What is the greatest innovation of human history?
Text: Matthew 9:9-17
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2024 CrossTalk Global
Brian: Harvard University defined innovation as something new and useful. It needs to be original, but it won't be successful unless people utilize it. They also listed incredibly successful innovations, the wheel, the light bulb, the automobile, computers, cell phones, the Internet, the bagless vacuum cleaner, and the iPhone. Not surprisingly, lists of innovators include Thomas Edison, Nicholas Tesla, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Graham Bell, Mary Curie, the Wright brothers, and Galileo Galilei. Yet I submit to you that both of these lists are incomplete. One immensely important invention has been overlooked, and perhaps the greatest innovator of all time has been left off the list. Who is this innovator and what was his invention? Join Kent Edwards, Nathan Norman and Vicky Hitzkis as they discover the answers to these questions in Matthew, chapter nine. Welcome to Crosstalk, a christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, doctor Kent Edwards, Vicky Hitzkis and Nathan Norman continue their discussion through the gospel of Matthew. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Matthew, chapter nine as we join their discussion.
Kent: Nathan, Vicki, if Harvard were to ask you what the greatest inventions of all time were, what would come to your mind? What would you suggest?
Vicki: Oh, I thought it was funny to hear the introduction because I would have named a lot of them. Not the bagless vacuum cleaner. However, I am thankful for mine.
Nathan: Yeah, I would say like penicillin. Right. So right before penicillin, if you got an infection, you died for the most part. If it got too, too out of hand or you had a good chance of dying. And then maybe the plow. Right. Because with the plow we're able to.
Kent: Agriculture. Yep.
Nathan: To grow large quantities of food. We're no longer a hunter gathering society, but we can build communities, build villages, build cities, build culture. Yep, those would be.
Vicki: This may not be the greatest, but I met a missionary once who was building some kind of aquifer that got water from a well into the village so the ladies didn't have to climb up a mountain every single time they needed water. And every time I use water, I think about how grateful I am to have easy access to water.
Nathan: Yeah, that's a great answer. I love that.
Kent: Yeah. I'm not quite as impressive as your suggestion, Vicki, but garage door opener, that's.
Vicki: Up there with the remote control.
Kent: Yeah, remote control for the tv. That, that can help. Sometimes I'm a little bit more pedestrian than the rest of you, perhaps? Yeah. But I love these inventions that come along that show us. Reveal to us something that we didn't even know we needed. But it makes life easier and better. But what many people don't realize is that Jesus was an inventor as well. In fact, he created something totally original and extremely useful. And he wasn't shy about telling people about his invention. In fact, listen to Jesus telling his critics about his radically new, world changing idea. And he does so in the form of a metaphor. Vicki, could you read it for us in Matthew, chapter nine, starting at verse 16?
Vicki: Sure. He said, no one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. For the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst and the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.
Kent: That's pretty strong language. Jesus is suggesting he's going to bring in a whole new paradigm. He's bringing a whole new idea that will be radically different from the past. But to understand what Jesus idea is, we need to understand who he was talking to. And the power of this ancient metaphor. A glance up at verse eleven as that question. It tells us there that he was speaking to the Pharisees. Nathan, help us here. Who were the Pharisees?
Nathan: Well, they were people with a passion for observing the law. They were lay people, so they didn't necessarily have titles. Although they could have had a title as that. But they were a group of people that really wanted to observe the law, to be faithful to God. They remembered how Israel had sinned against God so egregiously that God ended the northern kingdom and exiled the southern kingdom. And they were, I guess we would say in today's language, hyper conservative religious zealots. So much so that they. They were the ones who would build a law around the law. If you violated their laws, well, you still hadn't violated the law of God. And we're safe and we're good with Goddesse.
Kent: Yeah, I mean, they were paranoid about holiness, weren't they?
Nathan: They absolutely were. They would tithe the spices they grew in their garden.
Vicki: Wow.
Kent: Wow.
Nathan: You find a penny and pick it up. Better tithe 10% off that.
Kent: Which I applaud their desire to be holy. But they really were taking this to the extreme. So Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. And he does so in these metaphors. Vicki, when Jesus tells us that no one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment for the patch will pull away, making the tear worse. What is he saying through that metaphor to the Pharisees?
Vicki: I don't know. I mean, it sounds like he's talk. It sounds like he's being literal, that if you put. I don't know what he's saying there. I don't know.
