Let's look at Matthew chapter
9. I want to look at verses 9 through
13. Let's read them. And as Jesus passed forth from
thence, he saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom.
And he saith unto him, follow me, And he arose and followed
him. 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. And when the Pharisees
saw it, they said unto his disciples, why eateth your master with publicans
and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he
said unto them, they that behold need not a physician, but they
that are sick. But go ye and learn what that
meaneth. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. For I am come
to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." When I first started studying
this, I was looking at He came to Matthew. He came and found
Matthew. He had to come that way. And Psalm 8 popped out at me. What is man that thou should
visit with him? We're nothing. This was God the
Son that came walking through and came to Matthew. It was one
of his sheep that he had to find. Our God tells us in Isaiah, He
says, that I spoke it, and that also may come to pass. I purposed
it, and that I also will do. Everything that the Lord purposes,
everything that He speaks, He will do it. Us men, we make plans. Those plans fall apart. And yet,
like me, I'm starting to forget some of the plans that I've made.
Our God doesn't forget. He made them, and He does them. He purposes them, and He does
what He purposes. He purposed to save a people.
He purposed to, before the foundation of the world, to save some sinners
out of amongst this world of sinners. None of us deserve it. We're all saved by grace. You know, it said that Christ,
he was made a little lower than the angels. I mean, man is lower
than the angels. And our God decided to take on
him a fleshly body and walk around this earth for 33 years and then
lay it down that he might take it again for the salvation of
his people. I know I'll say it several times,
salvation is of the Lord. Nothing man can do. And here
we see that he came to Matthew. Matthew, it tells us in this
scripture, he was sitting at the receipt of customs. And in
Luke, it says he was a publican sitting at the receipt of customs.
Matthew was a tax collector. And I had never really thought
about it, but Matthew wasn't the only tax collector there. There was a lot of publicans. These were Jews that were collecting
taxes for the Romans, and the Jews hated them because not only
did they collect the taxes, they took some for themselves too.
But when he came to Matthew, which he had to pass this way.
He was one of God's chosen. John 6, verse 70. You don't have to turn with me. He tells us, he told Matthew
in this. Matthew was one of the 12. He
said, have not I chosen you 12 and one of you is a devil? He
chose. Matthew was one of the disciples.
Matthew was one of the apostles. He'd seen our Lord ascend. And
that's what we're studying in Acts. And we've just been going
through that about Christ's ascension. Matthew was a part of that. Nothing
he deserved, nothing he thought of himself any better for, other
than that the Lord had saved him and chose him out from among
everybody else. He was just a sinner saved by
grace. Matthew even considered himself
when he was speaking. This is recorded in Mark 2 and
Luke 5. And then shortly after that,
they all three list the disciples. And Mark and Luke just call him
Matthew as one of the disciples. In chapter 10, Matthew named
off the twelve apostles and called himself Matthew the Publican.
He didn't think too highly of himself. He was like the Apostle
Paul when he said that I'm the chiefest of sinners. But at that point when the Lord
told him, the Lord came to him, found him, he told him to follow
me. Matthew didn't have a choice
in the matter. He had to follow the Lord. Our Lord said, my sheep
know my voice and hear me and follow me. They have to follow
him. That is, our Lord has done the
work. He started it. He'll finish it.
He's finished it. And he will save his people at
his appointed time. If they're one of his sheep,
this was Matthew's appointed time to be saved. He had to be
saved. The Lord had to pass that way,
had to save him. When he said, give this as a
follow me, this wasn't an invitation. He didn't ask him to follow him
if he wanted to. He chose him out from the middle
of all those others to be his disciple, his apostle, And Matthew
had no say in it. He had to follow him. And we
see that Matthew had left it all. In one of the other passages,
it says he left it all and followed him. And this was a man that had been
taking all his money. He was well to do off. But men
are dead. And our God tells us to seek
Him while He's near, call upon Him. He tells us to believe Him. We can't do any of that. In our
flesh, we're dead. We can't do anything for ourselves.
