INTRODUCTION

Last February I was asked to give the opening prayer at a dinner hosted by one of our political parties. I was not asked because of my political affiliation but because the person who organized it forgot to get someone to pray and only remembered a few hours before the event. He knew me and so called to ask if I could bail him out. So Jane and I got to go and hobnob with a bunch of political activists and elected officials. What was very interesting to me was that it was not hard to pick out who the politicians were. They were the men and women who were initiating conversations. As we were virtual unknowns in the group we were approached by several candidates and elected officials. All of them were very friendly and eager to get to know us. It was not hard see who the politicians were because they acted like politicians.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if God showed up on planet earth? Would you be able to pick him out of a crowd? How would he act? In many ways this is the question that the first four books of the New Testament set out to answer. Each of these gospels presents Jesus as a man who acted like God, because he is both God and man. In the passage we are going to look at today Matthew zeros in on one of the chief ways that Jesus shows he is God by acting like God. But what he does and says to reveal his deity is surprising.

The famous statement by C.S. Lewis in his book "Mere Christianity" explains my goal for today. "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

MAIN POINT

Jesus says a lot of offensive things but v. 2 of this chapter contains perhaps one of his most shocking and offensive statements. Consider what is happening in this scene. A group of people carry a paralyzed man to Jesus. Given the fact that Jesus calls him "son", he is probably a teenager. Why do they bring him to Jesus? Obviously, they want Jesus to heal him. Jesus, we are told sees their faith, their confidence that he can help their friend. Then, before they say anything to him, Jesus says this amazing thing. He says, "Cheer up, son, your sins are forgiven."

I want us to stop right here and think about what Jesus has just said. He is talking to a young man who is paralyzed from at least the waist down. All of us, when we see people who have been disabled by birth or by accident are full of pity and compassion. We would not wish paralysis on anyone. Most of us feel nervous and inadequate when we are around the disabled. We are afraid we’ll say something stupid that will draw attention to their disability or to our ability. None of us would ever think of saying to a paraplegic or quadriplegic, "Cheer up". Can you think of a more insensitive thing to say?

Is Jesus being cruel? Is he out of touch with reality? Is he just insensitive? How many sins can a young, paralyzed person have committed, anyway? This paralyzed person and his friends did not come into the middle of this crowd of people to have Jesus patronize them. They didn’t bring him to Jesus to get his sins forgiven. They came to get him healed. But instead, Jesus tells him to cheer up and then spouts some religious cliché about his sins being forgiven. Can you imagine what this young man might say to Jesus? "Who do you think you are? What right do you have to tell me to cheer up? Keep your religious mumbo-jumbo to yourself. I don’t care if my sins are forgiven. Do you know what it’s like to not be able to do anything for yourself, not even go to the bathroom? Do you know what it’s like to watch everyone else playing and working while all you can do is lay around? Do you know how humiliating this is?"

What is Jesus doing? He is telling this young man that his biggest problem isn’t being paralyzed. He is telling him there is something far worse than not being able to walk. This young man’s biggest problem is his sins. If your sins are not forgiven, that means you are going to have to pay God back for them. In other words, Jesus is telling him that his biggest problem is that God is going to send him to hell for his sins and that is way worse than being paralyzed. The best thing that Jesus can give to him is forgiveness of sins. Don’t miss this. Jesus is telling him he can be cheerful while being paralyzed if he knows that his sins are forgiven.

If Jesus tells a young paralyzed man that his biggest problem isn’t being paralyzed but rather that his sins are not forgiven, then what do you think he would say to you? The number one reason why Christ means so little to us, why we have so much discouragement and fear and anger and envy in our lives is because we don’t believe our biggest problem is our sin. We think our biggest problem is we don’t make enough money or we don’t have enough free time or our spouse doesn’t care about us or we don’t have a spouse or we’re chronically ill or our child is ADD or we don’t have any friends. We know we’ve sinned. We know God doesn’t like sin. But we don’t feel the weight of our sin, nor do we fear God’s judgement the way we would feel the weight of a sick child or the fear he will die. If you know that your sin and God’s judgement against your sin is your biggest problem, then hearing Jesus say to you, "Cheer up, son, Cheer up, daughter, your sins are forgiven" will be a fountain of joy and peace and contentment.

We are told nothing about how the paralyzed man or his friends respond to this. However, we are told how the religious teachers respond. They charge Jesus with blasphemy. They accuse him of slandering and cursing God by claiming an authority that only God can exercise. Only God can forgive sins because sins are committed against him. Pretend I saw Chris lend Dave $10 and heard Dave tell Chris that he would pay him back tomorrow. Then I went to Dave and told him that he didn’t have to pay Chris back. I said to him in effect, "Your debt is forgiven." How would Chris feel about me? Obviously, he would be mad and offended because he loaned the money and only he has the right to forgive the debt. The religious teachers are saying the same thing about Jesus. He has no right to make such a pronouncement because only God has that right. Now look at what Jesus says next.

