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focus their work entirely on the teaching and proclamation of the gospel with very little thought toward justice and healing jesus shows us that the work of the compassionate shepherd is holistic and integral the preaching of the gospel is never separated from the embodied work of the gospel to bring healing and wholeness 2 what jesus is really doing here is exhibiting the love of god through his compassionate care for others next in our story jesus does something truly amazing he turns to the disciples and he tells them that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few and he asks them to pray that god will send workers and i would like for us all to listen carefully to what follows but before i do please let me explain something and the explanation will also serve as a bit of a hint about what is coming last week we talked about the greek word διδάσκω dee dás kō διδάσκω is the word that we translate as disciple and a disciple is one who learns a student the greek word ἀπόστολος a pasta las is transliterated into the english word apostle and means one who is sent a messenger did we catch the difference διδάσκω is a student and ἀπόστολος is one who is sent so disciple and apostle are not the same thing these words have two different meanings now matthew 10 verse 1 says jesus called his twelve disciples his twelve διδάσκω to him and he gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness and then in the very next verse jesus says these are the names of the twelve apostles the twelve ἀπόστολος what just happened as jesus gave his students the power and the authority to do exactly the things that he had been doing the disciples ceased to be the students and instead became the messengers the apostles and the thing here is what jesus was passing on to them was more than just his power jesus was charging them to have the same compassion the same concern and the same ability to see others that he himself had exhibited jesus wasn t sending the apostles out to show off some new found skills he was sending them out to love as he loved to be so moved by the hurting and the needs of others that the apostles also felt compelled to heal and to help and to make whole in our story today jesus had first asked the disciples to pray for god to send workers to the harvest but then almost immediately jesus turned around and asked the disciples to be the answer to their own prayers michael k marsh says he s telling his disciples to align their lives with their prayer if we are going to pray for the pain and needs of others and of the world then we also need to give our hands and feet to our prayer we need to embody and enact our prayer we too must be a part of the answer to our prayer 3 this command that jesus gives to go and to have compassion and to make disciples is an ongoing thing we are no less called to spread the gospel as we go about our daily lives than peter and andrew and james and john were it is this very thing to which god has called us but here in today s story we gain a deeper understanding that just as love was the driving force behind jesus actions so also must love be the driving force behind the actions of the original apostles and so also must love be the driving force behind the things that we do as much as we would love for our beloved church to grow that is not our reason for sharing the gospel we share the gospel because we love those with whom we speak and wish with all of our hearts that they would find the love of god in their lives just as we have found the love of god in ours as much as we would love for our beloved church to be an active participant in the feeding of the hungry it s not for our church s benefit that we contribute to the programs that feed the hungry or that we may directly contribute to those in need we contribute because we are grieved by the fact that people are hungry or are in need and we seek to love them by fulfilling those needs and as much as we would love for our church to advocate for justice in this unjust world the cause of justice is not just another way that we seek to benefit our church we advocate for justice because as believers we know that justice is nothing more than love in action and that we need to love the marginalized and the disadvantaged and the exploited by seeking justice we know that jesus when asked what the most important commandment was he responded by saying love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself and then jesus tells us plainly that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments the foundational command is for us to love at the very core of who we are as believers is this compelling need to love others and our story today shows us exactly what this means our story shows us that love is a verb not a noun our story shows us that the way to love is to recognize the needs of others and to act to address those needs in whatever way we are able now please remember that god doesn t expect us to do things that are not in our capacity to do but god does call us to use our time and our resources in ways that glorify him by serving others again quoting michael k marsh here s why i think all this matters i think we often misunderstand god s kingdom as an escape from the brokenness and pain of life that s not the kingdom the kingdom is a deeper engagement with and a response to the brokenness and pain if the kingdom of heaven is to come it will come through us and through our response to the suffering and pain of this world this town and one another in today s story jesus tells his followers that the kingdom of god is at hand what did he mean by this well let me ask this what exactly is a kingdom a kingdom is a place where the will of the king is done a king or a queen will decide something that they want to do determine a course of action for better or for worse and then expend whatever resources are necessary to accomplish their goals god s kingdom is present when god s will is done god s kingdom is present when we love others scott hoezee says god s kingdom is present wherever jesus nurtures certain behaviors and lifestyles that we call the fruit of the spirit the kingdom is present wherever people pour water over the heads of babies or take bread and wine to their lips all simply because jesus told us that this is the way we are to act in remembrance of him 4 the kingdom of god comes near in the actions of those who have compassion on the hurting and the helpless this call has been passed from generation to generation for over 2 000 years and the call has never changed share the gospel by loving and serving others my dear friends jesus sees the hurting and the helpless he sees us let us also see the hurting and the helpless and let us bring the gospel to them by loving them 1 grant r osborne exegetical commentary on the new testament matthew pg 364 365 2 danny zacharias workingpreacher org commentary on matthew 9 35 10 8 3 michael k marsh interruptingthesilence com fields of pain a sermon on matthew 9 35 10 8 4 scott hoezee cepreaching org commentary on matthew 9 35 10 8 tags bible christianity faith god jesus posted in uncategorized leave a comment dinner for sinners june 7 2026 june 7 2026 matthew 9 9 13 18 26 osborne tells us that meals were important social occasions in the first century defining peer groups and social status as the saying went to share a meal is to share a life for it was