Only the Sick Need a Physician Matthew 9:9-13

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We have used car salesmen, lawyers, news reporters, and politicians.
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All of these have built reputations of dishonesty and taking advantage of others while benefiting oneself or the group that it belongs to.
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Used car salesmen often do not tell the whole story about a vehicle in order to sell a car and make a profit.
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Lawyers, on the other hand, have a reputation of arrogance, and defense lawyers in particular have a reputation of defending one's innocence when the person that they are defending is not innocent.
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Then we have news reporters that hype a story without all the facts in order to fit a narrative.
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We've all been victims of that as Americans. News in America these days is more propaganda than truth.
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Then lastly, we have politicians. Now once again, there are some good ones out there, and I remind you that as Christians we are called to pray for our governing authorities as Romans 13 tells us, and we should pray for them, even when we don't agree with particular leaders.
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Our aim is to please God, and it pleases him when we pray for those in authority. But as we know, those in authority are often corrupted by power.
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Those in authority have one law for them and another law for the common man. Politicians frequently benefit themselves, they get richer, and they keep their position while they do not keep their promises, and the people suffer as a result.
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At every time in history, there are always positions that carry with them a stigma, a bad reputation in society.
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In the first century, there was one position that had a reputation that stood out in a worse way than any other, and that is tax collectors.
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They were a cancer of society. This morning, we are going to see
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Jesus remarkably call one of these men to be his disciples, and he's going to spend time with the despised of society, just as we sang, just as we heard sung, and he's not going to spend time with people we might have expected him to spend time with.
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At this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 9. We'll be looking at verses 9 -13, and if you're using the
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Red Bible in the pews, it's on page 967. This sermon is titled,
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Only the Sick Need a Physician, and here's our big idea.
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This sermon is calling you to do this, pursue the authentic otherworldly life, pursue the authentic otherworldly life, and we're going to see three character traits how this morning in this text, but before we jump into our text, let me give you a little recap of where we have been.
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Last week, we looked at the story where Jesus healed a paralytic. Throughout Matthew, we have seen
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Jesus do things that only God can do. Our main idea a week ago is that there is only one man that has authority equal to God.
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We had three observations from that text, verses 1 -8 of chapter 9. The first observation is that he alone can forgive sins.
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The second is that some refuse to recognize his unique standing, and the third is that others reverently receive his unique standing.
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Now this leads us back to our text this morning. The text we have already introduced.
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Let's begin by looking at verse 9 together. Matthew 9 verse 9, 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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What we read a week ago is that Jesus crossed the sea of Galilee and returned to his adopted home, his adopted home being
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Capernaum. Remember Nazareth was his hometown, but he wasn't welcome there.
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He was rejected, so Capernaum becomes his adopted home. After Jesus healed the paralytic, he went on from there and saw a man sitting at a tax booth.
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The man sitting at the tax booth is the author of this gospel, Matthew. Jesus did to Matthew what he earlier did to other prospective disciples.
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In Matthew chapter 4 verses 18 -22, Jesus called Simon Peter, Andrew, and the brothers
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James and John. Here in our text this morning, Matthew gives the account where Christ called him.
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It's always interesting reading Matthew, Mark, or Luke because they're called the synoptic gospels, which means that they are similar.
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There's lots of parallels between them where John is a gospel that is different from these three.
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There are two parallel accounts to this one in Mark 2 and Luke 5.
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What we learn in these two passages is that Matthew also goes by another name, the name
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Levi. To go by another name in the first century among Jews was very common.
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For example, the disciple Thomas was called Didymus, and Jesus gave
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Simon another name Peter. Now you may be wondering, as we think about this text, and we think about who
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Matthew is here, why were tax collectors so looked down upon by society?
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Let me read you this description from an author commenting on Matthew and his profession, this profession that had a horrible reputation.
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Matthew was a publican, a man who served occupying Rome against his own people as a collector of taxes.
