Life Project Blog

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:9-13

In this account, Matthew speaks of himself in the third person as he tells us how he came to be on Jesus’ team of disciples. Like you, I have heard the sermons on this passage many times; I have also heard the “Sunday school” version many (many) times, and in all of those renditions, I have seldom heard anyone come right out and say what Jesus was really teaching in this. Let’s see if we can fix that right now…

First, we know that tax collectors then as now, were not popular with the population, in fact in those days, they were considered one notch above a gentile in Jewish society, which would be several notches lower than dirt. Of course they partied with “sinners” and that was because nobody else would give them the time of day. So, Jesus walks up to Matthew’s tax booth, the scene of his crimes, we might say, and calls him to be His disciple… and surprisingly, Matthew follows Jesus, even inviting him to dinner. In an even more scandalous reply, Jesus accepts and goes to dinner at Matthew’s place and eats with tax collectors and sinners.

When the Pharisees heard about this, they were distressed because such a teacher as Jesus would be seen in such unsuitable company.

Sidebar: Before we continue, why don’t I re-write that last sentence: “When the church leaders heard about this, they were distressed because such a teacher as Jesus would be seen in such unsuitable company.” How often we see this scenario play out, with the assumption that the disciple of Jesus is up to no good, hanging out with the “wrong crowd”, “Why you’d never catch me eating with such people!” My question to something along these lines would have to be: “Then how can you share Christ with them?” OK, now back to the story…

Take a look at Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees; He didn’t come to preach righteousness to the ones who already were righteous, He came to save the “unsuitable”, the “ungodly” and the sinner; they are the ones who really need time in His company. Oh, and by the way, He came to die for them. Jesus came to bring righteousness to the unrighteous; this is a very important point, and where the lesson usually ends.

There is one more thing that we need to see in this picture; it’s the thing that many very righteous Christians don’t particularly want to hear… are you ready?

A person should not wait to clean up his or her act before they follow Jesus. If you are not a follower of Jesus yet, you do not need to clean up your act and get it all together before you follow Him. Look at the text! There was old Matthew the tax collector, right there in his booth, conducting his crooked and dirty business, and Jesus walks up right in the middle of it and says, “Follow me.” Did Jesus lecture him or tell him to change his evil ways first?

No, that comes later as the person grows in their relationship with the very same Jesus who called Matthew and went to his house and ate dinner with the wicked. Am I saying that Jesus didn’t care about their sin? Of course not; may it never be! Forgiveness comes first, repentance and growth and Christ-likeness is a process, and that is why followers of Jesus need to be in a loving community of faith, where they can be taught, nurtured and loved while they grow as a follower of Jesus in just the same way as the first twelve disciples did; that, dear reader is what Jesus is trying to show us in this passage, about life in the Kingdom.

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.

Matthew 9:1-8

Jesus returns to His home town and has the opportunity to demonstrate the fact that He has unique authority from God, and He demonstrates this in a unique way. Some men brought a paralyzed man to Jesus on a mat, undoubtedly hoping that Jesus would heal their friend. Jesus did so, showing us another aspect of the Kingdom; where the Kingdom goes, there is forgiveness of sins, and Jesus, seeing the faith of all involved went to the paralyzed man and forgave his sins.

If we take the long view, the forgiving of a person’s sins is a much greater form of healing than enabling the person to walk again, for the forgiveness of sins brings a healing to our relationship with God and with it, eternal life.

There were some teachers of the law on hand, and being good lawyers, they thought to themselves, “Why this is blasphemy,” since only God can forgive sins, and if Jesus were just some guy, they would be right. But Jesus was not just some guy; He was God in the flesh. Knowing their thoughts, He went to them and asked them a remarkable series of questions:

“Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 

When you think about it, anyone who didn’t care about the Law could tell the man his sins had been forgiven, lie though it might be, and pretend to have done something great… if the person was just putting on a show, but Jesus, in an effort to prove His authority volunteers for the next and impossible to fake step; He tells the man to get up, take his mat and go home… and that is what the paralyzed man did, for he had been made whole again in body as well as in spirit.

Once again, we see what comes with the Kingdom; the broken being returned to wholeness.

The crowd was filled with awe and praised God; but did the teachers of the law join in?

I pose this as a rhetorical question because there is no way for us to be certain one way or the other for the text doesn’t say… but I sure would like to know!

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

Matthew 8:28-34

When Jesus and the disciples finally reach the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, they have an interesting encounter with two men possessed by demons. It seems that they were so violent that people kept clear of them. When the demons saw Jesus, they knew exactly who He was, calling out to Him and naming Him as “Son of God.” It seems that they knew enough about Jesus to know that not only was He the Son of God, but that He was also their Judge, and asked if He was there to “torture” them before the “appointed time” of His final judgment. Still talking, they asked Him to send them into a nearby herd of pigs, and Jesus was only too quick to grant their wish. When the demons entered the herd of pigs, the pigs stampeded into the lake and were drowned.