a kind of alliance a declaration that a person was accepted into a group 1 hold that thought with the possible exception of the samaritans it is unlikely that there was a more reviled group of people in ancient israel than the tax collectors tax collectors were almost always wealthy and their wealth came mostly from extortion and from cheating their fellow israelites and so to say they were unpopular would be an understatement the pharisees routinely referred to the worst of the worst as the tax collectors and sinners so their status here is pretty clear and even jesus himself would occasionally lump the tax collectors in with people of low repute in order to make a point he once told the pharisees that the prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the kingdom of heaven before them and when he spoke of people who love only those who love them he said even the tax collectors do that to the pharisees tax collectors were sort of the poster child for ritual uncleanness due to their regular interactions with gentiles and their constant handling of foreign currency no good israelite would associate with a tax collector in any way because the uncleanness of the tax collector would be transferred to the israelite who associated with them and so in today s reading we find jesus not only calling a tax collector to follow him but eating at the tax collector s home with the tax collector s friends this was according to osborne an acceptance of these people by jesus into his group and the pharisees were incensed by this but they didn t address jesus directly with their complaints instead they asked his disciples why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners but jesus heard them or maybe he just knew their hearts and he answered them with a statement that is going to become somewhat of a theme in today s reading it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick jesus then told the pharisees but go and learn what this means i desire mercy not sacrifice for i have not come to call the righteous but sinners and as jesus so often does when he speaks to the pharisees he answers them directly from the bible in this case from the book of hosea and the kicker here is the fact that the phrase go and learn what this means was a term that rabbis used to call others to study the torah and so in an ironic reversal of things jesus was admonishing the teachers themselves to go and learn our reading today skips over a section where john the baptist s disciples asked jesus why his disciples didn t fast and while i am not going to spend a lot of time on this skipped over section jesus replies about not using a new piece of cloth to repair an old garment or about not pouring new wine into old wineskins will become a critical part of this chapter and so we will talk more about these things in just a bit our reading continues with a story that interrupts another story a leader of the synagogue comes to jesus asking for jesus help because his young daughter has just died and the synagogue leader believes that if jesus touches her she will live jesus immediately got up and went with the man but while they were on their way a woman who had been suffering from bleeding for 12 years surreptitiously approached jesus and touched the ritual fringes at the edge of jesus garment and she was healed instantly after jesus told the woman that her faith had healed her jesus continued on to the house of the synagogue ruler where mourners had already gathered and who were in traditional hebrew fashion playing flutes and wailing and crying and generally making a lot of noise wealthy israelites actually hired professional mourners to raise that noise level jesus commanded them to leave stating that the girl was asleep and he said this using a common hebrew euphemism for death so i am not really sure why the mourners laughed at him but they did and after jesus threw them out he took the girl by the hand and she arose and after hearing these two stories there are two more things that we need to remember about jewish purity laws first is the fact that touching a woman who is bleeding or having her touch you renders you unclean and the second is that touching a dead person also renders you unclean and so here after jesus has just made himself unclean through his dining with the tax collectors and the sinners he renders himsel unclean a second time when he was touched by the woman who was bleeding and then he rendered himself unclean a third time when he took the dead girl by the hand i don t know if we can understand the impact that this would have had on the first century witnesses to these actions but i would imagine that a pretty big collective gasp would have gone up when it was discovered that jesus had just done something that made him unclean but you know what jesus was setting an example here the needs of the tax collectors and the sinners to be saved was far more important to jesus than the following of a ritual law the needs of the woman who was bleeding to be healed and the needs of the synagogue ruler whose daughter had just tragically died were far more important to jesus than the need for him to maintain ritual purity i desire mercy not sacrifice the pharisee s obsession with ritual purity even though it was grounded in a desire to please god had become more important to the pharisees than the actual needs of actual people quoting from osborne again i n both cases jesus makes himself ritually unclean first by being touched by a woman with menstrual bleeding and second by touching a corpse this is often called the hermeneutic of love i e a willingness to break jewish taboos in order to help those who are suffering here too is a lesson for us that challenges our unwillingness to do the same for the needy mercy for the hurting and suffering around us should be the hallmark of the church 2 and for those who may not be familiar with the theological lingo hermeneutics describes a method of interpreting things a way of finding out what things mean and in this instance osborne is declaring that jesus words are being interpreted by the love that he pours out on those who are in need the hermeneutic of love a little earlier we spoke of cloth patches and old wineskins i am not the world s greatest handyman i don t mind trying to fix things but over the years i have definitely suffered from an occasional lack of knowledge of how to accomplish certain tasks when jackie and i moved into our first apartment there were large glass double doors that opened onto a patio and there was nothing covering those doors and subsequently there was zero privacy in our apartment so we went to the store bought drapes and came home and newlywed me screwed the curtain rod into the drywall the minute i hung the drapes on the rods the screws pulled out of the drywall and the drapes fell down i can t tell you how many times over the years that my dad had to teach me how to do something over the phone thank goodness for dads right another time i got a brand new sweater it was purple and i loved it and when it eventually got dirty i threw it in the washing machine and then i threw it in the dryer and it came out of the dryer just about the right size to fit my cat when some fabrics shrink they really shrink and if you can imagine taking a piece of this kind of fabric and using to make a patch for something that had already shrunk well t...
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