Jesus Extends a Call

Transcript

GR 680
8/26/1984
Jesus Extends a Call
Matthew 9:9-17
Gil Rugh

In chapters 8 and 9 Matthew reports a series of miracles Christ performed and offers them as evidence that He is the Messiah of Israel. Matthew breaks into this series of miracles on several occasions to deal with the issue of becoming a follower of Jesus Christ. Matthew also shows the impact on the lives of those who become Christ’s followers. Matthew 9:9-17 presents the call of Matthew and the effect of Matthew’s changed life and testimony as he introduces his friends to Jesus Christ. The uniqueness of the message that Jesus Christ brings, which has just brought Matthew to salvation in Christ, makes a tremendous impact on his friends.
Matthew records in verse 9, “As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth; and He said to him, ‘Follow Me!’ And he got up and followed Him.” There is nothing elaborate or special about this account. Matthew simply states the event. Then he shows the impact of this call on the lives of his friends who are drawn together at his house.
In the midst of these events, Matthew introduces a tremendous dichotomy. Matthew, the sinful tax collector, is going to leave it all to become a follower of Jesus Christ. But the self-righteous religious leaders of the day are going to increase their resistance and opposition to the ministry of the One who is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. Tax collectors are referred to repeatedly in the gospels in a negative sense and are frequently connected together in the phrase “tax collectors and sinners. ” These are lumped together by the Jews to indicate that they are the scum of society. They were considered to be at the bottom end of the social strata, the filth of the day.
In order to understand the picture completely, it is important to understand tax collectors from the Jewish perspective. The first reason that the Jews’ hated the tax collectors in Israel was that the tax collectors were Jews who, in effect, had sold themselves to the Romans. Because of the material gains they could acquire, they had become willing servants of the Roman Empire to collect taxes from their own people, the Jews. It was a great insult to the Jews that their fellow countrymen would stoop to represent the conquering nation and take taxes from their own people.
The insult did not stop there. The tax collectors used their offices to become wealthy men. The office of tax collector was often sold to the highest bidder who indicated what he thought he could get in taxes from the people. Then the tax collectors put the screws on the people to get the amount they had contracted for. The tax collectors made it a practice to collect more than the Romans demanded. That was how they made themselves wealthy. Of course, they had the force of the Roman government behind them in collecting the taxes, so the Jews despised them. The tax collectors were viewed as despised people who had sold out their own people and their religion and who were now working with the Romans to milk money from the Jews.

In his tax office in Capernaum at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, Matthew had an ideal location because he collected taxes on the trade carried by way of the Sea of Galilee and on the trade carried by way of the trade route which crossed near the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. As Jesus came by, He gave Matthew a command, “Follow Me!” (v. 9). Matthew says that “he got up and followed Him.”
Sometimes there is a mystical idea about what happened as Matthew was sitting in a tax office which was similar to a telephone booth with a window in it. But Matthew obviously had to know something about the ministry of Christ before this. Jesus had been carrying on a spectacular ministry in Capernaum so that people were coming from all over Israel to be exposed to His miracles and teaching. Matthew had probably been an observer at a number of the miracles Jesus had performed and had probably sat under His teaching. As he is confronted personally by Christ and given the command to follow Him, there seems to be no hesitation at all on Matthew’s part. He simply got up and walked away from his lucrative position, leaving it all behind to follow Jesus Christ. This is different from the man in Matthew 8:21 who said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” Rather than stalling for time, Matthew immediately followed Him.
Matthew does not say anything about the personal cost involved in following Christ. This shows something of the priority of Matthew in his decision to follow Christ. I wonder what I would have written if this had been me. I wonder if I would have written 13 chapters about all I had given up, including the money, the influence and the prestige. But Matthew records none of that. In fact, Luke’s account, not Matthew ’ s account, says that when Matthew followed Christ, he left everything behind. “And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him” (Luke 5:28). When Matthew got up and walked away from his position as a tax collector, he burned that bridge behind him.
