For today, I want us to look away from 1 Samuel for today and next week, just to hit some topics regarding the coming of Christ in this particular season. It's a good time for us to pause from our normal study and think about the coming of our Savior. And for today, I want us to consider one particular question, the question Why did Jesus come to the earth? Why did Jesus come to the earth? The second person of the Trinity, why was he born a baby? Why did all of this happen? And we could answer that question from a couple different angles. We could think about the covenant of redemption. He came because The father bid him come and save his people that he might have his people as his own possession. So a covenant made and eternity passed between the members of the Trinity and Christ came so that he would fulfill that great covenant. That's one way that we could answer the question. We could also answer it by looking at the prophecies that were made in the Old Testament. Prophecies like Genesis 3.15, that there would be a seed of the woman that would come to crush the head of the serpent. Some of Isaiah's prophecies, we just read, Isaiah 9. Then there is Isaiah 7 that a virgin would conceive and give birth to a son. Many other prophecies in the Old Testament that predicted that he would come. There are also old covenant promises that there would be a seed of Abraham through which all nations would be blessed. Covenant promises to David that there would be a son sitting on his throne forever. So that's another angle that we could look at to answer the question of why Jesus came, to fulfill promises. But we also can answer this question as concerns the extraordinary ministry that he brings to each of us. He came for us. He came to bless us in a particular way. Jesus came with clear and explicit intent to do something for us. And I believe that we'll be deeply encouraged and challenged if we see in scripture why it was that Jesus came for us. And so that's what I want to do today. And we're going to use Matthew's gospel as our source for investigation. Now, there's one particular verse that we'll be at to begin with, but then we're going to springboard to many places throughout this particular gospel account. And at the outset, as we're thinking about the reason why Jesus came, the blessing that he's bringing to us, and the purpose for which he came for us, we have to realize that it's a measure of extraordinary glory that he came at all. Jesus is the Son. He is God Himself in human form. He's the creator of all things. He's the sustainer of all things. He is more important than everything else. Paul makes this point in Colossians 1, verses 15 to 17, where he says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God and that He is the firstborn of all creation. Now, that doesn't mean that He's born first. But it means that he has the right of the firstborn to own everything, to possess everything. Creation is his to inherit. It's his. He owns it. So he doesn't have to come to us. We exist for him. And it is that Jesus who came to earth to do something for us. He entered into his possession to bless us. And he did it not just for a vacation, not at all for a vacation. It wasn't just a stroll through creation to see how things were going. The coming of Jesus was for a purpose. His spirit descended from heaven to be clothed with human mortality for a specific purpose. And I want for us to begin our investigation for why Jesus came to earth by seeing how Matthew puts it in Matthew 9 and verse 13. Matthew 9 and verse 13. We're going to look at the context of this verse in just a few minutes, but I'm just going to read this particular verse because here it is that Jesus makes a very explicit statement concerning his purpose for coming to earth. Matthew 9 verse 13. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice for I came not to call the sinner, not to call the righteous, but sinners. To rearrange a little bit, Jesus explicitly says that he came to call sinners. He didn't come to call the ones who had it all together to be his disciples. He didn't come to call the ones who were the most spectacular to be his disciples or the ones who had life figured out. He came to call the sinners. That's why he came. Now there are a few questions that we're going to have and need to think about. One is, what does it mean for Jesus to call? What does he mean when he said he came to call sinners? This is not a call on the phone. This is not a pithy little line you might read from a modern book that I wish you didn't have if you have it called Jesus Calling. He doesn't call you that way. You don't hear from Him in that regard or in that manner. When Jesus says He came to call, it means He came to give an authoritative summons. We sang a moment ago about Jesus and Galilee. When His voice told the winds to cease, what happened to the winds? They stopped. When He said to a dead person, Come forth, Lazarus. What did he do? The dead person came to life and came out. And it's been said it's a good thing Jesus specified Lazarus when he said, Lazarus, come forth. Otherwise, all the graves would have opened and people would have walked out. Because when Jesus issues a summons, it must be obeyed because he's the Lord of all. So when Jesus