When God’s Grace Offends God’s People

To watch the sermon When God’s Grace Offends God’s People| Matthew 9 9-13

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All right, so as they start to make their way out into their classes, I want to remind everybody that the fall feasts are coming up very, very quickly. If you don't know what the fall feasts are, they are the second half, always in the fall of the appointed times of God's calendar. A lot of times people will say it's the feasts of Israel or it's the feast of the Jews or whatever you want to say. They are God's feasts. According to the scripture, they are his, and he gives them to all who love him.

And we're real enough to understand that we're not in Israel. There isn't a temple. Nobody's hopping on a flight and going to the old city and sipping some coffee. Nobody's bringing a sacrifice. None of that.

I like to hear around this time where certain people have kind of caught the rhythms and the cycles of the Bible. They're like, you know what? This is what you're supposed to do at Tabernacles. And it's like, yeah, you know, first and foremost, like, maybe you should be in Jerusalem. So let's just not go creepy and let's just go camp and rejoice with God.

And so that's what this church does, is we go camp with each other and we hang out, have a good time. We don't overdo the schedule, none of that kind of stuff. We don't have any prophetic updates or we don't even update you if there's a schedule change. So it's just kind of free flowing in the spirit at that point. And so there is still some spots available.

There's definitely some tent spots available. There's also weekend available if you want to come down and join us for the weekend, if you've got work or whatever. If you. The weekend is the safest way. So if you're like, these dudes are about to be cultish out in the woods, I can assure you we're not.

We're not going to be cultish. Cults don't allow you to play golf. Cults don't allow you to drink bourbon and smoke cigars. I'm going to do all of those things while I'm down there. So you can play 18 holes.

I'll only make it eight, nine holes. So, see, you already have freedom of choice. Anyway, so Tabernacles is coming up, but before that, we have two special feast gatherings here. We've got the Feast of Trumpets and we've got the Day of Atonement, also known as Yom Kippur. And we're going to be in the book of Matthew for a long time.

So if you have the attention span of a goldfish, I apologize. But this is where we're going to be at least until the end of the year. So this week I had the opportunity to actually, like, plan out coming out of Matthew chapter 9 into Matthew 10, 11, 12. And at this rate, we might end up with Jesus, crucifixion and resurrection right around the time that he actually was crucified and resurrected. So maybe that's how God wanted it, I don't know.

But we're going to stay in Matthew and we're going to continue through that gospel for the foreseeable future. This week was a little bit of a rough week for me. Not necessarily with the church, but I have a tendency to. To help organizations. And I use the word help loosely.

A lot of times organizations say they need my help and I enjoy being active. And so I'll say yes. And so it was a little stressful. There was some things happening. There was not some great conversations that were happening back and forth.

And unfortunately, sometimes you gotta be the bad guy. I know Stephen's like, I've never seen Chris be the bad guy. I've known him for so long. He's always the good guy. I had to be the bad guy a little bit this week.

And so today I wanted to come in here and I wanted to not be the bad guy, but I wanted to do what my pastoral duty is. My children this week were going on and on about Forest Frank. Apparently Forest Frank is a somewhat albino looking individual. He's got very, very blond hair, very white skin. He's got a really interesting looking mustache.

Apparently that's super popular right now. And he has made Christian music popular again. And they have like these little dances that they do and all that kind of stuff. And then David Crowder broke his leg. And they're like on TikTok with each other and they're talking back and forth and they're producing music.

And hey, I know Crowder. Crowder is like from my day and age. And so they're doing all this cool stuff and my kids are talking about Forest Frank and how awesome it is that Christian music is hit.

This is bad doctrine and bad theology. Christian music was hip long before Forest Frank, long before David Crowder. Some of y' all never caught the trap beat when you were walking into children's class. And they were like, father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had, yeah, keep going.

I Am one of them. And so, yeah, right arm, left arm. Then you get down to, like, all the things they had built in dance moves here. These people got to do dance moves on top of that. And then if you didn't like that, then it was like there was some real good doctrine in there.