One would have to seriously consider whether such a decision would be worth it. In an earlier study, Christ stated that He has no place to call home. He is a wandering nomad teacher who has not been received well by the religious leaders of His day. The natural concern would be about what would happen to you and your family if you walked away from your job and left everything behind to follow Christ.
The disciples of Christ made this kind of decision. I believe that one of the reasons why the disciples’ lives made such an impact for the gospel of Jesus Christ was the fact that they were not burdened down with the trappings they had been carrying.
Matthew later records the concern of the disciples for the reward they will receive. “Then Peter said to Him, ‘Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?’” (Matthew 19:27). In answering that question, Christ promised them a great reward. But when the apostles and disciples became followers of Jesus Christ, they left everything behind. They made an all-out, no-strings-attached commitment to be followers of Jesus Christ and to represent Him and make Him known wherever they went.
Did you ever wonder why the life of the Apostle Paul made such a dramatic impact upon the world in which he lived? Paul writes in Philippians 3 about the glory and prestige that he had before he became a follower of Jesus Christ. Then he wrote of his changed perspective in verses 7 and 8. “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.” Becoming a follower of Jesus Christ cost him everything in the human realm. The things he had before are now all rubbish because the only thing that matters is that he has Jesus Christ.
You may ask if this means you must sell your house, give away your car and all of your money and live with nothing if you are going to follow Christ. No, it does not mean that, but it means you must have an attitude of willingness to give it all up if that is what Christ demands. Think back to the day when you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior. You were so excited about following Him that if someone had told you to sell your house, give away your money and go with them to evangelize the world, you would have been out in the street in a moment. All you wanted to do with your life at that time was to follow Jesus Christ. That is the kind of commitment He demands from His followers every day, a willingness and readiness to leave it all behind for Him.
If that is your attitude and if He, in His grace, chooses to allow you to be blessed with material things, that is simply blessing upon blessing. But if He chooses to take away the material things, it is no great loss because those things are only rubbish anyway.
I am convinced that at the moment of salvation, a believer has the most complete commitment to Jesus Christ that we ever have on this earth. At the moment we trust Him for salvation, we place ourselves in His hands for salvation without reservation. But with the passing of time, we begin to collect things again and to become oriented again to this life. If God were to give us a picture of what we look like now, I wonder what it would be. We would probably look like someone pulling a rope behind us with all our possessions tied to it. And that rope would probably extend back about 30 miles! Is it any wonder we are not making any impact on the world around us? It takes all of our energy just to pull the rope along.
We want to make Jesus Christ known, but we seem to be mired down all the time. Every time we want to speak to someone about Christ, we have to consider whether our doing so will cost us some business, our friends or some prestige. We are no longer going at it with the complete abandonment of one who has already given it all up. The fact that God has allowed many of these things to remain in our hands is just an extra bonus. Those things should not affect the way we live and serve Him because we are to follow Him as one who has left everything behind. After making that decision, we no longer have to be concerned about weighing the cost. The only thing that matters is our following Jesus Christ.
That is the kind of commitment we see in Matthew. The Bible does not reveal much about this man. Nowhere in the Bible is Matthew saying anything. He wrote this Gospel, but he never recorded anything he said himself. John wrote a Gospel, and John records his statements in his Gospel. But Matthew never recorded anything he said. Still his rather quiet life has made a tremendous impact on the world. He left everything behind to commit his life without reservation to Jesus Christ.
Matthew has just become a believer in Jesus Christ and has committed everything to follow Him. In so doing, he gives a reception at his house and invites all the tax collectors he knows and all his old friends to come and meet Jesus Christ. How exciting! Matthew’s most important concern after trusting Christ is his desire for other people to be introduced to Him as well. Who could better introduce his friends to Christ than he could? So he gave a big reception at his house for all of his friends.