calls sinners, he's issuing an authoritative command that will be answered. When he directs his call to a sinner, that person comes. Like the demons who he cast out, they left when he told them to. When he calls sinners, they come. And so we also then have to be very specific in realizing who are the sinners? What does it mean to be a sinner? And we have this misunderstood in our culture today because so often people in churches want to point to this idea that Jesus came to call sinners and say, well, that means he puts up with lots of sin. You can be very sinful and still belong to Jesus. There are a lot of misunderstandings about this. What he's getting at, and we're going to see this some more clearly, is the sinners he calls are those who recognize that they are sinners. Not those who celebrate their sin, not those who are content in their sin, but it's those who recognize that their sinful condition has them in a hopeless predicament. It is those people that Jesus came to call. And so one of the questions that I have, putting those things together, that I would ask Jesus if I were there when he says, I have come to call sinners, is why only sinners? What is it about the nature of this type of person that makes this type of person the only one that you're going to call to yourself? He's not calling the sincere. He's not calling the religious. He's not calling the kind. He's calling the sinners. Why is it the sinners? Well, I think Matthew and some of the other things that he's recorded in his book gives us an answer to that question because there are other places in the gospel of Matthew where we see the coming of Jesus connected to a specific purpose. And if we look through his gospel and we see those other places where we see that Jesus has come for a particular purpose, it's going to shed clarity on why it was that he came to call the sinners. Why is that a big deal? There are other texts in Matthew that give fuller clarity as to why Jesus calls as disciples the sinners only. And the key thought that we're going to be tracing throughout the book of Matthew is this phrase where Jesus said, for I came. This verb to come in five times in the book of Matthew is connected to a purpose for Jesus coming. And we're going to follow, trace all of those and gain some deeper clarity as to the reason why Jesus came. So when we read about what is said about the nature of Jesus's coming to earth in other places in Matthew, we're going to gain deeper clarity as to this purpose of him calling sinners here in this particular verse. Let me give you probably a bad illustration or example of this kind of study that we're going to be doing. If, let's say you walked in today and I spoke to you and I said, hi, how are you doing? You said, I'm doing well. And I said, why have you come here today? And you said, oh, I've come here to worship God. And that's why I'm here. And I would have said, definitely, I'm in that same boat. I'm here to worship God. And let's say two minutes later, you were in conversation with someone else and they were sharing with you some particular burden on their heart or a difficult thing they're going through in life. and then they asked you to pray for them, what you're not going to do is say, oh, friend, wait a minute. I already declared my intent of why I'm here. I'm here to worship God. I'm not here to bear burdens. I'm not here to pray. That's not why I'm here today. I'm here to worship God. I already made that clear. You would never do that because you understand that the bearing of one another's burdens and the praying for your brothers and sisters and all the elements of what we do, singing and praying and reading and listening to long sermons, all this stuff that we do, it's part of worshiping God. So all those other elements shed clarity on what it means to worship God. So as we look through the Gospel of Matthew at these other places where we see Jesus has come for a particular reason, it's going to shed clarity onto the true nature of his coming and why he came for sinners. And I think that's going to become more and more clear as we work through these texts, because you'll see they all seem to relate to each other very, very clearly. So let's start with where we're at right now. We're in Matthew 9 verse 13. I'm going to go back up to verse 10, and we're going to walk into the context of this particular verse. And here we're going to see the first reason why Jesus came to call sinners. So let's begin in verse 10 here of Matthew chapter 9. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are weak or those who are sick go and learn what it means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. And so here we learn that Jesus came to call sinners because sinners need to be healed. Sinners recognize their need to be healed. That's the first reason why Jesus came to call sinners, because they are the ones who recognize that they need healing. That's the point that Jesus is making here. The Pharisees were self-righteous. They thought they were spiritually whole because they conformed to themselves to an external standard that they made up. And so they assumed that the Messiah would come and want to hang out with who? With them, the clean ones. The ones who had everything right on the outside. Doesn't the Messiah want to come be with us? But here they are critical of Jesus, who claims to be the Messiah, because he's eating with the tax collectors, with the sinners. But it's the tax collectors and the sinners who were the evangelistic targets of Jesus, because these people knew that they needed to be healed. They were sinful. They were rotten. They knew that their lives were spiritual train wrecks. And so they knew that they needed to be healed in their soul. And that's why Jesus came to them. They knew that they required the skill of a divine healer to do for them what they could never do for themselves. They could never become whole or healthy in a spiritual sense just by reforming themselves. They knew they needed Jesus to heal them spiritually, and that's just what he did. Jesus called those people to be his disciples. And then he used them as a convicting example to the self-righteous Pharisees. So Jesus made it explicitly clear that it was the people who realized that they were sinful, who realized that they were spiritually sick. It's those people that he came for to call. He came not to call those who thought they were cool. He came to call those who knew they were sick to the point of death. So, first of all, Jesus came to call sinners because sinners know that they need healing. Sinners are the ones who recognize that they need His healing. That's what we see clearly here in Matthew 9. Go a page over to Matthew 10. or maybe two pages over, and beginning in verse 34, we come to the next time that we have a record of Jesus's reason for coming to earth. So here we're gonna find another example of a reason given why Jesus has come. Matthew 10, verses 34 to 39. Follow along as I read. Jesus says this, do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." Now, Jesus said these words in the middle of a time of instruction for the 12 initial apostles. He was going to be sending them out on a mission trip, and He was reminding them of the message and the doctrine that they were to preach to all the cities of Galilee, and one part of the message that they were to teach is revealed here where Jesus says in verse 34 why he came to earth. Essentially, he's saying, you're going out to preach the message of why I came. And here's why I came, verse 34, to bring a sword. And then verse 35, I've come to set someone against their father, and a daughter against the mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. I've come to bring a sword and to make enemies out of people who once were friends." That's probably a little shocking to us. We think of the Beatitudes, Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. But here He says He came to bring a sword and not peace. He came to bring division. and not unity. He came to bring discord and not harmony. How can that be? Well, as he says in the rest of the instructions here, the point is not that his people bring about the war. He's not saying go make war. He doesn't say, go preach a message that's going to end up with people doing some sort of Christian jihad where we're conquering our enemies. That's not what he's saying. The point is that those who accept his teaching are going to bring about this kind of antagonism for people from people who once loved them. This is how people are going to react to those who embrace Jesus's message. And the reason why this happens is because those who follow Jesus realize that they can't follow Jesus and family. You can't follow both. Now sometimes it works out when your family also follows Jesus that you can be united one to another. That's nice when that happens. But at the end of the day, for a lot of people, you're going to have to make a choice between family and Christ. The people who Jesus came to call realized that they can't follow any human relationship or institution that competes with their following of Jesus. And the result of the Lord's disciples following him over everything else is potentially dreadful. A man might be set against his father. A daughter might be set against her mother. A daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Enemies might be made in your very home. Children, parents, spouses may turn against you. That's what Jesus says. And Jesus says not just that it might happen, he came so that it would happen. That's what he's saying. The purpose for his coming was so that such domestic upheaval might happen for the good of his kingdom. But what does this have to do with him calling sinners? What does this tell us about the sinners? Why is it these people that he came to call? Well, I think there's another reason that we see in this text here. In Matthew 9, the chapter earlier, we learned that Jesus called those who realized that they're sinners because they knew they needed healing. Well, here in chapter 10, we see that Jesus calls sinners because these are the ones who realize they've got nothing to lose. Jesus calls sinners because they're willing to lose anything for Jesus' sake. There's nothing too great that they can't part with in order to gain Christ. Even their closest human relationship is worth giving up so that they'll get Christ. Jesus came to call sinners because sinners are willing to lose everything for Christ's sake. Sinners are willing to lose everything