Who built the ark? No, no. Who built the ark? Hannah. Today we were listening to it on the way to church, and it was like, brother, Noah built the ark.

She thought it said Father Noah. And she's like, dad, why are they calling Noah our father? Like, that's super weird. And I was like, oh, sweetie, I have done such a disservice to you.

What about teaching kids how to spell? I am a C. I am a C H. I am a C H, R, I, S, T, I, A, N. Oh, hashtag public school. So, Forest Frank, if you watch this, which you never will, redo those songs, they were popular before you. You can throw some crowder in there and make them super popular. Because obviously I did a horrible job as a father of teaching them what real children's music.

But that's okay. Cause we are in the Gospel of Matthew, and in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus heals and he forgives. So he can heal my bad music taste. And he can forgive me for not teaching my kids what good music is. Last week, we explored the connection of how Jesus tied the physical healing with the spiritual healing.

We had the paralyzed man. We had the interaction once again with Jesus and the Pharisees. And we saw that Jesus healing wasn't just about legs walking. It was about sins being cast away. And while the crowd had stood in awe and they were glorifying Jesus, Jesus continued to move forward quietly.

Jesus was always on mission. As Brent said 17,000 times on Sunday morning, God always does things on purpose, for a purpose, for his purpose. On purpose. For his purpose. On purpose, for his purpose.

God always does things on purpose. He's always on mission. This week, we'll continue on the journey to remembering that Jesus first spoke the words on the mountain. It seems like forever ago, you know, in this church. For the last three to four years, our sermon series have been very short.

And so we'll have a three, four, five week, and then Brent will do like a 10 week, and then we'll go three, four, five week or whatever. And here we are. I think we're on week 27. We have almost fulfilled Daniel's timeline.

Buckle up. We're entering into the millennia phase. There's a thousand years of Matthew left for us. It's A good thing. It's a great book.

I love this book. So. But we are going to continue on as we watch. Remember, Jesus started this all off by going to the top of the mountain. Moses had gone to the top of the mountain.

He sits down on the mountain and he speaks his Torah. Once he speaks his Torah, he comes down from the mountain and he immediately goes into action, puts into practice the Torah of the Kingdom, or the Kingdom in action. This is the Kingdom's manifestation of power, righteousness and action. And that's where we're gonna pick up today in Matthew chapter 9. 9.

And as Jesus had passed on from there, he had saw a man called Matthew sitting at a tax booth. And he had said to him, follow me. And he had rose and followed him. See, this is significant because think Back to Matthew 8, where they were hesitant when Jesus said, hey, come with me. Go across the lake.

Remember, he had asked them to, hey, let's go from here, let's go across the lake. And what did they say? Well, I will follow you, master, wherever you go. The other one said, let me go, Barry, my dad. They, they had precursors to the obedience, very simple obedience.

Follow me. Here we see a different response. Matthew, a tax collector, a man who absolutely was under authority. Tax collectors, see, they were not liked. Not like our modern irs, who we all love.

Tax collectors were not liked at all. They not only were to take a taxation from whether it was Greece or Rome or whoever the governing body was, but then they would go above and beyond. So if the tax was 1% on Jeremy's wages, they would tax Jeremy 3% and they would pocket the rest of it for themselves. So they would actually put the money back in. So obviously things haven't changed.

I know YouTube this week flagged this for election in government. And so I figured I might actually do it this week. Like, I might as well just do it if we're going to get flagged for it, like, ask for forgiveness later. So the tax collectors who would take and rob money and use unequal weights and measures didn't start with the founding of the United States of America. It started in this culture.