We can't hear this Word. We can't see this Word. The pastor
was talking before service. Me and Seth read this same scripture
that we read. They come up with all kinds of
wild ideas, make up all kinds of stuff, but it's because they're
dead. A dead man can't do anything.
He can't even get out of his own way. And we know that we're dead. It says in Ephesians 2, 1, that,
and you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.
We know that our Lord has to save us. He has to wake us, just
like He did Lazarus. If He doesn't call us from the
dead, we will not live. But thank goodness the Lord chose
to save some. Thank Him for having mercy on
some. None deserve it. The wages of
sin is death. Nobody deserves to be saved.
And the only difference between us and the people down the road
is that Christ. Christ is our only difference. He's the only difference between
us. And then he says that after he
told him to follow him, he said, it came to pass as Jesus sat
at meat in his house. This scripture, Matthew wrote
this story according to what God had taught him to write.
showed him to write, impressed upon him. But even as he was
humble, he didn't say that he was in his house. Luke tells
us that Matthew gave this great feast. And at this point, I could
only think of the woman at the well. After the Lord had revealed
himself to her, she went back to town and said, come see a
man that told me all I ever did. Is this not the Christ? You know
Matthew done that. He told all his buddies that
were out there, hey, you need to come hear this. This man knows
everything. He knows it all. This is the
Christ. He had to come. And then we see that Christ,
and this is most humbling, that our God would humble himself
in the flesh and come and sit in the midst of sinners, publicans
and sinners. That's so humbling. What mercy, what grace our Lord
has for his people that he would come and sit with them. It was
the Pharisees out there that were self-righteous, but they
were living by the law. They were doing everything right.
They weren't trying to get over on anybody in that sense, like
the publicans were. And yet, they couldn't have been
further away from God. And our Christ told them, when
he spoke to them, he said, you'd believe not, because you're of
your father the devil. Let that not be said of his people.
But he chooses some, and he reveals it to them, and makes them glad
in it. And they follow him. We have
no choice but to follow. And like I say, these Pharisees,
when they saw it, you can imagine how they looked down on it. It's kind of like religion today
tells us, oh, don't go to the movie house. Don't go down to
the restaurant because they serve alcohol. Don't go out there in
the world. And we shouldn't be in some places.
That's a given. But our God came to save those
people that were down in the gutters. But He eateth with sinners. That's
what mercy, what grace. And He told us in 1 Timothy 1.15,
He said, and this is a faithful saying, Christ Jesus came into
the world to save sinners of who I am chief. And everyone
that the Lord saves can say the same thing with the Apostle Paul,
of whom I am the chief. I'm just a sinner saved by grace. I'm a sinner. Everyone in here
is a sinner. There's a lot of people that
are sinners that don't know they're sinners. And that kind of leads
into the next thing that he had to say. When Christ heard this, He said
to the Pharisees, he said, they that be whole need not a physician.
It's not our Lord the great physician. We all have the disease of sin. We all need a savior. We need
a physician that can heal us from that. No earthly man can
do that. This physician, He does a heart
work. That's where our sin is at. The sin makes us do what our
hearts desire, but it's not according to what God is or does. God is not sin. He can't sin. He hung on a cross and bore our
sins, and He was made sin, it said, but He wasn't a sinner.
