Praise the Lord for
sweet and sizzling summer days here in America, the Beautiful. The temperature
climbed into the nineties here in New York. Sunita, Andy, Gabe, and Laureen are
with us this week. Friends of Sunita and Andy, that is Jenn, Rob, and Hannah
from Washington, DC will be joining us for the weekend. We will meet for our
Wednesday Evening fellowship and study at 6 PM. We will gather for a very
sweet, summer soul food at 6 PM followed by the Bible Study at 6:30 PM, when we
will be looking at Acts 2 and 3.
I love summer days. It
is the time for summer parties, graduation parties, family reunions, and July
4th celebrations. We have so much to celebrate. Our Lord Jesus loved to go
to parties. He taught us how to celebrate. In Matthew 9:9 we read that as Jesus was walking along, he saw a
man named Matthew, sitting at his tax collector's booth. When we hear the
phrase, "sitting at his tax collector's booth," mentally we might translate that
to "sitting at his bank teller counter," or "sitting in his gray IRS office."
When the people in Jesus' day heard that statement it carried with it an
emotional resonance. Because as soon as they heard "tax collector," they knew
this person was not just rich, but filthy rich, because he was making his money
destroying other people's lives. Just like scandal driven IRS of today the
taxcollectors were scandlous and corrupt, greedy and exploitative.
You could make loads of money as a
tax collector by extorting from your own people. The poor, working class people
were just trying to get by, but every time they caught fish, the tax collectors
taxed the fish, taking some of them. Every time they grew crops and were happy
because they wouldn't go hungry, the tax collectors took most of the good crops
from them. When it says, "Matthew was sitting in a tax collector's booth," it's
saying, "He was greedy. He was a sellout. He was a betrayer of his
people."
What did Jesus say to somebody like
that? Did He say, "Clean up your life, man. You've got to get it together"?
Did he say, "I see potential in you. If you will enter a four-year training
program, I think I can do something with you"? No, Jesus said, "Follow me, and be my
disciple." Jesus looked at a greedy, sellout-of-a-person, and said, "I want you
as one of my 12 closest friends. I want you as one of the most influential
leaders in this new movement of God that I am bringing to the world."
Later,
Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with
many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. Matthew invited people like
that because good people refused to be seen with him.
Imagine for a moment that you and I
being invited to a party with "disreputable
sinners." Jesus was invited to just such a party. It shocked the Pharisees
to see this, so they said, "Why does your teacher eat with such scum? Do you
not realize, Jesus, that by attending, you are condoning what they're doing?"
According to verse 12, "When Jesus heard this, He said, 'Healthy people
don't need a doctor. Sick people do.'" Our culture of tolerance insists that
nobody is really evil or ill. Jesus, however, said that there are two reasons
to be in a hospital: either you're sick or you're a doctor. It's more pleasing
to God for you to be there serving the sick, than to separate yourself from the
sick.
Verse 13 is the heart of Jesus' message. "Then Jesus added, 'Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture,'" and He proceeded to quote from the prophet Hosea: "I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices. For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous but those who know they are sinners." In Hosea 6:6. God says to the prophet Hosea, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
One of my daughters reminds me from time to time about the unmerited mercy of the Lord to those who are most undeserving. Somebody has said, "As important, and as awesome as sacrifice is, there's something even more pleasing to God: mercy." Mercy for the messy is more pleasing to God than religion for the righteous.
We could take this a step further
and say that, as important as it is for you and me to get our spiritual lives
together, it is even more pleasing to the heart of God that we show mercy to
people who don't have their spiritual lives together.
The good
news is that God has already provided you with a way to please him by showing
mercy to others. Everyone has somebody messy who has been bequeathed to them by
God, so we don't have to go far away to find what is pleasing to
God.
In Christ,
Brown
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