He tells them that their charging him with blasphemy is evil. In other words, they say he is doing evil by telling the young man he is forgiven while he says they are doing evil by charging him with blasphemy. How do we know who is right? Jesus gives them the proof. It is far easier to tell someone to be healed than it is to tell him his sins are forgiven. Jewish history has many instances of humans exercising supernatural power and healing illness. Jesus has been healing all sorts of people. But only God can actually tell a person that they will not have to pay for their sins. So Jesus heals the young man in order to prove that his sins are indeed forgiven. He does the easier thing in order to show that the harder thing has also been done. Do not miss how inconsequential Jesus views this man’s paralysis. He does not heal him because that is his greatest need but in order to show that the really important thing has happened, his sins are forgiven.

I am not saying that God is not concerned about our earthly problems. But I think this story shows Jesus, acting like God in drawing attention to what our greatest problem really is. As long as we are overcome with grief or anger over an earthly problem we will never see our biggest problem and so we will never know the joy that having our biggest problem solved will bring.

Matthew has what every human being wants. He has a career with significant authority. He has lots of friends and lots of money. But he doesn’t have the most important thing that a human being can have. He doesn’t have a relationship with God. You see, he’s a tax collector. This means that he does not follow Jewish religious law. He has chosen to ignore God and God’s people. He is Jewish but he works for the Romans to collect taxes from other Jews to give to the Romans. This money is then used to pay the Roman soldiers that make sure the Jews obey Roman laws. He is a traitor both politically and spiritually. We’re not told anything about his state of mind. We are simply told that Jesus goes and commands him to "Follow me". With that simple command Matthew leaves everything behind.

If you were to poll the religious folks in the little town of Capernaum and ask them, "Who is the most likely person to end up in heaven and who is the least likely?" I’ll guarantee you that one of the Pharisees would have been on the most likely to go list and Matthew would have been on the least likely to go list. Everything that Matthew was not, the Pharisees were. They were zealous in their devotion to the Jewish nation and to the Jewish faith. They memorized the Scriptures and prayed 7 times each day. They were very exact in their law keeping. When God commanded, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy", they described what that meant. They had over 30 laws describing how to keep that one commandment. They only associated with other godly people and were careful to not violate any of the food or cleanliness laws. Everyone would expect God to look with favor on the Pharisee and to condemn Matthew and his cronies.

What Jesus does in calling Matthew is to show he is God by being merciful. God saves people who have no hope and no ability to save themselves. The emphasis here is that Jesus commands and what he commands happens. This is the way it is with the commands of God. What God commands, he creates. He commanded, "Let there be light" and there was light. He commands Matthew, "Follow me" and Matthew has the faith and courage to follow, given to him as a gift by the merciful Christ to show off the amazing mercy of God. He is able to save even someone like Matthew. He brings rebels like Matthew into intimate fellowship with himself.

The second evidence that Jesus delights in showing mercy to the hopeless is in his explanation of what he is doing.

The Pharisees want to know why Jesus is hanging out with such riff/raff? They are insinuating that Jesus, by hanging out with those who ignore God and his ways is displaying his own disregard for God. They are accusing him of hypocrisy, claiming to be a religious teacher but really being no different than the guys who spend every Sunday morning in the bar getting drunk.

His answer is that these people are sick and they need a doctor. "I’m a great doctor. Jst look at how well I healed Matthew. Here is a whole house full of sick people. I can’t wait to make them well, like Matthew. I hang with those who are sick, not those who think they are well. The sick will make use of my prescriptions, those who think they are well just ignore me." Jesus is the doctor. Doctors only see sick people. The Pharisees do not see themselves as sick and so they have no need of him. But, Matthew and his friends know they are sick and they know they can do nothing to help themselves and so Jesus goes to help them.

What about us? Do we know we are hopeless? Are we persuaded that without Him we really are fatally ill and are going to perish or do we think we are well and can do just fine without Him? If you are ignoring Jesus it is because you believe you are well enough to make it to heaven. The only way Jesus will be a great doctor for you is if you first recognize how sick you are.

Those who experience the mercy of Jesus delight to show that mercy to others. Just look at Matthew. The first thing he does after Jesus says, "Follow me" is throw a party for Jesus and all his fellow tax-gatherers and other "sinners".

His response to Jesus is the opposite of the religious folks in town. The scribes and Pharisees are supposed to be the doctors. They are supposed to be the ones who are bringing healing to all the sinners. Yet they have no interest in being merciful. They want the tax collectors and the sinners to get what’s coming to them. What would you say about a doctor who never went near a sick person, in fact, refused to see them and yet received all the financial and social benefits that go with being a doctor? This is exactly the behavior of the religious leaders.

