November 5, 2023
Matthew 9:9–13

Title: The Call Of A Disciple And Sinners

Outline:

1. The Call Of A Disciple
2. The Call Of Sinners

Read Matthew 9:9–13.
In this latest section of Matthew, we have seen people respond to Jesus with doubt and faith and with earthly fear and reverent fear. We have seen charges of blasphemy and immorality by Jesus’ religious opponents. We have seen people respond with abandon. (Barclay) It is becoming clear: everyone responses to Jesus. Everyone has an opinion about Him. Many will continue to have doubts, fears, charges, questions, but through all the noise of the naysayers, we will continue to see our Lord Jesus persevere in His ministry and mission. Namely the disciplining His Apostles, founding and establishing the New Covenant (the New Contract from God to man), preaching the kingdom and ultimately placing His own life in the hands of political and religious enemies to bring about His own death and resurrection for the sins of the cosmos.

1) The Call Of Matthew: Verse 9

9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

• Background of Matthew
  • Matthew is Aramaic for gift of God. (Blomberg, Matthew, 155)
  • You heard me say that Matthew collected custom duties in a very busy region with its overland routes of travel. >> (840, Edersheim, Sketches of …, p. 42; France, The Gospel According …, 166 f)
  • But M’Neile though that, Matthew may have worked at the Capernaum dock as a custom officer on goods being delivered from outside of Herod Antipas jurisdiction via the Sea of Galilee.³
• Matthew reputation was that of a sinner. Something he would not shake due to his career choice.
  • Since “Matthew … [was] a toll-collector … he is looked upon by the Jewish society of Matthew’s story as no better than a robber and one whose testimony would not be honored in a Jewish court of law.”[842, Kingsbury, Matthew as …, p. 135]
  • Even if one was an honest tax collector in the first century they were still lumped with the dishonest “sinners”.
• But he was one of Jesus’ choices.
  • Hagner wrote, “Since Jesus’ mission is predicated upon mercy and not merit, no one is despicable enough by the standards of society to be outside his concern and invitation.”[844, Matthew 1—13, p. 240]
• Matthew’s call account is interesting in several ways.
  • Matthew was working as he had for some time the day that His life changed. Waking up that morning, like so many before, Matthew had no idea that the God was about to call his number and that his ministry would become a person to communicating the New Contract of God to humankind.
  • Some believe that Jesus ministered without His Disciples for up to a year. And that Jesus must have had rapport with Matthew beforehand. Others, say no. Jesus just reaching out to Matthew who would have been regarded as a sinner by the nation of Israel and that Jesus’ growing reputation was enough for him to immediately respond. >> (France, The Gospel According …, 167)
  • It’s either or (or something else). Arguments from silence are not provable and most often not helpful and may even be misleading. (Cf. Blomberg, Matthew, 155)
• But something we do know is that Matthew was committed.
  • Jesus said to him, “‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him.” That’s it!
  • We know from Luke’s account of the gospel that as far as his career went, Matthew did what is called in management circles, “quit without notice.” (Luke 5:28)
  • This is a hallmark of discipleship in Matthew’s account of the gospel. >>
  • Jesus’ disciples lived lives of big faith as they left everything to follow.
• Matthew’s character after Jesus’ ascension.
  • This account of Matthew’s call (as presented-by himself) is more “self-depreciating than Luke’s account.” (Carson, “Matthew”, 224)
  • Matthew’s account of his call didn’t start with any hint of back story whatsoever.
  • He didn’t mention that he quit without notice.
  • We have no record of him speaking at all in any of the gospel accounts. >>
  • Was he timid or humble, or was it because of Peter, James and John that Matthew couldn’t get a word in edgewise? We don’t know.
  • But I think that these things speaks to some degree that Matthew was humble and rightly wanted to keep things focused entirely on the Lord.

ILLUSTRATION

• Matthew’s call is not unique.
• We see similar throughout the Scriptures.
• Look at how God calls people to ministry at times: Abraham, Moses, Gideon. The list goes on and on for the demand of the immediate response.