Yet this man who was under authority, who knew what he was supposed to do from the authorities that had introduced him to his position, rose and went with Jesus when Jesus said, follow me. It's also important to understand that there's not many places that a tax collector would have been welcomed. In fact, if anything, they probably would have been feared. The best way I can give you this example, it keeps popping up into my mind, since we've talked about childhood and all this stuff is the old Robin Hood movies where they would come in and they would tax and then all of a sudden there has to be the superhero Robin Hood who comes in and basically steals from the leadership and gives it back to the poor because the poor has been taxed so much that they can't survive. And tax collectors were hated in that type of a perspective.

In that time. Everybody else in Matthew 8 wanted to finish their business first. They wanted to tie up their loose ends or they wanted to weigh the cost of what it meant to directly follow Jesus. But Matthew doesn't hesitate and he accepts Jesus not from an obligation, but from an invitation. And he gets up and immediately follows him.

And that's not just a detail, it's a testimony. It's not just a detail that Matthew came and Jesus called him and he got up and he went. It's a testimony that Matthew saw a difference in who this Yeshua, who this Jesus was that was in front of him enough so that he was willing to get up and go with him without any precursors. Matthew wasn't just disliked, he was despised. He was considered a traitor amongst his people.

The Chosen has done a great job at showing us some of the nuances that we see in the text. You know, a lot of times we read the text and we read Luke or we read Mark or we read Matthew and we kind of think, well, Matthew is exactly the same as, as Luke or Mark or whatever. The truth is that they weren't. And the writing styles are not the same and that's why you have different nuances. We see anti missionaries try to expose and say, well, see, Mark records this gospel in this way and then Matthew records this gospel.

And see, this is why you can't trust the New Testament. The only people you can't trust is the people who are the anti missionaries. Because when Tim and I go out to lunch, we're going to have different things that we're going to see, even though we saw the same thing. And we're going to record things differently because we don't write the same. Just like in this church.

Cam has preached, Brand has preached, Michael Stallsworth has preached, April has preached. Hopefully we're coming up on a series here soon where it's going to be about women in the Bible and I'm going to take four weeks off and Sarah's going to preach. So yeah, it's the best way is to tell that in public. When she can't say no, it's on YouTube forever, forever, ever.

We preach differently, we see things differently. That's the beauty of humanity and that's the beauty of Yahweh, our God. Every other God wants every person to fit into a box and be funneled into what we like to consider more abusive cult like behavior today. This is not Yahweh. This is not Jesus.

Jesus made all the different things. Jesus encouraged all the different personalities. And Jesus empowers those people to be who they are. He wants you to be the best version of yourself. He does not want you to be the best version of me.

He wants me to be the best version of me. And how do all of us obtain that is through the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling with us. And so we have an analytical person. Matthew is very analytical. Some would even say based upon the chosen's engagement.

They didn't have all these diagnoses back then, but some would say he's borderline on the spectrum, very analytical. He sees things very black and white. Most people who work in the financial department are kind of that way anyways. They're very black and white in how they see things. So he is not one who has a history of making rash emotional changes.

He doesn't have ups and downs. He is not manipulating. He is stable. Stable because he's analytical. He's weighing everything.

So you can rule out that when Jesus comes and approaches Matthew, that Matthew's making an emotional decision. You can rule that out. He's making a calculated decision based upon what we know about Matthew.

He understood exactly what he was leaving behind and he made the choice to go right away. Jesus didn't require an application process. It wasn't like, hey, let's interview three tax collectors and find out who's the greatest apprentice here and let's take him with it. Jesus gave a specific invitation and Matthew immediately responded. And we pick up in verse 10 and it said, and Jesus reclined at a table in the house.

Behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. When we read this passage, we traditionally highlight the fact that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners. That's what we traditionally highlight. And we traditionally gloss over the fact that Jesus wasn't sitting at the table. Jesus was reclining at the table.

I don't want to gloss over this, and I have taught on this for from time to time, but I think it's important every time we go through this passage that there's only two reasons, culturally and historically that Jesus would have Been reclining at the table. One was his culture, it was the Hebrew culture, the Jewish influence, and that's Passover. Pesach. Passover is the feast of recline. If you don't recline at Passover, then you're not doing it right as a joke.

