Sea of Galilee to a town called Capernaum, which was right on the coast. And so what we know from the other gospels is that Christ and the disciples were staying there in a house in Capernaum.

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So he gets off the boat, comes to the gate of the city and finds Matthew sitting at the tax booth.

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So that brings us to verse nine. As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, follow me.

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And he rose and followed him. So the two parallel passages in the other synoptics are

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Mark 2, 13 through 14 and Luke 5, 27 through 28. So Mark says, he went out again beside the sea and all the crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them.

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And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, follow me.

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And he rose and followed him. And then in Luke five, after this, he went out and saw a tax collector named

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Levi sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, follow me. And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

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So right now I wanna look at who was Matthew. Again, in Mark two and Luke five, they actually call him

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Levi, the son of Alphaeus. And if we look at Matthew 10,

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Mark three, Luke six and Acts one, they talk about one of the other disciples, James, son of Alphaeus.

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So most likely Matthew was actually James's brother, but not to be confused with James, son of Zebedee or James, the brother of Jesus, who of course is the author of the book of James.

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So that was a popular name. Jim, you would have fit right in with everybody. So that's kind of who

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Matthew was. Levi was most likely his given name. And there's a good chance that Christ actually changed his name to Matthew, which means

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God gives. Christ had a knack for doing that when people would come to Christ.

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They were transformed by the gospel. He would intentionally change your name. You look at Simon, he would change to Peter. Saul, change to Paul.

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And the book of Matthew doesn't actually name himself as the author, but through tradition, we know that he was the author.

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So Matthew was a tax collector. Some of the other versions call him a publican. This guy was the worst of the worst, the scum of the earth.

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He was a completely corrupt IRS agent. Hopefully there's no

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IRS agents here today. At least the

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IRS tries to regulate against corruption, question mark. Just leave it there.

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I'm being generous, that's right. But the way the tax collectors made a living is they would charge extra.

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So they had a certain amount of tax they'd have to charge. They'd charge extra and then skim off the top. That's how they survived, that's how they made a living.

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But it worked more like the mafia even than the IRS today. So that's who this guy was.

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Nobody liked him, right? And if you look at some of the other passages, because of the location where he was at, at the edge of the sea, probably at the gate of the town, he was actually probably a customs agent.

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Other translations say he was at the receipt of customs. So it wasn't even like tax on food or a living tax or anything like that.

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It was like a toll basically to get into Capernaum. You had to pay this guy money to get through the gates.

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For those that travel a lot, can you imagine? Dennis, can you imagine every time you go through your customs, you gotta pay the customs agent just to get through?

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Holy moly, that'd be crazy. Okay, so this guy was absolutely hated by the Jews. The tax collectors, the

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Republicans, hated by the Jews. They were considered unclean to the point where they were unable to even enter the temple.

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So basically, after the Romans would take control of a nation or a city, a town, they would find nationals and make them collect the taxes.

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So this guy is a Jew, and he's collecting taxes from his own people.

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The Romans must have picked people who apparently just didn't have any friends, didn't care, and they just were interested in making money.

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So basically, these guys would prey upon their own people. They'd cheat their own people, and that's how they lived and survived.

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And the reason the Jews hated them because they were essentially doing business with the people that were oppressing them.

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The Holman New Testament Commentary says this. The Roman Empire's practice was to recruit tax collectors from among the people they had conquered.

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These natives worked for the hated oppressor. This made them traders and outcasts among their countrymen.

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But if it was common practice for tax collectors to demand more from their countrymen than was actually due in order to line their own pockets, if the people refused to pay, the tax collector had the threat of the

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Roman military to back him up. Tax collectors in general were known for their greed and lack of conscience.

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So they were thought of as the lowest form of humanity. So not only were they cheating their own people, but they had the

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Roman army backing them up as well. So you can imagine why they were disliked so much. I was trying to think of a modern day example of how that might work here.

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So imagine, say, Canada invaded the US. Just kidding.

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Does Canada have guns? I don't even think they have guns in Canada. They would invade and they'd say, I'm sorry. But on the real, imagine, say,

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I don't know, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becomes our next president. And I don't know, they make

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Russia mad. I know this is really far -fetched. And Putin invades the

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US, takes control of the US. We're under their control, under their captivity. And they go around and take all the

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IRS agents and make them collect taxes from us. That would be kind of an accurate description of who these people are.

