Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Physician’s Scandal: Mercy Over Sacrifice (Matthew 9:9–13)

Transcript

The Physician’s Scandal: Mercy Over Sacrifice (Matthew 9:9–13) · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
0:01
For this deep dive, we are really zeroing in on a story
0:05
from the Gospel of Matthew that, you know, might seem pretty
0:07
straightforward on the surface. A man gets a new job, he throws
0:10
a dinner party, and some critics complain.
0:13
But hidden in this really brief exchange, Matthew 9 verses 9
0:18
through 13 is a spiritual revolution.
0:21
It's all about what true holiness looks like and how
0:24
God's grace actually works in the world.
0:27
It's a perfect snapshot of Christ's ministry, isn't it?
0:29
Yeah, the setting is Capernaum, which funnily enough, means
0:32
Village of Comfort, right? But the events here are anything
0:35
but comforting to the religious establishment of the day.
0:38
We see what looks like a small personal scene, a man being
0:40
called, a meal being shared, a complaint being made.
0:44
But it just exposes this colossal gulf between ritual
0:48
performance and actual spiritual reality.
0:50
So our mission today is to take these 5 verses and try to
0:53
understand them not just as, you know, a historical story, but as
0:57
a real revelation of Christ's redemptive holiness, the
1:00
mechanics of effectual grace, and what covenant faithfulness
1:03
truly means. We're going to take our time and
1:05
let this one confrontation shed light on the entire dynamic of
1:09
the gospel. And Matthew structures this
1:11
narrative so carefully. He's just shown Christ's
1:14
sovereignty over nature, over disease, over demons even.
1:18
And now he introduces a far more dangerous opponent, you could
1:21
say, which is the barrier of human alienation and religious
1:24
self deficiency. This passage really acts as an
1:27
essential bridge. It shows that Christ's authority
1:30
isn't just physical, it's spiritual, it's social.
1:33
So we jump right into the core tension, the Pharisees who saw
1:36
themselves as the guardians of visible purity.
1:38
They look at this meal and they see, well, they see a gross
1:41
moral violation. They see compromise, defilement.
1:45
Yeah, but Jesus is there to reveal that the meal is
1:48
something completely different. It's not a compromise of
1:50
standards at all. It's a full, stunning display of
1:54
redemptive holiness. It signals that the Kingdom of
1:58
God runs on something other than human respectability.
2:01
Right. It runs on the solid currency of
2:03
sovereign grace, and that is a challenge to every single system
2:06
that tries to earn or limit salvation.
2:10
Let's focus, then, on Matthew himself.
2:12
In verse 9, we meet him in a very specific spot, sitting at
2:16
the tax booth. This isn't just, you know,
2:18
mundane office work. We really need to visualize
2:20
this. A man is settled, literally
2:22
anchored to his desk, doing a job that made him a complete
2:25
outcast. Can you paint a clearer picture
2:28
of what the Telenyon the tax booth really stood for in 1st
2:30
century Capernaum? Certainly it was a is a visible
2:34
monument to national treason. Matthew, who is also called Levi
2:37
and other gospels, was a publicanis.
2:39
He didn't just collect basic taxes, he was what they called a
2:41
tax farmer. He bought the right from the
2:43
Roman occupying army to collect taxes and customs duties.
2:46
So the whole system was just designed for corruption from the
2:49
get go. It was built for it.
2:51
Matthew and his colleagues would pay the required amount to Rome,
2:54
and then they were basically free to charge the local people
2:57
whatever they could squeeze out of them.
2:58
They pocketed the difference. So his job was by its very
3:02
nature expletive, and he was collaborating with an enemy
3:05
power. Absolutely.
3:06
To the Jewish people, he wasn't just a wealthy guy, he was a
3:09
traitor. He was getting rich directly
3:12
from the oppression of his own brothers and sisters, and this
3:15
made him socially, religiously and spiritually compromised.
3:19
The sources we have from that period show that tax collectors
3:22
were routinely lumped in with prostitutes and thieves.