We don't go that far down in the theology. Thank you for those. Thank you, trollin. Thank you. I'll give you your $5 after service for laughing at my joke.

I know it gets very, very dry and stale in here when everybody's just like, hmm, he worked hard on that joke and it's still not funny. But Passover is a time where you would recline. Why would you recline? Because it was a time to be at ease in remembrance that God had fought your battles, he had led you out of Egypt. Passover is a time as well as to remember.

Now, post Yeshua, post Jesus death, that not only. And this is what Matthew's entire gospel is about, pointing out is that Jesus is the Messiah and there is a greater exodus, an exodus of sin and death, one that far supersedes the one that happened in Egypt. And that is the moment that Jesus dies on the cross and resurrects from the grave that we are no longer enslaved by sin and death. The greater exodus, even though there's all kinds of books that talk about walking with your feet and all kinds of nonsense that's not in the Bible. The greater exodus in the Bible and the Gospel of Matthew is all about the fact that the moment that the cross exists and Jesus comes off of that cross and resurrects, we are in the greater exodus.

Through Jesus, we have passed from sin to life. We are no longer under the curse of sin and death by Jesus. We have Exodus, we have gone out, we have been removed from that, and we are safe. So in the first century Jewish world, they would have known about reclining.

Jesus is what Brent does everything on purpose, for his purpose. Oh, I set you up to continue your Sunday sermon on Saturday, and you're over there writing notes about how awesome my sermon is. I'll give you a pass on that today.

See, these are the nuances in scripture, and there's plenty more. Every time I read the Word of God, there's some other nuance that pops out that doesn't matter whether it's 30, 40 years that I've been reading the Bible or studying the Bible, something pops out. Brent's been reading the Bible longer than I. He's been working on his master's degree and studying and Sometimes we'll talk and something pops out in the middle of our conversation, like, oh, why? Because the Holy Spirit is the one who leads to all knowledge and understanding.

And when you're asking the Holy Spirit to be present and you're talking about the word of God, in submission to that, the Holy Spirit reveals a depth of scripture that maybe we hadn't seen before, specifically for that moment or specifically for that time, or specifically for what's going on. And so they would have known this symbolism as possibly Passover. Jesus was speaking on the mountain and he's now doing through action what that the kingdom of God is here, the kingdom of heaven is here. I am the one that you have been waiting for for ages and ages and ages and ages. There is another possibility that wasn't necessarily directly tied to the Jewish customs or the feast.

And that is in the first century, the Greek influence had become kind of hoity. You know, when I think of hoity and I think of dinner parties, I think of in my day and age, we would talk about the English or the Brits and they would have their tea and they'd be like a cup of tea and their little pinky would be up and you just want to walk over and cut it off. It's like, mmm, how dare you. The Greek symposiums were the kind of that moment for me in time, that's where people would come and they would banquet and there would be these lavish feasts that would happen. And in the feast there was a person who was elevated to honor and the elevation to honor, that person would recline at the table because that's how you would know out of all the people in the room, that is the person who's being honored by the feast, they had some sort of influence or some sort of status.

And so at that time, those are the two cultural things that are possibilities. Either one, either one pretty daggone symbolic. Whichever one, it is pretty daggone symbolic. Either Jesus is showing by physical interaction that he is getting ready to what all the shadows of the Exodus and everything else. He's going to be one that helps them in the greater exodus passed from sin and death and the curse of the law is no longer upon them, or he is the man of honor if it's from the Greek influence.

Yet this was not the well off people. This was not Nicodemus, this wasn't the influential people. This was not like, it was like Tom Brady and Shohei Ohtani and all of the popular people. This was the water boys. This is the people who Were homeless outside of the stadiums and the coliseums.

The this is who was invited to this table. It was the people that nobody liked. It was the people that nobody talked to. People had no respect for people had no honor. For these men, Jesus is reclining at a table not with kings and prophets or elite teachers, but with the people that nobody cared about.

