The Savior, The Sinner & The Self-righteous

In your Bible, if you would join me in Matthew's Gospel, chapter number 9.

When you find your place in honor of God's Holy Word, we will stand and read verse 9 down to verse number 13. Matthew chapter 9, verse 9 down to verse number 13 today. The Bible tells us here in this tremendous passage of scripture, and as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom, and he saith unto him, Follow me.

And he arose and followed him. And it came to pass as Jesus sat at me in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your master with publicans and sinners?

When Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that behold need not a physician, but they that are sick, if you'd read verse 13 with me, but go and learn what that meaneth. I will have mercy and not sacrifice, for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And Lord, that is our desire today as we come to your word.

We pray that you would bring. The clarity that we are sinners. Maybe today someone doesn't understand how great their need is of a savior. But we need you more than we need food and water.

For our outward man could perish, but our inward man would live forever somewhere. And I pray that you would bring to light not only the need of a savior, but the acceptance of Christ. Lord, save the lost, be a savior here today. We need you to open the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, awaken the heart of that lost soul. God, I praise you for how you have worked so mightily. Lord, I pray that you would continue to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think according to the work of your power. And I pray that your word, your mighty word would not return void, but it would accomplish all your desire to bring salvation and sanctification in this place.

We ask it in Jesus name and God's people said, man, you may be seated today. The most destructive thing on the planet is not cancer. It is not some plague, the most destructive thing that we have ever faced is sin. Sin is what has produced all the diseases, all the plagues, all the violence, deaths, shooting, rapes, murders.

Our greatest enemy is sin, and the Bible tells us when Jesus came into the world, he came as heaven's cure for sin. Paul said in First Timothy 115, a very profound statement. He said, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all the expectation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And he says, of whom I am chief. Paul had authored 13 books of the New Testament and said, the reason Jesus came to the world born as a man unto a virgin was not to make us happy, to help us fulfill our dreams, to give us health and wealth or to give us our best life now. He said the reason he came to the world was for one reason, and it was to save sinners. Jesus said of himself in Luke 19, verse 10, he said, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Jesus declares here in verse 13, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And so the Bible is clear, the Lord only saves one kind of a person, one kind of people. He only saves people that recognize their sinners. Therefore, to be saved, you must understand that you are lost in your sin.

You are lost as a sinner. Those who believe they can earn God's favor or are good enough to get to heaven have that false view because they don't understand the Bible and what the Bible really says about themselves. Judaism in this day had molded into a very self righteous system. You see, they had the Old Testament and under the law of the Old Covenant, the Old Testament law was never designed to save people. It was designed to show them their need of a savior.

The law is not soap. It is a mirror and it exposes our need for salvation. It is that which can diagnose our sin, but it can never fix our sin. That is why Jesus came into the world to be the remedy. And the only way that you could be saved is to recognize your need of Christ as your savior, that you are lost on your own.

The only one who goes to a doctor are those who are sick and the only one who recognizes their need of a savior is those who recognize their sinful condition. That's why Jesus started the Beatitudes off in Matthew five, verse three, by saying this. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God and the poor in spirit are those who recognize their spiritual bankruptcy. It is unto them that the kingdom of heaven will be given.

It is for the humble, not the self righteous. Now, Matthew five through seven, we have the message of the great king. And then Matthew eight and nine, we have the miracles of the great king and the display of his divine power. In Matthew Chapter eight, we see the power of Christ over disease as he heals a leper and he heals a centurion servant with his word. Then we see his power over nature as he calms the storm at the Sea of Galilee. Then we see his power over demons as he casts out the demons out of the men of Gadara. Now we see his power over sin here in Chapter nine. Jesus Christ is the great power of God.

Last week, we saw four men bring a paralyzed man to Jesus. Jesus forgives the man of his sins. The religious leaders, when they heard Jesus say your sins are forgiven, are like, who does this man think he is God? Because only God can forgive sins, and they're right. And Jesus is showing his divine prerogative and forgiving sins in his deity. And how do we know he can forgive sins?

Because that's invisible, isn't it? I mean, you could say your sins are forgiven, but how do you know that that that actually occurred? Well, look at verse number four of Matthew nine.

When they're like, who does this guy think he is? In verse three, verse four, Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, wherefore thinking evil in your hearts? For whether is he easier to say thy sins be forgiven thee or to say, Arise, take up that bed and walk?