3:26
The Mishnah, which is the Jewish law tradition, consider them
3:29
essentially untouchable. I remember reading about the
3:32
specifics of his social standing.
3:34
His testimony, for instance, was inadmissible in any Jewish
3:37
court. That's right.
3:38
The assumption was just that he was in habitual liar and a
3:40
thief. And I think I recall that
3:42
priests would even reject his tides because the money was
3:45
considered dirty, ceremonially unclean.
3:48
Yes, in a fullest sense of the term.
3:51
He was socially dead to the covenant community.
3:54
He had swapped his birthright, his identity as a faithful son
3:57
of Israel, for money and for worldly security.
4:01
He was a man settled in the idolatry of his job and
4:03
completely disqualified by every religious purity standard of
4:06
that day. And it's this man in this
4:08
specific position who becomes the object of Christ's
4:11
unsolicited attention, the text says.
4:14
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew
4:17
sitting at the tax booth. The focus is all on Christ's
4:20
movement. He's not just wandering around.
4:22
He is passing on with this purposeful, sovereign freedom.
4:26
He's not bound by the religious or social map of who is worthy
4:29
and who isn't. That is the key to the entire
4:32
scene. The whole action begins not with
4:34
Matthew looking up or seeking change or feeling some kind of
4:37
remorse. It starts with Jesus looking
4:39
down. The gaze is everything the text
4:41
says he saw, and this is so much more than just a casual glance.
4:44
Right, it's not just noticing. No, it's the gaze of divine
4:47
purpose, of sovereign intention. Jesus sees not only the man
4:52
counting his coins, the tax collector lost in his Ledger,
4:55
but he sees the apostle to be that he intends to create.
4:59
The Kingdom of God advances here through sheer royal initiative.
5:03
This detail gives us a really crucial insight into the
5:05
mechanics of salvation, doesn't it?
5:08
It perfectly illustrates the idea of unconditional election.
5:11
It does. Christ's choice of Matthew is
5:13
based entirely on the free purpose of his own will.
5:16
It bypasses every human qualification, any foreseen
5:19
merit. Matthew isn't appealing to
5:21
Jesus, He's busy on his chosen path of compromise.
5:25
This scene is a dramatic illustration that salvation is
5:27
completely solly day. O Gloria, to God alone be the
5:30
glory, because He initiates the call totally outside of human
5:34
effort or qualification. I mean, if Jesus had been
5:37
looking for the most likely to succeed or the most spiritually
5:40
sensitive. He would have walked right past
5:41
Italian. He wouldn't have even given it a
5:43
second look. And then comes the command and
5:44
it's stripped down to its bare essence.
5:46
Follow me. It is startling in its force.
5:49
The Greek is Akalitheimoy, a present, active imperative.
5:54
This is not a polite invitation to, you know, join a ministry
5:57
program. It's not a negotiation to
5:59
improve your life or some soft suggestion.
6:01
It's a sovereign Fiat. It's a kingly command for
6:04
immediate wholesale allegiance. And Jesus is issuing a command
6:08
that the Sinner who is dead in sin is naturally incapable of
6:12
obeying on his own. Right.
6:13
And this is where the theological depth of the scene
6:15
really comes out. It links directly to our
6:17
understanding of effectual calling.
6:19
The call itself is performative, it creates what it commands.
6:22
Can you unpack that a little more?
6:23
The idea of a performative call. Sure.
6:26
When Christ issues the call savingly by the Spirit, that
6:29
call doesn't just sort of knock on the door of the heart.
6:32
It reaches in, it overcomes the natural enmity that's there, and
6:36
it draws the person certainly into union with Christ.
6:39
This is the very pulse of effectual calling as it's laid
6:42
out in the Westminster Confession, chapter 10.
6:44
You have the outward call, the preaching that anyone can hear
6:47
and resist, but then you have the inward effectual call.
6:51
That's the immediate, irresistible and sovereign work
6:54
of the Spirit that changes the will so that Matthew wants to
6:57
follow. That distinction is so
6:58
necessary, isn't it? Because if Matthew's response
7:01
depended on his own native unregenerate strength or some
7:05
kind of independent free decision of his fallen will, we
7:08
would expect him to hesitate. Oh, absolutely.