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And I'm sure none of us in here would like them people either. So an example here where we see the opposite spectrum of a

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Pharisee and a tax collector is Luke 18, 9 through 14. We all know this passage.

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He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

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So the Pharisees were the righteous and they treated the tax collectors and the sinners with contempt.

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So Christ says, two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by him prayed thus.

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God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

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I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but beat his breast saying,

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God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

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For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

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So you see here Christ using the example. And actually, as we go through Matthew, there's a ton of passages where there's a dichotomy between the tax collector and the

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Pharisee. So keep in mind, Matthew's just sitting there at his booth, minding his own business.

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He's doing his thing. It's just another day at the office, right? And Christ walks up to him, follow me.

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Matthew just gets up and follows him. When Christ says to him, follow me, it's not a suggestion.

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He's not asking him, it's a command, follow me. Essentially, he was saying, come be my disciple.

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So again, Matthew wasn't looking for Christ. He didn't chase after Christ. It wasn't like he knew that Christ was gonna be coming and he was waiting to talk to him.

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And again, Christ didn't ask if he wanted to follow him. He didn't say, hey, you wanna give me a try? You wanna give me a 60 day trial?

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He said, no, follow me. Christ saw him where he was at, and he called him from a life of taking to a life of giving.

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This is a perfect display of salvation. We all know about Lazarus in John 11.

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Lazarus, dead as a doornail, he stinketh, right? Christ says, come forth.

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Lazarus rises from the dead and comes forth. That's the power of Christ's command.

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He raised Lazarus from death to life by just the power of his own words. Al Mohler calls this the elegant simplicity of the transformed life.

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Essentially, there's one command, one answer. So Christ says, come forth, you come forth.

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He says, follow me, you follow him. Notice there's not even a verbal response, but it's an action.

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The following of Christ is an action. Spurgeon says, turn thou me, and I shall be turned.

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Matthew Henry, in his commentary said, he is fond of those that seek him not. Christ spoke first. We have not chosen him, but he hath chosen us.

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He said, follow me. And the same divine, almighty power accompanied this word to convert

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Matthew, which attended that word. Arise and walk to cure the man sick of the palsy.

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Note, a saving change is wrought in the soul by Christ as the author and his word as the means.

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His gospel is the power of God unto salvation, Romans 116. The power of God, the dunamis, that's where we get the word dynamite.

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Now, I mentioned that Christ saved Matthew where he was at. He saves all of us where we're at.

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Some of us, that might be a gradual process. Like me, I grew up in the church. It was a gradual, gradual process.

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There's other people, it's immediate, right? There's a lot of people in this room, I know that came to Christ out of addictions and it was an immediate change, a 180.

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Examples that we have here are Matthew. You look at Paul, a complete 180 in their life.

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Ultimately, God justifies the ends and the means of salvation. He justifies the how, the when, the who.

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And again, he saves each of us exactly where we're at. So again, keep in mind who Matthew was.

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He was completely corrupt. He was, I don't know, Hillary or Trump.

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Just corrupt to the core, right? So within Judaism, there was no hope for him whatsoever.

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He was done. So I can imagine someone in his shoes would just keep living the way they're living.

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There's no hope for me, there's no way for me to be justified. So not only did

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Christ speak to him, but he called him to be one of his closest followers. And like the paralytic,

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Christ knew precisely what it was that Matthew needed. He needed to be transformed, he needed his sins forgiven.

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And again, Matthew didn't ask for it. He didn't even know what he needed. So it says that Matthew rose and followed him.

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Scripture doesn't tell us much other than he rose and followed him. You look at,

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I think it was in Matthew, or is it in Mark or Luke, it says that he left everything. So he just got up, followed him, left everything behind him.

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It was that quick of a change. We can assume that he left his job.

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We can assume that he, that means that he left the power and authority and the money that came with it.

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Apparently he left his name as well. So most likely he didn't return, ever. It's possible, maybe he closed his accounts or whatever, but as far as we know, he didn't return.

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There's examples in the other Gospels of some of the disciples who were fishermen, who actually fished later on after coming to Christ and being one of the disciples, but we never see

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Matthew return to his job. So here's the point I wanna make here, is that following Jesus means you leave everything behind.

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I'm gonna read a few passages here. You don't have to turn to them, but if you wanna write them down. Matthew 10, 34 through 39.

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Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace with a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter -in -law against her mother -in -law.

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And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

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And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

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So again, we see here, if you're not willing to even leave behind your family, you're not worthy to be a disciple of Christ.

