March 26, 2017

“The Sinner’s Friend”Larry Thorson

Matthew 9:9-139 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.10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

One of the most common accusations hurled at Jesus was this:

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” —Luke 15:2, NIV

Today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, dinner parties. When Martha and I started a new church we built it around dinner parties at our house. It was a lot of fun. I remember her chocolate cake, it was so rich and thick that once people took a bite they were mesmerized (or their tongues wouldn’t work). It was the perfect time to close the deal and sign them up to be on our team.

Houses used to always be built with formal dining rooms. Even our tiny 1948 bungalow has a dining room. But formal dining rooms are becoming a thing of the past in new home construction. People aren’t having dinner

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parties like they used to. Those dining rooms that remain are going unused. We had new neighbors move in last year across the street from us and we invited them over to have a meal in our little dining room. They’re the age of our kids. Last week they reciprocated. That’s the first time we’ve gotten a dinner invitation in that neighborhood in the three years of living there. It was nice.

But who gets invited to your dinner parties? In Jesus’ day, to share a meal with someone was considered a big deal. Even today, someone in that culture may share a cup of coffee with you, but to invite you to dinner is an act of trust, respect, and friendship.

So when Jesus had a dinner party with tax collector people like Matthew and Zacchaeus, He was extending friendship to them … to such a degree that His critics said:

“Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” —Luke 7:34b

Then He caused a scandal by making Matthew one of His first and closest disciples. He even showed mercy to a woman who had been caught in the very act of committing adultery!

Have you ever wondered, would Jesus have picked you to be on His team or to come over for dinner? Some of you may be thinking “yea, I have a lot to offer Him, He’d be fortunate to have me on His team.” Others might be thinking “there are lot of others more qualified He could pick from.” “Why would He pick me?”

We all remember the painful experience of picking teams in elementary school. Of being picked last or second to last based mainly on how you dropped the ball in the outfield the last time you played. “Hey, it was one time, one time.”

Or the painful experience of your senior year in college when you were competing with your classmates for the few available jobs. Student after student would come to class excited about landing their dream job while your phone remained silent. Or that feeling when all your friends are getting married and you’re not. Maybe you’re the 2% of the population who’s never experienced rejection and can’t relate but most of us have been turned down

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plenty in our life and can relate to a painful selection process.

When Jesus went to pull together a team of volunteers He apparently didn’t give an open invitation. He knew what skills He was looking for, what personalities the team needed and the heart necessary to be on His inner team. He also spent considerable time praying about His selection before He made it.

Meanwhile Matthew was sitting in his little toll booth collecting taxes for Rome. They didn’t have cars in those days but if they did I’m quite certain it would be a Porsche two seat roadster. Why a Porsche? We had two kids and both needed braces as they were growing up. As you know if you’ve used them, orthodontists are very expensive. Both in Texas and in Southern California, two different doctors, I would drive up to the orthodontist office and look at my Porsche in the parking lot. I helped buy those things.

But orthodontists at least provide a good service. Just ask my daughter to smile for you sometime. Not Roman tax collectors. Rome supposedly provided protection for Israel from invading enemies but not really. They were the invading enemy that never left. Because they controlled things they could set what you owed them. To make matters worse they recruited Israeli citizens who spoke Hebrew to betray their own people to collect the taxes. Then to make matters even worse the unscrupulous Israeli tax collector could overcharge for your taxes and keep whatever was leftover.

So of all the people you would judge, it would be the tax collector. Of all the people you wouldn’t want on your team, it would be the tax collector. A tax collector is a traitor. A tax collector is a thief. A tax collector is immoral. A tax collector is opposed to God. A tax collector is despicable. Right? Why would any good, upstanding, godly Israeli invite a tax collector to his dinner party let alone invite him on his team?

Because the Son of God looks at the heart, not at the stereotype. A stereotype is an appearance that we’ve come to expect certain behaviors from. We can’t see what’s inside the heart. You can’t see inside my heart and I can’t see inside yours. We can only see actions which we presume to be from the heart.

So let’s assume this Matthew is everything we’ve come to know and not

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appreciate about tax collectors. Let’s assume he was as bad as we think he could be. Jesus gives this invitation to Matthew: “come and follow me.”

What that invitation must have done was soil Jesus’ reputation. He’s now associated with all the bad associated with a tax collector. And did He ever get criticized for it.

