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[silence] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled, "The Summons of the Savior." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message.

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This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. [silence] Let us now give reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the gospel according to Matthew

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at the ninth chapter and beginning at the ninth verse. [reads verse] [reads verse] [reads verse]

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[reads verse] [reads verse] And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from His Holy Word. Amen. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the last weeks we have been considering together our Master's mission. And we have been hearing and studying those words by which He Himself defined it.

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We heard Him say, "I have come to fulfill the law." We heard Him say, "I have come to bring a sword." We heard Him say, "I have come to spread fire on the earth." On Christmas Eve we heard Him say, "I have come to bring light that ye need not walk in darkness."

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And this morning we hear Him speak of His mission once again. The scene is in Capernaum, a large home. A dinner party is being enjoyed. And to catch every breath of the cool breeze of evening, the host has had the U-shaped table set up in the patio.

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And the guests are gathered about it, our Lord, some of His disciples, and other individuals, described by some as publicans and sinners. Standing out in the street, as was quite commonly the custom in that day, were people who were passing by and looked through the gate and saw the party and were observing it from the outside.

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And in this group there are some Pharisees, the Orthodox, the religiously correct and proper. Now, these Pharisees represent one kind of person, broadly speaking, found in Jesus' land in Jesus' earthly day. And those gathered with the Lord at the table represent the other broad grouping of men. There were the Orthodox, those strictly correct in the meeting of all the formalisms of faith.

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And there were the so-called people of the land, individuals who were not so careful in the fulfillment of their religious obligations, commonly described in that day as sinners. And the word literally means "those who miss the mark,"

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the suggestion being either that they miss the mark by deliberately aiming somewhere else, or they miss the mark through carelessness and lack of caution. In any case, this group on the outside, observing the young rabbi from Nazareth fellowshipping with publicans and sinners, begins to make comment about it.

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Birds of a feather flock together. A man is known by the company he keeps. Why does your master spend time with sinners? And Jesus, overhearing these questions, comes to the gate and he says four things to those assembled in the street.

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He says, first of all, it's the sick who need a physician and not the well. He says, secondly, you're not too well yourselves. He says, thirdly, my prescription for your particular spiritual anemia is Hosea 6.6. The Lord desires mercy and not sacrifice, that is, love-filled living and not empty religious formalism.

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And he says, fourthly, and these are the words with which we are particularly concerned this morning, I have come not to call those who think they are good. I have come to call, to invite those who admit that they're missing the mark in life. I'm here for the sick and not for the well.

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Oh, it's true, of course, that you are sick and you need to learn that God looks upon your heart and not at your ceremonial scorecard. But those who, like yourselves, think they're ripe are just becoming rotten. I've come instead to those who know they are green and who consequently still have the possibility of growth within them. This is our Master's word.

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I've come to call the green, the admittedly not full-grown, I've come to call sinners. And how magnificently he did it. Think, for example, of how he surprised sinners. He surprised them in this very scene by not only sitting down at table with them,

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but by calling them, inviting them into the table with him. Now, I don't think that we in the West will ever fully appreciate what the significance of the table is in the Eastern world. I remember two summers ago that I was invited to the tent of an Arab sheikh outside of Tangier in Morocco. And we went out and followed the path through the sand dunes, lighted by what you would call luminaria.

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And we came to the tent, and goatskin, black goatskin on the outside, but inside, beautiful, magnificently woven. And we seated ourselves about that low table, curiously and beautifully inlaid, on low cushions and divans. And that soft and mysterious air of music was being played by a small orchestra outside. And then they brought in the food, a great tray with a whole roast lamb.

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And then a mountain of rice shot through with succulent sweet potatoes and pieces of chicken and carrot and tomato. And for dessert, a brass tray six feet in diameter, covered with chilled sections of orange sprinkled with cinnamon. It was magnificent. But more wonderful than the food was the way in which the man welcomed us.

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I never saw him before, I will never see him again, and yet he treated us as if we were his own kith and kin. We shared all together, eating with our hands from the same bowl. We passed the same loaf from one hand to another. There was an intimacy, a fellowship, a sharing, a concern, which was one of the real delights of my life.

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I can understand why when our Lord wanted to establish a memorial by which we might remember him, he chose to do it at a table. I understand why that table is the centerpiece in every sanctuary of worship that's ever been built to proclaim the glory of Jesus Christ on the face of the earth. The table, the intimacy of the table, the fellowship of the table is something that's beyond our describing. And it was to precisely that intimacy that Jesus invited these folks who were missing the mark, "Come in and have dinner with me."

