The Mercy of The Kingdom

When it comes to weird religions, there’s weird… and then there’s SUPER WEIRD. For example, one religious cult - The Aetherius Society was started in the mid-1950’s by a taxi driver who taught his followers to appease “The cosmic masters” of the universe, who lived on the planets Venus and Saturn. And within this ET goes to Hogwarts religion, you have to appease the cosmic masters through... obedience.... Obedience to what? By spending their lives “spiritually charging the earth” to make way for their coming rulers, who will one-day descend to earth in a flying saucer, armed with magic that is more powerful than all of the armies on the planet.

Another weird religious cult is the "Ho No, Hana Sanpogyo” Which if you haven’t heard of, is a “foot reading cult” And this religion is based upon their founder who claims to be the reincarnation of not just one, but two people. Buddha, and Jesus. And within this bizzarro religion, you have to appease your master through... obedience.... Obedience to what? Foot examinations. Which is a life or death issue I guess, because without having the master read your feet, you fate would step in and kill you - or so he warned. And according to his methods, short toes meant you had a short temper, while fat toes meant your life would be filled with good fortune. Cuz hey, why not? However, the movement has struggled a bit ever since the master started charging $900 for his life-saving foot readings.

Another weird religious cult are, and I’m not making this up, a group called the “garbage eaters.” They also go by “The brethren” - which I personally think is the better of the two marketing strategies, and is an offshoot of the 70’s Jesus movement. Why are they called the “Garbage eaters?” Because, within this goat-like cult, you have to appease your cosmic master through... obedience.... Obedience in rejecting worldly goods by living homeless, In avoiding looking at mirrors, And rejecting money, dancing (there it is), and even LAUGHING! NO LAUGHING - you’ll are already out of the cult! Why so many rules? To purify yourself for the coming end-of-the-world! Which is pretty ironic since it’s a religion focused on purity that, get this, doesn’t allow BATHING - like, AT ALL! Which actually explains their other rule I didn’t mention yet, which bars interaction between men and women.

now, there’s one more religious cult I need to tell you about, This group goes by a A LOT OF NAMES And while it has a lot of names, it has the same core beliefs. Which is to appease the cosmic master through… obedience. What kind of obedience? Well, you have to say the right things and not say the wrong things, You have to go to the right places, and avoid the wrong places, Sometimes you have to wear the right things, and not wear the wrong things, You have to act the right way, and not act the wrong way, You have to pray the right things at the right times - not the wrong times! Oh, and you have to hang out with the right people and not the wrong people, because the wrong people are doing the wrong things and not the right things, and since you don’t wanna do the wrong things too you need to completely avoid them if you want to do enough of the right things to appease your master...

And what makes this last one just as weird as the other ones is they something they all have in common, though in different ways. And it’s this It’s the idea that we can do enough of THE RIGHT THINGS to fix our greatest problem. If we work hard enough Do enough good And just keep at it, then we’ll be right with God and everything will be OK. And sadly, professing Christians end up thinking this way, though this way isn’t further from the Christian truth! Because when it comes to our relationship with God, there’s only one path that pleases Him, and it is MERCY - NOT MERIT

In our passage this morning we find the calling of Matthew, who was the CHIEF LACKER when it came to religious merit. Because Matthew was a guy who had basically perfected the art of doing all the wrong things. Which tells us that our relationship with God must be based upon MERCY, not MERIT.

And so turning to Matthew chapter 9, verses 9-17, we are going to see 3 things the mercy of God does for us merit lacking sinners. And here they are:

The mercy of God:

1. Calls
2. Celebrates
3. Changes

Let’s look at the first one: The mercy of God:

Calls sinners

In verse 9, we see the mercy of God as the initiator of Jesus’s interaction with Matthew. And how? Because WHEN Matthew approaches Jesus asking to be one of Jesus’s disciples, Matthew explains how he sold all of his stuff, gave his possessions to the poor, and then promises Jesus that he’ll sin less, Jesus says: “Alright, that’s a good start, but I’ll be watching you Matthew - one slip up and it’s back to the tax booth you go!” Oh wait, that’s not what happened is it? No, Matthew isn’t seeking after God at all, is he?.... In fact, it’s the other way around. Jesus is the one who seeks out Matthew and simply says: “Follow me.”

