The scandal of mercy

All right. This uh this morning's scripture reading is going to come from Matthew chapter 9. Matthew chapter 9. Um yeah, I think I said it before, but I'm just really thankful for, you know, the many hands that have come and have helped. And I just love seeing us as a body uh work together uh in this. And so really appreciative of everybody. Um, so Matthew chapter 9 and we're going to be reading verses 9 through 13.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed him. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when he heard it, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I came to call the righteous, not to call the righteous, but sinners.

Let's pray. Well, Lord, we just pray that uh that you would speak to us through your word. And uh I just pray Lord that you above all would have um your way that we would just have open hearts to hear from you today and that you might give me clarity of voice and mind in Jesus name. Amen.

So, one of the things that that we really see coming forth from this is that as Jesus is talking and coming here and he calls Matthew in his life is that Jesus is ultimately showing us and reorienting us and revealing God what God's mission has always been to come near to people to come near to needy and broken people not for them to come to him but for him to first come down to them. And this is what Jesus has been doing is he has gone out and is doing ministry and has called this tax collector to himself. This has always been God's mission from the very beginning.

If you really think from the very beginning, Adam and Eve sin in the garden and they are running from God. They are leaving. They're filled with guilt and with shame and they hide themselves. And God could go, well, you know, this was a science project gone wrong. I guess too bad or whatever and just kick it, you know, to the curb. But no, God came down and he pursued them and he killed an animal and he clothed them. This signifying the the cost of mercy and of grace, but he pursued.

And even later as the children of Israel come out of bondage and out of out of Egypt and they are in the wilderness, God in the same way uh creates a tabernacle where he meets with the people. And then in this place there is the holy of holies and on the uh top of the of the ark of the covenant is a thing called the mercy seat where the priest would come and sprinkle that blood before the mercy seat. So God's mercy comes down to us and meets with us in these places.

And so we find that that ultimately what Jesus is doing here is redefining everything about the way that religion in this day and age has become. It's become about going to God and it's become about getting your life fixed and right. And yet Jesus is reorienting everything to God coming down and drawing us up unto himself. And so that changes everything. Um, Matthew 9, that mercy is no longer a shadow, but it now has a face. It's in Jesus.

And so what we're going to see here are three things. Why is Jesus here? What does he confront? And what does it all mean? Why is Jesus here? Well, first off, he's re as Jesus comes to Matthew, Matthew's a tax collector. And if you know in Jesus's day, tax collectors are known as sinners. They're known as corrupt individuals. Um Rome occupied Israel and it was a there was a system of exorbitant taxes that took place and oftent times tax collectors would profit by charging a search charge to the current tax and they would make money and they were known oftentimes as criminals or crooks or con artists. Uh they also are in Jewish times they are serving the the empire. So they're working against the people of God and in every way just culturally and religiously they're seen as outcasts. They're seen as the enemy. They're seen as the least of these worse than Gentiles in every way.

And yet Jesus is going along. He sees this guy who is a notorious tax who's known for his role. He doesn't deserve salvation. He doesn't deserve God in his life. And yet Jesus looks at him and he calls him to follow him. And Matthew would have, I'm sure, in the in the time of Capernaum and Jesus's growing fame, known about Jesus. The trade routes that would go along through a tax booth would often be lines of communication. He was aware of the ministry of Jesus and who he was. And yet we see here this picture of Jesus coming to someone who doesn't seemingly from a religious perspective deserve it, deserve the recognition, deserve the call. You would call as a rabbi this guy of all people to follow you. He's the least qualified and the least worthy of any of this. And yet that's exactly the kind of person that Jesus calls. And he calls him to belong. He calls him to be a follower. He invites him into his crew of people who will travel along and do ministry.

Now, there's that's scandalous if you can really think about it. I mean, if you think about even in our modern day just the people, you know, you you think about a con artist or you think about people that are notorious sinners or people that have cheated people. You think about the investment banker, you know, that that on Wall Street who's crooked or the crooked politician that should have gone to jail or whatever it is in life. And yet Jesus wants that person in his crew of followers. There's a scandal to it in a way. It's completely a reversal of who should belong and who should be included. But that's what Jesus does. He invites the people not who belong or think they belong because of their merit but just those who want to follow. And so the invitation to Matthew and to all is will you follow me? Will you come? And it's not to those who are well, to those who deserve it, to those who are pretty good people. No, it's just just anyone. Anyone. All who are unworthy. All who don't belong. Jesus says you can belong. You can be known, invited, seen, loved, included.

