Isolated No More

Intro

Matthew 9

Good to be with you

Who is tired of quarantine?

No matter how you feel about it, whether you think it’s necessary or not, I think we ALL agree that we don’t like this!

We were not made to live like this! We NEED to be with people; glad we are able to do so (soon)

But it’s going to look and feel different; but that’s okay, God’s people are resilient, and his church has survived a lot worse.

But it’s going to be different. And maybe that’s a good thing. I think this is a great chance for us to evaluate WHO we are as a church, and what we should look like.

I don’t mean what our schedule will be, what programs/events we will start and when…I mean what YOU and I should look like as we make up the church, God’s people, on a daily basis.

How can we BEST engage the world around us?

What we’re going to see today is two very different opinions about how the people of God should interact with the world, and specifically with those that are far from God.

Those that are lost in sin, those that behave very differently than the people you sit next to in church. Those that maybe you give a wide berth to when you walk by them on the street.

If we aren’t careful, we become a church that is quarantined from the world; isolated from those that need Jesus the most.

We rationalize it in all sorts of ways, but the end result is that we end up looking a lot like the pharisees that we are going to read about today.

Matthew 9 Context

Context: Jesus has just preached The Sermon on The Mount in Mt. 6-7

Flipped much of the religious worlds understanding on its head.

made enemies of the pharisees, religious leaders of the day; they did NOT want the status quo to change.

Then, at the beginning of chapter 9, he goes a step further, and REALLY makes the pharisees mad.

He not only heals a man, he tells the man that his sins are forgiven;

Well, they insisted that only God could forgive sins, and could not tolerate Jesus claiming to have this power.

Began looking for ways to condemn Jesus; testing him, trying to catch him slipping up

begin in vs. 9

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.

Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector to be his disciple.

At this point, Jesus could have had any number of more ‘qualified’ students to become his followers.

But he chooses Matthew. If you’re familiar with this passage, you know just how scandalous this would have been.

Tax collectors were hated.

Jews that were hired by the Roman government to collect taxes from their own people. They would pay the Roman government a flat rate for the right to become tax collectors. Anything they collected above this flat rate was pure profit for them.

They were HATED for this; seen as traitors.

they were stealing from those they collected taxes from, knowing they had the Roman army to back them up if anyone complained.

This led to a deeper hatred for tax collectors.

It became an idiom of the day; calling someone a “tax collector” was to call them the worst kind of sinner.

So much so that they were not even allowed to be a witness in a court of law, because it was assumed they would be dishonest.

And this is who Jesus chooses to follow him.

Not the best student of the law, not the highest ranking young pharisee. This tax collector.

And Matthew gets up and follows him. I hope you stop and think about how big a deal this is.

Jesus knew the fallout that might come from this, yet he chose Matthew anyways.

Jesus Sees More than Our Sin

When Jesus looked at Matthew, he didn’t see a traitor; a thief; a greedy, selfish man; even though Matthew was probably all of those things.

He saw more. He saw that Matthew was created by God, and was loved by God. He saw someone who needed to hear the truth about who Jesus was and why he came.

Jesus sees more than our sin. When he looks at you, he doesn’t just see you as your worst mistake.

Those things you struggle with, that you just can’t seem to stop doing; he sees more than that. He sees you as his creation, someone he loves, and desperately wants a relationship with.

So if you don’t know Jesus, know that when he looks at you, it’s not with disappointment or anger, it’s with love.

And if you DO know him; if you have been saved by him; don’t you think we should look at people the same way he does?

That we should see MORE than their sin? MORE than the easiest label we can affix to them?

The church is in real danger of looking more like the Pharisees than Jesus if we don’t get this right.

We HAVE to look past people’s sin, and see them instead as someone that God desperately wants to save.

Thank goodness that Jesus saw past Matthew’s sin.

That he didn’t just see a tax collector, a sinner.

Matthew would be an incredibly useful and loyal disciple to Jesus, author the book of Matthew, a text that God used to spread the Gospel around the world, and church tradition tells us he was so committed that he was later martyred in his attempts to take the good news to new places.

Jesus saw something in Matthew that no one else saw. He looked past his sin, and saw what he could be in the hands of God.

How many people do we look past because of their sin? How many “Matthews,” are out there? How many people have we written off as “too far gone?”

There’s no such thing as “too far gone,” with Jesus.

If we change how we see people, it will change how we treat people. That’s exactly the example we see Jesus give in the next few verses.