Kent: I think what he's saying is that what he is suggesting, what he is bringing in is a new patch of cloth. He's coming with an idea so radical that the old paradigm will be destroyed by adequate.
Vicki: It sounds like these people know what he's talking about. It's not like I realize he's talking about something new, but he's talking about something old so that they understand it about. You have to put. No one sews an unshrunk cloth. So they. They've already unshrunk. They've. What's an unshrunk cloth? Unshrunk cloth.
Nathan: But, like, when you wash clothes, they tend to shrink.
Kent: Brand new clothes. If you get a pair of jeans and you put it in the washing machine, they shrink. Unless you buy the pre shrunk version. But this is not the pre shrunk.
Vicki: Version, so it's already shrunk. So it won't shrink anymore.
Nathan: Right. So if you get a hole and then you patch it up with a piece of cloth that hasn't been shrunk, and then when you wash it, the holes, the. The piece of shrunk cloth is going to rip the hole back over.
Vicki: Got it, got it, got it.
Kent: Okay, so what he's saying is you can't add my what. What I am proposing to your old way. Your old way is obsolete. My new idea is so unique, it can't be integrated into your old paradigm. You just can't do it. It can't be done. And then he goes on to say, neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, and the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. Nathan, what is he saying here in this next metaphor?
Nathan: I don't know. Baptists really like this text. Like, yeah, pour it in there. Let it all run out. I don't see what the problem is here. No. So, wine, when it's new, it still ferments, and so it gives off gases, depending on what you're using, carbon dioxide, other things. And so it will expand whatever you put it in. So if you're putting it into some sort of animal skin and it's a new skin. What'll happen is the wine will expand, and the skin, because it's a fairly new skin, like, you know, think leather in our modern terms, it has some give to it, and so it'll. It'll expand with the expansion of the wine. But if you put a new wine that still wants to expand into an old wineskin that has already expanded, it's now old. It's crusty. It's maybe flaking in a few spots. If you put it in there. Eventually the wine is going to expand beyond the capacity of the wineskin to hold it, and it will burst. And it's the same metaphor in a different way. Jesus is saying, I'm bringing something new, and it's not compatible with the system, the old system that you are running.
Kent: Right. This is such a radical new idea that it will literally destroy the old. The two cannot coexist. And when he finishes the conversation with the Pharisees here, he finishes by saying that smart people will pour new wine into new wineskins. So both the wine and the wineskins are preserved. Wow. So what he's saying to the Pharisees is, you are old fashioned. You are obsolete. You are out to date. Worse than totally useless. Everything is lost if they try to. If people try to pour what I'm saying into your own concept of a.
Nathan: Relationship with God, you're windows millennium edition.
Kent: So why did Jesus speak so strongly against these highly respected leaders of the people of God? I mean, this is really strong language. I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone else in language as strong as what Jesus uses here. I mean, he's saying, you're yesterday's news. You're irrelevant. In fact, you're harmful to what I want to accomplish in the world. Wow. Why? Well, we got to go back a little bit further in this passage to see how the discussion started in order to get the context. In verse nine, we read what we read this.
Vicki: It says, as Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. So if we were in a melodrama, it would be, ooh, Matthew's at a tax collector's booth. And he says, follow me. And Matthew got up and followed him. That's pretty amazing.
Kent: It is. So, Nathan, help us once again. You've explained the significance of Jesus actions with tax collectors in the past. Can you help us out again?
Nathan: Right. So tax collectors were seen as betrayers of their own people. When the Romans conquered individuals, people groups, they would typically allow them to keep their basic structures, but they would now tax them. And so they would find people from within that people group, in this case, the jewish people. They would find jewish people who would be willing to collude with them and become their tax collectors. So they were seen by their own people as betrayers. And tax collectors also raised their own funds by adding a little bit extra to the tax collection number from their own people. That's how they, they raised income. So they were seen not only as betrayers of their own people because now they're working with Rome, but also that they were completely immoral because they were getting rich off the poverty of their own people.
Kent: So they were government sanctified robbers.
Nathan: Yes, being careful what we say here, really careful right now.
Kent: But it gets worse because in verse ten, we read, while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. Why does the author make the point of yet Jesus had dinner with them? How does this make it worse? Vicki?
