The Gospel of Matthew. We’re looking at Chapters 9 and Chapter 11. In two weeks, we start the Book of Revelation. In between here and there, a couple of topical sermons in the meantime. Today, we consider the messiness of ministering to sinners. We look to the reading of God’s word. If you please join with me in prayer. Our most gracious God, our heavenly Father, in you alone dwells all the fullness of light and wisdom. We ask you to enlighten our minds by your Holy spirit to truly understand your word, that you would give us grace to receive it reverently and humbly, and may it lead us to put our whole trust in you alone. And this we pray through Christ our Lord. Amen. Beginning in Chapter 9. As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me. ‘ And he rose and followed him. As Jesus reclined a table the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. When the pharisees saw this, they said to the disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
But when he heard it, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Matthew 11. But to what shall I compare this generation like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to their playmates. We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We sing a dirge and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has 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. Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. The word of the Lord. I like Samaritans because they’re good and they help people. I’ve never met a bad one. It’s hard to understand why people in Jesus’ day were so upset with them. And while the IRS may not be everyone’s favorite government office, I don’t have any objections to someone working there. Samaritans and tax collectors are okay people. What’s the big deal with them in the Gospels?
Why would anyone criticize Jesus for working with them? Now, it’s easy for us to appreciate classes of people who we have no real mixing with, no bearing on our lives. But when it strikes closer to home, then we can get bothered. How easy it is for us to see all their faults and exclude them from ourselves. They are sinners, and then they’re sinners. We can look okay when we’re around other respectable sinners. But at people know. They’re too far out for us. It’s easy for us to criticize them and anyone who’s helping them. And yet because the Lord desires love and mercy and not religious showmanship, we are to accept those who challenge our own sensibilities. Now, to get ahead of the objections, love and acceptance is a disposition of the heart. It does not mean acceptance of a person’s sin, nor does it mean that we foolishy trust ourselves to someone where trust isn’t warranted. Trust and acceptance are not the same thing. This morning, I want us to consider who those people were that criticized the ministry of Jesus, and what were their complaints. The Ministry of Jesus to call sinners to himself is everywhere present in the New Testament.
And yet many of those very sinners who were called questioned what he was doing. And We’re looking first at God calling sinners. Jesus enters into the local area of Galilee, the son of a local carpenter. His name was coming to the forefront, and nobody knew what to do with everything that was going on. His teaching with authority, He’s healing the sick. He’s casting out demons. He’s telling everyone that the Kingdom of God is at hand. And this sleepy little provincial lives they had are just getting blown up. Everybody is going out to see what’s happening. And along the way, we read Jesus passed on from there. He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth. Traditionally, Levi and Matthew are assumed to be different names for the same person. Mark and Luke referred him as Levi. Multiple names was a common occurrence in the New Testament. And so Jesus passes him by and he said, Follow me. And he rose and followed him. And Matthew would have likely known who Jesus was. He would have heard about all that was going on. He was a a toll collector who was stationed at a booth where people who came in and out of the town of Capernaum.
And from Mark and Luke, we see that Matthew invites Jesus to his house for dinner. A joyous response given by Matthew as he then invited his friends to come and to meet Jesus. And in verse 10, As Jesus reclined at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with and his disciples. Now, we’re used to hearing about this behavior from Jesus, but think about for a minute. Do you ever say, I’m going to have dinner with a bunch of sinners? That’s strange for us. But Matthew is showing us something about the mission of Jesus, and he’s also speaking the familiar terms of his day. Now, you could speak of sinners generically, meaning everyone, which Matthew does. It could also be a special category story that’s used by the pharisees. Sinners for them is someone who’s religiously unclean, those who stood outside of the Torah, the law of Moses. It included tax collectors, money lenders, steeds, sabbath breakers. It also included poor people, trade people like shepherds. These people were either too busy or too poor or too simple to live up to the standards of the rules of the religious authorities.