A hated tax collector, known sinners. He reclines, symbolically honoring them and extending dignity where no one saw any dignity or honor in them.

This banquet wasn't about power or prestige. It was a visual sermon that the kingdom of God makes room at the table for the rejected.

The table of grace is wide and was wide. But what happens when religion resists mercy? In verse 11, it says, when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Like, oh, man, this Pharisees, there's bad people. In the culture of our country, there are many, many times where we have taken a group of people or other groups of people based upon one or two criterias, and we have segregated them from a larger group of people. It could be male or female. I come from a form of Christianity where women were lesser beings. They were lesser beings.

Women can't be in ministry, but they can drive a tent peg through a man's head. In the Bible, women can't preach. And those are just the ones that I'm comfortable about talking about the other ones. Some atrocious things have been done by human beings to other groups that didn't look like them, talk like them, or weren't from the same side of the tracks they were on.

It isn't that they just went to the opposite side of the road. It isn't that they just had a distance between them.

Humanity has a history of dehumanizing other individuals. And God has a 100% track record of always putting value in every human being.

And how we approach each other is either modeling God's standard or it's modeling the world. But the Pharisees could not make sense of it. Their system of righteousness was built on separation, not inclusion. It was built on sacrifice, not mercy. They were deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a rabbi, especially a popular one.

I mean, Jesus from our modern culture would be trending on TikTok. He would be trending on Instagram right now, and they surely did not. The marketing department did not want Jesus to be out there hanging out with people who would tarnish his reputation.

And yet Jesus sat with people that nobody who would have given them counsel would have felt worthy to be there.

And yet, while they're murmuring, Jesus hears him.

Kind of like that. Mom ear. It's like the kids walk away. They go to the other room. It's like, I didn't do that.

He's like, what'd you say? I didn't say nothing, mom. It's like, I heard you. Jesus hears them while they're murmuring and grumbling. And he says in verse 12 and 13, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick go and learn what it means that I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

In one sentence, in one response, Jesus exposes the issue. They had mastered sacrifice, but they had forgotten about being merciful. They had followed rituals, but they, through compassion in the garbage disposal, the religious systems had created a false hierarchy of holiness, a pecking order that insulated them from the very people that God had called them to serve. And still today, the trap exists. There's churches and ministries and individuals who all fall in the same pattern.

They will minister to individuals until they get to a certain place. And when they get to the certain place, then the individuals become a means by which it keeps them in their system. It keeps them in their financial bracket. It keeps them in whatever. Whether they have an ego or a narcissism or whatever it is, it fills that need for them.

And we fall into that same pattern in the church today, and we mistake holiness for isolation.

You know, there was that season where we had the purity culture, where it's like, well, the only way you can be holy is to completely go to the full extreme, only to find out years later that the extensive amount of abuse that was transpiring inside that culture and inside those authors and things that were happening was no different than what we've talked about the last couple of weeks. One guardrail went to the other guardrail, and either way, your car is still wrecked.

The amount of people who have been irreparably harmed by taking and creating something that's too far away from the mercy of God. If you sacrifice showing your ankles, you are holy. If you sacrifice eating meat, whatever it is, just pick one random thing, then you're holy. You're closer to God. You don't cause another person to stumble.

There's all kinds of ways that we will use the scripture to justify these things. What we have is we have a car that's gone from one guardrail and a rack to the other side.

We're mistaking holiness for isolation and purity for exclusion. We forget that we, too Once sat at a table lost and broken until grace and God pulled up a chair.

How easy is it for us when we get into churches and we get into communities and relationship to forget about the person pre God? How easy is it for us to create some sort of self holiness or self righteousness inside of ourself that absolutely forgets about the grief and the despair and the agony and the struggle and all the things that happen while you were on the journey to God.