Which one's easier? They're stuck because they're both impossible. Well, you can't I mean, it's you have to be God to be able to heal somebody like that. You have to be God to be a forgive sins. And look what he says in verse number six. But that you may know that the son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins. Then sayeth he to the sick of the palsy, Arise, take up thy bed and go into thy house and he arose and departed to his house. Jesus showed his ability to do that, which is invisible by giving a visible miracle. He not only healed the man externally, but he healed him internally. Do you realize your greatest need today is not physical health? And do you and you know this the older you get the greatest pains in our life have not been external, have they?

They've been on the inside. The reason people drink it all the time or they get on the drugs and they get into all these things, a lot of and all kinds of medications, a lot of times it's not some physical thing they've gone through. It's internal bleeding of the soul, and they're trying to ease that pain. Jesus says, Come unto me, all you that are weary and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me and you shall find rest for your souls. You get soul rest with Christ.

You're way down both externally and internally. He says, Come to me and I'll bring you that healing. Now that Jesus has established his authority to forgive sins, the question comes is how many sins can he forgive? Like, I mean, maybe they thought the paralytic man perhaps didn't have a lot of sin in his life, so I mean, he's paralyzed.

He can't go out and do a whole lot. I mean, you know, maybe he forgave him because he didn't have a lot of sin. So the question comes, how much sin can he forgive and how great of a sinner is he willing to forgive? Those two questions are answered here in verse nine through verse thirteen. Today, I've entitled this message The Savior, the Sinner and the Self Righteous. First of all, let's look at verse nine, Jesus's response to a sinner. It says, And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom, and he saved on him.

Follow me. I can tell you, that verse doesn't mean a whole lot to you right now. But if a Jew heard that, they would have fell on the ground. That's how monumental that verse is. That's how crazy that statement was. But because we didn't live in those days, we're like, what's it mean?

So I'll tell you. So a publican was a tax collector. And you need to understand a little bit of history to understand the weight of this. Publicans were at the very bottom of the social ladder in those days.

Let me explain. In that day, Rome was an occupying force over the nation of Israel. Israel hated Rome. They were seeking to remove Roman oppression. Rome had a military presence in Israel, and then you had to pay taxes to Rome.

They wanted to be a sovereign nation, but they were under this occupation. At that time, the Jewish king that was set up over Israel was a man named Herod Antipas. He was not a Jew.

He was an Idumean. And he would sell tax franchises to the highest bidder, and then he would send those taxes to Rome. He was a corrupt king, and the Jews were seeking to be liberated from Roman occupation. So for you to be a publican as a Jew meant you were betraying your own people.

You were a traitor to the idolatrous Romans, and you were hated for that. Not only were publicans hated because they were traitors, but also because they were corrupt. Rome would set a certain tax amount that you would have to pay them. But as a publican, any other tax that you could make, you got to keep, and this was a recipe for corruption. They had some fixed taxes that you had to pay, a poll tax. They also had ground tax, basically property tax. They paid one tenth of all their grain and anything equivalent to grain in a property tax, one fifth of wine and oil. They had an income tax, which was one percent of a person's income. So there were those fixed taxes, but beyond that there were other taxes that they could basically tax you for really about anything. If you were pulling a cart, they would tax your commerce, all the goods that you had in the wagon. They would tax every animal, every cart that you pulled, every axle. They taxed everything imaginable. And so the tax collectors became filthy rich because Rome only received a portion of what they gathered. Then they would charge enormous, such enormous sums of taxes, people could not pay them.

So they would offer you an interest loan, and sometimes those loans history records will be up to 50 percent interest rates. So basically you became a slave to the publicans. They began to own you after a while. You say, how did they get away with this? I mean, why didn't people just like take them out? Well, the publicans would hire thugs that would be enforcers. The same thing happens in inner cities today, right? I mean, if you if you're if you have a business in some of these inner cities, there's gangs that own certain turfs they call turf wars. The reason they do that is because they will you have to pay them money. And it doesn't matter how much you get the police involved, you're going to have to pay those guys because it's just going to be what it is or you're going to get beat up.

Your store is going to get messed up. So you have to pay them. This is what this kind of system was. This was a corrupt system and the people hated them for that. So Matthew was part of this hated and despised corrupt group. Also, Matthew would have been doing very good because he was in the city of Capernaum. Well, Capernaum is like the biggest it's the largest city on the Sea of Galilee. Estimations were over two million people that were surrounding the whole area of the Sea of Galilee, and they were a high populated area.

