This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 2 October 2022. The full video recording of the service can be found below along with the transcript.
How do you handle disagreements? What goes through your mind and heart when you get in an argument? I’m sure there are some of you who quite like conflict. The adrenaline you get in an argument, the thrill you find in a fight, is exhilarating, even enjoyable for you. On the other hand, there will be other who don’t like conflict, and so are more likely to ignore differences, bury disagreements, avoid arguments. Each of us is wired differently, for when confronted, some are more prone to fight and others to flight. And it is important we all recognise our own tenancies and temptations. Some may need to grow in gentleness, others in boldness. And yet, no matter where we sit on the spectrum, we all need wisdom. For in the end, disagreement is inevitable. Sometimes no matter what we do or say, we can’t avoid it.
We see this in our passage this evening, which is made up of three interactions that Jesus had during his ministry. I hope at least one of them felt familiar to you, for last Sunday evening Billy McCurry was preaching to us about the healing of the paralytic in Mark 2, which is a version of the first story we find here in Matthew 9. However, if you had kept reading in Mark 2, you would have also seen that our second and third stories are included there as well. In both Mark 2 and Matthew 9, these three stories are presented together as a package. While Matthew and Mark often include different stories in different orders, both authors select these three stories and placed them together as a set. At first, it can be difficult to see why they do so, as they talk about different topics and address different groups. And yet, the one thing that links them all together is disagreement. Did you notice that? In each story, Jesus is drawn into a dispute. In 9:1-8, the teachers of the law pick a fight about forgiveness. In 9:9-13, the Pharisees cause a conflict over friendship. In 9:14-17 the disciples of John the Baptist ask a question about fasting. In each story, Jesus is challenged, confronted, first about forgiveness, then friendship and finally about fasting.
This is the first time we have seen Jesus have to respond like this in Matthew’s Gospel. Here, at the start of chapter 9, we are introduced to a new aspect of his ministry. As one writer puts it, we begin to see that "Jesus not only taught and healed, [but] he also argued." And we will see this happen again and again throughout the rest of Matthew. While Jesus did not go looking for fights, we see that they soon found him. And when they did, Jesus used them. He used these disputes to clarify who he was, to confirm what he has come to do. Here we see that when they are handled well, disagreements are opportunities to provide clarity, to shed light, to talk about truth. That is what we see in our passage. In each story, a particular truth is presented to us, and then, through the confrontation that takes place, is further clarified and stressed. It is as if in each, a gem is shown to us and then, by the conflict, polished as with a cloth, so it shines all the brighter, comes across all the clearer: (1) Jesus can forgive our sins (9:1-8); (2) Jesus is a friend of sinners (9:9-13); (3) Jesus turns fasting into celebration (9:14-17).
1. JESUS CAN FORGIVE OUR SINS (9:1-8)
If you have seen the famous long-running TV show ‘A Question of Sport’, you will be familiar with a quiz round called ‘What happens next?’ The basic idea is a video clip of a sporting event is played and then, suddenly paused, and you have to guess what happens next when the clip restarts. Does the goalkeeper accidentally miskick the ball into their own next? Or does the cricket player’s bat break in two and end up hitting a fielder? You get the idea! Well, if it was possible to have a similar quiz round for passages in the Bible, I think this one would work well. For what at first seems to be a rather predictable interaction, ends up taking a surprising direction. If you have been following our series in Matthew, you will know Jesus spends chapter 8 travelling around Galilee, healing the sick. We hear there of crowds coming to him with sick friends and family members, hoping that he will heal them. As chapter 9 begins, this seems to continue, for we read in 9:2, "Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat." Now if we were to pause the video clip there, it is clear what we should expect to happen next. Just as when Jesus cleansed the leper, healed the servant, drove out the demons in chapter 8, we expect him to do the same here, to heal the man. And yet, when the video restarts, we continue reading in 9:2: we instead see Jesus say, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.’ The man had come because of his physical needs, and yet Jesus addressed his spiritual need. As someone put it, the man came for healing, and he ended up with heaven instead.
