He Has Already Made Up His Mind About You

Introduction

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When I first started my faith journey I always struggled with the idea of God forgiving me.

I found it hard to believe that He could forgive and care about me knowing how sinful I was. Or knowing that I had committed the sins that I had.

I didn’t think that God could forgive me after knowing all those things, and that led to me doubting my salvation a lot.

I would question whether or not I was saved and this led me into praying the prayer of salvation over and over again, asking God to forgive me of the same things.

What was really going on was that I wasn’t forgiving myself. I kept bringing up the things that I had done. God had forgotten them. (Psalm 103:12) But it was me who was holding onto them.

And because I was holding onto those things, I couldn’t walk in the fullness of the salvation that God had bought for me. Me not forgetting my old life (old sins) was keeping me from growing in my walk with God.

This also led to me believing many lies of the enemy, that God didn’t care about me or that He was angry with me. Which in the end, actually drove me to fear.

What message I want to relay to ya’ll tonight is that God has already made up his mind about you, He loves you and He has came to forgive you of you sins, no matter how deep or how bad.

You have to make up your mind that God has already made up his mind about you, and not allow yourself or anyone, change that. You have to trust in what His Word says and not what your mind says.

In the Word of God, you are going to see that just like you Jesus made up His mind about a young man, despite what anyone else thought. His mind was made up about Him.

Jesus and Matthew

Mark 2:13–17 ESV

13 He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. 14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. 15 And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Context:

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Prior to His encounter with Matthew Jesus had just healed a man who was paralyzed and He forgave him of his sins. So Jesus had done the full workup on this man. His entire life was changed. His physical life and his spiritual life.

And the religious leaders were so angry with Him, they called Him a blasphemer which basically means they were accusing Jesus mocking the Word of God. Little did they know that Jesus was the Word of God in the flesh!

So Jesus has all these religious leader angry with Him and He decides to go walk to the sea of Galilee. Well He has them and all the other people who had saw Him heal the paralyzed man following Him.

And on the way to the Sea of Galilee, He sees a tax collector by the name of Levi aka Matthew, and He calls Him (as He was passing by) to be one of His disciples.

Tax Collectors:

What you all must understand to get this message is the story behind who a tax collector was in the Bible Times.

In the Bible times, the Jews were currently being ruled by the romans. And the romans were very mean and cruel to the Jews. They would beat them in the streets, and if Jews were ever caught in any trouble it wasn’t anything for a roman soldier to bring out his sword and kill them right there.

The tax collectors were often times more despised by the Jewish people than the romans.

You see the tax collectors worked for the Romans, and they were often times Jewish people themselves. Their jobs were usually voluntary, meaning they were not given this job without a choice, they willingly chose this profession.

And with this profession came many advantages that were not offered by everyday jewish citizens. They had their own personal guard, they had a high income paid for my the roman government, which means they did not have to live in poverty which was the case of most of the Jews in Rome. They basically had it made.

The job of a tax collector was to collect the tax against the people for the roman government. Which means the tax collector had to take a certain amount of money from the jewish people and give it to Rome.

What is important to know is that most of the time this was a set amount of money from the Roman government, but what a lot of tax collectors would do was raise the amount by however much they wanted to over the amount Rome wanted and they would keep the difference.

Example: Rome told them to collect 30 coins, they would collect 40 and keep the 10 left over and give the 30 to Rome.

So the tax collectors were a hated group of people among the Jews because they were taking and stealing from their own group of people.

It would be like if everyone in this room was very poor, and Rome demanded 30 coins from ya’ll and I was the tax collector and I said give me 40. I would be stealing from ya’ll.

Matthew:

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And this was the kind of man that Jesus had just called to follow Him, as He was on the way of the Sea of Galilee.

Knowing what kind of man Matthew was, the amount of sins that He had committed, the amount of people he had hurt, it did not stop Him from calling Him to be his disciple.

Why?

Mark 2:17 “17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.””

In fact, we learn in Romans 5:19 that Jesus came to “call the sinners, righteous” through them having faith in Him.

He Has Made His Mind Up About You

In the same way that Christ made His mind up saving and forgiving Matthew, He has made up His mind about you!

I want you all to know that Romans 8:38-39

Romans 8:38–39 ESV

38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That means that if you do sin, after being saved, do not think that Christ has forgotten you, or that He doesn’t still love you, or that He won’t forgive you. Instead quickly confess to Him what you have done and ask Him to forgive you, then move on! Do not think about it anymore, because He doesn’t! Psalm 103:12 “12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Man Can Do Nothing

In the text in Romans 8:38-39 it says that neither things in the “present nor things to come....nor anything else in all creation” can keep you from the love of God.

We see this same thing in the story of Matthew:

In Mark 2:15-16 we see that Jesus didn’t allow what the religious leader thought about Him hanging out with Matthew and his fellow tax collectors, Jesus went to their house and was dining with them!

Imagine you being a sinner, and Jesus walks into your house and says, “Hey can I come in and have dinner with you?” Imagine how awesome that would be! That’s exactly what happened, He was dining with them and Pharisees were like “Why are you eating with them? Don’t you know they are sinner?”

Jesus could have allowed what they thought to sway His thinking, but He already made up His mind about them, there was no convincing they could do to sway what Jesus had already established in His heart.

So what others think about you, no matter how noble or “important” they may be, their opinion does not matter, because their opinion has zero eternal weight or impact, and they can’t change one thing that God has done or will do for you!

So don’t live by what others say about you, live by what Jesus says about you!

Look at Yourself Before Others

Another lesson that I want you all to learn from this story in Mark is to before you judge someone else, think about yourself and how God has forgiven you of your sins.

Because before you came to Christ, you were in the same boat that they are in. Think about how Christ took you in, under His wing. Even when you like Matthew gave Him every reason not to.

The Pharisees were so judgmental towards these sinners because they failed to see their own mistakes. Don’t be like the Pharisees.

Conclusion

Romans 8:1 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

This was a verse that I held onto closely and frankly still do. Listen to those words, there is no condemnation. Christ does not condemn you He loves you.

This does not give us freedom to sin, but it motivates us more to not sin. Why would you want to sin against someone who loves you so much that despite your sins He doesn’t condemn you.

He is the Holy, Almighty God, He has every right to condemn us, but to all those who place their faith in His son Jesus, they are not condemned. That is the great power of the Gospel.

Before someone believes in Christ they are dead in their sins, but after they believe in Christ they are dead to sin, and alive to God. Meaning that sin, that once ruled and reigned over their life and was keeping them in judgement toward God, is now forever dead.

Give the analogy of king candy in turbo, how king candy is sin. When Ralph comes into the scene and destroys king candy the oppression and bondage that the citizens of sugar rush had was over! That is what Christ has done for you. By His death and resurrection. The power that sin had over you, how you were subject to its temptations you no longer are. Because He gives you strength over it.