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By the nature of his position, his first loyalty had to be to Rome. Nationals of a country or province occupied by Rome could buy franchises that entitled them to levy certain taxes on the populace and on travelers.
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A franchise required collecting a specified amount of taxes for Rome and allowed anything collected beyond that figure to be kept as personal profit.
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Because his power of taxation was virtually unlimited and was enforced by the
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Roman military, the owner of a tax franchise, in effect, had a license for extortion, so he could take whatever he wanted.
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For those reasons, the publican were understandably considered traitors by their own people and were usually even more despised than Roman officials or soldiers.
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And as we think about tax collectors, there were two kinds in ancient Rome. The first were called gabbai, and the second, mokis, probably two words you'll never hear again in your life, gabbai and mokis.
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The first group was hated less because they collected general taxes like income tax or property tax, but the second group, mokis, were hated far more.
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People held great disdain for them because they taxed a wide range of things, and they could expand their reach just about as far as they wanted.
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They taxed things like the expenses that come with travel and the expenses that come with businesses.
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They could tax everything associated with those, so let me give you an example of this.
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They could tax your way of travel, whether on boat or through a donkey. They could pretty much find anything to tax that belonged to a person.
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Think of all the fees that we have in our day from the government, and you think, why do we have to pay for this, right?
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This is ridiculous. They had this in the first century, too. The moki tax collector was one who taxed all the extra things.
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Ray was telling me, Ray's not here today, but he was telling me the story of people he knew that went fishing and they caught an illegal fish.
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As they came on shore, someone asked them how their day was and what did they catch. They told him that they caught smallmouth bass, which were illegal, and the man said,
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I work with the DNR and I'm going to take all of your stuff. So he took their boat, he took all their fishing gear, he took their life.
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No, I'm kidding, he didn't do that, but he took pretty much everything. That's what the DNR has authority to do, and these are the kind of people who really get under your skin as citizens.
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There are positions like this in government where people have a lot of authority, and the citizens obviously aren't happy about it.
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But as we think about tax collectors, we can see why they would have had such a poor reputation, and they would have been such a pain in the neck to the people.
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In the Jewish community, tax collectors had an even poorer reputation because they were seen as people who were working on behalf of the
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Romans, enriching themselves while taking advantage of their fellow
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Jew. The Jews were thinking, you don't do that. You find a different profession. You should not become a tax collector.
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Now, you might wonder, which of the tax collectors was Matthew? We don't know for sure, but he was probably the worst kind.
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The Mokeys. How do we know this? We know this may be the case because verse 9 tells us that he was sitting at the tax booth.
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He is out in the open as Jesus walks by. He was out among the people as Mokeys were trying to tax people in any way they could as people carried on with their business.
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The other tax collectors, the Gabbai, would not need to be out as much because they only collected taxes a couple times a year because they collected the general taxes, the property, the income, things like that.
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But Matthew, as Jesus is passing by, is out there among the people. And what
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Jesus does is remarkable. We've already seen him do things that no one else does.
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And he does it here as well. So Matthew, he has a horrible reputation among the
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Jewish people because of his profession. They were considered unclean by the
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Jewish leaders in the rabbinical tradition, just like they considered pigs to be unclean.
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And what was considered unclean was not to be touched. It was not to be associated with. Yeah, look what
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Jesus does. Jesus not only talks to him, but in verse 9, he tells him, follow me.
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He's not just going to spend a minute with the guy. He's telling him, spend your time with me. Follow me.
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He wants this outcast of society to be his follower. This is truly remarkable.
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The stage is being set for the Jewish leaders to be rubbed the wrong way once again.
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If you want to sum up Jesus' ministry, it pretty much was he did good things and the religious people just got upset at him. The Jewish leaders were steeped in tradition.
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And by the way, we see tradition everywhere in religion, in America, across the world.
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And if you see it, they're making the same mistake that the Jewish leaders made. God is not pleased.
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God cares about our heart. Not all these mystical, superstitious traditions.
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These Jewish leaders thought people like Matthew were the scum of society.
