Last week we considered the first 8 verses of Matthew chapter 9. We saw this incredible moment where these men of faith came with their paralyzed friend to see Jesus, but when they came, they couldn’t even get to the front door, because it was so crowded, and much less all the way to Jesus where He was inside. But that didn’t stop them, and they climbed with their friend onto the roof, they made a hole in the roof, and they lowered the friend directly to Jesus. And we saw this interesting situation unfold where Jesus announces the forgiveness of this man’s sins instead of immediately healing the paralysis.
And this puts the religious people there in an uproar, they claim Jesus is a blasphemer, they claimed that He was being completely disrespectful of God by forgiving sins, because only God can do that. The crazy thing is that they were on the right track, they almost had it, but they failed to understand Who exactly was in the front of them. But then Jesus engaged with these guys, and just to prove the point in a very Jesus way of doing things, He was like, just so you know the sin forgiveness thing was real, I’m going to tell this guy to get up and walk to. And then the guy got up and walked out of there.
And what’s amazing is that Jesus took care of the bigger issue of the man’s sin first, then still dealt with the paralysis, and probably gave all of those scribes something they had to go back and deal with. Obviously, people are amazed, probably going kind of crazy after witnessing that, but it’s right in the wake of that where we pick up in verse 9 this morning. So, let’s read this together.
Matthew 9:9-13
You know last week how it was interesting that Matthew left out some of the dramatic details, that Mark had included about the incident with the paralyzed man. Matthew didn’t talk about the guys on the roof, or them digging a hole through the roof, or lowering the friend down to Jesus. Matthew just dealt with the really important aspects of the forgiveness, the healing, and the response of the scribes. He covered all of the important things and maybe that was just his style, but maybe it was also because he wasn’t there at the house to see it first-hand. At least it doesn’t specifically say that He was. Because it was after Jesus left that house, from last week, that we see Him today in these verses, finding Matthew sitting at the tax office. And this is the very same Matthew that is writing this Gospel.
And just imagine this moment, the guy is literally sitting at work, maybe spreadsheeting out the tax information for local people and businesses or whatever else, who knows, but he’s at work. And as he is sitting there, this Guy walks in, and maybe He has a little entourage with Him, but He comes up to him right in the middle of his workplace, maybe right in the middle of working on something, and simply says “Follow Me”.
And then immediately after that statement, at the end of verse 9, it says that Matthew arose and followed Jesus. Now it’s very likely that Matthew was aware of this Man that had been building a following, that was teaching all of these things, that was performing miracles, that was probably in some ways the talk of the town. Information may have traveled a lot slower then, but the world also wasn’t that big in those days, and Jesus had been in this immediate area already. And for me, I always kind of stop and wonder about these things. Like, had Matthew heard any of Jesus’ teaching before? Had he already considered at all, if he would follow this Man, if given the chance? Was there more to the conversation between Jesus and Matthew in this moment that just wasn’t recorded?
I mean, think about this moment, you’re working and this Guy as far as we know just comes in and says follow me. I think we would have a lot of questions running through our minds in that moment. Like, follow You where? For how long? Can I still work? Will it be dangerous? Are we getting paid? Will there be housing? Why do you want me to follow You? And there’s probably so many more questions for this moment and again we don’t know if there was any other conversation had here, but we do know that Matthew, Mark, and John all record that Jesus told Matthew, “Follow Me”, and every single one says, with no break in between, that Matthew got up and followed Jesus. Well actually Luke puts one little comment in between, in Luke 5, it says that Matthew left EVERYTHING, got up and followed Jesus. He left everything, the guy had a government job, I’m sure he had some things, and some people, but God was standing in front of him, and he left everything and followed Him.
Jesus has made the same call to all of us, to follow Him, and to engage in His Kingdom work, in this life that we have. But Matthew’s situation here just causes me to stop and consider:
Is there anything that I have, is there anything that I could be doing, is there anything that I want or want to do, is there anyone, is there anything at all that we’re holding on so tight to, that it would cause me to hesitate from getting up and going as Jesus says FOLLOW ME?
