Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Is there a doctor in the house? I like doctors - and nurses. For the most part they are intelligent and nice people. Occasionally you will find one with a bad bed side manner. But what do you expect having to spend all that time with sick people. As a pastor I have noticed that there are a lot of doctors at the hospital.

But you know what the problem is with hospital. It's all those sick people. They are always complaining about something. "My stomach hurts." "My head hurts." And they take up all the time of those nice doctors and nurses.

You know hospitals would be much nicer places if they would get rid of all those sick people. Then there would just be those nice doctors and nurses. You could go to the hospital and you wouldn't have to bother with the sick people. You could just visit with the doctors and nurses.

You might laugh but that is what the religious people were complaining about back in Jesus' day. Jesus went to those who were sin sick. It would be one thing if he had waited for them to repent and then come to him. But he went straight to them before they repented. While they were still sinners, he sought them out.

Matthew was an example of this. The Bible makes the point that Jesus went to the place where he was collecting taxes for the emperor to call Matthew. Tax collectors were collaborates with Rome. They were traitors to Israel and they served a pagan power and made money off of it. Matthew was one of these back-stabbing, yellow-bellied turncoats.

And he was sitting at his tax desk doing his dirty Roman tax collecting when Jesus came to him. And Jesus said, "Your father Abraham would turn over in his grave if he saw you sitting there. I call down fire and brimstone on you boy because you done forgot who you are!" No, that's the kind of thing the religious people expected Messiah to do. Instead Jesus said, "Come, follow me."

Jesus called him and Matthew followed!

But that wasn't the whole of it. Jesus associated with sinners and ate with them. He spent all his time with people whose lifestyles were contrary to the Word of God! So the religious people decided to take action because of Jesus' indiscretion. Jesus was setting a bad example - what kind of roll model was he being? The religious people had a problem with Jesus' actions so they did what religious people often do. They went around behind Jesus back and complained to his disciples.

But Jesus knew what was going on. He said, "The healthy don't need a doctor. It's the sick that need a house call. Go home and read your Bible. In it God says, 'What I really want is mercy not religious ritual.' I'm here not for the self righteous but for sinners."

Jesus is the great physician. He is the healer with a cure for human sin. His very blood holds the vaccine against the Devil and Hell. And Jesus came to resuscitate spirits that were in a coma. He didn't come all the way from Heaven to just hang out with people who didn't need (or thought they didn't need) his help. He came for the sinners to be saved. So he went to the sinners while they were still lost in sin, that they could be called out of sin.

Is there a doctor in the house? Matthew's answer is "YES, praise God." He left that tax booth and stopped betraying his people to take up soul fishing. And almost as proof that there is a doctor in the house he told two stories or people being healed of life long or life stealing illnesses. A young girl is dead and Jesus raises her from the dead. A woman has been bleeding for years, and Jesus stops the bleeding.

These stories are metaphors for the spiritual state of the people. Some of them, like Matthew, were suffering the injuries of sin and were bleeding. Like that woman they had been bleeding for years. They had tried everything and still the injuries of sin hemorrhaged. Some like the religious leaders were in a coma if not dead. They were so far gone that they could not tell that they needed a doctor. Their souls had flat lined.

So, was there any hope for the dearly spiritually departed religious leaders? Yes, Dr. Jesus was in the house! You notice that it was a leader of the synagogue who came to Jesus? Did you notice what he said to Jesus? "My daughter is dead, but you can lay hands on her and she will live!" Now that is faith! If a leader of the synagogue could have that kind of faith, then there was hope for the religious leaders. They too could be raised out of their spiritual demise like that leader's daughter was raised out of death.

Is there a doctor in the house? YES! And I am not talking about Janet, Lou or Andreas. Jesus the doctor is here. But he didn't come for the healthy people. He came to heal the sick. He is not to raise the living but to raise the dead.

You know most people have it all backward. They think that the church is for those who are spiritually healthy. They think that people shouldn't come to church until they have their sin condition fully treated. That would be like banning the sick from going to the hospital! The church exists for those who are sin sick and sorrow worn.

Jesus Christ came to heal the broken hearted and to raise up those whose spirits were dead. Dr. Jesus is in the house! If you don't need spiritual healing, then you're in the wrong place. But if you long for a closer walk with God, for forgiveness, for grace, for peace, for healing, for new life� Then you are in the right place. The doctor is in. He will see you now!

"God helps those who help themselves." I am not sure where this statement came from, but it was not the Bible. It's an expression that we all have used, myself included, but what does it mean? Well, for some it means that God helps, but only if we get things started. If we believe something needs to be done we have to start it. Then God will pitch in and help. For others it means that God helps but only if we take responsibility for following through. So not only do we have to start something we have to make sure it gets finished. God in a sense is just there for moral support. And for a few it means God doesn't really help us at all. Oh, it may look like God has helped someone who completed a huge task. But the reality is that they did it all themselves. No matter which of the above understandings you have, the basic idea behind "God helps those who help themselves" is that we humans are ultimately responsible for anything we accomplish.

