Here are the notes and questions from LightHouse last night:
1. What did Jesus come to earth to do?
2. Who are our society’s tax collectors and sinners?
Matthew has been hammering home again and again that Jesus is the Messiah; in his words, in his actions, in each successive miracle which is more amazing than the last and which declares him to be God’s long awaited King. He teaches in ways that amaze and astound, he heals and makes the unclean clean, he commands out of control creation and it is calm and he has authority over demons and spirits who fear him as the Son of God who will one day judge them. But why did Jesus come? What was his mission? Was it to be a good teacher? Was it to be a miracle worker? Was it to cast out demons? Was it to give us a glimpse of what the kingdom of God could be like? Was it to be an example for us to follow? These next three incidents show us clearly who Jesus is and what his mission is. But as Jesus reveals who he is and what he has come to do we see the growing conflict between him and the Jews and what they expected.
1. Jesus came to forgive sin
Jesus heads back to Capernaum(1) and some friends bring a paralysed man on his mat to Jesus. What do they want Jesus to do? To heal him. But what does Jesus say? “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus doesn’t use the obvious words, in fact his words seem almost disconnected from the problem at hand. And Jesus is very deliberate in the words he uses. We see later on that this was a deliberate choice to say your sins are forgiven, because he later on uses the words get up and walk. So why does Jesus use this deliberately provocative phrase knowing how the Pharisees would react? Because Jesus is confronting false expectations about the Messiah and his mission.
(3)God alone can forgive sins. In Psalm 51 David teaches that all sin is against God therefore only God can forgive sin. In Isaiah 43and 44 God says “I, even, I am he who blots out your transgressions” and “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud. Your sins like the morning mist.” The law and the provision of the temple and the sacrifices declared that only God could forgive sin. But here is Jesus claiming to be able to forgive this man’s sin. It’s no wonder they accuse him of blasphemy.
Jesus claims to be able to do what God alone can do, and he explains why? How does he describe himself(6)? “The Son of Man”. Jesus is claiming that he is the Son of Man, the one who in Daniel 7 enters God’s throne room and is “given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”
Again Jesus explodes their limited, little ideas of the Messiah as a warrior king who would restore Israel. His claim is astounding; I am the Son of Man worthy of worship because I am God the Son come with his authority, glory and sovereign power and thus I can forgive sin. And in healing the man Jesus proves that he can do it(4-7), the healing is an outward sign of the forgiveness that Jesus has granted the man. Jesus can and does forgive sin.
Jesus gets to the heart of the man’s problem not the paralysis but his real problem, sin. Israel think they need a conquering warrior king who will boot out the Romans and restore them to what they once were in terms of international prestige but Jesus comes as a Saviour to forgive sin because their real problem isn’t the Romans it’s their hearts. Their real problem is sin.
Our society is no different is it? We jump from one social programme to another to another hoping it will solve crime, social breakdown, poverty and so on. But none works, not one solves the problem because they don’t go deep enough. They are about surface change, behavioural change, but Jesus mission shows us God’s diagnosis of the problem, it is sin and the only solution is Jesus who comes to forgive sin.
But notice that the people miss the point(8), they still can’t break out of small expectations, they still can’t see who Jesus is, they just go home amazed that God would give such authority to humans or to a man, they will not recognise who Jesus really is, and because of that they won’t accept the diagnosis of the problem or see him as the solution. You won’t come to Jesus for forgiveness until you recognise who he is.
2. Jesus comes to transform
We see Jesus mission again as he takes the initiative and approaches Matthew the Tax Collector. Jesus calls Matthew and Matthew responds by leaving and following. How did society view Matthew? An outcast, a collaborator, tainted, a sinner. But Jesus knows the power of grace to transform sinners into disciples. Jesus doesn’t just come to forgive he comes to transform.
What does Matthew do next? He throws a party, inviting Jesus to a meal populated by sinners and Jesus goes. Jesus mission is seen again in his actions, Jesus comes to forgive and transform sinners into disciples. But we also see that Jesus mission sets him on a collision course with the religious authorities. The religious thought of such people as defiling and were expecting the Messiah to condemn and crush such people whilst lifting up the righteous. But Jesus again confronts this false expectation, he is bigger than that, his mission is more amazing more radical than that.
