Dr. Roger Parrott, Belhaven University

Well, last week we talked about the path to following Jesus and the steps that that takes.

And I hope that was helpful to set the stage for us looking at very specific people and their path of following Jesus.

And today we're going to start with Matthew.

Matthew wrote the first gospel in the New Testament, so you know that name.

Well, if you read the Christmas story at your church or your home at Christmas time, you probably read Matthew's account of the Christmas stories that's told about the birth of Christ.

But Matthew didn't start out as the kind of person you would want telling the story of Jesus.

In fact, he might be the last person you'd pick out of a crowd that you would expect to become a disciple and a writer of the gospel.

Here's how Matthew became a new person in Christ.

When Jesus changes you, he changes you dramatically.

And when Jesus calls us to follow him.

Our past may explain where we've been, but our past no longer defines who we are.

Now all of us have labels that people use to define who we are.

Maybe it's your family, maybe it's your hometown.

Maybe it's your abilities.

Maybe it's your appearance.

Maybe it's your success.

Maybe you're happy.

Maybe you're grumpy.

Maybe you're hard to get along with.

Whatever it may be, labels get assigned to us by the people as shorthand to identify who they think we are.

And that's what happened with Matthew.

Some come from the career we pursue.

You know, I can take off my college president uniform and put on jeans and a T shirt, but I'm still president of Bellevue University.

Wherever I go, I can't get rid of it.

It's my identity.

Maybe your identity comes from the people you associate with instead of a career.

Maybe it comes from the reputation you develop.

Maybe the identity comes from the mistakes we've made.

And for too many people, that has become their identity.

And some labels get attached to us so strongly that we begin to believe they're permanent and we can't change.

And we're stuck in what that identity is.

What defines you right now?

What are you known to be?

What are the defining characteristics that identify you?

Well, I have a confession to make.

When I was sitting in your chair.

That was a lot of years ago, when I was sitting in your chair.

I was a good, solid C student.

Man, I could nail a C. I was good at it.

Once in a while, I'd sneak into the B category and I'd think, I, I got this thing.

It's really going now.

I wasn't a good student.

I fell asleep in class.

I'd sit in the back, not pay attention, watch the clock till it was over.

I was an athlete.

That's what I cared about.

But I wasn't all that great either.

I was second string goalkeeper on the soccer team and I played number three or four singles in tennis and number two, doubles.

Never that great.

I was destined for mediocrity.

I was going to hit the bullseye.

I found out years later.

My dad had told one of his closest friends.

He said, you know, I don't think Roger's going to amount to anything.

I'm really worried about him.

Well, something happened.

Two things happened.

One is I met and started dating a girl who later became my wife.

We just had our 52nd anniversary.

That's pretty good.

52.

I mean, that's for old people.

I don't get that.

That's weird.

That's weird.

52.

We've been together a long, long time.

And she was a brilliant student.

She was valedictorian.

She was a brilliant student.

If I wanted to date her, I had to go to the library and study.

And unless we studied seriously, we weren't going for a milkshake.

It wasn't going to happen.

We were studying first.

She started to change my pattern.

Somehow she saw some potential in me that I sure didn't see in me.

But then I began to look around at the school where I was going and my dad was the president at the time.

And I began to see the people who cared about me.

Not because I was a college president's son, not because I was a mediocre student, they just cared about me.

And faculty members who have put energy into me.

And a coach, a tennis coach who cared about me.

My soccer coach, he was creep, but a tennis coach.

And I thought, you know, if I could do some of what they could do, I could help people.

And God began asking me to prepare for that kind of life and follow him into that.

And so I went from a C student to getting a PhD and I really took off in academics probably my junior, late junior year, senior year, and off from then.

And I hope there's some good C student out here right now who God's going to touch to become president of Belhaven University someday.

I. I'd love that.

You see, the identity you have isn't the identity you have to keep.

When God gives you a new vision and calls you into something else.

And he used my wife to be that voice to speak into my life and to change It.

Well, some people have a calling that just labels them so deeply they can't get away from it.

And that was Matthew.

Matthew had the identity that defined him.

Well, he was a tax collector.