They were typically thought of as being outside the community of decent folk. If you were a tax collector, toll collector, you were considered a traitor. To get the job, you had to sell out to the Romans. It was a barely legal trade. Everyone understood that you skimmed off the top to get your share. These people got rich at the expense of their fellow countrymen, and they had the backing of the Roman Army to enforce their unjust practices. The reason these people are at dinner with Jesus is that they had to hang out together. Nobody else wanted them. James Boyce points out that Matthew was politically unacceptable, religiously unacceptable, and socially unacceptable. Here we see the absolute scandal of God’s grace. Jesus accepted Matthew before he did anything for Jesus. His love and his mercy do not have strings attached to them. No preconditions. Now, when Jesus interacted with people, he did not want them to remain where they were in their sins. He did not want to just have them stay that way. He did accept them where they were at. Jesus didn’t just teach them what was right. He also ate and he socialized with them.
For Matthew, a man who would have been a social outcast, his great wealth did not buy him love and acceptance. For the first time, a holy man, a religious man, moved towards him and not away. This is Jesus, the man who moves towards you. He’s not put off by your worst, nor is he impressed with your best. Matthew, a sinner, is called by the Lord to be his disciple. Repeatedly in the life of Jesus, he goes and he hangs out with disreputable people, the sexually unclean, the religiously unclean, the low lives of society. These are the ones that he calls to himself. And it is for this reason that sinners question this approach, this calling. In verse 11, When the pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? And make no mistake, this is not some polite question or inquiry. Pray tell, this is an unusual practice of Jesus. What’s going on there? No, it’s nothing like that at all. It’s an accusation. It’s a criticism. They’re saying this is a bad thing to be doing, Jesus. They’re scandalized. It’s one thing for a religious instructor to instruct sinners.
It’s altogether different to actually enter into their world and to socialize with them. In the writings of the rabbis, a tax collector, if he came into your house, it was considered ceremonia unclean. These steeds and traitors, as they were considered, were not allowed to be in the synagogue. So concerned were the pharisees, we see repeatedly with not breaking the law, that the pharisees would actually make extra rules to keep them safe. It’s likely that the name pharisee derived from this word to separate from. In order to be righteous in their minds, they separate themselves from sinners, especially the worst sinners. We do things like this, too. Of course, we know getting drunk is clearly a sin. And so there are some who say, well, you shouldn’t even drink any alcohol to avoid even getting near the line. Modesty is a virtue, and some justify a form of a Christian burqa to keep from being immodest all under the guise of not being a stumbling block. And on it goes. We fence the law. Now, not all fences are bad, and they’re not all good either. A fence is not a moral law, it’s a precaution.
But how easy it is to make a precaution into a law. And for a pharisey, that’s what they did. You needed to get cleaned up before you could take a bath. What we see is sin is not cured by religion. Sin is only cured by Jesus. In verse 12, when Jesus heard it, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Jesus is making a commonsensical observation. And when he speaks of those who are well or righteous, he’s not saying that there are some who don’t have a need of him because they’re good enough already. He’s talking about those who see their sin as not as bad as other people, those who do not know the Lord’s transforming grace and who think somehow they’re able to do it on their own. Then Jesus quotes from the Prophet Hosea, Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. The pharisees could not see their need of Jesus because of their self-righteousness. They were respectable, religious people who had all their religious teeth crossed and all their religious eyes dotted.
A little later in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus then is speaking about the Ministry of John the Baptist and its rejection by these very people. Jesus takes an illustration from his own day to make a point. He speaks about games children would play. In verse 16 of chapter 11, he says, What shall I compare this generation? It’s like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to their playmates. We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We sang a dirge and you did not mourn. He’s talking about children who are invited to play but insist on getting their own way. They don’t want to play unless it’s their game, and then they criticize others no matter what they do. Then Jesus makes this connection between this and his Ministry in John the Baptist as well. He said, For John, John the Baptist came neither eating or drinking, and they said, he’s got a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, look at him, a glutton, a drunkard, a friend, a tax collector’s and sinners. Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. The good religious people do not want to play with John and Jesus.
