Marriage and Mending - Matthew 9:9-17

And now let's pause to pray. Gracious Father, we pray that as we study the Word of God, you will remind us of old truths and you'll teach us new truths, and you'll put the two together so that we will make progress in our Christian life today. We're grateful for the freedom we have to do this, the freedom to broadcast. And we do pray for all who are in authority today that you will watch over them, give them wisdom to know what is right and give them the courage to do what is right. We ask your blessing now upon our study of the Word. Help us to practice it. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

All of us have attended birthday parties. Have you ever attended a new birthday party? I mean, do you know anybody who has experienced the new birth and was so excited about it that he or she gathered friends together and said, "Let's celebrate my birthday." Well, Matthew did that. Levi, Matthew 9:9. He writes about his own conversion. Then as Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And he said to him, "Follow me." And he arose and followed him. And so it was as Jesus sat at the table in the house, and this was Matthew's house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. You see, Matthew, or Levi, he was given a new name, Matthew meaning the gift of God. Matthew was smart. He knew that now that he was a converted man, he would lose some of his friends. And so he wanted his friends to meet Jesus. By the way, you better do that. Oh, you say, "I've just been saved a few weeks." Well, get to those friends of yours because they may drop you, they may get angry at you. More and more, we Christians move into Christian circles and don't even have any unsaved friends. It's rather sad because we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Matthew was smart. He called them all together for a new birthday party. And he said, "Let's celebrate the fact that Levi is gone and Matthew is here and I have experienced the gift of God."

Now, whenever you try to serve the Lord, somebody's going to criticize you. It's one of the hardest lessons to learn. I recall early in my Christian life, I was trying to serve the Lord the best I could. I didn't have a lot to offer, but I was using whatever abilities I had. There was always somebody to criticize. Makes you want to quit, but you keep on going. And when the Pharisees saw it, the fact that Jesus was eating with this outcast crowd, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Now, we have no evidence that the disciples gave any answer. They didn't have to. Jesus took care of it. By the way, when you are criticized, just take it to Jesus. There's always some Pharisees standing around, self-righteous, critical people. They can't see the plank in their own eye, but they can see the dust in somebody else's eye. And don't worry about it. Just tell it to Jesus. But when Jesus heard that, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." But go and learn what this means. And here he quotes Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

Now, in these verses, our Lord is describing in three illustrations what his ministry is. Here's the first illustration, that of a physician. He said, "My ministry, I came for sinners, not for the righteous. I came for those who need me, and they know that they need me." Now in the Bible, sinners are pictured in many different ways. They're pictured as defiled people, dirty people. They're pictured as people who are in bondage, people who are in darkness, blind people, even death. According to Ephesians 2, he made us alive through Jesus Christ. Once we were dead in trespasses and sins. We once were lost, but we've been found. Many different pictures of this salvation experience. But here our Lord is saying, when you get saved, it's like giving health to a sick person who is dying.

Now, Jesus sees us as sick people who need a physician. That's why he came. He said, "I've come to heal. I've come to heal the brokenhearted. I've come to set the captives free." Now the publicans and sinners who were friends of Matthew, they were sick and they knew it. Oh, they knew that they were not doing right. They knew that they had sinned. They knew that there was sin in their lives. Pharisees did not know it. Now, I want to ask you a question. Would you rather know that you have some physical affliction? I read sometime ago about a very fine-looking young man who was a an athlete, a high school athlete, and he went for his examination before school started, they discovered he had cancer. He didn't look like it, didn't act like it, but he had it, had to have surgery. That's a heartbreaking thing. To to be sick, to be dying and not know it. Now, the Pharisees did not know how bad off their condition was.

When you read Matthew 23, our Lord's message about the Pharisees, you see in what bad shape they really were spiritually. They were like whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside and decayed and filthy on the inside. They were like dishes that were washed on the outside but dirty on the inside. And Jesus said to them, "How are you going to escape the judgment of hell?" The Lord came as a physician. He came as a spiritual physician. And he said to these Pharisees, "You are so careful about your sacrifices. Why don't you show mercy? You go to the altar and give your sacrifice, but you don't have any love for people."

By the way, it's easy for us to get that way. So anxious to bring our sacrifices to the Lord, we'd forget to give our love to those who really need it. Illustration number one, Jesus says, "I am a physician. I came to help sinners. I didn't come for the righteous." Now, why didn't he come for the righteous? Because there aren't any. There's none righteous, no, not one. There's none that understands, there's none that seeks after God. If he had come for the righteous, he couldn't find any, because there were none, and there are none today. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro upon the earth and he sees our hearts, he knows our motives, he understands our thoughts afar off. He knows what we really are.

Now consider what a wonderful physician Jesus is. He comes to us. Our doctors today are very busy people. And they don't have time to go from home to home. And so often what we are sick with that keeps us at home, it's not that critical. In recent years, on a couple of occasions, my doctor's been gracious enough to come to the home. I've appreciated that. But I don't expect that. I can go to the office. He can help me there. What a physician Jesus is. He comes to us. He calls on us. He makes a perfect diagnosis of our situation. He gives us a complete cure, and then he pays the bill.

Matthew means the gift of God. Matthew was changed. Jesus called Matthew. He knew Matthew's heart. He knew Matthew was a sinner. And he changed Matthew, and Matthew became a trophy of God's grace. There's a lot of false spiritual healing going on these days. All kinds of cults, all kinds of groups that say, "Oh, we can take care of you," and they deal with the symptoms but not with the cause. Jeremiah 6:14, "They have also healed the hurt of my people slightly, superficially, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace." What would you think of a physician who diagnosed a patient and said, "You've got cancer. There's a tumor, but I'm going to give you some salve and you put this salve on your arm and that'll take care of it." Oh no, you need surgery. Jesus does not give a superficial diagnosis, nor does he give a superficial cure. He deals with the heart of the problem, which is the heart.