And he would have done very well. These men were rejected from religious life, according to Alfred Edersheim, who's a great Jewish historian. He said the public county or the publicans were not even allowed to attend synagogue life. Religion among the Jews was like center.

It was like very important. It's not like America. It was like if you were a Jew, like that's what that's a part of just being being a Jew. Like you were part of that, just like in some Muslim countries to go to their places of worship.

And so to be removed from that was like you're being separate from society. They were they weren't allowed to go to their synagogues. They were not even they were considered such liars.

They would not even allow a publican to give testimony in a court of law. They were social rejects among the religionists. The religious leader said, if you got near a publican, it would defile you. It was sinful to even commune with them, to talk with them, to be around them made you sinful. So they you weren't allowed to be around them. They were also ranked among the unclean animals.

They were in the classification with swine or pigs among the Jews. And so so they were completely despised. And the only people that publicans could hang out with were other people like them. You see this in Matthew Chapter nine, verse 10, it says, And it came to pass as Jesus said, It meet in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down.

Why? Because that's the only other kind of friends that Matthew had. Nobody else hangs out with publicans. They were like lepers. Lepers in that day were social outcasts. They could only hang out with other lepers. Publicans were were moral outcasts in that sense.

Edersheim goes on the right that there were only two kinds. There were also two kinds of publicans. There were there were publicans known as the Gabi. The Gabi were publicans who would do like the main taxes, like your property tax, your your income tax, things like that.

They were despised, but they were not the most despised tax collectors. Then they had another group called the mochas, and the mochas were also in two classes. There was what's known as a great mocha and then a small mocha.

A great mocha was somebody who had other people who would be kind of the front of their operation. They would go out and collect the taxes, but they kind of bailed themselves from society to protect their reputation. They just didn't want they just want the whole society to turn against them.

So they were kind of behind the scenes workers. But then the small mochas were the guys that actually sat at the table and like took your money and like had thugs that would enforce that. So the Gabi were hated. The great mochas were even more hated. But the most despised people in that culture were the small mochas. You need to understand Matthew was a small mocha.

He was he was the most hated guy in Capernaum. You don't get lower than him. Jesus saw this publican named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom. This is his tax desk. He's collecting people's taxes.

He's on duty. He undoubtedly taxed the fishermen. I mean, when Jesus had the miracle of fish and they brought all those fish to shore, I bet Matthew had a good day that day. Jesus had clearly left an impression on Matthew, not only his messages, but the miracles that Jesus did, Matthew would have been there. Matthew very likely was there when Jesus had healed this publican or this this paralyzed man in verse one through eight that we looked at last week. And the Lord had used that miracle, as we said earlier, as a platform to show that he has the ability to forgive people's sins. Undoubtedly, Matthew had been under conviction over his sinful lifestyle. His response to the Lord here in verse nine reveals that his heart had already been tilled up.

When the seed of the gospel landed on him, his soil was soft. Matthew must have understood how great of a sinner he had been. He was rejected from the religious life of that day. And you need to understand, Matthew probably thought there was no hope for him. I mean, among the Jewish religion, if he's kicked out of their system, you're hopeless then.

So you're only under judgment. You're like, well, I might as well eat, drink and be married because there's no forgiveness for me. And then perhaps he he heard Jesus forgive the paralyzed man. He's like, you mean he forgives sins? And he probably thought there's no way but Jesus would forgive me. I'm the worst guy in town.

I mean, I haven't been to synagogue because they won't even let me in. Maybe he would forgive me. Maybe he will forgive me. You know what had happened to Matthew?

Matthew had drunk the cup of sin and it left him empty. You know, because sin, sin over promises and under delivers, doesn't it? Oh, you're going to get so much pleasure out of this. You just need to go into this. You need to do this. And then you go do it. And as the weeks and months and years pass by, that sin leaves you miserable.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? Yeah, sin is a liar, isn't it? Matthew must have been under such great weight. And perhaps he's pondering all of this when he looks up and Jesus is standing at his tax desk. And he must be thinking, I'm about to get lit up.

Jesus is going to light me up. You know, he gets lit up by all the other religious guys. He's probably thinking Jesus is, you know, either judgment's coming or, you know, about to get that fire brimstone message right here.

