Matthew 9:9: Your Story

Matthew 9:9 ESV

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.

How many times a week do you think about the Roman Empire? This is a question that, thanks to social media, has risen significantly in popularity the past few months. The premise is that women would ask the men in their life, “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?” and they would record the response. The answers ranged from never to multiple times a day, and - thanks to my job of thinking about and proclaiming Christ - I would fall somewhere in the multiple times a week section as I engage with the Scriptures.

One of the things that you probably don’t often think about much is the way the Romans collected their taxes. One of the aspects of the Roman Empire that made them so successful for so long was the way they assimilated cultures into themselves. One of the ways to do this was by making the people of their conquered territories their tax collectors. Instead of having Roman soldiers collect the taxes personally, the people of the conquered territory would be offered a very lucrative job if they would be willing to serve the Romans by taking money from their fellow countrymen. If they wanted to pad the price to pocket some income for their troubles, that was allowed and expected by Rome.

Think about if we had been conquered by a rival nation, may God forbid it.

I’ll use China as an example because they are one of the other major world powers.

if China rose up and was able to conquer America and

they enacted a series of taxes that we had to pay as individual families to help support their empire

Or we would be thrown in prison or executed

And they offered anyone who wanted a guaranteed living and wage the chance to live comfortably If they would help collect and enforce those taxes.

If they skim a little extra off the top for their troubles, there would be no repercussions

Now think about if your neighbor took them up on the offer and they start collecting your taxes, saying you owe more than you know you do.

Think about if your own son or daughter did this.

Think about if someone in this church did this and they started showing up to church in brand new beautiful vehicles, clothes, and jewelry.

Would you be happy to worship God beside them?

We’ve been working through the Gospel account of Matthew for the past few months and we’re about a quarter of the way through. This morning we are introduced to the author, Matthew, for the first time. And he, Matthew, was a tax collector. How in the world did this man, this traitor to his people, become one of the authors of the accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry?

Let’s look at the text together.

9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew

We are in chapter 9 of 28

a quarter of the way through!

And this is the first time we’ve seen Matthew, the guy who wrote the story

This tells us something important

Who is the story about?

It’s got Matthew’s name on it, but its not about him

sitting at the tax booth,

As we already talked about, Matthew was a tax collector

he was a traitor to his people and was hated by other Jews

Surely Jesus didn’t want this guy as his follower!

Jesus walks up to him while he is there at work

and he said to him, “Follow me.”

This is startling!

Now wait just a second Jesus! Don’t you know who this guy is? Don’t you know what he’s done to his own people? YOUR PEOPLE! We can’t trust him! If he betrayed us once he’ll do it again!

Jesus isn’t marked by any anxiety over that though. In John 10 Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd who cares for his sheep and that when he calls for his sheep they listen and obey because they know and respond to his voice.

Jesus isn’t anxious because he knows his lamb, Matthew. Jesus created Matthew.

Jesus isn’t pleading with Matthew to follow him, he’s not overriding Matthew’s ability to choose whether or not to follow, he is simply giving the command to his lamb to follow.

And Matthew rose and followed him.

Luke says that Matthew left everything to follow Jesus

We see immediate obedience from the traitor to follow his master back into the sheepfold.

This should be startling to us to some extent as well! Who expected the traitor to give up everything to follow the man who said not long ago that he doesn’t even have a place to sleep!

But he did follow because he heard his master’s voice and responded to the call!

Brothers and Sisters, your story is not about you.

When sinners who are lambs of Christ hear their master’s call to follow him out of the wilderness, the brambles, and the muck that they have gotten themselves into, it often feels a bit scary. It often feels a bit painful as Christ detangles us from the thorns of sin that have ensnared us and only dug deeper with time. It most certainly is humbling, recognizing that we made a mess of things when we went off on our own and how much work Jesus is going to have to do to make us whole again.

But if we listen as his sheep, that call of Christ draws forth a longing in us. A longing to be reunited with our Shepherd. A longing to be free from our ensnaring sin. A longing to be where we were always meant to be, in a perfect righteous standing before God. And Jesus our Shepherd offers that. He offers it freely, not requiring payment because he actually loves that lamb who has caused him much grief. He actually loves you and wants what is best for you.

He wants to restore you from your rebellious prideful sin to life everlasting. He wants your life to count for something on this earth, making the name of God known through sacrificing yourself for the sake of others.

Sisters, He wants you to be a woman, daughter, sister, wife, or mother who recognizes her true calling to reject all the promises of a perfect life that you are bombarded with every day. All the ways that you are promised happiness if you change your appearance or personality to fit society’s mold, all the things you are told you need to spend money on to be a real and desirable woman, it is all rubbish. Your shepherd is calling you to listen to him! To give up your comforts and ideals to hear his call and to know true womanhood! To give of yourself for the sake of caring for your family. To be thinking of ways to meet the physical and spiritual needs of those around you. To be willing to work, to potentially look foolish, and to give your life for the sake of glorifying Christ! From as early as 111AD we have evidence from the Roman empire that women were boldly going out and serving the Church, glorifying God, even when it meant that they were tortured for information if caught.

Sisters, in so many ways our culture demeans you by either making you feel like you are either less than men, exactly the same as men, or better than men. It’s in the flock of Jesus Christ where you can be a powerful, vital servant for the cause of Christ and to stand in true womanhood. Your call is a call to sacrifice and love, to great effort and thought, to killing the flesh daily, and raising up men and women of Christ whether that is through your own children or being a spiritual mother, sister, or daughter to the members of this church! Your call is to give everything for the sake of Christ!

Brothers, He wants you to be a man, son, brother, husband, or father who recognizes his true calling to leave everything this world has to offer for the sake of knowing Christ. To set aside worldly ideas of what it means to be a man and to look to Christ as the only man who ever embodied manhood perfectly! In Ephesians 5 husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loves the church! Meaning he sacrificed for her! He counted her worthy of his life effort! And to the man of God, the call to sacrifice is the same whether you are a husband or not.

Gentlemen, the call of Christ is the call to true manhood! To sacrifice and love, to great effort and thought, to killing the flesh daily, to raising up men and women of Christ - whether that is through your own children or being a spiritual father, brother, or son to the members of this church! But not for your own sake! For the sake of the true man Christ! Your shepherd, your captain, is calling. Come and see true life! Stand and answer.

Brothers and Sisters, your story is not about you! It is about Christ! Live your lives in such a way that you recognize that! You are called to so much more than earthly comforts and kingdom building. You are called to so much more than living your “best life now”! You are called to leave everything behind for the sake of Christ!

And if your story looks less like Matthew’s and more like an autobiography. If your story is “The Story of Me” and not “The Story of Christ”, then can I implore to consider what changes you still need to make in your life to make your life about JESUS and not about you? Search your heart and be praying for the Holy Spirit to illuminate the sin in your life. If you need to pray then pray. You can pray at your seat, you can come pray and kneel at the front, you can even pull me aside and we can pray together! But don’t keep on in making your story about anything else other than Christ. May none of us come to the end of our lives and say, “I wish I would have made Christ a bigger deal in my life”.

If you are here this morning and your story has never been about Christ then I am calling you to right now to change that. Maybe as I preached this morning you felt that call of longing to follow the Great Shepherd, to be detangled from the sin that has you snared. If that is the case then please, be like Matthew and leave everything to follow Christ. If you don’t know exactly what that looks like and what that means, then please come talk to me! There is nothing more important to me than making it clear what it means to follow Jesus and be a Christian. Change the narrative of your story! May you find true life in Christ. Your Shepherd is calling, and he has not promised you another sunrise. Heed his call!