And this is why I always try to frame this concept. God fills you up with a gift. He teaches you, he empowers you. And at some point in time, he will send you back just like he did for Moses. Just like he's going to send his son back.

The greater Moses, he will send you back for the one person you used to be.

Why? Because the kingdom currency is lives. It's people. The devil is seeking to steal, kill and destroy and Jesus is seeking to restore and make whole. Some of us won't even sit with our own families at various holidays.

It's like, well, I just can't do that anymore. But I can. Next Tuesday, okay? Some of us avoid church because we say, well, I don't like the way they worship or I don't like the way that guy preaches. If you've been on our YouTube comments, it's because I have a man bun.

Like, how funny is that? Like, spoken by all the people who have the cul de sac. Like, which one's holier? Like, which one's holier? Which one's holier?

Neither. Because it's irrelevant. What's relevant is your heart and God bleeding through you. And he can do that. Whether you're bald, whether you got a man bun, whether you're young, you're old, you're black, you're white, you're rich, you're poor, you're male, you're female.

And this is what we're seeing at this table. The people who they would not sit with because they did not feel like they were worthy enough are the ones that Jesus invited into this feast. And he is sitting there with them and he is giving them honor and he is bestowing that time on them. The more time we spend with individuals in tougher situations than us, the more time I can promise you, you will stop complaining about how bad you have it. The more time you spend ministering the gospel of healing through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to those who do not have it, the less time you will start fighting over which version of the scriptures is holy?

Which version of the Scriptures is right?

And sometimes we're not as bold to say things, but sometimes our actions speak louder than words and not in a good way. Sometimes we imply by our silence or our spiritual arrogance that others aren't worthy of the table. And in our quest to be set apart, we find ourselves left out. I was going to say left behind, but also didn't want any emails because they're like, oh, we don't believe in the Rapture. Like, both fit in our quest to be set apart because the Scripture calls us a holy people, tells us to be set apart all the time.

And in our quest to be set apart in what we try to build the fences and the box around to be set apart, we find ourselves more often than not left out of what God is doing. Because what God is doing is not trying to tell you that what you do is making you more righteous. You're righteous because the Holy Spirit dwells in you and you're reflecting the character of God.

He is righteous.

Our obligation is to go to the table, to go to those who were not invited to the table and trying to be God to them. You say, oh, so he's got a God complex. Yeah, go wash your feet, go feed them, go talk to them, Go love on them.

It's amazing how that will change your life. Matthew's feast table here, the kingdom table, it reminds us that the call is to reach and not retreat.

When the church first started and we were having men's gatherings, you know, you're always looking for something cool and catchy, whatever. And I was like, we're not doing a men's retreat. Men don't retreat. We're doing a men's attack. Men's attack.

Oh, how one slogan means nothing.

Matthew's table is about reaching for those, not retreating from them. And that's important for us in how we live our life. The tax collectors and the sinners that Jesus reclined with weren't religious.

Sometimes we get sideways because we're like, well, I can't deal with the Calvinists. I know they're hard. Well, I can't. I can't deal with a Catholic.

They're all over there being like, well, I can't deal with that, dude. Like, it's not about being religious. See, the religious people of that time, they were the ones who were taking issue with what Jesus was doing. Jesus was reaching down to develop a relationship of love and mercy. And guess what?

He was sacrificing. He was sacrificing his integrity and his Character from the peer group. He was a rabbi. All the other rabbis are taking issue with what Jesus is doing here. He's sacrificing something.

He's sacrificing his character and his integrity and his name in his peer group to do what? What is right.

The people at this table, they were not Torah experts. They weren't experts about the prophets. They weren't even trying to earn righteousness. Jesus saw something in them that religion had missed. They were heart in need and ready to receive mercy.

When we isolate ourselves in our personal holiness bubbles, we risk cutting ourselves off from the kingdom mission, the kingdom power, and the kingdom authority worship. Tim, you can come back.

Then why are you alive if you're going to cut off the kingdom power, the kingdom mission, and the kingdom authority?

