So in this event before us today
we see the Lord Jesus describing himself as a physician, a physician
of men's souls. And we see in this story the
contrast which continues between the gracious operations of our
God in the flesh and the praise the glory of his grace brings
to believers versus the dreadfully hardening effects of legalist
works religion. It should cause us deep concern
and reverence to see the continuing reaction of the scribes and Pharisees
to the evident grace of God in the saving of His people. We
think of the sins of this world and so often we are drawn to
think of wars, abortion, child abuse, family strife and the
like. But when we have plumbed the
depths of human depravity, lying at the bottom of that cesspool
of evil is the sin of unbelief in the presence of the clear
unmistakable work of the Savior and his sovereign works of love
to his brethren. As the Lord Jesus says of these
people, if the light within them is dark, how great is that darkness. In John 1.5 we have the testimony
of God, isn't it, that the light shines in the darkness and the
darkness has not comprehended it. We must also be careful to
think that these crimes are just ancient. They are given to us
as examples, so that having witnessed the past, we will see it lived
out in our midst, and so that we see that these things are
written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort
of the Scriptures, might have hope. The Pharisees and the scribes
are alive and well and amongst us today. Total depravity is
not just a doctrine but a living reality. So here we behold our
God at His work in 2.13. And He went out again by the
seashore and all the people were coming to Him and He was teaching
them. Again we see the emphasis of
the Lord Jesus on His ministry of teaching people. to teach
that nothing can be better or more useful to the church than
wholesome teaching. And so the Savior set an example
for all of us and never neglected us. in all through Mark's gospel
over and over again. We see him teaching, we see him
preaching, we see him saying in Mark 1.38, that that is why
he came. He came to preach. But as he
was preaching, he came by in 2.14, and as he passed by, he
saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting in the tax booth. And
he said to him, follow me. And he got up and followed him.
The name Matthew means gift and what a gift we have in this story. So he was sitting at a toll gate
on the Great West Road from Damascus to the Mediterranean. He was
a publican who collected toll for Herod Antipas but ultimately
the toll went to the Jews. And the Jews hated and despised
these publicans and classed them as sinners. They were people
who were excommunicated from the synagogue. They were cut
off from fellowship and worship, and they were cut off from the
sacrificial system and its sin-atoning balm. But the Lord Jesus comes
and He calls, and He calls with divine power, a divine power
of God, and it moves the sinner's heart. So in this we see again
the deity of the Lord Jesus. He is Israel's King, Israel's
Messiah. These are His sheep in His land,
and when He calls, His sheep are given ears to hear, hearts
to respond to His voice. Some might ask, does he call
them against their wills? The Word of God says that flesh
gives birth to flesh and spirit gives birth to spirit. So without
the removal of their stony hearts, they can never respond. But with
new hearts, they are moved, not against their wills, but in response
to renewed wills. They are drawn by cords of love. They are compelled by love, not
against their wills, but delighting to go. And Jesus comes to those
who are his bride. Octavius Winslow says that the
Lord Jesus sustains no association to his church more expressive
than that of the marriage relationship from all eternity. He forever
betrothed her to himself. He asked her at the hands of
her father, and the father gave her to him. He entered into a
covenant that she should be his. The conditions of that covenant
were great, but not too great for his love to undertake. They
were that he should assume her nature. discharge her legal obligations,
endure her punishment, repair her ruin, bring her to glory.