7:10
He'd calculate the financial risk.
7:11
He'd try to negotiate the terms. But the text gives us none of
7:14
that. No negotiation, no calculation.
7:17
Matthew's response is immediate. He rose and followed him.
7:20
Grace comes before works, and Christ's lordship creates the
7:24
very obedience that acknowledges it.
7:26
The immediate decisive action just shows that his will was
7:29
supernaturally changed. Discipleship begins not with a
7:33
personal decision to clean up your act, but with a divine
7:36
interruption that reconstitutes your very self.
7:39
Let's really unpack the cost of that immediate rising.
7:42
We often hear about the fishermen, Peter, James and
7:45
John, leaving their Nets, and that was a sacrifice for sure.
7:48
They left their livelihood, but it was an honorable trade, a
7:51
necessary trade. They could, and in Peter's case
7:54
temporarily did return to. Matthew's sacrifice was far more
7:58
ruinous to his old life. He wasn't just leaving a dusty
8:01
boat, he was leaving a lucrative, secure career that
8:04
was guaranteed by the most powerful empire on earth at the
8:07
time. That's a great point.
8:08
Walking away from the till, Lenyon was burning his bridge
8:11
completely. The Romans didn't offer
8:13
severance packages or second chances to defectors.
8:16
He gave up financial security, social power at the table of
8:19
profit for a life of itinerant ministry and eventually a cross.
8:23
He exchanged a life of comfort for a life of discipleship.
8:26
That act of rising from his seat is concrete, visible repentance
8:30
in action. The evidence of the effectual
8:33
call isn't found first in some emotional feeling, but in a
8:36
decisive external change of allegiance.
8:39
That's it. He chose the king over the
8:41
Ledger. This living parable humbles both
8:44
the despairing Sinner and the self-righteous moralist at the
8:47
same time. No Sinner can look at Matthew
8:50
and say I'm too far gone because Matthew is the spiritual
8:53
definition of too far gone. And no more or less can say I'm
8:56
already well because Christ skipped the temple leaders and
9:00
went straight for the traitors. The Lord's saving word is never
9:04
impotent. The whole drama is in that
9:06
contrast. The man who is most attached to
9:09
worldly security and profit immediately sacrifices
9:12
everything at the sound of a simple two word command.
9:15
And it highlights that the object of the call is always the
9:18
person of Christ. Matthew didn't follow a program
9:20
or a new philosophy. He followed the living King.
9:23
And because he followed the king, his entire social world
9:26
had to change. Which leads us right into the
9:28
source of the controversy. Matthew's story immediately
9:31
shifts then. It goes from the call and the
9:33
public sphere to the consequence in the intimate setting of his
9:36
own house, verse 10. And as Jesus reclined at table
9:40
in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and
9:43
were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.
9:45
This Matthew feast is his spontaneous act of repentance
9:49
and evangelism all rolled into one.
9:51
The location, Matthew's house, and the acts of reclining are so
9:54
significant. To share a meal, particularly
9:57
one where you recline, was a posture of settled, intimate
10:00
fellowship. It was a covenantal act.
10:02
It signified peace, acceptance, a shared life.
10:05
Meals were boundary markers in that culture, and Matthew
10:09
immediately makes his house a physical place where his new
10:11
allegiance crashes into his old social circle.
10:13
And it's the guest list that just throws gasoline on the
10:15
fire. Many tax collectors and sinners.
10:18
The Greek is hamartaloy. We have to stop and realize that
10:20
sinners wasn't just a generic label for all of humanity.
10:24
If it were, the Pharisees objection would be pointless.
10:27
Right. The Pharisees used that term
10:29
hamartaloy as a specific sociological and religious
10:32
category. These are people who are
10:34
demonstrably outside the bounds of covenant obedience, either by
10:37
their trade, like the tax collectors, or by their
10:40
persistent disregard for ritual and moral law.
