June15thamSermonTXT
15 June 2008CAMBRAY SERMON SUNDAY 15 JUNE 2008
NEW LIFESTYLE Matthew 9: 9-17 Page 973
New values (vv 9 - 13)
Some people think they sometimes get a cold reaction when they mention their job to someone they meet for the first time: dentist, GCHQ staff, grave digger, pastor, policeman, undertaker. Admitting you do one of these jobs can be a conversation stopper. People are not sure how to react. Tax collector is another such job.
And Jesus chose a tax collector as one of his disciples. That was new thinking for many people at that time and may be new for some now. In our passage this morning Matthew is writing about his own call to follow Jesus. Please follow it in a Bible – p973 in church Bible.
Sometimes at the customs point, if you look suspicious, a customs officer says ‘Follow me’ and leads you away. But one day, at the booth of tax collector Matthew, Jesus said to him ‘Follow me’. Others would have as little to do with such people as possible, but Jesus had no such hesitations.
In those days tax collectors were allowed by the Romans to collect taxes on goods moving from one region to another. Often there was extortion, forcing people to pay high taxes or not be let through, so tax collectors were disliked and despised. Besides customs duty there was income tax and road tax and there were toll bridges. Tax collectors could charge more than they passed to the Roman government so some became rich and were hated. Being a tax collector was seen as co-operating with the Roman occupiers, and that was frowned upon by many Jews, and regarded as making someone unclean by such contact.
But Jesus had a place for Matthew, a tax collector. Jesus said to him ‘Follow’ me and Matthew did. Jesus even went to Matthew’s house for dinner. Verse 10 says ‘many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples.’ Probably some were Matthew’s colleagues in the tax collecting business. At that time the word “sinners” usually meant Jews who wouldn’t keep the rules, who were immoral, or heretics, or tax collectors. We see Jesus being friendly to such people!
Matthew accepted “sinners” into his house. Jesus and his disciples went there too. And to the Pharisees that was wrong. Some Pharisees asked the disciples of Jesus ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and “sinners”?’ verse 11. They put their question to the disciples but mainly it was Jesus they were getting at. The implication is that you’d think a good teacher would avoid bad people, not sit with them over a meal!
The mission of Jesus was exactly the opposite of this attitude. He came for all sorts of people, even if they were dishonest, greedy, immoral or unpopular. Such people felt the disapproval and rejection of others. They knew they were despised by posh and proud people. They didn’t have much hope for better times. They felt powerless and stuck.
Sometimes the way they treated other people was sick – they exploited or abused others. Sometimes they were sick in the way they treated themselves, and some became physically sick as a result.
And Jesus came for them. Jesus came to them, like a doctor on a home visit. He came for Matthew, the rotten tax collector. Some people like Matthew, couldn’t remember the last time a religious leader accepted them, if ever they had. Religious leaders didn’t usually associate with bad people like them. Jesus was different.
QUESTION – Who are the groups of people we might be inclined to despise and write off, and perhaps be uncomfortable with if Jesus surprised us by reaching them with his love?
(Asians, drug addicts, gypsies, homosexuals, murderers, paedophiles, prostitutes, thieves.)
In one of Paul’s letters to the Christians at Corinth, he showed what some of them had been like: 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11.
Jesus heard the Pharisees questioning his disciples and wanted to answer them. ‘It’s not the healthy who need a doctor’ he said ‘but the sick.’ (v12) Jesus came for those who admit, and maybe know all too well, that they are not good enough for God; those who know they can’t make it to God on their own. This was seen as a kind of sickness. Those who know their only hope is for someone else to rescue them. This hasn’t dawned on the proud who insist they are right with God by their own achievements. They are self-satisfied and don’t see the need for Jesus.
When Jesus said ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners’ (v13) there is irony here. There aren’t really any righteous, those who have no sins and are right with God without Christ – only some who mistakenly think they are! And while they think they are ok anyway, they won’t want Jesus. Jesus came to call sinners to follow him and that’s still what he is doing.
But what about the sentence ‘Go and learn what this means “I desire mercy not sacrifice’, quoting from the Old Testament book Hosea. Hosea criticised religion that concentrated on externals, rules and rituals, yet had no heart for love, especially faithful love for God. Self-righteousness never pleased God – didn’t these Pharisees know that? Hosea was in their Bible – hadn’t they read it?
Jesus was showing mercy to sinners and that’s what he wanted others to do. Simply demanding fasting and sacrifices and law keeping missed the point. God loves people as they are. Sure he wants them to be changed for the better but he doesn’t wait for them to make themselves good enough by strict rule keeping and then love them. He loves them first. Those who know God, know his heart for rescuing sinners and they also get a heart for reaching lost people.
Do you know this God? Has knowing God given you compassion for those who are despised and rejected? Do you have the same values as Jesus? It sometimes means being counter-cultural. Jesus was prepared to befriend a tax collector, even though they were despised by most people and even though doing so would bring him opposition and hostility.
Could there be Christians today who think like the Pharisees? That to associate with bad people, to talk with them, to eat with them automatically makes you unclean, so you’d better avoid them like the plague. If we think like that we don’t have the mind of Christ. His mission was to reach such people. So it is not for us to think that certain kinds of people are beyond salvation.
But before we move on there is one important point to note. When Jesus associated with sinful people he in no way approved of their sins. Nor should we. The approach of Jesus is clear in John 8 where it is recorded that he talked with a woman caught in adultery, opposed those who wanted to stone her to death, and said to her ‘Go and leave your life of sin.’ Jesus wanted to reach her, to change her.