And he undertook all and he accomplished all because he loved her. The
love of Jesus to his church is the love of the most tender husband. It is single, constant, affectionate,
matchless, wonderful. Jesus sympathises with her, nourishes
her, provides for her, clothes her, watches over and indulges
her with the most intimate and endearing tenderness. and the
bride is drawn from a pool of humanity that we would see as
the most unlikely. When we think of those most unfit
for the kingdom, just look around us, just look here. We are all
unfit, unprofitable servants. We have all, like sheep, just
gone astray. Matthew was most unlikely, just
like Zacchaeus, possibly a thief, But Matthew was certainly a traitor
to his nation. And this is a traitor to God's
nation, God's chosen nation. In the eyes of the Pharisees,
he was a traitor to God. His money was ultimately collecting
money for the Romans. And Matthew was defiled each
day by handling money with pagan symbols on it, which the Jews
considered idolatry. So Matthew was cut off from Jewish
worship. he was hated and he was despised. And so it seems in the calling
of Matthew that the Lord Jesus deliberately provoked and then
exposed the true hearts of the Pharisees. Our flesh so often
wants to win the enemies of the gospel through gentle persuasion
and there is a sense in which the God-given reality of our
weakness and sin should cause us to approach other sinners
with humility. Whenever the Lord Jesus met with
the broken-hearted, there was great compassion. But when he
met with the self-righteous and the hard-hearted, he was very
direct and blunt. He caused offence. It got him
killed. How sad it is to see the hearts
of the Pharisees. How many times they would have
walked by Matthew and his like and sneered at them and avoided
contact to maintain their ritual purity. Instead of rejoicing
in seeing this openly traitorous man freed from his sin, they
instead seek his judgment. What should have caused great
rejoicing leads to bitterness. And when it happened that he
was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors
and sinners were dining with Jesus and his disciples, for
there were many of them and they followed him, what was the response
of the scribes and the Pharisees? when they saw that he was eating
with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, why
is he eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners? And so in their tradition, they
believed that anyone who was a companion or a friend who becomes
the king's collector or republican or the like, they are to drive
him from society. And also, when the king's collectors
enter into a house to dwell, all that are in the house are
defiled. Again, as they had done with
the paralytic, they could use the scriptures, aided by their
human understanding, to support their accusation. They saw that Matthew was wicked,
even though he had left the tax collector's booth, and there
is no record of him ever going back again. and they would have
had their Psalms, they would have had the Bible to back them
up in their actions. In Psalm 1 it says, how blessed
is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.
What a clear picture of the fact that the Lord Jesus came not
to bring peace, but a sore to divide. What a
picture of salvation of the elect, rejoicing with the Lord, and
those cast out still with bitterness in their hearts. Here is a picture
of the wedding supper of the Lamb, whose glory is great in
the salvation of his bride. But the Lord Jesus also, as he
did before, he hears this, hears these men scoffing and mocking
him and then going and talking to his disciples. Hearing this,
Jesus said, is not those who are healthy who need a physician,
but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous,
but sinners. So there were these men, they
wished ill of the Lord Jesus. They were probably still smarting
from his claim of forgiving the sins of the paralytic, and sadly
they wished evil for the publicans. Those who are most self-righteous
are always the quickest to want judgment to fall on others. The
Lord Jesus had left the beauty and peace and glory of heaven
itself to dwell on earth among sinners and in their sins and
all to save his bride from their sins. It is always the work of
legalists to break up by gossip, the fellowship of believers.
As the scribes and Pharisees were speaking to the disciples,
Jesus heard them and answered for his disciples. And those
gathered by the Lord and gathered to him will be protected by the
Lord. He's promised to care for them.