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And Jesus calls him to be one of his followers. Remarkable. Who is this man,
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Jesus? He's different from others. He is unimpressed with the people that society adores, the cool, the accepted, the superficial, and the ones that the world treasures.
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Jesus would rather spend time with the people that no one wants to be with. And you can think of those people in your life.
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Think about this. The same one who put the stars in the heavens, the same one who created all those galaxies, the same one who created you and me, would prefer to hang around the despised of society and not the elite, not the celebrated.
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There are elite people in society that want nothing to do with even with us.
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Right? We're just country people, right? Rural people. We're not the treasure of society.
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And yet, Jesus wants to be with us. We are commoners.
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And yet, Jesus, the greatest and most important person who has ever lived, who still lives in heaven, wants us.
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He is so happy to have us as his followers. Now, what we know about Matthew is that he was a big sinner.
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He was a tax collector and the worst kind of tax collector, probably. Jesus is not looking for good people to join him.
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He's not looking for a few good men like the army says. He's looking for sinners who recognize their sin and need for a savior.
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And what he will do by his grace is make that person good. This is what
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Jesus does. He has come to seek and to save the lost. And he will only save the ones that recognize that they are lost.
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Everyone in this room who knows Christ understands this. And if you don't have a relationship with Christ, please understand this.
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The qualification of becoming a follower of Christ is recognizing your wretchedness and throwing yourself onto Jesus, who will gladly take you.
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He loves saving sinners, but he opposes the proud. He opposes the one that think they are righteous.
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And we're about to see that. So we know that Matthew recognized his wretchedness by the fact that he gladly gets up out of his tax booth and follows
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Christ. Now, like many of the narratives we have seen in Matthew, once again, as I already mentioned, there are parallel accounts in Mark and Luke in Luke 528, we learned that Matthew left everything to follow
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Jesus. In the book of Matthew, we have seen thus far the importance of counting the cost.
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The tax collector position that he held would have been lucrative. It was corrupt, largely speaking, but they made a lot of money.
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That's why people were drawn to it. But what Luke 528 tells us is that he left everything to follow
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Jesus. So let me ask you this. What have you given up to follow
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Jesus? Genuine believers leave their old sinful life behind in order to follow
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Christ. We are always at war with sinful desires till the day we die.
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And it is God's design that we move further and further away from those desires.
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But what we must understand is there is a turning from sin when one follows
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Christ. 1 John 3, 9 says that no one born of God makes a practice of sinning.
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My way of understanding that verse, and I think the correct way of understanding that verse is no one born of God is comfortable sinning.
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It's not that you don't sin, it's just that you can't stay in it. You don't want to stay in it. Believers fight their sin.
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They want it gone. One of my favorite songs, and I know it's one of Sean's favorite songs too,
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Come Thou Fount. There's a line in there. This is my favorite line of any song ever written, by the way. Oh, that day when freed from sinning,
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I shall see thy lovely face clothed then in blood washed linen. I shall sing thy sovereign grace.
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Come now, Lord, no longer tarry. Take my ransomed soul away. Send thine angels now to carry.
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Me to realms of endless days. Wonderful song. And that's the cry of a believer's heart.
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Free me from sin. And when Jesus says that he will set you free, that's what he's talking about.
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Freedom from this bondage of sin, this slavery that the world finds themselves in.
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And he says, I want to free you from this. Sin doesn't lead to happiness. Following me does.
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And the song I just sang, unbelievers do not sing this song. They love their sin more than God.
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Unbelievers feel deep sorrow about giving up their sin so they don't give it up.
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And maybe you remember the conversation that Jesus had with the rich young ruler. Later on in Matthew, we will see this,
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Lord willing, in Matthew 19, 20, 21. But let me tell you about this. The ruler, this rich young ruler, came up to Jesus and asked him, what must
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I do to inherit eternal life? And you know what Jesus said to him? He said, sell everything that you have and you will have eternal life.
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We would have expected Jesus to say, believe in me through faith alone. But he didn't say that.
