I have looked forward to it.
I count it a great honor and blessing to be able to worship
our Lord together with you. If you would open your Bibles
with me to Matthew chapter nine. I've titled the message this
evening, why does your savior eat with sinners? I want to answer
that question in such a way that the oldest believer here, Find
your heart full of joy and confidence in trusting Christ. And I want
to preach this in such a way that the greatest rebel who's
here will find yourself running to Christ the Savior. Now, our
text begins in Matthew 9, verse 9. And Jesus passed forth from
thence and 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. Now, our Lord passed
by, and I love how he does this, the way scripture makes it sound.
The Lord called Matthew to follow him, and he didn't stop walking. He didn't stop to see if Matthew
was gonna follow him. He knew Matthew was gonna follow
him. He told Matthew, you follow me. And the Lord kept walking,
because he knows When the Lord calls somebody, they're gonna
follow, aren't they? And Matthew followed the Lord. Now, it's
significant for us to note who Matthew was. He was a publican. Publicans were considered to
be the worst kind of sinner by both the Jews and the Romans.
You know, a publican was somebody who was so greedy that he would
collect taxes for the enemy and then overcharge his countrymen
while he's doing it. He's both a greedy man and he's
a traitor. He's a cheat and a traitor. That's
pretty despicable, isn't it? And that's who the Lord called
to follow him. There are a lot of Pharisees around. The Lord
didn't call them. There are a lot of good moral women, good moral
mothers and daughters. The Lord didn't call them. The
Lord called a publican to follow him. I wish we would ever learn
this. The Lord calls sinners to follow
him. Not good, folks. The Lord calls
sinners to follow him. The Lord Jesus Christ saves real,
genuine sinners. Not people who, yeah, I say I'm
a sinner, but I don't really mean it. I mean genuine sinners. If you and I are not genuine
sinners, God will never save us. And then as soon as the Lord
told Matthew to follow him, like I said, Matthew just immediately,
he left his ledgers, he left his money, those things that
had been so important to him, he left them. And he got up and
followed Christ. Now that's the irresistible call
of God the Holy Spirit. Now I know this from scripture.
God the Father, he elected a people to save. Before he created anything,
he elected a people unto salvation. He gave them to his son to save.
In the fullness of time, God the Son came into flesh and he
did everything that was necessary to redeem those people from their
sin. He obeyed the law, established righteousness for them. He shed
his precious blood, his precious sinless blood to put away their
sin. God the Son paid the redemption
price for those people. And then God the Holy Spirit
comes and he calls those people to Christ. He gives them faith
in Christ so they can't do anything but trust Christ. He gives them
faith in Christ so they can't do anything but come to Christ.
I'll tell you what God the Holy Spirit calls us, we want to come
to Christ. God gives us a new want to. We
want to come to Christ because I need to come to Christ. There is not one believer that's
been drug to Christ against their will. No, God gives us the need
to come to him and we come just like Matthew did. Well now, now
Matthew's following the Lord. Now Matthew's a changed man.
He wants other people to know Christ too. So Matthew has a
dinner party at his house. He wants to throw this party
in honor of the Lord Jesus, and he wanted people to come to his
house for dinner so they'd have a chance to hear the Savior speak.
So they'd get to know him like he'd gotten to know him. He may
have figured, well, the Lord passed by me and called me, Maybe
if the Lord's by these other people, he'll call them too.
He wanted other people to know the Lord. But you know, the only
people Matthew knew to invite to his house were his old cronies,
other publicans and sinners. Matthew invited publicans, I
mean people who were despised by everybody in society, Jews
and Romans alike, to come to his house for dinner with the
Lord. And Matthew also invited sinners. to come to his house.
Now that word sinners means somebody who's devoted to sin. They don't
just sin sometimes. They're devoted to sinning. It's all they can do is sin. They're especially sinful. The
word means preeminently wicked. That's the crowd that Matthew
invited to come into his house and sit down and eat with the
Lord of glory, with the Savior. Now the Pharisees saw that, They
didn't like this guest list. Verse 11, when the Pharisees
saw it, they said unto his disciples, why eateth your master with publicans
and sinners? The Pharisees wondered, how can
a man of God have fellowship around a dinner table with the
worst of sinners, with these people who are preeminently wicked? Doesn't he know how wicked these
people are? How can a man who's supposed
to be holy rub elbows with these horrible sinners? That's the question I want to
answer tonight. How can he do that? Well, number one, Christ
the Savior eats with publicans and sinners because that's who
Christ came to save. The whole Bible says Christ saves
guilty, helpless sinners. Isaiah told us that Christ is
coming to loose the guilty prisoner from the prison house of sin.