And it changes everything. And yet that mercy as it is, that invitation to belong, it calls for a response. It invites all of us not just to say that's a nice thing, but to understand what he's doing. Matthew very much understood the scandal and yet the beauty the overwhelming privilege of what Jesus was asking and what Jesus was inviting him to everyone else around him maybe even Matthew himself who me yeah Matthews and even for us you know as a church you know we often can value people based upon their worth. They're deserving. Maybe they're they're good people that they're clean and they got their life together and they've acted right. And so those are the kind of people we want to attract and draw. But that's not how Jesus values it, right? No, it's based on the one that God chooses, based on the one who will get up and follow. And that's who Jesus extends it to.

He also changes everything and redefineses by renewing the original mission. See, the mission of God wasn't uh it changed over time in Judaism. I had a professor in college that talked about salvation and talked about the message of the Bible. And the way that he said, he said, "Conceptually, it boils down to this question. Is it that we rise up to God or is it that God came down and he draws us up to himself?" And the message over and over again, even from Genesis, as I said earlier, is that God came down and he meets with us. And it's not based upon our qualifications or anything else. and he draws us up to himself.

And we see that that it everything in in Jesus's day, there was a temple on a hill. And the understanding of the Pharisees and all who looked on at people like Matthew would have been this. If you want to come to God, then you go to that temple up there and you offer your sacrifices and you get your life right and you start acting right and then God will accept you. That's the way that Judaism worked in Jesus's day. And yet Jesus comes and he sits with sinners and tax collectors, people that don't belong, people that shouldn't be included in the circles of holiness, people that we shouldn't be reaching out to. They need to come to God and get their stuff right first.

And yet Jesus does the very opposite. He meets with people in their lives. He breaks bread with them. Especially in ancient near east times, breaking bread and fellowship, this life on life, it meant community. It meant acceptance. There is something even today about inviting people in your homes. There's another level of friendship that gets included with that. It's not just a co-orker or somebody you meet on the sidewalk. There's a greater level of intimacy and acceptance and community that's built around the table. And Jesus here is having table fellowship with people who normally religious people of his day didn't hang out with. And yet he comes.

And so we see this shift from the temple over there where you go and you get your life right and you meet with God up there to what it says in John 1 where Jesus came and he tabernacled among us. The temple of God moves from up on the hill to around the table and in the neighborhood and in front of the tax booth. It shifts and changes everything about the Jesus's ministry. And it reminds us of that same model that it's not just coming to God and getting your life right. No, it's God coming down and meeting with you wherever you are. Not because you're worthy, not because your life is good or right, but because God loves and pursues his people. And Jesus brings holiness and forgiveness and cleansing. And it's a reminder that we are to befriend in this just like Jesus all sorts of people, all sorts of walks of life to break bread around the tables just as Jesus did here with tax collectors and with sinners. And we're so so afraid sometimes. What will people think? That's sort of the question of the Pharisees in many ways. What will people say when this religious rabbi is eating with those kinds of people?

And it's the reminder that that's the God that we serve and the God that he calls us to be to go and be incarnational in the world around us to enter into the lives of people and people who are different than us, people who might not be religious at all and to share life and in the right moments to see how God opens the door for us to be able to share the message of the gospel even in their lives.

So what does Jesus confront? And as Jesus is changing and redefining and reorienting everyone back to God's original mission, what does he confront? And ultimately he confronts the Pharisees. The Pharisees ask of Jesus, you know, but uh they they look and see that Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners. And that's what they say. They say, "When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples,"Wh does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? These aren't the kind of people you should be reaching out to. These aren't the kind of people you should be associating with Jesus. This is the wrong place for you to be.

