Jesus Seeks And Saves Sinners

Jesus' power to forgive sinners

If you're taking notes this morning, it's follow Jesus who has come as the promised Messiah to forgive sinners. Follow Jesus who has come as the promised Messiah to forgive sinners. The first thing we see here in chapter nine is Jesus' power to forgive sinners.

Last week we saw how the whole thing was designed around this boat trip, and now we have this boat trip ended. He has just landed after going to the other side of the sea to save a demoniac who was a Gentile. He's now come back to his own city, Capernaum. That's where he now resides, and it's probably Peter's home. And notice, as he's there, the word behold is regularly introducing the next new character we need to notice.

Behold, some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed.

" There's a new character.

Now, we know this from Mark that there's a little bit more to the story. Matthew often tells us less than the other Gospels. They're all telling us the one truth, but they choose which details to include. This is the story where Jesus is teaching and the house is packed, so they tear up the roof. Here, Matthew keeps it short, sweet.

Jesus sees their faith. That there is plural. I believe it's the men carrying the paralytic and the paralytic. Jesus sees their faith. In this significant moment of him seeing their faith, he says to the paralytic, Jesus, focus in on the one who is not able to walk, who's being carried by friends.

Take heart, my son. This is the compassion of Jesus. Be encouraged, be comforted. Your sins are forgiven. An incredibly powerful statement. Be encouraged, your sins are forgiven. Take heart, my son. There's a relational way in which Jesus is speaking to him and he gives him a grand promise. Your sins are forgiven. But step back just for a moment.

This is clearly what everyone would like to hear, but is this what the paralytic and his friends came to hear? Were they carrying a paralytic to a man who just healed and healed and healed and healed and healed so that they would hear your sins are forgiven? Or do you think they were coming to hear stand up and walk? Most likely, that's what they really were expecting because he has kept healing and healing over and over again. And so they brought their paralytic friend. The paralytic is coming, hoping to hear, get up and walk. Well, the story develops.

The next character introduced,

behold, Some of the scribes said to themselves.

The scribes, those who are responsible for writing out the law, preserving the law, interpreting the law, they say to themselves. Now this could be they're in the back kind of like whispering to each other. I believe more, it's kind of like more of the bubble in the cartoon, like they're thinking this. They're literally saying to themselves something.

This man is blaspheming.

This now has a significant twist. The story now has taken a significant turn with this new character. Blasphemy, that means he's misrepresenting God. He's lying about God. He's defaming God. Here, the accusation is more directly, he's claiming to be God. He's a man. He's claiming to do something only God can do.

Now, let's just be real clear, if any man, a mere creature, said what Jesus just said, he would be blaspheming. They're right about that particular problem and that particular accusation if he's merely a man, but what if he's God? The stakes are high on this accusation.

Now it's important to see what happens next,

but Jesus knowing their thoughts.

So this is why I don't think they're kind of murmuring to each other, they're thinking to themselves. And let's just see, there's a spoiler here, verse four. Jesus knows their thoughts. Evidence one, he's God. I'm looking at your faces. I'm trying to interpret what you're thinking. I have no idea what you're thinking. You can't get in someone else's mind.

Only God has that knowledge. So spoiler alert, it's gonna be even more and more evident, but he's God. He knows what they're thinking. He asked them,

why do you, Think evil in your hearts.

He knows they're calling him out for blasphemy in their hearts, and he's calling it evil, because they're blaspheming. They're defaming the Savior. They're defaming the God who has come. And then he asks him a question, then he gives a declaration. The question is challenging.

Verse five,

for which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say rise and walk?

Which one of these is easier to say? I may have taught this particular story more than any other in all of scripture, and I'm not sure which one really is easier to say. Because you could say your sins are forgiven, but there's no evidential point to it, right?

There's no evidence of proving it. But if you say, get up and walk, if the dude doesn't get up and walk, you stone him because he is blaspheming. He's pretending he can do something that God does. We see here that the Declaration of Your Sins are Forgiven, that's declaring that forever the wrath of God is removed because it is a grand divine declaration. Neither one is easier to verbalize. One is evidence, the other is not. But we see what the point is. Which is easier to say, sins are forgiven, rise up and walk.