Matthew got up, he left everything, and he followed Jesus. I’m not saying that we have to get rid of everything, it’s also not my business to take that off the table if God were to call any of us to do just that. He has called many people to do that. We need to be loosely holding onto the things of this world and ready and listening for God’s direction in our lives. It sounds like Matthew was doing just that, based on his response. He got up, and he went, and that’s how I want to be. And then we see what happens next in verse 10, we see Matthew’s first act in following Jesus.
Read Matthew 9:10
And you know what, before we even talk about this, I want to jump over and read about the same moment in Mark, just like we did last week, because Mark adds a few more details once again. Let’s head to Mark 2.
Read Mark 2:15
And there’s something to note here, and we talked about it before, when we first started the book of Matthew. That Matthew also went by the name Levi as well, and you can see this clearly in verse 14, let me read that.
Read Mark 2:14
It’s the exact same situation, he is just referred to by the name Levi here. But that helps us understand the extra detail back in verse 15, because there is now a dinner party going on at Levi’s, or as we will refer to him, at Matthew’s house. The Gospel of Luke says that Matthew “gave Jesus a great feast in his own house” and that’s what we see going on right now. But as verse 15 in Mark says, that at this dinner party, at this great feast, it wasn’t just Jesus and the disciples, it says that a bunch of tax collectors and sinners sat down at the table too, because as it says there, many of these people were following Jesus. But let’s look at what happens in verse 16.
Read Mark 2:16
To me it’s like, after thinking about what happened last week, it’s like “here we go again”, it’s these same guys from last week. You had these guys camped out and doing some sort of recon at the house where Jesus healed the paralyzed man, and they were trying to catch Him up in some sort of problem. But they’re back at it again. It’s like, you guys, you literally just saw Him pronounce the forgiveness of sins, and then back that up, with the complete healing of a paralyzed man, and now you’re still following Him around, and trying to cause problems? But yes, they are. And they’re like, why is this guy hanging out with all of these tax collectors and sinners? And just side note as well, that we have mentioned before, they essentially put the entire profession of tax collector in the category of sinner as well. These people were not well liked in that society, and many of them actually were crooked, and cheating people, and they were definitely not the people that you wanted to be found hanging out with, if you wanted to keep a good reputation.
But here Jesus was, at a great feast, at a tax collectors house, a tax collector that was now part of His inner group, with a bunch of other tax collectors and sinners, and these guys that are following Jesus, and not following in a good way, following in a trying to cause problems way, are just losing their minds over this. They’re like “how is it, that He is eating, with these people?”. Apparently, this wasn’t a high society enough crowd for these self-righteous trouble makers. But let’s head on back to Matthew and we’ll read Jesus’ response to these people there.
Read Matthew 9:10-13
Jesus begins to respond to their comments when He hears what they are saying. But it’s interesting to note though, that they weren’t making these comments directly to Jesus. These guys are here to cause problems, but it seems that they may not have the nerve to take the problems to Jesus directly. So they start having these side conversations with the disciples, we saw that in verse 11, it says “they said (these things) to the disciples”. And maybe that was a tactic, maybe they were trying to sway some of the disciples or try to cause some questioning or division to start happening in the group, or maybe it was just the first people that they were talking to. We don’t really know, but we do know that these guys were obviously there for the troublemaking. But Jesus hears what is being said and now He engages with it.
Jesus’ first statement there in verse 12 is “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” He’s saying, essentially, that healthy people obviously don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. Obviously if there is nothing wrong with you right now, if you aren’t feeling sick, if you don’t have any symptoms, if you didn’t injure yourself, then you aren’t going to be heading over to the urgent care after church. Because you wouldn’t need it. But if you knew that something was wrong, if you felt it, if you were hurting, if you saw the symptoms, then you would probably be on your way to get help.
Well unless you are like me, because every single time something happens with me, we end up having problems with insurance. So I’m usually to the point where I’m going to lose a limb or something before I will head to the doctor, because it always ends up costing us more, it always ends up as a headache, and usually it takes my wonderful wife caring for me to force me to go to the doctor. But anyways, you get the point, you go to the doctor when you understand that you need the doctor.
