Jesus Calls Matthew - Life of Christ Part 12

I went to a college down at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, home of the Tar Heels. In case you haven't noticed, the number one ranked basketball team in the country.

Thank you. Hopefully we're going to schwack Duke this afternoon. And when I was a freshman there, I decided to join a social fraternity. The one I actually ended up joining was called Pi Lamb Defy and it was about 80 guys, 50% Jewish and 50% non-Jewish and 100% degenerate.

We were everything that the movie Animal House portrayed and much worse. I wouldn't even want to go into it, some of the things that went on in my fraternity house. I got heavy into drugs in 1967 and 1968 looking for some answers to life. And in the process, I turned on to drugs, a large number of my fraternity brothers trying to convince them that some of the answers might be found in drugs. Then in the spring of 1971, I found Jesus Christ or maybe to be a little more theologically accurate, he found me. And suddenly, I had all the questions answered to my life.

All the questions I'd been asking were answered. I found the joy and the peace and the supernatural wholeness for my life that I'd been looking for that I'd never found in drugs, but I found in Jesus Christ. And immediately, I made it my goal to go back and tell all 80 some of my fraternity brothers about what I had found in Jesus Christ.

Before I left Chapel Hill, that was my goal. I felt that I'd led so many of them wrongly into drugs looking for answers and now that I had the answer, I had a responsibility, a responsibility to share that answer with them since I knew it. Jesus Christ had changed my life and made me whole and I wanted other people to share in that.

I wanted them to experience what I had experienced. Now, it was kind of like you win the Publishers Clearing House, you know what I mean? I mean, what would you do if suddenly they called you up and said, you not only were a finalist like 50 million other people, but you actually won the Publishers Clearing House and we've got a guy on his way over to your house right now to give you a check for $10 million. What would you do? I mean, something like that happened to you. Man, I don't know what you would do, but I'd be telling everybody that I could find the good news.

I'd run on out in my front yard in the neighborhood and start shouting to the neighbors, yelling in my front yard, hey, guess what? I'm going to finally get my red Miata. This is great. They don't cost $10 million, do they? No. Good. But you know, I knew that something had happened to me in 1971 that was better than winning the Publishers Clearing House.

I knew that. And I didn't want to keep quiet about it. I wanted to tell everybody I could find.

People on the street, people in my fraternity house, everywhere I went, I wanted to tell people. Now, in our passage for this morning, we're going to see a fellow named Matthew find Jesus Christ just the way I did. And we're going to see him try to do for his friends exactly what I tried to do for mine. There's some great lessons in our passage this morning about Matthew and how he responds to Jesus Christ. And I hope God will use the passage we're going to study this morning to touch your heart the way he did mine this past week.

Let's look at it together. It's in Luke, chapter 5, beginning at verse 27. It says, after this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi. This is the same fellow as Matthew, sitting at his tax booth.

Follow me, Jesus said to him. Now, Matthew was a tax collector. He was a publican, is the word that King James will use to translate this. I want you to think for a minute of the most hated, the most despised, the most despicable occupation that you can think of. Think for a second.

What is it? Maybe you might think of a porno shop owner. Or maybe you might think of a pimp. Or maybe a prostitute. Or maybe you might think of an abortionist. Maybe you might think of an IRS agent. Maybe you might think of a lawyer. You know what's black and white all over and looks great on a lawyer? You know the answer?

A pit bull. I had a lawyer tell me that. Now, if I think I got some West Virginia letters, wait till I hear about this, right? But there's some great lawyer jokes. What's the most despicable occupation you can think of? Well, whatever it is, I guarantee you, none of it even compares to how the Jewish people of Jesus' day felt about people like Matthew, about tax collectors.

And let me explain to you why. You see, at this time, the Romans controlled the land of Palestine. And they taxed it heavily. But they didn't collect the taxes themselves.