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What he said was sell everything you have. Why did Jesus say this to him? Because he had to give up his sin before he could follow
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Christ. Now, it doesn't mean perfection, but it means I want to turn from this.
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I want to follow you. And the man went away sad because he loved his sin so much he didn't want to follow.
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So believers hate their sin, but unbelievers want to hold on to their sin.
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But the tax collector in our narrative hated his former life, and he gave up everything to follow
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Jesus. He gladly gave up his sin. He didn't want to live this corrupt life, this life of taking advantage of people for his own benefit.
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And we know this because he immediately followed Jesus. And Luke in his gospel says that he gave up everything to follow him.
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The tax collector would have been overwhelmed with his sin. And when Jesus said, come follow me, those would have been such sweet words to him.
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And so he leaves his life to follow Christ. His life was dominated by guilt.
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But now love, joy, peace, hope, and comfort would be his story as he began to follow the only one who can take away his sins and give him a life of forever joy.
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So pursue the authentic otherworldly life. And the first character trait, how is by cutting ties with your former life.
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The second character trait, how is by spending time wisely with the non -religious.
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Verses 10 and 11, we will see this. So Matthew, he leaves everything to follow
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Jesus. And what is his first order of action? Verses 10 and 11 tells us.
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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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So Matthew was so grateful to leave his old life that he threw a banquet for Jesus at his house.
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Mark 2 15 and Luke 5 29 tells us that this banquet was held in Matthew's house.
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The attendees of this banquet were all of Matthew's friends. As we might expect, his friends at this time would have been rough characters.
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He probably had no Christian friends. He just had unbelieving friends. And they were the ones that society looked down upon.
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Verse 10 tells us that the attendees were tax collectors and sinners. The second half of verse 10 tells us that these rough characters shared this meal with Jesus and his disciples.
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And once again, the tax collectors were those who took advantage of others. And when it says sinners here, we could assume that this would have been thieves.
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This would have been prostitutes. This would have been greedy people.
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These would have been the people that society looked down upon. Drunkards would have been in this list as well.
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And the Jewish leaders, those who knew the Mosaic law well, who had all of this rabbinic tradition, these were the people that they looked down upon.
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And yet Jesus is with them. It's interesting to think about this.
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Now, when I arrived on the scene at Eureka Baptist four years ago, I found it interesting that we had a bar only a few hundred yards from this location.
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What people say is there is a bar at every corner in Wisconsin. Is that true, right? As a
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Minnesota person, I have found that to be true over the last four years. And passages like these from scripture came to mind as I started my ministry.
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And you know what I thought? If Jesus were here in body, he's in heaven right now, of course. If he were here, if you were the pastor of Eureka Baptist, he would spend time at KJ's bar.
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After all, when he was in Galilee in the first century, he spent time with the rough characters in the community.
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The people who were said, were dismissed as sinners. In fact, he preferred to spend time with them over the outwardly religious.
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As we are about to see, Jesus had nothing ever good to say about these religious people, but he spent time with the sinners.
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Now KJ's is closed right now, except for Fridays. Mickey and I were there Friday. And they're eventually going to reopen, is my guess.
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But for the first few years I was here, I made it a point to go over there. The Lord gave me some opportunities to talk about Christ.
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And I invited some to church. And what I also like to do is pass out our newsletter. In fact, when
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I was there the other day, one of the ladies, she said, can I have the newsletter? And I said, yeah, absolutely.
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And so she took the newsletter. Then I grabbed another newsletter and put it over there. And I guess that they do read them sometimes.
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So that's good news. And here's a funny story. One of the employees there, early on when
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I came here, was introducing me to some of the people there. And she said, this is our new pastor.
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And they've never even walked in these doors. But they said, this is our new pastor. Now none have come, but we can't give up.
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One who has hung out there for many years may be a future disciple. What we and those who spend lots of time there need to understand is that we all have the same problem.