We end up becoming the very same thing that we fear. Fruitless tree.

Jesus didn't call you out of your past just to keep you safe. He called you, he healed you, and he empowered you so that you could go back and sow the freedom into other people that you so desperately needed when you were at the same spot they were. And this could be anybody. This could be somebody at the grocery store. This could be somebody who walks through the door of your office.

This could be somebody who you meet online.

Too often we find ourselves in the nuances of every scripture arguing over this or that. And we completely miss the 10 people who walk by us, who are on the verge of committing suicide, who are on the verge of utter despair, who don't believe they're welcome anyplace, who just lost a family member, a spouse member, who, whatever it is. And when we isolate ourselves the same way the Pharisees did, to talk about how righteous and how holy these things are, we miss the very juxtaposition that Matthew is writing about at this table. Jesus dines at the table with the people they wouldn't eat with, maybe even think they're unclean. And the Pharisees, won't they take issue with this Rabbi?

Who will?

We must remember that healing comes with forgiveness. Forgiveness comes through faith. And faith leads to freedom for you and for others.

So who are you in this story?

Are you, Matthew, the one who is ready to leave it all behind and accept the opportunity that God has given you in the moment, to seize that and to follow immediately. Are you the Pharisees who constantly question why somebody is at the table? Or why is this person here? Or why is that person here? Or whatever?

I've been to Pharisees sometimes. I've walked in some parties And I was like, why are they here then? Maybe we're saying the same thing to me about me. Why is he here?

See, the Bible is basic instructions before leaving earth, before we get out of this body. Maybe we should. Maybe we should just, like, go ahead and calm down on, like, who got the invite? Who's allowed at this restaurant? Who's not allowed at that restaurant?

Because right now we have some grace and we have some mercy. But can you think about what happens when you show up to the wedding feast with Jesus, and Jesus is sitting at the head, and all of the people who have been saved, been found covered by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony are sitting around the table? Can you imagine?

You're like, hey, Jesus, I know, I know. You want to go ahead and get ready? Like, ready to eat.

Got a question.

Why is Cam here?

You see everything.

I know you saw it at that moment. Here's how I think Jesus is going to interact. This is all hypothetical because I don't believe any of this engagement is going to happen. But at that moment, he's going to soccer mom, arm you on a stop. He's going to be like, son, I saw what you did to me, and I know you're hurt.

I know it didn't feel good. I know he stole your Lego, but I love him too. Ha ha. He didn't have the right theology. He didn't have the right doctrine.

He didn't say the right name.

That's okay, son. I only gave you, like, 40 different titles to call me in scripture. It was really that big of a deal. I'd have given you one.

Oh, but they didn't. Did you know that they had yellow 40 high C is from the devil, and then they had a monster drink. They took the mark of the beast.

That's okay. I understand. They made a mistake. And then they accepted me for their salvation, and I put the mark myself over the mark of the beast that they took. If it's a literal thing.

A lot of speculation on that.

As we continue to go through Matthew, we see the Pharisees engaging with Jesus a lot. We're also going to see individuals who are sick, who are hurting, who are in need. A lot that tells me, just because I believe the Bible is real and inspired by the Holy Spirit, that fast forward a couple thousand years, we still have the same problem. We still have some people who believe that they are Pharisaical in their religious approach to how they walk out the commandments of God and honor God. And we have Many, many more who are just sick, and they just need healing, and they just need to be empowered by the Holy Spirit, and they just need to find the peace and the joy and the compassion of the Lord and all the peace that surpasses understanding in this world.

Maybe the person who is sick, who's waiting to be healed, but they're afraid to respond.

We have a choice. We have a choice. When we choose to be offended by who God knows to the banquet table.

God did not ask us for our influence on the guest list.

And somehow we trust him to save us, to be our salvation. But somehow we're just like, hey, God, I trusted you to do the hardest thing, the thing that only you could do. But you know, you know, when you. You throw that banquet for. For, you know, like, maybe I should help you figure out what Doyle is to put on the table.