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Matthew 16, 24 through 26. That Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

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For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will a prophet demand if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

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Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? And then in Luke 9, 57 through 62.

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And as they were going along the road, someone said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

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To another he said, follow me. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

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Notice the difference between this guy and Matthew. Matthew got up and followed him. This guy said, well,

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I need to go bury my dad. And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

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Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

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Here's another guy who says, I want to follow you, but I need to go say bye to my family. Again, notice the difference between him and Matthew.

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And then Christ says that if you're gonna look back, you're not worthy, you're not fit for the kingdom of God.

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And then Luke 14, 26 through 28. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

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Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

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So I'm sure most of you are familiar with this passage. Christ is not saying that we are to hate our family members, but what he's saying is that if you're not willing to hate them if necessary in order to follow

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Christ, you're not worthy to be his disciple. So do you get it?

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Following Jesus involves all that you are, all that you have, all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, and all of your strength.

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There's no looking back. And as Christ said, you must consider the cost. You might even need to leave behind your eye or your hand.

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Matthew 5, 29 through 30. If your right hand causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

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And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.

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Again, Christ isn't literally saying plug out your eye and cut off your hand. But the point is that if you have something that you cherish more than following Christ, it's better that you lose whatever that is than to lose your life in hell.

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So everything else pales in comparison to Christ. Matthew then follows

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Christ the shepherd as a sheep. Matthew Henry says this call was effectual for he came at the call.

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He arose and followed him immediately. Neither denied nor deferred his obedience. The power of divine grace soon answers and overcomes all objections.

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Neither his commission for his place nor his gains by it could detain him. When Christ called him, he conferred not with flesh and blood, he quitted his post and his hopes of performance in that way.

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So moving on to verse 10. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

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So I love this here. What is the first thing that Matthew does after following Jesus? Throws a party, invites his friends.

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He wants them to hear the good news. So notice that it's not just his tax collectors, friends that are there, but there's sinners, it just says sinners in general.

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Could be a number of things, number of different people. But again,

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I mentioned Mark and Luke tell us that this house is the house that Christ stayed at with his disciples. This wasn't

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Matthew's house, it was Christ's house that he was living at. And Luke tells us that Matthew actually prepared the feast himself.

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The other disciples that were fishermen, they were poor and they probably wouldn't have been able to do that, but him being a tax collector and having more money, he was able to actually throw the feast.

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So you remember when Luke 9 .60 said, and Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

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Matthew's first importance, after putting corruption to death, was to proclaim the kingdom of God.

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So the picture we have here at this meal, is in that setting, in that culture, is one of the most intimate settings to be involved in.

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They're having a meal, they're sitting down, and not just eating, it says they're reclining. So if you guys know anything about that culture, they probably sat on the floor and ate.

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She's probably just laying back, chilling, eating, hanging out, it's a very intimate meal.

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Again, who is there? Jesus and his disciples, and then they're hanging out with the tax collectors and the sinners.

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And these sinners, again, were outcasts. They were considered unclean, unrighteous, the dregs of society.

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Imagine a meal with Jeff and I and the deacons, and Hillary Clinton and her staff.

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That's what you got going on here. Man, I would not be as patient as Christ, if that was the case.

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The new International Greek Testament commentary says this, sinners here should be understood primarily sociologically as identifying those publicly known to be unsavory types who lived beyond the edge of respectable society.

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So righteous people wouldn't have been caught dead at this meal, and I'm gonna explain to you in a minute why.

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Matthew 11, 18 through 19 says, for John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he has a demon.

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We're talking about John the Baptist here. He didn't drink alcohol, he ate locusts and honey, and people said he had a demon.

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So the son of man, verse 19, came eating and drinking, and they say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.

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So Christ came, he ate, and not just ate, but he ate with tax collectors and sinners, and he drank alcohol.

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We'll save that for a different day. Notice it says at the end, yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.

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Proverbs clearly teaches that wisdom makes her own wine of the finest sort.

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Again, that's a different discussion for another day. The point is that Christ was known among the

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Pharisees, among the people, is hanging out with the tax collectors and the sinners. The Holman New Testament commentary says,

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Jesus proceeded to violate the cultural standards of acceptable behavior even further by visiting Matthew's home and by eating with him and many of his tax collector friends, as well as many other sinners.

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Eating together was the deepest form of social intimacy. Normally, no sinner was welcome at a righteous man's table, and no righteous man would consider eating at a sinner's table.