Did you notice that these powerful demons were helpless before Jesus? Entirely at his mercy, they asked to be sent into a herd of pigs… of all things, and Jesus made it so with one little word: Go! Rather than tremble and cower in the presence of Jesus, they destroyed themselves, using the pigs to dash into the lake, the very lake that Jesus had so recently calmed, now the watery grave for the unclean spirits and their unclean host bodies of the pigs.

When you think about that picture, the optics are truly amazing to behold.

The men who were the keepers of the pigs ran to town and told everyone what had happened, and the entire town came running out to Jesus… to beg Him to leave the region!

Were they upset with the loss of their food source, or were they just afraid of His power?

I doubt they had many Jewish visitors, since the area would have been unsuitable because of the pigs, but one thing is for certain; the demons knew exactly who they were dealing with, and they were sore afraid, while the villagers actually had the audacity to ask Him to leave, so blind are we humans in the presence of spiritual authority.

Whatever they were thinking, Jesus quickly moved on His way…

Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

Matthew 8:23-27

In the last section, Jesus denied the anonymous disciple’s request to go and bury his father, then they went into the boats to cross the Sea of Galilee; the timing of this is no coincidence. As so often happens in that region, a storm came upon the Sea of Galilee very suddenly, they were awash in the winds and waves, but Jesus was sleeping, at peace.

His disciples, including several professional fishermen who knew these waters well, became alarmed; they were in a precarious situation. They awakened Jesus asking for Him to “do something”. His reply is telling: “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”  If I try to imagine myself in the disciples’ shoes here, Jesus seems a bit out of touch with the perils of the moment; the disciples’ fears seem entirely rational to me… but from Jesus’ point of view, they seem almost silly. Jesus was the very coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, He is on official “God business”, God’s own Son, and so are the disciples; is God going to allow a storm to destroy His eternal plans?

Not a chance.

Jesus essentially tells the storm to knock it off, and the storm abates; the winds and waves are calm once again… and the disciples are blown away.

Let’s regroup:

1. Jesus told the disciple to “let the dead bury their own dead” and didn’t allow him to take time off for the burial.
2. They took to the boats to cross the Sea, and when the disciples were afraid of a sudden storm, they found Jesus sleeping through it peacefully.
3. When awakened by the frantic disciples, Jesus asks them why they were afraid, and tells the storm to abate.
4. The disciples wonder just who and what this Jesus is.

With these material facts, we can ascertain the following:

1. The disciples’ lack of faith came from the fact that they didn’t comprehend who and what Jesus was, and as a consequence, they didn’t comprehend what sort of mission they were part of.
2. That disciple who wanted to bury his father was in a storm of a different kind, a storm socially, for he wasn’t doing his earthly duty as a son. I can only imagine what the folks back home were saying about him running off with this Jesus guy. Thus, I’m guessing that at that precise moment, his mind was in a bit of turmoil, yet Jesus, who completely understood the larger picture, was entirely at peace.
3. The storm on the lake illustrates a much larger reality for those of us who read this account, for it not only was a literal meteorological event; it illustrates the storms of this life.

Therefore, as followers of Jesus, we can weather even the most furious of storms by placing our lives fully in God’s hands, as Jesus was doing, secure in the knowledge that as we serve Him, God will see us through to accomplish His perfect will in spite of the cost or social consequences.

The real question for us is this: Will we trust God with our lives or will we be battered about by the storms of life?

…comes with a cost.

When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

Matthew 8:18-22

In the last post, I mentioned what we discovered about Peter, and what it apparently cost him to drop his fishing nets and follow Jesus; in these verses, we see the cost again in two brief examples. The first of these is the teacher of the law who declared his intention to follow Jesus where ever He might go. Jesus’ reaction to this declaration is interesting, don’t you think?

He might have said, “Great friend, we’re delighted to have you along on the journey,” but His reaction was quite different. No, the Son of Man had no home, for He had given all of that up to do His Father’s will; fair warning for the teacher of the law. Right at the moment, I cannot recall that any of the Twelve were this teacher of the law, can you?

The second example is a tough one, for here we have a “disciple” requesting leave to “bury my father” before heading off across the lake. There is nothing in the text  to indicate a bad motive, neither is there anything that would tell us that this disciple (whoever he was) is seeking anything more than to accomplish the sacred duty of a son that the Law required of him. In other words, this was a very reasonable request for him to make. Yet Jesus didn’t say what we might expect, something like, “OK, give my best to your family and meet us at such and such a place day after tomorrow.” Instead, Jesus says, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

This may seem a little harsh, and in a sense, maybe it is, but Jesus is going about the business of His Father, and so are His disciples; there is no “leave of absence” from the calling of God.

His remark about “the dead” burying the dead refers to the recognition that there are many people who are spiritually dead, who are not following God’s call to do His will on earth; they have time on their hands. Notice the strong implication that if we are spiritually alive, we have a calling to serve God. It would seem that there is no such thing as a follower of Christ who does not have a calling, even though some might think otherwise.

So, what is the cost of following Jesus? It is leaving the things of this world behind and really following Him.