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We are all sinners in need of a Savior. For those of us who know Christ, we are in a glorious position and heaven bound, not because of what we did, but because of the mercy that God has shown us.
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And he may show it to them also. And he may use us as an instrument to bring that about.
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And they may be closer than people who go to church every Sunday, who just think they're good people.
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Believers are to follow Christ's example in this. Now we need to be wise. Hanging out at the bar doesn't mean drinking like the people at the bar do.
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It doesn't mean taking part in the sinful activities of the people there. But we should seek them out as we walk in wisdom.
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And the Lord may be glad to use us in their lives. Now, in the previous passage, we learned that the scribes thought that Jesus was a blasphemer because he forgave sins.
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What I mentioned is that the scribes were the teachers of the Old Testament, while the Pharisees were a party of Jews that were the strictest adherents to the law.
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Jesus runs into these people again in our text. And we looked at the scribes before and now the
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Pharisees are highlighted. And I already read this, but let me read this again. Verse 11. And when the Pharisees saw this, when they saw
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Jesus hanging out with these people, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
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It's interesting how the Pharisees don't ask Jesus, but they go around him by going to his disciples.
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They saw what he had done already in his ministry, and they knew his reputation, so they were afraid of him.
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They wanted him off the scene, but they were afraid of him. But what they ask his disciples are, what is your teacher doing with these rough characters?
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This question is rhetorical. They weren't innocently asking here. Like, I want to learn here.
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I want to know why is he spending time with these people? They were not asking with sincerity.
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The question was condemning. They believed, of course, he shouldn't be eating with these people.
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If he truly were from God, he wouldn't be eating with these people. He'd be spending time with us. Jesus hanging out with the sketchy characters built him a reputation.
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Earlier in the call to worship, I read Matthew 11, 18 and 19. John the
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Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he is a demon. The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
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They thought Jesus was a glutton and a drunkard, because he hung out with them. His opponents, the
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Jewish elite of his time, thought he was guilty by association.
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But the Jews said, you were to do nothing with these people. They're unclean.
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Remember, a Jewish tax collector was not allowed to go to the temple or any of the synagogues.
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They were considered unclean, just like some animals were considered unclean. And so no
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Jew was to associate with them. The Pharisees believed that Jews were not to associate with anybody that was out of line with the traditions, with their standards that they set up.
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Now, what we have already seen in Matthew is that Jesus has drawn a line in the sand. He's not a politician who's trying to live in both worlds.
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He's drawing a line in the sand here. He's saying, I want nothing to do with these people. And by the way, that needs to happen a lot more in the church in America.
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We need to be drawing lots of lines in the sand and say, you know what? I reject this unhealthy movement.
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Jesus did that. We should follow his example in that. The Jewish leaders were well -versed in the
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Old Testament, but they misunderstood the Old Testament. They were false teachers.
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They did not believe that one was saved by grace through faith alone.
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They did not believe that God's plan also involved the Gentiles. They believed that salvation was through the law and the strictest adherence to the law were the ones that God was most pleased with.
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These were the ones who were heaven -bound. But even though they were outwardly righteous, that is, they didn't have any flagrant sins on their sleeves, they followed the
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Mosaic law outwardly and they even followed their own rabbinic tradition that came after the Old Testament.
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Even though they did all of this, God was displeased with them because God himself is standing before them, the
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God -man Jesus Christ. We know that God is displeased because of that reason.
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He's disgusted with them. These were not loving people. They did not love God. They did not love people, but they were rule keepers.
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In Matthew 23, 23, Jesus said about the Pharisees, they tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.
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As we think about the Pharisees, Christian conservatives need to ask, are we known for our love or are we known for rule keeping?
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I know that historically, I think Baptists have had the reputation of rule keepers, right?
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We don't smoke. We don't drink. We don't play cards. We don't dance.
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We don't go to movies. Now, if that's the test of Christian character, that's a bad thing because those are extra things that are added.
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We're committing the same error the Pharisees are if that's a test of Christian maturity.