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Jesus had no such misgivings. He displayed his unconditional acceptance and impartiality by participating in this meal.

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So verse 11, and when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with the tax collectors and sinners?

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So notice who's watching. Jesus, the disciples, the tax collectors, sinners, they're hanging out, they're eating, they're having a meal.

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The Pharisees are standing around watching. Talk about no privacy.

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Here we don't even know what that means because everything's walled off. Back then, apparently, the houses were probably more open to the public, or it's possible they were eating in the courtyard.

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But nonetheless, can you imagine trying to have a meal with somebody and then there's like a bunch of people just taking notes.

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They got their scrolls, you know, making a case against Christ. I will say this, as a side note, we here at Apologia know nothing about this.

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Nobody ever stands afar and takes notes, watches for us to make mistakes, never.

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Nobody's gonna be watching this later, judging everything I'm saying right now. Moving on. So in their eyes, in the eyes of the

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Pharisees, Christ was promising salvation to the wrong people. These terrible, filthy, unclean sinners didn't deserve to be justified.

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They didn't deserve to be in the temple. Spurgeon, in his commentary, Matthew says this.

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Here was a fine opportunity for the sneering Pharisees. They insinuated that the Lord Jesus could be but a sorry person, since he drew such a rival around him and even allowed him to be his table companions.

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They were very careful of their company when they saw them, for they thought that their superior holiness would be debased by allowing sinners to sit with them.

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And now they have a handy stone to throw at Jesus while he eats with publicans and sinners.

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So this is exactly why the Pharisees or anybody that considered themselves clean or righteous would not be caught dead at this meal, because they would be associated with sinners.

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So notice who the Pharisees ask. In a sheer act of cowardice, they ask the disciples, not

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Christ. They don't go to the horse's mouth. They say, hey, dumb, dumb disciples, what's with your teacher over here eating with these tax collectors and these sinners?

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That's not the right way to go about it. As a side note, if you have an issue with someone, obviously you go to that person.

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You go to the source. And you certainly don't speak publicly first without going to the source.

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You don't, I don't know, write a news article without talking to the source first and completely misconstruing the situation.

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So the Pharisees, in asking Christ, were probably asking them sarcastically, but their intent was probably to cause division even amongst the disciples.

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Another side note, if you here at Apologia ever have an issue with Jeff or I, please come to us directly.

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Please don't go to the deacons and ask them, hey, why did Jeff say that? Or why did Luke do this?

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Please come to us directly. Ultimately, the beef that the

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Pharisees had was with Christ and not with his disciples. So two points I wanna make here. One, again, if you have an issue with someone, you go to the source.

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But two, if you're always ready to give an apology or a reasoned defense for the gospel, as we should be here, if someone takes issue with you, it's most likely the issue is with the gospel and it's with Christ.

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That is, of course, unless you're acting like a big meanie. But it should be, the issue should be with Christ.

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And that should free us to be able to defend the gospel without trying to defend our dignity.

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Matthew Henry says, they that quarreled with him were the Pharisees, a proud generation of men, conceited of themselves and censorious of others, of the same temper with those in the prophet's time, who said, stand by thyself, come not near me,

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I am holier than thou. They were very strict in avoiding sinners, but not in avoiding sin.

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This is important. None greater zealots than they for the form of godliness, nor greater enemies to the power of it.

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They were for keeping up the traditions of the elders to a nicety and so propagating the same spirit that they were themselves governed by.

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So the Pharisees hated sinners so much and they loved their own righteousness so much that they were actually physically grieved over the repentance of these sinners and these tax collectors.

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They actually wished ill will against Christ to the point that they were willing to misrepresent him.

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So clearly they knew what was happening at this dinner. They didn't ask the disciples because they needed the information.

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They knew what was happening, but they sought to critically identify

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Christ with the sinners. And identifying Christ with the tax collectors would have been a huge win for them.

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It would have been like, I think it was Spurgeon said, it would be a big rock they would have to throw at Christ.

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So the New International Greek Testament commentary said, the Pharisaic approach to being pure before God involved active separation from sinners.

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On the analogy of communicable ritual uncleanness, one avoided contamination from contact with morally suspect elements of Jewish society as much as possible.

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So the Pharisees then viewed Christ as contaminated, as unholy, as unclean, as one with these sinners.