Now, culturally, we don’t realize how big of a deal this actually was. Because it was a big deal - since Matthew was a Tax Collector. Which was an absolutely hated profession! This wasn’t simply like being an IRS agent either And we don’t really have a modern equivalent to compare this to, So maybe think of the politician you dislike the most, and times that by about a thousand.

Tax collectors were considered the worst of the worst! Worse than the prostitutes, the town drunk, the dishonest business workers, All of those were saints by comparison to a tax collector. Because a tax collector was seen as someone who was not only a dishonest thief, but a traitor to the people and country.

During this time the Roman empire ruled the world, and they taxed all the people who were under their rule. But Rome was smart about it: Instead of going in and making their Romans soldiers collect the tax - which would often result in uprising and violence, they would hire the locals to do their dirty work for them. And don’t forget just how badly the Jewish people hated the Romans. Which means, Matthew basically sold his national soul for money.

Now, to make matters worse, the Romans allowed these tax collectors to take even more money from the people in order to line their own pockets. So they basically got rich by being societal leeches.

Also, tax collectors like Matthew were considered unclean, and if you’ve read Leviticus before, you know what that means. This was a big deal for a Jew, since it meant they couldn’t enter the temple or synagogues, Which led to them being despised and hated even more by basically everyone other than their fellow tax collectors. And so when it came to other rabbis and teachers, Matthew never would have even been considered for discipleship.

But not so with Jesus... For when Christ calls us to become His disciple, it is entirely by Mercy not Merit. For Christ calls Sinners not Saints.

After Matthew got up and followed Jesus, they went to Matthew’s home with a bunch of other sinners and tax collectors - because that’s the only friends Matthew had - and then what happens? Does Jesus preach at them for hours on end? No, Jesus reclines at the table with them for a meal. How scandalous! Which is why when the pharisees find out, they are appalled, and ask why Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. And why were they appalled by this? Because of the risk of contamination.

Do you remember several weeks ago when we looked at the first big healing miracle Jesus did after the sermon on the mount? Who did Jesus heal? The leper right? And when Jesus healed the leper, what does He do? He touches Him. YIKES! “What are you doing Jesus, you’re going to get contaminated!” “You can’t just touch lepers like that!” “You can’t just sit there all close to tax collectors and sinners - you’re going to get contaminated!”

But here’s the thing. Jesus is the perfect Holy Son of God so can’t be made unclean Jesus can’t catch our spiritual sickness! For Jesus is the great physician who heals the sick! And He heals them based upon MERCY, not MERIT.

Do you see how upside down this is for us? When it comes to evaluating someone’s worth, do we base it upon mercy or merit? MERIT! We all naturally evaluate people’s worth based upon their merit. Are they healthy or unhealthy Intelligent, or stupid Easy on the eyes, or hard on the eyes, Do they have a respectable job, or an un-respectable job? Do they vote for the right party, or the wrong party? Do they believe the right things, or the wrong things? And the even scarier part, is we can get this way over the gospel! “oh they don’t believe the gospel of mercy and grace, they are into MERIT! “LOOK AT THEIR MERIT!” “TERRIBLE PEOPLE THEM MERITLESS PEOPLE!”

We all do these sort of things in different ways, don’t we? And because we all do this, we can easily become cultish in our thinking towards God and think God thinks this way towards us, But He doesn’t!! And praise God He doesn’t! Because if He did - not a single one of us is gonna be clean enough to merit His approval!

The pharisees sadly didn’t understand this, as the idea of mercy was completely foreign to their thinking. Which is why Jesus corrects their thinking, when He says in verse 12 that it is the sick who are in need of a physician, not those who are well. And His point isn’t that the pharisees are spiritually healthy and the tax collectors aren’t: Not even close... His point is that He’s come for those who know they are sick, not those who are sick but believe they are healthy. For Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

Do you realize church THIS is the fundamental key element to being a follower of Jesus? It’s the realization that Christ called me, yes even me, a sinner saved by grace! Because when you realize THAT - do you know what happens? It radically changes your life! In fact, it changes your life down the very core! Down to even the nuts and bolts! And when the great physician makes that kind of a radical change in your life, you live celebrating the wonderful mercy He’s given you Which leads us to our 2nd point.