See, the Pharisees represent religion. And religion is based upon the simple rule. Obey and you'll be accepted. Get your life right. Do right. Do what God has called you to do. fix the things that are broken, repent of your sin, and then God will accept you. But what happens over time when we when we begin to operate on that? Well, one, we can't clean ourselves to underestimate the depth of sin deep within us. Awtoer said it like this. It's not what we do that makes us sinful. It's what we are. There's something deep within us that's broken and that's we've lost and twisted something about the humanity that God put in us so that it's offkilter and we tend to be prone to wander, prone to reject God, prone to go our own way. And there's something about religion that says if you'll conform, if you'll follow these rules, you can find acceptance. You can obey and be accepted. You can live your good life. You can avoid bad people. And this will lead to to righteousness.

But really ultimately, that's a self-righteousness. It's a righteousness that that starts to look at our works and our life and our our goodness and we begin to depend on that and we begin to slowly see that our life is based upon our good works. And the problem with religion is that it makes us judgmental toward others. Pride takes root in our heart. It blinds us to our need. The gospel challenges religion. It tells us that you are accepted and therefore through that obey. And something about what the Pharisees do here is that they they misunderstand the heart of God. They misunderstand in here that God is calling them to not to to religious obedience.

I'm running really low on uh on sleep and I feel sort of just my own um brain fog this morning and I'm trying to read through my notes, but so much of what I've prepared to say and what I have somewhere in my head is um it's clouded because I'm running low on sleep this week. So, I kind of need some grace and I'm sorry for that cuz uh I need my own mercy this morning because I feel clouded and my brain doesn't want to think and um I'm going to see if I can get through it though. So, sorry, but uh I appreciate the the grace on it. Lord, I pray that you'd help me cuz I really need it in this moment.

All right. So Jesus, he's confronting something of the day and the age around him. What does he confront? Legalism. See the Pharisees. The Pharisees had um they believed they had followed the rules. They had offered the sacrifices. They had done all the right things in their life and so therefore they are accepted. And for all the other people out there, if they want to get right, then you come and you offer your life and you do right. And if you're a tax collector, you know what? You don't belong and you never will belong. Maybe if you like repent, you turn, you quit your job and you start offering sacrifices, you'll be accepted. But it's based upon what you do. You come to God, you work your way up. And it's all about you rising up to God.

And what happens over time is that there's a self-righteousness that begins to birth within this because you begin to slowly think, I have obeyed. I've done what I'm supposed to. I'm a good person. I've followed the rules. And therefore, God, I've got holiness and he accepts me because I'm a good person. And slowly that shift begins to not see God's mercy. The mercy that you have to come before with the high priest and sprinkle the blood in front of. No, you begin to say, "I am righteous. There's a shift because of what I've done." Because of what I've done.

And what it will slowly do in your heart is it will begin to make you proud. And you will begin to look at other people who maybe don't have the same conformity, the rules or the level or whatever it is that you have. I I tithe more. I'm more generous. I follow the rules better. I'm stricter. I dress up better. and you will begin to judge the people around you. You will begin to condemn them. And that's what the Pharisees ultimately do here. If they want, if people want to come to God, they need to clean their life up first. That's how religion always works, right? You follow the rules. You get your life right. You come to church. You read your Bible. You pray enough. You do all of these things. And then you start to kind of be a righteous person. And you begin to look around at the world and even people in the church. And you can start to judge them. You can start to say who is worthy of God and who is not. And the whole system begins to look at conformity to rules. And and then we begin to become afraid to actually enter into the other people's lives who might not be as conforming as we are because it might impact us. It might taint us.

And the amazing thing about what Jesus is doing is that he enters in. See, the way the Jewish system worked is that you you abstained from things that made you unclean. If you came into contact with with things, unclean foods, dead carcasses, whatever, that would taint and make you unclean. And it got so far that eventually it was stay away from sinners because they are unclean. Gentiles are not part of the people of God. Stay away from them because they are unclean.

And you can see more and more how religion begins to put up these barriers and these walls and saying, "You're out there. We're in here. Somehow we're more accepted. We're more elevated. We're better. God loves us more. accepts us more because we've obeyed and we sort of just throw truth at those who are outside. And so you can kind of see this great separation that begins to happen.