I can't imagine what's going through his mind. But instead of a message of judgment, Jesus looks at him and says, follow me. I want to be your rabbi. I want to be your teacher.

I want you to be my student. So how do you know Matthew was thinking all of that? That's a lot of reading between the lines, Pastor Josh will look at verse number nine. And he arose and followed him.

How on earth do you get up from your work? Leave your job to follow Jesus if your heart was not softened, right? You need to understand Luke Chapter five twenty eight puts it this way, and he left all rose up and followed him. He left everything behind. This is not like Peter, Andrew, James and John, who were fishermen in Matthew four.

When Jesus comes along and says, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. They dropped their nets. They left their boats. They followed Jesus.

They still own their nets in their boats, a little fishing operation. Their daddy kept going. But when Matthew stood up and left his tax office, you don't go back because there's another guy, another puppet that jumps in that chair. When he got up and left all he he could never go back to that. He would have to start a ground zero again.

You need to understand this guy is sitting there and by two words, follow me. He was willing to leave everything in his life behind to follow Jesus. How soft does your heart have to be to God to do that? This man must have been buried in the guilt of his life. Any way I can get out of this, but there's no way to be forgiven. There's no way to have my sins forgiven.

And then Jesus comes along and offers the man a way out. Follow me and I'll forgive all of your sins. Follow me and I'll cast your sins as far as the east is from the west. Hey friend, you have some sin today you need to remove from your life. You stood before God today.

You think you'd be innocent. Do you feel like you're good enough to get to heaven? If you feel like you're good enough to get to heaven, you're unsavable.

Do you hear me? If you feel like you're acceptable with God, like if I ask you this question, if you stood before God and he said, why should I let you into heaven? What would you say if you said to me, I think I'm a good person, you're unsavable. You're unsavable until you get to the point of saying, I know I could never make it on my own.

I'm not good enough. I deserve hell. I deserve judgment. I'm a sinner and I need mercy. I need forgiveness until Jesus only saved sinners. He says, I didn't come to call the righteous. I'm not going to save them, but I will save sinners. So either you're here today and you recognize you're bad enough and you can be saved or you think you're good enough and you'll never be saved with that mindset. Only two kinds of people. People say, yeah, I've heard people say through the years, all those people who go to church say they're so self-righteous, they think they're so good.

They go to church. Look at them over there packing that lighthouse parking lot out. You know what? They think they're so good. No, you're the ones who think you're so good.

You think you're so good. You don't need Jesus. You don't need mercy. You don't need the word of God. You don't need preaching. You don't need church.

You don't need any of that. The reason we come is we realize we are sinners in desperate need of his mercy and when he saved us, we fell in love with Jesus Christ and I want to live for him all of my days. That's what he's done for us. We don't have to go to church. We get to come and worship him.

We get to celebrate the word of God. I mean, this is more important than me out mowing grass today, isn't it? Go break in the weather.

Sure. There's somebody thinking off. I knew it was going to be this clear.

I could have stayed home and mowed. Dandelions will be there tomorrow. Right?

Sorry. Today, Jesus is still seeing those who are lost. Unity saying to you today, if you were to die today, you don't know if Heaven's your home. You know what he's doing?

He's coming up to you and say, follow me, come to me, follow me. You mean you, Jesus, do you know what I've done? You know, there's two kinds of people. There's those who don't know you and all the details of your life, then there's those who do know you. You know what? You know what? You know what true love is? Knowing somebody fully and still loving them. That's so scary, isn't it? Isn't it scary to open your heart up and let people know who you really are sometimes?

Like, hey, I struggle with this or this was part of my past and we're afraid how people might take us. You know one thing I love about Lighthouse is we're just a down to earth church. People get up here, don't they, week after week and share their testimonies, baptism testimonies. You know what, I was out lost and I had done this and that and man, God gave me salvation.

Man, this last Wednesday we had a testimony. Todd to Lena with Farland, shared their testimony, Marine retiree out of Marine. He went on 11 tour, spent six years out of the country serving our, aren't you appreciate our military?

Don't you think the Lord for those who served our country that I can tell you six years out of the country takes a toll on your family, takes a toll on your marriage. So they got involved in our reengage ministry, marriage ministry study, and it was through that study of those four months that he was in our small group. He came to know Christ as his savior. He went home one night after that and he asked his son Cam, who's one of our interns. He said, he said, Cameron, he said, I need to talk to you. He said, I need to be saved. Cam's like, we can do that right now that they got down on their knees and he called out to Christ and to see that Marine this last Wednesday, sharing what Jesus did for him.