Verse six, Jesus tells us that he wants them to know who he is.

But that you may know, the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

This whole story has had these twists and turns so that the scribes may know He is God He has that authority that they are accusing him of blaspheming for claiming That you may know Jesus is teaching them. There's a theological lesson everyone gets here That you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins He then said of the paralytic so he's He's been talking to the scribes that are in a distance. He's now turning his attention to the paralytic and he simply says to him,

rise, pick up your bed and go home. And he rose and went home.

There's three ways we see Jesus as God in this text.

First, he knows our thoughts.

Second, he declares, get up and walk, and as paralytic, the assumption is he's been paralyzed for some time, and when you're paralyzed for some time, you don't use muscles, they atrophy. Blood vessels stop working, nerves stop working. God, the creator, has just spoken a word, and the man's legs are fully restored to life. That which was not has become, because he has the very power of God, the creator.

But the main focus, the main central point is he's God who can forgive sins. He says your sins are forgiven and you are forever declared righteous. You're forever declared innocent. Even though guilty of sin, even though a great sinner, Jesus declares your sins forgiven. are forgiven and they're far removed from you as the east is from the west. It's important that Jesus makes it known he forgives sinners because we are all sinners. We all need a savior for our sin. We all need forgiveness and the only one who can forgive you is Jesus Christ. The way to receive that forgiveness is believe in Him. I want us to see Jesus doesn't just have a grand divine eraser. When He says, your sins are forgiven, they're just poof, they disappear.

No, Jesus is making a promise for what's going to happen in just a couple years. He's making a promise that your sins are forgiven because He's going to go into Jerusalem one last time. and he's going to die on the cross, and he's going to take that man's sin upon himself and pay the penalty. It's not cheap grace. It's not cheap forgiveness. When Jesus declares your sins are forgiven, it's because he pays for them. Here, he's going to pay for them. For us, we believe we know he has paid for them.

Notice the crowd. Verse eight,

when the crowd saw it, they were afraid and they glorify God who had given such authority to men.

They have not fully wrapped their heads around who this is and who he is and claiming to be the son of man, fulfilling Daniel, having authority to give life and healing to have authority to forgive sins, but that mixed emotion is real and raw. There's fear. and yet glorifying God because they see the goodness. Having seen he has the authority to forgive sins, let's look at our next section. Jesus' purpose is to save sinners. He has the power to forgive sins, and he has the purpose to save sinners.

Jesus' purpose is to save sinners

Verse 9,

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.

Now, what a nice, succinct description of discipleship. Jesus sees a man, calls him, says, follow me, and he just gets up and follows. Now, he's a tax collector.

Israel is occupied by Rome. Rome has their soldiers there, their guards. They employ actual Israelites and Jewish men to be tax collectors. So here a Jewish man is working for the Roman government that's occupying Israel and well this is why everyone hated tax collectors.

We typically don't like taxes anyway. But here one of your own kinfolk is working for the enemy And the way a tax collector would actually get money, would get his own employment, he would overtax. He would get to take what he wanted in addition. And so there were not just betrayers committing treason against their own people. They oftentimes abused them and overcharged them. They were thieves.

Well, Jesus sees him in a tax booth and says, follow me. This is the normal invitation of Jesus. We call each other to faith, believe in Jesus. That's your first step to following him. But the real discipleship life of Christ is when it follows him. We're called to be near him, to obey him, all by faith. The early church called Christianity the way because it was a new way of living, a new following, a new master. You believe in that master and you follow him.

Now notice, well this is Matthew, writing about Matthew. This is the author, I think, of our text. In Mark, it's Levi, and let's just be clear, Levi's his Hebrew name, Matthew's his Gentile name. We saw a little while ago, there was a call to discipleship and there was a very zealous scribe who said, I'll go with you anywhere, and Jesus calls him out on his zeal. overzealous, and another delayed. He said, I need to wait for my father to die. Here, Jesus has followed me, and it's just simple. He rose and followed. No qualification, no over-exaggeration.

Matthew is a disciple of Jesus. Verse 10, we appear to be in Matthew's house now. Matthew, who's following Jesus, has invited him to his table, and he's invited all of his friends, the tax collectors and sinners.

As Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

So here we have a setting, a new disciple, someone who is an outcast in society, despised by most people, but Jesus has invited him to himself.

Notice verse 11,

when the Pharisees saw this, They said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Again, culturally, the Pharisees, they are the righteous leaders, the scribes, the teachers, the Pharisees, they distance themselves from sin, they teach others how to distance themselves from sin, and that meant sinners, especially tax collectors. Incredible, they're asking Jesus' disciples, why does your teacher eat?

Well, let's just appreciate here for a moment. Jesus sits down with sinners. And we miss this in our society that's a bit too casual and individualized and independent. When you share a meal with someone, you're sharing your life. Jesus invites sinners into his presence, into his life, to share himself with us.

The Lord's Supper is before us. It's a small taste of that forever meal we get to share with Jesus. He invites sinners into his presence to be made saints. to be forgiven, to rejoice in all that he is and what he's done. That the Lord's Supper is a regular reminder that Christ invites us to him. It's a regular reminder that he will come again and there will be a feast forever with our great God who has saved us. There's an invitation by God to salvation. We must come.

The Pharisees, they asked the disciples, and the kind of question here is important. When you see questions in scripture, we have to ask, is that a good faith question or is that a suspicious question? Sin began with a suspicious question. Satan comes to Adam and Eve initially asking questions. Did God really say you can't have anything? The question itself is meant to draw doubt and suspicion and question the goodness of God, and here I believe these Pharisees are doing the work of Satan. Does your rabbi really eat with those kind of people? Is he really good? Would a good messiah, would a good teacher relate to those people? Do you really want to be associated with those tax collectors and those sinners? Well, here he hears them. The Pharisees saw this, they asked the disciples, verse 11,

when Jesus heard it, he said, those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick.

He gives a pretty straightforward answer from kind of just common knowledge. Again, he's usually speaking very plainly and clearly for us. We typically like to go to the doctor For anything, even when we're sick. But a doctor, he's coming to heal the sick. A doctor doesn't try to apply a medicine to someone who's healthy. No, we try to encourage and enjoy a healthy lifestyle. Here, Jesus, the great physician, he has come to heal us in every way we need healing, and specifically, the forgiveness of sins. Now, there's something significant here.

At the bottom of 13,

for I came not to call righteous, but sinners.

We have to understand the Pharisees are not really righteous. They pretend to be righteous with performance. Remember the Sermon on the Mount,

your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees.

And when Jesus makes that contrast in chapter six over and over again, It's a righteousness that's internal, not just external. It's a real righteousness that is portrayed.

The problem with the Pharisees, they think they're righteous, and it's merely external. They're self-deceived sinners. They perform righteousness only. The tax collectors, they know they're sinners, because everybody tells them they're sinners. They are self-aware. And the work that God is doing is an inside-out work. He's coming to save those who are self-aware sinners.

Just as we sang earlier,

all that you need is to know you need Him.

If you do not know you are a sinner in need of a Savior, Jesus cannot save you from any sin you do not confess. You must first confess you are a sinner in need of a Savior. Self-righteousness keeps you from that salvation. We think about that problem, the performance self-deceived sinner versus the true sinner who confesses their sin and gets invited to be near Jesus.

Christian, I encourage you, grow more grateful that Jesus calls you and invites you in his grace. Again, the Lord's Supper is a wonderful declaration, you're invited to Jesus, grow to be more grateful. A regular danger Christians run into is we first come to Jesus fully dependent upon Him, and somehow we become independent again. We do easily, we easily recognize we're a new believer, how great His grace is and that we need Him, but somehow we think there's a way in which we grow in maturity where we don't need Him as much. No, the real life of growth and maturity is seeing how much more you need Jesus. So Jesus, given his grand declaration, a physician comes to the sick, not the healthy. I have come to save sinners, not the righteous, rather the self-righteous.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice

Verse 13, let's go back to that particular declaration.

Go and learn what this means

, and he quotes scripture. This is not how Jesus is seeking to win friends. He's speaking to those who are supposed to have authority to teach scripture and he's telling them, you need to go learn more. You need to go back to school, guys. Go learn what this means.

