Matthew chapter nine, beginning
at verse nine, but I want to start off. I've got in your lesson,
this is one of the most profound gospel statements the Lord made. It's a simple statement. It's
not complicated, it's really not deep theologically, but man
by nature doesn't know what it means. And that's why he said,
if you look at the last verse of our lesson actually, that's
where I got the title from, when he said in verse 13, go ye and
learn what that meaneth. I will have mercy and sacrifice,
for I'm not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. That is a profound statement.
And as I said, it seems so simple because actually in the way that
he puts it in the illustration that he uses is simply this,
that if you're sick, you need a doctor. If you're not, you
don't. And that's how simple it is. But when you see the spiritual
implications of what he's teaching here, and he tells you, go learn
what that means. That's what we do when we seek
the Lord. We're going to learn what that
means to Him and what He's got to teach us. But He says, I came
not to call the righteous, but I came to call sinners. And that's
the holy calling. That's, as I put here, the sovereign,
the powerful, the irresistible and invincible calling of Christ
by the Spirit under the preaching of the gospel to do what? To
call sinners to Christ, to call us unto faith in Christ and repentance
of dead works, all being the gift of God. We know that no
sinner is going to call on Christ of his own free will. There is
no such thing. We know that if we seek the Lord
and call upon him, it's because he sought and found us. That's
what Christ is doing here, all through his journey on earth.
And then through his preachers and his people, the church here
on earth, we're seeking his sheep. We're seeking God's people, and
he's gonna find them, and he's gonna bring them to himself.
But God's chosen people, sinners saved by grace, are gonna be
called to a saving knowledge of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
repentance of dead works, that's the term the Bible uses. What
is repentance? We turn away from our works. and we latch hold of Christ and
his work, his merits. And I know I'm gonna be dealing
with this throughout, but when people think of repentance, they
always think in terms of going from immoral behavior to moral
behavior. And if people who are engaged,
and I say engaged because we're all sinners now, I mean, you
mark that down. But those who are engaged in
a lifestyle of immoral behavior need to turn from that and to
try to be better people, try to be moral, responsible, that's
true. But people can do that without
godly repentance. And that's what we need to understand.
An alcoholic can stop drinking. A drug user can stop using drugs. A person who is an open adulterer
can stop doing that, all of that, without repentance, the gift
of repentance, because the gift of repentance is a change of
mind concerning how God saves sinners. That's what it's about. So, you know, we speak of repentance
in such ways that's no more than what we call outward reformation.
But that's not the case. Christ said, I came not to call
the righteous. Now let's look how he leads into
this. Look at verse nine. As Jesus
passed forth from thence, you remember last week we talked
about he healed the man sick of the palsy and he made the
statement, he said, thy sins be forgiven thee. He was challenged
by the Pharisees and the scribes. You claim to be able to forgive
sins. Only God can forgive sins. And he said, well, which is easier?
To heal somebody who's sick or to forgive, for God, either one. You see, because how does God
forgive sins? On the basis of the blood of
Jesus Christ. And I'm not saying that was an
easy thing. It certainly wasn't an easy thing for our Savior
to go through when he went through the suffering unto death that
he went through to accomplish redemption upon which forgiveness
is given. But for God, it's something that
God can and did do. And only God can do and did do. So as he passed forth from thence,
he saw a man named Matthew. And that word saw is an interesting
word. It's an intent gaze. It's not
just a glance. And the indication is that Christ
is seeking his sheep and there's one of them. His name is Matthew. Now over, Mark and Luke identify,
in their version of this, and you can read that, I've got it
listed here, they identify him as Levi, his name was Levi. And
Mark adds the son of Alphaeus. And a lot of different ideas
on that. Some say that his first name
was Matthew. The name Matthew means gift of
God. And his last name might have
been Levi, which means united or joined. Some say, well, this
is the Greek word, or this is the Hebrew, I don't know, you
know, but, Matthew and Levi, they're the same person. All
right, so they're not contradicting. But look, he saw a man, he fixed
his gaze upon this one man. And you know, normally when he
was traveling now, there was several with him, sometimes a
multitude, but he fixed his gaze on Matthew. And that tells us
about Matthew. Matthew was one of God's chosen
people. He was one that God chose before
the foundation of the world and gave to Christ. And he was one
whom God justified and sent Christ to redeem all of that. And now he's getting ready to
call him. It seems the first calling here
that we're gonna talk about, and we'll see this in a minute,
is a calling of providence, and brought him under his teaching.