I tell you, Marines don't cry very much. Sometimes it goes decades without that happening, but just seeing him breaking down and sharing what grace God has poured out on his life now, 29 years married and he says, now I want to help other military families in this area to help their marriage and to share with them what Jesus has done in my life. Isn't that amazing? That's a miracle of God. And maybe you're here today and you say, man, my life's been so messed up.

My life's been so broken. I just want you to know today, God will save you if you come to him. He says, come unto me all you that labor. He invites you in, but you know what he said in John eight is the people kept rejecting him. He says, you will not come unto me that you might have eternal life. And he said, and if you don't come to me, you will die in your sins. Come to him.

Come to him today. What happened to Matthew after this story? Well, this sinful tax collector who Jesus saved became one of the 12 apostles of Jesus. Not only does he become one of the 12 apostles, but God gives him the assignment to write the first book of the New Testament. The book of Matthew is written by that guy. The most hated man in Capernaum launches the manuscript, the New Testament gospel of Matthew. I mean, if you were to ask the disciples like, how are we going to list the gospels? They're like, well, you're going to have to probably start with John because they really love John. You know, Luke was a doctor. Maybe put him second. Mark wrote to the gentile. So put him third and then Matthew, I didn't know why they put him in there, but put him as a fourth gospel. Let's just put him after revelation. She's like, that ain't how it works.

I'm going to take Matthew, the worst man in town, the publican, and I'm going to put him as the first book of the New Testament, the gospel according to Matthew, the publican. I can tell you friends, Jews who read this, they're like, that's why they don't want Jesus. That's despicable grace. They just can't.

That's too much. Why do you think they crucified him? He's a friend of publicans and sinners.

Can't stand that guy. There's no way he could be the Messiah of God. Don't you know what kind of woman's touching your feet, Jesus? Jesus said, Simon, the Pharisee, and Jesus said, Simon, I have something to say to you.

Simon never said that out loud. Jesus starts answering his thoughts. That's a little problem, isn't it, when Jesus starts answering your thoughts? He said, since I've come in, you gave me no water for my feet.

You never gave me no ointment for my head. Since I've come in, this woman has not ceased to wash my feet with her tears and dry them with the hair. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she's been forgiven much, therefore she loves much. You know the reason people don't love Jesus like they should?

They just forget how much they've been forgiven. When you start remembering all that you've done, you start realizing how much grace he's dumped on you, you'll fall on your face before him and worship him. There's a true story of a man, I was sharing this in our foundation class, it just came to my mind, but of a true story, an inner city construction worker was three stories up on scaffolding. There was a businessman that was walking underneath the scaffolding at the time, and it just so happened one of those men on the scaffold fell off. Must have been a gust of wind, something happened, he fell off the scaffold. The man looked up as the man yelled, and he saw him, and he had time to just like jump out of the way, like that's what your natural instinct, something falling, you're going to jump out of the way. They said instead of doing that, like he braced himself to catch the guy, and he caught the man and it just literally crushed the businessman on the pavement.

Totally shattered his body, just totally broken. Story goes on to say how every day of that construction worker basically got up and walked off the scene like he was fine, but that man was paralyzed in a wheelchair the rest of his life to businessman. The story went on to say how every day of that man's life he tried to do some act of kindness for that businessman, writing letters, giving things. He said he could just never get over his thankfulness for what that man did for him. You know when Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago went to the cross, he took our death so that we might have life.

He was crushed for our sins so that we might be saved from them. Do you understand what he's done for you? You know what Matthew said? I'll walk away from everything the world has offered me to follow Jesus Christ. I'm going to ask you a question today because I believe that Jesus is still calling people to follow him and I believe he's still calling people to further works for God.

Let me ask you a question. If you're saved, what are you doing for Jesus? Like what are you doing in the church for Jesus? Are you serving?

Are you a member? Are you, are you allowing God to use your life to teach, to help, to minister, to, are you sharing the gospel with your neighbors, coworkers? What are you doing with your faith? What are you doing? I mean, do you, do you receive it and say, thank you Jesus for catching me, but, but then what are you going to do with that?

She's going to go on and live your life. I believe there's, there's pastors that God, God would come along and well, let me ask you this question. What if God came along and said, Hey, I want you to leave your profession and follow me.