But there's something about Jesus and about the way that God works that penetrates and tears down the walls because Jesus's holiness, God's holiness, it enters in and when it touches unclean things, does he absorb it? No. His holiness and his power and his righteousness conquers and transforms those things. Jesus is not made unclean by his contact with sinful people. He's not made unclean by his contact with leper. It's the power and the holiness of God that begins to transform and permeate out. Do you see?

It's like the illustration might be like light and darkness. Anytime you turn on light in the dark, it's going to conquer it. It's going to drive out the dark. So it is with God's holiness. Unlike the Jewish system which was gotten so strict about walls and barring things off because it might taint us, Jesus goes out into those places and says the power and the holiness of God will like like light drive out and change and transform. And when he shows up at the tax collector booth and when he shows up in people's houses and he breaks bread with sinners and tax collectors, he's spreading and invading his holiness into people's lives. He's offering himself. He's offering mercy to them, grace to them, and it penetrates.

Matthew looks in the eyes of the savior of the world. Doesn't know it. But something about that guy said that I'm seen. Everybody in the world has told me I don't belong. People hate me. I'm a cultural outcast. And he said I can belong. He said I can be in. And there's this power and this reversal that begins to take place that moves from religion which says do right and then you can enter into the into the walls of acceptance to God moving out coming down into that space and into those places granting mercy telling people they can belong telling them they are accepted and inviting them to follow and to respond. ond and it changes everything.

He knows my name. He called me by name. He invited me. He told me I belonged. He gave me like acceptance before I did anything to deserve it. That's what's happening in Matthew's life. That's what's happening in the lives of so many people is Jesus moving out of the confines of religion and bringing gospel. That's the difference between religion and gospel. Religion says follow the rules and you'll be accepted. Gospel says you're accepted and obey. Walk in that. And who wouldn't want to when they've experienced such mercy, such forgiveness, such when this person like Jesus says you can belong.

Matthew had never experienced anything like that in his life. And if we're honest, we've all been Matthew. I hope you can remember. I hope you don't think that you've always had it all figured out, that your life has been clean, cuz you will start to become like a Pharisee, and you'll forget the need that you have for mercy. You'll start to say, "I'm accepted because I've done right, not because God came in when I was not looking for him and not interested." And he called me and told me I was loved and seen, that I could belong. That's gospel. And it's scandalous.

You see this, right? Everything in this world says you do and therefore you're accepted. I mean we feel it. We naturally feel it. We feel like even when we get gospel we always orient back to law. We always feel like well I got to keep doing you know. No. Everything's a response. It's a response. It doesn't make you more accepted. It doesn't make you like better like you're going to get some higher level of salvation and acceptance. God pursued you first when you were not interested in him. And so Jesus confronts the religion of his day and invites people to belong and it changes everything about it.

So Jesus here and just to recap as I kind of got off track and lost my way there. Why is Jesus here? Because he's redefining what it means to belong and he's renewing his original mission. God's original mission from the beginning to invade and to come and to draw people to himself and then to work through the lives of those people to come and gather their friends and all these different people and walks of life and to begin to build a new kind of society a new kingdom of people who will follow him whose lives have been transformed who didn't deserve it a bunch of people who felt like that riffraff and I didn't belong and I didn't deserve and my life is a mess and yet God said that I belong I could have a seat at the table and it shifts everything and it produces some sort of gratitude and unbelief of this mercy that he has extended.

And he turns to the Pharisees here and he quotes a verse from Hosea. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I meet the people who need me. And ironically, the Pharisees here don't think that they need righteousness. They think I am righteous because I have obeyed. They think, "I'm not sick, therefore I don't need a healer and doctor because I have my religion." And Jesus sort of in an off-handed way as a teacher says to these guys who know their Bible, who have taught their Bible, he quotes a verse from Isaiah and says from Hosea and says, "Go and learn what this means." And it's a little bit insulting. Like, you kidding me? I know the Bible. I know what it says. I taught on that verse. And yet, that's what he does. Go. because you you know the word but you don't know it. It hasn't penetrated your heart and your life to understand the heart of God, his very heart.