Everybody in his city knew the shorthand label of what that meant.

And it all set the limits and the opportunities for Matthew's life.

He couldn't be anything but that because that was his identity.

Then Jesus walked up to his tack booth and with two words, opened the door to a completely new identity for Matthew.

He said, follow me, Follow me.

And it's a fascinating story about how Matthew went from tax collector to writer of the gospel and a disciple of Christ.

And there's much to learn about following Jesus from the life of Matthew.

So let's look at it.

Jesus calls Matthew while he's sitting at his tax booth.

The label everybody knew about him was tax collector.

And in those days, the tax booth was in the city, and the taxes were collected by an individual.

You didn't have a form you sent in.

The tax collector was given that role by the Roman Empire, who had suppressed the Jewish people and had taken over the land.

And so the tax collector was a Jew.

We know that about him.

We know he was educated or he wouldn't get the job.

We know he had stature in the community, and we know financially he made a lot of money.

But he was also a traitor because he was Jewish, but he was collecting money for the Romans.

We know he was sophisticated to somehow get into that role and to get a very prized position.

But we also know he was dishonest because that's how tax collectors were.

Tax collectors were told, you raised so much from this person and they would raise that amount and they'd keep the difference, and whatever they could squeeze out of you is what they got.

They were essentially mafia in many ways.

That was the label Matthew was known for.

And when people saw Matthew, they didn't see a man.

They saw a tax collector.

Now, Matthew knew how he was seen.

He knew what he signed up for.

And I'm sure he put up defenses to deal with the label they put on him.

I'm sure he played the role.

He may have leaned into it because he had a lot of power and control over people, or maybe just resigned to the label.

What's your label?

What's your label?

Smart, Athlete.

Performer.

Successful.

Disappointing.

Difficult.

Mediocre.

Outsider.

Failure.

Maybe the person nobody knows.

Some labels are positive and some labels are negative.

But either kind can be a prison when we allow it to define who we are.

And Matthew's whole Identity was wrapped up in that tax booth.

Well, Jesus said two other words.

It said in the scripture, Jesus saw.

Jesus saw Matthew.

Two words that changed his identity completely from one of the most despised people in that city to one of the people we admire most as we read the New Testament.

Everyone saw Matthew as a tax collector.

Jesus saw Matthew.

Everybody saw what Matthew had done.

Jesus saw what Matthew could become.

Everybody saw Matthew in a category of a person to avoid.

Jesus saw Matthew as a person to be loved.

Jesus sees everything about us.

I think it's funny when people try to live their life and think, well, you're not going to get close to God because I don't want him to know about this.

Are you kidding me?

God knows everything.

And Jesus could see past all that, walked up to him, had never spoken to him in his life, walked up to him and could see all that in Matthew and said, follow me, because he could see Matthew.

Now it's important that Jesus saw Matthew's sin again.

Tax collectors were sinners, really bad ones.

They did it in public.

And Jesus never minimizes sin.

We know that because he came to die on a cross for our sin.

But we're never reduced to the identity of our sin in Christ.

And that's what grace does.

Grace doesn't remove the sin, it redeems the sin.

Matthew never pretended his old life didn't exist, but grace gave him the possibility of a new life.

When Jesus saw him as a person, two words that changed his identity, he said, follow me.

Follow me.

Not only changed his identity, but changed his direction.

He doesn't say, you know, Matthew, you're really a bad guy.

Why don't you clean yourself up and see if you got the desire to be better than who you are?

And so we'll talk, we'll have a cup of tea, and we'll visit.

About this, he didn't say that.

He didn't say, matthew, if you really want to change your life, prove you're serious, and then, and then we'll see if you can measure up.

He didn't say that.

He didn't say, matthew, go make up for everything bad you've ever done, and then come to me and then we'll be ready.

No, he didn't say that.

He didn't say, matthew, become responsible, and then I might take you in.

He didn't say that.

He just said, follow me, knowing exactly who Matthew was.

Just follow me.

Christianity begins there.

Not with becoming good enough for Christ, not with creating a better version of yourself before you can come to Christ.

Not with having some religious achievement before God will accept you, not with inventing a new identity.