What they did is they took each district and they set an amount that they wanted in taxes. And then they farmed it out to some local Jewish person who was the highest bidder. And that Jewish person had the responsibility of collecting the taxes and paying off the Roman authorities. But the deal was that whatever he collected over and above the amount that he owed the Romans, he could keep for himself. And the Romans didn't care how much he collected over and above what they were due.

As long as they got what they were due, they were happy. He was backed up by the Roman army itself. He could assess anybody, any amount, without any regard to fairness or equity or anything else. He could do whatever he wanted to. And people were completely helpless against a tax collector because, as I said, he was backed up by the Roman army.

So what could you do? The Jewish people hated tax collectors with a passion. In fact, a better word might even be they loathed them for two reasons. One, they considered them extortioners of their own people. They were wringing this money out of their own Jewish people.

And number two, they considered them traitors for having thrown in and cooperated with the occupying army of Rome. Tax collectors were not even allowed to enter the synagogues in Israel. Tax collectors could not even give testimony in court.

Their testimonies were inadmissible in court. In fact, the rabbis taught that Jews were not even allowed to ask a tax collector for change if they met them in the street. Matthew was one of these tax collectors.

And there's another one in the Bible that most of us know about. He was a wee little man. Remember him? What was his name?

Zacchaeus. We'll get to him later on when we get to the Gospel of Luke chapter 19. Now, Jesus passes Matthew sitting at his tax collecting booth, and he says to him, follow me. He said, well, Lon, how could Jesus expect Matthew to obey such a sudden command? I mean, he walks by this guy. The guy's never seen him before. He says to him, get up and follow me, and Jesus expects him to follow. Wait a minute, wait a minute. This was not a sudden command.

Not at all. You see, Matthew's tax booth was set up down by the sea so that he could catch incoming ships and get all the taxes that was due. And many times, Matthew must have sat in that booth, and he must have listened to Jesus as he taught the crowds right down there on the seashore and near Capernaum. Matthew had had lots of time to hear Jesus' words and to think about Jesus' words, and Jesus had passed him before. I don't believe this is the first time he's walked past Matthew. But now it's time for Matthew to take action. Now it's time for Matthew to make a decision, and Jesus calls him and says, Matthew, you've listened long enough.

It's time for you to make a decision, son. Are you going to follow me or aren't you? Verse 28, and Matthew got up immediately, and he left everything.

Look at that. And he followed Jesus Christ. Verse 29, then Matthew held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. I love this part. You see, Matthew wasn't just interested in getting up and following Jesus himself.

No, more than that. He wanted all of his friends to experience the same joy and the same peace and the same forgiveness of sin and the same life-changing salvation that he had found in Christ. He wanted to tell all his fraternity brothers what had happened. And so he threw a gala party for all of his tax collector friends, and he invited them to come and to hear Jesus. Man, that must have been quite a happening. I mean, that must have been some party.

The untouchables from all over Israel gathering under one roof for this party, driving up in front of Matthew's house in their limos and stepping out with their wives and their girlfriends or their prostitute for the night all decked out in their finest, going in and having lots of food and lots of drink. Matthew gathered the hardest hearts in all Israel together to hear Jesus Christ. I mean, you had to have a hard heart. You had to be a hardened human being to deal with the kind of rejection and the kind of ostracism that these people put tax collectors through.

You couldn't remain as a tax collector and not be hard. But Matthew realized that hard-hearted people didn't need condemnation. They needed Christ, just like soft-hearted people. And he realized that there wasn't any heart anywhere so hard that God couldn't touch it because God had touched his heart. And so he invited all of his hard-hearted friends to come together. And at some point during this party, Matthew rose to speak and maybe to begin, he told a few tax collector jokes, I don't know.

But then he got very serious and he said, Now, friends, the reason I invited you here is because something happened in my life a few days ago that has totally revolutionized my life. I committed my life to Jesus Christ. I embraced him as my Messiah.

