Introduction
For the benefit of those of you who are joining us today, since July, we’ve been reading through Matthew’s Gospel together. This is basically an eye-witness account of Jesus’ life, and especially the last three years or so of it.
And what we’ve been seeing, particularly over these last few weeks, is that Matthew, writing his Gospel, has been very eager to highlight the authority that Jesus has.
Chapters 5 - 8 expressly mention the note of authority to what Jesus’ says, his authority over disease and sickness, over nature itself and over the dark realm of the occult.
As we step into chapter 9, Matthew’s going to tell us that the authority and dominion of Christ extends still further. So let’s read chapter 9.1-13.
Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”
Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Prayer…
Well, I’ve got just two points this morning; number 1 – get up! And number 2 – follow me! (meaning, of course, follow Jesus).
1. Get Up
This first story we read today tells us that Jesus has authority over sin.
I once had a computer that started to run slowly and crash unexpectedly. It got more and more unstable. I was told that the software on it was infected with a virus. It had to be dealt with before it could operate efficiently again.
That’s what sin is like. A computer virus that makes everything go wrong. Sin is everything we do and say that falls short of God’s perfect standard and it just makes everything in life turn sour.
But Jesus is like antivirus for people; he has what it takes to say to someone, “your sins are all forgiven. It’s like a factory reset; now, you can function well again.”
The problem in Jesus’ day is that the powers that be make it quite clear that, in their view, Jesus does not have the right to forgive sins.
Imagine walking into a Category A prison like Franklin or Belmarsh. Those places are high-security buildings, populated by people doing time for murder, firearms offences, violent robbery, terrorist attacks, rape and drug trafficking.
Imagine you go in and say to inmates there, one by one, “You’re not guilty anymore, your conviction has been quashed, your life sentence is cancelled, and I am granting you today an unconditional pardon and immediate release; come this way to collect your belongings, you are free to go.”
What would the governor and prison officers say about that? I know exactly what they’d say, and it is not the sort of vocabulary you hear in church very often.
Because it’s not your gift to bestow a royal pardon. You don’t have the power to do that. It would be dangerous if convicted criminals were allowed to walk free just because you or I said so.
And this is precisely what the highly qualified religious leaders of Jesus’ day think about him saying to people, “your sins are all forgiven.”
Jesus has no proper qualifications. He never went to theological college. He hasn’t got a doctorate in theology, but he doesn’t need all that.
In v8 people marvel - not at the prestigious university on his CV, or the many letters after his name - they are awed by his authority. He has what it takes to change lives - and that’s what people want.
The teachers of the law watch Jesus forgive the sins of a paralysed man and they say, “Hang on, what’s this about? He says he can forgive sins? How can that be right? Only God can do that. Who does this nobody from Nazareth take himself for?”
And then Jesus heals the paraplegic, who then slowly gets to his feet and walks off with his mat, and people say, “Oh, OK.”
Here’s how this scene is depicted in the TV series The Chosen.
Isn’t it sad, indeed tragic, that instead of applauding what Jesus does in this poor man’s life, the religious people criticise it and find fault.
Unfortunately, cynicism and jealousy are attitudes that are
common in religious circles today.
These teachers of the law have the attitude, “We’re good, you’re bad. We’re the teachers of the law. You’re the learners of the law. You have the needs; we have the solutions. You have the questions; we have the answers.”
I’m OK, you’re not OK. We are literally holier than thou.
And notice, they don’t come with an open mind, curious and inquisitive. Like many people in our society, religious and otherwise, you meet them every day, they have already made up their minds, they have shut their hearts, they are totally unreceptive to the idea that their views about Jesus might be wrong.
Have you perhaps closed your mind? Did those testimonies before the baptisms make you wonder? What if there’s more to all this than I previously thought?
Jesus doesn’t let prejudice and narrow-mindedness set the agenda; he just focuses on the person before him.
“Take heart son,” he says, (v2), “your sins are forgiven.” No other religious leader in the entire history of the human race ever said that. Buddha didn’t. Krishna didn’t. Mohammad didn’t. Nor does the Dalai Lama or the Chief Rabbi.