(11)So the Pharisees charge Jesus with eating with tax collectors and sinners. The question they ask is a loaded one, eating with such people brought into question who Jesus was. Jesus answers them with a clear statement of his mission; (12)"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill. But go and learn with this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
They expect the messiah to condemn the sinner and uphold the righteous but Jesus seeks for, forgives and transforms the sinner and challenges the hypocrisy of those who think they are righteous. We see that in the quote Jesus uses from Hosea as he tells them that they need to go and look again at this scripture because they haven’t learnt what it means. Hosea is one of the most graphic books in the bible as Israel’s unfaithfulness is portrayed as adultery, with God as the faithful husband and Israel as the unfaithful wife who whores after others. God tells Israel’s leaders that though they practice religiously at the temple their hearts are rotten, they have forgotten what God is like; compassionate, faithful and merciful and they are nothing like God.
Jesus is saying the same thing to the Pharisees here, in fact in an ironic twist their charge in (11)proves it. They are God’s people but are nothing like God or the people he would have them be, they don’t live like a Son in the Father’s image there is no mercy, no love of the lost, just a cold hard shell of external religion. But Jesus is the image of the father in his compassion and loving seeking after the lost to transform and bring them back.
They will never see their need of Jesus, their need of forgiveness, their need to be transformed unless they accept his diagnosis. Their hard cold judgemental hearts show their need as much as the tax collectors and sinners. Jesus comes to save but they will not recognise him so they will not accept his diagnosis and therefore they don’t see their need of a Saviour.
Whose heart do we have? Are we like the Pharisees or like Jesus? Do we believe in the power of the gospel to transform anyone and everyone or think it is just for good people like us? We may know this in our heads but how does that translate into action, into our diary, into decision about where we work, where we send our children to school, where we live, who we invite into our homes, who we invite to church, who we spend time with?
Who are not just societies tax collectors and sinners but our tax collectors and sinners? We are to be like Jesus who is like God in holding out the gospel to tax collector and Pharisee alike because we know their need and we know the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
3. Jesus comes to create a new kingdom
Who comes to Jesus(14)? Disciples of John the Baptist. It’s worth noting that Jesus is so different, so radically ripping up the blueprint that even disciples of John come to Jesus. Indeed in 11v3 John the Baptist himself seems to need confirmation of who Jesus is, that might surprise us given John’s role as the fore-runner, but it just shows us how radically different Jesus ministry is from the expectations.
What is the question John’s disciples ask? Why don’t your disciples fast? Jesus answer seems a bit cryptic doesn’t it as he talks about a bridegroom and a feast.
The image Jesus uses is one you can find in a few places in the Old Testament where God is pictured as Israel’s husband (Is 62:4, Jer 2:2, Hosea 2:19), but Jesus applies it to himself. The Jews sometimes used this picture of the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom was often spoken if as a feast hence the image of the bridegroom and a banquet. In effect Jesus is saying they don’t fast, which was associated with mourning, because I’m here and I’m the one you have been waiting for, the waiting is over so they rejoice.
That would be a startlingly arrogant assumption if we said it wouldn’t it, but given what we have seen all the evidence that Jesus is the Messiah it is just a statement of fact. Jesus is the Messiah, the waiting is over, for the moment, the king is here.
But Jesus goes on to raise the stakes even higher with two pictures of the inability of the old to contain the new(16-17). Jesus uses these two pictures to show that the old structure of Judaism can’t hold his kingdom, because with his coming everything changes, he doesn’t come to do a patch up job but to bring something new. He comes to fulfil, he is the one it all points too and now everything is radically altered. Now that Jesus is here it is how you relate to him, whether you accept him or not, that matters.
Let’s just think about that for a minute, think about the Sermon on the Mount what does Jesus do, he raises the bar of the law, not adultery but no lustful looking, not don’t murder but don’t be angry. Think about the Passover at the last supper Jesus reinterprets the Passover; he is the lamb, his body the bread, his blood the wine. Think about the temple which Jesus says is now his body, it is in him that we now meet with God, or the sacrificial system there is no need for sin offerings to be made because he is the sin offering once for all. Everything changes, everything is made new now that the King is here bringing his kingdom, so that even fasting along with everything else changes.
Jesus comes to forgive sin to transform sinners and to bring about a new kingdom where relationship to him as Saviour, king and Lord is what matters not religious practice.
Do you see Jesus mission? To forgive sin, to transform sinners and to bring a radical new kingdom that explodes the confines of the old just as it brings a whole new way of relating to God by grace through him. That is the heart beat of the kingdom, shared by Father and by Son and the adopted blood bought children of grace.
1. Which groups from society are under-represented in our churches? Why is that? How can we reach them? What stops us and how does the gospel challenge that?
2. What does society say is wrong and how does it try to solve it? What does Jesus say?
3. What should our approach to fasting be? Should we or shouldn’t we and why?
4. How, why and where is Jesus mission both liberating and challenging for us?
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