Vicki: Well, I think it's because Matthew wasn't just following him, but Jesus was befriending Matthew. And not just Matthew, but here's Matthew, this cheater and swindler of his own people and other tax collectors and sinners, just, you know, random sinners of all kinds came and ate with him, his disciples. So here's this merry band of sinners all glommed together and they're all eating and having fun together at Matthew's house.
Kent: Yeah. So there are the tax collectors sitting there, and Jesus is seemingly approving of their behavior by eating with them, at least in their minds. And that there's these other sinners. And when it says other sinners, what kind of people would that involve? Not just tax collectors, but who else? Actual thieves, the scum of society. Jesus is sitting down and breaking bread with the worst of the worst of morals. So I'm not surprised that when the Pharisees saw this, we read in verse eleven, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? This is awful. How dare he give tacit approval to their immoral behavior?
Vicki: We read this a lot. If you grew up in Sunday school, you read this a lot. And it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. But just imagine, especially with all the scandals going on lately, if one of the pastors of a megachurch or a pastor in your town, depending on where you are or if you're a pastor, if a pastor really went to a bar, went to a home of a known convict or a mafia person. And there was just tons of other known, quote, unquote, sinners there. And he was hanging out with. That's who he hung out with. That could make the papers. That'd be a big deal.
Kent: Yeah. So why. I mean, for Jesus, this could only hurt his reputation, right?
Nathan: Yeah.
Kent: Especially among the religious, holy people, like the Pharisees. This hurts him.
Vicki: I can't say the guy's name right now because my memory's shot. But the guy who supposedly hung himself in prison, who had the island with all the girls, the young.
Nathan: Epstein.
Kent: Epstein.
Vicki: Okay. Think about the people whose names have been leaked out, rightly or wrongly, accurately or not accurately, just for fraternizing with him. That's the kind of people Jesus was hanging out with. Well, of course, the Pharisees were appalled by this, obviously.
Kent: So why did he do it? What possible upside could jesus have. For going and participating in this dinner party of thieves and reprobates? What does it say in verse twelve.
Vicki: When he heard the Pharisees were asking this? It says, on hearing this, Jesus said, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
Kent: So what was Jesus priority? What was his rationale for hanging out with these reprobate sinners?
Vicki: He was concerned about their souls. He was concerned about them.
Kent: Yeah. He went to where the spiritual need was the greatest. And what did the Pharisees do? What was their inclination?
Vicki: To accuse him? To say, how dare you?
Kent: And to separate themselves from them, thinking, as a holy person, I can't get close to unholy people. Wow. Jesus ran towards the sinners. They were running away. Does that happen today?
Nathan: Yes.
Kent: What does that look like? When do we see the church not running towards the people who are most obviously in need, but distancing, separating themselves from them? When do we see the church acting more like the Pharisees, the old wineskins more than the new?
Nathan: I'll tell you what. When I was younger, I was a youth leader in the church I grew up in. So I was like, I don't know, 1819, 21 of the young men. Max, he was bringing his friends to youth group, which. Okay, that's great. And we enjoyed it and everything. We had a pretty vibrant youth group. But he. He brought this one friend, Adam. And, oh, man, this guy asked tough questions and obnoxious questions. Wasn't a believer. Didn't want to pretend to be a believer. Disrupted everything. And I can remember resenting Max for destroying our paradise of youth group, for making youth group hard and awkward. And, yeah, I, you know, years later, I realized what a jerk I was.
Kent: Yeah.
Nathan: Because this is exactly the person that needed to be here. Why in the world is this person who's so antagonistic to Christianity coming to church every week? And here I was like, oh, this is awkward and hard, but that's exactly where he needed to be. He needed to be within the community of believers and to ask the tough questions and to have us struggle through those. Those tough answers. Right. So we'll see that when people come into church and they don't look the part or they don't have everything together and we want to chase them out or, you know, christians. Can I say this on the podcast? I've heard joked, and I've used the joke is that often christians, we use the f word. How are you doing? I'm fine. I'm fine. And we pretend like we're fine. Meanwhile, our families are falling apart. We're struggling with our kid, we're struggling in our marriage. We're struggling with substance abuse. We pretend like we're fine, like we have our entire lives together. And then when people who don't have their lives together, just like us, come into the church, they're like, I don't fit here because I'm not willing to pretend that I'm something I'm not. So you have people who struggle with same sex attraction, or maybe they're not struggling with it. Maybe they think it's a good and holy thing. Right? And the church is like, well, we're not comfortable with that. Get out.