Would you leave it? You know, Dr Martin Lloyd Jones was a doctor that God called him as a very successful doctor. He left his profession as a doctor to go all in for Jesus and be a pastor. Jesus asks you to go all in.

Would you do that? You know, Matthew walked away from his job. I remember Eric Woodworth when he was just a, he was just 18 year old guy and he got saved and he was working in Christian store and they were looking to make him a manager there and doing for, for where he was at. He was just doing very successful. He left all of that to come here to Xenia to help me start a church. We were so poor at that time. Like he, he, he said, man, I was, I was eating beans and bread, some for several weeks.

Cause he's like, we didn't have anything. You know, Braden teach left a job where he would make more to his Christmas bonus at the end of the year than he would make in nearly the whole year coming on staff here. My brother has a guy who was a district manager for, for Sam's Club making hundreds of thousands dollars a year, walked away from that to go into full time ministry. Let me, I just, I just wonder if, if there's anybody still that if Jesus came along and said, Hey, I want you to follow me. I want you to be in full time vocational ministry. I want you to be a pastor, a teacher, a missionary, evangelist. I have a greater purpose for your life. And say, man, I'm too deep into this stuff.

Too successful. God made me radically successful in the world before I began to work full time ministry, making about a thousand dollars a day and listen, sometimes the world can offer you great success and the question is, what are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do with your life? Maybe he just wants you to be faithful with the job you're at and that's exactly what's God's called you to do. Be faithful there. Be faithful to serve. Be faithful to teach. Be faithful to do whatever he's called you to do, but, but be willing. Don't just be like, well, I'm just going to live life, go to church on Sunday, sit there and punch my card.

That's great being here. That's great learning the word of God, but don't be a here and not a do or take that truth and say like Matthew, Lord, whatever you want me to do, I'm willing. Sometimes people are afraid to like surrender their life to God.

Have you ever done that? Fully surrendered your life to God, say God, whatever you want me to do, I do it. I remember as a young man, I thought, boy, if I surrender my life to God, I'm going straight to like the Congos. I know he's going to take me there or the Amazon jungle.

You know, we live living inside of a mosquito net all my life. You know, I just be, I was saying he's going to take me somewhere I have no desire to be. It's what I thought and I was always afraid to surrender my life, but you know what I've learned through the years? The greatest fear is not me being in the driver's seat. The greatest fear is not letting God in the driver's seat. The greatest fear of my life is me getting a hold of the steering wheel. Do you think you can drive your life better? You think your plans are better than God's?

Let me ask you a question. What are you willing to follow him in? He said, if any man comes after me, there's a death to self, a denial of self to follow him. There's more that God has for some of your lives.

You need to be willing to give him your life and say, Lord, what would you have me to do? And it starts with being faithful over little things, doesn't it? Coming to church, reading the Bible, praying, sharing the gospel. It's not about being over a ministry. It's about being in a ministry, being a servant. I remember when Eric Woodworth got saved, he was an 18 year old, Nathan Woodworth, he'll be here tonight.

He's his brother. You know what's crazy is me and Ryan went to start a church 20 years ago in Chillicothe, Ohio with eight people, and that church blew up to 600 people like this. We started in a hotel conference room, and the manager of that hotel was a man named Eric Woodworth Senior, and he had two sons who set the room up, Eric Woodworth and Nathan Woodworth, who were both lost kids, and they would go in and set a room up for two brothers who moved to that city to preach the gospel, and years later, those two boys ended up getting saved. I mean, this was years later, and we were like, we started in the hood, and they're like, our dad was the manager there. I was like, did you guys go there? They're like, we used to set the room up. I'm like, are you kidding me? And you didn't even come.

They're like, we were lost, chasing girls or whatever else we were doing. You know what I mean? There was just no part of that. God's sovereign though, isn't he? So Matthew here not only responds in obedience, but he also responds in joy and celebration. Look what he does in verse 10. And it came to pass as Jesus said it, meeting the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. He's so excited. He has a great feast.

You know what's interesting? Do a study in the Bible. Jesus, he liked to go to feasts. He liked to be at those parties. He liked to be with big gatherings of people. He liked people. He's not away from the people guy. He's in the midst of them. And this guy had to have a pretty big house. Some historians talk about and theologians about that he could have had even upwards of 100 people he invited to this. It's a big party. And the people that come, it says, are the publicans and sinners. Those are the only friends he had.