This will be incredibly offensive. In the Pharisees' mind, this would be like the criminal convicted telling the judge and the prosecuting lawyers to go back and read the law. What they miss is he is the word of God, the author of the law, the author of God's word. They need to hear the master teacher. Go learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

What a short, fantastic declaration you can memorize that we can unpack so much from. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. We read of this earlier from Hosea chapter six. First, I want you to recognize there's a Hebrew idiom. This isn't a affirmation denial. There's a Hebrew idiom that really is communicating more.

It's I desire mercy more than sacrifice. I desire your steadfast love more than sacrifice. Hosea did not end the sacrificial system, Jesus did. What God is saying in Hosea, I desire your love and mercy more than you merely performing sacrifices, thinking that's what I need and want. I desire you and your love, not just your performance of sacrifice.

Now often a citation like this assumes the rest of the text. Hosea is one of the more dramatic prophetic texts. Yahweh calls Israel out for her idolatry. He calls her idolatry spiritual adultery. They whore themselves after other gods while the one true God promises his steadfast love. As we saw in Isaiah 6, 4, he likens Israel's love to morning dew.

It just disappears. It's a saying. It's an idea. It's something they might do for a little while, but it disappears. It's not built on a promise. It's a fleeting performance. God says he desires steadfast love and not sacrifice because we do not love him as he loved us. They would get into these problematic phases of thinking their circumcision gave them an assurance it should not give them. Or it made them think the sacrifices, all I need to do is sacrifice, I don't need to truly love the Lord my God with all my heart and all my strength. They go through a performance action of love, but their real love, their real commitment is somewhere else with their God. It's false worship, they merely go through the performance.

Now, I want to make sure we understand Matthew here is quoting the Septuagint that always translate the word mercy for loving kindness, the equivalent. The same idea here of a commitment, a love, a relationship. The accusation that Hosea makes against Israel is now being made against the Pharisees. Jesus is trying to help them see from God's word They're the ones that merely perform a action of love and sacrifice they don't truly love.

They don't have a promise love that responds to the promise of God. They have mere a performance love. They don't truly love God internally. To understand this, let's just do a quick diagnostic. Performance love tends to embrace distance from others and judge others. A mere performance love tends to distance others and judge others. That's what the Pharisees are doing with the tax collectors and even Jesus. Promise love invites others in and leans towards others in love. Performance love is meant to be seen, but not experienced, not pursuing others. Performance love stands off and looks down Promise love invites and leans in.

Now, if you see yourself as that performance love, I invite you to turn to page seven and just meditate on coming centers. You have more than permission. I invite you to just phase me out for the next few minutes. If you recognize you're a believer, but you've been practicing performance love, not promise love, Go there and just see the come ye sinners invitation. And go to the refrain,

I will arise and go to Jesus.

He invites us into his promised love. But we must repent. The Pharisees cannot help the self-aware sinners because they don't know God. Only Jesus can truly help us when we are convicted of our sin. He's the merciful God who gives himself over to us in true love.

Here, by alluding to Hosea, he's giving us the first picture that he's the bridegroom. He's the one who has come to marry himself to sinners, to purify them and cleanse them. This was amazing about all the miracles we've seen. Jesus, when he touches a leper, he is not made impure by touching that impure leper or made sick by touching that leper or unclean. No, he cleanses. Oh, and Jesus comes to us as the bridegroom, the one who loves us. He gives us his life that heals us. Church, we can just fast forward over a little bit and see this is what Jesus came to do. He came to forgive sinners. And if you've come to Jesus as a sinner to be forgiven, now you're on mission to proclaim him who saves sinners.

We're called to be a church that's united together under Christ, confessing sin, forgiving sin, repenting of sin, calling each other up to a greater love of Christ, to know how firm and clear his promises are in love. to help each other in that promise-making love. Final section, verse 14, Jesus was promised to bring a new way to love God.

A new way to love God

9 through 13 and 14 through 17, they're different scenes, but I believe they're still the same setting. They're still in Matthew's house, they're still reclining at table, but we have a new character and a new question. And we see the way Jesus answers is that he is the promised Savior who brings a new way to love God.