for Christ's sake. Notice how Jesus summed up this entire instruction in verse 39 here of chapter 10. He said, if you find your life, then you will Lose it. But if you lose your life for His sake, then you'll find it. It's only those who realize that everything in their life is forfeit for the sake of Christ, only those will actually find life. Only those who see themselves as sick with sin to the point of death understand that they have nothing to live for in and of themselves. Only those who see their true sinfulness will personally affirm what Paul wrote in Philippians 3 verses 3-7. Listen as I read. For we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. I was circumcised on the eighth day. I was of the people of Israel. I'm of the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the law, I was a Pharisee. As to zeal, I was a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the law, I was blameless. So Paul had a lot going for him. But then he says this, but whatever gain I had, I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ. And that's to be all the attitudes and the dispositions of those for whom Christ came to call. We are those who are eager to leave everything behind to follow Him, even if it means sacrificing human relationships. We can be sure that Christ came to call us if we recognize our sinfulness such that we are willing to leave everything in this life to follow Him. That's clearly how we can know that He came to call us. We're willing to leave everything to follow Him. So Jesus came to call sinners because sinners know that they need to be healed. That was Matthew 9. And secondly, Jesus came to call sinners because sinners are willing to lose everything for His sake. That's Matthew chapter 10. Matthew 11, if you go there, we'll find it to be true that Jesus came to call sinners to be his disciples for a third reason. And we find it in Matthew 11. This is the reason Jesus came to call sinners to be his disciples thirdly, because sinners will not stumble over Christ in pride. Sinners will not stumble when they encounter Christ because of their pride. See, pride tends, and we see this with the Pharisees, to have them miss who Jesus really is, because they think more of their own thoughts than they ought to. We're going to see this clearly in Matthew 11. Matthew 11, beginning in verse 2, says this, now when John, John the Baptist, heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the one who is to come? Or shall we look for another? Here we have this other, this next use of this idea of the coming of Jesus. This time it's from John the Baptist. Are you the one who is to come? And John is here potentially, we think, maybe a little discouraged. He's been put in prison. Maybe he is wondering, he's doubting a little bit if Jesus really was the Messiah. And one of the reasons would be because Jesus hasn't done all the things that John or others might have thought that the Messiah would do. Back in chapter 3 of Matthew's Gospel, John said that Jesus is the one who would baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Now the baptism of the Holy Spirit is referring to the new covenant that Christ is going to pour out. His spirit would come and would inhabit his people and a great revival would occur. We weren't seeing that in Israel yet. And the baptism with fire is talking about judgment for his enemies. Jesus would come and would rain judgment upon the opponents of his people. John the Baptist was in prison. The fire of the judgment of the Messiah was not coming down upon the enemies of God's people. So John, perhaps, is not seeing in the ministry of Jesus what he thought he would be seeing, and so he's wondering, are you really the one who is to come? So John is at this spot where he might trip up in pride over who Jesus really was, because it didn't look like what he thought the Christ would look like. Well, let's notice the answer that is given to John the Baptist. So go with me, if you would, to verse 4 of Matthew 11. Jesus answered them. So this is the message that he wants sent back to John the Baptist. Go and tell John what you hear and what you see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them." This is essentially exactly what Isaiah 35 predicted would be true of the Messiah. All these things the Messiah would do. So Jesus is saying, look, I'm doing exactly what Isaiah predicted I would do. But then notice what Jesus says in verse 6. He said, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me. And the word offended there is the Greek word for stumbling. Blessed is the one who doesn't get tripped up because of me. Meaning, I'm not fulfilling visibly right now all of the things that the Old Testament predicted to be true about me. I've not come to conquer in a physical sense all of the enemies of Israel, like many of the Jews were thinking he would do. But look, I'm doing so many of the things that are predicted of me. Isaiah 35, and eventually Isaiah 53. So many of the prophecies about Christ are being fulfilled, and Jesus says, don't stumble because of what you can't understand yet. I've given you enough for you to truly have faith in me as the Messiah. Don't in your own pride stumble because it doesn't look the way you think it should look. So