“Come To the Sin Doctor"
Text: Matthew 9:9-13
6-11-2023
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I’m sure that over the years we’ve all heard plenty of doctor jokes, especially by comedians. Like the man who went to his physician because he had a pain whenever he bent his right arm. He said, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” And the doctor said, “Well then, don’t do that!” We may laugh at that but in reality, it’s not funny when it happens to you. We may find it difficult to wholeheartedly trust doctors in general in recent years, but we really do need to have physicians we can trust. And yet the fact is that even after all their years of training, doctors do make mistakes. We’ve heard the horror stories about surgeons accidently operating on the wrong person or the wrong body part. Or the sad stories about doctors misdiagnosing a person’s condition. And yet, even though they make mistakes sometimes, we still go running to them when we have health problems. Why are we so willing to do that, knowing that they could make a mistake? Isn’t it because deep down we know we need them? Even though they aren’t perfect, we know that quite often doctors can help make us feel better and relieve our pain. That’s part of the Hippocratic Oath that they take.
There is a perfect doctor though. A doctor who has never made a mistake. A doctor who has a 100% cure rate. You won’t find Him listed in the yellow pages or if you do a search online for doctors. The Gospel writers tell us that Jesus was that perfect doctor. He healed many people of their diseases and their physical deformities. In fact, if you skim all of Matthew chapter 9 you’ll find that Jesus was very busy healing people at this time. I counted 6 different people He healed in just this chapter alone. But we had better not stop our count at 6, because there were more. How many more? We don’t know for sure. Verse 10 only says that “many tax collectors and sinners” came to Matthew’s house to eat with Jesus.
Now wait a minute! Why are we counting them along with the others that Jesus healed? It doesn’t say that they were sick and He healed them. Or does it? If you’re thinking only in terms of physical healing, then the answer is “No.” But if you’re looking for spiritual healings, there are plenty of them to be found. Actually, that was the real mission of Jesus Christ. Yes, He had mercy on people whose bodies were in pain. But He was more concerned with healing their souls of the deadly disease of sin. Jesus was and is the Sin Doctor and He’s got the only cure.
That leads us right to the conflict that we see in our text. The Pharisees didn’t think it was right for Jesus to be hanging out with tax collectors and other so-called “sinners.” We can kind of agree with them, can’t we? I mean, besides lawyers, aren’t tax-collectors the least likely to get our pity or mercy? IRS agents are despised by us because they seem to enjoy gouging their fellow citizens. That’s how the Jews looked at someone like Matthew. He was a traitor. He was a Jew, collecting taxes for the oppressive Romans who ruled over them. And not only that, it was common practice that guys like him would charge extra and take a huge cut for themselves. Tax-collectors were rich, but they were also hated.
That’s why it was so appalling to the Pharisees that Jesus would eat with, let alone talk to, a scum bag like Matthew. They detested it and they protested it. They could clearly see that Matthew was sick with sin, but they didn’t think he deserved to be healed with God’s forgiveness. Worse than that, though, they could not see that they too were sick with sin and needed healing from Jesus. On the outside they looked spiritually healthy. They went through all the motions of acting religious and holy. But on the inside, they were spiritually sick with the deadly disease of sin, just like Matthew and his friends. The Pharisees just couldn’t, or should we say wouldn’t, accept their true condition.
There’s a strong parallel here between a physical disease and the spiritual disease of sin. Take cancer for instance. One of the most fatal mistakes you can make is to ignore the warning signs. If you discover a strange lump on your body, you had better run, not walk, to your doctor. The very worst thing you can do is deny that it’s there. And yet, people do. Maybe it’s because they’re afraid of what the doctor is going to find. Or maybe they’re thinking, “This couldn’t happen to me. I eat healthy. I don’t smoke. I exercise. I can’t have cancer.” The sad fact is that cancer is an equal opportunity killer. Even seemingly healthy people are devastated by it. Anyone can have cancer. I’ve had it, and been treated for it. And I can tell you from the mistakes of others, denying the diagnosis can kill you.