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Now, we need wisdom on those things. Maybe, you know, there's some movies we shouldn't go to. We shouldn't excessively drink.
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At times, playing cards is bad. There's certain dancing that's wrong. But just to say outright, nope, can't do that.
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There needs to be wisdom in this, right? And when we talk about Christian maturity, we need to be biblical in the way that we talk about.
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So we need to ask ourselves this question. Are we known for our love or are we known for keeping rules?
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We are 100 % to uphold the truth and you cannot have love without truth. But do people know us as those who look down at the end of their nose?
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Or do people know us as those who truly care about them? Do the non -religious know that we care about them?
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Do we do good to them as Jesus did? Now, this does not mean that we don't offer any judgment.
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We've already seen this in Matthew. We're to look at the plank in our own eye before we look at the speck in someone else's eye.
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But we are to do everything in love. We don't want to be anything like the
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Pharisees. These Pharisees that challenge Jesus are in hell right now. And they thought they were the righteous people of their day.
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There's a slope here, right? You can be like a Pharisee, but you can also be on the other side where everything's just a license to sin.
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Both ditches are equally damning. But we need to be biblical in the way that we look at everything.
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And not fall into either trap. So we are to pursue the authentic otherworldly life.
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And the second character trait, how, is by spending time wisely with the non -religious. And our third character trait, how, we are to pursue the authentic otherworldly life.
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And this is the last one, is understanding the meaning of true righteousness. And we'll see this in verses 12 and 13.
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Now, as the Pharisees ask this question to Jesus' disciples, Jesus overhears what they say. And he responds to them in these verses.
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But when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician. For 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.
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These verses tell us the difference between true religion and false religion.
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Every false religion says that we can do it. That we can earn our righteousness before God because we are good by nature.
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During our last Sunday of 2020, we asked and answered the question, what did you learn in 2020?
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There were many different responses that were given. One that came to mind was total depravity was on full display.
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If there was ever any question about the depravity of man before 2020, 2020 settled it.
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We arguably saw more evil on display in America in 2020 than at any other time in our nation's history.
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Only biblical Christianity says that man is utterly depraved.
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And only Christianity says that God does the work to save us. Not us.
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He does the work. What Jesus says in verse 12 is that those who realize they are sick need a physician.
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And they are in a much better place than the self -righteous religious people that think they're good.
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The self -righteous religious people think, I got this. I'm good. Just like the song that Brianna sang.
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We're well and we're good. And they believe they are good with God based on their own merit, but these people are blind.
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They don't realize how utterly sick they are. They notice the sins of others, but they don't see the mountain of their own sin.
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These people are unpleasant to be around. They are not gracious and they are excessive on the law.
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They love to judge, but they don't really love anyone. Jesus tells them in verse 13 that God cares about mercy and not sacrifice.
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He wants people to be real, not fake. In this verse, Jesus quotes
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Hosea 6, 6, where the prophet said on behalf of the Lord, I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice.
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The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. What Jesus is saying to the Pharisees is that God calls you to be merciful to others, to forgive others, and not to look down on everyone because they aren't as pietistic as you.
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God cares about the heart. This was the problem with many Israelites in the Old Testament.
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They would externally offer sacrifices at the temple, but they did not do it out of worship.
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Those who worship God as they offered sacrifices would also love others. The two go hand in hand. If you're truly worshiping
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God, you're going to be good to people. Proper worship of God always leads to good works, to doing good to others on behalf of God.
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As 1 John 2, 5 says, whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.
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By this we may know that we are in him. But the ones who realize their sickness, they realize how sinful you are.
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This person is ready to have a relationship with your creator. What we and every human must realize is our biggest problem is our sin.
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What is the number one problem in your own life? It's your sin. What's the number one problem in America?
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It's your sin. And the solution to this biggest problem is that there is a physician.
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There's only one physician. He is the one that heals the spiritual disease that we all have.
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In heaven one day, we're going to look back at our life on earth and we're going to say, man, was I a rotten person in so many ways.