Matthew does not take credit for this in his book. He records the event very simply in Matthew 9:10: “Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples.” Another name for Matthew in the New Testament is Levi. Luke 5:29 says, “And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.” Matthew is not sitting back saying, “Look what I have done! I have walked away from my job. Do you realize I do not have any income now ? What in the world am I going to do when I retire? ” That is not his approach at all. He feels that he has to tell his friends. “I have just become a follower of Jesus. We are having a big dinner. Come on over, I want you to meet Him too. ”
So, Matthew’s house is packed full of tax collectors, those men in the same occupation he had been involved in, and sinners. You get some idea of the circle Matthew moved in by the description of the people at his house. He was definitely not of the upper class of Israel. The people who were at his house were tax collectors and sinners. “Sinners ” was the title used by the religious people for Jews in Israel who did not observe ceremonial details laid down by the scribes and followed by the Pharisees. Sinners were the people who disregarded those things and just went on living their lives. They were viewed by the religious leaders as the lowest kind of people. They were hopeless outcasts as far as the religious leaders were concerned. But Matthew brings them all together. What a way to make an impact on their lives.
This is something you ought to encourage new Christians to do. If you lead someone to Christ, tell him that he ought to invite all of his friends over to his house. That would be a wonderful opportunity for him to share how he came to know Jesus Christ and what He has done for him. Have him tell his friends that he has trusted Christ and become his child, and now he wants them to trust Him too.
That would do several things for new believers. One, it would enable them to share the gospel with several other people. Two, it would help them get their testimony right out in the front line with those they have contact with. That would surely cause their unbelieving friends to watch them every moment of every day from then on, but that would not be bad. Many of them might come to know the Savior as well.
As is often the case, the impact of Matthew’s reception was different on different people. The response of the Pharisees is given in Matthew 9:11: “When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, ‘Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?’” The Pharisees are critical of Jesus’ association with this kind of people because the Pharisees would not have anything to do with them.
Jesus’ response is found in verse 12: “But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.’” Is it not amazing how ignorant otherwise intelligent people can be when it comes to spiritual things? Jesus is saying that people who are well do not need a physician, but those who are ill do. He was associating with those people as a physician who could bring spiritual healing to them.
It is possible to have two wrong attitudes in this regard. One is the attitude of the Pharisees who completely disassociated themselves with sinners lest they be defiled. Sometimes Christians develop that attitude as well. As Christians we just cannot stand the people where we work cussing all the time and telling dirty jokes. It makes us feel dirty to be around them. But we need to remind ourselves why God has placed us there. It is not those who are well who need a physician, it is the people who are ill. Instead, we think about how nice it would be if we worked around believers. Yes, it would probably be refreshing to be around believers, but believers do not need a physician.
We must be where the sinners are and in contact with them. That is God’s plan for putting you there. You may feel bombarded by filth hour after hour and day after day. But do not worry, that will not defile you. You cannot be defiled from the outside. If you begin to dwell upon it and roll it over in your mind, then it becomes defiling. But you are a representative of Jesus Christ. If you do not carry the good news of salvation to that filthy, foul-mouthed person, how will he hear it?
Sometimes we decide that we want to cut ourselves off from those kinds of people because nobody wants to be around them. So we draw a circle around the people who cuss and declare them anathema. Then we draw a circle around those who tell dirty jokes. Before long we have drawn our circles around everyone until there is no one left we can witness to. We may prefer to witness to the good moral people in our neighborhood. But they will be the last ones who want to hear it because they are like the Pharisees, closed to change. They already think they are all right.
Praise God if He has placed you in the filth, because those around you need a physician. They need the cure that God has placed in your hands, and you are there to give it to them. They will not want to hear it, but that is all right. Keep hammering away anyway. Just as you are constantly bombarded with filth, so they should be constantly bombarded with the gospel. The only difference is that the message you are proclaiming has power. It is the power of God unto salvation. It is the Word of God which is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. If we are what we ought to be, the bombarding will go both ways, the unbelievers will be bombarding us with their filth and we will be bombarding them with the gospel. If we are faithful to our responsibility, the Holy Spirit can use our message in their lives.