But he saw the man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom. Now, to sit at the receipt of,
he was a tax collector, that's what that is. Which means he
was a publican. That's what a publican was. A
publican was a Jew who was employed by the Roman government to collect
taxes from the Jewish people. And you know, we think our taxes
are unfair, their taxes are really unfair. And publicans were well
known for being thieves and robbers. They collected taxes, they skimmed
off the top, they cheated people, they had that reputation. And
so they weren't very well liked among the Jewish population.
They were hated and despised. They were known sinners in the
eyes of the people. So, here Christ comes and he
focused intently upon this one particular man, and verse nine,
he's sitting at the receipt of custom, collecting those taxes,
and Christ said unto him, two words, follow me. Follow me. And look what happened. Matthew
arose and followed him. Now, this is the sovereign call
of Christ to Matthew, I believe, in the realm of providence. Christ bringing his sheep to
follow him and be taught of him concerning the things of salvation.
And that's what happened. Here Christ didn't preach the
gospel to him, but the gospel is gonna be preached. And he's
bringing him under the sound of the gospel. He's drawing him
providentially through power. Because think about it, how do
you account, and this is what I've got in your lesson, how
do you account for a sinner who made his living getting rich
off of other people's misery, just simply hearing two words?
And he, follow me, and he leaves all of his ill-gotten gain behind
to follow this man, Jesus, this person. Well, this is the providence
of God. This is the work of God, even
this calling. We know the calling unto salvation
by the Spirit in the new birth is of God, born from above. But even these providential callings,
and I think about this, if you look over in Romans chapter six,
and I always like to make this distinction here because I think
it's important. When God calls a sinner to faith
in Christ, he doesn't just zap him, you know, or strike him
with lightning. I know there are things that,
that accompanies some of these experiences of salvation in the
Bible, and I know there are things that happen providentially in
your life, but when God's gonna bring a sinner by the Holy Spirit
unto faith in Christ, he first connects that sinner in some
way with a communication of the gospel. because the gospel is
the power of God unto salvation. And the reason I'm making such
a big deal of this is because a lot of people say, well, see
there, Matthew was saved and he didn't hear the gospel, he
just heard the two words, follow me. And that's not what happened
here. Matthew, he heard the two words,
follow me, and he followed, and that was God's calling to him
to get under the gospel. Providentially. If you'll look
at verse 17 of Romans chapter 6, it says, but God be thanked
that you were or as you were the servants of sin. Now, servant
of sin there is an unbeliever, an unregenerate person. And he
says, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine,
that teaching, and that's the gospel, which was delivered you. And the King James version, it
says, which was delivered you. Well, It's true that when God
saves a person, when the new birth comes, when we come into
the new birth, the gospel is delivered to us. Okay, that's
true. We're begotten again by the word
of truth. It's the power of God, the power of the Holy Spirit
using the instrument of the gospel to draw us unto himself, all
right? But literally, if you went to
the original construction of this in the original Greek, what
it would say is you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
where to you were delivered. You were delivered there. Now
it may be in your life, it may be God brought you here. He delivered
you here. You hear the gospel. Or he delivered
you to a TV message. But in some way, he delivered
you into a place where the gospel would be preached to you. And
that's what's happening to Matthew here. Follow me. And it's a glorious
calling. I don't wanna downplay it. I
don't wanna act like, well, this is nothing. No, this is everything.
This is the call that leads to salvation. Many who heard the
gospel and followed him, not because of the gospel, but because
of the loaves and the fishes, turned away. But Matthew didn't
turn away. And we know that for sure later,
because he was called to be one of Christ's, one of the 12 disciples. So here it is. We can truly mark
this incident as coming about by the sovereign providence of
God. And that's the way it is with you and with me. That's
right. Some way, and you can think back
in your life when you first heard the gospel. I know when I was
first delivered to the gospel under it, I didn't want it. And
I rejected it. But God in his providence, he
kept me under it. And I'm gonna tell you something,
it was against my will, because I didn't want to be there. I really didn't. And the only
reason I stayed there is because I felt sorry for my mother. And what I found out later is
I'm the one they all should have felt sorry for. And my mother
did feel sorry for me. But that's how God providentially
worked things. See, God is the God of providence.