This is what the world believes. You know in the church we have "Creeds" or "Affirmations of Faith" that are our statements of belief. Well the world has a creed too. It is the Creed of self reliance: It states: "I believe in the human ability to begin and complete anything." "I believe that my initiative is at the center of the universe." "I believe that the power of my intellect and my will are the greatest powers in the universe." "I believe in the human spirit, the human will, in me!"

In the church we have saints who are people whose lives are living examples of our beliefs in practice. The world has saints too, people like: Henry Ford, Donald Trump, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs ... Henry Ford began with an idea in a small workshop and before he was finished the automobile which had been a plaything of the rich became commonplace. Donald Trump a man who has built a corporate empire on casinos and entertainment. Ted Turner began with a small billboard business in Atlanta and he now owns one of the fastest growing communications empires and a World Series winning baseball team. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started building computers in a garage and now both are billionaires. These are self-made self-starters who demonstrate the worldly belief that God helps those who help themselves. Don't misunderstand me I am not insinuating that any of these people believe in the World's creed of self reliance. I simply don't know any of them good enough to make that judgment. But people do lift up such people as examples of self reliance.

But the Bible paints for us a different picture. It holds up for us the example of Abraham. Who was Abraham? The Bible tells us that he was an old man; very old by his day's standards. And all he had done in life was follow his father to Haran, marry Sari and grow old with no children. Abraham's only accomplishment in life had been that he sat there. Abraham was not a self starter. He had done little or nothing worth noting. He had lived and grown old. It was God who got Abraham started. God came and I imagine Abram was sitting on his front porch in his rocking chair when God said, "Get Up! And go to a land that I will show you."

Not only was Abraham not a self starter he didn't have the ability to finish the job he started. What was the job you may ask: producing a holy nation of decedents for God. He wasn't able to produce descendants; he was too old. And Sarah, his wife, was barren. And when he did try to start the job by taking a young wife Hagar, he just messed things up.

Abraham didn't start the job, he couldn't finish it without help and he didn't finish it. God had to intervene and it was 500 years after Abraham's death that the job was finished. Abraham was given the job of making a nation of righteous people for God. The Bible says that his faith was reckoned unto him as righteousness. In other words he wasn't really righteous by God's standards but because of his faith God decided to give him the righteousness he needed. He didn't even do that part by himself.

Abraham was not a self starter or a self made man, but I don't want to get the idea that he did nothing. He may not have started or completed his journey to the Promised Land, but he did journey. Abraham didn't start himself but he did respond when God called him to start. He did more than just go, he went in faith. In faith he believed in the promises God made to him even when God asked him to sacrifice his only son.

Paul emphasizes this point in his letter to the Romans. He writes (Rom 4:18-22) "18. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations; as he had been told, 'So shall your descendants be.' God had told Abraham that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky, but that seemed hopeless. But because he believed in God and his word, Abraham and Sarah hoped anyway. 19. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. Abraham and Sarah were near death, how could a nation be born from them? Most people would give up but their faith did not waver." As Paul said, "20. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21. fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." And in conclusion the Bible says, "22. That is why his faith was 'reckoned to him as righteousness.'"

Abraham was not a self-made man; he was a God made man. But God did not make Abraham the father of a holy nation without Abraham's consent or participation. Abraham had to first put his faith in God to receive the promises God made to him. And Abraham is an example to us. The world may say, "God helps those who help themselves" but Abraham proved that God helps those who cannot help themselves, but who have faith.

The problem is that there is a part of us that believes that if we only try harder we will succeed; that only we can help ourselves. Even in the church this is true. A person feels called by God to do something. If they fail and their first response is to say, "I should have tried harder." A church or ministry feels called of God to take on a project and it falls apart and they say, "We should have applied ourselves more." The evaluation is always "we should have raised more money" or "we should have recruited more workers," or "we should have done more research," or "we...we...we..." Maybe the truth is that we should have prayed more or simply trusted God or that we should trust God that even though we seem to have failed, God is not finished yet.

We think that it is by our intelligence, our wealth, our creativity, or our will that things are accomplished. But the Bible tells us it is by faith that God's promises come to fruition. Trust in the God who is able to make the impossible possible. Oh yes, we may seem to fail in the short run. We may not even see the fulfillment of the plan God has stared with us, but if we trust, God will bring it to completion.

That is true about all things. You cannot do anything worth doing by your own power. We cannot do anything worth doing by our power. That's true in every part of our lives. In our personal, family, business and religious lives. We must trust God for his promises of blessing to be realized. Then why try anything? Because God calls us just as God called Abraham and Sarah. And when God calls, go in faith and your faith will be reckoned unto you as righteousness and God's promises will be fulfilled in and through your life.

God's promises are not dependant upon our goodness or strength. They are dependant upon the goodness and strength of God. So follow the example of Abraham and just do as the old hymn says and trust and obey. Think about it. Monuments to self reliance, made by the power of humanity, are built upon human will and will be dust in a few hundred years. But the people of God have been around for four thousand years. I think I will choose to be a God made person not a self made person. What about you?

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