Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

If you have your Bible with you, you can open it up to Matthew 9. Anybody else have Olympic fever? I love the Olympics. I don’t watch anything else on TV when the Olympic Games are on. I like the Summer Games, but I love the Winter Games, which is probably a little weird coming from a person that’s never been on a pair of skis in his life.

One of the best moments for me so far was when the Flying Tomato won a gold medal. Shaun White took gold in the snowboard half pipe competition. He earned his nickname, the Flying Tomato, because he has this huge mop of red hair, and he flies higher than anyone in his sport. When snowboarding people talk about Shaun White, they talk about big hair and big air. His reputation is one of a high flyer.

The question is, do we have that same reputation? Are we known as people who are flying high in our lives and in our church. That is God’s plan for us. To fly, to soar. But many times we’re content to settle for less. I don’t know about you, but I can’t be content anymore. I’m ready to fly. And the key to fly to new heights is our attitude. Your attitude determines your altitude.

In this series, we’ve talked about four fundamental attitudes that will allow us to fly higher. Our attitude about God, our attitude about sin, our attitude about God’s Word and prayer, and our attitude about each other. Today, we tackle an attitude that is keeping countless churches grounded. Our attitude about lost people.

In Matthew 9, we read a short story about Jesus and Matthew. Now, understand that the Matthew in this story is the same guy that wrote the book of Matthew. This is Matthew’s autobiography, written in the 3rd person.

Let’s pick up in verse 9. “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, NIV)

We need to unpack this story a little bit so we all have a good grasp on what is happening here. Matthew was a tax collector. There was probably no more despised person in 1st century culture than a tax collector. We may not like the IRS today. (I hope there’s no one here who works for the IRS!) We may not care for the IRS, but that doesn’t come close to how the 1st century Jews felt about their tax collectors. Why were they so hated by the Jewish people of that day?

The Jewish people lived under the rule of the Roman government. The Romans had no standard fee or percentage when it came to taxing the Jewish people. They didn’t break it down into income brackets or anything like that. Instead, tax collectors would go to Rome and they would bid. The job went to the highest bidder, who was then obligated to raise the amount that he bid. For example, let’s say I went to the government and said, “I can raise $200,000 in taxes from the Amelia district.” I am now obligated to raise $200,000. What if I only raised $150,000? Oh, I’m still going to pay the full $200,000. The extra $50,000 would come out of my pocket. But, what if I were to raise $300,000? Then I just made a cool $100,000 that goes straight into my pocket.

We need to understand that 95% of the Jews who lived in the Mediterranean basin lived at or below subsistence level. In other words, if you worked that day, you ate that day. If you didn’t work that day, then you and your family would go hungry. So it’s easy to see why tax collectors were so hated by the Jews. They were con men. They were extorting money from the very poor people in this region.

Now, Matthew’s spot to collect taxes was on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. This was quite a lucrative spot because fishing was the main industry in the area, and Matthew’s spot allowed him to tax all the fishermen. So guess who Matthew knows personally? Peter, Andrew, James, & John. These men were disciples of Jesus, but they were also all fishermen. And these disciples hated Matthew for overtaxing them on behalf of himself and on behalf of the hated Roman government. So you can imagine how thrilled these other disciples were when Jesus told this tax collector to, “Come, follow me.”

The story then fast-forwards to a dinner party at Matthew’s house. Who was attending this party? Matthew, all his other tax collecting buddies, there were most likely prostitutes and other “sinners” present…and Jesus. Then the Pharisees come on the scene. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of that day. These men were the elite. They were revered by the Jewish culture. They walk in and what do they see? They see Jesus eating, drinking, laughing, and enjoying the company of all these sinful people. Well the Pharisees didn’t even have the guts to ask Jesus about this face-to-face. Instead, they go to his disciples and ask how their teacher can be surrounded by these lowlifes. The disciples were probably pretty uncomfortable with this too, but Jesus overheard the conversation and just nails them. He said, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…I haven’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

In this story, I see three distinct differences between the attitude of the Pharisees and the attitude of Jesus toward these lost people. And as we compare these attitudes, it will give us a pretty good insight into our attitude about the lost people who are all around us.

The first contrasting attitude in our story: The Pharisees saw the person’s sin. Jesus saw the person’s worth.

One of the benefits to moving back to the Cincinnati area is that I’ll get to see a lot more Reds games this year. I’m a big Reds fan in case you didn’t know. I’m excited that pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training this week. I’m ready for baseball. When I lived in Indiana, I caught a good bit of grief about my loyalty to the Reds. Admittedly, the last few seasons have been less than stellar. But a lot of people out there would just hammer on me saying, “The Reds are losers. Look at their record. They’re losers.” But, no matter how bad they may be, they’re still my team. You see, it’s all a matter of perspective. Other people focus on the number of losses. I focus on the fact that they’re worth a lot to me because they’re my team.

When the Pharisees walked into this dinner party, all they could see was sin. It was all around them. It was blinding. All they could focus on was the number of losses. You could just hear it in their voice when they asked Jesus disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners?’” (Matthew 9:11, NIV) All they could see was the person’s sin.

Jesus, on the other hand, saw the worth and value of each person there. You could hear his compassion when he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Matthew 9:12, NIV) It didn’t matter how many times they had fallen in the past. It didn’t matter how many losses they had accumulated. He saw the worth, the God-given value, in each individual life.

We have to decide which attitude is going to be present in our lives and in our church. When a person who is outside of Christ walks through our doors, what will you see? Will you see their sin and their shortcomings? Or will you see a person who needs love, acceptance, and most of all, a person who needs Jesus?