It is also too often the behavior of American Christians who treat non-Christians as if they are the enemy. It would be hard to invite people to a party at your house after you have distributed pamphlets condemning them for their political affiliation. Your non-believing neighbors do not need your condemnation, they need mercy. We are so offended that people who do not know Christ commit acts of sin and believe and teach all manner of falsehood. But for God showing you his mercy, you would behave in the same way and believe the same lies. Often our problem is that we believe we are better and smarter than those who do not yet believe. We act like the reason we are Christians is because we were smart enough to figure it out ourselves. The only explanation for why I believe and someone else doesn’t is that God has been merciful to me and not to them yet.

Do you see Matthew’s freedom in inviting his friends to be with Jesus? He wasn’t being overly courageous. It was the spontaneous result of experiencing Christ’s call. To know mercy is to extend mercy. Matthew wasn’t offended by his friends’ behavior because he knew that the only reason they were living as they were was because they had not yet tasted mercy. He had complete confidence that all he needed to do was get his friends around Jesus and He would save them. Jesus delights in our showing mercy because through us he is able to show his mercy.

Consider this story about Charles Wesley. "On July 18, 1738, two months after his conversion, Charles Wesley did an amazing thing. He had spent the week witnessing to inmates at the Newgate prison with a friend named ‘Bray’…One of the men they spoke to was a black slave that had robbed his master. He was sick with fever and condemned to die. On Tuesday Charles and Bray asked if they could be locked in overnight with the prisoners who were to be executed the next day. That night they spoke the gospel. They told the men that ‘One came down from heaven to save lost sinners.’ They described the sufferings of the Son of God, his sorrows, agony and death. The next day the men were loaded onto a cart and taken to Tyburn. Charles went with them. Ropes were fastened around their necks so that the cart could be driven off and leave them swinging in the air to choke to death. The fruit of Wesley’s and Bray’s night long labor was astonishing, here is what he wrote:

What amazing grace is this! Not only does Jesus display his mercy in saving these twelve condemned men but he shows his mercy in enabling Wesley to go into the prison. Humans do not do these sorts of things by nature. Only a heart that has been overwhelmed by mercy shows this kind of mercy. It gives great honor to Christ when we act kindly to those who are in need or those who have injured us because we are secure in the grace of Christ.

In vv. 12-13 Jesus says two astonishing things. First, notice in v. 13 that he quotes Hosea 6:6 which says, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" and then immediately says "for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." The "I" in Hosea is God and Jesus equates himself with that "I" in what he says. In other words, Jesus explicitly claims to be God. Second, he says that he, God, did not come to call the righteous but sinners. In other words, Jesus says that God does not save the righteous, but sinners. This is the opposite of what hundreds of OT passages seem to say. Just consider this one from Psalm 34, "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth." Repeatedly the OT says that God destroys sinners but saves the righteous. Jesus says God rejects the righteous but saves sinners. What is he talking about?

In Hosea 6 God is condemning the people of Israel for their sins. He says their love is like the morning mist and like the dew on the grass. It is not real or permanent. They worship idols, commit acts of sin, depend on other nations rather than the Lord and yet they continue to come to the temple with their sacrifices every day. They are confident that God accepts them because they perform the rituals handed down to them and yet their hearts do not love God but rather love the pleasures of this world. So Jesus compares the Pharisees to these ancient Israelites. They have the same problem. They believe they are accepted because of what they do. Jesus tells them the same thing Hosea tells his contemporaries. God saves people based on mercy, not based on performance of religious rituals. He is looking for a response of love, not the response of an employee. The Pharisees act like they are employees of God, providing him with services that he needs. Then, like a good employer, God will reward them or compensate them for the service they render. But that is not how God deals with people.

Rather, God only helps those who are not able to help themselves, like Matthew and his friends. The Pharisees excluded themselves from the possibility of heaven by their insistence that they did not need what the tax collectors and sinners knew they needed, mercy and so they were rejected by Christ. They did not see themselves in the same category as the sinners and so they did not need the mercy of Jesus. So Jesus rejects them the same way God rejected the Israelites in the OT for depending upon their performance rather than his mercy. To live as a person who does not need mercy is to disqualify yourself for heaven. To act towards others as if they have less of a chance to make it to heaven because they aren’t as good as you is to deny the power of mercy and to take the place of a "righteous" person who needs no mercy. The primary qualification for heaven is to be a sinner who knows he/she is a sinner and in need of mercy. The only thing I add to my salvation is my sinfulness. A righteous person is one who has been made righteous by God, not by their own effort. The righteousness that God rewards is not produced by humans but given as a gift by God’s mercy in Jesus.

Jesus will help anyone who wants to feel in greater ways the depth of their need for his mercy. It is a prayer all who want to go to heaven should pray. "Lord, show me how helpless I am in my sin and how deep is my need for mercy. Cause me to despair of ever finding heaven on my own. Give me confidence in your mercy."

© Copyright 2000 John Swanson.
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