essentially what Jesus is saying is that he came to call the sinners because those are the ones who would not let their arrogance get in the way of recognizing him as the Savior. And clearly John was not arrogant enough to be tripped up by Christ, but the Pharisees were. The Pharisees continued on throughout the rest of Jesus' ministry to still hold on to their notions of what the Messiah was supposed to be and do, and they always held Jesus up to that level of scrutiny. Oh Jesus, you're not doing what we think you should be doing as the Messiah, so there's no way you could possibly be the Messiah. Whereas the people whom Jesus came to call the sinners are those who looked, look, the blind are receiving sight and the lame are walking and the deaf are hearing and the gospel of the kingdom is being proclaimed to all people, even to the Gentiles. It's unmistakable. This is the Messiah, even though I can't quite figure out how all the elements of the prophecies are fitting right now, because I don't have full clarity and revelation, but I trust what I see. I will not stumble on account of what I see. I will believe in this Messiah in faith. So this is one of the other elements that is true of the sinners, those who recognize that they are in need of a physician, They are those who recognize that they are willing to give up everything to follow Christ, but also they have a humility about them. They don't have to have all the facts. They don't have to have every little thing, idea tied up with a neat little bow. They don't have all the questions answered. But they have enough answer to clearly see this is indeed the Christ and I will follow him. So thirdly, Jesus came to call sinners because they will not stumble over him in their pride. They're not arrogantly puffed up with their own selfishness. The next one, the fourth reason why Jesus came to call sinners, you might guess it, is in chapter 12. It's interesting that they're all in sequence here. Chapter 12, look with me at Matthew 12, and we'll begin in verse 38. And here in Matthew 12 and verse 38, we're going to see that Jesus came to call sinners because it's only the sinners who see the wisdom of turning to Christ. Only sinners, number four, see the wisdom of turning to Christ. So look with me, beginning in verse 38 of Matthew chapter 12. Jesus says this, or Matthew records this, then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. But he answered them. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." So you can clearly see here the sign of Jonah is Jesus' death. He was in the ground for three days and three nights, and then he came out like Jonah came out of the fish. So that's the sign of Jonah that he's talking about. Verse 41, the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. And friends, that is what we call in literature an understatement. Something much greater than Jonah was here. Verse 42, the queen of the south, this is a reference to the queen of Sheba, will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, here's another understatement, something greater than Solomon is here, referring to himself. So the Pharisees here are doing something really dumb again. They're asking Jesus for a sign. Remember, Jesus just told John the Baptist all the signs he had already done. This is sufficient to prove that I am the Christ. And they come to him again saying, show us a sign, as if you haven't done enough already. And so Jesus, in judgment, says to them, you'll only get one more sign. And it's the sign with the fact that he will be killed, laid in the grave and three days later will come out in the same way that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days and then was spat out. But then Jesus connects Jonah to something really important that is true of the Pharisees. Because the Ninevites were these wicked, evil Assyrians who hated God and they were known for their brutality across the ancient world. And Jonah, who was this racist prophet because he hated the Assyrians and who didn't want to see them repent and who thought they deserved judgment. He didn't want to go to Nineveh, but God swallowed him with the whale and spat him out on dry ground. And even when he went and preached to Nineveh, he then went up to the hilltop and was waiting for God to throw down fire from heaven and judge them because he didn't want to see them repent. He thought there was no way that this evil people would repent. But what happened? The Ninevites repented at the message of a guy who was racist and smelled like a fish. They heard his message and they repented. And so Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, look, if the Ninevites heard a message of repentance from Jonah, of all people, and they repented, And here you are hearing my message as the Messiah, God incarnate, and you won't repent. Jesus says, well, one day they are going to rise up at the judgment and condemn you. Can you imagine that? The Pharisees as a group one day in the judgment will have all the Ninevites come to them and point their fingers in their faces and say, you are condemned for your utter foolishness to not receive the Messiah. We listened to Jonah and you wouldn't listen to Christ. Similarly, the Queen of Sheba, likely a queen coming from some African