Matthew 9:10-11

Matthew 9:10–11 ESV

10 And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

1. After he invites Matthew to follow Him, Matthew invites Jesus to dinner.

And Matthew, who has heard of Jesus teaching, heard of his miracles, heard that he has even been offering FORGIVENESS OF SINS, invites all his friends to come meet Jesus, too.

Well, what type of friends do you think a man like Matthew had?

They were fellow outcasts of society, called “tax collectors and sinners,” in v. 10.

Just like with Matthew, Jesus was more than happy to associate with these people. He looked past their sins, looked past their reputation, and gladly attended the party Matthew has thrown for him.

When the pharisees see this, they are shocked! They ask his disciples, “what is he doing? Why would he do that?”

They aren’t curious; they are outraged! They don’t understand how Jesus can claim to be sent by God, and then also dine with this type of crowd.

I think Jesus example here is a great reminder for those of us that are called to represent him to the world around us;

Jesus Didn’t Wait for People to Come to Him

There were of course times that Jesus spoke, and the people came.

Lots of stories of large crowds coming to him.

But he understood that there were also times when he needed to go to them, and meet them where they were.

Many Christians today think that our job is to open the church doors and invite the world to come to us;

Historically in America, this wasn’t a bad strategy.

From 1937-1976 church membership in America never fell below 70%, and it was still 69% as late as 2000.

Now, that number has dropped over 20% points over the last 20 years, less than half of Americans say they belong to a church.

The number of Americans describing themselves as Christian has dropped 12% in the last decade alone.

The world is NOT going to come to the church any longer. The church in America has been lulled to sleep by decades of being a majority, of being influential, of being necessary for any societal standing; but those days are gone.

And is you look at Christianity historically, this was always the outlier; the exception to the rule.

That’s why Jesus instructs us to go to the world with the message of the Gospel, not wait for them to come to us.

This mindset of expecting sinners to come to us can lead to isolation from the world, and for many of us, it has.

Think about it for yourself; if the Pharisees were around today, would you be at ANY risk of being accused of dining with tax collectors and sinners, like Jesus was?

We often try to sanitize our faith, and isolate ourselves from the sometimes messy work of sharing the Good News with those who need it; but that is NOT the example Jesus left for us.

Maybe now more than ever, the temptation has never been greater to only interact with those you know, those who are like you, those you can trust.

But that isn’t what Jesus did, and it’s not what his people should do either.

Obviously, it might be tough to find ways to emulate Jesus while we are all on lock-down; you can barely go out to dinner with your family, much less with a group of others!

But we should be constantly looking for opportunities to interact and cross paths with the lost.

Do your neighbors know Jesus? Have you ever even asked?

Do your co-workers?

Do you take time to look for opportunities to share Jesus with the lost, or are you more focused on staying comfortable, avoiding any messy situations or messy people?

This was what the pharisees did. They acted holy and righteous, but turned up their nose at any who they saw as less righteous than them.

Look how Jesus responds to the pharisees, who are so shocked by his actions.

Matthew 9:12-13

Matthew 9:12–13 ESV

12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Just before this story, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus has claimed that he is able to forgive sins, something only God can do.

And so the pharisees are then at a loss as to WHY someone who claims to be not only sent from God, but God himself, able to forgive sins, would be keeping company with a group of people like this.

And Jesus gives them a simple and clear answer.

“I am a physician that has come to offer healing to the sick.”

Here is what he means by this.

ALL of us are infected with the sickness of sin the moment we are born.

The bible makes it clear that ALL have sinned, and ALL of us deserve to live an eternity apart from God as punishment for our sin.

But as Jesus reminds the pharisees in v. 13, God desires mercy. He wants to give mercy to all who would receive it.

So Jesus says that he came to heal the sick, not the healthy, and to call sinners, not the righteous.

Now, is Jesus here saying that there are some who are not sick, or some who are not sinners?

Of course not.

What he’s saying, somewhat ironically, is that the Pharisees, and others who see themselves as righteous, are in no position to receive salvation from God.

Instead, only those who have recognized their need, who understand that they can have NO righteousness on their own, can be saved.

There is no place in the kingdom of God for those who think they don’t need a savior.

For those who think they are good enough on their own.

He makes this point to the pharisees by quoting the Old Testament, which they were so familiar with, back to them.

God said, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”

God Desire Mercy More than Sacrifice

We so often view God as this big, angry old man that’s just waiting to strike us down the second we mess up.

And so we react to that by either avoiding him, or by trying to please him through all the good things we can do for him.

This is just a fundamentally WRONG understanding of who God is.