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It surprised them. It surprises many people today, too, and yet I can't understand why. We expect to find a fireman at a fire, we expect to find a policeman where the law is being broken, we expect to find a doctor where the sick are. I read of a man who went to a doctor's home and asked for the doctor, and the doctor's little son said that he was not there.

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And the man said, "Do you know where the doctor is?" And the little boy said, "No, I don't know where he is, but wherever he is, he is helping." That's a fine thing for a son to say about his father. And that's the place we expect to find a doctor, and that's the place we should expect to find our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever people need help, there he is, out in the world, giving it to them.

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And that shouldn't be too surprising, and why is it then that in the fellowship which is the Church today, you find so many people throwing up their hands in some kind of pseudo-holy horror about the fact that the Church is beginning to move out into the world where people need help? Why is it that some are shocked when we establish a coffeehouse, or begin an industrial chaplaincy,

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or move on to a college campus with a dimension of ministry that has not been known there before? That's where the people are who need help. That's where the green folks are who still have within themselves the capacity for growing. Why is it surprising that we should be there?

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That's a beautiful glass window. I'm beginning to wonder if the Church hasn't had stained glass windows for too long. We need windows with clear glass in them so we can see a world out there. As I walked down Harvard Street the other day, I made a shocking discovery.

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The towers of this Church are built like battlements. This building resembles a fort. Are we trying to keep people out? Throw down the drawbridge!

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That's where the people are, and that's where the Savior is with the people who need Him. Surprising them. That should be no surprise to us. And we must be out there with them, and with Him.

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The results can be magnificent. A young friend in the ministry who had in his congregation an extremely successful, renowned business executive. He always felt kind of overpowered by this man, and never had gotten up the courage to really tell this man the truth about Jesus Christ and this man's need for Him.

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So one day, he screwed his courage to the sticking point and went to the man's office and was ushered past legions of secretaries, finally into the Holy of Holies, and there he was seated in this luxurious leather chair before the man across a half acre of desk. And after a few pleasantries, he told the man the truth about his need,

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about how God has met that need, and of how that man could claim the blessing God was giving. And at the end of his witness, the businessman did not say a single word. So my friend repeated his witness, only this time in different words, thinking that there might be some confusion or some lack of understanding.

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And as simply as he knew how, he told of God's love made manifest to us in a son who came and lived and died and rose again on our behalf, and that all a man need do is be sorry for his yesterdays and commit all of his days and tomorrows to that Lord. And he'd know a new dimension of life, life as God wanted it to be.

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And he spelled it out, and when he was done, the businessman said not a single word. So he thought he would try it one more time, and this time, because his courage was now rapidly leaving him, he said it in just a few sentences. And as he finished, the businessman picked up from his desk a piece of paper

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and wrote across it this single sentence, "I am so moved that if I would speak, I would weep." If we would follow our surprising Savior into the world with his surprising gospel, I think we'd be surprised at how many folks would rejoice at the hearing of it.

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Notice this, too, about the way in which he called sinners. He shamed them. Now, this is a very important point to meet and to master. When our Lord Jesus Christ went out into the world with those who were green,

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he did not adopt the kind of living which the green people were then enduring. Jesus, as he went out into the world, did not surrender to the way of the world. And unfortunately, there are many people who, in their witness today and in their zeal to reach people for Christ, are going out into the world good,

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but once they get there, they're surrendering their Savior, and in an effort to communicate with the world, they are becoming like the world, forgetting that they are not to be in the world for Jesus Christ, but rather that they are to be in Jesus Christ for the world.

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A clergyman who is involved in a riot is a blasphemous contradiction in terms. A witness for Jesus Christ who is consistently and persistently involved in undermining the law of the land, which we believe to be established by the providence of God, is a blasphemous contradiction in terms.

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The youth worker who feels that in an effort to communicate with youth, he must proceed to sink to the level of their humor and oft times to the level of their language, profane and vulgar as it might be, in an effort to reach them, vitiates any meaning there is in his ministry.

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For we are to be with them, to their surprise, but we are to shame them by the splendor of our living. Just as our Savior did. When I was in the third grade, we had an art teacher whose name was Miss Mabel Stewart,

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and she was one of these people that went through all of life on tiptoe. Just a delightful person. Everybody's grandmother. And she came in one day and with some colored paper, she made a basket of spring flowers, and we were all to do the same.

