SERMON OUTLINE

The Mission of Jesus and the Heart of God

Matthew 9.9-13; Mark 2.13-17; Luke 5.27-32

Why Do You Eat With Sinners?

-Pharisees “separated ones”; Scribes interpret the Law

-613 commandments formed into rituals, traditions, rules

-The Orthodox and the People of the Land never mix

-So why is Jesus eating with sinners? Luke 7.36f

To Save Sinners

-A physician goes to the sick not to the healthy

-I have come to invite sinners not the self-righteous

–For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Luke 19.10

God Desires Mercy

-Go and learn what Hosea 6.6 means (Matthew 12.7)

-God desire mercy for sinners and offers mercy before judgment.

-God wants His people to show mercy for they have received mercy.

-God desires a relationship based on mercy not mechanical obligatory obedience. Matthew 23.23-24

-The older son in the story of the Prodigal. Luke 15.28-32

Conclusion

1) Follow Jesus. Admit you are a sinner before God and men. Ask God to forgive you and fill you with the Holy Spirit. Follow Jesus and let Him change you.

2) Show mercy to others as God has been merciful to you

SERMON NOTES

The Mission of Jesus and the Heart of God

Matthew 9.9-13; Mark 2.13-17; Luke 5.27-32

-The incident described in these verses reveals to us the saving mission of Jesus, the loving mercy of God, and the complete misunderstanding of the Pharisees regarding salvation, the righteousness of God and what is pleasing to God.

-On this particular day in the life of Jesus four men brought a paralyzed man to Jesus for healing. Because of the crowds they had to climb on the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching, make a hole in the roof, and lower the man down in front of Jesus. What Jesus said to this man shocked all who were listening. Jesus said, “Take heart my son, your sins are forgiven” (Matthew 9.2). What shocked the crowds and the Scribes who were listening was the blaspheme of Jesus in his presumption to forgive sins, for only God can forgive sins. Jesus proved that he did have the authority to forgive sins by raising the paralyzed man and having him walk home carrying his bed.

-As Jesus passed on from that encounter he saw a man called Matthew sitting at his tax booth and he said to Matthew, “Follow me”. Matthew left everything behind him and followed Jesus. Matthew decided right then to turn his back on whatever security and future hope he had in collecting taxes for the Roman government and to trust Jesus to lead him and provide for him. Matthew knew that his future was to be bound up with Jesus and he was willing to leave his present circumstances and follow Jesus. I am praying that you will come to the same choice as Matthew did. Some of you here this morning believe that Jesus is God, and know that Jesus saves from sin, and you even pray to God, but you have not yet left your old life behind to follow Jesus. You are not born-again and you are not sealed with the Holy Spirit of God.

-In celebration of his new life Matthew prepared a mega-banquet with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many tax-collectors and friends of Matthew came to the banquet including many disciples of Jesus. The Pharisees and Scribes, and the disciples of John the Baptist were also in attendance. The suggestion in Mark’s Gospel is that while the wine and food were freely flowing, the Pharisees and Scribes, and the disciples of John were fasting and praying, and very much offended with Jesus and his disciples for participating in this great feast. The Pharisees, Scribes and disciples of John accuse Jesus and his disciples of their wrong behavior by asking them a question. Luke tells us they grumbled against the disciples of Jesus asking them, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

-Let me provide some background to the accusation behind this question. Pharisees means “separated one” and Scribes were the interpreters of the Law of Moses. The Pharisees and Scribes came to prominence during the Maccabean period of revolt against Rome some 200 years before Jesus. Over time they gained political power and also aimed at controlling the religious system. The Pharisees believed that the Babylonian Exile was caused by Israel’s failure to keep the Law of Moses so they determined to study the Law and apply the Law to the nation. The Scribes determined that the Law contained 613 commandments, 248 positive and 365 negative. The next step was to interpret and apply these laws and this developed into a complicated system of rituals and traditions which the Pharisees and Scribes and others who sought to keep the Law meticulously followed. For the Pharisees and Scribes this meant a strict schedule of fasting and praying, exact tithing even of the spices they bought, hand washings and cleansing rituals for plates and cups, eating rituals and food prepared under special circumstances, Sabbath keeping, and rules about whom they could associate with. All of these detailed rituals and traditions were obeyed in order to keep the Law of Moses and be righteous before God. In the process of this painstaking keeping of the Law, the Pharisees and Scribes forgot about having a relationship with God.

-Pharisees would not participate in a meal unless they were sure that every grain, every herb, every item used in that meal had been tithed, and that all the utensils had been properly purified. If they ate food that had not been tithed or was not purified it would make them unclean before God. The food had to be cooked in pure vessels. They would only associate with those whom they knew to be law keepers like them that they might remain pure.

-The teaching of the Rabbis classified the Jews into two groups – the orthodox who meticulously kept the Law of Moses in every detail; and the people of the land who did not keep the details of the Law as taught by the Rabbis. The orthodox were forbidden to travel with the people of the land, do business, give or take anything, entertain as guests or be guests of the non-orthodox people of the land. To eat with sinners would defile them and make them unrighteous. They must completely separate from sin, and sinners, and all that sinners touched. They must have no contact with those who did not keep the Law in every minute detail less they become unclean.

-So Jesus, who claimed to be a teacher from God, a righteous man, a spiritual leader, a prophet, should know better than to eat with tax-collectors and sinners. He was allowing himself to be defiled and was allowing his followers to be defiled as well.