He doesn’t desire punishment, he desires mercy.

Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, he came to save the world.

Jesus wasn’t pleased by the self-righteousness of the pharisees, he was drawn to the self-awareness of the tax collectors and sinners.

The pharisees looked only on the outside. When they looked at people, they judged them by their actions, by their external worth.

Jesus looked deeper. He sees each and every person in this world as precious. As worthy of love and salvation.

The church would do well to be constantly evaluating if we look more like Jesus or the Pharisees when it comes to interacting with the world.

Conclusion

At different points in my life, I’ve identified with different characters in this story. Maybe today, you did too.

You might be hearing this today, and feel like Matthew. Like you are defined by your mistakes.

Feel like when people see you, all they see are your sins.

That is NOT how God sees you. He sees you as his precious creation. As one who he loves dearly.

He comes to you today offering you complete and unconditional forgiveness for all your sins, past, present, and future.

The Bible says that all who repent of their sins, and call out to Jesus for forgiveness will be saved. It’s as simple as that.

Jesus says to you today, “follow me,” just as he did to Matthew. Will you get up? Will you leave your old life behind, and give it to Jesus instead?

Maybe you identify with the Pharisees. You know the truth from God’s Word, but you’ve allowed yourself to become isolated from the world around you.

You got so caught up in rules and obedience, trying to please God with your good works that you forgot that the heart of the Gospel is that God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

Maybe you need to repent of your self-righteousness, and the ways you’ve been viewing other people.

Need to ask God to give you a fresh love for the world, and ask that he give you opportunities to dine with tax collectors and sinners, and share with them the hope that you’ve found in Jesus.

It’s my desire that we be a church that identifies with Jesus. That doesn’t care what the religious think of our activities, and instead seek only to please God by sharing the good news with ALL who need to hear it.

That we would be more concerned with the sick finding healing through Jesus than we are with our own reputation or good-standing with those around us.

The church is NOT supposed to be quarantined from the world!

Why do we have churches full of Christians that act like they have to social distance from sinners?

This is NOT how Jesus lived, and to follow him means to follow his example.

You never know what can happen when we are willing to share the Gospel with the sinners and tax collectors of the world. God can do amazing things with the people we would think the least likely to accomplish them.

There’s an organization you may have heard of called Youth For Christ. It was founded in 1946, and has the simple mission of taking the gospel to teenagers and college students around the globe.

As you can imagine, some cultures, and some countries are more receptive to their work than others.

One of the countries that Youth for Christ first began ministry in was India, back in 1947, before India had even gained its independence.

This was an uphill climb, to be sure. This is a culture that is saturated in hinduism and other religions, and it can be difficult to make headway with the gospel.

But eventually, doors began to open, and ministers for Youth for Christ were able to begin making relationships with young people across India.

Fast Forward to 1963.

One of the ministers for YFC is on the way to the hospital to visit a young man who had come forward at a recent rally, but had still not decided to follow Jesus.

This 17 year old had a bright future.

His Father was high ranking government official, they belonged to a very high caste.

Had a great life laid out in front of him.

He had heard some of the teachings of Jesus, but it was lost amongst the religious backdrop of a culture that worships millions of other deities, and he never had much interest in any of it, much preferring to play cricket and tennis than study school or religion.

Despite this, he could feel nothing but depression and emptiness, until one day, he stole a variety of chemicals from his school, went home, and attempted to take his own life.

Through the grace of God, one of the servants in the home found him, and rushed him to the hospital, where this Youth for Christ worker was going for a visit.

There, he was able to again share the gospel with this young man, who was fortunate to even be alive.

And in that hospital bed, Ravi Zacharias first understood the good news that Jesus came to bring, and gave his life to Christ.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias passed this last week at the age of 74. In the 57 years since he accepted Christ in that hospital bed, he would go on to be one of the great Christian thinkers and preachers of the last hundred years. For decades, he was a champion of the faith, travelling to over 70 countries, defending the Gospel with logic and love. millions upon millions have heard his preaching.

And it all might not have been, if faithful men and women decided that India was too hard of a place to do ministry. That the people there were too lost, too sinful to try to share Jesus with.

Oh that God would raise another Matthew, another Ravi. That those the world gives up on, and that the religious despise, would hear of the love of Jesus, and be set free from sin.

This is why Jesus came. To seek and save the lost. To offer healing to the sick, and salvation to sinners. He offers it freely to all today. If you desire to be set free from sin, get up and follow him. And if you claim him as your Lord and Savior, let’s see and treat the world around us the way that he did.

Pray