I Know I Am … Accepted

Everyone close your eyes and bow your head. Without looking around, I want anyone who ever feels left out to raise your hand. Raise your hand if you ever feel like no one wants you. Raise your hand if you ever feel not good enough. Raise your hand if you ever feel rejected. Now, hands down and heads up. I want you to share with your neighbors the answer to this question: Share about a time when you felt left out or like everything was your fault. Do you think this is how God wants us to feel? Deep down, we all need to be accepted. But we can never really feel accepted deep down until we can see ourselves the way God does. We have to learn to see ourselves the way God sees us instead of looking at the people and situations that make us feel not good enough. Let’s read from Matthew 9. Open up your Bibles to Matthew 9. ⁹ As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. Write this down: Jesus ACCEPTS us FIRST. Matthew was just doing his job. And Jesus saw him. And Jesus stopped. Then he tells Matthew, because Jesus didn’t really ask, he tells Matthew, “follow me.” God has chosen you. GOD has chosen YOU. God chose you to be friends with Him even though He knows all about the junk in your life. Let me tell you a little thing about Matthew that a lot of people tend to forget. He was a tax collector. And I don’t mean he was a tax collector like he worked for the IRS, or was an accountant or something I’m talking about he took money from you, often times more money than necessary or required, and then gave the money you earned by breaking your back every single day and gave it to people who virtually enslaved you for living. Here’s what I mean. Back in the day, the only way Rome was able to maintain peace in their gigantic country was to have policing. In order to have policing you need to have money to pay the salaries of those doing the policing. Long story short, a tax collector, would buy the right to collect money on behalf of the Roman Empire to make sure that you are policed. Now, having police isn’t that bad. Right? Of course it’s not. But Rome used the police for their own purposes—they used the police to instill strict control. There would be no rebellion or dissident. As a result of this, people like Matthew were the worst. They made money by cheating their fellow countrymen and got rich. All the while everybody else suffered horribly. Jesus accepted Matthew first. Jesus was a teacher and well respected person. He should not have accepted the worst type of human being—the type of person that gained off of other people’s miseries. Let’s go to the next verse. ¹⁰ While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus associates himself with those people that he wasn’t socially supposed to associate himself with. It’s like hanging out with the unpopular kids. That is what is said in verse 11. Except in this case, Jesus was hanging out with traitors. This is apparent—Jesus chooses those who are not chosen. But here’s the extra interesting part of the story that people don’t catch. Matthew’s unacceptable friends also have dinner with Jesus. Not only did Jesus first choose a person who was unchosen, he also welcomes those people that the person that was unchosen chose to bring with him. Do you know who wrote this story? Yes, that’s right, it was Matthew. The same guy that Jesus called first is writing this story. He makes this a point—when he was chosen by somebody who wasn’t supposed to choose him, he brought his friends to meet him so that they too can be chosen. I want you to think about that for just a hot minute. There are some crazy implications to that. Look at it in verse 10—many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. Do you know how I first became a follower of Jesus? I was 16 years old and my buddy, who by societal standards should not have been my friend because he was from another lifestyle. Like he was in a gang, and I don’t mean the type of gang kids run around in getting into fist fights, I’m talking about the type of gangs where if you look at them funny, they shoot you or push you off the top of a roof, but he was my buddy anyways, he invited me to a place I never would have imagined him to invite me to – a Christian gathering. He said to me, “Jesus is calling you, just listen.” So I sat there and listened. But this is the exact moment that Matthew is describing. A lot of you can probably understand that opportunity. You may have been invited to eat with Jesus by a friend at church, or may be your Bible study teacher or maybe even your parents. But regardless, when Jesus reaches somebody, he is reaching everybody around that person. When you have the opportunity to know Jesus, he is giving your friends that same opportunity, so you must invite them. I’m not going to touch verse 11 because if you have any sense you’ll know that these people are hypocritical and selfish and don’t know how to share. They care more about exclusion that inclusion. Jesus didn’t care for exclusion. That’s why he chose somebody who was excluded from the house of Israel for being a tax collector. Let’s go to the next verse. ¹² On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ¹³ But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Write this down: Jesus ACCEPTS me UNCONDITIONALLY. Jesus doesn’t care about whether or not you have anything to offer him. He already knows you’re broken, filled with mistakes that are unforgettable and too regrettable to even begin talking about. But he accepts you unconditionally. It doesn’t matter that you have problems and you can’t add or spell or take care of yourself. He just doesn’t care. He accepts you unconditionally because God is good. He sent Jesus to save us from our sins. But He didn’t stop there. God chose to invite you into His family. When we accept God’s forgiveness because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we receive mercy that we should never have received. We have an opportunity not only to experience that in our lives, but to invite others who need it, into that type of acceptance in Jesus. Let’s look at what Ephesians 1:4 says, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” I want us to take five minutes right now, and close our eyes and imagine us through Jesus’ eyes. Then I want you to think through your mind’s eye about somebody in Jesus’ eyes who seems unaccepted by the world. I want you to pray for that person right now. I want you to think about ask him or her to church next week.  Let’s pray.