Christ is gonna loose them by taking their place in the prison,
by taking their guilt and putting their sin away by his own sacrifice. Christ is coming to loose the
guilty prisoner, not somebody who's not guilty and not in prison. He came to save those who are
guilty. They're in prison. The writer of the Hebrews tells
us Christ came to do what all those animal sacrifices of the
Old Testament never could do. He came to take away the sin
of his people. By his one sacrifice for sin,
Christ blotted out, made to not exist, all of the sin of all
of his people, and he did it in one sacrifice. I mean, those
priests after the order of Aaron must have offered millions of
sacrifices, didn't put away one sin. By his one offering, Christ
removed all of the sin of all of his people. He took those
sinful people and he sanctified them. He made them holy. The
angel who announced his birth said, you call his name Jesus,
for he shall, he shall without a doubt save his people from
their sins. Now, if these people have sins,
they're sinners. I mean, you know, I'm pretty simple, but
now that's so, isn't it? If these people have sinned,
they're sinners, and that's who Christ came to save. And brother,
he got the job done. He saved those people from their
sin. Christ came. to save real sinners. I mean genuine sinners, sinners
who are devoted to sin, sinners who are preeminently wicked,
and Christ came to make them the righteousness of God in Him. These sinners that Christ came
to save, all they can do is sin, but by His sacrifice, Christ
made it so they can never be condemned. Now all they can do
is sin, but Christ made it so they could never be condemned
because he was condemned in their place as their substitute. Christ
came to save the guiltiest of sinners and not just ignore their
sin, but make them what they're not, holy, unblameable, and unreprovable
in God's sight. Not someday in glory, right now. If Christ has saved you, That's
how you are right now, holy, unblameable, and unapprovable.
And somebody's gonna say, oh, no. I sure don't feel that way. I
mean, when I look at myself, I don't see anything holy, unblameable,
unapprovable. Well, you know, when Paul made
that statement, he didn't say you're holy and unblameable,
unapprovable in your estimation of yourself. He said in God's
sight, in God's sight. Now friends, the way God sees
things is the way they really are. And God sees his people
as holy, unblameable, and unapprovable because that's what Christ made
them to be by his sacrifice for them. Christ came to save the
filthiest of sinners and to wash them white as snow. So even though
all they can do is sin, there's no trace of sin left in them.
Christ came to save the chief of sinners. so that all of creation
would look at who Christ saved and they would praise God in
awe and wonder. Only God could love sinners that
much that he would slaughter his son to save those people.
Only God has the power, only God has the mercy to take natural
born enemies of his and make them his children. God saves
the chief of sinners, so he's gonna get all the glory from
all of creation. Eternity, I don't know a lot
about heaven, but I know eternity is gonna be taken up with this.
All of creation in awe at who God saved and how he saved him,
at what God did for his people. Matthew invited all these people
to come to his house for dinner, and the Savior came and sat down
right amongst them. You know, our Savior is the only
one who will have anything to do with sinners. You and I wouldn't
have something to do with sinners like this. We'd find another
place to sit, wouldn't we? Not the Savior. You know, eating
together involves fellowship. It involves talking to one another.
I got here this afternoon, and my daughter Savannah had a delicious
meal fixed. And she and I and Grayson sat
down to eat. Clark was out doing what Clark
does, working, cutting the grass. But three of us sat down to eat.
It was a delicious meal, but we didn't just eat silently and
put those nutrients in our body and go on our way. We sat there
and talked to each other. We enjoyed one another's company.
The Savior sat down and ate with these publicans and sinners.
He had fellowship with them. He had fellowship with them.
Now, you know, the publicans and sinners, I mean, they liked
this. They were comfortable in the
presence of the Lord Jesus. They had never been comfortable
in the presence of these Pharisees. The Pharisees were always judging
them. They felt judged and criticized all the time. They weren't comfortable
with the Pharisees, but they were comfortable with the Savior. They were comfortable with holiness
personified. Interestingly enough, while the
publicans and sinners were comfortable with our Lord, the Pharisees
weren't. They thought they were so righteous,
but they were never comfortable in the presence of the Savior.
But sinners were. You know why? Because that's
who Christ came to save. All right, number two. Christ eats with publicans and
sinners because they're the ones who need to be forgiven. You
know, all these notorious sinners were comfortable enough to stay
and eat with the Lord. But think about that for a second.