He wants all of his friends to know, hey, there's forgiveness to be found. Like y'all are miserable. Remember our misery? We drink ourself into misery and run around doing that stuff.

There's someone who can save us out of this. You know what's interesting? Jesus came to his hometown of Nazareth, very religious town. They kicked Jesus out and a publican takes him in his house. You know, the self-righteous people don't need Jesus. They don't need his messages preaching his word. Those who recognize their sinfulness, all that Jesus has done will be the ones who embrace Christ.

They love him. You know, it's just crazy in the Bible. The woman at the well, Samaria, John four, then you have Saul of Tarsus, the worst guy killing Christians.

Then you have Matthew the publican. God keeps using the worst of sinners to bring salvation to the world. You know why he does that?

You know why he does that? First Timothy one, Paul says, I am the chief of sinners because I'm not even deserving to be a Christian because I used to kill Christians. He says, but God saved me so that he could show how great his mercy is by saving the worst of us. So we can look at this and say, praise God.

Not only can he forgive, but he can forgive all and even the worst of them. Not of the self-righteous respond to this, look at verse 11 and when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, why eateth your master being your teacher with publicans or tax collectors and sinners? I mean, he is defiling himself. These are the self-righteous legalists.

They believe they made themselves acceptable to God and there's really nothing more disgusting than that. To be around people who think they're just so good. Money does that to people.

You ever seen that happen? Somebody's a millionaire and some people can have a lot and be humble and some people can have a lot and they think there's something because they have stuff. See my new, oh, I have this job here. Or they're the degree people. They put every doctor, executive, doctor, doctors, executive, so and so.

Nothing wrong with having a doctor before your name, but you don't have to put it in capital letters all the time, right? Your identity is not in your money. It's not in your job.

It's not in your education. Our identity is in the Lord Jesus Christ and they said, why do you eat with the publicans and sinners? They were upset. Jesus, you and your disciples are being open and friendly with sinners. You're just too friendly with them.

There's too close of contact. You need to separate yourself. Pharisees were separatists. And how does Jesus respond to this?

And that's, that'll be our fourth and final point. Jesus' response to self righteous people, verse 12 and 13, he gives a three part response in verse 12 and 13. His first point is undebatable. He says in verse 12, but Jesus, but when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I mean, that's an undebatable response. He's like, why are you eating with the sickest people in town?

He's like, because the sickest need the physician, right? And they're like, they never would say things like that because they didn't want to agree with him. It's like the Republicans and Democrats.

You know, we're kind of turning into a one party country anyway, it seems but anyway, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. And he says, the Pharisees and scribes, they couldn't argue with that. The reason that like, like, you need to understand their heart would have been like if they saw a scribe or a publican and these sinners, like, in desperate need, struggling, they would rather them die than to touch them. Do you remember when this Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, and the man was lying on the ground like dying, and then it says, it just so happened that like a priest passed by that way, then a scribe or Pharisee passed by that way.

And what do they do? They pass by the man, they wouldn't help him. I mean, that's that's the heart of these guys. No compassion, self righteous, prideful. I've heard at times of the year, self righteous Christians show a lack of compassion towards sinful folks and sinful situations in society. People maybe struggle with alcohol, drugs, homosexuality, prostitution, do you realize there's a lot of people in our church that got saved out of drugs, alcohol, prostitution, homosexuality sitting in this room right now? I praise God for mercy.

I praise God for Lighthouse, this has always been a church that loves sinners. And if we ever stop loving sinners, may Christ shut our doors. So he says, they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. Point number two, verse 13. But go learn what this meaneth, that meaneth, he quotes Hosea six, verse six. He says, I will have mercy and not sacrifice for I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. What he's saying here is God loves people, God loves his people, loving mercy, or being merciful to people more than going out and making sacrificial or sacrifices to God. Because it's real easy to take an animal in those days and bring that as an offering to God.

A lost person can do that. But to love your neighbor as yourself, that can be tough. He says, I desire you to be merciful. Be merciful, Luke 636 says, as your father in heaven is merciful. Jesus said in Matthew five, seven, blessed are the merciful, they shall obtain mercy.

Are you one who've received mercy but are not willing to give mercy? Don't ever let that be said of you. And then thirdly, he said, I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And this is a stinging rebuke to them, full of sarcasm. Because they knew the Old Testament declared they were sinners. I mean, Psalms 14, verse two and three says, the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did good, that did understand and seek God, I should say.

