Matthew 9:9-13 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus tells the Pharisees, men devoted to the Mosaic law and regulations, that God desires mercy more than their sacrifices and religious restrictions. These men for the most part were dedicated to serving God, but their service to God was based on human effort. But Jesus now tells them that they are mistaken in their beliefs if they do not understand that God is a God of mercy and grace. He is the one who sends the rain on the just and the unjust, the daylight to those who are good and righteous and to those who live in the darkness of sin. Mistaken about the nature of God, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are judged harshly by Jesus. In Luke 11 Jesus accuses these religious leaders of lacking the nature of good shepherds who care for their sheep. Without godly character, they are greedy, faithless, and unrighteous. He evaluates them as poor shepherds, caring for themselves above the needs of the sheep. “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” (39) “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.” (42-44) Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them.” (46-47) “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” (52) The tax collectors and sinners that Jesus met with in Matthew’s house are illustrative of wayward sheep who have no shepherds to guide them. They are the most needy of the Israelites, but these are the people Jesus came to minister to. He did not come to those who thought of themselves as good or without need. He came for those who knew without a shadow of doubt that they were outside of God’s holiness. For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. (Matthew 9:13 NLT) The outcast, the poor, the blind, the crippled, the needy in spirit and body were central to Jesus’ ministry. Those on the wrong side of the street in respectability are the ones God showers with the Good News of mercy and grace. The elite, especially the spiritually elite of that day or any day, assess themselves as being in control of their spiritual lives. Maybe a tweak here or there is needed to make them better, but a total overhaul of everything within them will never fit well with their ideas of worthwhileness and goodness. If we feel we need only a minor adjustment to our spiritual wellbeing with God, we are totally wrong. We do not understand the perfection and holiness of God. That is why Jesus could say do not call me or any man or woman good in the flesh, for all fall short of deserving the mercy and grace of God. All are unworthy to approach God in any situation or under any circumstance in their own righteousness. What is needed then? A new creature is required, made perfect without blemish. Only Jesus fits that role, holds the power to create anew. We who hide IN JESUS because of our faith in his works become totally acceptable to a holy God.
Presented with the Good News, many of the needy will follow Jesus. When asked, Matthew followed Jesus. Interestingly, he followed Jesus to his own house where Jesus met with more sinners, those who were outside the culture’s acceptability. Jesus not only sat down and talked with them, He interacted with them socially by eating and drinking with them. His accusers said He was a wine imbiber because of these situations. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. (Matthew 11:19) But Jesus was seeking followers, those who would commit to him emphatically because they saw in him one who understood their needs. The “do gooders,” the self-righteous, would never commit to him because of their incorrect evaluation of themselves. They were living their lives believing they were okay with God, not assessing God’s righteousness correctly. The people Jesus was associating with at Matthew’s house knew they were outcasts, unappreciated by the majority culture and society. Jesus did not feel as a stranger in these situations; He knew He was at home with them for He was sent by God to minister to them, to rescue them from hopeless lives, dead ended in the Jewish community. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. (John 1:11) How many of us today know that we are hopelessly lost unless we accept Jesus’ work on the cross for us? How many of us really understand that Jesus came for the unhealthy? It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. How many of us really love our enemies? Do we care for those who make fun of us because of our silly beliefs about a God in heaven and the resurrection of the dead? How many of us love those who ridicule our belief in a virgin Mary and the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem? Who among us loves the homeless, treating them as we would want to be treated, sorrowing over their circumstances? How many of us love the beggar instead of looking down on their way of living? How many of us would stop on the way through a busy day to help those who cannot help themselves? How many of us are perfect, acceptable to a perfect God? The answer is obvious: none! We depend unreservedly on the grace and mercy of our loving heavenly Father. But we can do better, so much better. Open our eyes, Lord!
The people in Matthew’s house that day were living as if there were no God, in many ways by taking advantage of the Jews. The tax collectors served the Roman Empire, and they were often dishonest in their assessments of the taxes owed by the Jews who considered them duplicitous. Other sinners in Matthew’s house probably broke many social norms and laws of the culture, but Jesus sat down and interacted with them as equals. He was so much at home with them that the Pharisees criticized his association with that kind of people. But Jesus knew these individuals, as with all people, were blind from birth and in need of light. As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:1-5) Jesus uses this scene to illustrate that he has come to bring light to all people who are blind in their humanness and sin. Of course, Jesus cures this man’s blindness through the power of God. He uses spittle and dust for this miracle, maybe indicating through the spittle the power of the Holy Spirit, for from the innermost being the Spirit will flow as water through us. Regardless, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were angry about this healing. How could a sinner like Jesus heal anybody? They thought that maybe Jesus was using demonic power to heal. But the evidence was clear: a man blind from birth was healed. Jesus told the former blind man this healing was to show God’s power because God alone could change his blindness. Jesus said He came into the world to reveal God’s authority and power to his creation. Then Jesus told him, “I entered this world to render judgment—to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” (John 9:39) Jesus brought light to this man who could clearly see who Jesus was, the Son of God. He was delivered from his innate blindness. Now the Pharisees as all supposedly good people, upstanding citizens even in today’s society from the right part of town, questioned this idea of spiritual blindness or the disability of sin. Some Pharisees who were standing nearby heard him and asked, “Are you saying we’re blind?” “If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty,” Jesus replied. “But you remain guilty because you claim you can see. (John 9:40-41) The people in Matthew’s house knew they were blind. A great light came into their midst and fellowshipped with them, leading them to eternal life. The supposedly well people on the outside were the blind ones. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:10-12) The Pharisees claimed to be God’s own, but they were not; they were hypocrites, so they did not receive Jesus as the Son of God. Matthew opened his home to Jesus; he became a child of God. Our righteousness will never get us home to God—only Jesus knows the way. I tell you the truth, anyone who obeys my teachings will never die. (John 8:51) Place your trust in Jesus and you will never die.
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