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So moving on to verse 12, we talk about the great physician. But when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

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So I love this here. The Pharisees again are talking to the disciples, probably standing out or on the outside of the gathering, kind of whispering, hey, disciples.

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And I imagine they're whispering to the disciples and then you see like Christ like, he hears them, he knows what's going on, he knows their hearts.

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So here he refers to himself as a physician because he came to heal the sick because those who are well don't need a doctor.

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But in this, Christ actually acknowledges the Pharisees' assessment of the sinners.

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Yes, they're sinful. Yes, they need to be healed. They're sick. But instead of spurning them, instead of neglecting the contaminated people, he sees these sinners as people that need help.

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Clearly here, Christ is referring to the sickness as a spiritual sickness, not just physical.

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Matthew Henry says, sin is the sickness of the soul. Sinners are spiritually sick.

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So our original sin, our sin nature, our corruption is disease of our soul.

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And our outward sin, our transgressions and our physical wounds or the eruption of that disease.

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And thankfully, God has not left us incurable. That is why Christ came, the great physician, because he had the cure.

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If you think about this, in that day, if you were sick, you probably died. It wasn't like if you got a flu or a felon hit your head or whatever, you could just run over to the

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ER. Like if you got really sick, there's a good chance you would die. And we look at the ministry of Christ, there's many instances where Christ, the great physician, cured physical disease.

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And the reason he cured those physical diseases was in order to heal the spiritual disease. So again, he uses this medical analogy following a medical miracle.

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Remember, last time Jeff taught the paralytic, he healed them, him.

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But he healed him in the most important way, eternally and spiritually. He cured his condition of sin.

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Matthew Henry says, Jesus Christ is the great physician of souls. His curing of bodily diseases signified this, that he arose with healing under his wings.

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He is a skillful, faithful, compassionate physician, and it is his office and business to heal the sick.

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This is precisely why that he then went to the sinners. The sinners knew they were sick, so he went to them, because they would listen.

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Matthew Henry again says, the more sensible any sinners are of their sinfulness, the more welcome will

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Christ and his gospel be to them. The Pharisees, on the other hand, they thought they were righteous.

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They didn't know they were sick. They didn't know they needed to be healed. They thought they were well. And not only did they think they were well, but they would not admit that they even needed a doctor.

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They were blinded to their sin, and they actively avoided going to the doctor. Spurgeon says, where should a physician be but among the sick?

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And the New Testament commentary says here, he defended his lack of association with the Pharisees, the healthy, by alluding to the fact that they saw no need for spiritual healing in themselves.

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He was not implying that the Pharisees were righteous, but only that they saw themselves that way. And so were not open to receiving his healing of forgiveness.

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I wanna look quickly at Luke 15, one through seven. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him, and the

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Pharisees and the scribes grumbled. Again, we have the same thing. When you start going through the synoptics, it's just riddled with the

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Pharisees and the scribes grumbling and complaining against Christ, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

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Again, it's the same complaint over and over and over. That's all they had on Christ. You jerk, you eat with sinners.

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That's it, that's all they had. So he told them this parable. What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it.

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And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, rejoice with me, for I found my sheep that was lost.

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Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

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So I don't have time to really dive too much into this passage, but I want to make a quick point.

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The shepherd had lost a sheep. He sought it out and he saved it and greatly rejoiced over it.

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Matthew Henry says, the case of a sinner that goes on in simple ways, he is like a lost sheep, a sheep gone astray.

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He is lost to God who has not the honor and service he should have from him. Lost to the flock, which has not communion with him, lost to himself.

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He knows not where he is, wanders endlessly, is continually exposed to the beasts of prey, subject to frights and terrors from under the shepherd's care and watching the green pastures.

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And he cannot, of himself, find the way back to the fold. Here's the point,

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Christ came to seek and save the lost. Let's look at another famous tax collector.

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Get ready, because I want some crowd participation on this one. Luke 19, one through 10, we all know this story.

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He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus.

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He was a chief tax collector and was rich, just like Matthew. Only this guy was like probably one of his bosses, right?

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He's a chief tax collector. And he was seeking to save who Jesus was, or seeking to see who

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Jesus was. But on account of the crowd, he could not because he was small in stature.

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So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him,

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Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today. So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully.

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And when they saw it, what did the Pharisees do? They grumbled. He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.

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And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything,

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I restore it fourfold. So he wanted to pay everything back, four times what he stole. And Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham, for the son of man came to seek and save the lost.