Another wrong attitude that we as believers sometimes have is that we forget why we are with unbelievers as we associate with them. When we are around them, our responsibility is to present Jesus Christ as the Savior that they need and call them to righteousness in Him. We are not there to be one of them. There is no question that Jesus Christ is not one of the tax collectors and sinners, but He is there to have a ministry as the physician with the cure for their illness. They are hopeless sinners, and salvation can be found only in Him.
We need to have contact with unbelievers. Praise God that he has placed many believers in jobs where they are in constant contact with unbelievers. If you are in such circumstances, be careful that the contact does not have negative effects on you so that you become like them. God has placed you there with them as a physician with the message of healing to lost people. If you do not tell them, who will?
Some people think it would be wonderful if all believers could quit their jobs and come to work at the church. After all, they would not have to be out there with those dirty old sinners at all, and things would just be great. No, things would be wretched! We would soon get tired of each other, because there is an excitement about new believers coming in and sharing the excitement they have found in becoming God’s children.
When you are out there every day with unbelievers, you have the opportunity to contact them with the gospel. “Well, ” you respond, “that is easy for you to say because you are cloistered here in the church. ” That is right, it is easy for me to say because I am cloistered here, but God has called me to do one thing and you to do another. The one thing about my job is, I miss the regular contact with unbelievers. If all believers were in the position I am in, our city would not be reached with the gospel. It is those who have contact with the lost, those who are rubbing shoulders with them day after day, who have the opportunity to share the gospel in a unique and special way.
It is a privilege to have contact with them, and remember that it is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are ill. Who would you expect the Son of Man, the Savior of the world, to associate with? He came to seek and to save those who are lost. Now He is being criticized for being with the lost. But it is impossible to share the good news of salvation with the lost if you do not have any contact with them.
Christ continues His response to the religious leaders in Matthew 9:13: “But go and learn what this means, „I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Christ manifests much love, concern and compassion for tax collectors, harlots and other kinds of sinners, but He is very abrupt and firm in dealing with hypocritical religious leaders. This verse is a slap in the face for the Pharisees.
He tells those Pharisees who were looking down their noses at the tax collectors that they ought to study Hosea 6:6 and understand what the Scripture means. The people of Hosea’s day were still pursuing religious activities and carefully observing the sacrificial system, but they had collapsed spiritually while indulging in all kinds of sinful activities as though one offset the other. But God told them that what He wanted was a change of heart.
The word translated “compassion ” in Matthew 9:13 comes from the Hebrew word chesed which refers to covenant loyalty or faithfulness. God is saying that He desires covenant loyalty, faithfulness to Him from the heart. That is what He demands from a transformed person. Without that transformation, all of their sacrifices mean nothing. The problem the Pharisees of Jesus’ day had was that they were going through religious activity and religious motion, they were as religious as you could get, but they had not been changed on the inside.
This was a continuing problem for Israel. You can read about it in Amos 5:21-24: “I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; and I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” God demands righteousness, justice and transformed character. The externals are significant only when they result from transformed character which is evidenced by justice and righteousness from a faith relationship with Him.
The same message comes through clearly in Micah 6:6-8: “With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” God wants transformed character which is characterized by justice, kindness and humility in our relationship with Him. He desires one who has bowed down and acknowledged Him as Savior, one who recognizes his own unworthiness and lets the character of God pervade his life.
The problem with religious externals (and that is all they are, externals) is that we get caught up with the externals. People continue to come to churches for so-called worship who have not experienced a transformed heart. They have not realized they are sinners and have not trusted Christ as their Savior. They are going through religious rituals and God says, “I hate it. I reject it! ”
Jesus’ most harsh words are reserved for the religious people of His day. In Matthew 9, He is dining with the tax collectors and sinners because they realize their unworthiness and are open to help from Him. But in Matthew 23:23, He speaks to the religious leaders: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.” The externals are fine, but these Jewish leaders should be taking care of the basic things. They have failed to take care of the inner character, they have neglected justice, mercy and faithfulness.
