Receiving the Sinner
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 29 July 2012
There are several little vignettes, different conversations and, yet, they all come together to give the same message. The key to the whole passage is Matthew 9:13, "For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." In other words, the effectual call of the Gospel to salvation is extended only to sinners, to those who know they're not righteous.
And Luke 5:31 adds, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” This is the glorious message of the Gospel. It is a call to sinners to repent and be forgiven. Matthew makes this clear even beginning with the genealogy in Matthew 1, and you find that the heart of the genealogy is that God saves sinners.
In fact, everybody mentioned up until Christ is a sinner. There's Tamar, who was an incestuous woman. There's Rahab, who was a professional prostitute. There was Ruth, who was a member of a cursed nation. And then there was the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, who was an adulteress.
Whenever you hear a preacher who says, "I don't preach on sin. It's negative," you will also hear a preacher who has no Gospel in his message, who does not bring men to salvation. When you come to Matthew 4:17 you read, "From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, 'Repent.'"
Coming to Matthew 6:12 the Lord says, "When you pray, you better pray like this: Forgive us our debts." In other words, Matthew is saying to us is that men are sinful. They must repent, and that is first and foremost the message of the Gospel...The incarnation is so that God may call sinners to repentance.
In Acts 26:20-21, Paul says to Agrippa, "I declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance. 21 For these reasons the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me.”
Why? Because the Jews always rejected the message of repentance. Why? Because they thought they were righteous already. And the word repent means a total turnaround; which indicates more than just sorrow. It indicates a sorrow that leads to a change of purpose, a change of direction, a change of life and a change of opinion.
When the Apostle Paul was instructing Timothy in the manner of his ministry in 2 Timothy 2:24-26, he said, "And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, 25 in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, 26 and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
In other words, he says, "You must preach with meekness and gentleness and patience; and your message is repentance, for it is repentance alone that is able to draw men out of the snare of the devil."
Matthew 3:7 again, as John the Baptist was there preaching, and people came and confessed their sins, the Pharisees and Sadducees came and he says, "“Brood of vipers! 8 bear fruits worthy of repentance, 9 and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”
What he meant was, "Let me see some of the true repentance out of you, and don't think you're save just because you are Jewish, just because you've kept the rabbinic tradition, don't bank on that." But that is what they thought and that's why in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never enter the Kingdom."
Theirs was a self-righteousness. You see, Jesus came to drive men to a recognition of their sin and then to repentance; and in the midst of that repentance, the forgiveness, which He gives. The Pharisees were great at diagnosis but they were indifferent to the cure.
Matthew 9 focuses on this reality that Jesus receives all of the worst of sinners; and He rejects those who think they are righteous. And in order to show the extent of His forgiveness, Matthew introduces himself as the worst sinner. He was the little mokhes of Capernaum, the worst of all kinds of tax collectors, a traitor to his own people, yet, it was to Matthew the Lord said, "Follow Me," and he rose and followed.
The second argument is one from Scripture. Matthew 9:13 says, "Go and learn what the Scripture says," when it says in Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” That you could be uncaring and uncompassionate to these people in sin betrays the fact that your religion is false."
And, thirdly, He says, "From My own authority, this is the direction of My ministry, for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Now, beloved, this is the heart of the Gospel; and just to show you how much it covers and how repeated its emphasis is made, I want you to look at Luke 15 for a couple of moments.
Luke 15:1, "Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.” We can be sure of one thing. They wouldn't go near a Pharisee, because they would be rebuked and criticized unmercifully. But they drew near to Jesus. He had something to give them, and they knew it.
Verse 2, "And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.” Now, here you have Jesus, the compassionate, the merciful, the loving, the forgiving, drawing to Himself the sinners; and there you have standing far away and criticizing, the self-righteous Pharisees. They don't confess any need. They sit in judgment; 3 So Jesus spoke this parable to them, saying:
Verse 4, " “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ 7 I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”
That last line is the key to interpretation. That is sarcasm. That is saying, "You confess that you are righteous, I'll accept that confession." Jesus accepts their self-confessed righteousness and says, "Heaven is indifferent to you. Heaven rejoices over the one who knows he's lost, and is found." That's the real issue...
Go to Luke 19:1, “Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. 2 Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. 3 And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way. 5 And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”
Now, people just didn't go to the house of a tax collector. 6 So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully. 7 But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.” But that's the whole point of Jesus, He couldn't help the rest, and the conversion of Zacchaeus takes place between verse 7 and 8.
We don't know the story in detail, but it happened there, because the fruit of his conversion is in verse 8, "Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.” He fulfilled the law of Exodus 22. He was going to give back full restitution.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
And then He made one of the greatest statements in the Bible, Luke 19:10, "for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” That is the heart and soul of the Gospel message. Jesus came to save sinners. The worst who recognize it, who repent of it, who seek to be forgiven. That's what we have been seeing in Matthew 9.