So we talked about why Jesus is here. What does he confront and what does it all mean? What it means is that we need mercy. Matthew needs it, but we need it too. And if we ever forget that, then we begin to align our lives more with the lives of religious people who say, "I'm accepted because I've obeyed instead of God scandalously came and offered it to me."

You know, one of the things in my own life and heart is uh years ago I struggled with addiction and I was just my life had a lot of things that were not going well and I was really confused and I had this something began to birth all of a sudden in me. I began to feel real guilty about some of the things I was doing and uh and started to bother me and months went by and I was trying to fix it and I couldn't fix it and and you know the religion thing started to kind of like the God thing started to kind of come into the picture and I started thinking about it but you know what scared me so much it what scared me is I actually thought that if I came and I asked God for help he wouldn't take me because he knew what I'd done. He knew who I was. He wouldn't receive me. He wouldn't forgive a guy like me. And it scared me. It scared me to come to him because I was like I mean, man, if if there is a God cuz I wasn't sure if I even believed in him and he does reject me. I mean, I kind of I kind of I'm lost. That's the worst of all. I mean, he's supposed to be gracious and yet I was afraid. The enemy had me so afraid.

And we can't forget our need for mercy. Mercy changes us from the inside out. And it changes Matthew's heart and life here because as he understands what he's been invited to, he's through that going to live a life that's completely changed because God said he belongs. And it was like he was named something that what than what he was. See, when God extends mercy to you, he calls you something than what you are different than what you are. You know, you can be a tax collector, you can be a drug dealer, whatever. You can be a prostitute. And yet he says, "No, that's not what I name you." See, when he extends his mercy to you, he's calling you something different. He's giving you worth and value, and he's saying, "That's not who you really are. I know who you are. John, Sarah, Sandra, I made you. I created you."

And something about that awakens a person that makes them want to to start to respond to that identity, to begin to live that out. And that's what begins to happen in Matthew's heart. He doesn't want to live this old life anymore. He doesn't want to be the guy that's rejected. He doesn't want to be the outcast anymore. He said, "I was I belong." He said, 'I can be part of the people of God. He invited me and included me. And Matthew's life is all now about responding and living that out, living up to the thing that he's been invited to. Because that's what God's mercy really does. And we should never forget it in our own lives. Mercy changes us from the inside out, not the outside in. It calls us first. it comes down and grabs us and draws us up to God.

And in that same way, we're also to turn and not look at the good deeds we did, but to realize, no, you were accepted because God just loved you. And through that response, not to proceed in judgment and condemnation to the world around you. And not to look and say, well, I'm a pretty good person. That's why I'm really accepted. Because pride slowly do that to you. It will slowly make you into a religious person.

And we have to see just like Jesus, let him come in and reorient us and challenge us just like he's challenging the way that things work in this modern time that he operates in here 2,000 years ago. It had shifted from the garden and from what he originally intended to a system that was very different than what God intended it to be.

So there's a warning to all of us to avoid becoming the Pharisee like that. We can start to clean up our lives and we can live so tidy that we begin to put these confines around us and we don't want to enter into the world around to break bread to share life to enter into people that are different than us and just find that shared experience that love for football or whatever it is or pickle ball or anything like that or volunteering and just see how God opens doors. wars in those spaces with people very different than us and allows us to be agents of his mercy, his goodness, his gospel in this world.

You know, one of the things as I really sort of sum maybe to sum up all of this is um is I as I thought about what Jesus is doing here and how he's changing everything and he's and he's extending I came to give mercy. I want I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I thought about uh the story in Lamez. If you've seen the movie, it's pretty close to the book in many ways. Um in a very famous scene and that scene is uh is Jean Van Jean Vjan is a uh is a convict and he's been set out of prison and he and he stays with a priest overnight in his house and and he steals the silver. Like you're out of jail, man. and like you're already committing a crime cuz Jean Baljon's a he's not a great guy. He's not a great guy. And uh and he steals the silver and you know the police were watching him and so he goes and um and and he's run off and they catch him and they bring him back to the priest and uh and they say, "Hey, we caught the guy. Here's your silver back." And he says, "Oh no, I gave that to him." And and the police are completely dumbfounded. They're like, "What? You gave it to him?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah, you, Jean Valjon, I'm mad at you. You forgot the candlesticks." And he grabs these silver candlesticks that are also worth a lot of money. And he gives them to Jean Valjon. And the police are like, "So we can we can let him go." And he's like, "Yeah, you can let him go. He's fine."