It's receiving the identity of Christ when he says, follow me.

So Matthew stood up and followed.

He stood up and followed.

He couldn't follow Christ, remain seated at that text booth.

He left everything.

That was his full identity.

That was his fortune, that was his power, that was his stature.

You know, in ancient times, in those times, if you had something serious that you were in charge of and sharing, you would sit down, you wouldn't stand up like this.

We read often, Jesus sat down to preach.

Matthew was sitting at that booth, which meant he had stature and power.

And what did he do?

He stood up.

He stood up and he followed.

If we're going to follow Jesus, sometimes it requires a very serious break.

We have to be standing up, and when we stand up, we're going to be seen.

We have to leave the tax booth.

It requires action.

We have to go have a new direction to follow him.

Sometimes following Christ requires us to walk away from the very thing that defines us, the tax booth.

Sometimes it's less visible than that.

Maybe it's for you ambition that doesn't leave any room for God.

Maybe it's a relationship that is not bringing you closer to God.

It's deteriorating your relationship with God.

Maybe it's a sin pattern that takes off every weekend and you think, I'm going to do better next week, but you don't.

Maybe it's a need for approval.

Maybe it's resentment that hasn't been released.

Maybe it's a private life that doesn't match the person everybody else sees.

You have to stand up and follow.

You can't follow without leaving behind something you now value.

It means Jesus becomes the one who decides what stays in our life and what goes.

You see, it's interesting to me.

Matthew didn't negotiate.

Again, Matthew made a lot of money.

He had a lot of stature and power.

He could have said, well, Lord, I'm going to play by the rules.

I'll do this by the rules, but I'll just keep this job and I'll do better and I'll be really interested in what you.

He didn't do that.

He didn't negotiate in any way.

He left it all behind and he got up and he walked away.

And here's an important part of this story.

That job was not waiting for him.

If he got away and changed his mind, decided, wanted to come back, he burned those bridges.

They were gone.

And sometimes, if you're going to follow Christ, you might Be in a position where you got to burn the bridges all the way in order to get up and follow him.

He was staking his future on Jesus.

Following Christ always involves trust because we do not know everything that comes after.

After we walk away from our identity.

And that's what Matthew did.

That's exactly what Matthew did.

But Matthew was still Matthew even after that.

Now, Matthew's identity changed before his circumstances did.

But his past didn't disappear.

People knew what he'd done.

The consequences for choices he'd made earlier were still very real.

And others, Jesus might have given him grace, but other people didn't.

They still identified him as the old Matthew that they didn't want to be any part of.

But something fundamental had changed in Matthew.

He was now a follower of Jesus who used to be a tax collector.

A completely new identity because he belonged in Christ.

If failure is part of your story, it's not your identity.

If rejection is part of your story, it's not your identity.

If success is part of your story, it's not your identity.

If struggle is part of your story, it's not your identity.

Those things do not have the final word on who you are.

Christ does.

Christ does.

Matthew had a new purpose.

You know, following Christ can't be private because it changes you.

And so the first thing Matthew wanted to do that same day is for the people that he knew best to know Jesus Christ, who was seeing him as a person to be loved and cared for.

And so he invited his old network together for dinner that night.

And the disciples came and Jesus came, and all the tax collectors in the town came.

All the bad guys came and had dinner with Jesus and Matthew, who got up from his tax table and walked away.

I'm sure Matthew felt like, man, these guys are going to think I'm crazy and I'm not going to be accepted anymore.

He didn't care because he knew who Jesus was at that point, and he wanted to follow him and he wanted them to know who Jesus was.

The very relationships associated with old life became his best opportunities for his new life.

The experiences you wish you could erase may allow you to reach somebody else that nobody else can reach.

See, because Jesus doesn't waste a consecrated life, even if there are things in our past that we wish we could forget.

Matthew had this new purpose.

And then it didn't change all the people around him.

It changed Matthew, but it didn't change all people around him.

People around him didn't see the immediate change.

And the people who were the most judgmental Were the religious people the Pharisees?

It says.

It says, why are you having dinner?

Why is your teacher having dinner with these scum?

They saw the old label.

