Well, hello everybody and welcome back. This is our Daily Devotional for Monday. Oh, Mercy, wait a second. Is my calculation correct here that it's December? Happy December, everybody, and even more so than that, Merry Christmas, everybody. It's so good to be with you here this Advent season. Now, I'm gonna tell you, we're doing daily devotionals this week, maybe next week, but I am gonna be taking a break for Christmas time. Need a break, y'all. It's been a very, very busy holiday season, and Thanksgiving has just passed. Had 18 people. Thanksgiving dinner at my house. And the smoker did great. The potatoes, not as good as they could have been. The turkey, oh, so good. So, so good. And I do a great brown sugar pineapple ham. And I know you think, ham, I don't do the whole Rainbow sheen thing. I mean it cooks for like eight hours. So anyway, it was it was a great meal wonderful time with family But it is good to be back with you now I'm gonna go ahead and say this old Providence has a lot of things going on during the holiday season the Christmas season Like for instance in a couple of days, it's gonna be Wednesday coming back together y'all. I don't know I don't know what the theme is. I think I don't know. I don't want to venture a guess, because I don't know everything that we're having. But if you were here with us the last time we had Wednesday night, or any time that we've had Wednesday night, you'll know that it never disappoints. You should trust the meals at this point, because they're always fabulous. And I know this week is going to be great, and I know that the next week is going to be special, because that's going to be our last one of the year. But this week, we're actually going to be finishing up the why we believe what we believe, what we do, that kind of stuff, what we do in worship, why my sermons are the way that they are. why we sing hymns and psalms. What are the psalms even? So we're gonna be talking about that and the structure of our worship service and that sort of thing. You're gonna have the opportunity to ask questions. I don't know what my hot take is gonna be yet. So I don't know, we'll see about that. But nevertheless, y'all, I'm really excited about Wednesday night. We eat from six until seven. If you have a teenager in your life, at this point they would be going, Six seven, you know that kind of thing and ask them if you don't know what that is But that's Wednesday night the next Wednesday night. We're meeting again our Church congregational Christmas dinner is going to be Wednesday. I believe that is the 17th the the choir's cantata they're practicing next door as I'm recording this but the choir is doing their cantata and and the children are doing their Christmas pageant on the 21st. It's gonna be precious, y'all. So anyway, plan accordingly. Oh, and two weeks, in two weeks on the 14th. Yeah, I guess it will be the 14th. Is that the date? I need to look at my calendar here. Yeah, so on Sunday the 14th at my house, you're invited from three till five. We're just gonna have a drop in at the Mance. We'll have punch and I don't know, I might make dip. I'm definitely gonna have, Well, I say this, I'm planning on having meatballs and other things. We'll have cookies. It's just a drop in, no program, just come on by. Watch your step. We got two dogs now if you come in the back way. Don't come in the back way, come to the front of the side door. But anyway, excited about that stuff, so plan accordingly. Now, enough of that stuff. Let's get to the subject of the day, and that is Matthew chapter nine. We're continuing along. Jesus is in Capernaum at this point. He's still doing his thing. Remember, I have pictures for you. The last time that we were together, we dealt with Jesus healing the paralytic man I remember the order of things. First, he forgave the man of his sins, and then he healed him. Jesus prioritizes, right? He knows that it's kind of like that whole, give a man a fish, he'll be full for a day, teach a man to fish, you know, that sort of thing. Jesus has that mindset because it's the correct one. If Jesus would have healed him alone in his body and yet not forgiven his sins, well, what good is that? You know, certainly it's a better life for a little while, but then an eternity in hell afterwards? Jesus starts with what's really important. And remember, that's what all the miracles do. They are signs pointing forward to a much greater, deeper reality. Not that the people that receive the wonders and the miracles weren't blessed. They were. It's not that these things aren't important. They are pieces of evidence. But what they point to, that's what's really important. They point to the authenticity, number one, and the exclusivity, number two, of Jesus Christ. That he's not just a man. He's not just a prophet. He is God the Son. And we see him claiming this even more so in the passage that we come to today when he has to deal with some Pharisees. Now, interestingly enough, thus far in Matthew, we've gotten little hints at it, but we haven't really seen the full force. of Jesus having to deal with the Pharisees of his day. But today, we see just an outright confrontation between Jesus and them. Now, I want you to remember before we get to the text, in Israel at the time, and I joke around about this, I tell people, I know it's hard for us to envision, but in Israel at this time, there were really