• Download a powerpoint resource for this lesson here.
I love Jesus. He makes me laugh because he frustrates the “religious” people so much. Come to think of it, sometimes he frustrates me when I become over religious but under Christian.
One of the worst weeks of my life happened during M-Fuge. This is Lifeway’s youth camp meets mission trip experience. We were in Nashville doing typical youth camp things, except we also went to lead a backyard Bible club daily in an impoverished apartment complex each day.
It was in terrible disrepair. I was astonished at the living conditions. I was embarrassed as a citizen of the United States that our government would call this place “government housing.” However bad you see it in your mind, multiply it by 10.
We were allowed to use an unfinished metal building for our Bible club. There were about 30 children we led daily in games, crafts and Bible study. The children were very dirty. It was obvious that they were in a deep cycle of poverty. The youth working with me did a great job of loving these kids and trying really hard to give them the gospel.
Being somewhat of a germaphobe, I purchased the biggest bottle of hand sanitizer you have ever seen. I mean, it was Sam’s Club big! About every 20 minutes, I went back to the church van to squirt more hand sanitizer in hopes of staving off one of life’s many unknown illnesses.
On the last night, we were sharing what we learned about God’s work in our lives during these days. I listened as one youth after another shared how they felt moved by God during their experiences with these impoverished children. I didn’t have such a story. All I had were hands that smelled like hand sanitizer.
Then it hit me. I was more concerned about my outside than I was concerned about their inside. I was more concerned about my hands than I was concerned about their souls. I was a Pharisee. I wept as I confessed my sin before the youth and adults I was called to lead. It hurt. I was ashamed, and I should have been ashamed.
My opportunity to hug, love and teach those impoverished children had passed, and all I had to show for it was a bottle of half-used hand sanitizer. My quiet, judgmental attitude toward those precious souls changed my life. I never have been the same.
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Doesn’t the word “judgmental” pretty much summarize the position of the Pharisees and teachers of the law? They were guilt of the same sin—thinking God’s kingdom was reserved for those who were already clean, healed and disease free.
This is why I love Levi (or, just in case you haven’t made the connection, Levi and Matthew is the same person). Matthew begins his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus. But, it’s no ordinary genealogy. Matthew seems to go out of his way to highlight really bad sinners in his genealogy of Jesus. He highlights Tamar (not enough space here, but look her up in Genesis 38—it is an R-rated Bible story for sure). He also highlights Rahab the harlot.
When Matthew gets to the genealogy related to David, he throws Bathsheba into the mix. If Matthew was trying to convince his audience Jesus was the Messiah, why bring up these characters? Why not just go around them? As Pastor Andy Stanley said, “they are not just part of story; they are the point of the story.”
Just as Rahab the harlot had a tag on her name, so Matthew had a tag on his name. Matthew the tax collector. Yuck! He was the worst of sinners in his day. Matthew would have fit right in with Rahab the harlot in the eyes of Jesus’ contemporaries.
Yet, when Jesus called Matthew, he didn’t say “Matthew, go remove your ‘tax collector’ tag, and then come follow me.” Matthew’s life is indeed the point of the whole gospel message. Jesus accepts us just the way we are: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Right in the middle of the mess of our lives, God is calling us, just as he called Levi. And for those of us who have been Christians for a while, we still are wanting people to clean up their lives before they take that step of faith into God’s kingdom. Oh, we don’t verbalize it, but you know we think it.
Don’t believe me? Here is a “Could he be a Christian” test. What is your reaction to a big, burly man on a Harley Davidson with tattoos all over, a shaved head, long facial hair and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth? That’s what I thought. You are probably thinking, “You need to clean up a little bit before you call yourself a Christian because you don’t look like a Christian.”
If my assumption is correct, welcome to the Pharisee club! When the Pharisees saw Matthew, they thought he needed to clean up his life, too. But Jesus, right in the middle of Matthew’s tax collecting day, said, “Follow me.” And Jesus didn’t tell him to clean his life up first. No. Jesus knew that while Matthew followed him, Matthew’s life would be cleaned up.
And if you can adopt that same mindset, you will be one of the most extraordinary Christian leaders and evangelists your congregation has ever known.
I kept that bottle of hand sanitizer. It’s in my office in a place where only I can see it every day. It’s a constant reminder of a very important verse: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
Since we are morphing your Bible study group into a “Bible-doing” group, I have three possible applications for you this week:
1. This question may hurt, but it’s a good one: What percentage of your Sunday morning attendance are people without Christ? Why?
2. What church culture issues need to be addressed in order for more people without Christ to be in your weekly worship services?
3. If you want to impact new people at your church very positively, do something really simple. Ask your class to commit to simply talking to people they don’t know first. If you would commit to do that long term, your class would make a huge difference in the friendliness of your church. Make it a goal to simply have first-time guests return. Most especially if they go by the name Matthew or Levi.
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