They saw tax, they saw sinner, they saw crook in Matthew.

And you know, that can be really painful when you're trying to follow Christ.

It can be really painful that you're trying to become a new person in Christ and the people around you yet don't see it, but you don't need them to recognize it before you can live it.

Jesus answered beautifully.

Healthy people don't need a doctor.

In fact, the scripture says it well.

For I've come to call not those who think they are righteous, but.

But those who know they are sinners.

The greatest barrier between us and Jesus is not that we have sinned, because that's exactly what he died for.

The danger is believing we do not need him.

Jesus knew the Pharisees needed a physician too, but they simply didn't know they were sick and they felt like they didn't need him.

Christian identity begins with a confession that we never outgrow.

I need Jesus.

I need his forgiveness.

I need his wisdom.

I need his strength.

I need his correction.

I need his grace.

I need his spirit.

That's not weakness.

That's following.

And that must be our constant prayer.

Jesus, I need you.

Well, the new identity does not mean pretending that the old life never happened.

When Matthew writes about himself in his Gospel, this is how he describes himself.

Matthew, the tax collector.

It's fascinating to me.

He's remembering who he'd been, but now he's seen that past viewed through the grace of Jesus.

That grace transformed him and washed clean that past, although the past was still there.

Matthew the tax collector, who's a follower of Jesus.

Remarkable.

There's great difference between remembering your past and letting your past control you.

You do not have to deny what happened.

You don't have to pretend you never failed.

You don't have to act as though sin doesn't have consequences.

It does.

But you also do not have to keep paying for what Jesus has already forgiven.

It's over.

Matthew says, yes, that was me, the tax collector.

And then Jesus.

Then Jesus came into my life.

I was going one direction as a crook, a mafia guy, a bad person.

And then Jesus changed it.

I was a sinner, and then Jesus.

I was building identity that was not sustainable because it was corrupt.

Then Jesus.

I was carrying guilt I couldn't remove.

And then Jesus.

Well, Matthew's life leads us to ask three questions.

What defines your identity right now?

What's your identity right now?

Your identity.

Identity can be, I belong to Jesus Christ, and everything else is secondary.

It doesn't mean it's not important that you're an athlete, a performer, a good student, a bad student, whatever it may be.

Those things still matter.

But your primary identity is you belong to him first.

And everything else is secondary.

Second question.

What do you need to leave behind?

Standing up from that position where you have security?

Matthew, I'm sure, felt very secure sitting at that table.

It's a difficult action to take.

It's hard.

It takes risk, it takes commitment.

Because Matthew couldn't go back and we need to be in that position.

What do you need to leave behind?

And then thirdly, who needs you to meet the Jesus that changed you?

Who trusts you enough that you could help that person take a step closer to Jesus?

Matthew had no idea, no idea what would happen that day.

When he stood up, he didn't know where that life was going.

He didn't know he'd become one of the 12 disciples who would walk with Jesus for three years and be there when he was crucified and when he rose from the grave and go on to preach and to share the good news of the world.

He didn't know that was going to happen.

He didn't know there would be generations of Christians who would read his Gospel and understand who Jesus was by what Matthew told about him.

He didn't know that thousands of years later there'd be a chapel in Jackson, Mississippi, where we'd be talking about his life and his courage to stand up that one day at that tax table so long ago.

Matthew only knew that Jesus had looked beyond his identity and said, follow me.

That's where new life begins.

And Jesus still does that.

He meets us in the places where we have settled into identities that too small for what he intends for our lives.

He meets us in our success.

He meets us in our failure, in our guilt or ambition.

He meets us in the life we've constructed for ourselves that's so limited.

And he says, stand up and follow me.

Years later, when Matthew wrote his gospel, he recorded the words from Jesus that could almost serve as a caption for Matthew's life.

Here's what the scripture said that Matthew wrote Jesus words.

If you cling to your life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

Matthew knew it was true.

He'd lived it.

He walked away from the life he built for himself and discovered an entirely new life in Christ.

And if today if today you are not following Jesus as you should, this is the day to stand up and walk and follow him.

Pray our prayer of benediction.

And might it be your prayer?

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love.

God bless.

Have a great day.