Saving Sinners: Matthew 9:1-17 (Ep. 115)

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Good day, and welcome to stories of a faithful god for kids. Dave here. A big shout out to Odette and Annie in Hobart, Tasmania, right down at the bottom of Australia. They've just become club members to hear all episodes of stories of a faithful god for kids. Odette and Annie, I think you're our first Tasmanians to sign up.

[00:00:22] - [Speaker 0]
It's so great to have you in the club. Keep trusting Jesus. By the way, parents, if you do sign up to the club, I'll usually send you an informal email, and sometimes that goes into spam folders. So just make sure you check it's there. Now on with the show.

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Have you ever said or done something to someone that's made them really sad or angry? Maybe to your friend or a parent or even someone you don't like very much. Have you hurt someone by what you've said or done? When that happens, there is nothing you can do to fix it. You can try.

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You can bring them a nice drink or offer to clean their room or wash all their clothes for the next ten years, but none of that will take away the pain you caused them. It might show that you're sorry for what you've done, but it can never ever fix what you broke. The only way things can be fixed is if the other person decides to forgive you. They may still be hurt, but instead of treating you as the one who hurt them, they decide to just wash it away, treat you like you never did that nasty thing. In fact, they keep all the hurt and don't let you be hurt in return.

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They don't have to forgive you even if you beg them, but if they do, it is such a wonderful thing. So what about God? It's easy to think we don't do anything wrong to God, but we do all the time. When we don't live the kind ways he wants us to live, when we don't always tell the truth, when we treat ourselves as more important than other people and even more important than him, when we don't say thank you to him for all the good things we have. It's all what the Bible calls sin, and there is nothing we can do to fix it.

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So the real question is, what will God do? It's time to find out. Get ready for our next episode of stories of a faithful God for kids. At the end of our last episode, Jesus had just saved two men and an entire area from evil demons. Instead of thanking Jesus, the local people asked him to leave.

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Craziness. Well, Jesus and his disciples get back in their boat and cross the lake back to Capernaum, where they've just come from. Remember, huge crowds of sick people had been coming to him there to be healed. Now that he's back, people want the same thing. Some people bring a man to Jesus.

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The man is paralyzed. That means he can't use or even feel part of his body. I assume it's at least his legs that are paralyzed because the people have to carry him to Jesus on a mat. They didn't have wheelchairs in those days. Now everyone watching knows that Jesus can heal people.

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They've seen him heal people, or at least they've heard about it. It's one of the reasons people are coming to him. This time, though, they get a surprise. Jesus can see that the people who've brought the man really trust Jesus, and so he gives the man the most important thing he needs. In Matthew chapter nine verse two, he says to the man, be happy, young man.

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Your sins are forgiven. This is the most wonderful gift in the universe. It's even better than being able to walk for seventy years. Jesus is making this man friends with God forever. He's taking away his sin.

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He's fixing the biggest problem in the man's life. There's a problem, though. There are some people there who are teachers of God's Old Testament law, and they are shocked by what Jesus just said. They know that only the one who's had something done wrong to them can do the forgiving. Let me put it like this.

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If you punched me in the arm, you didn't have to actually do it. Well, now that you've punched me, it's not okay for your best friend to go up to you and say, don't worry. I forgive you for hitting Dave. No. They can't forgive you.

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They weren't punched. I was punched, and it really hurt. The only person who can forgive you is me. And don't worry. I do forgive you.

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When we sin, we sin against God. So the only person who can forgive us is God. And the teachers of the law are looking at this man, Jesus, who's just said he's forgiven the man's sin, and they're like, who does he think he is? In verse three, they say to themselves, this man speaks as if he were god. That's blasphemy.

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Blasphemy means using god's name as though god's not important or like god isn't who he actually is. They are so angry that Jesus is basically saying he's god. Jesus knows exactly what they're thinking, and he tells them that their thoughts are really evil. In verse four, he asks them, why are you thinking evil thoughts? Which is easier, to tell this paralyzed man your sins are forgiven, or to tell him, stand up and walk?

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Why is he asking that? Think about it for a moment. They've all expected Jesus to be able to heal this man just by speaking to him. They think he can say, stand up and walk, and the man will be able to do it. Jesus wouldn't have to give him any medicine or do an operation on him.

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He'd just speak, and it would happen. But there's no human on Earth who has that power. So who has the power to speak and make such amazing things happen? Well, if you go right back to the beginning of the Bible, when the world is all empty, God speaks. He says, let there be light, and all of a sudden, light appears.

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God's words are really that powerful. And all these people standing there know that Jesus has that power. If he just told the man to stand up and walk, no one would have been upset at all, even though he's doing what only God can do. Jesus is telling them, if you accept that I can heal people by doing what only God can do, then you should also accept that I can forgive people in the way that only God can. Jesus can do both because he is God, God the sun.

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In the last episode, we saw him speak to wind and waves, and the wind and waves obeyed him. We saw him speak to demons, and the demons obeyed him. Everything is showing us that Jesus is god. These guys don't get it yet, and so he shows them again. He says in verse six, but I will prove to you that the son of man, that's Jesus, has power on earth to forgive sins.

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And then he says to the man lying there on his mat, stand up, take your mat, and go home. Now if you or I said that to the man, it would be a bit embarrassing. He'd have to keep lying there because we don't have God's power to make him better. Jesus is different, though. The man's body obeys Jesus.

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The man who couldn't walk before stands up and goes home. Everyone is amazed. Matthew tells us in verse eight, they praised God for giving power like this to men, which kind of misses the point. They still haven't understood that Jesus is more than just a man. He is a man, and he's also God, which means as well as being able to heal people, he's also able to forgive sin.