Kent: Yeah, I think you're right. Jesus is deliberately going to minister to the people that the holy people of his day would have nothing to do with. And I think that's what he's calling us to do. I'm surprised at how often we're very antagonistic to the homosexual communities in our areas. Jesus obviously would not have approved of their behavior, but he loved them as individuals. I'm amazed how often we pillarize people who are caught up in the whole transgender movement. I don't have to agree with that, but I can love the people who are struggling in that area. I wonder how many people in our churches have actually perhaps even had an abortion but don't want anyone to know because they will be vilified. We don't have to love that behavior. We don't have to agree with it. But, like Jesus, could we sit down and have dinner with these people, with convicts, with Muslims, with people who are very opposite from what we believe? Are we prepared to give priority to the sick and not stay isolated among the, quote, morally healthy. This is an innovation. I mean, he's really pushing the boundaries of what he's asking his followers to do, isn't he?
Vicki: Yeah. That wasn't common back then. It just wasn't.
Nathan: Well, it's not common now.
Kent: Right.
Nathan: Like, imagine. Imagine a christian going to a gay. Right. Parade.
Kent: Right, right.
Nathan: Or, you know, some sort of festival. I mean, that's. Why are you going there? Do you support that lifestyle? No, but I support the people.
Kent: I mean, this is so radical, so against our nature. Isn't it just to think about what I tend to get by parade? Well, no, because I'm not in favor of that. Yeah, but that's where the sinners are of. Right? And Jesus said very clearly, here, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. And so when the Pharisees challenge him for going to the. Bring the gospel of good news to the people who need it the most, he says to them, ah, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners. When he says that in verse 13, he's saying, look, I'm pleased that you tithe. I'm pleased that you are trying to obey the law, that you are in every way trying to live up to God's word. I want that. But God wants more than just external obedience. He wants a heart. A heart that loves people who are lost. Don't trade spiritual behavior for acts of piety. Don't substitute the lesser for the greater. Jesus is saying nothing is more important than saving people lost in their sins. That is to be your goal. That is to be your objective. Because there's nothing more important than people made in the image of God. And he wants them to love him and abide with him forever. And that is what the Pharisees were doing. They were more concerned about people's behavior and staying righteous. Than reaching the unrighteous who were surrounding them. And the Pharisees were not the only ones who were doing that. I mean, I'm shocked to read verse 14 because it extends from the Pharisees to someone else.
Vicki: It extends from the Pharisees to the disciples. It says. Then John's disciples came and asked him, how is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?
Kent: Ah, so not only do the Pharisees have this unfortunate tendency to lead to the external rather than the internal, but John's disciples are doing the same thing, aren't they? I know you're sitting down with sinners but why aren't you fasting? Remember when we talked about fasting in the sermon on the mount? Remember, we discovered that God required Israel to fast only once a year on the day of atonement. And nowhere else does the Bible command fasting. But people did fast. And when they did, it was always a spontaneous act. Either they were overwhelmed by God or a terrible situation. But by New Testament times, this once a year behavior had been elevated to. Well, the Pharisees practiced fasting all the time, didn't they?
Vicki: Twice a week, I think.
Kent: Yeah, that's what the Pharisee says himself in Luke, chapter 18. And Jesus responds in verse 15 to this emphasis on the doing the right thing rather than focusing on the lost.
Nathan: Yeah, Jesus answered, how can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them. Then they will fast.
Kent: Yeah. Jesus is basically saying, how stupid of you. Why should Jesus disciples fast twice a week when they could spend their time with me, spend their time with Jesus, God incarnate, assisting and learning from him and assisting in his ministry, bringing lost souls back to God. Not only were the Pharisees more concerned about external doing the right things, rather than having the priority of Jesus to reach lost souls, but they were very happy in just doing external forms of righteousness and saying that was all that God required. What Jesus is saying to us is, don't let religious traditions stop you from accomplishing your main task. Keep the main thing. The main thing. And what is the main thing? The church should be about winning people.
Vicki: To Jesus Christ and growing ourselves and other people.
Kent: And we do that by eating with who?
Vicki: Tax collectors and sinners, of whom everybody is, don't you think?
Kent: Right. We are not to be living on a holy mountain, secluded from others in a monastery. No, our purpose is not to call the righteous, but to mingle with the sinners and bring them to Christ. I mean, how many times do we find our church traditions getting in the way of our purpose?
Nathan: I'm trying to think of things that I can share and not get people into trouble.
