Sorry if this is a duplicate, had some issues with internet service the past
week.
In der Liebe Christi,
Rev. Kurt Hering, Pastor
Trinity Lutheran Church
Layton, UT
SERMON for The 4TH SUNDAY after PENTECOST: June 8, 2008
"Jesus Sits with Sinners"
TEXT: Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold,
many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His
disciples. Matthew 9:10
I. What a beautiful picture we have in our Gospel today. Jesus, the Christ,
the Son of the living God, sitting down to dinner with all manner of people.
The Pharisee's question of the disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with
tax collectors and sinners?" shows they neither knew Jesus nor themselves.
For Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Messiah, who came to
save sinners. That is His very name, Jesus, Jahweh saves, that is I Am
Salvation. And there is not one among them or us who is not a sinner.
II. Why did Jesus eat with sinners?
A. Unsinners don't need Him.
B. Unsinners cannot recognize Him.
C. If He did not eat with sinners, He would have to eat alone.
III. Now imagine Jesus were to come today. Where would He go to find sinners
and eat with them? Right here. Unless we realize and confess that we are,
each of us, a sinner and even more the worst of all sinners, He does not
invite us to eat with Him.
We are not Pharisees gathered here today to show God how much you love Him,
or how much you have done for Him; to get His attention by your many words
of prayer and petition, or by your beautiful songs of praise. We are sinners
gathered here by the Lord to receive His attention, to be forgiven your sins
and strengthened in faith unto eternal life by His precious Word, for Him to
lavish you with His love and send you forth into the sinful world to speak
this loving Word of forgiveness of sin, life and salvation and to sin no
more. This is what Jesus means when He says to Matthew and to all His
baptized disciples, "Follow Me."
IV. Now this text, this message that Jesus eats with sinners can be a real
land mine for the pastor to preach. For if we take it out of the context of
the rest of Scripture, we can make it say all kinds of things. And if the
pastor is not aware of and ready to teach the Baptized "to observe all
things that I have commanded you," (Matt 28:20 NKJ) there is real danger
that the Baptized will be led to believe in some kind of universalism that
says since Jesus came to save sinners and eat with them, that everybody is
going to heaven and will be at His banquet table.
This is simply not true, as Jesus points out very clearly in the words of
our Gospel from last week, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall
enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in
heaven....And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from
Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"
Out of a desire to offend no one or a fear that we will turn people off of
or away from God, there is the temptation for the pastor and/or his
congregation to use this passage as rationale to ignore and excuse all kinds
of sin, because it is what Jesus did isn't it? Ate with sinners?
While we must admit that, yes, Jesus ate with sinners, we also must not
forget that He did not eat with ALL the sinners. He ate with those sinners
He taught and He taught those sinners with whom He ate. And that is the
pattern and command He gives to the baptized, forgiven people of His church
and those He has called to shepherd them.
In the verse that precedes our Old Testament lesson from Hosea we read about
what must happen to sinners before they seek the Lord's face and sit down to
eat with Him:
"For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of
Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no
one shall rescue. After I will return again to My place till they
acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction
they will earnestly seek Me."
And this is not just Old Testament religion speaking either. The Apostle
Paul warns those who would mistake forgiveness, which is deliverance from
our sin, for license, which is permission to keep on sinning:
"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor
revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were
some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." (1
Cor 6:9_11 NKJ)
False teachers tell you that you can continue in these things. Our Baptism
into the Holy Christian faith teaches us otherwise:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you
not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into
death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been
united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in
the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was
crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we
should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from
sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with
Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.
Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died
to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise
you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in
Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body,
that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as
instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as
being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness
to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law
but under grace. (Rom 6:1_14 NKJ)
Yes we are under grace. Though we are sinners, we are forgiven our sin and
freed from it for Jesus desires mercy not sacrifice. That is, because
sacrifice is of men but mercy is of God.
By outward appearance and according to the works of men, Jesus sits at the
table with sinners. But by the inner reality and according to the work of
God, Jesus sits at the table with His saints. Saints not given to their sin
but sinners clothed in His righteousness.
Therefore, we who belong to our Father in heaven and are kept by the Holy
Spirit with Christ Jesus in His church, teach repentance -- that is hatred
for our sin and turning away from it to the forgiveness Christ Jesus earned
on Calvary. This is precisely what the prophet Hosea is speaking of in our
Old Testament lesson today when he says, "Come, and let us return to the
LORD; for He has torn, but He will heal us; he has stricken, but He will
bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise
us up, that we may live in His sight."
Thanks be to God our Father, and His precious Son Jesus Christ. We are not
doomed to live in our sin and damned to live without God. For Jesus has
suffered, died and risen for us. Everything the prophet Hosea writes about
the people of God has been visited upon His Son and our Savior, Jesus
Christ, in our place. Truly, in Christ, we ourselves were torn and stricken
on the cross. By pouring out His Holy precious blood and His innocent
suffering and death on Calvary some 2000 years ago He has forgiven the sins
of the whole world. In the waters of our Baptism, in the confession &
absolution of our liturgy, in the proclamation of the Gospel, in the body
and blood of the Lord's Supper, in all of these things we have been revived
and raised up with Christ to come and return to the Lord our God. For in
these things the Lord Jesus Christ is present today to "revive us; ... [and]
raise us up, that we may live in His sight" even as He forgives you all your
sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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