Then we find out that He invites tax collectors (plural) and their cheating friends over for dinner. Remember in that culture (and in ours), going to someone’s house for dinner was a sign of real intimacy. If you want to make friends with tax collectors have them over for dinner. But be careful, it’s been said that we become like the company we keep. I keep the company of dogs so what does that say about me?

Now imagine you meet a member of a white supremacist group. His group hates African Americans, Asian Americans and anyone not of the white Aryan race. He stands for everything you don’t. Yet you invite him over for dinner. He has friends and asks if they can come too including Oscar who just got released from San Quentin. They’re surprisingly polite and you have a really good time. You tell them about Jesus and they’re interested. Afterwards they sit around on your porch letting your neighbors know just the kind of friends you keep from their tattoos to the bumper stickers on their trucks. You’re feeling generous so you invite them back for another dinner next week and they agree to come. The next thing you know you’re on the government watch list.

That’s what happened to Jesus by inviting Matthew to join his team. It

upset people. Read in v.11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” We all know the reason He ate with sinners. Jesus explained it in the next verse. 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

I’ve never worked in a medical office but I’ve sat in many waiting rooms of doctors. I never like it because how contagious is the person sitting next to me? I may have a back problem I’m bringing in for a look but I’m not contagious. Yet I may leave there sicker than I came in. Then I think about my doctor and her staff. They’re being exposed all day long. What can they do? Antibiotics only go so far before we become immune to them. I say shut the office down before everyone on staff gets sick. Keep those sick people away.

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But that’s who a doctor is there for.

So a well person runs the risk of getting sick in order to help one get well. It happens everyday, seven days a week in doctor’s offices and urgent care centers. You know going into that line of work that you’re going to be exposed to sick people. If you don’t like it don’t go into that line of work.

In the same way the Son of Man knew that being around dishonest people could have an affect on Him. He could become like the person He’s trying to help. That’s why the religious teachers of Jesus’ day were separatists. A Jewish separatist only associated with orthodox Jewish believers. They separated themselves from everyone else for fear of being corrupted by corrupt company. But Jesus said But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’

He was quoting the prophet Hosea, who, centuries earlier, had condemned the Jews for attempting to excuse their idolatry and their oppression of the poor by offering the prescribed animal sacrifices. “Hey I paid for the sacrifices now I can do what I want and you can’t stop me.”

God always values “mercy” over “sacrifice.” But what exactly does that mean? A lot of us seek opportunities to engage in what we consider acts of mercy. We may serve in the Tri City Free Breakfast Program on our campus or volunteer in a coat drive for the homeless, fill a shoebox with gifts, or build a wheelchair ramp for a disabled veteran. Those are good things to do and I would never knock them. But are these acts of kindness what Jesus truly meant when he challenged us to learn the difference between mercy and sacrifice? I don’t think so.

A friend invited a blogger named Denise Loock to join a cook team at a local soup kitchen. She says she initially went because she thought the experience would be good for her—make her more aware of her blessings and increase her compassion for those less fortunate. She concluded that was the wrong attitude. Why? Her acts of sacrifice were all about her. She writes “As the months passed, my attitude changed. Seeing some of the same folks in the serving line twice a month led to conversations. “How are you feeling this week, Marie? Is your cold gone?” “Have your new meds made it easier for you to sleep at night, Raymond?” “When are they going to do that surgery on your finger, Buddy?” A few months later, I started giving the pre-lunch devotion once a

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month. Before I blessed the food, I asked for prayer requests. Listening to what was on people’s hearts drew me closer to them. Praying for them planted their needs and concerns in my heart. I made sure Billy got a can of the Mountain Dew he preferred, and I reminisced with Barbara who grew up in my hometown. I chatted with Donnie when I cut his meat because he couldn’t do it with his misshapen right hand. The so-glad-to-see-yous and the hugs multiplied.

So what happened to this woman? She developed relationships. The people she was “sacrificing” for became dear to her. Going to the soup kitchen wasn’t an act of sacrifice; it was a place where she hung out with people she cared about.

In Matthew 9, the Pharisees gathered at Matthew’s house saw nameless “tax collectors” and “sinners.” Jesus, on the other hand, saw people he cared about, people he wanted to hang out with. And he knew their names.When we view what we do in Jesus’s name as faceless sacrifices, we’ve missed the whole concept of “love as I have loved you” (John 13:34). It was all personal with Jesus. It was all about relationships.