10:43
So, you know, thieves, prostitutes, public law
10:45
Breakers. They were the moral dregs, the
10:47
outsiders within Israel. Exactly the covenant outsiders.
10:51
So by visibly and publicly reclining with them, Jesus is
10:54
making an undeniable theological statement of inclusion.
10:58
This is the scandal of grace. The Holy One of Israel is
11:01
sharing the deepest form of community, bread and intimacy
11:04
with the ceremonially and morally unclean and.
11:07
This gets to the core air of the Pharisees.
11:09
We could call it a quarantine theology.
11:11
Their whole religious system was built on the idea that holiness
11:14
was fragile, easily corrupted by contact, and maintained mostly
11:17
through separation and distance. The logic was simple.
11:20
If a clean vessel touches an unclean one, the clean vessel
11:23
becomes defiled. So for them, true holiness meant
11:26
building high fences and meticulously avoiding anyone or
11:29
anything they deemed unclean. So they practiced isolation as a
11:33
form of piety. Their goal was to keep their own
11:36
hands clean, even if that meant abandoning the wounded on the
11:39
side of the road. And Jesus demonstrates the polar
11:41
opposite of this theology. His Holiness is redemptive.
11:45
It's not threatened by contact with the unclean because he
11:48
possesses the power to cleanse. The analogy is powerful.
11:52
When the sun shines on a dunghill, The dunghill doesn't
11:55
darken the sun. The sun illuminates the
11:58
dunghill. I like that.
11:59
Jesus's presence is mission shaped, It's merciful nearness
12:03
with redemptive intent. He enters the proximity of sin
12:06
to initiate the cure, not to contract the disease.
12:09
And we absolutely need to be sure we don't sentimentalize
12:11
this moment or turn it into an affirmation of lifestyle
12:14
choices. Yeah, his proximity is not
12:16
affirmation. The sources are absolutely clear
12:18
on this. Jesus enters the plague ward not
12:21
because he loves the plague, but because he is the only physician
12:24
with the cure. The text doesn't say he affirmed
12:26
their ways. It's as they came and were
12:28
reclining with Jesus. He's the magnetic center of this
12:31
new community. He draws them to himself for
12:33
transformation, not for endorsement.
12:35
This action, then, requires us to guard against two very
12:38
persistent errors in Christian conduct even today.
12:42
The first is the error of legalistic separatism.
12:46
This is confusing genuine godliness with social distance,
12:49
that fortress mentality where we judge the success of our faith
12:53
by how few sinners we interact with.
12:55
And the second. The second is the error of
12:57
antinomian permissiveness. This uses Jesus's nearness as a
13:01
cloak for moral indifference. It suggests that radical
13:04
inclusion negates the need for repentance or holiness.
13:07
But Christ's mercy is compassionate engagement, and
13:11
it's always governed by the goal of calling sinners into
13:14
fellowship with the holy God. He sits with them to heal them.
13:17
The Pharisees watching all this, they immediately move into the
13:19
posture of accusers, which we see in verse 11.
13:22
They saw this, and it's not just that they noticed it.
13:24
They observed it as a supposed actionable violation of purity
13:28
law. And look at their tactic.
13:31
They don't approach Jesus directly.
13:33
They question the disciples indirectly.
13:35
Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
13:38
It's the classic move of the critic who wants to undermine
13:41
the master's authority by sowing doubt among his followers, all
13:45
while avoiding the risk of submitting himself to the
13:47
Masters. Correction.
13:48
They're prosecutors, not seekers, and their question just
13:52
lays their self righteousness bare.
13:54
For the Pharisees, purity was a defensive boundary.
13:57
It was built to keep themselves safe and their reputation high.
14:00
By maintaining that distance, they define themselves against
14:03
the moral chaos of the Hamartu Loy.
14:05
Their contemptuous language is so telling.
14:08
They treat sin as a tool for their own self exaltation.
14:11
We are not like them. They love the idea of holiness,
14:14
the separation, the boundaries, but they despise the actual
14:17
messy, difficult work of redemption.