They are all gonna side, they are all together become filthy. There is none that do with good, no, not one. That is later quoted in Romans chapter three, right? Ecclesiastes 720 says, there is not a just man upon the earth that do with good and sin if not. So what Jesus is saying is, you know, you guys are righteous, I forgot. You guys are so righteous that you don't need a Savior. You know, the Father sent me to save the lost and to save sinners, but you don't need me to save you because you saved yourself. You're good enough to be saved. I don't come to save people like you, I come to save sinners, but because you're so righteous, you don't even need a Savior, right?

This is a sarcastic, just cut against them. You need to understand, friend, if you don't come to Jesus and trust in Him, who is it showing that you're trusting in? If you don't say today and cry out, God saved me from my sins, I trust in you. I believe Jesus, you died, you were buried, you rose again from the dead the third day. I believe you are the Lord of heaven and earth, I need your forgiveness, I need you to wash my sins away, I cannot save myself. If you don't come to Christ and you understand you're a sinner, then who are you trusting in to be your Savior?

Is it not just yourself? If you believe you're good enough to get to heaven, you're unsavable today. You cannot be saved until you recognize you can't be good enough.

Romans 3-12 says, they are all gone out of the way, they are together to become unprofitable, there's none that do with good, no, not one. So in conclusion, what have we learned from this story? We've learned the good news that Jesus will save the worst of sinners. Is that good news? It's good news, isn't it?

Anybody ever feel like you're like the worst guy in the neighborhood, the worst guy in the block? Yep. Secondly, Jesus calls us to respond with obedient, sacrificial faith. True faith is obedient, it's sacrificial. This man left his table to follow Jesus. Those who come to Jesus, thirdly, will be saved and he will use your life in a greater way than you could ever imagine.

Matthew never would have thought Christ could have saved him. Besides being able to write the gospel of Matthew, 28 chapters written with the same pen that was used to writing down extortion and robbing people with numbers is now pinning the very word of God. Are you willing to follow the master's call today?

If God were to call you to preach, to teach, be a missionary, to serve more diligently in the church, whatever he's calling you to, would you be willing to follow him? We learned that God responds in mercy to sinners who humbled himself. You know, Jesus said this, the Bible says this, God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. I remember the day when I called out to Christ, I was a teenager and I recognized, man, I was a sinner. I'd been to the principal's office, I think that week, three times already, I knew I was a mess. I was going down a wrong road and it was much worse than just getting in trouble in school and I realized I need forgiveness, I need grace, and I was so sick and my sin just left me miserable, empty. I knew enough of the Bible, it was wearing me out and I remember getting on my face before God and calling out to him, save me God, save me.

And man, I wish I had a pastor there, I didn't have anybody to talk to, so I prayed for weeks. I had no one to tell me like verses in the Bible like that, I just was pleading with God to save me from my sins and man, he saved me and he changed my life. And I can tell you, I haven't been perfect since, but I've been changed. He made me a new creation, he turned me and put me on a different path. It's not the perfection of your life, it's the direction and he put you on a new road. Friend today, if you're not saved, I'll have men and women stand at that door and that door, you could just walk up to them and say, hey, I need to be saved.

They'll pull you aside in a private room and show you from the Bible today how you can know Christ is your savior. We all have sinned, we've all fallen short and today, why don't you come and say, Jesus, I want to follow you. He's calling you.

He said, follow me. So what are you going to do? Let's all stand this morning. Father, we thank you for your word today, it is our joy and as we come to you in prayer at this time, I pray father that you would just raise up pastors and teachers and missionaries and godly servants who work at the grocery store, work at some factory that work in business and in the hospitals and military, God, that you would raise up godly servants that would be light in all those different communities, godly neighbors, friends and family members that share Christ. Lord, I pray that you would draw anyone today that doesn't know you as their savior, that today would be the day of their salvation, that they would not stay where they are, but they would come and be saved. Father, I pray as Christians that we would recognize that you made a greater sacrifice than that businessman that day when he was walking down the road.

You was crushed and bruised for our iniquities. How could we not live the rest of our life for you? May we cast away our sin and may we love Christ with all of our heart. We ask today, use our life. We don't want to be in the driver's seat, we want you to be. We surrender our all to you, my King, my God, in Jesus' name, Amen.