We have to get our heart involved with people—people with names and stories, joys and sorrows, prayer requests and praises. Otherwise, we’ll never understand what Jesus meant by “mercy, not sacrifice.”

Part of the problem is that mercy sounds too much like pity to us. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mercy as “compassion or forbearance” words that convey a certain condescension: Aren’t I something, helping out this person who’s less fortunate than I am? Jesus never responded to people with that attitude, even though he, the sinless Son of God, was indeed stooping to their level. Instead, he placed himself in a position—as he did in Matthew’s house—of reaching across the table, of treating each person with respect and dignity. We don’t have to participate in their prejudice or their drinking or their immorality but we can be there with them. That’s what Jesus did.

We have to move beyond feeling obligated to give up to be perceived as religious. We need to get our hearts tangled up with other people’s lives, so the word sacrifice drops out of our vocabulary and all we know is the passion to love others as Jesus loves us.

It can start with a meal. Jesus ate with Matthew and his “sinful” friends

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because He wanted to. He loved them. He didn’t love what they did but he loved them. The Pharisees couldn’t conceive of that kind of camaraderie between the pious and the publicans, the upright and the upended, the moral and the maligned. But Jesus didn’t label people. He loved Nicodemus as genuinely as he loved the tax collectors Zacchaeus and Matthew. He loved Mary of Bethany as much as he loved Mary Magdalene the prostitute. He always looked beyond a person’s history toward a person’s potential future.

This Lent let’s ask God to move us in the direction of that kind of love. Pray about who you might invite to have a meal with. Surprise someone not expecting it and surprise yourself . And see if you don’t experience the Son of God in a new and fresh way.

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LIFE GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE - Week Four

The Man of Sorrow

Life Group Resource for the week of March 26, 2017

Connect

Describe an experience of falling asleep when you shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

What is the saddest or happiest scene you’ve ever experienced?

Watch Video - The Agony in the Garden

Engage

1. Read Matthew 26:36-56 ● How did the disciples react to Jesus saying, “My soul is overwhelmed

with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me?”

● Are you surprised by their response to those words? Why or why not?

● What was the point of Jesus praying, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Do you think the second sentence more or less cancels out the first? Why or why not?

● When Jesus asked, “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?,” which of the following do you “hear” in His question?

○ Irritation○ Resignation○ Disappointment○ Accusation○ Curiousity ○ Disgust○ Frustration○ Other

Discuss

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● Have you ever felt “sorrowful and troubled”? Even “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death?” Describe it briefly.

● Have you ever really needed someone’s help or support and been disappointed? Describe it briefly.

● Have you ever faced a situation you didn’t think you could endure? Describe it briefly.

● When the Bible says Jesus “bore our pain” and “took up our suffering,” do you think it refers only to our sin? Why or why not?

● How do you think the following verse (Hebrews 2:17) relates to your life?

Follow Up

● Read Isaiah 53:1-3. Confess to Jesus the times you have not treated Him respectfully or responded to Him gratefully.

● Read Isaiah 53:4-6. Thank Jesus for taking your sins upon Himself. ● Read Isaiah 53:7-9. Praise Jesus for His faithfulness in fulfilling His mission

all the way to the cross. ● Read Isaiah 53:10-12. Pray a prayer of surrender and recommitment.● Read Mark 14:32-50. Underline every reference to an emotion Jesus felt,

and then give thanks for His perseverance through pain and obedience to death (Philippians 2:8)

● Read Philippians 2:1-11. Praise Jesus for His condescension and humility.

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TO LEARN MORE

Join a Life Group 510/657-3133

To learn and encourage one another

IF YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW HOW TO GET STARTED IN FAITH

1. Recognize that everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s ideal Romans 3:23-24

2. Know that the wages or payment for sinning is death Romans 6:23

3. But God loved us so much that He sent His only Son to die for usRomans 5:8

4. It is our responsibility to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and allow Him to become the master of our life

Romans 10:13

Invite Jesus into your heart by praying something like the prayer below… “Dear Lord Jesus, in many ways I have sinned against you. I am sorry and want to turn from my sinful ways. I invite you to come into my heart and begin to make me like yourself. I commit my life wholeheartedly to you now. Thank you for saving me.”

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