He continues His charge against them in verse 24: “You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” They are more concerned about the little detail of fasting at the right time of the day than they are about whether they have experienced salvation by the grace of God. They have no conception of things that matter as opposed to things that do not matter. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also” (vs. 25, 26). God wants to transform the heart. Then as a result of being transformed on the inside, the life begins to change and become more what God wants it to be outwardly.
Jesus’ statement in Matthew 9:13, “I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,” indicates that besides having an emphasis on religious externals, these people had no biblical conception of sin. They thought sin was external resulting from not obeying religious practices. They failed to realize that sin affected everyone and thus, everyone needed to believe in the Messiah as the Savior. Since they had no grasp of the real sinfulness of man and his need, they were without compassion toward the sinner. They were not excited that the tax collectors and sinners were coming to the Messiah and experiencing His cleansing power because they had no conception of the awfulness of sin and the remedy needed for it. Such an attitude is characteristic of one who does not have a relationship with Christ. He is without compassion because he does not have God’s perspective on the lost.
We as believers need to be careful that we see the lost as God sees them. He rebukes the Pharisees because they have no conception of the tremendous need of these lost people. Sometimes even believers become like Pharisees because of a hardened attitude toward the lost. Sometimes they are more anxious for God to sentence the unbeliever to hell than for him to know the Savior. They cannot understand why God does not deal with the unbeliever more firmly and more harshly. Those with that attitude do not really understand what God desires. He wants a transformed heart, and there is no hope for these people until they receive this transformation by faith in Jesus Christ. This should give us a burden that unbelievers would know Jesus Christ. That will help put things in their proper perspective.
The Pharisees are not righteous in the ultimate sense, but they are righteous in their own eyes so that they make themselves unreachable and incurable. There is no disease or sin that God cannot cure except the one of the person who is unwilling to believe in Him. He cannot save the Pharisees because they do not see their need. What a tragedy! “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him” (Matthew 21:31 and 32). The scribes and Pharisees are self-righteous, but the tax collectors and prostitutes see their sinfulness and cast themselves upon the mercy of God, experiencing His salvation. But this makes no impact on the religious people because they are satisfied. They think they are doing all right because they have their own church and their own religion.
Do not be discouraged if after sharing the gospel with your unbelieving friends, you find opposition, criticism or attacks. That is all right. Just let God do with His Word what He chooses when He chooses to do it.
In Matthew 9:14, Matthew takes a different direction as the disciples of John raise a question. “Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’” The Old Testament required only one day as a fast, the Day of Atonement recorded in Leviticus 16. The issue being raised is not what the Law says about fasting, because the Law requires only one fast day per year, but the Pharisees had added all kinds of fasts to their religious practices.
The disciples of John practiced fasting which is a visible sign of mourning, sorrow and repentance. But they do not understand why Jesus’ disciples do not fast. Note Jesus’ response in Matthew 9: 15: “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?” Jesus is saying that it would be inappropriate for His disciples to fast because He, the Bridegroom, is present with them, and the attendants of the bridegroom do not fast when he is present with them. When the bridegroom is present, it is a time of joy, happiness and rejoicing. Jesus is drawing attention to the fact that He is the Bridegroom. Since we are not as familiar with the Old Testament as these Jews would have been, we may miss the point Jesus is making regarding His deity or His messiahship. He is actually giving evidence of the fact and making the claim that He is the Messiah, He is God.
Jesus’ reference to Himself as the Bridegroom shows that it would be inappropriate for them to be fasting while He is present because fasting is a sign of mourning. In the context of the messianic reign of Christ, Isaiah 62:5 says, “For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you.” God is seen in the picture of the bridegroom rejoicing over his bride. Jesus claims in Matthew 9 to be the Bridegroom. As the Bridegroom rejoices, so the attendants of the Bridegroom will share in His joy and rejoicing.
In Hosea 2:19 and 20, God again identifies Himself as the bridegroom and pictures the nation Israel as the bride being betrothed to Him: “I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the Lord.” When Jesus refers to the attendants of the bridegroom being with Him, the disciples of John, who were very familiar with the Old Testament, would realize that Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah. They would also recognize that in His presence there is joy and rejoicing, not sorrow and mourning.