He's in control. He's the governor. He put you
where you are. Isn't that right? He put me where I am. And that's
why, you know, we look back on it and all of our complaining
and all of our unbelief, you know, we ought to be ashamed
of ourselves. Thank God he brought me under the gospel, and thank
God he delivered the gospel to me. But what's happened to Matthew? Matthew was an object of God's
electing love and grace, and this was the appointed time of
his calling to Christ. and to be converted, eventually
to be converted to faith in Christ and repentance of dead works
and idolatry. And I've often said, I know,
you know, we talk about the disciples and we see their, we see their
strengths, we see their shortcomings. A lot of times we can't explain
all of that, but I know Christ called them, he kept them, and
he revealed himself to them. Isn't that right? And they came
to know him. We know, we talk about Peter
especially because he's kind of like an easy target. He stood up bragging, I'll die
for you. And then the next few days he
was denying him three times and cussing. He did a little cussing. Just so they know, well, I'm
not one of his. Don't lick me with him. Well,
isn't that the way we are? I tell you what, that sin that
so easily besets us. My goodness, if the Lord don't
keep us, where would we be? We'd all be as one old preacher
said, we'd all be goners. Well, look here, verse 10. It
came to pass as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, this
is Matthew's house. Matthew was holding a feast in
honor of Jesus, that's what he was doing. And it came to pass
as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners
came and sat down with him and his disciples. Matthew had a
feast at his house in honor of Jesus and he invited his friends.
Well, who were his friends? Publicans and sinners. It's the
only friends he had. Birds of a feather flock together. That's the way it is. The general
population of the Jews, and especially the Pharisees and the scribes,
they hated the publicans. And you all know how it is with
the publicans and the Pharisees. We're gonna look at that in just
a moment. But here he is sitting down having a meal with them.
Now to have a meal with somebody back then meant more than just
some kind of a social event. You know, you remember when Peter
was in Antioch and he was sitting at the table with Gentiles and
eating their food and then some people, some of the brethren
from Jerusalem came down, the Jews, and Peter got skittish
and he jumped up and switched tables. He didn't, oh, I can't
let them see me eating with these Gentiles. And you remember what
Paul did, he withstood him to the face. That's how it was.
If you sat and ate with him, that means you're part of that
group. You're in fellowship with him. You know, a lot of times
salvation, the glorious state, is described under the metaphor
of sitting down and eating with Abraham. See, that's a fellowship. So here Christ is. Now he's not
in fellowship with publicans and sinners. He's not a publican. He's not
a sinner. And he didn't contract their
sin. He wasn't corrupted or contaminated by them in any way. But why is
he eating with them? Well, that's what the Pharisees
asked. Look at verse 11. And when the Pharisees saw it,
they said unto his disciples, why eateth your master with publicans
and sinners? Now they just knew. And it was
because of their own spiritual blindness and their own self-righteousness,
they couldn't understand how a true man of God, if that's
what he was, could consort and sit down with such people. Why
are you eating with people like that? You don't want to be seen
with people like that. You know, I know we know better
than all of this, but you know, just like when we instruct our
children growing up, we don't want them to run around with
the wrong crowd, do we? And that's what's happening here. These
Pharisees, they say, you're running around with the wrong crowd.
The problem is, with us running around with the wrong crowd,
is that we're sinners just like them. They'll influence us, because
we do have something in common with sinners. We're sinners too. So they'll rub off on us more
than us rubbing off on them. But Christ is God manifest in
the flesh. And these are the types of people
he came to save. And we couldn't corrupt him.
Aren't you glad that he ate with publicans and sinners? Aren't
you glad that he did? He sat down and ate with me and
you in our salvation, metaphorically speaking. But see, you know how the Pharisees
looked at the publicans. Turn over there to Luke 18, you
know the passage. And I think it's worth being
reminded of. This was their attitude, the
Pharisees and the scribes. And listen to what they said.
Now, why does your master eat with publicans and sinners? They
didn't believe they were sinners. And here's their attitude described
in this parable of the Pharisee and the publican, where it says,
Christ, in verse nine of Luke 18, he spoke this parable unto
certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and
despised or rejected others, hated others. Now notice what
he said, they trusted in themselves that they were righteous and
others weren't. Now we trust, if we're sinners
saved by grace, if we're people of God, we trust that we're righteous,
but not in ourselves. We trust in Christ, who is our
righteousness. And we know it by the word of
God. And it says, two men went up, verse 10, two men went up
into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, the other a publican.
Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God I thank thee
that I'm not as other men are, extortioners, unjust adulterers,
even as this publica. I fast twice in the week, I give
tithes of all that I possess. So here's this Pharisee, and
I always point out when I come to this parable, don't miss the
first words the Pharisee said in his prayer. What did he say? He said, God, I thank thee. So he's giving credit to God
here now. You understand that? You know,
most people think they're okay, like in their prayers or in their
worship, as long as they give God credit. Well, this Pharisee's
giving God credit. And he starts out, this is what
I'm not, and this is what I am. And you know what the problem
is? What he was not and what he was or what he did, that was
his righteousness in his mind before God. That's what he's
pleading. And he gave God credit. Now,
don't we give God, you know, somebody says, well, I thank
God I'm not what I used to be. We do that. But we know that's
not our righteousness before God. Isn't that right? You see
the difference? Just like those in Matthew 7,
haven't we done this in your name? I'm preaching in his name
right now. But that's not my righteousness.
You see what I'm saying? Christ is. And that makes all
the difference. And that old publican, he says,
The publican, verse 13, standing afar off, would not lift up so
much as his eyes on the heavens, smoke beat upon his breast, saying,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Christ said, this man, this
publican, went down to his house justified rather than the Pharisees.
So that shows you the attitude. Go back to our text now, Matthew
9. Why, Edith, verse 11, your master with publicans and sinners,
and look at the Lord's response. But when Jesus heard that, he
said unto them, they that be whole need not a physician, but
they that are sick. Very simple truth, very good
metaphor. Sick people need a doctor. People
who are well don't need a doctor. They that be whole, that would
be righteous people. And they that are sick, that
would be sinful people. In reality, among fallen human beings, there
are none who are whole. That right? We're all sinners. We're all sin sick sinners. We're
all spiritually dead and depraved by nature. We fell in Adam, we're
born in sin. We commit a sin in that sense. But also by nature, I've got
here that sinful people judge themselves to be righteous or
righteous enough or they've judged themselves
to be good, or at least good enough to be accepted with God. You know, you've heard it said,
well, I'm not perfect, but I'm not as bad as some people.
You know what that goes to? That goes to the two major fallacies
of false religion. making salvation, righteousness,
acceptance with God conditioned on ourselves in some way, to
some stage, in some degree, and measuring righteousness and goodness
on a sliding scale. Whereas the gospel tells us that
salvation was and is conditioned on Christ alone, who fulfilled
those conditions as our surety, our substitute, our redeemer,
secured our salvation because he fulfilled all righteousness
on our behalf. And righteousness cannot be measured
on a sliding scale, it always has to be measured as we see
it in Christ. Because he's the standard of
judgment. I could probably let you all quote it. God has appointed
a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by
that man. whom he hath ordained, and that he had given assurance
unto all men. So whenever we talk about being righteous before
God, where should our minds and our hearts go? To Christ. On that cross. Shedding his blood
is the full payment for our sins, making an end of sin, finishing
the transgression, bringing in everlasting righteousness. And
in that light, we see that we in ourselves never measure up. Look at that old publican. Look
at that sinner. By nature and in myself, I am
no better than he. My hope of salvation is his or
her hope of salvation. And that's the sovereign grace
of God through the blood and righteousness of Christ and him
alone. And I've got no other plea. Debbie and I were talking
about the other night. When you stand before God at judgment,
actually, you're not gonna say anything. You know that? Because you're talking about,
you say, well, if I say anything, I'll mess it up. Well, me too.
You're not gonna say anything because Christ is your mediator,
your intercessor. He'll stand there for you. He'll
speak for you. He is your righteousness. You've
already been judged for all your sins. They've been put away. God won't bring them up again. He can't bring them up again
because he's faithful to his glory and his promise. He can't
bring them up again. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justify it. But
now these Pharisees here, they didn't understand that and they
didn't want to. But listen to what Christ says to him in verse
13, but go ye and learn what that meaneth. Boy, that's the
best thing that any sinner can do. Go learn what that means. I need to know what that means.
And when God the Holy Spirit delivers us under the gospel,
however he does it, he teaches us what that means. I'll have
mercy and not sacrifice. Listen, salvation, forgiveness,
righteousness is not a matter of what we do or don't do. It's
not a matter of animal sacrifices. It's mercy. And mercy can only be found in
Christ. And God says, I'll have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. and I'll be gracious to whom
I will. Is there anybody who has received mercy from God?
Is it possible that I could receive mercy? That's what I want to
know. And here's what he says. For
I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Brother
Mahan used to say, are there any sinners here today? I mean real sinners, you know. He'd say this, he'd say, you
know, I've been religious all my life, but I'm like those publicans
and sinners. I need the great physician to
heal my disease. I need a righteousness that I
have not even in my lifetime. even up to now, that I have not
even in my lifetime come close to producing. How about you? I know where to find it. You? It's in the mercy seat. And who's that? That's Jesus
Christ crucified and risen from the dead. I'll have mercy and
not sacrifice. Okay.