The mercy of God:

After Matthew follows Jesus, in verse 10 they go to Matthew’s house and celebrate with a feast. Matthew doesn’t follow Jesus around groveling every two seconds shouting out: “Unworthy, Unworthy!” Does he? No, they go into Matthew’s home and recline at the table with Jesus. it’s a very joyous and intimate occasion.

Do you realize that’s one of the marks of mercy? Love, not fear.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

1 John 4:18 ESV

We have to be careful here, because yes, we still have a reverential fear of God, but not a terrified, petrified fear of God. We don’t. Because why would we need to? God didn’t accept us because of our merit, but because of His mercy! Which is a great cause for celebration is it not?

Some people nearby see Jesus, Matthew, and the other sinners feasting and celebrating, and they get all cconcerned about it. And so the both the disciples of John and the pharisees approach Jesus, and they are like, “What’s the deal? Why all the celebration and no fasting?” And what does Jesus tell them? He tells them that they aren’t fasting because it would be inappropriate to. He tells them that would be like mourning at a wedding. And Jesus’s point is that He’s the bridegroom, And when He’s with us, we have everything to celebrate!

Now, if you remember a couple of months back, we looked at what biblical fasting is and isn’t, and it’s not a way of earning God’s favor or getting Him to do what we want. Fasting is feasting upon God’s Word and prayer in order to focus our attention in our great need for GOD. And when you have Christ right there, at your very table, feasting with you, what else do you need? I’ll tell you. NOTHING! Now, we’ll come back to this, but Jesus goes on to mention that His disciples will certainly fast when He is taken away from them, but what is He referring to? He’s referring to the cross. He’s referring to His departure.

Most likely, Jesus is quoting Isaiah 53 here, which speaks of Christ’s suffering on the cross, and in John 16, Jesus explains what this will be like.

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

John 16:20-22 ESV

Do you see what Jesus is saying? He’s saying that once His work upon the cross is finished, Once the anguish of this world is over, and we are with Christ again, we will have unspeakable, unending joy! And nothing will ever take that away from us! For on the cross, Christ vanquished the only thing that could ever threaten our hope and joy!

One of the verses that I’ve come to find great comfort in is 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 ESV

Do you see that church? We will alway be with the Lord? Do you long for that day? Do you celebrate our coming joy that is found in Christ? You should, For if you’ve truly tasted the mercy of God that calls sinners, celebrates with sinners, you also will see how it changes sinners! Which leads us to our final point.

The mercy of God:

Changes sinners

In verse 13, Jesus tells the Pharisees to go learn what Hosea 6:6 means, which says:

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6 ESV

The religious leaders of Jesus’s day had MISSED this BIG TIME! They were on The MERIT train, which was heading straight for a deadly cliff, and they refused to jump off! Which is the point Jesus is making in verses 16 and 17 with the cloths and wineskins.

How so? OK, let me explain the illustrations first, and then I’ll tell you how.

With the cloth, Jesus is saying if you want to patch up your old favorite shirt, you can’t just take new cloth and sew it in there as a patch. And why not? Because when you wash it, what does the new cloth do? It shrinks! But the old stuff doesn’t shrink, because it’s already been shrunk. Which causes what? More tearing. Point being - you can’t mix the new with the old. You can mix a new cloth patch with a new shirt - and you’re fine And YOU CAN mix an old cloth patch that’s been shrunk with your old shirt and you’re also fine. But you can’t mix the new with the old.

Alright, then Jesus goes to the wine in verse 17, and points out that you can’t put new wine into old wineskins. And why not? Because when wine ferments, what’s it do? It expands. And if you put fresh wine into an old wineskin that’s already been expanded from previous wine, it’s gonna burst! So instead, you have to put new unfermented wine into new wineskins, so that as the fermentation process happens they both expand together, and then you don’t have a problem. So again, you can mix the old wine with the old wine skins, or the new wine with the new wine skins, and just you can’t mix and match them.