only two major parties. You had the Sadducees and you had the Pharisees. The Sadducees were seen as liberal. The Pharisees were seen as the everyday man. Pharisees were super conservative. Sadducees were liberal. I know that it's hard for us to grasp a society that can be divided by such terms. Obviously, it's a little tongue-in-cheek. But Jesus deals with the Pharisees who are conservatives when it comes to the law and theologically speaking. But y'all, they're hypocrites. They're a brood of vipers. They're whitewashed tombstones. They're the sons of hell. And these are not my terms. That's what Jesus called them. They're hypocrites of the highest variety, saying everything they had belonged to the temple. And they said that so they didn't have to help their dying parents. I mean, they're just the worst, y'all. They're legalists. They have added to God's Word. The Sadducees take away from God's Word. They didn't believe in the resurrection, for instance, and the supernatural. And which one's worse, taking away from God's word or adding to God's word? The answer is yes. Somehow, some way, they are both worse than one another. And equally, the penalty for this sort of thing is damnation. Pharisees did it, the Sadducees did it, but the Pharisees are much more numerous. And he realized that the Sadducees controlled the temple. And it's not that they weren't present in other parts of the country, but Jesus is in Capernaum. He's not in Jerusalem here. He's dealing with the everyday man, dealing with the synagogue. The Sadducees were over the temple. The Pharisees controlled the synagogues. That's where Jesus is. That's where Jesus is doing what he's doing. So he has run-ins a lot more often with the Pharisees. They're much more numerous than the Sadducees anyway. And so to that end, we pick up today in Matthew chapter nine, we're gonna start reading in verse nine. What he's just done is he's healed the paralytic. And then as we find out from there, as Jesus went on from there, all right, we're gonna pray. And then that's where we will begin, but let's go to the Lord. Our God and our Father, we pray that you would be with us now. Give us wisdom, give us understanding. Help us to see what your word is saying here and why it's so important that we would evaluate ourselves in light of what we read here. That we would know who we are and be able to assess where we're at spiritually speaking. Because Father, we want to be captive to your word. We want to do what you want us to do. So please guide us now. And we pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, y'all, so Matthew chapter nine, beginning in verse nine, it says this, it says, as Jesus went on from there, so in other words, it's right after he's healed the paralytic man, 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. Now, time out. This is one of those things where we're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Matthew. All right, good, that's where Matthew came from. Yeah, but y'all, you gotta look at the deeper thing here. As I've just said, all of Israel is divided into two parties, religiously speaking, but really, Along the same lines, two parties, politically speaking, the Sadducees were seen as the Roman lapdogs, okay? They did whatever the Romans wanted them to do, and so they were given control over the temple. That meant that they made lots and lots of money. There was another group, also, that were considered to be lapdogs of the Roman Empire, and that would have been the tax collectors. Realize how tax collecting work. Rome issued a quota of taxes per region, per city, et cetera, et cetera. What do we find when Jesus is born? That Mary and Joseph have to go to Bethlehem, the city of his origin, in order for the census to pay taxes. So that's how the Roman Empire worked. The Roman Empire let people do their thing, all that kind of stuff, fine, as long as they paid their taxes. And Matthew is a Jew. But how Rome worked was they didn't send in employees. They didn't have enough. The Roman Empire was the known world at that time. And so when Rome went in and conquered a place, they would find people to work for them to collect taxes. And the way that it worked is the tax collector was given a quota for a certain geographical region. And he was told, bring us our money. Do whatever you need to do to get it. And it's up to you how much you really take in. This is how much we require. And we will give you the resources of the Roman Empire in order for you to collect the taxes that you need. Put two and two together. There were a lot of tax collectors that were rather dishonest people. And it's how they made their living, to be fair about it. But if Rome said, all right, I need $15 per person, and the tax collector shows up at your house with Roman soldiers and says, hey, yeah, just in from Rome. I'm going to need $30 per person. five people in the house, you know, that Rome gets its cut, and then you get to keep the rest. And usually they would pay Roman soldiers to be extra mean, all that kind of stuff. Somebody sent me a meme recently about a guy showing up saying, oh, it's time for taxes. And the guy said, my Lord, the taxes are too high. We cannot pay. And the meme said, the guy said, hey, you talk a lot of smack for somebody whose house is made out of such flammable materials. In other words, pay up or we're gonna burn your house down. Or you