Other religious figures tend to say things like, “You need to bathe in this sacred river, you have to sacrifice this animal, you’ve got to visit our holy shrine, you must fast every day for a month, or cover your head, or suffer and get reincarnated until you purge your soul. Somehow, you have to make yourself good enough to earn it.”
But Jesus just says, “You are forgiven, because I say so.” This is what we call grace. Being forgiven and welcomed into God’s family is shockingly simple.
To become a Christian and get your past record wiped clean, whatever it is you’ve done, is almost ludicrously straightforward.
There’s no need for any elaborate ceremony, no religious palaver, no long-winded litany, no prolonged self-flagellation, no great sacrifice, no intensive study programme, no weighing your good deeds against your bad deeds, no requirement to go off and slay dragons, no sweating for centuries in purgatory… we just come to Jesus, as we are, empty handed.
And when we do, we find he has already turned towards us. And it’s done. And it’s free. There is no long, nervous, agonising wait while God goes off to consider his verdict. His mercy is instant.
Whenever you feel dirty and guilty, and ashamed, and defiled, you can go to Jesus in simple faith and he’ll make you new again.
In fact, so new, Jesus calls it being “born again.” There’s a new you. That’s what the 4 who were baptised today are so excited about.
Jesus says to this man, “Get up.” Stand up. It is a visible, physical outward response to what God had just done inwardly in his heart. That’s exactly what the 4 who were baptised today have done.
Is it time for you perhaps to stand up and be counted?
2. Follow Me
As
Jesus goes on from there, Matthew writes about an encounter that changes his
life forever. We’re in Capernaum, Jesus’ adopted home town.
Matthew (v9) is the man in charge of the inland revenue booth there and people have to line up and pay their poll tax.
How do you get to be a tax man in Jesus’ day? You put in a bid to the Roman authorities and the contract goes to the highest bidder.
Yes, you actually pay for the privilege of being the most unpopular person in town, but you recoup your investment in no time because you work on commission and you get rich quick by ripping people off for more than they actually owe.
It’s a racket. It’s naked corruption. It’s an open secret. Everyone knows it. But Rome doesn’t care. As long as Caesar gets his money they aren’t bothered.
So people queue up to pay their tax to Matthew at his booth, and they screw their faces up with resentment. They hate him.
Their hard-earned money pays for all Rome’s squalid excesses. Caesar’s drunken orgies and pagan entertainment is all funded by their taxes and it makes them upset.
This is why tax collectors are all shunned as traitors and automatically excommunicated from the synagogue. Even their families disown them.
There’s little doubt that Matthew will have heard about Jesus before. Jesus has already done sensational things in this area as we saw in chapters 4 and 8. Word will no doubt have got around.
Nevertheless, what happens next is totally out of the blue. No one expects it: Jesus walks by, turns and looks at this crooked, money-grabbing ratbag and says, “Matthew, come with me.”
Here’s another clip from The Chosen.
Verse
9 could say that Jesus asked him, or Jesus invited him,
but it doesn’t. It says Jesus told Matthew to follow him. This
is no polite request; it’s a summons. And yet another proof of Jesus’ authority
right there.
Did you know that God loved you long before you ever even thought about him.
It’s not that people just decide to get up and follow Jesus one day as if it all depends on our initiative.
That’s what it feels like to us, but the truth is that behind the scenes, before we were even half aware of any spiritual reality at all, God already knew us, and loved us, and chose us.
He drew us to himself and gave us the gift of faith. Of ourselves, we are totally unable to respond to God; without the grace of God, we are spiritually lost.
“It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2.8-9).
Matthew gets up. He leaves his tax ledger and his piles of coins on the desk. All that was once so important to him; the wealth, the power, the bodyguards, the luxurious lifestyle, that’s over.
His security guy, dressed in his military uniform, is saying, “Hey, wait! Where do you think you’re going? What about all these people in the queue?”
But Matthew doesn’t hear him. He hands in his keys. He doesn’t even know for sure where this will all lead; he just knows he’s never going back.