All of their sin was against him. It was against him. Their rebellion was against him. And he didn't make them uncomfortable.
Now, he never condoned their sin, did he? But he didn't make
sinners uncomfortable. because Christ came to forgive
sinners. Now the Pharisees, they felt like they weren't sinners,
and they were very uncomfortable in the presence of the Lord Jesus.
What's the difference? Christ came to save sinners who
know they're sinners. Look with me at John chapter
nine. Christ came to save sinners who know they're sinners. John 9, verse 39. And Jesus said, For judgment I am
coming to this world, that they which see not might see, and
they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees
which were with him heard these words, and they said unto him,
Are we blind also? They knew what he was saying.
And Jesus said unto them, If you are blind, you should have
no sin. But now ye say, We see, Therefore,
your sin remaineth. See, the problem with the Pharisees
is they said they don't have any sin. Christ came to forgive
sinners. The Lord's saying if we confess
our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive our sin. If we confess
that we're spiritually blind, he'll give us sight. He'll forgive
our sin because Christ came to forgive sinners who know they're
sinners. Now, this is amazing. When we
preach the gospel and we think about salvation in Christ, we
can never forget this. This is something that grips
the heart of every believer. Christ came to forgive the sin
of his people, not by ignoring their sin, not by pretending
they didn't sin, not by pretending it's okay, not by pretending
it didn't happen. not by pretending they didn't
mean it. Christ forgives the sin of his
people by being made sin for them, by taking their sin away
from them and making it his, taking it into his own body upon
the tree and putting that sin away by his horrible, bloody
sacrifice when he made his soul an offering for sin. Not just
the bodily torture that he endured, but he made his soul an offering
for sin before his father. The creator died so that the
creature could be forgiven of a sin. Mm-mm-mm. The creator suffered the penalty
of the broken law so the creature, a little speck of dust in God's
creation, could be forgiven of their sin. Mm-mm-mm. If that doesn't grip your heart,
I'm afraid you got a hard stone. The holy God forgives the sin
of his people because there's no reason for him to be angry
with them anymore. Because he poured out all of
his anger against the sin of his people upon his son, our
substitute. See, the issue in this thing
of salvation and forgiveness is need. That's what it comes
down to. Publicans and sinners, they need
Christ to save them. They need Christ to wash them.
They need Christ to make them righteous because they can't
do it. Their sin is so great, they can't do anything about
their sin. They need Christ to forgive them. So he does. So he does. And you got this
Matthew's house party, you got that scene in your mind, all
these publicans and sinners sitting with the Lord and his disciples?
The needy people are sitting down at the table with the Lord.
The ones who have no need are sitting out here on the outside
criticizing everything going on. Which one am I? The question for you and me is,
same as it was in that day, do we need Christ to save us? Do
we need him to take our sin away? Do we need him to make us righteous?
Because we can't do it by our own works of the law. If you
need Christ to save you that way, I'm gonna make a bold statement. God will forgive your sin. If
you need Christ to save you that way, Almighty God will forgive
your sin. You know why I make that statement
in such boldness? That's what the forgiver said.
That's what the forgiver said. He came to forgive sin. Then
number three, Christ eats with publicans and sinners because
that's who he came to seek. You know, one day the Lord was
walking through Jericho. He passed through Jericho and
he left that city. And as he's walking out of the
city, he passed by a certain tree. He looked up in that tree
and there's a little fella, this little short fella sitting up
in that tree. He was another publican, Zacchaeus. And Lord
told Zacchaeus, you come on down. I must go to your house today. He invited him over to Zacchaeus'
house. He said, I'm going to your house today. Here's another publican. I mean, the man's treed, just
like a guilty criminal, you know, running from the law. He's up
a tree. Why did the Lord call him? Look
at Luke chapter 19. Let's let the Lord tell us why
he did that. Luke chapter 19. Luke 19, verse nine. And Jesus said unto him, this
day is salvation come to this house, for as much as he also
is a son of Abraham. Four, now here's why salvation
came to Zacchaeus' house that day. For the son of man is come
to seek and to save that which was lost. Zacchaeus was found
because the Lord came seeking him. And the Lord wasn't seeking
him like I seek my keys when they're lost. The Lord knew right
where he was, the Lord put him there, and he came to get him.