could be thrown into prison. I mean all sorts of things. Now you put two and two together. Popular of a guy do you think Matthew would have been? Or any tax collector for that matter. Especially given how much the Jews hated Rome. Remember, they're occupied by Rome. Anybody that was in the Roman government's, what's the word I'm looking for? Thinking of a baseball term, anyone that's in their bullpen, if you will, right, that's there, that's ready to serve the Roman Empire, the Jewish people are going to hate. And Matthew would have fallen into that. By the way, not every tax collector is horrible. Zacchaeus was not a cheat. People talk all sorts of things about Zacchaeus, right? They say, oh, he's dishonest. He said he would repay. No, Zacchaeus said, if I've ripped anybody off, I will repay him. The idea we get is that Zacchaeus was not a dishonest man. But he was considered to be a terrible person because he was a tax collector. And people hated Rome. And so they would have hated Matthew. Now, why do I bring that up? Because here we find out about Jesus calling Matthew a tax collector. First off, you see that Jesus just kind of said to him, hey, you're mine, follow me. And Matthew did. There's no everybody bow your heads and close your eyes. And if you're interested in coming after me, I see one hand, I see another. No, just like with Paul on the road to Damascus when he was Saul going to terrorize Christians. So it was with Matthew, Jesus said, follow me. He told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. But realize something interesting here. You have Matthew on one side, and then you have Jesus calling Simon to be a disciple. Now, we're not reading about that right now, but you know what Simon is called? He's Simon, not Simon Peter, let the others know, Simon the Zealot. You know what a zealot was? It was someone who existed to overthrow the Roman government. So in Jesus's group of 12, you've got one guy who worked for the Roman government as a tax collector, and then you got another guy that's described as a zealot that exists to overthrow the Roman government. Fascinating, right? Just goes to show that Jesus crosses all cultural lines. And in fact, Jesus exists to break those sorts of things up. Now, that's not a touchy-feely kumbaya moment where we say, oh, it doesn't matter what your political persuasion is, et cetera, et cetera. No, it does. Because it matters what you support. It matters what you believe. It matters what you're in favor of. This is not saying that you get a pass and you can be whatever you want to be, et cetera, et cetera. Leave all the politics aside. Now, you got to give an account for the things that you support. So don't misunderstand me here. What I am showing through Jesus Calling Matthew here is something really important is that Jesus is no respecter of political parties, that sort of thing. What Jesus wants is not for you to be a Republican that happens to be a Christian or a Democrat that happens to be a Christian. He wants you to be a Christian. He wants you to be his follower. And you may happen to ascribe to certain political ideals, but that's what should come first, you see. Now, I'm finished preaching on that subject. Let's continue with the text. So, 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. Now, here's the interesting thing. You might say, okay, well, we get tax collectors, and what are the other sinners? They're those that have made a lot of hay out of this. They're those that say, oh, well, it means that they're you know, prostitutes and drunkards and all this kind of stuff, that's not what it says. It uses the term sinner, but the context of that term is in what we're about to see. We know that there are tax collectors, but the idea that we get from the text is not necessarily that these people are even wicked, terrible people, but instead, it's people that are seen as sinners by the Pharisees. In other words, they don't fit into the box that others have built for them. Now, might there be prostitutes? I guess it's possible. We don't get that from the text. It just says that they're sinners. That 1984 NIV even puts quotations around sinners, which I think is appropriate here. Why do I say that? Well, verse 11. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked the disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? You know, Matthew is writing this not saying that these people were sinners. He's saying that's how the Pharisees viewed them, okay? Tax collectors included. And Matthew doesn't go into that anymore. Instead, he goes straight to what Jesus said. It says, on hearing this, verse 12, 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. Now y'all, it's really important what Jesus is doing there. He's actually quoting, excuse me, Hosea chapter six. And if you know anything about the book of Hosea, you know, it's about a prophet named Hosea and his wife named Gomer who keeps out and well, keeps going out and prostituting herself. I think it's the King James puts it, she goes out whoring. Again and again and again. And Hosea keeps going out and getting her and bringing her back and going out and bringing her back. Y'all, the point of Hosea and Gomer is not that it's okay for Gomer to go out and be a prostitute. The point of Hosea and Gomer and the whole book of Hosea is that that's what God did with his people of old. Again and again and again, they