“What does Jesus desire?” The scripture for this week is Matthew 9:9-13.

The mercy of God does not have a time stamp or a job description.  His mercy on the cross is sure, and we can’t show mercy better than Him. Point to the cross of Jesus in your life and the lives of others, regardless of how it looks, and God will honor your faith. Have a blessed day!

  “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”- Matthew 9:13. 
#WhatJesusdesires
#Hisbloodavailedforme

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Oh, do you need a Bible? No, I do not. You don't? I cheated. You cheated? Well, everybody, please stand.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Grab the microphone button.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Yeah, that way everybody can hear me. I'm reading Matthew 9, 9 through 19. 13. 13. Okay. Jesus forgives and heals a paralyzed man. Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over, and came to his town. Some people brought him a paralyzed man lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Hey, Matthew 9. Oh, yeah, keep going. Never mind. You're good.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Am I good?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, you're good. Keep going. Okay. Pastor Zamora. I'll leave it all fit.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Got me nervous up here now, Pastor.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Keep going.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

All right, all right. I'll keep I'll continue.

unknown 1:03

Please.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

At this point, at this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, This fellow is blasphemy. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, wait a minute, I am off.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Wait a minute. Let's uh let's start this over, people. Forgive me. Alright, the calling of Matthew.

unknown 1:28

Very good.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

As Jesus went from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth. Follow me, he told him. And 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. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? On hearing this, Jesus said, It is not healthy to meet a doctor but to sit. But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I have not come to call the righteousness but the sinners. Word of God for the people of God.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Yes, sir. And now, Lord, may the words of my mouth, meditation of my heart, be fully acceptable, graceful, and worthy in your sight. For you are and forever shall be our strength and our redeemer. Amen. What does God desire? What does he desire for your life and for my life? Today I want to talk about Jesus desiring mercy for you and for me and the difference his mercy can make. Our text today is one of the hallmarks of the Christian life. Jesus invites us to realize something critical. Worship can be formed by music preferences. It can be formed by music preferences and music styles. It's okay to prefer contemporary music or traditional music. However, real worship, listen to this, is also rooted in mercy and relationships. A classic case of the mercy of Jesus that Jesus was talking about took place in the 1970s and the 1980s. Pastor Winsglow or Wincy Pedilia was a Christian leader in the Philippines under the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Because Pedilia spoke out against human rights abuses, disappearances, torture, kidnapping political opponents, all the things, he was arrested and imprisoned and repeatedly tortured. Fortunately, Pedilia survived. And after the dictatorship fell in 1986, a truth commission was formed in the Philippines, and victims were asked to come forward and testify against their torturers. Many did, demanding justice. Pedilia was asked what he wanted done to the men that tortured him. Listen to this. He said, Here's what I want done for the men tortured to me. I want to meet them. And listen to this. I want to forgive them. I want to meet them and I want to forgive them. So the commission arranged a meeting. It's kind of weird, but we'll do it anyway. One by one, the men who had held Pedalia down and beaten him and waterboarded him were brought into the room. Some of them were ashamed. Some were defiant. And they said, I tried to kill you then. If I could, I'd kill you now. And it mixed all of the above. But then Pedilia looked at each person and said this. He didn't excuse it. He said, What you did was evil. What you did was wrong. But I'm a follower of Jesus and he commands me to forgive, so I forgive you and I release you from the debt you owe me. I will not pursue revenge or vengeance. One of the tortures that Pedelia had talked to, and he wanted to that he said this to, he broke down. He broke down and said, Pedilia, would you pray for me? Pray for my soul, pray for who I am. When a journalist later asked, how in the world could Pedalia forget the man who not only betrayed him but the entire nation? Pedelia said this. He said, if I had demanded justice, I would have remained their prisoner. I would have remained their prisoner. My hatred would have kept me in that cell years ago. Forgiveness set me free, but they did not deserve it. The Bible calls that mercy. So let's talk about it today. Let's talk about the mercy that this isn't just Pastor John passing on advice. This is what Jesus said. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, he said. So let's talk about the mercy that Jesus desires and the difference he can make. Number one, the mercy of Jesus is transformative. As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting up the tax collector's booth. Follow me, he told him. And Matthew immediately got up and followed him. The story is dramatic when you consider the backstory. Matthew was a tax collector. Not just any tax collector, okay? He was a publican. He was a Jew working for the Roman occupation, collecting taxes from his own people. In Jewish society, this was about as unpatriotic and low as one could get. Reputation be darned. He went to go work for Rome, and he is seen as a traitor to the nation. Tax collectors were deemed religious outcasts. They were considered ritually unclean. They were excommunicated from a synagogue. To put it in modern terms, if Matthew was coming to first Methodist today, we lived in that time. Matthew couldn't come in. You gotta leave, brother. You're a traitor. Not just to our church, you're a traitor to the country. Unpatriotic, right? That's what happened to Matthew. It was assumed that tax collectors were thieves and extorting more than what was owed to their line in their own pockets. They were grouped with sinners, Gentiles, even prostitutes. For Jesus to even speak with Matthew was scandalous. Why are you talking to him? Isn't he a traitor to a nation? Isn't he a traitor to our faith? Why would you invite someone so morally corrupt and the traitor to the nation to follow you? For Jesus to invite Matthew to become a disciple, a student who would share in the life and ministry of Jesus was not something that the Jewish world would have endorsed. In Jewish culture, the dynamic was reversed. A student would seek out a rabbi. One of you would come up to me and say, Hey John, can I be your disciple? Can I follow you? Can I mimic you? Can I copy everything that you do? That's what was done in that time period. Jesus breaks the pattern entirely. He doesn't wait for Matthew to come to him and say, Can I be your disciple? He doesn't check Matthew's references or moral qualifications. He goes directly to the most despised person in the community and says, Follow me. The text says that there was no negotiation with Matthew. He didn't say, Eh, let me go check with my boss. Let me go check with people before I leave. He says he got up immediately and followed him. This wasn't a slow, deliberate conversion. It wasn't a, hey, can I visit your church for a couple weeks? Let's try it out. He left. Said, there's eternal life. There is life worth having. So he followed him. It was a clear, trusting act of surrender. Lute's gospel adds this line that Matthew left everything and followed Jesus. Could you leave everything that Jesus ever blessed you with? Just to follow him. That's what Matthew did. The mercy of God transformed my own life in the year 2009. I have shared bits of this story, but some stories are worth repeating. Amen. Brianna and I were living in Jacksonville, Texas. I was coming off a year of teaching which I didn't feel like I had the best year teaching. I knew it, my administrators knew it, my co-teachers knew it. I knew I didn't have the best year. But that was also the same year that we adopted Evan. I didn't have the best year of teaching, but we also adopted Evan. Here's the kicker. The school I was driving to, while we had adopted heaven in this school year, the school I was driving to was 40 miles away. So I told you Anna. I said, I don't like driving 40 miles one way. 80 miles round trip. I want to be closer. But if you know the teaching world, you know you just can't sign up like a sacking groceries at the grocery store. You gotta wait for something to open up. Friends, I had a conundrum. I knew I needed to be a good father, but I knew I also needed to work. I could lead kids. I just needed someone to show me mercy, to give me an opportunity to build on what I had learned in my second year of teaching. So I prayed every day for the mercy of God to show Himself. Father, please just show your mercy. Just give me a shot open somewhere so I can be a dad, but also continue to do which at the time I was called to do, which is teach and coach. It was a rough summer. Could I continue to work and teach? Choosing between family and work was the most conflicted I'd ever been. The big question was, did I deserve that shot? Friends, I don't want to hear it. Sure you did, John. Okay. Show me anybody that deserves something from God. Friends, that's not mercy, that's entitlement. I didn't want to be that kind of Christian that felt like I deserved a shot from the Lord. I needed his mercy. Did I deserve it? Did I deserve an opportunity to be closer to home and work with my family in the school that I was called to teach in? Or was the Lord going to tell me, sorry, John, you're stuck? But then in July of that summer, the Lord opened the door. Coach Anderson at Westwood in Palestine called me and said, Hey, Coach Thomas, you got a job yet? He invited me to come in and interview, but he also encouraged me. He said, John, I know you think you had a bad year. I don't think you made anyone mad, but let's see what you learned and what happens if you come to work for us. That moment of mercy led to a couple teacher awards from Westwood. I'm grateful for that moment. If you talk to my wife, she will tell you that the greater thing that happened out of that moment of mercy wasn't just awards, it was transformation. When I understood that repentance is not just telling God sorry. Repentance is also responding to his mercy with a desire to change and taking steps to do so. I set alarms for everything now. Since that year. Even if it's something silly like Bible devotions, I set an alarm for it. It didn't get an alarm, it doesn't happen. I set alarms for everything now. I did more at home to help Rihanna with dishes. Fold and clothes. Sorry, husbands, you don't get off the hook. When I began to preach part-time in 2013 and dropped coaching, I took those lessons of mercy and transformation and I applied it to my ministry. I had a full-time teaching job, no coaching job, but I also had two part-time churches, and Brooklyn have been born by that time. You talk about busy. What did I do? I chose, this is a good word to consider. I chose to not let responsibilities stop me from doing the small things well. Friends, that needs to be written down. You know how many times I hear as a pastor, well, I've got this, this, and this. Well, that's great. Did you do the small things well? Everyone thinks responsibilities are the only things we got to do. Yeah, that's a part of it. But if you don't do the small things well, if you don't do them well, where are you going? I chose to not let responsibilities stop me from doing the small things well. If I had an assignment dude for course of study and ministry, I blew up my