But Jesus acknowledges their claim to righteousness, a righteousness
involving their works and their worth, a righteousness which
even takes them to the point of judging the Lord Jesus. Their question is not really
a question, but an accusation. For them, table fellowship with
these sinners denotes acceptance of them. Just like touching the
leprous man calls defilement, close association with sinners
brings defilement in their eyes. These men and this man, the Lord
Jesus, must be unclean. In every situation, when they
see the graciousness of the Lord Jesus, they turn from mercy and
love and compassion and care, and all they see is darkness. Jesus casts out demons, therefore
he must be using the power of Beelzebub. Jesus welcomes sinners
and tax collectors, therefore he must be a sinner like them. And accusations still flow. It's the same today. We speak of sovereign grace and
are accused of being armchair Christians. We declare that believers
are free from the law and accused of being antinomians. We rejoice
in God's love for His bride from eternity and are accused of not
believing in evangelism, hyper-Calvinists. We tell of the complete and perfect
forgiveness of sins and are accused of licentiousness. We speak of
absolute sovereign election from eternity and we are accused of
fatalism. We bring the good news of redemption
accomplished and applied for God's children alone and to God's
children alone and we are accused of being too serious about the
scriptures and divisive. The gossip will go on. But legality
can at best look at the outside and not at the heart. Here we
meet the legalists who are so blinded by their religion they
look in judgment upon the Son of God and condemn Him and try
to lead His disciples into condemning His actions. and today they still
look in condemnation upon the Lord Jesus and they take from
his bride the robe of his perfect righteousness and try to expose
their sins. The law can do no other. And those entangled in law religion
today do exactly as their forebears did. They spend their time looking
at outward acts because so often there is not an inward act inward
work of God the Holy Spirit which has brought humility into their
lives. God's salvation is always accompanied
by brokenheartedness, but these men reflect not the brokenheartedness
that God the Holy Spirit brings, but self-righteous pride. As
Spurgeon said, it is a hideous farce to see the rebellious sinner
suddenly become jealous about good works and greatly concerned
for public morality. Does it not make laughter in
hell to see licentious men censuring the pure gospel of the Lord Jesus
and finding fault with free forgiveness because it might make men less
mindful of purity? It makes one sick to see the
hypocrisy of legalists. And Jesus says that these men
are strong, they're robust, but sadly here they are seeing redemptive
love in action and they cannot rejoice. I wonder whether one
of the truest marks of grace in the lives of believers is
the ability to rejoice. I don't mean the happy-clappy
frivolity, but deep rejoicing over witnessing in our hearts
the wonder of redeeming love in action. to my knowledge, there's
not one incident of the enemies of God ever rejoicing with those
who rejoice or weeping with those who weep. Love of God and love
from God to hell-deserving sinners is the greatest love in this
world because it comes without any cause in the sinner. It's
freely given and at great cost, it cost the Lord Jesus unimaginable
agony. Just go to Gethsemane, just go
to Golgotha. Love for his fallen bride drove
every act of his life. His eye was constantly on his
beloved, that she should be saved and cared for. One of the saddest
aspects of flesh, law or works religion is that it cannot rejoice
in absolute sovereign grace that the triune God exhibits in the
work of his Son. God the Father, who has loved
his children from all eternity, gave them as a treasure to be
the bride of his dear son. Eternal, immutable, everlasting,
powerful, effective love. Our Lord Jesus loved and cherished
his bride from before the foundation of the world, removing her filthy,
sin-stained clothes and adorning her in garments of his perfect
holiness. not of a man's standard, but
God's holiness imputed to her. And then the Blessed Holy Spirit,
taking perfectly the works and worth and very being of the Lord
Jesus and applying the balm of the Lord Jesus to sin-sick souls,
weighed down with all the woes of this world and their own sins.
and He heals our constant backslidings, imparting and implanting Christ
in us and us in Him, seamlessly woven together. This gospel is
enough to rest our immortal souls upon. Take this medicine home
with you today and rest your troubled hearts. Hide away from
the storms of this world in the cleft of the rock. Eat and drink
at this feast. Some of my saddest experiences
are when rejoicing in telling of redemptive love. You meet
someone who says, but... and then says that you must do
something as if our love needs to be proved by good deeds. And
they say, yes, God has done all he can do, but now you must add
your obedience. You must add and fulfill this
list of this new evangelical laws. And it's brought down on
the back of the captives who have been freed by the Lord.
