Follow Me, Sinner!

Matthew 9:9-13

1.  The Call of Matthew

A.  Matthew, the publican: As a tax collector the local people despised him.  He almost certainly would have gouged the people to line his own pockets.

B.    Levi, the Jew: As a member of the tribe of Levi he could have been eligible for the priesthood but chose to go in almost the opposite direction. Could this have caused him to despise himself?

C.    Matthew, the disciple: Jesus calls him to be a disciple. There is no hesitation recorded. The effect of Jesus’ call is awesome.

2. Jesus Christ, the sinner’s physician.

A.    The sick are in need of a doctor. Jesus states the obvious for the very reason that it wasn’t obvious what his true meaning was. That Jesus came as the doctor to the sick is no sur­prise. But who are the sick?

B.    The death of Jesus is the life of the sinner. Jesus’ death was the cure for a sinful life— from the obvious to the ridiculous—in the eyes of the world.

C.    The resurrection of Jesus gives life to the sin­ner. Jesus being raised from the dead gives eternal life to those called by God. This ben­efit comes to us from the Gospel—in Word and water and bread and wine.

3. Jesus came only for sinners.

A.    Those who do not think they are sinners miss out. It has been said that Jesus came to save the whole world—and that is true. But anoth­er way to say this and get people’s attention is to say that Jesus came only for sinners. This is also true because all are sinners. Those who do not think they are sinners are actually rejecting what Jesus has done for them.

B.    We are all sinners. The Law shows that not only are “sinners” sinners, but all of us have fallen short of the glory of God.

C.    Jesus came for all of us. Therefore we are included in Jn 3:16.

One evening at a mission station in the Belgian Congo, a converted man prayed, “Lord Jesus, thou art the needle, and I am the cotton.” To the missionary this seemed strange language, and so he asked the man what he meant by his unusual words. It turned out that the man had visited the mission school that day and watched the girls sewing. What interested him most was that the thread always followed the needle. In the same way, he wanted to follow Jesus wherever he led.

When Jesus tells us to “follow me,” he wants to have us so close to him at all times, so completely yielded to him, that we follow him as directly and dependently as the thread follows the needle (David F. Burgess, compiler, Encyclopedia of Sermon Illustrations [St. Louis: Concordia, 1988] 80).

A news magazine once published a little piece on “The Toughest Job in the World,” a refer­ence to making decisions. I share it with you here, replacing the words “making decisions” with “being a disciple.” It reads:

It can be more fatiguing than a day of stonecut­ting. It can be more nerve-racking than a day of heart surgery. It can bring success, happiness, life ... or failure, unhappiness, death. In today’s security-conscious society, it’s a job fewer peo­ple want to tackle. It’s not for the faint-hearted who are afraid to fail It’s not for the reckless who can be dangerous. It invites ridicule, criti­cism, and unpopularity. But without it the world stands stilt It is the lonely, ulcerous, pre­carious job of being a disciple. (Quoted in Burgess, 62)

In the future, the most important test of the Christian church may not lie in the wisdom of our planning or the skill of our preaching but in the plain, stubborn, devoted commitment of people like ourselves, who are not wise enough or good enough to deserve the name of Christians but who resolve to follow Christ in everything that we do.