If you have been coming to our services recently, you will have heard us talk a lot about this. Last Sunday, in both John 5 and Mark 2, morning and evening, we seen that the Bible teaches our greatest need is a spiritual one. Even when someone is struggling with an illness or disability, like this paralysed man was, it is their underlying spiritual condition that is most important. If you are here this evening, and you are not a Christian, the Bible, Jesus himself, is very clear: whoever you are, whatever is going on in your life, however you are struggling or suffering right now, your greatest problem is spiritual, your biggest problem is sin. You see, when God first made this world, he created it good, perfect, yet, when humanity turned against him, decided to live according to their own rules and follow their own desires, death and disease entered, this world was broken. Because we reject God, the author and giver of life, we are under the curse of death, suffer the consequences of sin. Our lives are filled with direct consequences of sin: broken relationships, addictions, abuse, discontentment. Those are all direct consequences of sin. What is more, we are also surrounded by indirect consequences, whether disease or death, which were not part of God’s world before we turned away from him. And yet, the greatest consequence of sin still lies in the future, not merely suffering for a lifetime on earth, but suffering for eternity in Hell. Because each of us has sinned against God, committed crimes against our Creator, each of us deserves to be judged, condemned, sentenced for our sin. As humans, like this paralytic, our greatest problem is sin. And so, our greatest need is forgiveness.
That is what Jesus gives this man in 9:2, isn’t it? Knowing his greatest problem, Jesus gives him his greatest need. He gives a gift that is far greater than any physical healing. For he gives him new life, he clears his debt, removes his guilt, restores his relationship with God. It is the greatest gift anyone can be given. And the religious leaders there that day quickly realised this. For in 9:3, we read: [READ]. As we heard last week, these teachers of the law have the right theological principle, yet come to the wrong conclusion. The principle they get right is that only God has authority to forgive sins. This is obvious when you stop to think about it. Given that sin is rebellion against God, it can only be forgiven by God. Only God can forgive sin for the same reason that only the bank can write off your mortgage. They lent you the money, and so they and they alone have authority to release you from the debt. And the same is true of God. As we heard at the beginning of our service from Psalm 103:3, it is the LORD who forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases. Only God has authority to forgive sin. These teachers of the law get that absolutely right. But, what they get absolutely wrong, is concluding that Jesus is blaspheming. For in claiming to forgive sin on behalf of God, Jesus is not making a false claim, is not committing blasphemy. For we shall see, Jesus has that divine authority in Psalm 103, both to forgive all our sins and heal all our diseases.
This is what Jesus uses this confrontation to clarify. His brief interaction with the paralytic in 9:2 drew out that gem of truth, taught that Jesus can forgive sin, and now uses the dispute to polish, clarified, underline that truth. In 9:4-5, knowing their unspoken scepticism, Jesus asks them: "Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?" Now, in one way, the answer is neither. Both are easy to say but impossible to do. It is like asking, which is easier, flapping your arms so fast that you take off and fly, or moving your legs so fast that you can run across water? Both are impossible! And yet, as we heard last week, one of these two things Jesus talks about can be easily verified. Whether Jesus had authority from God to forgive was hard to determine, but whether he had authority to heal would be clear as soon as the words left his mouth, for this man will either get up or stay on the mat. And so, as Jesus explains in 9:6, to prove he had authority to forgive, as he claimed, Jesus showed his authority to heal. The one who came carried on the mat, was sent home carrying the mat. We see in 9:8 that the crowd gets the point, for they praise God for giving ‘such authority’ to man, realise Jesus has authority to do what only God can do: to heal all our sickness, to forgive all our sins. Reflecting on this, Martin Luther, said the Christian faith can be summed up in those four words of Jesus in 9:2, "your sins are forgiven." The very heart of the good news of Christianity, of the gospel, is that through his death and resurrection, Jesus has authority to forgive, that he will forgive all who turn from sins and trust in him, who confess they have sinned and look to him for mercy and forgiveness. If you are here tonight, and you are not a Christian, see here that that your greatest problem is sin, and that Jesus can forgive our sins.