He came to get him, because that's what shepherds do. They find
their lost sheep, and they bring them back to the fold. Now, nobody
would deny that all the people in Matthew's house that he invited
over to his house, sitting there with the Lord, were notorious
sinners. There they all are, sitting around
the table with the Savior. The shepherd sure sought and
found them, didn't he? he drew them all to him. Now
he used the means of Matthew, but it was the Lord that drew
all these notorious sinners to come to him. Isn't that gracious? The Lord seeks and he finds sinners. Now these publicans and sinners,
they were lost and they knew it. And up to this point in the
religion of their day, not one single solitary religious person
had ever sought them. The Pharisees never sought them.
I mean, all the Pharisees were trying to do is say, look how
bad these people are. And so, you know, then by deduction,
you can decide how good I am. The Pharisees didn't try to point
them to Christ. The Pharisees just tried to get
away from them. The only one who ever cared anything enough
to do anything for these poor publicans and sinners is the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he sought them and he found
them, just like he does all of his elect. The Savior came to
seek and to save that which was lost. Now, how did we get lost
in the first place? Well, all of God's elect, just
like every other son of Adam, we're born lost in Adam. We're
born natural-born sinners. And we lived in our own sin.
We lived in our own man-made religion. We thought we were
thriving in our own righteousness that we established by our own
works of the law. And we're so dead, we didn't
even know we're dead. We're so blind, we don't even know that
we're blind. We're so lost, we don't even know that we're lost.
But the Lord knew it. The Lord knew it. And he came
as the great shepherd of the sheep. And he laid down his life
for his sheep. He laid down his life as a sacrifice
for his sheep so that his sheep would live. And then he arose
again from the dead. He rose again because all the
sin that was laid on him had been put away by his precious
blood, and he went out to seek and to save his lost sheep. And
he comes, and he calls them by name. Zacchaeus, come down. Matthew, follow me. And when
he calls, they follow him, and he brings them all the way to
glory. Now, the Lord does not call his
sheep today audibly like he did Matthew and Zacchaeus, but he
calls his sheep by what we're doing right now, the preaching
of the gospel. The Lord uses the gospel to call
his sheep, and he uses that same gospel to take care of his sheep
the rest of their journey home. That gospel feeds his sheep.
That gospel comforts the hearts of his sheep. That gospel teaches
his sheep. That gospel leads his sheep to
follow Christ all the way to glory. All of God's elect were
born lost, but not one of them's gonna die that way. The Lord's
gonna find them all. It is my earnest prayer that
the Lord is seeking somebody here tonight, because if he's
seeking you, he's gonna find you. You can't hide from him. He's gonna find you, and he's
gonna bring you to himself. Oh, I pray that so tonight. Then here's the fourth thing.
Christ eats with publicans and sinners because of his compassion
for sinners. And back in our text, Matthew
chapter nine, verse 12, but when Jesus heard that, here are these
Pharisees and their self-righteous, critical tone, 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. Now you go and learn what that
means. I'll have mercy and not sacrifice. I'll have mercy, not
your works of religion, for I'm not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. Now the Lord Jesus came as the
great physician of our sin sick souls. Now the only people who
need a doctor are sick folk. That's the only people who need
a doctor. Now, you might need to go to a doctor because you
need a checkup, or you might need a refill in your prescriptions.
But when you go for one of those, what they call well visits, you
don't really need the doctor. I mean, it's pretty inconvenient,
isn't it? But if you're sick and you need the doctor, go in
his waiting room, waiting on him, not a real big problem,
is it? Because you need him. Now, when the Lord says he came
to heal the sick, he's telling us what sin really is. Sin is
not something that we did that's kind of wrong. I could have done
that better. That's not sin. Sin is not breaking
God's rules. Sin is not, you know, I really
shouldn't have done that and I'll do better next time. That's
not what sin is. Sin is an awful disease. Scripture
likens it to leprosy. It's a terminal case that always
kills. Sin is a gross disease. It rots us from the inside out.
It bursts out all over our body like huge tumors. Sin leaves
us covered with open wounds and bruises and putrefying sores
that have not been closed up, neither mollified with ointment.
We would gag if we could really see what we look like in our
sins. God doesn't let us see completely
what we are in our sin or we go stark raving mad. When our
daughter Holly was a little thing, we were in the service and a
man was describing what sin must look like, our sin must look
like to God. And he described a Civil War prisoner of war camp,
where the prisoners, they weren't taken care of at all, it was
just horrible. And this one prisoner was so
sick and he had this big boil on his head, it was just awful. I mean, the filth, all the things
about this camp and this sickness that this man had. And they finally
decided to lance this boil or whatever it was on top of this
man's head. And it was full of maggots. And poor little Holly
went. That's what we do if we had any
idea, the filthiness, the corruption of our sin. But Christ says,
he's come as the great physician, Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that
healeth thee. Not the Lord that practices medicine.