I've given up being a tax collector. God's given me a whole new life and the reason I invited you here tonight is because I want you to listen to him. And as Jesus rose to speak, I guess those tax collectors probably braced themselves expecting to hear some more of the same rejection and threats and deprecation that the rabbis poured on him. But that's not what Jesus said at all. Jesus got up and he told him about how much God loved him. And he told him about how much God wanted to forgive them. And he told him about the new life that God wanted to give them. And the Bible never tells us how many of them or how many of the ladies with them that evening made the same decision as Matthew had made. But I'll bet when we get to heaven, we're going to find a whole lot of tax collectors there that were at this party that night at Matthew's house.

I believe that. Bible doesn't tell us for sure about that, but it does tell us how the rabbis were feeling. And it tells us that the rabbis were not happy campers. Let's go on, verse 30.

It says, But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belong to their sect complained to Jesus' disciples and they said, Why do you eat? And why do you drink with these kind of people? Why do you hang out with this kind of riffraff? And why does your leader hang out with this kind of riffraff? With tax collectors and sinners, with the dregs of society, with the outcasts and the bums.

Why do you hang out with these people? Don't you know better? Jesus heard about it and look what he said. Verse 31. He said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call righteous people, but I came looking for sinners to call them to repentance. I love what Jesus said here.

In fact, I think this is one of the greatest verses in all the Bible in terms of defining our mission as Christians. Jesus just draws on simple human logic to make his point. He said, Hey, look, a doctor is for sick people, right? Doctors aren't for well people.

Doctors are for sick people. I came as a doctor for sinners. And if I'm a doctor for sinners, it only makes sense I go where my patients are.

That's what I'm doing with these people. I'm a doctor for sinners, and I go where they are. Now, in presenting himself as a doctor, or we would even say as the great physician, Jesus in doing that helps us to better understand so much what he's really offering to do for us. I got to thinking this week, what does a good doctor do? I don't know if you think you've got a good doctor. Good doctors are hard to find.

But I've got a good doctor as our family doctor. What does a good doctor do? What distinguishes a good doctor?

Well, I came up with three things. Jesus said he's a doctor, and he's certainly a good one. What distinguishes a good doctor? Number one, a good doctor really cares about people who are sick.

A good doctor is really available. He's really interested. He's a man or a woman of compassion. Sick people need help, and this person, a doctor, is willing to give it.

He's never in too much of a hurry to listen. She's not interested in your fee. She's interested in you if she's a good doctor. Number two, a good doctor accepts his patients right where they are. I mean, can you imagine walking in a doctor's office and having the doctor say to you, oh, when you get rid of that fever and that ugly cough, come back and see me, but ugh, get out of here. Because your nose is running.

You're disgusting. But what kind of doctor is that? Doctors don't do that. Not good doctors.

Good doctors accept you right where you are. And if you're sick, no matter how sick you are, that's where they start with you, right? Number three, if you are sick, a good doctor is not content to leave you where he finds you, right? A good doctor, if he finds you sick, he's committed to healing you and making you better and making your life well. That's what makes him a good doctor. Jesus said, I am a doctor.

What does that mean? It means that Jesus is really interested in the lives of men and women, even men and women who are hardened with sin like the men and women in Matthew's house. It means that Jesus Christ accepts people right where they are, sickness and all, and it means he's committed not to leaving you right where you are, but to changing your life and making you better and different.

That's what a doctor's all about. And he sums all of this up in Matthew chapter 11. I'd like you to turn there. Keep your finger in Luke.

We're coming back. But turn back to Matthew's gospel, chapter 11, and I want to show you all three of these parts of being a doctor rolled up in one sentence that Jesus said. Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. This was the verse that actually led me to Christ, this verse in the Bible. It's a very precious verse to me. Look what Jesus said, verse 28. He says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

All three parts of being a good doctor right in that verse. Jesus says, come to me. Why? Because I'm really interested in you.

I really care. Number two, come to me if you're weary and you're burdened. You don't have to get well first. You can come to me sick.

That's okay. And number three, I will give you rest. I won't leave you the way I found you, but 2 Corinthians chapter 5 says when a person becomes a believer in Jesus Christ, they become a new creature. God doesn't leave you where he finds you. God changes you from the inside out and makes you a different person.

