3-1-09 Talking About God Without Feeling Weird

Lawton isn’t a real big town, pretty small really. I’d like you to take a bit of a geography test this morning. What’s on the corner of 3rd street and M-40? Fifth Third bank – yep. What’s across the street to the South? A gas station – yep! What’s across the street from the gas station to the West? Wagoners – a grocery story – yep. What does the bank offer the community? Money. And the gas station offers gas to motorist, and the grocery story offers food. These are all important things that each of these places offers our community, but what about us; what do we offer this community? Jesus, God’s love, good news, the Gospel.

 

Jesus said to His followers, you and me – the people of New Community:

 

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

 

Jesus did not entrust His good news to a bank or gas station, or a grocery store, although these are really good places. Instead, He gave it to His church. He gave it to us.

 

We are going to take a look at how we take this step of spiritual transformation. How do we actually become agents of good news, dispensers of God’s grace and love? I want to do that by looking at the story of a very unlikely follower of Jesus, a guy by the name of Matthew. He was also known as Levi, and part of what makes him very unlikely is his job, because he’s a tax collector. Now, tax collectors have never been particularly popular.

 

Does the date April 15^th ring a bell with anybody? Is that a happy day for anybody? Somebody sent me something where there’s a new tax form the IRS is sending out that only has two items on it. It’s very simple. (A) is “what did you earn in 2008?” And then (B) is, “Send it in.”

 

People have never really liked tax folks, but in Matthew’s day it was a lot worse. Matthew was a tax collector in Galilee. Now the way the tax deal worked at that time-some of you know that actual collectors, for the most part, were Israelites-but they were hated by the rest of Israel because they collaborated with Rome. Basically what they said was “I want to get rich so much that I will betray my own people and work with the Roman oppressors so that I can rake in as much money as possible for myself.” It was assumed that tax collectors were corrupt and that they were swindlers. They were also traitors to their people and their God. And, therefore, they were taboo.

 

They were the untouchables. Tax collectors were not allowed in the Synagogue. Tax collectors were not allowed to give testimony in court of law in Israel. No devout Israelite would eat with them, talk with them, fellowship with them or touch them. Nobody was considered farther from God than a tax collector. A good rabbi wouldn’t even look at one. Israelites had no use for them. Romans despised the tax collectors because they were Israelites, they were Jewish. The only person who would be civil to a tax collector was another tax collector.

 

Now Matthew was kind of a low level tax collector. He worked at kind of a tollbooth. In Galilee his boss was Herod Antipas. Herod wanted build a lot of buildings, and so he did as government officials often will, that it was going to take more money and so he figured more stuff that he could tax. He started collecting tolls on a road. People would remember when they used to be able to use this road out of Galilee for free. Now when they went on it, they had to pay a tax to the Romans and Matthew was the guy sitting at the tollbooth collecting the money.

 

How do you think people interacted with Matthew when they went through his booth? Think they said nice things to him? Keep the change? Have a nice day? Stuff like that? No. The best he could hope for was to be ignored. The worst that he would get was to be called scum or trash, because every culture has foul language to insult people and that’s what he got.

 

One other thing you need to know about Matthew. Some of you remember the story about John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, when he was beheaded. The guy that had John the Baptist beheaded was Matthew’s boss, Herod Antipas. Not just that, we find out a little bit later in the Gospel of Luke that

 

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to Him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” (Luke 13:31)

 

That’s the guy that was in charge in Galilee. That’s Matthew’s boss.

 

One day Jesus, the Rabbi, is going through Matthew’s tollbooth, but He stops and He looks Matthew right in the eye like he’s a person and He talks to Matthew. Not just that, He says to Matthew:

I want you to come. Follow Me. Matthew, I know all about you. I know your decisions, that you made money your God, that you put it higher than every other value. I know what you’ve been doing with your life, but I’ve decided I want you to be My friend. I’d like to invite you to be a part of My community, I’ll teach you. I’ll pray for you. I’ll eat with you. I’ll share life with you.

 

We’re told that Matthew got up and left everything-left his job, left his vocation, left his dreams, left all that money-and followed Jesus. (Luke 5:28)

 

Now you have to imagine the drama of this event because this turned Matthew’s life upside down. Imagine his vulnerability as Jesus introduces him to the other disciples. He’s the only tax collector in the group. Everybody hated tax collectors. They were especially hated by a group in Israel called the Zealots. The Zealots were kind of a radical political party. They hated Rome so much. They were regarded by Rome as terrorists. They would die before they would pay taxes to Rome or they would kill before they would pay taxes to Rome. Those are the Zealots.

 

One of the disciples who followed Jesus was known as Simon the Zealot. Now you imagine this moment. Jesus says, Matthew, meet Simon. Simon, meet Matthew. You guys are going to room together now as we travel around. We think it’s hard to have two people from two political parties in a small group? You think about Simon the Zealot and Matthew the Tax Collector.