He was not born of man. Anyone born of man has to be
a sinner because our father was a sinner and their father's father
before them and all the way back to Adam Adam sinned and About
one man sinner entered into the world They said by We're grace about it or worse
in about it grace did much more I Our Lord Jesus Christ can save
the most worthless person, sinner. And I know that because he saved
me. I was like Matthew. I spent years not giving God
a thought. Had I had knowledge, but didn't
give God a thought out doing what I wanted to do, doing what
my heart desired. And then like the Apostle Paul,
he stopped me in my tracks, showed me, no, this is what you're supposed
to do. This is, you need to follow me. And as one of his sheep, I heard
his voice and I followed him. And I pray that he'll keep me
following him, because if he doesn't keep me, I will leave. So prone to wander, Isaiah 64 6 tells us that we're
all sinners our best our most our righteousness is only as
filthy rags Romans 3 23 says we're all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God This sin is such a disease Christ
is that physician The woman that had the issue of blood She had
that issue of blood, I believe it was 12 years. No man could
cure her. But she knew the Lord had shown
her that all she needed to do was touch the hem of his garment
and she would be healed. That's Christ faith. Christ is
the faithful one, but he gives people faith to believe that
way. It said Abraham believed and
it was counted unto him for righteousness. It's amazing that our God would show that kind of mercy to sinners. Sons of Jacob's. Jacob, he said, Jacob have I
loved and Esau have I hated, Jacob did nothing to deserve
him love him As far as speaking for men we
would have chosen peace all over Jacob But the Lord does the choosing
the Lord chooses the one he wants And I thought in reading this
whole chapter We'll look a little bit of it here, too. They spoke
of him being the great physician. Well, then we go down to verse
18. And a certain ruler had a dead daughter. His daughter was dead. We that have children that the Lord
hasn't revealed to, we can all relate to that. The children
are dead in sin. But the Lord went and raised
her up and healed her. In verse 20, we're told about
the woman with the issue of blood that I just talked about. And
he told her after he healed her, he said, Daughter of El, of good
comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was
made whole from that moment when Christ saves his people. When
he does that heart work, they're saved. They were saved from before
the foundation of the world. Once he does the heart work,
they see that they were saved before the foundation of the
world and will be for eternity as long as he keeps us. It's
still his faithfulness. He's the one that's faithful.
And then he came down, and verse 27, two blind men crying on him,
thou son of David, have mercy on us. And he opened their eyes. In the same chapter that he said
he was the great physician, he just performed three miracles
that he told us individually about. But then he went on in
verse 35, he said, and Jesus went about all the cities and
villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the
kingdom and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. We can have cancer. We can have heart problems. We
can have any number of ailments in our body, but the one that
we need healed from is sin. If we're healed from sin, when
we die, we'll be made whole. It doesn't matter. The man with
the withered hand, if he would have died with a withered hand
and the Lord had saved him, he would have been whole. It would
not have had a withered hand. In heaven there will be no diseases.
We will be praising our Lord for everything he's done for
us. We're not going to be there looking for mama, not looking
for grandma. We're going to be there worshiping
our Lord, praising him all the day long because of what he's
done for us. He came, he found us. As his
lost sheep, he said he'd leave the 90 and 9 to go find his sheep. Find one sheep. That's great
mercy that he would go to find a sinner and save him. And then in verse 13, he tells
us, he said, but go ye and learn what that meaneth. I will have
mercy and not sacrifice. Our Lord tells us, he told Moses.
The Apostle Paul reiterated it in Romans 9. The Lord said, I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. It's not of him that willeth
or him that runneth, but on the Lord that does the same. Our
Lord gets all the glory in salvation. He heals the sinner. He gives
them a new heart. But it's all his glory. Man has
nothing to do with it. And that's why we can say, like
in Ephesians 2, he said, we're saved by grace, through faith. And that's not of ourselves,
but it's the gift of God. It's not according to our works.
Our God does the saving. He does the keeping. And then the tells us, says that he's not
come to call the righteous. We're talking about self-righteousness.
That's why man can't save himself, is because of self-righteousness.
He's trying to do something. When there's nothing to be done,
the work is already done. The Lord finished it. He said
on the cross, it is finished. So it's not of, he didn't come
to call the righteous. He come to call, but the sinners
to repentance. A sinner that has been saved
by grace will repent. They'll call on the Lord for
mercy. They'll be like the, they'll be like the publican
Where the story of the publican and the Pharisee, the publican,
he couldn't even come near. He stood afar off and just said,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. If Christ saves us, if he reveals
himself to us, we'll all cry, have mercy on me. That's all
we'll be able to cry. We'll have, there'll be nothing
else. In that regards, that we can
say or do, but have mercy on me. And I believe that that never
goes away. As Paul said, that that I would
do, I do not. And that that I wouldn't do,
that is exactly what I do. And I have to beg for mercy every
day because of my sin. I'm just a sinner saved by grace. And that's all I have. So if
you would stand with me and let's pray together.