OK, so what’s Jesus’s point here? His point is actually pretty simple, and it’s this. You can’t mix Jesus with their religious system! And I’m no, we aren’t going all crazy-hyper-dispensational here and saying the Old Testament doesn’t fit with the New Testament, Because remember what Jesus told us on the sermon on the mount? He’s not there to abolish the law, but to fulfill it! And so what Jesus is doing is He’s attacking their man-made religious system that they set up for themselves.

Now, for those who remember when we looked at fasting, how many regular fasts were commanded in the Old Testament? Just one. The day of atonement. And how many fasts were the pharisees doing in Jesus’s time? Two per week! Which weren’t commanded AT ALL in the Bible. They were man-made laws, that were masquerading as God’s laws. And so when they come to Jesus and they are like, “Why aren’t you and your disciples doing the right things like our 2 days a week fasts,” Jesus tells them two things. 1. They will fast - but not legalistically and ritualistically like you are doing 2. Don’t try to force me into your system

Their system said they were righteous because of their works - but Jesus said you can only be righteous through my works. And His point is simple - you can’t mix these two together. You can’t mix merit and mercy It’s one or the other! For God desires mercy, not pure, heartless, ritualistic sacrifice.

Now, I do need to point something out to you, and it’s important. Does accepting God’s mercy result in sacrifice in our life? Does it result in obedience? Of course it does.

In verse 9, what does Matthew do after Jesus calls Him? He gets up and follows him. And in Luke’s account it tells us that Matthew left everything in order to follow Jesus. Which is interesting, because out of all of the disciples, Matthew likely had the most to lose in following Jesus. As a tax collector, Matthew would have been pretty well-off, which is why the feast that’s thrown here would have been in Matthew’s home. But the point here is, how do we know Matthew accepted Jesus’s call of discipleship? Because when Matthew was called, we see the evidence of his response in his life.

“But how do I know if there’s enough evidence of a response in my life?” Like how much is enough here? What if I’m a little bit short? How do I really know?!”

OK first off, stop that - you’re trying to put the new wine into an old wineskin You’re trying to sew the new patch onto the old shirt. It’s not going work

Here is how you know God’s mercy is truly in your life. First off, you actually see some sort of change in your life. Because when Jesus calls you to follow Him, that means you’re now heading in a new direction, so SOMETHING is going to look different! What will look different? Well, this passage points at least one thing. And it’s this: You are going to start treating others based upon mercy, not merit. And why? Because that’s how God has treated you! Do you see how that works? How can you claim to have received the mercy of God if it always just kills you to extend it towards others?

Secondly, not everything is going to instantly be different, and you really have to come to realize this or you’re going to be live in a world of hurt... However, though you will still sin and act unmerciful at times, You are going to find something really odd happening within you. You will find that the times you do treat others by their merit and not mercy When you do sin you find something or someone squeezing you a bit. Tugging at your heart strings a little. And the direction it’s pulling you is an obvious one - it’s pulling you towards the one who called you! And when that happens, it’s an amazing thing! Because you know you never would have wanted to give Christ control of that area of your life all on your own! Not in a million years! And some of you have some pretty wild testimonies of how this has happened in your life - don’t you? Yes you do.

But here’s the thing church, when Christ calls us, we, follow... Yes we trip, Yeah some of us follow a little faster than others, But we follow, And we follow Him simply because He first followed us, and lovingly pursued us as a groom does for his bride.

Over and over again we are referred to as the Bride of Christ, and sometimes we forget that our beauty is not of our own making, don’t we? We start to think focus on our faults and failures, thinking that His love for us is based upon our merit, instead of His mercy. But the truth is church, we are beautiful in His eyes not by our merit, but BY HIS! And His MERIT IS INFINITE - For by His mercy and grace He has wrapped us in HIS ROBES of righteousness, and NOTHING can ever take that from us! Not sin, death, or hell!

Yes church, our sins they are many, but Praise God, His mercy is more! And we are going to sing in a moment: Praise the Lord, His mercy is more! Stronger than Darkness, New every morn, Our sins they are many, His mercy is more!

If you are here this morning and you have been trying to approach God by your merit, instead of His merit, give up on that weird cult of MERIT and embrace the GOSPEL OF MERCY as Matthew did, which comes to us BY GRACE through FAITH And if you do, you too will find that His mercy is more than enough!

This is the manuscript the sermon was preached from, so the recording may differ in places.