Come to me because I'm really interested. All you who are burdened and weary, you don't have to get well first, and I'll make you different. I'll give you rest.

The great physician. Friends, this is what Jesus Christ offered Matthew, what he offered Matthew's tax-collecting friends, what he's offering you and me. And if you're here and you've never trusted Jesus Christ personally as your Lord and your Savior, what Jesus wants you to understand this morning is that he really cares about you. I don't care what you're involved in. I don't care where you've been. I don't care what you've done.

It doesn't matter. He really cares about you, and he wants you to come to him just as you are. You don't have to go out and get well first. You need to come to him just the way you are, and he'll heal your life. That's his promise. He'll make you a new person, supernaturally from the inside out.

He'll change your life so radically, you won't even recognize the person that you are now, five years from now. Our part's merely to do what any sick person has to do to get help from a doctor. What do you have to do to get help from a doctor when you're sick?

Two things. One, you got to admit you're sick, right? And two, you got to go to the doctor for help. That's all Jesus is asking, that you're willing to admit you're sick and that you need help, and he'll do it. And I've found that even as a Christian, even once you make that decision, Jesus remains the great physician. You know that? He doesn't stop being the great physician after you become a Christian.

No, no. He's always caring and always accepting and always anxious to bring more healing in our life as we turn to him and as we yield to him, the great physician. Isn't it great to have a doctor for the soul? I mean, it's great to have a good doctor for the body, but it's even more important to have a great doctor for the soul, and that's what Jesus is.

And folks, the people around you at work and the people around you in your office, the people around you in your neighborhood, they don't need condemnation. They need the doctor. They need the healing that the doctor of people's souls can bring. Be a Matthew when it comes to them. Don't think of any heart too hard that the doctor can't touch it, because he can.

Offer them the doctor, and if they realize they're sick and are willing to turn to him for help, he'll take it from there. Now, that's our passage for this morning, but it leads us to ask the question, so what? That's right. And I want to answer that.

Actually, you know, I had planned to answer that question with what I just told you about the doctor. I thought, that's pretty good. That's really got a lot in it. But there's really a lot more as I began to study and think about this passage, and so you kind of get two for one this morning.

How's that? You know, there's a great lesson here in how Matthew responded when Jesus said, follow me. Did you ever think about that? Remember I told you that being a tax collector was a very lucrative task? If you turn to Matthew 19, which I don't want you to do, but you can check it out later, when we meet the wee little man, Zacchaeus, it says about him, he was very wealthy. And the reason that tax collectors normally became very wealthy was because they could line their pockets at will with the Roman army to back them up. Matthew was so wealthy that he had a house big enough to fit all these tax collector buddies into, and that he paid for this whole party by himself. He was a wealthy man. And so when Jesus said to Matthew, follow me, he was asking more than meets the eye. Listen now, what he was asking is he was asking Matthew to turn his back on a lot of money. He was asking Matthew to give up a very lavish lifestyle.

He was asking Matthew to say goodbye to a lot of creature comforts that he had become very used to having. He was a wealthy man. And if he picked up and followed Jesus the way Jesus was asking him to, he wasn't going to have any of this anymore. And he knew it. Matthew knew exactly what it would mean for him to follow Jesus.

And yet look what he did. Luke chapter five, if you want to turn back there, look what he did. It says in verse 28 that after Jesus said, follow me, Levi or Matthew got up and he left everything. And he followed him.

He had counted the cost and he had decided it was worth it. I meet so many people who talk to me about what it means for them to really obey and follow Christ. And one of the most common objections that I hear is, what am I going to have to give up? Or, Lon, I'm going to have to give up so much to do this and I'm not sure I'm willing to give up when I'm going to have to give up in order to do what God's asking me to do. And this is true of people who are thinking about following Christ, making their initial commitment to him as their Lord and their Savior. If you are out there and you're ever sharing Christ with people, one of the biggest concerns many people have is, what am I going to have to give up?