St. Paul tells us something similar about the disease of sin. In Romans 3:23 he says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” No one is excluded. Every single human being is born with this spiritual disease. Paul also gives us the sad diagnosis. He says in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” Denying that you are a sinner can kill you. Not just physically. It can also kill you spiritually.
And yet, deny is what so many people do. How come? Well, perhaps an illustration might help. When I was a cop in Omaha, we arrested a man at a night club with a large amount of cocaine. The off-duty cops who caught him had handcuffed him and leaned him against the front of my car. They placed his wallet, keys, and the baggie of cocaine on the hood of my car. We turned our heads for one second and the next thing we knew he had picked up the baggie with his mouth and started eating it! He was determined to destroy the evidence of his guilt. I don’t know exactly how much he managed to swallow, but it was a dangerous amount. Myself and other officers urged him to let us take him to the hospital to have his stomach pumped. He refused. In fact, he flat out denied eating the cocaine even though his mouth and nose were caked with the residue. At that point, we couldn’t force him to get treatment. But soon he started to shake as he felt the effects of more and more of the drug entering his bloodstream. And the crazy thing is that even then, he kept on denying it. His denial was about to kill him. It got bad enough that we were finally able to legally force him to get treatment, and he survived.
You see, that man didn’t want to be treated by a doctor because doing so would mean admitting his guilt. He wanted to cover it up. But his denial was killing him. It’s that way with sin. Acknowledging our sin means that we accept responsibility for it. Our sinful nature militates against that. To put it plainly, we don’t want to admit we’re wrong and that we deserve the pain and punishment for our sin. So, we deny it and refuse the healing of Jesus, the Great Physician. But this denial can kill you spiritually.
Friends, that’s why we gather together here in God’s house. We come here to be treated by the Sin Doctor, Jesus Christ. When we honestly examine ourselves, we find more than just a suspicious lump. No, we find that we’re filled with the cancer of sin. But then we confess our sins to Jesus and ask to be healed. And through His Word and Sacraments we receive His cure. We deserved suffering and pain and death for our sins. But Jesus swallowed that bitter pill for us when He suffered and died for the sins of the whole world on the cross. When He rose from the grave on Easter, He made the cure available for everyone who would receive it.
But you know, it’s easy to slip into the error of the Pharisees. It’s easy to start thinking about so-and-so. You know, that “sinner” over there. That person who is a worse sinner than me. It’s easy to think that certain people need the healing forgiveness of Jesus more than we do. It’s easy to get kind of arrogant and think that we’re better off than other sinners. But if we stop and really examine ourselves, we’ll quickly see that we too are filled with sin in our hearts. And we too are just as desperate as they are for the healing of Jesus. Christ says “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” That’s still true today. Christians are no better than the other sinners around them. The only difference is that we know we’ve received the healing forgiveness of Jesus. Does a person who has been healed of their cancer go back to the doctor’s office just to show off their health to the other patients? No, they go back for regular check-ups to make sure that they stay healthy. Likewise, we don’t come here to God’s house to show off how spiritually healthy we are. We come here to have Jesus examine us and remove our sin so that we can stay healthy and strong. And we come here with thanks to the doctor of our souls for healing us.
Now if you had found a doctor who cured your cancer, would you keep that a secret or would you tell other cancer patients about it? Of course, you’d tell everyone you knew about this doctor, right? You’d be so excited that you’d just have to share this information with others who are suffering like you were. Well, we have even greater news than a cure for cancer or any other deadly disease. We know the Physician who has the 100% guaranteed cure for sin. It’s our Savior Jesus. Our world is dying to hear that news. Quite literally, it’s dying spiritually. God wants us to go out now as His healed and forgiven children and spread that news to our sin-sick world. His mercy is poured out on us so that we can show mercy to our fellow sinners around us. May God continue to work His healing forgiveness in us and may He fill our hearts with compassion for others who also need His miraculous healing of their souls. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!