And why is Jesus suddenly talking about a doctor? What in the world, does this mean, in this situation? Why is Jesus telling this, to these guys, that have a problem with Him?
As I just said a second ago, you go to the doctor when you understand that you need a doctor. There’s a reason why Jesus was surrounded at this moment by a bunch of tax collectors and sinners. Maybe it was because these tax collectors and sinners understood that they had an ailment, maybe they understood that something was wrong, and maybe they were starting to understand that Jesus was the only one that could fix it. Or if they weren’t totally understanding that yet, then maybe it’s what we see in the next verse, maybe it’s the doctor going to where the sick people are, because the sick people need Him. Let’s read verse 13.
Read Matthew 9:13
Jesus says, I didn’t come to call the righteous, I came to call the sinners to repentance. Now there’s something I want to understand first, before we talk about this. And we can get this understanding in Romans 3. Let’s go there.
Read Romans 3:10-12
This is Paul writing to the Romans and quoting out of the book of Psalms, but he makes a really important point for us. That there is not one person in this world that is actually righteous on their own. The Bible literally says, we just read it, that there is NONE RIGHTEOUS.
So, we have to take that into consideration in Jesus’ statement. Because we know now, that nobody, is actually righteous, but the problem is, that there are a lot of people that believe themselves to be righteous. That they are a good person, that they do good things, that they haven’t done anything “all that bad”, and that must make them righteous. Well, I hate to break it to you, maybe you’ve thought that, and maybe you haven’t had to deal with this before, but you’re not righteous, I’m not righteous, none of us are. Nobody is righteous without God.
The book of Isaiah says, that the best that we have to give as people, still amounts to like, a pile of dirty rags, before a holy and awesome God. As righteous as we can be in our humanity is like a bunch of rags covered in sin. And to follow Jesus’ doctor analogy, it’s because we all sick, but not sick like covid sick, we’re sick because of sin. It’s an infection that started at birth, it’s an infection that will kill us all, if it isn’t dealt with, and if we die before going to the doctor then we’ll never get to experience the eternal care that He has planned for us, it’s an infection that will never go away without the doctor’s, or without Jesus’ intervention.
So basically, what we are seeing, through this whole passage in Matthew today, is that Jesus is saying that the Doctor is here to deal with these sin infections. And these troublemakers, these Scribes and these Pharisees, are all up in arms, about these types of people gathering around Jesus, but they completely fail to see, the simple truth, of sick people, coming to the doctor for help. Jesus says I didn’t come, to call these people, that think they are just fine without me. Why would they come to the doctor if they don’t think that there is an issue? I came to call these people that actually know that they are sick, and we see them at this moment gathered all around Him.
For us today, I’m not righteous of my own self, and you’re not either, if you have never dealt with your sin, and come to the doctor so to speak, as we are seeing today. Then I would absolutely encourage you to do so. The doctor gives His prescription at the end of verse 13, He says that He is calling sinners to repentance. Repentance means having an understanding of our sinfulness, all of the things that we have done wrong before God, and then completely turning away from it. And you know what you find in the opposite direction from sin. You find Jesus. Jesus calls us to turn away from our sin, but as our primary care provider, as our only doctor, as our only hope, He also gave up His life on a cross to pay for our sinfulness, perhaps to pay off our spiritual medical debt. Then they put Him in a grave, because He was actually dead, but then three days later, the doctor was back in the office, Jesus rose from the dead. And the only way that any of us will ever be righteous, the only way that any of us will ever get to be with God forever, is listen to the doctor, to turn from our sin, to believe in His sacrifice, and then to be covered in His righteous, because we won’t ever have any on our own.
Jesus was engaged with questionable people, because they absolutely needed Him, we’re questionable people, every single one of us, and thank God that He is willing to deal with people like us, even if other people around us maybe think that He shouldn’t. Maybe Jesus being there at that dinner party that night, engaging with these people, even with judgmental people mouthing off around Him, should teach us a thing or two about compassionately engaging with other people that maybe even the society around us looks down upon. Because we’re no different and sick people need the doctor, they need Jesus, just like we do.