Right? And so they they they go off and he's standing there with Jean Valjon and uh and he and he and he gives him the candles and he looks at him and he comes in slowly and draws close to him and he says, "Don't ever forget it. Don't ever forget it. I have purchased you from evil and from darkness. That is no longer who you are. Keep your promise, Jean Valjon. And Jean Valjon through this is literally the book talks about him shaking and being so bewildered by what was happening and dumbfounded by what he was experiencing and thinking, I didn't promise anything. What is he talking about? And Jean Baljon leaves there sort of disoriented.

And as the book continues, he doesn't immediately change. He actually winds up stealing some money from a little kid. And yet something begins to like the words of that priest begin to haunt him. Why did he let me off the hook? Why did he extend such mercy to me? And it begins to like fester in Jean Valjan. and he comes to a place where he begins to realize like if this guy has done this for me and I reject it, it means one of two things. It means I really am a wretch and my life is going to move on this trajectory where I I'm not even I people can even treat me nice and this is the way that my life goes. I'm a I'm the wretch of all wretch. I'm almost a demon or something about this is it's messing with me and if I'm going to respond to it's going to change everything about me. I'm going to live out something about what he has called me to because of what he did. He gave me like a new opportunity, a second chance.

And so, Jean Valjon kind of comes to this crossroads in his life as he begins to ponder that and as it fers in his own heart. And the author says that mercy began to dawn in his soul. It penetrated something in him. That priest had named him and called him and accepted him in a way that was not who he was in that moment. And he began to live in light of that.

Mercy calls us to live in light not of who we were, but of who God called us and who he calls us to become. And so our life is always responding to that calling and that naming and that act of mercy. Mercy disrupts and it overwhelms and it shapes us. I mean think about your own life. It shaped me when I experienced it that very first time when I thought God's not going to give me mercy. And then he did and he met me in a very powerful way one day and it began to shape and stir something and I knew I didn't deserve it. And like Jean Bjon, I began to to live in light of it. I didn't want that old past to define me anymore.

But mercy is it costs something. God just can't wave his hand over someone and and say forgiven. Even for the priest, it cost him that silver. It cost him in that moment to to extend mercy. And in that same way, God pays for that costliness. He absorbs all of our guilt, all of our shame, all of our actions and says, you know, that we don't belong. And he extends to us not just mercy, but he also extends to us his righteousness.

So you think about Matthew there, tax collector, his identity, his robbery, all of these different attributes that are on him. And it's not just that Jesus waves his hand over that guy and says, "You're clean." He does, but he takes it and he pays for that. He absorbs it. And then he with the theologically they call it imputed righteousness. He transfers his holiness, his righteousness to Matthew. So it's not the old Matthew we see, it's a new Matthew. As Matthew responds and leans in, he receives all of Jesus's credit and rightness and goodness. It falls on Matthew as a follower. It's redemptive. And he begins to live in light of that.

So that God no longer sees old Matthew tax collector. He sees it his son. He sees the righteousness of Jesus sitting on Matthew. And for all the tax collectors and the sinners and all of the different people that will come to Jesus, that's what happens. God absorbs our sin. He pays for the cost as we'll see next week as we look at Good Friday and then he gives us his holiness and his righteousness. It's that light penetrating that darkness. And when it does, it changes us.

But it also commisss us like Matthew to throw the parties and to gather the different people of the walks of life to gather around the table like them to be present in the lives of people and to extend mercy whether it's them coming in here or whether they gather in our homes or whether we meet them in different walks of life. And sometimes it's through relationship as Jesus breaks bread. And sometimes it's a quick meeting in a coffee shop or at a tax collector booth. In the same way, standing like Jesus, calling people to belong, to be known, to be invited in, to know a God who loves them, so that they might receive that same mercy and righteousness from him. Let's pray.