And they are burdened yet again, rather than rejoicing in his
freedom. Not for nothing, the Lord Jesus says, woe to the scribes
and Pharisees who weigh down God's children. The apostles
said in Acts 15 that it is testing God or tempting him. And so these men, rather than
rejoicing, here's a feast before them. And rather than being in
there and rejoicing in what the Lord Jesus had done, these disciples
come in Mark 2.18, they were fasting. They bring their works
of righteousness. They were fasting and they came
and said to him, Why do John's disciples and the disciples of
the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? So they actually come to the
Lord Jesus while they're in their fast. And how would they have
known? Because when they fasted, they
fasted so that other people would see what they were doing. They
bring their deeds, their works of their righteousness before
the Lord Jesus. Our friend Robert Hawker said
it's wonderful to see how fond men have been in all ages to
substitute anything and everything in the room of real godliness
and a change of heart. Fasting and almsgiving and services
however costly shall be set up provided they may find pardon
to the sins of nature. But all these are not regeneration. It is still the old nature. It
is still the old creature, only dressed up in a new form, not
transformed by a renewing of the heart. Romans 14, 17 says,
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness,
peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So to be faithful to your souls,
I must remind you, as Simon did earlier, that we have no righteousness
of our own. We have none to establish, we
have none to defend. All our righteous deeds are but
filthy rags before a holy God. All we have ever done in our
Father Adam is sin, and that is all we do. May the Lord demolish
any notion we have of our goodness, We are unprofitable servants,
even after we have done all that we have been told to do. And
in our flesh dwells no good thing. We are wretched, poor, pitiful,
blind and naked, and there is nothing in our flesh which should
give us any cause for confidence. Salvation is looking to the Lord
Jesus. All of Christian life is looking
away from ourselves and our activities and looking to the Lord Jesus.
And again, he reminds these people what really should have been
happening. And it's so sad to see the contrast. Jesus said to them, while the
bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom
cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom
with them, they cannot fast. For some of them, John's disciples
there was a time of fasting. John, their friend, was in prison
and it was appropriate for his disciples to fast until they
were completely weaned from John and united to the Lord Jesus.
But nation Israel, the nation that these people esteemed and
desired so much to be the center of the world, had waited thousands
of years for this. Jesus says of Abraham, he saw
my day and rejoiced. Moses longed for the prophet
to come. David looked forward to the king
who would have an everlasting kingdom. Isaiah foretold of the
priest who would come and bear the sins of his bride and carry
them away in perfect judgment in his own body. All the prophets
look forward to this particular time and these particular events. All the streams of Old Testament
types and promises culminated in the coming of the Lord Jesus.
And now he was here. This was a time for rejoicing,
not for mourning. Isaiah 61 10 says, I will rejoice
greatly in the Lord. My soul will exalt in my God
for he has clothed me with garments of salvation. He has wrapped
me in a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself
with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden
causes things in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause
righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations. And the Lord Jesus speaks of
gathering his sheep in Luke. What man among you, if he has
a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the
ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is
lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he
lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls
together his friends and his neighbors and says to them, rejoice
with me, for I have found my sheep, which was lost. I tell
you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over
one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous who need no repentance. But there will be a time of fasting
and mourning for Jesus' friends, because the acceptance of Matthew
and his followers had to be on the basis of what the Lord Jesus
would do when he went to Calvary. But the days will come when the
bridegroom is taken away from them. Then they will fast in
that day. There will be a day of fasting
for God's children. but it'll be a brief day for
the Bible says that for the joy set before him, the Lord endured
the cross, scorning its shame and the pain that came into the
lives of the disciples and the suffering that they endured and
the agony of being without their savior and the particular agony
of Peter and the apostles as they denied him before men and
ran and scurried away to protect themselves. that sadness and
that mourning would turn to great joy on that wonderful Easter