 

In this Jesus community everybody is welcome and nobody’s perfect and anything’s possible. Matthew is so blindsided by grace, he had made so many bad decisions that no decent person would speak to him until Jesus and now he’s forgiven. Now he’s accepted. Now he’s given a clean slate. Now he’s part of a community. Now he has friends. Now Matthew is right with God. Now he’s got a new heart. Now he’s got a purpose for his life; he’s got something to live for. No wonder he left it all.

 

I know so many of us in this room could talk about the day when we were blindsided by grace and learned God wants me to be His daughter, His son. He wants to forgive me, give me a purpose for life. If you’ve never done that, that’s the way grace works. You can do that today. Right now you can say, God, I want Jesus to come into my life. I want to be forgiven and embraced and part of that new community.

 

That’s the beginning of spiritual life and anybody can have that. That’s grace. That’s what happens to Matthew. It’s been going on a long time.

 

But, after that happens, something keeps gnawing at Matthew. Something is festering inside him and will not let him alone. Matthew remembers his old friends, those tax collectors. He knows that to everybody else they are just part of the scenery at best, at best. To everybody else they are figures of contempt to be used by Rome and despised by Israel. But to Matthew they are all people. They all have a name, they all have a face, they all have a story. They are all his friends.

 

One thing Matthew knows for sure, if he doesn’t do something for those tax collectors, nobody else is going to do anything for them. Nobody else is going to get them to Jesus. He thinks and he thinks and he thinks. And then one day he has this out-of-the-box idea. He says,

I’ll have a party. My friends love parties. Nobody says no to a party and I will invite these unclaimed, despised, corrupt, traitorist tax collectors and I’ll invite Jesus, my Rabbi, because if I can just get those guys and Jesus in the same place, then Jesus will figure out what to do next. He will take it from there.

 

Now the Text doesn’t say this is really a radical idea, but I’m thinking this would have been radical to Jesus’ disciples and the rest of the Jewish community. Matthew’s saying, I want to have a party with tax collectors and Jesus.  Hugh Hefner and Billy Graham. Dennis Rodman and Mother Theresa. Paris Hilton and Pope Benedict. What do you think the other disciples would say? Not a good idea. Don’t even think about it. Jesus would never do it. It would trash His reputation. It would ruin His ministry.

 

But Matthew loves these tax collectors so much, he believes in Jesus so passionately, he can’t stop himself, and so he throws this party. You have to imagine this scene. This has never been done-a party for tax collectors, despised, rubbish, sinners-and the greatest Rabbi of Israel, Jesus. What would they talk about? I imagine at first the conversation is kind of superficial because they don’t know what to say to Jesus.

 

“So Jesus, like, who does your taxes for you?” But then Jesus makes them feel at home, and it gets a little deeper and Matthew is watching as his Rabbi, Jesus, is eating with these tax collectors and talking with them and laughing with them and listening to their stories about their lives and talking with them about their dreams and their experiences and how people hate them and how God must hate them too. He watches Jesus explain to them about how God loves them.

 

Matthew feels like his heart is going to pound right out of his chest. I’ll tell you what Matthew is thinking while he’s watching his friends and Jesus. He’s thinking, You know, all those years I thought making money was it. I thought getting rich, that’s what I was after. I was so deluded. This is it right here. I have people that I love and Jesus that I follow and bring them together. This is as good as it gets. This is the best.

 

Now, at this point in the story I want to get personal for a few moments and ask a few questions. The first question is: Do you know anybody who needs Jesus?

Or another way of putting it is: Who do I know that is so together that they do not need Jesus?

Who is in the I don’t need Jesus category? Another way of saying it is, is there anyone who doesn’t need God, because that’s who Jesus is – God in the flesh.

 

Do you think God ever looks down at the people in Northeast Van Buren county and God says to Himself:

You know, those people in that part of the county have it so together relationally, physically, financially, spiritually, emotionally, they really don’t need me at all. I don’t think God says that. I think sometimes we get so short-sighted that we forget that everybody sins and everybody dies and everybody faces an eternity with Christ or without Him.

 

Matthew and his party made it into the Bible. Why? Because that’s what it means to love God and love your neighbor. God loves every single person that he ever created and he wants a relationship with them. God already knows that person and he loves them, but many people don’t know the love of God and that saddens him. They will never experience the goodness of God. They will never know who they were created to be. They will never experience up there coming down here and they will never experience heaven when they die.

 

So, here’s a question: How many people do you know that don’t know God’s love. And then of those people how many of those people do you spend at least an hour a week with them. 98 percent of the people who come to know God’s love come to him through relationships. How are you doing at that? I have to confess, right now I’m not doing very good in this area.

 

I have to confess that I was doing pretty well at that for several years, but now, I’m sorry to say that my efforts and my time have turned toward people inside the church. I’m out of balance. This message has convicted me that I need to get back in balance.

 

Now, the only reason that I want to spend time with other people is because I want them to know and experience the love and goodness of God and because I see the goodness that God has placed inside of them and I want more of that for them.