What am I going to have to give up? And it's also true of young Christians who are grappling with making an all-out surrender to the lordship of Christ. They'll say things like, well, you know, accepting him as my Savior, I mean, that was a good deal. I traded nothing in and got heaven.

It was a good deal. But now this lordship stuff, I mean, that's going to really cost me something and I'm not sure I want to pay what that's going to cost me. You know, it's even true of seasoned Christians when sometimes God steps into their life unexpectedly and calls them to new levels of obedience and new levels of submission to his will, new levels of Christian growth, oftentimes through tragedy and heartache, and he says, follow me. Yeah, you've followed me for years, but now I'm going to ask you to follow me in an area where I've never asked you before and it's going to be really hard. Are you willing to do it? And you have to say to yourself, I don't know.

It's going to cost me a lot. All of us are so quick to negotiate with God, aren't we? We down our knees and we go, well, now, God, if I do this, I mean, I want you to tell me upfront what this is going to cost me, and I want to know exactly what I'm going to have to give up, and God, I want you to promise me that you're going to give me back more than I give up before I make this decision.

Now, maybe you've never been on your knees like that, but I have. See, when I look at Matthew, I don't see this kind of attitude at all, do you? I don't see this kind of focus at all. He wasn't concerned about what he was having to give up. That isn't what he was focused on. Matthew was thrilled about what he was getting, and what was he getting? Man, he was getting Jesus Christ, and he was getting an opportunity to serve the living God of the universe, and he was getting a chance to make his life count for something beyond just money and material things and the things of this world, something that would last for all eternity. God was giving him a chance to make his life count and make a difference, and he said, when I weigh those two, man, anything I've got to give up, forget it.

It doesn't even matter. He followed God unconditionally. He followed Jesus with so much joy that he threw a party. He threw a party to celebrate what he was giving up because he was getting so much, and I believe whenever God asks you to follow him, the response he's looking for is that he wants you to be a Matthew.

He wants you to be a Matthew, and Matthew got up, left everything, and followed him. In thinking about this message this week, I decided to sit down and make a list. I don't know if you've ever done this, of everything that I ever gave up to follow Jesus Christ. Do you ever make a list of that?

You ought to try it sometime. I sat down in my study and got a back of an old envelope and a pen and just started thinking, now, what did I give up to follow Jesus Christ? And, man, I came up with the longest list.

I want to share some of it with you. These are things I gave up to follow Jesus Christ. I gave up hangovers.

I did. I gave up one-night stands where after they were over, I felt like I had been used or I had used somebody else. I gave up the chance of getting AIDS or some other sexually transmitted disease. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up being terrified of death. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up being a slave to all kinds of self-destructive and sinful behavior that were ruining my life. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up having no purpose for living and not even knowing why I was alive. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up sitting in a tree on the campus of the University of North Carolina smoking pot all day because I had no direction in my life and no reason to get down and go anywhere. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up getting lung cancer and heart disease from two packs a day. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up feeling so terribly alone in the decisions of life, so terribly by myself. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up spending eternity in hell. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up being psychologically ill. I was paranoid and insecure and sociopathic and narcissistic, and I had a lousy self-image and I was generally neurotic. You say, well, after a list like that, we believe it.

It's true. I'm not lying to you. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up a hatred for my mother that had produced such a bitterness in my life that it was destroying me. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up being a slave to performance-based living in every area of life where I could never relax and just be myself, where I was always on the performance treadmill, always trying to earn people's love. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up an obsession with material things that destroyed every relationship I got in. When I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up having the Chapel Hill Police chasing after me with a warrant for my arrest on drug charges. Yes, sir, friends, when I decided to follow Jesus Christ, I gave up a lot and every bit of it was crud. Every bit of it. And what I traded it in for was a chance to know and serve and let my life count for the living God of the universe.

Now, you tell me that's not a good trade. You tell me God owes me anything in return. You tell me that God's my debtor and that he didn't give me back a million times what I gave up.

