Mark Twain reportedly said, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts that I do understand.” One such understandable story is found in Matthew 9:9: “As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth....

  Not too long ago, a host pastor asked me if he could do “such-and-such” during a worship service in which I had a part. “You can do what you want; it’s your church,” I replied. He shot back, “No, actually, it’s God’s church.” He didn’t say it in a flippant...