14:19
Why do you think that is? Because redemption forces them
14:22
to admit that the problem isn't just out there among the
14:25
despised people. The problem is in here, in their
14:28
own prideful hearts. And what makes their reaction so
14:31
chilling is the total absence of joy.
14:34
A tax collector just torched his entire career to follow a rabbi.
14:38
This is a miracle of conversion happening right in front of
14:40
them, but there's no amazement, no gratitude, just sneering
14:45
contempt. Their religion Can't Sing when
14:47
sinners come home, It can only protest the proximity.
14:50
That sneering contempt is the clearest diagnostic sign of
14:53
spiritual pride. Pride prefers a neat,
14:56
predictable, moral universe where good people associate with
15:00
good people over a messy, unpredictable miracle of
15:03
conversion unfolding at a dinner table.
15:05
Their objection is a deep misrepresentation of God.
15:08
It implies that God's holiness is about avoidance and isolation
15:12
rather than active self giving rescue.
15:14
And that objection, which they intended as an indictment of
15:17
Jesus, actually serves as the perfect revelation of their own
15:19
spiritual sickness. They stand outside the house
15:22
judging the party and set themselves up perfectly for
15:25
Jesus's immediate, paradigm shifting reply.
15:27
He doesn't let the accusation just hang in the air.
15:30
No, he doesn't. He shifts the entire framework
15:32
of the discussion. He moves from the Pharisees
15:34
courtroom where they're the to a hospital where he is the doctor.
15:38
Verse 12. But when he heard it, he said
15:40
those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who
15:43
are sick. It's a brilliant, succinct
15:45
defense. Jesus brings the accusation
15:48
right out into the open and immediately asserts his
15:51
authority to diagnose truly and heal effectively.
15:54
He identifies himself as the Iatros, the physician, and that
15:57
claim is massive. It places him above the Mosaic
16:00
Law and the Pharisaic interpretations because he is
16:03
claiming the unique right and power to address the fundamental
16:07
human problem, spiritual corruption.
16:10
Let's break down that diagnosis of sin, or what we would call
16:12
hamartaeology. By using this metaphor, Jesus is
16:15
identifying the human condition not as some minor deficiency or
16:18
a set of bad habits, but as a lethal, crippling disease, a
16:22
corruption of the soul, a spiritual necrosis.
16:24
Exactly. Sin isn't trivial.
16:27
It's both culpable and evil we consciously commit and crippling
16:32
a ruin we passively suffer. It's a cancer that spreads
16:35
through the entire being. This aligns perfectly with the
16:39
doctrine of total depravity. The sinners at the table, by
16:42
gathering around the doctor, are tacitly acknowledging their
16:45
lethal condition. They are patients who are
16:48
desperate for a cure that their rituals and their money could
16:51
never buy. The logic is just undeniable.
16:54
If they are truly sick, then the only scandal is that anyone
16:57
would try to deny them access to the doctor.
17:00
The presence of the physician in the sick room is proof of his
17:02
competence, not his compromise. But the proverb acts as a razor
17:06
sharp rebuke of the Pharisees. They place themselves into the
17:09
category of those who are well. And this confidence in their own
17:12
spiritual health, their self righteousness, is ironically
17:15
their most dangerous disease. They're suffering from a
17:18
spiritual anesthesia, a condition that's far more
17:20
terminal than the recognized sins of the tax collectors.
17:23
I think we need to linger on that irony for a moment.
17:26
The Pharisees can see the external public symptoms of sin
17:30
in other people with surgical precision.
17:33
The corruption, the open disregard for the law, yet they
17:36
remain completely blind to the silent, lethal tumor of pride in
17:41
their own hearts. They ask why does he eat with
17:43
sinners? And they're completely missing
17:45
the point that their core problem is not proximity to
17:48
sinners, but their distance from God, which is masked by all this
17:51
ritual performance. The most dangerous patient is
17:55
the one who denies the diagnosis.
17:57
They are spiritually anesthetized.
17:59
The real dividing line Jesus draws here is not between the
18:02
clean and the unclean, but between those who confess their
18:05
sickness, the tax collectors, and those who deny it.