As Jesus continues His comment in Matthew 9:15, He refers to the time when the bridegroom will no longer be present: “But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” Questions are raised fairly often about fasting in the Bible and why we at Indian Hills do not fast as a practice. It is important to understand fasting biblically. Fasting is a sign of mourning and sorrow. I believe it is out of step dispensationally for us to be involved in fasting today. “Wait a minute, ” you say. “The Bible says that when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast. Christ came, then He was taken away. Why don’t we fast today now that the Bridegroom is gone?”
Jesus makes it clear why we do not fast today. He said the period of fasting would be very short. It was approximately three days. “When the bridegroom is taken away” (v. 15) refers to His being taken away in His crucifixion. The Bridegroom will not stay to set up His kingdom, but will rather be taken away. That will result in fasting and mourning.
Jesus refers to this in John 16: “‘A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.’ Some of His disciples then said to one another, ‘What is this thing He is telling us, “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me” and “because I go to the Father”?’ So they were saying, ‘What is this that He says, “A little while”? We do not know what He is talking about.’ Jesus knew that they wished to question Him, and He said to them, ‘Are you deliberating together about this, that I said, “A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me”? Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy. Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you’” (vs. 16-22).
Why do I not fast? Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and He indwells me. I have His joy and rejoicing in my life. That is why I do not fast. The disciples could not fast while the Bridegroom was present with them. There was a short period of time when He was taken away from them, but He returned and transformed that sorrowful mourning into joy. Mary wept in the garden saying, “Where have they taken my Lord? ” Later she rejoiced in His presence. Her sorrow, as well as the sorrow of the other disciples, was turned to joy and rejoicing.
I would see no problem in a person wanting to fast to spend on extended period of time in prayer before the Lord. If you want to abstain from food or other activities for a period of time and give all of your attention to prayer, I have no problem with that. But fasting is not a religious principle that is binding on us today. We have the joy of knowing that the One who is the Bridegroom indwells us and has given us His joy and rejoicing as we serve Him. So we are to be a people characterized by joy. We do not worship a Savior who is on the cross, but One who has risen and is alive. Therefore, we have joy and rejoicing.
Jesus gives two rather simple illustrations in Matthew 9:16 and 17 to drive home His point.
Even though I am not going to spend much time on them, I want to be sure you understand the significance of them since at least one of them is very much misunderstood.
Verse 16 gives the first one: “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.” You do not have to know a lot about sewing to understand this example. New cloth shrinks when it is washed. You may buy a new pair of slacks and need to hem them up, but you wash them first, because when they are washed, they may shrink.
To use the example Christ used, you may want to sew a patch on an old pair of jeans. But before you put the new piece of material on the cloth, you throw it in the washer because the new material will shrink when washed. If you sew it on the old material before the patch is washed, then you wash the garment, the patch may tear away from the old garment, and you have a worse situation than you had when you started.
In this context, what is Jesus talking about? He is referring to putting together the pieces of Judaism in the Old Testament system with His teaching. Jesus says you cannot do that because you will destroy both the patch and the garment.
Jesus gives a second illustration in verse 17: “Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Wineskins were used for storing wine and were made from animal skins. The hair was trimmed off very closely, the skins were turned inside out, corks were put in the legs and the neck was used as a spout. That probably does not make you very thirsty to hear about it, but that was a wine bottle! When they were new, the skin was pliable, allowing for stretching. New wine could be put in the wineskin to ferment there. However, old wineskins became taut and stiff. If you put new wine into that stiff, hardened wineskin, the fermenting process would cause it to burst, and you would destroy the wineskin and lose the wine.