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So, those of you that grew up in church and went to Sunday school, we all know about Zacchaeus.

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He was what? Wee little man, and a wee little man was he.

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He climbed up in the? For the Lord he wanted to? Nice job.

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Again, notice the grumbling and complaining from the detractors. Why, why were they so upset?

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Because Christ was chilling with the sinners. And again, what is Christ's response?

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For the son of man came to seek and save the lost. This is what

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I want us to get from here. No man has ever been saved that did not know he was a sinner.

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No man has ever come to Christ without acknowledging, repenting, and turning from their sin.

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And it's only God's grace that first allows us to see that. But you cannot come to Christ if you don't know you're a sinner.

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So, verse 13, go and learn what this means.

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This is Christ talking to the Pharisees. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

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I got actually really excited when I started digging into this verse, because I just kind of read over and didn't really catch what was happening.

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So, the Pharisees clearly didn't get what Christ was saying. So, he says, go and learn what this means.

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The Pharisees considered themselves skilled in scripture. If anybody ever had a question about what scripture said, you went to the

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Pharisees. So, Christ is saying this to them. You have the scripture. Now, go and read it and actually learn what it says, because you've completely missed the point.

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Spurgeon says, our Lord, having gloriously defended himself from the insinuations of the proud Pharisees, now carries the war into the enemy's territory.

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He says to them, go ye and learn. And this alone would be distasteful to men who thought that they knew everything already.

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These guys, they thought they knew everything. And Christ is telling them, you don't know anything. You completely missed it.

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You may know this verse in this, it's Hosea 6 -6, which I'm gonna get to, but you may know

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Hosea 6 -6. You may think you know it, but you don't know it. So, he says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

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Again, that's Hosea 6 -6, which says, for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

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So, what we have going on here is Israel was performing the required sacrifices at the temple required by God, but they were only doing it out of duty, not out of love.

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They were doing it outwardly. They were religious. They looked proper, but inwardly they were sinful.

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The whole point of these sacrifices was for them to confess their sins to God, but they were doing that.

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Again, they looked good outwardly, but inwardly they remained unrepentant. God didn't want claims of righteousness, but true, heartfelt, faithful righteousness.

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So, by quoting Hosea, Christ was saying this to the Pharisees they didn't get it then, and you don't get it now.

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The Holman New Testament commentary says, the word sacrifice here represents all the religious motions and rituals the

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Pharisees observed that were meaningless and empty. So, the Pharisees were doing the exact same thing that Israel was doing in Hosea 6, but accompanied by a heart after God, particularly a heart of mercy and compassion, righteous deeds take on positive significance before God.

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In their pride, they were unmerciful, demonstrating that they had no grasp of Jesus' statements.

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So, Christ was not looking for outward, ritualistic sacrifice, which is precisely what the

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Pharisees were doing, but he was looking for inward mercy upon sinners, the same mercy

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God has upon us. In Hosea 6, the word for mercy is chesed, and this is

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God's loving kindness towards his people. It's used a lot in the Old Testament whenever God would show mercy upon Israel when they were acting like fools and sinning against him and forgetting what he had done for them.

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He continually showed them mercy. That's the word we have here, chesed. So, at this meal,

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Christ was actually physically demonstrating this same mercy at this supper towards the sinners and tax collectors.

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Matthew Henry says, Christ's conversing with sinners here is called mercy. To promote the conversion of souls is the greatest act of mercy imaginable.

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It is saving a soul from death. So, by quoting Hosea 6 to the

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Pharisees, he was actually vindicating himself. Finally, the last thing here is he says, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

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So, here Christ now clarifies his physician analogy. He came to call to repentance those who needed repentance.

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He came to save those who were lost, real sinners.

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Spurgeon says he deals not with our merits. I quoted this at the beginning. He deals not with our merits, but with our demerits.

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Christ does nothing unnecessarily. If we're not lost, there's no need for him to save us.

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If men weren't sinners, there'd be no need for Christ coming among them. If the first Adam had never sinned, there'd be no need for the second

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Adam. Again here, Matthew Henry says his greatest business lies with the greatest sinners. The more dangerous the sick man's case is, the more occasion there is for the physician's help.

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So, Christ's focus then is where there is a need for real restoration.

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The so -called righteous, the Pharisees, were not really righteous at all. They only thought themselves to be righteous.

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And the Holman New Testament commentary says we can read some sarcasm and irony into his use of the word righteous when referring to the

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Pharisees. They were not willing to accept his forgiveness and respond to his call.