No, I don't believe that. He gave me a chance to stockpile treasure in heaven. He gave me a chance to set the healing power of the great physician loose in my life. God doesn't owe me one thing, not one thing. And even if some of what I had given up hadn't have been crud, it has still been worth it a thousand times over. Matthew knew what I've learned, and that is that what Jesus was calling him from isn't even worth comparing to what Jesus was calling him to. And the same is true for you and for me. What God's calling you to is not even worth comparing to what you're so worried about losing and holding on to.

If you could just trust him and let go, he'll replace it with things so much better, you won't even believe that you were worried about hanging on to the old stuff. There was a man named Jim Elliott. I don't know how many of you have ever heard of Jim Elliott. Jim Elliott was a missionary.

He was a very young man. And after he graduated from Bible college, he decided that God wanted him to go to South America to work with a group of Indians called the Auca Indians, A-U-C-A. He had a friend named Nate Saint and three other friends who committed themselves that they were going to South America to work with these Indians. And they were warned by members of the Shell Oil Company who had been in this area and had some of their own workers killed by the Auca Indians that the Auca Indians were a treacherous, untrustworthy, savage group. They were warned not to go there because they would get killed.

And Elliott wrote down in 1955 some of his thoughts. And he said, you know, if God's called us to go do this, we can't worry about the fact that God may ask us to give some things up. He said, we can't worry about the fact God may even ask us to give up our own lives.

If God's asked us to do this, the only choice for us is to follow God and do what he asks. And then he made this very famous statement. He said, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Isn't that something? He is no fool who gives up what he can't keep anyway to gain what he can't lose.

Well, Jim Elliott went to South America along with Nate St. and three friends, and in 1956 they were killed by the Auca Indians. But you know, what he said is still true. He is no fool who gives up what he can't keep anyway, his life on this earth.

You can't keep it. To gain something he cannot lose, which is heaven and the reward of God. And many, many times when I'm faced with those hard choices where God says, Lon, I want you to go in this direction, but it's going to cost you this. I always remember what Jim Elliott said. He is no fool who gives up what he can't keep anyway to gain the blessing and the reward of God, which he can never lose.

Well, that puts it all in perspective, doesn't it? Because see, all those things you and I are hanging on to so hard, you can't keep them anyway. So why not let them go and follow God for the things you can't lose? Is God calling you to follow him as your personal savior? Be a Matthew and do it. Is God asking you to follow him by submitting to his lordship over some area of your life? If so, as a Christian, be a Matthew and do it. Is God asking you to step out in faith and follow him in some endeavor in your life? Be a Matthew, do it. Is God calling you as a seasoned Christian to follow him into some new level of Christian growth, maybe through pain, maybe through suffering, maybe through loss?

If God's calling you to do it, follow him. He's the great physician. He never leads anybody down the road that'll hurt them. He knows what he's doing. Remember, all the things you'll have to give up, you can't keep anyway. Jim Elliot said to trade them in for the things you can't lose. He is no fool who does what Matthew did, gives up the things he can't keep to gain the things he can't lose. May God help you do that.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, following you in this life is not easy because the pull of the things of this world on us is so strong. Money, material things, luxuries, comforts, all of these things that this world offers us, Lord, we enjoy them, we like them, they feel good. None of us want pain, none of us want heartache, none of us want to suffer any kind of loss. And yet remind us as we look in the Bible that following you always costs.

That's how you decide and how you find out who means business and who doesn't. But Lord, as I look in the Bible, there's not one person who ever followed you that didn't end up better than before they did. Remind us that you are the great physician, that you only lead us down the road to healing and benefit. And I believe there are probably some of us here whom you're calling to follow you, either as Savior and Lord or into some new area of Christian living that scares us, causes us to be afraid. Lord, I pray that you would reassure us today, you know what you're doing. Give us the attitude of Matthew and of Jim Elliot to say he is no fool who gives up what he can't keep to gain what he can't lose. Make us faithful followers, Lord, that you might use our lives and that you might bless us. We commit ourselves to you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. .