Verse 14,

then the disciples of John came to him saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?

All right, the disciples of John are John the Baptist. John the Baptist is one of the most unique characters and figures in scripture because he's the last prophet who says the Messiah is coming, but then he also gets to say, there he is, this is him.

Behold the lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

He's also the one who called the Pharisees a brood of vipers. John came preaching repentance. So John is this really incredible kind of in-between figure of the Old Testament promises and getting to see the one who is the fulfillment. And John's disciples come to Jesus asking a question.

Why do we and the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not?

Important. Unlike the Pharisees' question, this is a good faith question. I believe they're coming with true inquiry because they're recognizing there's something different. Now, fasting We do see the Pharisees, they fasted to be publicly praised. There are required fasts in the Old Testament, but the Pharisees, they added tradition upon tradition to require many more fasts. They want to know why Jesus and his disciples don't fast. So Jesus says to them, he answers them because it's a good faith question. Something that's hard to capture from the Greek to the English, In Greek, you set up a question that already assumes a rhetorical answer. Like we ask rhetorical questions, assuming people get what the rhetorical answer is already. Here, the question is answered already with a obvious no answer. It's obviously and necessarily no as it is written. It's designed that way already.

Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

And the answer is no. Logically, it's no. Grammatically, it's also no. The point here is, When the wedding guests are there celebrating, you don't fast, you feast. It doesn't even need the grammatical point, right? We just know this intuitively. When you're at a wedding and the bridegroom is with you, they haven't gone off yet, you feast and rejoice and celebrate.

Jesus answers them very clearly. You don't feast when you're with the bridegroom. Then he says,

the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and they will fast.

I believe we're supposed to practice fasting. Here Jesus is making a real clear implication. When the bridegroom is gone, we fast.

Fasting is an intense prayer because what you do is you take the time you would normally set aside for a meal and you You instead do not eat, and it isn't just what you don't do, you set aside that time to pursue God in prayer. You set aside more intense time, and there's something about that sacrifice, that denying of yourself, that makes fasting a more intense way of praying. I believe this is important for us, because we need to know how to deny ourselves. and fully depend upon Christ. We're too easily self-sufficient. So I believe here Jesus is implying clearly, once he's gone, we're supposed to be fasting. He makes the answer pretty clear. Now's not the time for the disciples to fast. It will be when he leaves. There's something else here that is significant.

Based upon the quotation from Isaiah, Jesus is now directly calling himself the bridegroom. He's calling himself the one who has come down to demonstrate his love perfectly for the church. It's important for us to get this picture that there's numerous ways in which we have a picture of salvation. There's also numerous ways God describes the church. We're a body, many members. We're a temple. designed for the holiness? The implication is we're the bride. We're the beloved people of God.

Jesus, the bridegroom, has come to show us the perfect, absolute, true love of God. He comes to love us while we're still sinners. He comes to love us while we're sinners so that we are purified, forgiven, and then made beautiful through his purification and sanctification. Christ has come to be the perfect representation of God's love that he laid down his life for us so that we might be forgiven for our sin and know the love of God. In this way, he's a new way of loving God.

We know him not as the God who is fearful and distant on Sinai, but we know him as the bridegroom who has come to love us with this incredible picture of marriage, an intense, personal commitment of promise-making love. We must understand this is who Christ is, the bridegroom, and we are his beloved bride. The next section he gives two more pictures.

Jesus is what's new

You don't put an untrunk patch on an old garment and you don't put new wine in old wineskins. Everyone would know this from their practice. We probably don't know what this means in terms of how we practice. We could do some simple physics experiments after church if you like, but if you put an unshrunk patch on a piece of clothing, when that patch shrinks, it's gonna tear away. It's going to mess up the rest of the garment. And the new wineskins, through the fermentation process, it will destroy the old wineskins. Incredible that there's an emphasis on what's new. Jesus is what's new.