Remember the Cambray verse of the year for 2007? Jesus said to God his Father ‘as you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.’ Into the world, for Christ, is where we must go. But my last comment about this is that in doing so we need the guiding and protecting power of God the Holy Spirit, for in the world we are vulnerable. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’ In reaching others we may be tempted to compromise – on their behaviour or ours – and we mustn’t do so. But the answer can’t be to avoid undesirable people. Jesus didn’t; and he asks us to follow him. Talk to the outcastes, eat with them – there may be a price to pay (e.g. some fellow Christians will disapprove) but if Christians don’t share with such people the good news they’ve found in Jesus, who will?
May God change our values so they become more like Christ’s.
New wine (vv14-17)
Another group challenged Jesus - disciples of John the Baptist. They asked (v14) ‘How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’
This doesn’t mean the disciples of Jesus never fasted, but not daily or week in, week out, as a matter of habit. And maybe the disciples of Jesus had heeded his teaching that when you fast don’t show off but do it in secret; in which case their fasting would not have been visible and obvious. Jesus wasn’t against fasting – he fasted himself in the wilderness. (Matthew 4)
Note how Jesus replied: VERSE 15 ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.’
What was Jesus getting at? Matthew and Jesus had good reasons to celebrate that day rather than fast, for Matthew had become a disciple of Jesus For religious leaders to include tax collectors as disciples was new.
Jesus was bringing in something new, not just continuing the old. And in the new era some things change. Your understanding of fasting might change, especially if you think fasting is one of the ways you earn God’s approval and grace. This doesn’t mean the OT can be discarded but that it is not God’s last word on things. The Old Testament sometimes helps us understand the new and vice versa.
What is meant by the references to the bridegroom in v15? That was for the disciples and the early Christians to work out and many of them said Jesus meant that he was the bridegroom. While he was with them they would have joy – in time he would be taken from them in his crucifixion and again in the Ascension.
This bridegroom and marriage picture is there in the OT. A wedding cements a new relationship, doesn’t it? God’s relationship to the Hebrew people was like marriage. God chose them. He rescued them from Egypt in the Exodus. He made a covenant with them. Yet sometimes they were unfaithful, turning to other gods. Read about it in Hosea. So this reference to bridegroom would ring bells with many of the Jews listening to Jesus.
To be with Jesus was a joy but there was a time coming when he would be taken from them; then for a while they would lose their joy. In Matthew’s gospel the term the Son of Man is often linked with suffering e.g. 17:12 Jesus said ‘I tell you, Elijah has already come, (referring to John the Baptist) and they did not recognise him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.’
This idea that Jesus the Messiah would suffer and be killed was a surprise to many who heard Jesus speak about it. It wasn’t the kind of Messiah they expected or wanted.
To help people understand, Jesus gives two short pictures.
Verse 16 ‘No-one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.’
Jesus is not just patching up the OT, not adding a patch to the OT, he’s not commending simply a revised Judaism. He is bringing something really new.
And new wine is a powerful picture verse 17: Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.’
What does wine signify? In the Bible it indicates several different things. For example, even in Genesis, first book of the Bible, wine was a sign of God’s blessing and support (e.g. Gen 27:28), withdrawn when there was disobedience. (Deuteronomy 28:39, 51)
Also wine is a picture of forthcoming and greater blessings, e.g. Joel 3:18 This is about a coming day when the Lord will bless his people richly ‘In that day the mountains will drip new wine.’
Amos 9:13 ‘The days are coming declares the Lord, when New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills.’
The coming of Jesus, God’s Son, our Saviour, was that new wine.
But wine is sometimes a picture of God’s judgment and wrath. To Jeremiah ‘the Lord .. said “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.’ (Jeremiah 25:15)
Clearly Jesus knew this. Once he said to two disciples and their mother ‘Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?’ (Matthew 20:22)
So it’s no surprise that three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, shortly before he was arrested, Jesus prayed ‘Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.’ (Matthew 26:36-36)
And so Jesus took the cup of wrath that was ours. This one sacrifice for sins, was new. It’s not the system of animal sacrifices continued. It’s different.
This new wine, speaks to us of blessing and celebration, for Jesus has taken the wrath of God that was due to us, and we go free! But it also speaks to us of the suffering of Christ – at the Last Supper Jesus had with his disciples before he was arrested he took the cup and said ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’ (Matthew 26:28)
And wine also points to future celebration, for at the same Last Supper Jesus also said: ‘I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.’ (Matthew 26:29)
Do we live in the light of this? Do you? If you have sins on your conscience this morning it means one of two things. Either you are refusing to confess to God your sins against him and they still weigh on your conscience, though you may try to shut your conscience up, or you confess them but what God has done in Christ still hasn’t dawned on you; you are still burdened by them and without the new wine, perhaps hoping that eventually you will make yourself good enough for God but burdened because you often doubt you’ll make it.
This morning if you are a Christian it is because of God’s grace – in providing forgiveness of sins through Jesus. Accept that and you are free from the penalty of your sins. Paul wrote to the Galatians ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.’ (Galatians 6:1) To go back to thinking you’ll only be accepted by God if you qualify by the strict rules you keep, would be slavery indeed.
So, as we come to this table, we may be reminded of the blessings that are ours through the death of Jesus symbolised in the bread and wine. In this connection Paul sometimes wrote of the cup of thanksgiving, and we shall be thankful for those blessings. But we also remember, more than our blessings, the death of Christ that made them possible.
May the new wine of this gospel give us new values – love for all sorts of people, following the example of Christ; and love for God in response to the freedom from slavery to rules, that he has given to us.
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