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As he leaves that place, Jesus sees a man named Matthew. Matthew is a tax collector. Tax is the money governments collect from people so that they can do the job of governing. Generally, even today, all adults have to pay some tax to the government, and, generally, that's a good thing. But in Jesus' day, there are some bad things about being a tax collector.

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One, they're allowed to take more money than the government needs and keep it for themselves. If you say no to them, they can have soldiers come around to your house and do mean things to you. Also, the people they collect taxes for are the Romans. The Romans aren't from around there. They'd come in with their big army, killed a lot of people, and taken over the country.

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They are the enemy, and the tax collectors are working for them. Generally, Jewish people kept away from tax collectors. They thought of tax collectors as the worst kind of sinners, greedy people who worked for the enemy. When Jesus sees Matthew sitting at the tax office, it'd expect him to turn around and walk the other way, but he doesn't. Actually, he speaks to Matthew.

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In verse nine, he says to Matthew, follow me. Follow him? Is Jesus serious? This really sinful guy who takes people's money and works for the enemy, Jesus wants Matthew to follow him. Well, he doesn't need to ask Matthew twice.

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Matthew gets up straight away and follows Jesus. And do you know where they go? They actually go to Matthew's house to have dinner together, his actual house. More than that, a whole bunch of other tax collectors and other people who are thought of as really bad sinners come to the house to eat with Jesus and his followers. Now the Pharisees remember them.

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They're the guys who think they're really good at obeying God. They wouldn't be seen dead hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. They want those people as far away from them as possible. So when they see that Jesus is having dinner with them, they're like, what? They go to Jesus' followers, and they ask in verse 10, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

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Jesus hears them asking, and he answers them. He explains that the whole reason he's come is to save sinners, to bring forgiveness to sinners, to help sinners turn away from their sin and back to God. You can't do that by keeping away from them. You have to go and meet with them. He also gives a warning to the Pharisees.

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He shows how even though they think they're great at obeying God, they're actually really hopeless at it. They've read the Old Testament law, and they see that God told his Old Testament people to make lots of sacrifices, and so that's what they do. And yet, they've completely missed the most important thing about the law. It's supposed to teach the people how to love like God loves. Jesus tells them that God would be totally fine if they never sacrificed any animals again as long as they were loving people.

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In verse 13, he tells them, go and learn what this means. I want faithful love more than I want animal sacrifices. I did not come to invite good people. I came to invite sinners. The Pharisees think they're good people.

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But if they were really good like God, they would love sinners and want to help them trust and love God. The Pharisees are not good at all. Jesus, on the other hand, goes to people who have treated God really badly, and he loves them. He wants to forgive them. He wants to save them.

[00:14:28] - [Speaker 0]
And because he's God, he can forgive them. He can save them. All they need to do is trust and follow him, which is exactly what the tax collectors and so called sinners are doing. Who isn't trusting and following Jesus? The pharisees.

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They don't realize how much they sin. They think they're good, but they're actually sinners as well. They think they don't need forgiveness, and because of that, they won't be forgiven, which is really sad. They really need Jesus, but they don't realize they need Jesus. Some other people who haven't realized how much they need Jesus are the followers of John the Baptist.

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Some of them come to Jesus and ask why his followers are eating so much. Why don't they fast? Fasting is when you don't eat or drink anything for a day or two, often to show how sad you are. John's disciples asked Jesus in verse 14, we and the Pharisees often give up eating, but your followers don't. Why?

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The Pharisees and John followers fast because they're so sad about all the sin in Israel. Jesus explains that it isn't time to be sad about all the sin that's around. Rather, it's party time. It's party time because Jesus has arrived to deal with people's sin. Imagine wandering around sad all the time wishing there was a party when actually the party's going on right now.

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Jesus is the one who can forgive sin. He's the one who can save. He can do the thing that we never can, fix our friendship with God. The people in Jesus' day who knew they'd done heaps of bad things, they realized really quickly that they needed Jesus. People like Matthew.

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He was changed so much by Jesus, he ended up writing the Bible book we're looking at right now, the gospel of Matthew. That's him. Jesus saved him, and he wrote this down so that other people could hear about Jesus and be saved by him as well. The people who weren't saved by Jesus were the people who didn't think they needed him. They thought they were fine with God.

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They didn't think they were sinners, and so they didn't trust Jesus to forgive them and save them. What about you? Maybe you think, I'm fine with God. I go to church. I'm from a Christian family.

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I listen to really great Christian podcasts like stories of a faithful god for kids. I must be fine with God. But none of those things will take away your sin. Only Jesus can do that. The great news is he wants to do it.

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If you know you've sinned, if you want your friendship with God to be fixed, ask Jesus to forgive you and save you and change you so that you can truly love God and love other people. While Jesus is speaking to the followers of John the Baptist, a desperate man rushes up to Jesus. He wants to ask Jesus to do something that only God can do. Something terrible's happened, and only Jesus can fix it. But that's a story for next time.

[00:18:31] - [Speaker 0]
Hi again, everyone. I wanna let you know that a new season of bible in your brain has just kicked off. Bible in your brain is the memory verse podcast for everyone who's in the super club. In this season, we'll be learning one Peter chapter one verses three to five. It's all about what God has done for us, what he is doing for us, and what he will do for us.

[00:18:54] - [Speaker 0]
It's such wonderful news, and it's so good to have those words in our brains and in our hearts. If you wanna hear bible in your brain, plus every episode of stories of a faithful god for kids, join the super club right now by going to faithfulgod.net/membership. That's faithfulgod.net/membership. Keep trusting Jesus. Bye for now.