“Follow Me” -- Matthew 9:9-13

I had been called to jury duty one time and made it to the second round, the round of voir dire. This is the round where the attorneys for the respective parties get to question the prospective jurists. In this particular case, the issue was whether or not a man had committed a crime.

The district attorney’s office asked several questions during voir dire, then it was the defense attorney’s turn. He asked several questions, but one particularly stood out in my memory. It wasn’t the question so much as the response.

The question was, “To convict a person of a crime, you have to be absolutely certain they did. If you were in a room of 11 others who were certain, but you were not, could you be a leader and vote not guilty?” The first jurist said, yes, she could be a leader, followed by the second, third and so on. Each agreeing that he or she could be a leader. Until it came to me.

I said I didn’t know if I could or would be a leader. When asked why, I explained that it would depend on the circumstances—how strong were my doubts, how strong were the certainty of the others and a host of other issues. The defense attorney thanked me for my answer and continued on, as each other person gave the same response as the first candidate. In other words, the entire jury panel demonstrated their leadership abilities by mimicking the answer of the first person.

We are a nation of followers, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We follow our favorite sports teams, our favorite celebrities. We count the number of followers on Twitter to determine popularity and influence. If a person gets enough followers from their tweets or on YouTube, the person can make a very nice living.

Our loyalty as a follower can be suspect. We can change our loyalty if someone or something we follow makes a decision or a statement we strongly disagree with. If we feel strongly enough about it, we’ll drop our loyalty. Sometimes, we can surrender our loyalty because we’ve lost interest or moved on to something else. Our tastes may change. There are any number of reasons we may stop being a follower.

Jesus calls us to follow Him. When He does call us to follow, we are called to something beyond anything we can fully imagine, and we are called to something we can never fully experience until we truly follow Him.

Background

There are a number of passages where Jesus calls His disciples to follow Him. One of my favorite is when Jesus has Peter take Him out on a lake in order to speak to a crowd that was pushing Him into the lake because of the size of the crowd. After teaching, Jesus told Peter to lower his nets. Peter had been out all night fishing and had caught nothing. He tries to warn Jesus, but lowers the nets anyway. When the catch is so great that it takes two boats to pull the net up, Peter tells Jesus he is unworthy to be in Jesus’ presence. Jesus’ response is, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men” (Luke 5:1-11).

In this particular passage, Jesus calls Matthew to follow Him. The call is simple and direct. And Matthew’s response is immediate. In this calling, we find a profound depth to the calling and the expectations Jesus has for those He calls.

Central Truth: Jesus calls us, He calls us to follow Him.

Jesus’ call:

Demands a response (9)

When Jesus gathered a group of disciples together, He chose a rather eclectic group. Along with the six fishermen (Peter, James, Andrew, John, Thomas and Nathaniel), He also included a Zealot (Simon, not Peter). To be a Zealot was to be super-patriotic. Simon longed for a free Israel and hated the Romans and all they stood for. There was nothing more important for a Zealot than to have the complete overthrow of Roman rule. We don’t know what four of the other apostles were associated with, but we can see that Jesus called men from Galilee and Judea.

Into this mix Jesus added a tax gatherer, Levi or Matthew. To be a tax collector in Judea was to be an employee of the Roman government. The way to become a tax collector was to bid for the right to do so. There were only three set taxes required by Rome—a tax on the produce of the land, a tax on income and a tax on just living in the empire. These taxes had a set rate on them and were mandatory. Any other tax was left up to the tax collector, who could tax imports and exports. He could use a sales tax or any other tax he was clever enough to think up. The rates on such taxes were also left up to the collector. Needless to say, being a tax collector was a potentially great source of income that could be made off the backs of everyone else. It would be an easy system to abuse. It should be no surprise that the tax collectors in the area were by and large hated for how they made their living.

So, when Jesus walked past Matthew, had He taken a vote with the other apostles with Him, it is doubtful that Matthew would become one of them. That’s the thing about Jesus. He sees things in people that others don’t see. He looks past the exterior things that define us and goes to the heart of the person. Jesus saw Matthew and, getting his attention, said simply, “Follow Me.”

There is no indication that Jesus had ever met Matthew before. There is no record of any earlier encounter. We don’t know if Matthew had been part of a crowd that heard Jesus or anything else about him. All we know is that Jesus saw in this tax collector someone who had the potential and the need to follow Him. So Jesus said, “Follow me.” Matthew gave up everything he had and followed Jesus.

The thing about Jesus’ calling is that it’s simple but it’s also very direct. When Jesus calls us to follow Him, He doesn’t give us the opportunity to also follow others. In other instances, Jesus was told by others they wanted to follow Him. Each of those who expressed an interest also had something else they needed to take care of first. Jesus rejected them as followers (cf. Matthew 8:18-22; Luke 9:57-62). There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, we can only follow Christ when He calls us to Him. John 15:16 states that Jesus chooses us, not the other way around. In Peter’s confession of Christ as the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:13-20), Jesus told Peter that his awareness of Who Jesus is is a result of God’s revelation. It is the Holy Spirit working in us that brings us to salvation. It is not our coming to Him, but Him calling us to Him that is important.

Second, when Jesus calls us to follow Him, it is an exclusive calling. It is exclusive in that we are called to follow Him and only Him. Our loyalty cannot be split between Jesus and others; it cannot be split between Him and something else.