They reject their ministries, they reject their message. Why? What’s at stake? The hard-hearted do not want to hear they need to repent of their sins. They don’t want to rub shoulders with those that are actually responding to this good news. They want religion on their own terms, but Jesus is having none of this. He’s not offering religion. He’s offering himself. Now, Jesus did not go around saying, I’m okay, you’re okay. Let’s just celebrate our sinful diversity. He called it sin. He forgave sin, and he said things like, Go in sin no more. He wasn’t blind and indulgent in his acceptance of people. Real love does not want people to remain the worst form of themselves. Jesus accepts sinners and desires to see their lives changed. See, to be a disciple means to hear the call of Christ, to repent of your sins, to believe him, to follow wherever he leads. That’s the good news. Matthew did not stay in his morally compromising job. He followed after Jesus. But what I want us to consider with Jesus’s Ministry to Sinners is the opposition and the criticism he received for doing this. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus was opposed by sinners, especially those sinners who were largely religious people.
Jesus busted through their veneer of respectability. If you’re going to be with Jesus, you need to get used to being around people you might not otherwise ever hang out with. People who think differently than you, people who might smell and are dirty, people who don’t have their lives together, who are from different social groups, who have the opposite bumper sticker that you have, who wear the other shirt, the other hat that you don’t like. The point of understanding who those sinners are, it’s understanding it’s people you don’t like. I don’t have a problem with Samaritans. Don’t know any of them. Don’t really know any tax collectors. I do know people I don’t like. I struggle with them. That’s the point that Jesus is making. When Jesus pushes these boundaries, he’s criticized and he’s dismissed. He’s lazy, he’s a drunkard, he’s demon possessed. He’s a violator of our traditions. When you are a religious person and you’ve come to the point where you’re the Lord of glory has a demon, you’ve made a wrong turn. You made lots of wrong turns. How did you get there? Because somewhere you hate the people that Jesus is reaching out and loving.
There’s something about them that you despise or that brings out something in your own heart that you You have to own yourself. For the record, you’ve heard me say this before, criticism is not a spiritual gift. I’ve looked everywhere, seen all the assessments investments, it’s not included. Throwing bricks is not being prophetic. Some people think that they pointed out the problem, then their job is done. Several years ago, I was walking walking up to start the Sunday service, and a man actually came, even if they’d been downstairs. He sought me out to tell me the toilet was clogged. He was taken aback when I told him the plunger’s right next to it. Rest assured he was not the one to fix the problem. How easy that is to say, Well, I did my job. I told you what the problem was. Now, there are times when we do raise concerns and questions of how we might be ministering to others. There’s a validity to that, but there’s a right way to go about doing it. You’re entering in beside people. You’re coming along with them and not just simply throwing rocks. It’s not usually what’s done.
Most often people throw shade from a distance and grumbble in the corners. Ministry with real people with real problems is always going to be really messy. If you support the Ministry of a Pregnancy Center, it may mean that you’re going to have to make room in your home for a young pregnant teen whose life is a complete shambles. It’s going to be costly. It’s going to be inconvenient. If you want to help those with drug and alcohol addictions, it’s challenging work. You’re going to be lied to, you’re going to be disappointed, you’re going to be let down. It’s a part of that difficult task. But what I can assure you is if you step into a real ministry, helping real people with real problems, you’ll be criticized by those doing nothing. When you ask them, what’s the better thing that you’re not doing that’s so superior to the poor thing that we’re actually implementing? There’s a difference. It’s not a theory. It’s people, real people. If you are not sure about what a ministry is doing, I would just simply tell you, go ask the ministry. Go find out what they’re doing. People lie and cheat and steal, yes, but that’s not a reason for avoiding helping people.
Just because there might be a person that you can’t stand who may be a bell ringer for the Salvation Army, don’t throw out the whole ministry. Because sinners make up ministries. Every ministry has sinners in it who are trying to reach other sinners. This is part of the game. There may be ones that you struggle with. We also know that different denominations are doing some great things in their ministries to people. We can come alongside and not only encourage that and support that, commend that. Commend those who are doing the Lord’s work in other avenues, other lanes. It’s a wonderful thing to see. In the last 14 years of our Refuge Ministry, we’ve actually helped hundreds of abused women. Were one or two of them, maybe not legit? Sure. I’m sure some of them weren’t. That’s the nature of helping any group of people. You’re going to be taken advantage of at times. You’re helping people in need. You might be defrauded. It’s just part. It goes with the territory. I’ll tell you this in terms of the refuge, you have questions. Come talk to me. Come talk to those who are actually a part of it.