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And we all worked very earnestly at this, and I was deeply satisfied with what I accomplished. And then she invited us to bring our baskets of flowers and to thumbtack them to the board with hers, to make the board look like a flower store. And I was so satisfied with what I had done,

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that I pushed my way to the front of the group and put my basket of flowers on the board right next to hers. And then I stepped back. And when I saw my basket of flowers next to her basket of flowers, I wasn't too impressed with what I had done.

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And you know, this last Christmas I was in Chicago, and my nephews and nieces had enveigled me into coloring books and papers and pencils and those kinds of things, still trying to make that basket of flowers like Miss Stewart did. You see, the splendor of what she did made the poverty of what I did very obvious,

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and that was the secret of our Lord's witness. The magnificence of His living, the calmness which He radiated, the peace which was His, the strength which emanated from His life, the power and the truth of His words captured people so that they wanted to be as He was.

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And we should be going out into the world with that same love and that same peace and that same contentment and that same courage and that same hope and that same dream, and people in seeing it will want it. Once at the zoo, a group of us stood and watched a peacock.

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Strata, spread his tail, white peacock, gorgeous. And he paraded for all of us to enjoy, and then a little duck came up out of the water, a little brown duck, silliest duck you ever saw. Have you ever heard that, "Why can't a little duck walk softly?"

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A little duck can't walk softly because a little duck can't walk hardly. Well, this little duck was coming up out of the water and he couldn't walk hardly. And we all looked and laughed, and somehow or other, that peacock became aware of the fact that he was no longer the center of attention.

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And he charged across that ground, hissing and spreading and flapping his tail, and the little duck turned around and scurried back into the water. And when he got into the water, all of his awkwardness disappeared, and he was swimming with grace and diving and was a beautiful thing to behold.

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We all admired the peacock, but we all loved the duck. And my friends, we are to go out into the world, not like spiritual peacocks, spreading the fan of our faith and proclaiming, "Behold, look at us, and you can be as we are," but going out so living in Jesus Christ, so filled with the love which was his,

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that people will see us and love us as they loved him, ashamed of their own manner of living. Think of this about the way in which he called sinners. He sympathized with them. I think sympathy is perhaps the dimension of concern which is most absent in the church today.

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I heard a woman pray in a prayer meeting once, "Oh Lord, make me better than I am, although I do not see how I could possibly be any better than I am." That lady had no sympathy with her own need and was also completely out of sympathy with the needs of others,

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for I'm sure she was judgmental and censorious and indicting when she considered the way other people were. I read of a clergyman who came out of his church one Saturday night and found a drunk who'd been stabbed on the front steps, and he gingerly stepped about the drunk, then called the police and sat down to write a sermon on the evils of alcohol. Never pausing for one moment to try to understand what had happened

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or to involve himself empathically in what was going on and the tragedy on his very front steps. I sat and had lunch with one of America's prominent business executives. Some of you would know his name were I to mention it. His corporation recently has had difficulty with the federal government

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because of employment practices which were prejudicial and bigoted. And the federal government through its course properly ruled against his firm and forced them into a hiring policy which was American. And he sat at the table and said to me, "First we were frustrated, then we were intimidated, and now we're contaminated."

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Well, that man may be a financial wizard, but he's an ethical imbecile. He may be a fantastic businessman, but he's a moral moron. He has no sensitivity to the agonies that some people are having to undergo, even in this land, for reasons that are not valid or sometimes for reasons that are valid.

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But still there is no empathy, there is no reaching out, there is no real knowing of the other man and the problems he has to endure. That was the secret of our master's ministry. He knew. The scriptures say he knew what was in man.

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When he met that woman at the well in Sychar, he did not step up on the top of the well like it was a pulpit and proceed to preach to her that he was the Messiah. He said, "Give me a drink." Then after they visited for a while, he said, "I am he."

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And when she went back into the village, what did she say? She said, "I've met a man who's told me everything I've ever done." You see, he knew her. When he met Peter after the resurrection, the last time he saw Peter it was with these words on his lips,

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"I know not the man," right before the cock crew. Now he meets Peter, and Peter is confident in the presence of Christ. Christ says, "Peter, do you love me?" And Peter answers, "Lord, thou knowest that I love thee."

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The disciples' hope rested in the truth that he knew, Jesus knew, what was in him and why it was in him. When the disciples were on the lake and the winds were contrary, blowing against them, "Jesus came to them," the Scripture says. And if I know anything about life, it's this, when people are experienced the winds that are contrary,

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that's when Jesus comes to them, because he knows and he understands and he sympathizes and he cares. The Indians say you cannot judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins. And our Lord Jesus Christ left the counsels of eternity to walk the dirty roads of Palestine in order that he might know and sympathize.