Sunday. So they will fast, but then there
will be a fast that leads to great rejoicing. The Lord Jesus
then gives two great examples of the sadness of works religion. Mark 2.21 No one sews a patch
of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, otherwise the patch pulls away
from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. No one puts new wine into old
wineskins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the
wine is lost, and the skins as well. But one puts new wine into
fresh wineskins. So you can't put a new cloth
onto an old garment. It will just tear away. We can't
put the new robe of Jesus' righteousness. It cannot be joined to patch
up the filthy rags of our work's righteousness. And neither can
the new wine of the gospel be received into the old, unrenewed
skin of our fleshly nature. But the Holy Spirit must come
in regeneration and make all things new, and then Christ's
righteousness is received as a new robe of righteousness and
salvation. And the blood of Christ as the
wine makes glad the heart of men, and so both are preserved
and blessed. But sadly, the Pharisees were
self-righteous. And it's really, really sad to
see their response to rejoicing and to the wonderful work of
the Lord Jesus. And they came to Him bringing
their robe of righteousness, and He was bringing them something
infinitely better. We are to put new wine into new
bottles, and then both are preserved. And new bottles are meant to
be sinners whom Christ calls by His grace. And the Spirit
regenerates and renew, and they are made new creatures in Christ. They have new hearts, new spirits. They have new principles of light,
life, love and faith and holiness. All of these things implanted
in them. They have new eyes to see with, new ears to hear with,
new feet to walk with. And they walk to Christ and they
walk in Christ. They have new hands to work and
handle with, and they live a new life and a new way of living. and John Gill expresses it so
well. Now to such as these the love
of God is manifested and shed abroad in their hearts, and by
these the gospel of Christ is truly received and valued, and
these enjoy the spiritual blessings of it. And so both the teaching
of the gospel and the grace of God are preserved entirely, and
these people will be saved in the day of Christ. So we cannot
mix law and grace. We cannot mix works and grace. We cannot mix the old man and
the new man. We cannot mix the old covenant
and the new covenant. Like oil and water, they cannot
be joined together. We cannot drink from two fountains
at the same time. We will always be found drinking
from one, but you cannot drink from two. The two covenants are
distinct. The things belonging to one must
be kept separate from those that belong to the other. By trying
to mix the two, by making a legal yoke to bind the necks of the
disciples of the Lord Jesus, they do two terrible things.
They rob the Lord Jesus of the honor of what he has done to
make them free from the yoke of bondage. And believers are
robbed of their right to liberty with which he has made them free. And when these legalists from
Jerusalem came to Galatia at the beginning of the time of
the church. There were two things that were taken away from the
Galatians. That was their freedom and their joy. And any gospel
which puts God's children under a bondage to any slavery and
takes away their joy and takes away their freedom incurs the
wrath of God. and alienates people from the
Lord Jesus. So what a picture we have in
this story of the eternal end of all things. The Lord Jesus
is surrounded by those he has redeemed, a feast of celebration
and those outside still criticizing and carping and free forgiveness
and holy love to sinners. Does this bring to your mind
some of the parables of the Lord Jesus? It's wonderful for us
to contemplate that what lies before the people of God is a
feast, a wedding feast when we will sit down in that day and
we will delight in what the Lord Jesus has done and we'll delight
in who He is and we'll delight in each other as we look upon
our brothers and sisters and we see them as they really are. We will see them as God sees
them. They are holy, they are spotless,
and they are free from accusation. There is rejoicing. May God make
us a rejoicing people as we see the works of the Lord Jesus happening
in our midst and in the lives of those that we love. Let's
pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that your dear son, our Lord
Jesus, came into this world to save the likes of us. to recreate
us heavenly father to make us trophies of his grace and love
and we pray heavenly father that you would protect us from the
pharisee that lurks within all of us that you would give us
the grace to look upon our brothers and sisters as you see them heavenly
father that we might be used of you to proclaim the praises
of our dear Saviour and the wonder of redeeming love. And Heavenly
Father, we pray that you would continue to work in our hearts
to use us for your glory and for the glory of the name of
our dear Lord Jesus in this world. Help us, Heavenly Father, to
see things as You see them. This alone is Your work, our
Father, and we commit ourselves into Your hands. In Jesus' name,
Amen.