APPLICATION

• We have seen these calls before, so you have heard me talk plenty about faith-forks. So I will not belabor them here.
• But briefly, God shows us a need or calls us to a need and He places us at a fork where the answer must be “yes” or “no.”
• That’s often the way He works.
• When one considers how God shows up in life, one must take care to know that it is often a day like any other day.
• One must be in a posture of readiness.
• The opportunities to follow is often given when we are busy making other plans.
• These times we will be especially equipped for.
• We must be responding to discipleship in the day to day moments of course.
• But we each should also respond to discipleship of Christ in these important times (call to call).

The Call Of A Disciple >>
2) The Call Of Sinners: READ 9:10-13

• How did Matthew respond after his call?
  • He held a big dinner party of his sinner friends. Verse 10 And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.
  • We know this was at Matthew’s home because of Mark and Luke’s accounts of the gospel (They called him Levi.). (See Mark 2:14-15; Luke 5:29).
  • Matthew again left himself out of the details.
• 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
  • Their question to the disciples was “less a request of information than a charge” against Jesus. (Carson, “Matthew”, 225)
  • We can tell by the question that, this eating, thus this close fellowship, was an uncommon practice in Judaism. (Cf. France, The Gospel According …, 167)
• Although reaching out to sinners of the day seemed to be frowned upon by the majority of the leaders of Judaism, doing precisely that is what France called, “a prominent feature of the Gospel portrait.” COMMENT (France, The Gospel According …, 167)
  • Look at the Lord’s reply in verse 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
  • This seems to be a tongue-in-cheek response to teach Jesus’ theology of outreach.
  • Jesus is the doctor of course for both the physically sick and the spiritually sick.
  • Carson brought up a nuance here too: “There is no suggestion here that [Jesus] went to sinners because they gladly received him; rather, he went to them because they were sinners …” (Carson, “Matthew”, 225)
• Jesus continues with His seeming sharp replies to their charge. >>
  • He is know for this in responding to people that should know better.
  • Verse 13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’
  • Jesus commanded the scribes to “go and learn”, which was a “rabbinic formula” to tell His naysayers that they needed to go and study the Word of God more closely. The phrase is almost certainly sarcastic in nature here and was fitting for those that thought they knew the Scriptures well but had overlooked an important truth. (Carson, “Matthew”, 225)
  • Jesus quote is the first half of Hosea 6:6. The verse says, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (BSB)
  • Jesus was making one of His purposes crystal clear: to share the kingdom of God with those who needed it most. To bring mercy and grace to sinners such as I.
  • France said it well, “The difference between Jesus and the Pharisees lies in their conception of priorities in the will of God: for the Pharisees the first priority is obedience to regulations, for Jesus a mission to people.” (The Gospel According …, 168; Emphasis mine.)
  • Mercy is the priority.
  • And mercy has a target, people.
  • This gives weight to a couple of things:
    • Every verse matters.
    • Jesus’ theology here was based on a half verse in the OT.
    • Verses that speak to God’s character should be given careful attention.
    • Wrong actions in the community of faith is the result of faulty thinking regarding the Scriptures and/or ignorance of Scriptures. REPEAT
• Jesus gives the reason they needed to go back and study the Scriptures:
• Verse 13b For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
  • Jesus obviously would confirm ever person’s individual need as a sinner.
  • I take this passage to mean that these critics were people of faith who do not have the right attitude towards very sinful people. The Pharisees already had the Scriptures but we see that very early on they were not processing Messiah’s mission. Caron said it well, the Pharisees had “preserved the shell while losing the heart of the matter …”. (Carson, “Matthew”, 225)

APPLICATION

1. Even versed people can miss important themes in the Bible.
   • Every verse matters. We need to get busy studying the Bible.
   • Even partial verses like ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ are taken as is and a proper theology is built around it.
2. The Pharisees had missed Jesus’ main purpose: to show mercy to sinners.
   • Blomberg had a great quote: “Jesus’ fraternizing with dis-reputable people remains a scandal in the predominantly middle class, suburban, Western church. Many of us, like the Pharisees, at best ignore the outcasts of our society and at worst continue to discriminate against them.” (Blomberg, Matthew, 157)
   • How often are we living our lives and missing the main purposes of our lives?
   • What gets most of your thoughts?
   • What gets most of spare energy?
   • Are we truly investing in things that matter to God?
3. We too bring judgment to the wrong people!
   • We fail to distinguish sinner from backsliden Christian in our judgments.
   • Nutshell theology of judgement:
     • We are not supposed to judge lost people at all! (1 Corinthians 5:13)
     • We are not supposed to judge motives of our family members of faith.
     • We are supposed to judge open sin in the Church when we see it.
4. What is our attitudes toward the lost?
   • Do we see the sick in need of spiritual, medical care or as enemies?
   • Guard our hearts.
   • God saves sinners --like us.
   • Expand our ministries and vision.
   • Many Christians’ hearts for sinners are and are becoming the same way as the Pharisees’.
   • Many Christians today are not only not friends with sinners but “protect themselves and their families” with walled off lives from such ones. >>
   • This thereby reduces efforts to evangelize and be used of God in other ways as well.
5. We too should “hang-out” with sinners.
   • “There can be little doubt that Jesus was known as a friend to tax collectors and sinners.” (Matthew 11:19)¹
   • Who are the lost people in our lives?
   • How are we reaching out to the lost?
   • We are a very guarded culture. We must continue to push into the world with the kingdom message of mercy.