We can get very good at stereotyping people. We look at certain people and say, “Well, there’s no way he’ll ever accept Jesus. Her, become a Christian after what she’s done? No way!” That is not our decision to make. Look at Matthew. Who would have ever guessed that he would become a dedicated disciple of Jesus? Who would have ever thought that he would write one of the gospel books telling us the story of Jesus’ life?

Jesus hung out in places that were, and still are, unacceptable to some people. I had a buddy who was ministering with a local church. He had a great passion for ministering to the people who spent a lot of time in the local bar, but he felt like he couldn’t do it because he was afraid he would get fired from his church. I always found it ironic that he would get fired for doing the same thing that Jesus did. Are we going to look at people through a Pharisee’s eyes or through the eyes of Jesus? Are we going to see only the person’s sin, or will we see the person’s God-given worth.

Another contrast in attitudes between the Pharisees and Jesus: the Pharisees focused on the rules, while Jesus focused on the relationship.

Jesus was having dinner with people that his culture, and especially the Pharisees, would absolutely reject. That may not mean a lot to us now, but you have to understand that people in this time period found great symbolic meaning in sharing a meal. Today, we get to know one other people at mealtime. Nicki and I are scheduling lunches with people here at the church every other Sunday for the sake of getting to know everyone better. We’d love to do this with your family and there’s a sheet out in the foyer where you can pick the date and sign your name. This would be unheard of in the ancient world. You didn’t get to know someone over dinner. You only ate dinner with people that you knew intimately. To the people of the first century, eating a meal with someone you don’t know well would be like us inviting a stranger over on Christmas morning. You don’t do that. That’s family time. That’s exactly how the Jewish people viewed sharing a meal. Eating a meal with someone was an indication of total love and acceptance, like you would find in a very tightly knit family.

So now do you see where this is going? Jesus took these cultural rules and totally flipped them upside down when he had dinner with Matthew and his crowd. He ignored one of the most basic and fundamental rules of his society. That is why the Pharisees threw a hissy fit when they saw what was happening. Jesus was breaking their rules!

But Jesus wasn’t concerned about their rules and traditions. His focus was on building relationships with people who needed to be saved. Jesus was going to love people. Jesus was going to reach people. And if he had to go against the Pharisees traditions to do it, then so be it.

As a church, we have to decide whether we’re going to value rules or relationships. We have to decide if we’re going to be willing to think outside of the box, to try something new to reach the lost people in our community. Too many churches are hamstrung by traditions. “We’ve never done it that way before” is the prevailing attitude that keeps the church from trying new methods to win the lost. I’m not saying that all traditions are bad. Not at all. But we have to be willing to do new things to carry out the Great Commission. This requires courage from the leadership, and it requires active support from the congregation. Change can be a scary thing, but General Eric Shinseki once said, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” We have the most important message the world has ever known, and the message does not change. But our methods have to change in order for us to be relevant and understood by our culture. Jesus was willing to go against the traditions of his day to build relationships with lost people, and his example calls us to do the same.

One final contrasting attitude in our story: The Pharisees thought they had reached spiritual maturity, but Jesus pointed out their immaturity.

As we said earlier, the Pharisees were the religious elite. They followed the Old Testament Law better than anyone. They were respected and revered by their culture, and many of them had convinced themselves of their moral superiority. But Jesus reserved his harshest criticism for this very group of religious elites. Because the Pharisees had achieved such a status in their culture, they began judging people by their own standards. If they didn’t look like them, act like them, walk like them, and talk like them, then they didn’t measure up. They basically created a spiritual beauty contest where everyone was judged by their standard because they had it all together. They had reached the pinnacle of spiritual maturity.

And then, here comes Jesus again turning things upside-down. He told these elitists that, in fact, they had a lot to learn. In verse 13, he said, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13, NIV)

Jesus was quoting Hosea 6:6, a Scripture from the Old Testament. The Pharisees were Old Testament experts, and yet here’s Jesus saying, “Go and learn what this means!” You just didn’t say things like that to a Pharisee!

Now, what did Jesus tell them to go and learn. When God said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” what he was saying is that love and mercy and relationships are more important than following the rules to the letter. God would rather have someone who is not perfect but who loves others than to have someone who can follow the rules perfectly but has no love.

It’s easy for us in the church to get to be good at rule keeping. And we view it as spiritual depth. We’re going deep in the Word, we’re going deep in our walk with the Lord. And many times these “deep” churches totally ignore evangelism. They totally ignore the Biblical command to win others to Christ. And they view what they’re doing as spiritual maturity, when in fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s spiritual immaturity.

I want our church to be a church that does both. A church that wins the lost and grows them to be mature followers of Jesus. Any church that does one without the other isn’t following the Biblical design.

Our attitude about lost people is a critical attitude for our lives and for our church. It is critical because it is urgent. Hell is a very real place, and it is the eternal destination of many people in our community. If we hope to reach them with the gospel message, it will begin with our attitude toward them. We can either have the attitude of the Pharisees or we can have the attitude of Jesus. Jesus was willing to look past sins and shortcomings to see a person’s worth. Jesus was willing to break with tradition and try new things to build relationships with lost people. And Jesus points out that for us to achieve true spiritual maturity, we have to love people enough to point them to Jesus.

Jesus hung out with messed up people. He spent time with sinful people. And that’s great news for us because we’re all messed up and we’re all sinful. The only hope we have is that Jesus has taken all our sin and wiped it clean. So if you haven’t yet accepted him as your Savior and Lord, know that you’re in a room surrounded by people who aren’t perfect…but we’d love to introduce you to our perfect Savior.

Mike Edmisten