2. JESUS IS A FRIEND OF SINNERS (9:9-13)
In 9:9, Matthew moves on from the dispute over forgiveness to that about friendship. Back in chapter 4, we heard how Jesus called four fishermen to come and follow him, to be his disciples. Here in 9:9, we watch as he does the same to "a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth." This short story is more significant than it first seems, for it is likely that this is the Matthew who years later would write this record of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. And the trustworthiness of his account is highlighted by the fact, that here Matthew makes no attempt to hide his shameful, disgraceful past. For here he openly confesses that he was once a tax collector. Tax has been in our news a lot recently. However, whatever you think of our current tax regime, we can be thankful we don’t live under the one the Jews had in the first century. For not only did they have to pay religious taxes to the temple, as required in the Old Testament, but they also had to pay large amounts of tax to Rome. The Jewish people effectively had to pay for their own occupation, had to fork out money so that Roman troops could control their country, live in their land. As a result, the Jews who worked for the Romans, who collected this tax on their behalf, were despised and hated. They were working for the enemy, enabling the ongoing occupation. Further, they often impoverished their own people in the process. For, these tax collectors were known for charging higher rates, for putting you in a higher tax band so they could not only give Rome what it required, but also make a tidy profit for themselves. We’ve already seen Jesus mix with undesirables like lepers and gentiles, but by reaching out to a tax collector, Jesus was crossing a new boundary. By calling Matthew to follow him, Jesus was becoming a friend of sinners. He was mixing with the immoral. We see this so clearly in 9:10, where he goes back to Matthew’s house for dinner, and we read "many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him". That category of ‘sinners’ was used to describe the worst of the worst as it were: prostitutes and pimps, gamblers and thieves. Men and woman who had broken God’s laws in the most outrageous ways. And yet, here we find them sitting down to a meal with Jesus. Friend, if you ever feel you that you lived too shamefully, sinned too outrageously, to be forgiven by Jesus, to be a Christian, then remember this meal. Remember that Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. That he called Matthew to be his disciple, to even write this Gospel we are reading, despite all of his past. Here we see no one is beyond the love of Jesus, too far gone to be forgiven. Whether it is a tax collector in the 1st century, or a fraudster, child abuser or addict in the 21st century. As the puritan Richard Sibbes put it, no matter what we have done, "there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us." Friends, Jesus has never met a sinner that he could not forgive.
However, such fraternising with sinners was all too much for the Pharisees, for in 9:11 we read they came and asked the disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" If we step back and think about it, this in some ways, was a sensible question to ask. Even today we still have sayings, like ‘bad company corrupts good morals.’ We tell our children to be careful who they’re friends are, for we know they are likely to influence them. And this isn’t just sensible, it is also Scriptural. For example, that proverb, ‘bad company corrupts good morals’, is used approvingly by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:33. There is some wisdom in how these Pharisees acted. Wisdom that is supported by the Bible itself. And yet, here we see how dangerous it is to take wise advice, and turn it into a binding rule. In taking what is a good idea in some situations and making it the only option in every situation. That was the mistake of the Pharisees, and it is the mistake that many of us are still tempted to make today.
At the beginning I said that disagreement is inevitable, and friends that is true even within local churches. As a church, we all agree on the most important thing, on the Gospel. And we also agree on other important things, such as how we ought to order ourselves together as a church, live along side each other here. Those are the beliefs that are found in our statement of faith. And yet, there are many things that many of us are not going to agree on: whether it is what we eat and drink, what we wear, what Bible translation we choose to use, who we decide to bring up our children and on and on. And so, one of the key things we need to learn as brothers and sister in Christ, is how to disagree well, how to care for each other’s consciences, respect one another’s opinions. How to avoid the mistake of the Pharisees, taking what is wisdom and turn it into legalism. Requiring everything of others that we have decided for ourselves. Yes, in some situations, separation from sinners is a wise way to live. But we must be careful not to declare that it is what everyone must do in every situation. For as we see, there can be wisdom and mercy in doing otherwise as well.