nation, heard of the glory of Solomon and knew that the right thing to do would be to go visit this king and learn of his God. She even had the wisdom and discernment to do that. And Solomon, well, we know what happened to Solomon. He ended up having his heart turned away from God. And then the kingdom was divided, the next generation. So Solomon wasn't really all that spectacular, but the Queen of Sheba realized, while there's something going on in Israel, I should go see what it is. She had the wisdom to go check that out. And she also would rise up and have condemnation levied at the Pharisees for their lack of wisdom. And the point here is this, that Jesus came to call those who will have enough wisdom to receive him. He is greater than Solomon. He is greater than Jonah. It has come. It says here, this is the same word. The word is here at the end of verse 41. And in verse 42, something greater than Jonah is here. Something greater than Solomon is here. That's just a different tense of the word to come. Jesus is saying, I have come to provide something greater than Jonah, something greater than Solomon, and you would be wise to accept me. That's the point Jesus is making. Jesus came to call sinners because they would be the ones who would see the obvious wisdom right in front of them. If Nineveh could repent at Jonah, and if the Queen of the South could see the glory of the Kingdom of Solemn and be attracted to it, then so also us sinners can see the wisdom of a Savior who is perfect and divine and gentle and authoritative and is crucified for our sin and risen again for our justification and offers himself freely to us for us to be saved from our sin. If you can't recognize the no-brainer that it is to receive that gift of salvation, then there's something wrong with us. Do you ever interact with lost friends or lost family members and you think to yourself, how is it that you can't understand this? Jesus simply says in his word, come unto me and find rest, all you who are weak and heavy laden. He says, come unto me. He says, repent. He says, believe in me. The gospel is so clear. How can you not see it? It's because the stubbornness of the human heart blinds us into great foolishness. Jesus has not come to call those who are still in their blindness. He came to call those who are aware of their sinfulness, those who know they need healing, those who recognize that it is worth giving up everything in life to follow Him. It's worth ruining every human relation to have Christ. He came for those who recognize that they might not have all the answers to all the questions, but they have enough with what Jesus has presented to them to recognize that he truly is the Savior. And then fourthly, he came to call those who recognize the great wisdom that it is to run to Christ. He is the answer to everything. Those who recognize that they are sinners realize that. And so for those four reasons, we see the wisdom of God. They show His mercy and compassion. And it shows to us that God's Spirit has done a mighty work in each of us so that we would come to see our sinfulness. Hopefully you see yourself in all of those four things. Hopefully you see that you recognize that you need healing. You can't save yourself. Hopefully you recognize and see that gaining Christ is worth giving up everything in life. There's nothing on earth that can compare to Him. Hopefully you see that you might not have all the answers. There are still theological conundrums that exist, but you know enough to put all your hope in Christ. And hopefully you see that you would be a fool to not turn and receive this glorious Savior. But there's one more reason why Jesus came to call sinners. And I believe it's more glorious than all the others put together. If you would go to Matthew chapter 20. Matthew chapter 20. We're going to see another reason why Jesus came to call these sinners. And this one doesn't have to do with what is true of the sinners. Those first four indicate what's true about us. Jesus came to call us because essentially of our humility and our recognition of our need for him. But look at Matthew 20 and verse 20. The mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked for something. And he said to her, what do you want? She said to him, say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom. This is the way to do it. Get your mom to go ask on behalf and see which one gets the best seat. But verse 22, Jesus answered, you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? They said to him, we are able, very presumptuous. Verse 23, he said to them, well, you will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father. And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave. And Jesus basically here is demonstrating rules for how his people were to interact in his kingdom. We're to be servants. We're not to lord things over people. That's the point of what he's saying, but then he turns everything here to himself at verse 28 and giving himself as the example. He said, even as The Son of Man came, there's our word, not to be served, but to serve. So Jesus came to serve, but here's our really important phrase, and he came to give his life a ransom for many. Now, Jesus could have stopped right there at the end of, in