Now in Matthew 9:14-15, Jesus changes the picture. He's continuing to talk to the crowd around him, but he changes the picture. Then the disciples of John came to him. These are the disciples of John the Baptist, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast." Now he pictures himself not as a physician, but as a bridegroom. "I've come to bring joy and not grief. I've come to bring joy and not sadness." He's talked about the sickness of sin. Now he's going to talk about the sadness of sin.

The Pharisees were a sad people. They did not radiate any joy. They had religion, but no joy. They had a self-righteousness, but no joy. They did not have a living relationship and a loving relationship to Almighty God. Now, our Lord says, "I'm the bridegroom." That means those who have trusted him are a part of the bride. The marriage has not taken place yet. Oh, it will. One of these days we're going to hear the voice of the bridegroom and the trump of God, and we're going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. And there's going to be a wonderful marriage feast up in heaven. We have been engaged to the Lord Jesus. And the Holy Spirit of God who lives within every believer is, as it were, the engagement ring, the down payment, a first step in our heavenly experience. He is assuring us that we're going to go to heaven.

Salvation's like a marriage experience. Did you know that? I've performed many, many marriage ceremonies. No matter what they plan as far as music is concerned, or dresses, or whatever they plan, that doesn't make a lot of difference, that's just the trimming. The important thing is that the groom says to the bride, "I will. I do." And the bride says to the groom, "I do." Not I feel, not I know, not I think, "I do." There is a commitment. And the Lord Jesus Christ comes to us and says, "I want you. Trust me." And we say, "I will." And we are married to the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 7:4, that we might be married to another and bring forth fruit to God. Oh, the joys of that marriage relationship. The forgiveness that he gives us, the peace, the privilege of fellowship and communion and prayer. When you marry the Lord Jesus Christ, you take his name. You become a Christian. And you share his wealth. You're blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Our Lord is saying to the disciples of John the Baptist, the Christian life is not a funeral, it's a wedding feast.

Now, there are days when we have sorrow. There are days when we have trial. No question about that. But those days of sorrow and trial are surrounded by joy and confidence because we're married to one who takes care of us. And Jesus says to us, "Now, I'm taking you for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, sickness or in health. I'm yours. You're mine. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine," says the bride in Song of Solomon. And we belong to him, and he cares for us and he'll never, ever leave us or forsake us. He is the great physician. He came for sinners, not for the righteous. You say, "Well, I'm a sinner." Then Jesus came for you. He's the bridegroom. He came to bring joy, not grief and sadness.

And thirdly, he talks about mending, Matthew 9:16-17. "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. For the patch pulls away from the garment and the tear is made worse." You see, in those days, they did not have pre-shrunk material like we have today. So there's a rip in a man's old garment. He puts a new piece of cloth on it, sews it on. The next time it gets wet, it starts to pull away, and it's not done permanently.

Now he changes the image in Matthew 9:17. "Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins." They didn't have bottles such as we have, glass. They didn't have pottery, of course. But they used wineskins. They would put the wine into the wineskins and then as the wine fermented, the wineskin would give. But the old brittle wineskins couldn't give anymore and so they would crack and then they would break. And what happens? "Or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. You've lost the skins and the wine." "But they put new wine that is still fermenting into new wineskins and both are preserved."

He's the physician who came for sinners, not for the righteous. He's the bridegroom who came to bring joy and not sadness. And he came to bring the new, not to patch up the old. He is the one who brings the new.

Now this third illustration, the cloth and the wine, answered the Pharisees. The Pharisees said, "Well now, let's just patch up the law. Let's just bring renewal to the old covenant law." And Jesus said, "No, no, you can't do that. You can't patch up your life." That's what people want to do. They they look at their lives and say, "Well, I've got a problem here, Jesus, you took care of that. And I've got a problem here, Jesus, you take care of that." But Jesus doesn't do it that way. He takes that old garment of sin with all of its rips and tears and filth and he gives you a brand new garment. If you want Jesus to patch up your life, you're not going to have that experience he wants you to have. He wants all of your life. He doesn't just want to solve your financial problems or your physical problems. He wants to take all of your life. Likewise with the wine. They said, "Well now, Jesus, we like some of the things you are doing. Why don't you use it in our receptacles? Let's work together." He said, "Oh no, that won't work. That won't work. I will destroy what you've got and you'll destroy what I've got." No, he brings the new life. He brings the new beginning. Not a partial patching, but a complete new robe. Not a temporary patching, but eternal life. That which is permanent, that which is eternal, not something mixed, but that which is pure.

See, the tragedy is that people don't want a new life. They want, oh, they want to be sure they're going to heaven, but they want to live their old life. Oh, yes, they'd like to have new power and and and new support and maybe new success, but they don't want a new heart. And the Lord Jesus doesn't do it that way. He brings to us that which is new. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. All things are become new. He doesn't just patch up your vocabulary and clean up your uh voice in here and your and your speech. No, no, he just makes a whole new person out of you. And this is what the Lord Jesus is talking about. And this is what the Pharisees did not understand. They did not see themselves as sick sinners. Therefore, they rejected the physician. They did not see themselves as lacking true joy and love. Therefore, they rejected him as the bridegroom. They wanted him to patch up the old life. They wanted some of Moses and some of Jesus. He says, "No, I can't do it that way. I won't do it temporarily and I won't do it partially. What I do is complete and permanent. And you have to receive me." And they wouldn't do it. Now what are you going to do with the Lord Jesus today? Are you a sick sinner? Then he can heal you. He can forgive your sins. He can bring you joy. He can change your life. Because that's why he lived, and that's why he died.