18:09
The Pharisees refusing the doctor is the evidence of their
18:11
deadly delusion. They're demanding that Christ
18:14
should only treat those who have already recovered.
18:16
That sets up the core gospel logic so perfectly.
18:19
Christ doesn't wait for the sick to become well through their own
18:22
works or effort. He goes to them precisely as
18:24
sick in order to make them well. And this order completely
18:27
refutes moralism and pelagianism, the belief that man
18:31
has the inherent capacity to heal himself through effort and
18:34
works. Jesus declares that without the
18:37
physician there is no health, there is only the steady decay
18:40
of the soul. He's not just offering advice,
18:43
he's offering intervention. And we have to be sure the
18:45
listeners understand this isn't some kind of liberal
18:47
affirmation. The doctor does not validate the
18:50
disease or call the sickness of valid lifestyle choice.
18:53
Absolutely not. The doctor accepts the patient
18:56
as he is riddled with spiritual corruption in order to make him
18:59
what he is, not a redeemed, sanctified follower.
19:03
The gospel is not you are OK as you are.
19:05
Keep doing what you are doing. The gospel is you are dying.
19:08
But I have the cure, and the cure demands change and
19:10
allegiance. So the condition of sickness
19:12
doesn't disqualify the penitent person, it actually qualifies
19:15
them for mercy. And the very confidence of the
19:18
well may be the only evidence needed that they haven't yet
19:22
truly met the physician who alone can heal.
19:24
And Jesus establishes that his presence among sinners is about
19:28
calling and curing, not compromise or contamination,
19:32
which sets the stage for his ultimate rebuke.
19:34
Having established this physician principle, Jesus then
19:37
shifts the ground of the argument entirely.
19:39
He moves beyond social custom and metaphor and throws down the
19:43
gauntlet of Scripture itself. His answer in verse 13 begins
19:46
with the most stinging command. Go and learn what this means.
19:51
That phrase porosentis methite, go and learn, is extraordinarily
19:56
powerful in its rabbinic context.
19:58
This was not gentle encouragement.
20:00
It was a technical, dismissive formula used by a master to send
20:03
away a student who demonstrated staggering ignorance of the most
20:06
basic tenets of the Torah. So Jesus, the rabbi from
20:09
Galilee, is accusing the professional theologians from
20:12
Jerusalem, the Pharisees, of being biblically illiterate.
20:15
That's right, he's accusing them of being illiterate about the
20:18
very scriptures they claim to guard.
20:20
He is effectively telling them you are experts in minutia, but
20:23
you have completely missed the elementary principle of God's
20:26
character. They had mastery over ritual
20:29
form, but they had spiritual blindness to the heart of the
20:32
covenant. And to back this up, he cites
20:34
Hosea 6.6. Exposing that ancient air that
20:38
had plagued Israel for centuries, elevating external
20:41
religious form over internal moral reality.
20:44
God declared through the prophet, I desire mercy, has
20:48
said, and not sacrifice. This is a classic prophetic
20:52
contrast. We should probably be clear
20:53
about the terms. It's easy to read mercy as you
20:56
know, a soft sentimentality. But what does has said really
21:00
mean in this covenantal context? Has said is much better rendered
21:03
as covenantal loyalty, or steadfast love, or covenant
21:06
keeping faithfulness. It's the powerful love that
21:09
moves toward the needy, often in the face of their unworthiness.
21:12
It reflects the very character of Yahweh toward Israel.
21:15
It's action that's taken out of loyalty.
21:17
So the Pharisees had an intense focus on sacrifice.
21:20
Yes, their meticulous adherence to ritual purity, their
21:23
separation, their tithing. But they abandoned his said.
21:26
They abandoned the love and compassion that was demanded by
21:28
the covenant. So the contrast isn't between
21:30
good works and bad works. After all, God instituted
21:34
sacrificial worship. The contrast is between the form
21:37
of religion, the sacrifice, and the substance of righteousness,
21:40
which is mercy or loyalty. And ritual without righteousness
21:44
is hypocrisy. It's an offense to God.