Now, I want to draw us through the final four verses for tonight in Matthew 9, and you'll see how it all unfolds. The message of Jesus was so different that it just didn't connect. It created confusion, and so we find posed a question in Matthew 9:14, "Then came to him the disciples of John."
John, as you know from chapter 4, is in prison now; and so his disciples say to the Lord in verse 14, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?” They were still stuck with their system; because the Pharisees believed you should fast twice a week; whereas, the Old Testament listed only one fast, the Day of Atonement.
In other words, "How come your religion is so different than ours?" The three major expressions of the traditions of that time were fasting, almsgiving, and prayers; and they had their little routines during the day when they said prayers at so many intervals; and they had their little almsgiving routines and they also had their routine fasts.
That's really a very important question because they don't see religion as a matter of humility, sinfulness, repentance. They see religion as a matter of ceremony, as a matter of ritual; and there are many like that today. They don't know what it means to be convicted of sin, to have a deep repentance in the heart.
Verse 15, “And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” In those days a wedding would last seven days, and his best friends who were responsible to keep the party going. So Jesus says, "Look, this is a celebration. In other words, don’t fast now, your ritual is out of sync with reality, you should be celebrating if you understood what God is doing right here.
Well, don't you know that fasting is connected with mourning? "Oh?" Don't you know that fasting should be connected with praying? "It is?” This is like what we do now too, “We go to church every Sunday." Oh, you do? "Oh, yes, we have gone to church every Sunday for years." Do you go to really worship God or is it just a habit to make you feel good?
Back to verse 15, "But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them,” Jesus is talking of His crucifixion, "And then they will fast." The Lord says, "If you go through religious exercises apart from an honest attitude in the heart, it is ritual and nothing more. If you fast just to fast, pray just to pray, go to church just to go to church, sing a song without understanding, you've missed God’s purpose for you."
And right now He says: the bridegroom is here, and the wedding feast is going on. You don't cry at a feast. You cry at a funeral. You are happy at a wedding. I'm here with them. This is not a time for mourning."
Their bigger question is this, "How does our present religion relate to what You are teaching?" And the Lord says, "It doesn't relate at all. I just have to tell you that it is not possible to adjust your religion, you have to change radically. And Jesus gives them two illustrations in verse 16 and 17 that are very powerful.
Jesus is not teaching reformed phariseism. Maybe some people think it means that He's setting aside the law and bringing in grace. That is not what He's saying. Law and grace have always coexisted anyway. He is teaching about a personal relationship with Him that comes from your heart.
Now, watch verse 16, "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse." Now in those days, all garments would shrink. If you take a piece of new cloth and stitch it on an old garment, as soon as you wash it that new cloth will shrink and will rip it all.
Jesus says, "There is no way that what I teach can fit into your system. There is no way that the teachings that I give about internal holiness, real repentance, a pure heart attitude can ever fit in the ritualistic system that you hold. Not only won't it connect; but, secondly, your system cannot contain it."
Verse 17, “Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” So the Lord is saying, "Look, you just have to get rid of your system.” The traditional, legalistic, formal, self-righteous externalism was in no way able to contain the ministry of Christ.
You know what the result was? The system had to eliminate Christ. That was the only option they had, and they did. Our Lord did not come to make a few additions to Judaism. Their religion was not the religion of the Old Testament. It was a rabbinic tradition that denied the very truth of the Old Testament.
Now, as we close remember this, because you need to understand the essence of what God is communicating to us. There are three marks of a true believer. No. 1, he follows the Lord. Look back at verse 9, "Jesus said to Matthew, 'Follow Me.' and he arose and followed Him." It is characteristic of a true believer that he lives a life of unquestioning obedience.
Secondly, a true Christian feeds the lost. Matthew right away called all the sinners together and gave them Jesus. Look at your life. If the Holy Spirit dwells in you, the same compassion for the lost that exists in the heart of Christ will exist in you. Oh, it may get covered up by your selfishness from time to time; but it has to be there.
And, thirdly, a true believer does not use legalism, which means only following a set of rules. He does not try to sew a new patch on an old robe, or to try to fill up an old wineskin with new wine. He knows you are not perfected by the law or by some ritual, only by a new personal relationship with Christ.
Do you follow the Lord with a life of unquestioning obedience? Is it your highest privilege, greatest joy and deepest desire to obey Him? Do you have compassion and care? Are you doing away with legalism? Do you know the difference between true worship and going to church? Let us worship God by doing the Lord’s Supper together.