Kent: Well, I know as part of Crossdoc, as I work with churches and church traditions around the world, there are some who say morning prayers and evening events, and Saturdays men's meetings and Sundays services morning and night. That's what, that's what measures your spirituality. How many events do you attend? But yet sometimes we have so many events in our church calendars, there's no time left to raise our kids or even meet with non Christians.
Nathan: Yeah. And the studies have consistently shown that over programming at a church does not make spiritually mature christians. It makes tired, burned out christians.
Kent: Yeah. And how many times do we invite our christian friends for our backyard barbecues? But no non Christians are heard there? We tend to find it more comfortable to be with christians than non Christians.
Nathan: Well, that goes back to my thing with Adam and youth group. We had a beautiful youth group. It was paradise and we had all the right answers and it was great. And my friend Max brought his friend Adam. And man, it made it uncomfortable and difficult, but that's exactly what we need to do.
Kent: Yes. Jesus is inventing his church. He is creating an organization that had never existed prior to this. A church that is made up of sanctified, saved people who are reaching out to those who need to hear the gospel. How are we intentionally doing that? I know that one church that I came across a number of years ago was employing a great strategy. I thought they set up sports teams, non competitive baseball league where anyone could join. The coaches were all members of the church who were christians, but the players didn't have to belong to the church or be of any religious persuasion that they wanted. And that gave the coaches opportunity to model and talk before, during and after the games what it meant to be a Christian and how someone could have Christ as their savior. They were deliberately intersecting the non christian environment around them. It may not be baseball games for your church, but there's got to be a way that we take Jesus priorities seriously and sit down and eat with sinners, the people who need to hear the gospel the most. When the church through the ages has embraced Jesus new wineskins gospel approach to ministry, it has enabled it to grow into the largest organization in the history of the world. But at least in my part of the world, the church seems to be stagnant. It keeps itself busy. But reaching the lost is not often its highest priority. Look, I think we need to be inspired by what Jesus is saying here and the example that he's setting. May God give us the courage to throw out old, tired, traditional wineskins of the past and have the courage, like Christ did, to meet sinners in non traditional ways in the midst of their sin, so that we can transform their lives and change their destinies. Oh, and by the way, who was that sinning tax collector to whom Jesus decided to have dinner with?
Vicki: It was Matthew, who became one of his big time disciples and wrote this.
Kent: Gospel that we are studying.
Nathan: Why? It was the very author of this book.
Kent: And look at the difference that that one controversial dinner made for the kingdom. If we dare follow in Christ's footsteps, we just might see more people like Matthew transformed by the gospel. What makes Christianity so unique? Because Jesus, the great innovator created a faith different from every other religion on the face of the earth. A group of people focused on saving the spiritually sick rather than continuing with past traditions. Jesus innovation was the creation of a religion that focused on the spiritually sick. So let's leave the holy huddle and be salt and light where it's needed the most.
Brian: Jesus in this passage reveals himself as perhaps the greatest innovator of all time because he comes up with a faith that separates himself from every other religion. He says, don't look down at sinners, but look out at sinners. Take the good news of the cross to people who need it the most. And not only is Jesus concept original, it was also successful. It created the largest organization the world has ever seen. Lets follow Jesus example and refocus our efforts and reach the people who are in deepest need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I trust that todays discussion of gods word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the word, but doers together. Lets bring gods word to life, to our lives. This week the Crosstalk podcast is a production of Crosstalk global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more or to support the work of this ministry, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. our next crosstalk events are happening in Nebraska and Kansas. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also help support this show by sharing it on social media and telling your friends. Tune in next Friday as we continue our discussion through the gospel of Matthew, be sure to join us.
Nathan: And perhaps the greatest inventor of all time has been left off the list. Who is this innovator? We know it's Jesus. And what is his invention? Well, that one's harder to answer. Join Ken Edwards, Nathan Norman, Vicky hitzges as they discover the answer to these questions in Matthew nine. Before we jump into this, I just imagine Ken just, just sweating over that last line. Kendall, Nathan nor Vicky has. Am I only in there once?
Kent: Yes.
Nathan: Is Vicky's name spelled correctly? Yes.
Kent: Hey, small victories. Small victories.
Nathan: Oh man.
Kent: Well, it took about this long to come up with a pattern that every, every new podcast just keep moving. Everyone's name. One forward.
Nathan: Three years. You'll get there, you know, sooner or later.