21:46
That's the entire point. The Pharisees, obsessed with
21:49
building up their personal standard of ritual purity
21:52
through avoidance to sacrifice, completely abandoned the
21:55
covenant of love. That demand they engage with the
21:58
lost, the religious distance, The refusal to eat with sinners
22:01
was not a mark of holiness. It was a failure to enact the
22:05
very mercy and loyalty God demands.
22:07
Applied back to Matthew's dinner table, then, Jesus is saying
22:10
your avoidance of sinners is your failure to practice His
22:13
head. I am here demonstrating the
22:15
merciful character of God that your own scriptures demand you
22:17
understand. Jesus embodies the fulfillment
22:20
of Hosea 6.6 He didn't sidestep holiness by eating with him.
22:25
He enacted holiness by moving toward the unworthy to redeem
22:28
them. He demonstrated that holiness is
22:31
measured by conformity to God's merciful character, not by
22:34
distance from perceived contamination.
22:37
Sacrifice without mercy is not spirituality, it's hypocrisy
22:42
that obscures the very nature of God.
22:44
After that stinging rebuke from the Old Testament, Jesus seals
22:47
his defense with his own mission statement in the second-half of
22:50
verse 13. For I came not to call the
22:52
righteous, but sinners. That phrase I came althon.
22:56
In the Greek it's a strong statement.
22:58
It implies pre existence and a deliberate divine purpose for
23:01
the Incarnation. The Son of God stepped into
23:04
history with the specific intent of fulfilling the Father's
23:06
saving plan. And that mission is to call.
23:09
This links right back to the follow me imperative in verse 9.
23:12
Jesus is not offering a choice here.
23:13
He is summoning people into discipleship, into repentance,
23:16
into the obedience of faith. The Gospel is a royal summons.
23:19
And the declaration not to call the righteous but sinners is of
23:24
course ironic because Scripture tells us there is none
23:27
righteous. No, not one.
23:28
So who are these righteous people that Jesus came not to
23:31
call? They are the ones who think they
23:32
are righteous. They're the ones who use their
23:34
religion, their separation, their ritual as a shield against
23:37
conviction. There are those who treat their
23:39
moral standard as proof of their standing with God, and in doing
23:43
so they refuse the divine diagnosis that they are in fact
23:47
desperately sick. So the true sinners he calls are
23:50
the ones like Matthew who are willing to admit their
23:52
bankruptcy. They are sick and they know it.
23:54
And because of that, they are not offended by the presence of
23:57
the physician. That is the profound barrier.
23:59
Yeah, self righteousness. It is the greatest obstacle to
24:03
the gospel because it refuses the diagnosis and proudly bars
24:06
the door against the only doctor.
24:08
You cannot be saved if you do not admit you are lost.
24:11
So the call is always for those who are willing to repent, and
24:14
Matthew's action of leaving the tax booth is the visual
24:17
definition of repentance, A decisive turning from his old
24:21
self justifying life toward Christ as Savior and King.
24:25
And this principle acts as a dual guardrail against legalism.
24:29
It declares Christ comes for the morally bankrupt, not the
24:32
spiritually credentialed. And against antinomianism, the
24:36
idea that grace means moral indifference, it declares that
24:39
Christ's mercy is fundamentally corrective.
24:41
He calls sinners as sinners, yes, but He calls them out of
24:44
sin and into the path of discipleship.
24:47
The voice that demands following also creates followers.
24:49
This short passage, then, Matthew 9.9 to 13, really lays
24:53
out the whole plan of salvation in miniature.
24:55
We see the source of salvation in Christ's sovereign grace, the
24:58
initiative, the effectual call, and we see the necessary
25:01
consequence, A reordered life, in Matthew's immediate, costly
25:06
repentance. It demonstrates the beautiful
25:09
internal logic of conversion. According to a Reformed
25:11
understanding, justification is by grace alone through Christ
25:15
alone, but that grace never remains isolated.
25:18
Christ receives sinners, and Christ reforms sinners.