Jesus is driving home the same point with this illustration. You cannot take the parts of the old system, the fasting, keeping of the Law or whatever, and mix with it what Jesus is offering or you will destroy both. Jesus is saying that He has come to bring something radically new. Galatians 3:24 says that the Law was a schoolmaster or a tutor to bring us to Christ. Once a person has come to Christ, he no longer needs the tutor. The purpose of the Law is completed.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that He came to fulfill the Law and the prophets, in other words, to bring them to completion. They are the old to which Christ is referring in Matthew 9:16 and 17 in the analogy of the old garment and the old wineskins. Christ brings the new. The old and the new are incompatible and cannot be mixed, because when you mix them, you destroy them both.
The Law had a purpose; the old dispensation had a purpose. It served that purpose when Christ came, then it was finished. To try to mix the old with the truth Jesus Christ brought would only destroy the impact of both. In our application of this today, it is true that you cannot mix biblical Christianity, the gospel of Jesus Christ, with any other system. When Constantine Christianized the Roman Empire, he destroyed the impact of Christianity because he mixed the teachings of the New Testament with the pagan practices of the world. We still see the results of this pagan combination today. It is important to remember that you cannot mix what Jesus Christ offers in His teaching with anything else. The old dispensation of the Law served its purpose and is no longer necessary.
The answer to why we do not follow those practices is very simple. They are incompatible with what Jesus has to say now. That does not mean that God’s Word contradicts itself, because God’s intention of the Law was to usher in Jesus Christ and bring us to Him. So the Law has now served its purpose; it is worn out. One of the meanings of the word which is translated “old” in this passage is “worn out.” It has served its intended purpose.
Much of organized Christianity today is diluted and rendered null and void, because in many systems, they have mixed in their own religious practices. We need to be aware of this. They may quote certain verses and believe certain doctrines, but what they have mixed together is now a hodgepodge. They have destroyed both the old and the new so that neither has any impact.
Sometimes I watch religious programs on television which come from those who mix the Bible with false doctrine. To watch some of them, you think you are hearing biblical truths. Many of the things they say are true, but the ministry makes no impact on people’s relationships with God. The unsaved are not brought to Christ and believers do not mature in that kind of teaching. Why is that true? Jesus gave the answer in these illustrations. They destroy what Jesus brought when they mix with it their own philosophies and teachings.
It is the same with those who try to mix Law and grace today. They try to decide which part of the Law must be carried over to mix with present-day Christianity. When they carry over something like that, they destroy what Jesus Christ brought in the grace and truth that came by Him according to John 1. Many people are still trying to do that. We ought to be firm as believers and know what Jesus Christ has brought. The message we have from Him is unique and stands alone. It needs to be proclaimed in its uniqueness.
What has Matthew brought to our attention? He has shown us the simplicity of his call. Jesus said, “Follow Me! ” and immediately Matthew left all he had and followed Christ. Has that been your response? Do you realize that your only hope for salvation is in Him?
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ now, what is your attitude in following Him? Are you leaving it all behind? If He should choose to leave some of your possessions in your hands that is an added blessing for which you can thank Him. If He chooses to take everything tomorrow, that should be fine, too, because you have determined to follow Him without reservation, leaving everything behind.
What kind of burden do you have for those you know who are lost? What about the sinners who get on your nerves, those who are not good or moral upstanding people? You ought to have a burden to carry the gospel to them, the neighbors around you and the workers with whom you rub shoulders at your job. Are you considering how you can introduce them to Jesus Christ and bring them face to face with Him so they might believe in Him as you have done and experience eternal life? Do you have compassion for the lost as evidenced by Christ, realizing that it is not those who are well but those who are sick who need a physician?
Do you realize the uniqueness of the message we have in biblical Christianity? We have something that will transform lives. Only as the Spirit of God takes the message and applies it to their lives can transformation take place, but God uses us as human beings in that process. He used Matthew to bring his friends to Christ. So He uses us in bringing the truth of the gospel to those who are lost and dying around us. The Spirit of God can take the Word of God we give them and use it in their hearts to bring them to salvation in Christ. Oh, that God would give us total commitment and willingness to follow Jesus Christ whatever the cost. We have a message that is unique and special, and we are privileged to proclaim it. Oh, that the Spirit would use us in making an impact for the gospel of Jesus Christ and bring many to Himself.