If we are called to follow Jesus, we are called to be His and His only. This means that His word is the final word; His will is the only will; His way is the way. When Jesus says, “Follow Me,” He expects us to set anything and everything aside that might hinder that calling. To follow Jesus is to let Him lead us where He bids us go. All we need to do is trust Him and obey Him.

Matthew understood this. When Jesus called him to follow, Matthew walked away from his old life and never looked back. From that moment on, Matthew belonged to one Lord, Jesus Christ.

Is often questioned by others (10-11)

There are two times we learn of Jesus eating at tax collectors’ houses. One is here, and the other is with Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. In both instances, people grumbled. In Zacchaeus’ case, Jesus at his house resulted in a new life and a new devotion to Christ. In this case, eating at Matthew’s house, there are also those who question Jesus’ judgment.

When Matthew invited Jesus to his home, Matthew also invited all his friends. Since Matthew was not a popular man, most of his friends did what he did. The house was filled with other tax collectors and other “sinners” in the eyes of respectable Judeans. (One can only imagine what Simon the Zealot must have thought with all these traitors sitting with him to eat.)

The Pharisees couldn’t understand it. Whether they were afraid to ask Jesus directly or whether they didn’t want to intrude on His meal, the religious leaders turned to Jesus’ other disciples and asked how in the world Jesus could eat with such riffraff. The fact that Pharisees were present should raise the question about them. I suspect their answer would be they were there to condemn the tax collectors and sinners (while also enjoying a free meal at their expense would go left unsaid).

Just as Jesus calls us to follow Him, He also calls us to accept others that He chooses to call. If Jesus bids us follow Him, He bids us to follow Him to places that wouldn’t be comfortable for us. Sometimes, our discomfort can hinder our ministry. I was so thirsty once while waiting for a plane that I had to find something to drink and somewhere to get that drink. The only place open was a bar. I was so uncomfortable there that I only spoke to the waitress long enough to tell her I wanted a Coca Cola. She brought me the drink and a basket of pretzels. I told her I didn’t want the pretzels, but they were on the house. Looking back on it, it was a place where the light of Christ could have shone through me, but my discomfort placed a bushel over the light. Following Jesus means we go where He sends us and let Him deal with the discomfort.

When we follow Jesus, there will be those who question what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. They will question the validity of the One we follow. They will question those with whom we fellowship. They will do what they can do dissuade us from following Him.

Our task is to ignore the questions and follow the One who calls us.

Is extended to those who need Him (12-13)

We don’t know if the Pharisees’ question was loud enough for Jesus to hear of whether Jesus knew what they were thinking. The Bible says, “Upon hearing this,” but again, did Jesus hear it from one of the disciples, did He hear it from the Pharisees with His hears, or did He know? Regardless, Jesus answered the question asked of the disciples. In answering, Jesus gives three statements.

First, He points out that the people who need a doctor are those who are ill. In the case of spiritual wellbeing, Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes that the only ones who will recognize the need to follow Jesus are those who are poor, who are hungry, who mourn. The ones who go to a doctor are those who are experiencing physical ailments. Those who are experiencing spiritual difficulties know they need to turn to the One who can heal them. If we assume we’re in good standing with God, we have a tendency not to seek Him.

There are millions of people in our world who think they have no need for spiritual healing. They will tell us that they are good people, doing relatively good things with their lives. And for the most part, that’s true. But they don’t realize they are sinners in need of salvation. They think that sin is doing something truly horrible, something that all humanity recognizes as wrong. They don’t understand that sin is far deeper than the mere act of sin. The Bible says not to lie, but the lie in and of itself isn’t the bad thing. It’s the refusal to obey God that is the sin, and that rebellion against God is the death of the spirit. Jesus cannot save those who think they don’t need saving, because they will be deaf to His calling.

Second, Jesus challenges those who question Him to reconsider what it really means to be a follower of God. The Pharisees prided themselves on keeping the law of Moses and of the Prophets. They were diligent in their efforts and were determined to prevent a second destruction of Jerusalem because of disobedience to the law. In response, Jesus cites for them Hosea 6:6—“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The context of the verse comes from a people seeking God’s blessings, and assuming that performing the rituals and sacrifices of the Law will suffice to brings God’s blessings upon the land. God’s response is what Jesus quotes here. Jesus doesn’t want or need people who go through the motions thinking that that’s all God really wants. God wants our hearts demonstrated by our love for Him through the way we treat those around us. He requires mercy, not sacrifice.

Third, Jesus tells those who question Him a rather plain answer to their question. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” The whole reason Jesus gave up the glory of the Godhead was a keen awareness of a world desperately in need of saving from our sins and our abandonment of Him. Knowing that it would take His supreme sacrifice to make things right, Jesus chose to come and die for us in order that we might let Him live through us. When Jesus bids us follow Him, He bids us die to self and let Him live through us. That’s why Jesus came—to save the sinners, of whom we are all numbered.

Conclusion

I was 20 years old, in college, taking a New Testament survey class. We were going over some of Jesus’ parables, beginning with the sower and the seeds. As the teacher was going over the parable, I asked him if the three soils after the hard soil—the soil with the weeds, the shallow soil—were about backslidden believers. His answer surprised me.

He said the only “seeds” in the parable that were the believers were the seeds that fell in the fertile soil and bore fruit. All the other seeds were never believers to begin with. His point was that when Jesus calls us to follow Him, we have to go all in or we fall short.

If we are today here proclaiming Jesus Christ is our Lord, then He has called us to follow Him.

Are we?