Again, we see Jesus takes the chance this confrontation provides to clarify what is going on, to highlight the truth behind all that he is doing. As the Pharisees seemed to have both common sense and Scripture on their side, Jesus likewise uses the same to defend his actions. The piece of common sense can be seen in 9:12, where he says, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." It is a simple yet effective point. Just as you expect a lifeguard to be by a swimming pool, rather than in a play park, or a life raft to be on a boat, rather than in a car, you expect to see a doctor with sick people, those who need his care. The point is clear. If Jesus can forgive sins, then we can hardly be surprised that he spent time with sinners. For those are the people who needed him. That is the point Jesus also makes in 9:13, this time from Scripture, by quoting Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." It means that God is more interested in heartfelt love than empty religion. O yes, God wants us to be moral, and yet he also wants us to be merciful. And it is mercy that we see here in Jesus’ actions. It was because of his great mercy, that he left the company of his Father and the angels in heaven to come and sit at a table with tax collectors on earth. It was because of his mercy that he not only called Matthew to follow him, but he also went to Matthew’s house for dinner, so he could spend time with Matthew’s friends, so they too could meet the one who could forgive their sins. Here we see, that because of his mercy and love, that Jesus is a friend of sinners. Indeed, that is the very label that the Pharisees later gave him, in 11:19 they accused him of being: "a friend of tax collectors and sinners."
If you are a Christian here tonight, what about you? Could you be labelled like that? Are you seen to be a friend of sinners? Here at Grace Church, we rightly stress the need for Christians to be committed to the local church. As a church we desire to care for and encourage one another. To live our lives alongside each other. And that is a wonderful, a beautiful thing. And yet, we must take great care that we do not neglect those around us, end up living lives that are more like that of the Pharisees than of Jesus. Friends, it is possible to be so busy in here that you fail to be a blessing out there. I know, for myself, that it can be easy to use up my time and energy, relationships, interactions, with God’s people. Every night of the week is another church activity. Every weekend filled by time with other believers. And yet, we see here that Jesus was not only found with his followers, but he also spent time with sinners, built friendships with the most unlikely people. Is that also true in your life? Think over the last week. Did you spend intentional time with a non-Christian this week? Like Jesus, did you sit around a table with an unbeliever and chat? Or ask yourself, do non-Christians in your life, simply see you as a colleague from work? A classmate from university? Or do they see you as a friend? As someone who is there for them, looking to support them in their struggles, pointing them to Jesus whenever possible. Brothers and sisters, Jesus came to forgive sins, and so he spent time with sinners. As we go with the same gospel of grace, we must do the same. When the Pharisees looked at Jesus’ life, they were able to accuse him of being a friend of sinners. O may that also be true of each of us, may others who look at our lives be able to say the very same.
3. JESUS TURNS FASTING INTO CELEBRATION (9:14-17)
In this final story, we see that it is not just Jesus’ enemies, but also his friends, who have questions. And again, Jesus uses this dispute as an opportunity to clarify, to teach the truth. This question of fasting contrasts well with the feasting of the previous story. Jesus and his disciples were well known for eating with sinners, whereas both the Pharisees and the disciples of John were better known for fasting, that is for not eating as an act of religious devotion. Now, for the Pharisees, this may have been an act of self-righteousness. Jesus will later tell a parable in Luke 18 about a Pharisee who goes into the temple to pray, and thanks God that he is not like a tax collector, but instead fasts twice a week. However, even if the Pharisees did it in self-righteousness, we see elsewhere that the disciples of John the Baptist were right to fast. Indeed, as we seen in chapter 6, Jesus did in fact teach his followers how to fast, and in chapter 4, even fasted himself for 40 days in the wilderness. Matthew is clear that Jesus is not against fasting. It seems it’s not a question of whether to fast, but when to fast. For Jesus, fasting is a question of timing. That is what Jesus highlights here in his response to the question, which is in two parts. First, he says what his followers will do when he is with them (9:15), then what they will do when he is taken from them (9:16-17).