Have you ever walked away from an old way of life, to follow Jesus? If you haven’t, you should do it today! Nothing is more exhilarating, more freeing, more thrillingly audacious than that.
The next scene is at Matthew’s house. Probably, given his wealth, a prestigious mansion in the posh end of town. He has been with Jesus for just a few hours, or maybe a couple of days, but already he’s learning that following Jesus means accepting his agenda from now on.
Jesus says, “We’re having a party tonight – and, congratulations, you’re hosting.”
That’s quite a big deal. Matthew’s got to tidy his place up and get it ready. He’s not used to doing this; he’s hardly got any friends, remember, because of his job. He has to go out and buy food and drink and napkins.
Then everyone turns up. He has to put up with people spilling red wine on his Persian carpet. Some idiot drops oily hummus on his nice sofa. Someone else neglects to flush the toilet.
Verse 10 says, “many tax collectors and sinners were there.” Some are blacklisted like Matthew and the other tax-gatherers. Others are probably people who lead a notorious lifestyle. It’s a pretty motley crowd. The one thing they have in common is that they’re all excluded from the synagogue.
But Jesus breaks all the rules. He goes out of his way to mix with some pretty colourful people; call girls, alcoholics, petty thieves, street rats, lap dancers, pimps, pickpockets, opium addicts, bandits...
Some of them need to go a bit easier on Matthew’s fine cru Chateauneuf du Pape. Some dodgy looking teenagers in the living room are helping themselves to some of Matthew’s little ornaments.
It’s messy. Things often get messy when Jesus is about. It’s never boring that’s for sure! But Matthew is all in.
But Matthew welcomes everybody with all their chaos and their bother and their noise and he says, “make yourself at home; come and meet Jesus.” And that’s how lives get changed. This is how God works.
But some people are outraged and offended. The establishment don’t get it.
They say to Jesus, “Why are you associating with the riff-raff? You’re supposed to be a man of God! We think it gives the wrong impression.”
And there’s Jesus, completely at ease. Not because he moves to the level of sinners and affirms their godless way of life. But because at last they see, in him, a way out of the mess they’ve made of their lives.
And notice, this is really telling, the people criticising Jesus don’t think that they’re sinners. In v11, it’s “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Sinners is other people. Whenever people go religious, they start to think that others are worse than them. Holier-than-thou…
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t actually disagree that these messed-up people are sinners. They do have sin in their lives and Jesus doesn’t make excuses for it or play it down or make light of it.
In fact, he actually concurs with the religious Pharisees. “Yes, these people need a doctor. Definitely. I agree with you, they really have a lot of sin and brokenness and disorder in their lives. But don’t you Pharisees as well?”
Jesus says, v12, “It is not healthy people who need a doctor, but the sick… I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus didn’t come to run a holy club for the respectable and upstanding. He came to heal broken hearts, mend broken lives, restore broken families and rebuild broken communities.
Jesus went to the religious people, the Pharisees - and he loved them - and then he told them the truth about who they were.
And they replied, “How dare you!” They hated him, they tried to trap him, they argued with him, they plotted against him, they went on to arrest him, they fixed his trial, and in the end they got him crucified.
Jesus went to the messed-up people too; the loose women, the drunkards, the tax collectors and petty criminals - and he loved them too - and he told them the truth about who they were as well.
And they said, “You know what? You’re right, our lives are a wreck. How are we ever going to get out of this mess? We need to change but we just never seem to get out of the hole we’re in. Is there anything that can be done? Can anyone help us? Can you help? You can? Great!” they said.
And Jesus brought transformation every time.
Ending
“Get up!” It’s a command. “Follow me.” It’s a challenge.
As we end, in the same way that Jesus said to the man in the story, “get up,” some of you are going to get up out of your chair this morning and make a response to what Jesus is calling you to do.
And as Jesus said to Matthew, “follow me,” he says it to us too. And most of you here have begun to do that already, but perhaps some have begun to hesitate a bit. Whatever is holding you back, leave it all behind this morning.
Today, Jesus offers a totally brand-new start to everyone who comes to him and humbly asks for it.
Let’s stand to pray and respond…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 8 October 2023
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