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We think so highly of ourselves while we're here. And we're going to look back and we're going to say, I had a long ways to go.
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Because in the age to come, you won't sin if you're in Christ. Which is remarkable to imagine. We don't go a day in our life without sinning.
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And a day is coming where we will never have a day where we do sin. Think about that. So those who know the need for this physician are in a wonderful place because He will heal you.
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He went to the cross to put an end to your sin. And by believing in Christ, it is gone. Psalm 103 verse 3 says that He forgives all your iniquity.
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He heals all your diseases. And then verses 8 through 12 of that psalm say, the
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Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always try, nor will
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He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
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For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear
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Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does
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He remove our transgressions from us. This is what Jesus does to those that realize their sinfulness and seek
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His forgiveness. And what's remarkable is that if you seek God, realizing you're a sinner and you need
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Him, that He is your Savior, John 6, 37, he says, whoever comes to me,
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I will never cast out. So people wonder, how do
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I know I'm among the elect? You want Jesus. That's how you know. So do not see yourself as falsely healthy like the
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Pharisees did. That's a horrible place to be in. Don't see yourself as falsely healthy and deceive yourself.
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But see yourself for what you are, a sinner in need of a Savior. And the beauty is that every sinner that comes to faith in Christ is now considered righteous.
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You are counted righteous through Christ's righteousness, being counted as yours, and you are able to do righteous things through the power of the
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Holy Spirit. And so you are called righteous by God. 1 Peter 3, 12 says, the eyes of the
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Lord are on the righteous. So when God looks at people like the Pharisees, He's disgusted.
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And when He looks at people who are truly following Christ, He's saying, I am pleased with that person.
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That's my child. This is the true righteousness that comes from God. And it's much different from the false righteousness of the
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Pharisees and any religious system, which, by the way, are all of them other than biblical Christianity.
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It's the wrong path and it leads to destruction. Never trust your own merit.
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Only what Christ has done on our behalf. So we are to pursue the authentic otherworldly life.
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And we have seen three character traits. How? This morning. By cutting ties with your former life. By spending time wisely with the non -religious and by understanding the meaning of true righteousness.
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This life, the true life that God calls us to is unique. Man -made religion does not live like this.
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The life of following Jesus is realizing how much you need God and how much He wants you to focus on others, no matter who they are.
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And I think that's one of the ways we know we're doing good with God. Are we loving other people?
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It's a package deal. You love God, you love people. And that's a great test.
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As we see, as we wonder, how are we doing in our walk with the Lord? So may we as a church live this otherworldly way and make a difference right where He has placed us in this community.
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Now, next Sunday, we will return to the topic of fasting. We talked about fasting already in the
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Sermon on the Mount, but we go where the Bible goes, right? The Bible goes there twice, we go there twice. So we're going to do that next
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Sunday. And the question about fasting is going to come from one of John the Baptist's disciples.
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And that'll bring this topic to the forefront again. This time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, thank you,
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Lord, that you sent a physician to this earth. The only physician that can heal us.
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What a remarkable man Jesus is. God came to the earth, the greatest one that there is.
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And he spent time with the weak, the downtrodden, the outcasts of society.
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And when we think about most of the people who come to faith in Christ in the history of the world, they are not the celebrative society.
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They are so often looked down upon. And they are the ones who realize what wretched sinners they are and how much they need
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Christ. And so may we understand that, Lord. If anyone here is not saved, Lord, I pray that they would believe in the
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Lord Jesus this day and be saved. And for those who are, may we be so grateful and praise you for what you have done on our behalf through this physician.
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And may, Lord, we be motivated to live lives of intimacy with you and that the intimacy would show in the way that we treat others.
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That we would treat others as Jesus treated others. Use us to be a light to those who are the outcasts and who know that they're sinners and are in bondage to their sin.
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Use us to set them free. Use us as your vessels. And as Jesus said, the truth will set you free and you will be free indeed.
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Lord, these prayers we bring before you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.