In that first part of his response, Jesus explains that these disciples have utterly misunderstood the nature of what is happening. They seem to be under the impression that they are at a funeral, whereas the truth is that they are actually at a wedding. That would be an embarrassing mistake to make, wouldn’t it? To get an invitation to a special occasion, you think it’s a funeral, and so go dressed in black accordingly, and yet when you get there you actually realise it is a wedding! Hopefully upon realising, you would quickly made amends. Ditch the ‘With Sympathy Card’. Find some flowers from somewhere to brighten up your dress! However, imagine you didn’t, imagine you persisted with the mistake. During the marriage ceremony you loudly break down in floods of tears, not of joy, but of grief. Afterwards you go up to the family and explain that you are sorry for their loss! We all realise that that would be ridiculous, completely inappropriate. And yet, Jesus says, that this is what these disciples are doing. Fasting in the Old Testament was primarily a sign of mourning, of loss. Whereas Jesus explains it is currently a time of great joy and celebration! After all, Jesus is the long-promised groom that God has sent to the bride of his people. And so, his disciples should spend their time celebrating, not commiserating. Jesus has turned fasting into celebration!
Yet, while it is currently a wedding, we see that Jesus suggest a funeral will soon follow. As Jesus puts it in 9:15, ‘The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.’ This is the first mention in Matthew of Jesus’ coming fate, of the death that awaits him when he finally arrives in Jerusalem. This groom will be taken from his bride, will go and die for her. Jesus is that perfect husband who, as we heard Paul explain in Ephesians 5 this morning, loved the church and gave himself up for her. Jesus can forgive sin, because he suffered the punishment for it on the cross. Paid the debt that we owed, took the sentence that we deserved for our crimes. O yes, there is a wedding now, and yet Jesus explains that a funeral is just around the corner. In that day, those who follow Jesus will fast again.
And yet, in 9:16-17, we see that even then, this fasting will not be like the fasting of the Pharisees and the disciples of John. In 9:16-17, Jesus uses two everyday tasks to help illustrate this truth. He uses the illustrations of fixing a garment and filling a wine skin to teach that the old is not compatible with the new. For example, if you put a new patch on an old garment, when you wash the garment the new bit of cloth will shrink in the wash and so tare away from the stiches. Similarly, you do not put new wine in old wine skins, for the gas let off by new wine as it settles will create too much pressure and the wineskins will burst. A more familiar example to us might be that can’t use a PlayStation 1 game with a PlayStation 5. The old won’t function with the new. And Jesus says this is true of the fasting of his followers. When he is taken from them, they will fast yes, but not like they fasted before he came. They will fast in a new way, they will fast not as if they are at a funeral, for they know that Jesus did not stay dead, for he rose from the grave. Jewish fasting looked back, in sorrow and remorse, mourning a loss. Christian fasting looks forward in faith and hope. It is less about loss, and more about longing, about anticipating the future that awaits all of us. It will be like the fasting you do on the way to a wedding – where you are hungering for what is to come, saving space for the satisfaction that awaits you when you arrive.
As Christians, our lives look forward, to that day when the bridegroom returns, and the marriage supper of the lamb takes place. When we are reunited with Jesus and enter into that eternal marriage that satisfies all our desires and never ends. That the is tone and tenor of Christian fasting. This is the third time we have covered the topic this year as a church – how are you obeying it? And yet we see that it is also the tone and tenor of the Christian life. That is why Paul can say that even when we mourn, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. That even when we are sorrowful, we can always be rejoicing. Because Jesus has come, because he has changed everything, because the old life of loss is gone and a new life of longing has begun, because he has given us a hope that stenches beyond this life, has given us the certain hope of heaven, which every day, every hour, moves closer and closer and closer.
ALEXANDER ARRELL