 

How many of you have at least one person in your extended family like that? I’ll tell you what you are hoping if that’s the case. You are hoping there’s a Matthew in their life. You are hoping there’s somebody who knows them and loves them is so passionate about Jesus that they are just staying up nights thinking:

God, what is some way that I can get this person together with Jesus because everybody needs Jesus?

 

Second question:

If I take the risk of pointing someone towards Jesus, who can I always count on to be at work?

And the answer to that question is God. Any time I take a step toward pointing someone to Jesus, it’s never just me. 

 

Ninety-two year old, Pauline Jacobi, reads her Bible every day. Her strong faith keeps her going in life and in the process may have saved it. Jacobi had just finished putting away her groceries inside her car at a nearby Wal-Mart. Only seconds after Jacobi got into her car, a man jumped in the passenger side. The man told Jacobi he had a gun and that he would shoot her if she didn’t give him money.

she said “No”. I’m not loaded with money.

Jacobi told him “No” three times. Then she started to talk to him.

You know if you kill me I’ll go to Heaven and you’ll go to Hell.

She told him to ask God for forgiveness. She said,

Jesus is in this car and He goes with me everywhere I go.

He just looked around and the tears began to come in his eyes. Jacobi ministered to the man for 10 minutes inside her car. He says,

I think I’ll go home and pray tonight.

she said,

You don’t have to wait until tonight. You can just pray anytime you want to.

As tears were rolling down the man’s face, Jacobi voluntarily gave him all the money she had, $10.00. She said, “Don’t you spend it on whisky either.”

The man thanked her for the money and then…

Jacobi relates, “He kissed me on the cheek and then walked away.”

Isn’t that an unbelievable story?

Now, here’s the question:

Is some 92-year-old woman more courageous than you are?

Yeah, pretty much. Me too. But when we step into this stream, then it’s not just us at work any more.

 

Paul says to the Church of Colosi – writes this while he’s in prison

:

Devote yourselves to prayer… Pray for us that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, the good news, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should. (Colossians 4:2-4)

 

Any time anybody takes the risk of pointing somebody towards Jesus, then it’s not just me. You may not feel competent. You may not feel adequate. You may not feel like you can answer every question. That’s not the primary deal, because when I take that risk, then I step into the reality of a Kingdom dynamic where it’s not just me any more. God is at work in somebody’s heart and I don’t have to feel the burden of controlling the outcome. My job is just to say,

God, I will obey your promptings in every conversation as best I can-every interaction at work, at school, in my neighborhood, in a parking lot at Wal-Mart. God, just open a door.

Are you praying for open doors?

 

Another question, just on a personal level:

What’s keeping me from pointing people towards Jesus like Matthew did? What’s preventing that from happening in my life?

This is part of where understanding spiritual formation, spiritual maturity, and a love for folks that are far from God is really important, because people get this mixed up and it happened in Jesus’ day.

 

Interesting part of Matthew’s story. He throws this party. Jesus, Matthew and the tax collectors are there. Another group of people who were there are religious leaders. Only Matthew’s thrilled about this party. The religious leaders are actually put off by it.

 

The teachers of the law complained to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” (You see, to them spiritual maturity is getting distant, being separate from such people, looking down on them. Why do you associate with those guys?) Jesus answered them, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous. (Or those who think that they are righteous.) I have come to call sinners to repentance. (Luke 5:30-32)

 

That’s fundamental for us. These religious leaders thought of themselves as spiritually mature, but they are not doing what Matthew is doing. They are not throwing parties to get anybody to come to Jesus. They don’t have any pictures. They don’t have any names on their list, folks they are praying for, burdened for.

 

What’s worse; they don’t think this is a problem. They actually think they are quite mature spiritually, but the reality is, it is simply impossible to love the Father without sharing His heart for the people that Jesus gave His life for. You can’t love God without loving the people that God is always seeking and searching for.

 

The greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength; to love God with all that we are. You know how you do that? Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Who’s your neighbor? Anybody who you find yourself next to. Our vision is heaven on earth and what that means is that we are called to love people like Matthew did. He brought people to Jesus. Why is Jesus so important? He’s the only one who truly knows who we were created to be, and he’s the only one who has the power to help us become who he created us to be.

 

Apart from Jesus we have no knowledge about what is right and wrong, good or bad. Rejection, insignificance, fear, hurt, brokenness, relational fights, marriages breaking, and the list goes on and on and on. God, through Jesus, wants to take those areas in our lives that are less than he created us for and transform them into goodness, joy, peace, and love. He wants us to experience the goodness that he created us for.

 

The bank offers the community money. The gas station offers the community gas. The grocery store offers us food, the church – New Community offers our community the redeeming work of Jesus, the Love of God the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit to sinners, people like you and me AND like everyone out there. God calls us to GO and make disciples. Let’s learn together what it means to do that with Matthew.