professor's cell phone. Almost obnoxious. Every day called, hey, what about this? What I need to do with this. Ask me heaven. Every day. If I had to register with a conference, Wade Harmon was our conference registrar, and he told me a story one day. He said, John, I'm just going to tell you. There are some days when you called to make sure you had all your steps ready, where my wife would look at the phone and say, Honey, it's John again. What do you want me to do? Hang up. But, friends, that's what I did. I was not going to let anybody take care of my walk for me. Wade wasn't going to do it. My wife wasn't going to do it. The conference sure wasn't going to do it. Because of that moment of mercy and transformation with Coach Anderson, those moments of transformation almost never happened. But because Coach Anderson called me and showed me mercy that summer of 2009, he knew I had a bad year. He took me on anyway. Said, let's see what we can do. The mercy of Jesus is transformative. It's also relational. Next piece of our sermon: while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and able to them and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? On hearing this, Jesus said, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I have not come to call the righteous but sinners. The radical nature of the invitation of Jesus is underscored by what happens next. Matthew gets the host for dinner. Again, he's a traitor to Israel, and Jesus says, go set up the party. He gets the host for dinner, and the guest list as many tax collectors and sinners. The religious leaders, the Pharisees, they're mortified. Why are you eating with traitors? If I might go there, why are you eating with traitors to the nation? Take any traitor to the nation you can think of today. Jesus was eating with them. It reveals their central belief of the Pharisees. Perception, not relationships with sinners, was the most important thing for them before God. How many of you have always heard Christians say, Well, I don't know what they're going to think. You heard that before? You hear Christians say that respectfully. That's a Pharisee thinking. They were worried about what people thought, not about relationships. Jesus' response is the opposite of the Pharisees. It is the heart of his ministry. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Remember, rabbis were sought by students to follow him. Jesus turns it around and says, This I have come so people might know me. I have come so people might know me. There are over 30 to 40 passages Jesus spoke about a personal direct relationship with himself and the gospels. Hear the spirit of Jesus for us. If you ever think you're forgotten or people aren't listening to you, hear the spirit of Jesus for you. Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. Come to me and I will give you S. Matthew 11, 28. When people need mercy and fruit in their lives, Jesus said, I am the vine and you are the branches. He who believes in me and I in him, you shall bear much fruit. But you can do nothing without me. If a person feels rejected, not included, and all they want is someone to listen to them. Jesus shows mercy and says, Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge them before my Father. Matthew 10, verse 32. These passages make one thing clear. The mission of Jesus, newsflash, it's not a finance committee. The mission of Jesus is not a building committee. The mission of Jesus is not administration. The mission of Jesus is us. It's you watching online. The mission of Christ is us to have a relationship with us so that you and I can have abundant and resurrection life in Him. Friends, that's an amen statement. His mission is us, you and me. That should radically change how we live. If people are the mission of Jesus, and we are his representatives on earth, and that has several ramifications. Your parents worried your kids will be bored this summer. You have the same invitation the disciples did. Far from boredom. Far from boredom. You have an opportunity for this to be the best summer you ever had with your kiddos. For kids about to go to summer camp or college this fall, you no longer have to worry if camp or college will shake their faith. That college or camp should worry because the same Jesus who said, Learn of me, will be teaching your kids things that you would never have taught them. They both, without even knowing it, may be used by Jesus to teach you something that you didn't know either. Glory be to God. So what kind of mercy do you need today? Remember, friends, New Testament teaching addressed needs. Taught the life of Jesus, but also address problems. Someone reading Matthew's gospel needed to know mercy was possible, even for people who didn't know that they deserved it. Are you in need of mercy today? Do you need the mercy of God in your life? Do you have the ability to give mercy, but you've been withholding it lately? They don't deserve it. What kind of mercy do you need? Friends in Christ, you can have both. You can let go of the pressure to be merciful yourself. You don't need to be. Jesus has already done it. On the cross. You can let go of the pressure to be merciful because Jesus has already done it for you on the cross, and you can receive his mercy. Purchased for you by his blood, even when the world says you don't deserve it. That is the heart of the church's mission statement. To share Christ. Friends, I invite you to share Jesus and His mercy this week to anybody who will listen. Call that person you hadn't called in a while. Go get that cup of coffee. Do something biblical like go order chips and queso and just go sit down with them. Yes, that's in the Bible, by the way. Here's the thing: don't always talk when you hear something you don't like. You hear me? If you hear something you don't like, you don't have to post about it. You don't have to respond in kind and say, you know, I don't know if I agree with it. Just be quiet. Just listen. Pray, sleep on it. Don't lean on structure and information. Lean on Jesus. Lean on transformation. That is his mercy. And that is the difference that Jesus makes. Friends, in the name of the Father, name of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.