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The sinners, on the other hand, were aware of their sin and hungered for forgiveness. They responded to his call to true discipleship.

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So, in conclusion, there's three points

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I wanna make. The first one is that following Christ is equal to leaving everything behind.

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You cannot serve two masters. We all know this verse, Matthew 6, 24. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

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You cannot serve God in money, or God in your job, or God in comfort,

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God in your children, even. You can only have one master. There's no such thing as part -time discipleship.

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You can't only be a disciple on Sunday. You must love

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Christ so much with everything that you have that you hate everything else in comparison.

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And as Christ said, you must first count the cost to be his disciple. And he also said, don't look back, because if you look back and you long for the things before Christ, then you're not worthy to be his disciple.

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Second point is that God saves who he wants, when he wants, and how he wants.

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Again, he justifies the ends and the means of salvation. This means that we don't know who he's gonna save, we don't know when he will save someone, and we don't know how he will use us to lead someone to him.

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We're not hyper -Calvinists here. We don't sit on our hands and let

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God save whom he will. We all know this, we're active. We try to expand the kingdom.

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My prayer is that our efforts may be the means that God has ordained for someone to come to him.

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Ultimately, we've all come to Christ because of someone else's God -ordained efforts. I'm gonna ask you guys, please feel free to raise your hand.

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How many of you here have come to Christ because of someone at Apologia sharing the gospel with you?

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That's awesome, praise God. So in order for us to be the means to this end, third point is that we must show mercy to sinners.

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I wanna ask everyone to examine your heart now. So how many of us are doing that?

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Don't raise your hands. But how many of us are doing that? How many of us are showing mercy to sinners? Christ, our

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Savior, was accused of being a friend to sinners. How many of us have been accused of the same thing?

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To be honest, I don't know that I have been accused of that, to my knowledge. Christ wasn't just buddies with the tax collectors and sins.

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He wasn't just their bro, right? He didn't just hang out with them and then just let them go on their way and he went on his way and did his thing.

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He was intentional. He called them to change their lives through faith in himself. He called them to repentance.

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Matthew Henry says, the gospel call is a call to repentance, a call to us to change our mind and to change our way.

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And for this to take place, we must get out of our Christian ghettos. Here in Arizona, we must go across the street.

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We must peek over the wall occasionally and talk to our neighbors. We must love the unlovable and desire the undesirable and have mercy on those looked down upon by society.

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We must show them, the has said, God's loving kindness. The last thing

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I wanna mention here is Marcus was just showing me a video the other day of a famous reform pastor.

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I'm not gonna mention his name, but he was doing an interview on racism and he literally said this.

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I quoted him. He said, if someone came to Christ, he said, I would never send a new believer back to fix the pre -salvation world from which they came.

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And Marcus and I were like, what are you saying? This is precisely what we need to be doing and what we should be doing.

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Now, in this situation with Christ, with Matthew, with the tax collectors and the Pharisees, it wasn't racism, but it was classism essentially.

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The same thing. Racism today is mainly white people not liking black people or vice versa, et cetera.

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Then it was the Pharisees not liking the tax collectors and not just not liking them, but hating them to the point where they wished ill will against them.

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So we need to be bringing the gospel to our surrounding pre -salvation world, which that term is ridiculous to me.

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So pre -salvation world, right? In order to fix racism, in order to fix classism, it's gonna take the gospel.

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It's gonna take someone coming to Christ and going back to that world from which they came and sharing the love of Christ with them just as Matthew did with his tax collector buddies.

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So we need to show them mercy by calling them to repentance. Just as Christ did to Matthew, just as he did to the tax collectors, just as Christ did to the prostitutes, and just as someone did to you and me, if you're a believer here in Christ, someone showed you mercy, showed you that has said by sharing the gospel with you.

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So again, we have no idea who God will save. We don't know when he will save them. We don't know how he will save them.

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But again, my prayer is that God grants us the privilege of being the means for someone else's salvation.

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Let's pray. Lord, I just thank you so much for this passage and thank you for Matthew, Lord, for saving him,

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Lord, and using him as an example of what it means, what true discipleship and repentance looks like,

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Lord. And I just ask that you would give us boldness, give us the love that we need to have to show mercy towards the undesirable and the unlovable.

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And Lord, I ask that you would, if it be your will, that you would use this church,

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Lord, to be the means upon which many, many sheep come to the shepherd.