There's no longer a lamb sacrificed year after year that promised God would save us from our sins. No, the lamb of God has come who takes away our sins once for all by taking it upon himself. There's a newness of how God is revealing himself as one who loves his people and is committed to his people. Christ is going to tell us, and this is why we have the Lord's Supper rather than sacrificing a lamb. It's a new covenant in his blood. A new ordinance to remember him by and to rejoice in what he's done. A new way to relate to God.

One of the most clear and obvious ways Jesus contrasts in what's new is over against the Pharisees. We'll see this even more in Matthew 15, but the Pharisees are the wrong interpreters of God's law that make it burdensome. Jesus is new in a sense that he comes as the true and last Moses, the true and last prophet to tell us who God is and how to worship him. If you want to know how the Old Testament relates to the new, I invite you to study under Jesus, the teacher.

Go to Luke 24, where it says everything was pointing to me. He fulfilled it. Start asking, and we can help you get some clues as to how to do this, but start looking for the scarlet threads. The son that's promised, the prophet that's promised, the king that's promised, the priest that's promised. If you wanna start seeing how the old and the new relate to each other, see what God promised in the old and how it functioned, and see how Christ has come to bring about something new as the true prophet, priest, king, the Son of God. I believe he's showing first he's better than what the Pharisees are teaching, but I believe he's actually saying there's something new in the way you're going to relate to God as well.

Again, there's no more sacrifice of lambs in our worship. It's not bloody anymore. There's no more distance for certain believers and most believers in terms of how we come to God. Christ has come as the great high priest. who gave himself up as the perfect once for all sacrifice. We no longer worship in distance and fear. We're told to draw near boldly in the name of Christ because of what he's accomplished.

Secondly, there's no more nation state we're supposed to be expecting. We just heard the king tell us how to live as citizens, not as a bordered nation state in a land, but as a people of God, citizens of heaven, spreading the declaration of who the king of heaven is.

See, something goes horribly wrong when the church forgets what's really new and wants to go back to what's old. That's what the entire book of Hebrews is about. But we need to make sure we understand what is truly new because we're supposed to be living in the newness of what Christ has done. Let me give, I think, an obvious example. This is where the Roman Catholic Church has gone wrong. They do not give that confidence and assurance of salvation that the book of Hebrews gives us, or that Jesus gives us, or that Paul gives us. They withhold confidence and assurance of salvation.

And in his place, they put a new order of priests not recognizing there's something new about the great high priest who does away with that kind of priesthood. Those priests, they stand in the place of Jesus in the right hand of the Father. They're not supposed to do that. They stand in the place of the Holy Spirit who dwells within you so that by the Spirit, you have access to the Father in Christ. By creating that boundary system, they deny the finished work of Christ, they deny the Holy Spirit.

Friends, we need to make sure we know what's new. So that we know what is carried over in a continuity, we know what's new. Christ has come as the bridegroom so that we experience fresh His love.

God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.

That's new. It was promised. It's not brand new. It wasn't suggested before, but it's a new administration of the covenant. It's a new stage in redemptive history.

Be assured he's coming back

One of the most significant things we can do, New Testament believer, go back to the old. See how sure God was to keep every promise. Because we're now living in the stage where we're supposed to be fasting, waiting for him to come back. As sure as he fulfilled every one of those promises in Jesus, and it's amazing to count up all the ways Jesus fulfilled those promises. God kept his promise. Be assured he's coming back. Be assured he's coming back. know how to live in the newness of the nearness, to come to Him in prayer, to come to Him in joy, to come with Him in celebration and thankfulness.

But no, this isn't it yet. There's another stage. There's another administration. There's one last call. The trumpet will sound and Christ will come back. and all who have been sealed by his spirit and bought with his blood will be brought near, not to simply remember what he's done and he's coming back, but to be with him at the feast. Not judge for our sin at that trumpet, but no, to be brought near him at the feast. Christ has come to give us a new way of knowing God's love at the bridegroom and new access to worship him. And while we rejoice in this, we do fast knowing this isn't the end yet. There's even something better yet to come.

Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you have kept every promise. You alone are able to keep your promises, Lord, may we be a people who receive your promised love and love you in return. Cleanse us of our fickleness, sinfulness. Thank you that we have a confidence in the forgiveness Jesus gives us. Help us, Lord, to love you more by seeing you as our great God of salvation. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.