-We have a good example of this Pharisaic separation in Luke 7.36f. Jesus is invited by Simon the Pharisee to eat at his table. Simon did not fully accept Jesus because he did not kiss him upon his arrival, he did not wash his feet or anoint his head with oil. A sinful woman when she heard that Jesus was at Simon’s house went to the house and washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and then anointed them with perfume. Simon’s reaction is to say, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner”. Simon the Pharisee believed that if Jesus were a true prophet and a righteous man he would know the character of this woman and would not allow this sinful woman to touch him and would have asked her to leave and stop polluting him with her tears and kisses and perfume. Instead Jesus allows her to express repentance over her sin by her actions toward him and then he forgives her sins.

-So this question to the disciples of Jesus is an accusation of his unrighteous and unholy behavior by eating and drinking with sinners. Jesus takes this occasion to teach them about his saving mission, the loving heart of God, and their own misunderstanding of salvation, righteousness and what is pleasing to God.

-The question was posed to the disciples but Jesus is the one who answers it. Jesus uses the illustration of a physician and his patients. Those that are well do not need the help of a physician but those who are sick do need a physician. To help sick people a physician needs to be with the sick not with the healthy. The implication is that Jesus is meeting with sinners because they are the ones who are in need of his help. Those who consider themselves righteous do not need Jesus. The mission of Jesus is to help sinners find their way to God, not to support the self-righteous who think they are already accepted by God. In Luke 19.10 Jesus clearly states his mission during a meal with Zacchaeus, another tax-collector, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”.

-Then Jesus uses a phrase used by the Rabbis to direct their students back to a text of Scripture for further study, “Go and learn what this means”. He then quotes to them the first part of Hosea 6.6. The principle in this OT verse is very important to Jesus for he quotes it again in Matthew 12.7, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’, you would not have condemned the guiltless.” The Pharisees and Scribes and disciples of John are misunderstanding the mission of Jesus and do not know the heart of God. In their zealous pursuit of legalistic righteousness they are not seeing in the coming of Jesus the mercy of God to save sinners.

-God desires mercy. God desires to be merciful to sinners and sent Jesus Christ His Son to die on a cross so that He might show mercy to those who admit they are sinners in need of a Savior.

-God desires mercy. God wants His people to show mercy because they have experienced the mercy of God in Jesus Christ in their own lives. Mercy is a sign of the presence of God’s mercy in your life. God will judge every sinner who does not repent and will send them to hell but God offers His mercy to every sinner and will be merciful to those who receive His mercy.

-God desires mercy. God desires a relationship based on mercy and not a mechanical fulfillment of obligations, duties, rituals, and commands. Some translations have “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice” another says “I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice”. What Jesus wants the religious leaders of his day to understand is that the love of God, the mercy of God, a relationship with God is to be the motive behind their actions, not sacrificial seeking of self-righteous acceptance before God.

-The Pharisees gave themselves completely to fulfilling the details of the Law of Moses that they had developed over 100’s of years. They sacrificed to make themselves righteous before God, but they did not know God and the love of God and the mercy of God. In another encounter with the Pharisees Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23.23-24).

-Jesus, in his love for God and for lost sinners, was calling the Pharisees to change their attitude, their thinking, and their behavior to be in line with the heart of God. They needed to infuse their rituals, traditions and beliefs with a life-giving relationship with God. Jesus was showing them the heart of God but all they could see was Jesus contaminating himself by eating with sinners. The mission of Jesus to associate with sinners in order to save them expressed the mercy of God and rebuked the false religion of the Pharisees based on keeping their inflated concept of the Law. A religion void of any love for God and of mercy toward others.

-Remember how Jesus describes the father’s reaction to the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son? The older son was angry and refused to go into the house and rejoice with the others in the return of his younger brother who had destroyed his life and the family name in his sinful living. The older son says to the father who comes out and asks him to come in the house, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” This typified the Pharisees stern obedience to what he perceived as a demanding God, but this perception of God was wrong. The father responded to the older brother, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15.28-32). The older son did not have a relationship with the Father but served him with loveless sacrifice. The older son had never experienced the love and mercy of his father. In the same way the Pharisees did not know the love and mercy of God but only loveless sacrificial service in order to earn acceptance with God.

-The Pharisees and Scribes needed to change their view of God and of what God expected of His people, and especially at this time because the kingdom of God was coming in the coming of Jesus Christ. They needed to be merciful to sinners, not judgmental; they needed to serve others not separate from them.

-Jesus was the application of Hosea 6.6. Jesus came in God’s name and in God’s power to offer God’s mercy by calling sinners to repentance, a mercy the Pharisees knew nothing about. They had never experienced the mercy of God and they did not express mercy.

-There is much more to speak about from this passage and I want to take the discussion up next week by comparing the attitude of the Pharisees with the offer of Jesus to forgive sinners. The Pharisees believed they could save themselves by a strict obedience to the Law of Moses and by making themselves righteous before God. Jesus taught that only He could forgive sins and make a person righteous. We need to discuss that next week.

-We also need to examine how we may be like the Pharisees in our own relationships with sinners.

-Let me close this morning by first calling those who have not yet decided to leave their old life behind them to follow Jesus. Admit that you are a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness. Admit it to God and admit it to those around you. Ask God to forgive you and fill you with His Holy Spirit. Ask God to make you into a new person. Then publicly follow Jesus and let Jesus change you as you follow him. I would be glad to help you to follow Jesus.

-Then let me next call you who are God’s people to be merciful to others because God has been merciful to you. Show mercy to sinners and offer them God’s mercy in word and deed. Share the Gospel with them.