Do you know that abusive men are not the best ones to ask about what goes on at the refuge. I see people doing that all the time. We don’t run people to the court to get divorced. We’re not a divorce ministry. It’s a broken ministry of really shattered relationships, where people are coming in, sometimes at the very tail end of things. They have questions to ask. To young people, If God has placed on your heart a desire to serve and to step into the lives of others in some particular way, do it. Be bold. Do great things by the enablement and the power of the Holy spirit in you. And yes, you should probably seek wise counsel and hear from the good input of other people. Zeal without knowledge is not a great thing. But know that you will likely be opposed by others who call themselves Christians. I wish it wasn’t the case, but welcome to ministry. They’re calling Jesus demon possessed and a glutton. They’re going to say things about you. That just goes with the territory. I wish it wasn’t the case. Good, respectable religious leaders oppose Jesus. For you who have been Christians for a while, I just remind you, don’t be an impediment to ministry.
It’s easy for younger brothers to turn into older ones over time. You come and you receive the grace and the mercy of Jesus. You’re like, Oh, my goodness, this is amazing. I’m such a terrible person. And somehow over time, you just build up this self-righteousness and you forget where you have come from. Allow the Lord to soften your heart. To go, yes, I, too, am the chief of sinners. It’s not necessarily maybe everybody’s a pharasy, but I would say that there’s a bad habit of complaining and criticism that can just move us into a dark place. To forget the love and the mercy of Christ, where he says, Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came to call not the righteous, but sinners. And so when we step into those arenas and we’re trying to work and to gather and to be the person of work of Jesus, as he has called us to be to other people as his ambassadors. The disposition that we should have should be the disposition of Jesus. What is that? Jesus stepped towards people. He stepped towards brokenness. He stepped towards sinners.
He stepped towards difficult places. If your first response is to step away from them, you need to question that. If it’s to move away, to move away because these people are unclean, these people don’t have it all together, these people are thinking thoughts and their theology is off or wrong. No. Your first response, step towards them. It may be that you need to step away, sure. But if that’s always your first response, it’s going to take you into places where you become an impediment to what the spirit is doing. Our time is short. We don’t know how long we have the time that God has given to us. And so in the time that remains for you, make it a time that counts for the Kingdom. God has put you in places where he is empowering you to be his voice, his people, his place here to reach out, to do the things of the Kingdom. It’s short. Step into it. Don’t step away from it. Move into those directions. Get into the messiness of lives with people. Don’t play it safe. We don’t stand before the Lord and go, I played it safe. No, step out.
Do. And you will get criticized. You will have opposition, and it will likely come from people in the church, the religious people. But don’t let that slow you down. Because Jesus reached out to you as a sinner. He called you to himself. He called Matthew to come and to follow him. And what did Matthew do? Matthew then went into the world with the rest of the disciples to proclaim the greatness and the goodness and the grandeour of the mercy of God. That we can move towards others because Jesus has first moved towards us. He has demonstrated his love and his mercy by calling sinners to repentance and changing our heart to fill us with a love for people that we struggle to like. Because that is the true power of the gospel at work. Pray with me. Father, we do thank you and praise you. Father, thank you that you have called sinners to your son. And Lord, that you have regenerated hearts. You have granted Father saving faith. You have justified us by faith alone. And Father, we would pray ask that you would help us to have a heart to remember that, eyes to see and ears to hear the wonder of salvation given to us.
Lord, that you would forgive us where we have moved away from others because of our disdain and dislike for them. Father, that you would forgive us for grubby and stingy hearts. Soften them, we would pray. And Lord, that you indeed would be pleased to use us for the glory of Jesus, that his name would be lifted high here in the valley, the state, the nation, and in the world. Father, that the name of Jesus would be lifted up and glorified. We pray that we would be a part of this. And we ask this, Father, humbly before you all in the name of our mighty savior, Jesus. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.