25:20
His mercy is not sentimental tolerance.
25:22
It is healing holiness that demands a new life.
25:24
The community gathered there in Matthew's house is built on a
25:27
shared confession of need. It's not a club for the
25:30
respectable. It's a congregation of the sick
25:32
who have found the physician. And this is the enduring
25:35
identity of the church. And it sets the stage for our
25:38
conduct today. Our approach to the world can't
25:41
be the Pharisaic suspicion that masquerades as purity, nor the
25:45
careless worldly assimilation that pretends to be love.
25:48
We have to abandon the fortress mentality.
25:51
We practice a holiness that is both distinct, because sin is a
25:54
lethal sickness, and compassionate, because Christ's
25:57
mercy actively pursues the lost. The church is a hospital, not a
26:02
museum for the morally perfect. So let's try to apply this with
26:04
a three fold response directly to you, the listener.
26:07
Let's start with the head. What must we believe?
26:09
What is the cognitive submission that's required here?
26:11
Intellectually, you must submit personally and as a church to
26:15
the divine diagnosis. The Pharisees essential error
26:18
was a cognitive one. They misunderstood the true
26:21
nature of sin. You have to believe the total
26:23
depravity taught in this passage, that sin is both a
26:26
forensic guilt before God and a lethal spiritual disease that
26:29
renders us dead in our trespasses.
26:31
You have to reject the self-care delusion, the idea that more
26:34
effort or more reading or better rituals can excise the cancer of
26:37
the soul. Your standing is based entirely
26:40
on the sufficiency of the physician.
26:41
Soul is Christus. OK, next the heart.
26:44
What must we feel? This text demands that you
26:47
inspect your own pride and kill the idol of self righteousness.
26:50
When you look at the tax collectors of our modern age,
26:53
the people you find socially or politically or morally
26:55
reprehensible, does your heart swell with that covenantal
26:59
loyalty that has said that God desires?
27:02
Or does it instinctively harden with this nearing contempt of
27:04
the Pharisee? If you view the lost with
27:07
superiority, you prove you have misunderstood the nature of the
27:10
grace that saved you. The heart, truly healed by the
27:13
gospel fuels a deep existential solidarity with every other
27:16
Sinner. You have to cultivate mercy,
27:19
fueled by the daily realization that there but for the grace of
27:22
God go I. The clearest indication of a
27:25
healthy heart is not how successful you separate from the
27:27
lost, but how fervently you yearn for their healing.
27:30
And finally, the hands. What must we do?
27:33
The response has to lead to practical, everyday action.
27:36
It has to move us beyond just introspection.
27:38
The application is missional hospitality, the Matthew Feast.
27:42
Matthew used his house, his resources, his social circle to
27:46
bring his lost friends into proximity with Jesus.
27:48
We're called to practice this kind of contagious holiness.
27:52
We have to engage the secular world not to join in their
27:55
compromise, but to bring the light of the Gospel into their
27:58
darkness. This means rejecting the safe
28:01
zone mentality and using your home, your business, your
28:04
resources, your time to engage the loss for redemption.
28:08
Your obedience is not an attempt to earn health, it is a grateful
28:11
response to the saving physician.
28:13
The entire scandal at Matthew's table comes back to that
28:15
central, liberating revelation. The king advances towards
28:19
sinners to redeem them. God seeks has its steadfast
28:22
covenantal love, not ritual that leaves the heart untouched and
28:26
the conscience unexamined. And this passage remains a
28:29
necessary, permanent corrective for the Church.
28:31
Christ's welcome is for the sick, and that welcome demands
28:34
that we rise and follow Him. The table is set and the
28:37
physician is in the house. This passage really forces you
28:40
to make a choice about your own condition.
28:42
Will you cling to sacrifice, to externalism and self
28:45
justification, convinced you were well enough?
28:47
Or will you come to the physician confessing your
28:49
spiritual sickness and trusting in the holy compassion of the
28:52
Son of God? For Christ came to call sinners,
28:55
and his welcome demands that we leave the tax booth behind.