So we trust him with the tough stuff, but then when it comes to the. To the smaller things, we're not willing to release those to Him.

Every time we try to control God, we will find ourselves in the position of the Pharisees. We will be trying to tell God what is appropriate for him to do or not to do. And nowhere in the scripture ever, not in Matthew's gospel, does God give us the right as the creation, not the Creator, to try to control him, to try to tell him what to do or try to give him counsel on how to do his job. What we do, see here at the banquet table, is that if we allow Jesus to be who Jesus already is, and we just pull up a seat at the table with him, wherever you're at, he can heal you. He can set you free.

He can empower you, he can steer you, he can lead you, he can guide you.

The invitation from Jesus to Matthew was to follow me every day of our life. When we accept Jesus as our salvation and Jesus as our Savior, we have the same invitation. You wake up in the morning and he says, follow me.

You get your lunch break, follow me, go home, follow me. Somebody cuts you off in traffic, follow me. You don't sleep well, wake up on the wrong side of the bed, follow me.

He modeled physically, he spoke it audibly. There is freedom from the things that enslave you. That is, the greater exodus, is that this is not a temporal Israel went back into cycles upon cycles and cycles of slavery. This isn't a temporal. This isn't.

I'm going to take you out of Los Angeles and plant you in Oklahoma. Go to Austin.

It's not temporal. You got anger Come to the table. He'll free you. You got an addiction. Come to the table.

He'll free you.

Is your heart broken? Come to the table. He'll free you. Is your heart angry? Come to the table.

Feel free.

And when the Son of man and the Son of God sets you free, this is not a temporal freedom.

This is a deliverance from the things that have controlled you by replacing the things of our flesh with the divine nature of Jesus Christ.

And for anybody in this room has been set free from anger, bitterness, whatever it is. We all have something we've been set free from. Why wouldn't you want that for somebody else? Why wouldn't you want them to be set free? Why would you despise them so much that you wouldn't want them to heal?

Why would you not want them to be joyous?

There's been people in my life who have really heard me.

People in this world, I've really heard too.

But I don't want them to die. I don't want their death.

I want them to be healed, and I want them to be set free just as much as I want to be healed and set free from the trauma of their situations. This kingdom table we saw today was a different kingdom than the religious leadership of that time. Those tables were invitational. Those tables were for the scholarly and the wealthy and the elite.

The kingdom table that Jesus models and shows us on the other side. That juxtaposition is one that every single person was invited to.

Who are you in that story? If you're the Pharisee today, as we respond, ask the Lord to remove that resistance to the mercy of God from your heart. If you're the person who's sick, ask God to bring you to the table with him and start that work inside of you.

If you're Matthew and Jesus has been calling you and say, follow me, and there's. Even if it's one area of your life that you. You haven't time to follow him is now.

It's now. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to come and praise you, to enthrone you.

Lord, as we continue as a church through the Gospel of Matthew, continue for each and every person in this place to give them that greater exodus. Whatever it is in their heart or their mind that they have locked away or they have buried in the backyard, Lord, that they don't want you to see, and they're holding on to it, that keeps them enslaved. That keeps them in their Egypt. Lord, I ask that you would reveal that to them. You would go into that place you would sit with them Lord and you would remove it from their hearts and their mind and you would fill it with the power of your holy spirit Lord for those who have struggled to be outreach minded towards other people whether it's just their own family or whether it's it's even the world in general Lord help us to understand and see people the way that you see them not the way that our culture has taught us to see them.

There is an opportunity for us in each moment in each breath of our life Lord to reach out to somebody about the power of the gospel of your kingdom Lord help us to stay on mission tapped into the kingdom power under your kingdom authority until you return for Lord you are great you are mighty you are holy you are worthy we love you with everything we have for it's in the name of Jesus amen and amen stand and let's respond.