kept leaving him and prostituting themselves to these gods and goddesses of Canaan. And God was faithful. as Hosea was faithful and went and got his wife. So God always went and got his people. But what he's quoting there is a passage from Hosea chapter six, where he's talking about what's really pleasing to God. And that is not a sacrifice to pay your debt. What he wants in the first place is mercy. What he wants in the first place is grace and love and devotion. And what Jesus says here to the Pharisees, y'all, don't misunderstand what Jesus is saying here. He's not saying to them, oh, no, no, no, no, you guys misunderstood. I'm not coming to eat with you because you guys are good to go. You guys are fine. Hey, listen, you're not sick, so you don't need a doctor, and you're not sinners, so you don't need salvation. That is not what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is hitting them square between the eyes with the reality that everybody's a sinner. The difference is that some people recognize they're a sinner, and they're in need of mercy, and they're in need of grace. And then there are some people who are rotten sinners, but they're haughty, and they don't believe that they need forgiveness. What Jesus is talking about here is very practical. It's so utilitarian. And y'all, it's this. If you think you're squared away, if you're innocent, if you're not a sinner and you don't need the grace of God, y'all, listen, if you don't need salvation from your sin, if you don't need salvation, you don't need a savior. And what good is Jesus to you? Saving from what? If you're good to go, if you're righteous in your own eyes. The problem is is that you're not righteous. That's what's between the lines here with the Pharisees. Nobody's righteous, except for God. When we get to Matthew 19, Jesus is gonna deal with the rich young ruler. He says, hey, what do I need to do to get into heaven? And Jesus says, well, you just follow the laws. But before he says that, he says, good. Why are you talking about what's good? Only God is good. And then Jesus says to him, go follow the law. And he said, well, I've done this. What the rich young ruler has said is, you know, Jesus just said, hey, only God is good. And the rich young ruler said, well, I'm good too. I'm righteous. I've followed these since I was a boy. He had y'all, but in his own eyes, he was good to go. And y'all, when that sort of thing happens, it's not that you don't need Jesus. You double extra need Jesus. The problem is, is that there's no room for him inside you. If you think you're good to go, if you think you're just set, then you need to pay attention to what God's word says, and you need to pay attention to what Jesus is saying here to the Pharisees, where he's saying, hey, I didn't come for the righteous, I came for sinners. I came for people who recognize the fact that they need me. Now, you probably know where this devotional is going. Do you realize how much you need Jesus? I can't do this for anybody else. I can do it for me. I need him. I need him so badly Whether it's the things that I do that I shouldn't do or whether it's the things that I leave undone that I should have done Isaiah said it best when he said all of our righteous acts on their own. They're just like filthy rags. They're like feminine hygiene products. I And he said this in a society where a woman was seen as unclean, spiritually speaking, ceremonially speaking, when she faced that. And he said, all of our righteousness, that's all it amounts to. Y'all realize that even our tears, when we cry out over our sinfulness, even our tears need to be washed. We need to be cleansed, need to be made whole. And that can only happen through Jesus Christ. Do you realize how much you need him? It is my prayer that you do. But the beautiful thing is this, for those that do, all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. And not only will they be saved, what a beautiful picture here, where Jesus comes, He just forgave the paralytic sin. And what do we find Him doing? We see Him calling Matthew. We see Him sitting down and dining. Not only will Jesus forgive your sins, He'll dwell with you forever. What a wonderful Savior we serve. What a glorious Father we have. Again, do you realize this? It's my prayer that you do. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we thank you so much for your grace and for your mercy. We thank you for Jesus and what he did. That Father, he came to save the lost and we are lost without you. So please, for any here that have not trusted in you, draw them to yourself now. But for those of us who have, Oh, Father, let us see our great need for you and let us positively revel in the goodness of Jesus Christ. And we pray all of these things in his name. Amen. Well, I'd like to thank you all for being a part of this time. Lord willing, we'll be back together tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Go ahead and mark those calendars. And oh yeah, it's Monday. Sunday morning is a Monday morning decision. Go ahead and start making plans for this Lord's day. Had a wonderful first Sunday of Advent. The thing messed up, so it didn't record all of it, but we sang Christmas carols, right? Preached on Micah chapter five. This week is something different, but it's Advent. It's going to be a different thing every week, but make plans to be there. Thanks so much.