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But more than that, in his calling, he also sacrificed. He sacrificed his very life. If you were to visit Bell Vernon, Pennsylvania, just a little town, you would find just outside the town an old cemetery.

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And in that cemetery there is a tombstone which has gathered some note. During the days of the Civil War, a farmer was drafted. He was a widower. There was no one to care for his children if he was to go to war. And so he did what was quite common and quite lawful in that day.

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He got another to go in his place, a young boy from a neighboring farm. And it happened that in the very first battle in which that boy was engaged, he lost his life. And when the farmer heard of this, he went to his field, unhitched his horses from his plow, and taking his wagon, he drove all the way to the field of conflict.

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And then he went through all those broken and bleeding bodies until he found the body of the boy. And lifting it gently, he brought it back to Bell Vernon. And he laid it away with love in that little cemetery. And above it he put a stone.

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And you can see that stone until this day. On it, these words, "He died for me." And every Christian can look at the burial ground of his past and say, "Here lies all that time, all that agony that I knew when I missed the mark deliberately and with conscious intent,

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and it lies here dead because Jesus Christ died for me." "Here lies all of the carelessness, the lack of caution and concern, the casualness about living which profaned and shadowed my life, and it lies here dead because Jesus Christ died for me." The calling of the Savior went beyond surprise and shame and sympathy to sacrifice.

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And like him, we are to sacrifice in calling those who want to grow. You know how it is. You're sitting rather cozily, comfortably. It's warm inside.

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And then there patters upon the window of your consciousness the rain of somebody else's tears. Or you hear the wind of someone else's worry. Or the whole frame of the house of yourself is shaken by the cry of someone else's anguish. And alarmed by this, you go to the door of your heart and you open it a crack.

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And you look outside and you see the world and all the people who are in the world who do not know the Savior that you know. And as you look out over the multitude, you pick out one who is attractive to you. And you invite that one to come into your heart. And he comes.

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And you put your arms about him. And you love him. And you lift him to the Lord you know. And when you've done this, and when you've seen the transformation that occurs in his life, you feel very satisfied.

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And then you make an awesome discovery. That when this one came into your heart, he left the door open. And behind him come others. And first they come one by one.

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And then they start coming in groups. And they bring with them all their burdens. And they come twisted by their own anxieties. And they come perverted by their own sin.

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And they come destroyed and broken down by the kind of lies that they've been leading. And they bring with them hatred and resentment and injustice and distrust and perversion and all the things that are ugly in the world. And they come as towns and they come as peoples. And they come as nations and they come as a whole world.

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And they drag behind them all the rust of the world's wreckage. And they push their way amongst your heart strings. And they press out the walls of your concern. And they eat away at your insides until your relationships become changed.

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And your wife says to you, "Don't you think you're taking this religion thing a little too seriously?" And your children begin to ask questions. And your job starts to take second place in your experience. Until finally you're reduced to the place where you cry out, "My God, there's no longer any room in me for me!"

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And in that moment, you hear a voice say, "In losing your life, you have found it. Hush, my child. For when all those needy ones slipped into your heart, I slipped in amongst them." And that is what it is to sacrifice. Oh, his was a magnificent calling.

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He surprised them by his coming. He shamed them by his living. He sympathized with them by his loving. And he sacrificed for them with his dying.

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And he calls us as his disciples to do the same. When I was very young, the summer evenings, we used to play, you know, out in the neighborhood. Tag and hide and seek. Statue, kid talk.

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And then just as it started to get dark, my dad would come out under the front porch, sometimes mother but usually dad, and he'd call us home. And we wouldn't want to go. We wouldn't want to separate ourselves from all the good time we were having.

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And then we'd think a moment. We'd think about the love that was waiting there, and the questions, and the answers, and the compliments, and the condolences, and the criticisms. We thought about the snack, and that tub filled with warm water, and those clean beds,

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and being tucked in, and having someone who prayed with you. And after we thought about these things for a moment, we'd get up, and we'd run across the street and across the sidewalks and across the driveways and across the yards, all the way home, calling, "Coming! Coming!"

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And there will come a time when each of us will hear the call of our Father. "Come home. Come home." And I pray God that when we hear that call, we'll come running and calling out, "Father, coming! Coming! And look who I'm bringing with me!"

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For you see, when Jesus went home, he took a thief by the hand. And who will we be bringing with us? Oh God, grant in thy great mercy that we might not come home alone. For the world's sake, for our brother's sake, for our own sake, and for our Savior's sake.

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For he came to call.