Notes

^{Notes from above may not be in numerical order.}

¹ Carson, “Matthew”, 225. Carson confered with M. Vökel, “‘Freund der Zöllner and Sünder,’” ZNW 69 [1978]: 1-10; see note on 5:46.

² “Asceticism.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asceticism. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023.

³ See A. H. M’Neile, The Gospel According To St. Matthew. London: Macmillian, 1915, p 117. Available at this webpage: https://archive.org/details/gospelaccordingt0000alan/page/117/mode/1up. Blomberg cited A. H. M’Neile

Works Cited

Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Click here to access the works cited web-page for this document, save those marked as “Notes” or “Other Works Cited”–if any. Most of these cited works correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of general background information and references, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with. ¶ Furthermore, there may be numbered notes that are URL linked; these are usually retained numbered notes from Thomas Constable’s, “Dr. Constable’s Expository (Bible Study) Notes.” These links are preserved “as is” at the time of this work’s formation and I usually include other citation information from Constable as well (e.g. authors’ names).

Other Works Cited

Note: All of the resources below were cited in at least one of the sermons in the Book of Matthew but not necessarily this one.

Augsburger, David. Dissident Discipleship. Brazos Press, 2006.

Barclay, William. Barclay’s Daily Study Bible. Westminster Press, 1955-1960. Sourced digitally from studylight.org/commentaries/eng/dsb.html.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary, vol. 22, ed. David S. Dockery, et al., Broadman Press, 1992. May be sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/matthew0000blom

________. Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation. Baker Academic, 2004. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/preachingparable0000blom/page/82/mode/1up)

Bruce, Alexander Balmain. The Training of the Twelve. Ed., A.C. Armstrong and Son, reprint 1984, Kregel Publications, 1971 edition.

Carson, D. A. “Matthew.” The Expositors Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein, Ed. et al., Zondervan, 1984.

_______. The Sermon on the Mount : an Evangelical of Matthew 5-7 Exposition. 1978, Baker Book House, fifth printing, 1989. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/sermononmounteva0000cars/page/54/mode/1up

_______. When Jesus confronts the world : an exposition of Matthew 8-10. Originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in 1988, Paternoster, 1995. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/whenjesusconfron0000cars/page/n3/mode/1up

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Our Daily Bread Publishing, web ver.

Davies, W. D. and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. T. & T. Clark, 1988. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/criticalexegetic0001davi/page/n7/mode/1up

Evans, Craig A. The Bible Knowledge Background Commentary: Matthew-Luke. Victor, 2003. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/bibleknowledgeba00crai/mode/1up

France, R. T. The Gospel According to Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1985.

_______. The Gospel of Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000fran/page/n6/mode/1up

Harrington, Daniel J . The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 1, A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press (publ.), 1991. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000harr/mode/1up

Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke. Baker Book House, 1984.

Phillips, John. Exploring the Gospels: John. Loizeaux Brothers, 1988.

Plumptre, E. H. “Matthew.” Commentary for English Readers, Charles John Ellicott, Compiler/Editor, Lord Bishop of Gloucester Cassell and Company, Limited, 1905. Sourced from BiblePortal.com. Click here for a list of the authors of the CER.

Robinson, Monte. The Way of Discipleship. Independently published, 2021. Web, aimdiscipleship.org/book.html, accessed Oct 2023.

Yancey, Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew. Zondervan, 1995.

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