Not the Lord that's gonna try this prescription or that prescription.
The Lord that healeth thee. The Lord heals all the sin sickness
of his people by pouring in that sweet balm of Gilead, that wine
and the oil of his precious blood that cleanses us and heals us
from all of our sin sickness. Now I tell you, you can trust
your soul. to this physician, the great
physician. He only takes terminal cases.
He's not going to take you if you just got a cold. He takes
terminal cases where all hope is lost. He actually only takes
cases where the patient is already dead. And he gives that patient
life by taking their place, by taking their death and giving
them his life. And this physician has a 100%
cure rate. He always gives eternal life,
and he does it freely. You'll never get a bill from
this physician. He heals his people freely, and
he does it with compassion, not just clinical know-how, compassion. Christ came to show mercy to
the miserable. I have learned by experience
that the best doctors and nurses, they have real compassion for
a patient who's suffering. It just makes all the difference
in the world. And I'll give you an example.
A few years ago, I was in the hospital. I mean, I was in so much pain.
There was so much stuff going wrong with me. It started to
cross my mind. Am I even going to get out of
this place? Am I ever going to get out of this room? I mean,
am I going to get out of here alive? It was so horrible. Misery. And Jan and I were praying. And
I prayed to the Lord, would you just give us something? Can you
just give us something, some grace that's sufficient? Can
you give us something to get through this next minute, this
next hour? Just, Lord, help us. Just something. I was past asking
the Lord to heal me, just give me something, you know? And I
no sooner said amen than the door opened up. The Lord seldom
answers my prayers this quickly, but this time he did. And in
walked a nurse named Annie. And Annie, she took a lichen
to me and Janet. I think we reminded her of her
parents that she took a lichen to us. Now, Annie had the clinical
know-how. She was an RN, but this was her
last week as an RN. Starting the next week, she would
begin working as a physician's assistant. She had the clinical
know-how. She'd been to school. been on
the job a long time, so she had the clinical know-how, but I'm
telling you, it was her compassion that made all the difference
in the world. It made me feel so much better,
and her compassion made her not miss anything that could be treated. She just didn't miss anything.
I'll never forget Annie. I mean, I love this woman. I'll
never forget her. She did everything she could
do, just humanly do, to make me better. But you know old Annie
could only do so much. Now I want you to imagine the
eternal, omnipotent God as your great physician. And he doesn't
just treat you with clinical know-how. He does it with compassion. The Lord was moved with compassion. Toward that great multitude,
there were a sheep not having a shepherd, and he fed them.
The Lord was moved with compassion for that poor leper that came
to him and said, Lord, if you will, you can make me whole.
And the Lord reached out his hand and touched him. Can you imagine what that touch
felt like to that man? He was so full of leprosy, other
lepers wouldn't touch him. And the Lord reached and touched
him and said, I will, be thou clean. So here's the question for you
and me. I ask you again, are you a sinner? Because the Lord
came to save sinners. I mean the worst of sinners.
Sinners who all they can do is sin. The Lord didn't come to
save people and say, well now of course I sin, who doesn't
sin? Of course I sin. but I'm not that bad. I mean,
I know some folks down the block, you know, they're worse than
me. I mean, I'm not perfect, but I'm not a prostitute. I'm
not a traitor to my country, you know. I'm not a cheat. I'm
not the worst sinner in the county. There are plenty of people worse
than me. That's not who the Lord came to save. The Lord didn't
come to save some folks. I need some help. You know, Lord,
I can do this if you'll just take care of the rest. The Lord
came to save sinners, sinners who are dead in sin, so they
can't do one thing to help themselves. The Lord came to save sinners
who are helpless. They can't do anything but sin.
They can't make themselves righteous. Here's good news. The Lord came
to show mercy to helpless, hopeless, dead sinners. This multitude
of publicans and sinners gathered around our Lord, there were many
of them, many of them. The Lord had time for each and
every one of them. The Lord had mercy for each and
every one of them. The Lord had grace, forgiveness
for each and every one of them. The Lord had time to forgive
their sin and sit down and have fellowship with them. Now, are
you so lost? Are you so dead in your sin that
you must have Christ do all the saving for you? Are you? Then he will. And when he does,
he's going to come and eat with you too. He is willing to sit
down at the table with the likes of you and me because Christ
came to save sinners. All right, I pray Lord bless
that to you.