the middle of verse 28. He could have said, to make His point, He could have said, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. See, I came to serve you. I'm going to wash your feet. I've led you. I've been a servant leader. That's a good example for you to go be servant leaders in my kingdom. That would have been enough, but He didn't stop there. He said the other part of why He came was to give his life a ransom for many. This is a rich and a glorious statement that he's made. Jesus came to serve by giving his life a ransom for many. He came to exchange his life for others. He came to willingly lay down his life so that others might live. So back to our original question, why did Jesus come to call only the sinners to be his disciples? Well, the answer, according to verse 28, is because those are the people that he died for. He came to call those for whom he died. Jesus calls with authority to those whom he exchanged his life. If he gave up his life for you, then he will come to you essentially and say, follow me, sinner, because I willingly exchanged my life for yours. If a ransom has been paid for you, then the whole point is that you are now the possession of the one who paid for you, right? You don't belong to yourself. So that's why he has the authority to come call you, because you belong to him anyway, because he already gave up his life for you. If Jesus gave Himself a ransom for you, then He owns you, and so He calls you to follow Him, and so you obey. And the reason for that is because you were the sinner that He ransomed. So why does Jesus only call those who realize that they are sinners to be His disciples? Well, it's because it's for those people that He died. It's for those who could never pay to God what was owed to him that Jesus died. It was for those who never could have lived the kind of life that God requires that Jesus gave up his life for. The one that Jesus died for is the one who now is owned by him. The currency that Jesus paid was his own blood. And Jesus Himself said that is why He came. He came to give up His life a ransom for many. He came to give His life in exchange for the sinners whom He would then call to be His disciples. So Jesus did not come to earth to call the righteous, the ones who think they can earn heaven on their own, the ones who think, I don't need a physician, I'm not sick. The ones who would rather hold on to their accolades in life. The ones who would rather think that they're smarter than what they see. And Jesus doesn't quite fit the picture of what I think the Messiah should be. The ones who are like the Pharisees who are going to be condemned by the Ninevites, they're so blinded in their own pride and foolishness they can't see the wisdom of turning to Christ. Those are the ones for whom Jesus gave his life. He came to pay the ransom for all of them. Now, you might ask the question at this point, I know it comes to my mind sometimes, how do I know that Jesus paid the ransom for my sins? How do I know that? I wasn't there. He didn't mail me a card saying, paid in full, so that I can hold around with me and say, see, I got the card from him. I'm good. I can't go online and check my account and see that I'm all squared with God. So how do I know? Well, that's the beauty of what we've just put together here, because there's a connection between how you view yourself as a sinner and Jesus paying the ransom for your sin. There's a one-to-one connection here. You can know that Jesus paid the ransom for your sin if you recognize that you are a sinner. And we have those four other Those four clarifying ideas in the Gospel of Matthew that paint the picture of what it looks like to be a sinner. You recognize that you are in need of healing, of spiritual healing. You recognize that you are willing to give up everything in life to follow Jesus. There's nothing you want to hold on to. You follow Christ even though you don't quite have all the answers to all your questions, but you have enough that he's given you in his word. And you have the ability to discern, to have the wisdom to know that he, Jesus, is the only one who can save you. You have wisdom like the Queen of Sheba, wisdom even like the Ninevites to turn to Christ and repent. So if that's you, if you see yourself as that kind of a person, then you can know for sure that Jesus came to earth for the purpose of giving his life a ransom for you, because that means he has called you a sinner to be his disciple. Heavenly Father, during this Christmas season, as we reflect on Christ and who he is, help us to keep in mind that he came for a specific purpose for us. He came to call us sinners. And anyone who is not willing or able to view themselves as truly the kind of sinner that we are, that's someone that has no claim to the atoning, ransoming death of Christ. So Father, we pray that you would help us to understand how we are so great of sinners so that we might recognize how Jesus is so great a Savior. We thank you for the clarity that we have in the word of Christ as to how we ought to view him and view ourselves. And we ask you would help us to think more and more rightly as we ought in accordance with what your word reveals about who we are and about who he is. And we pray this all in his name. Amen.