MATTHEW 9:9-13
There is no division whatsoever over the statement, “I believe... in the forgiveness of sins.” No Christian cringes at that because every Christian recognizes that this small affirmation is a large part of our Christian faith.
This is as it should be, for near the beginning of our Lord’s ministry, when he teaches his disciples to pray “the Lord’s Prayer,” forgiveness is at the center. And at the end of his earthly life, during the Last Supper, Jesus takes the cup and says to his disciples, “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). Even while shedding his own precious blood, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples, and opening "their minds to understand the Scriptures,” he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:45-47).
So, yes, I believe (and I hope you believe) in the forgiveness of sins, for this is the heart and soul of Jesus’ lifesaving mission.
In the last chapter we learned that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. In this chapter we will learn how he uses that authority. We will learn how he uses that authority to sovereignly call sinners. With the conversion of Matthew we will learn two truths—first, that Christ’s call is sovereign, and second, that Christ’s call is for sinners.
Christ's Call Is Sovereign
For better or for worse, my wife and I are in the habit of watching murder mysteries. On the negative side, I have learned all sorts of diabolical ways in take the life of another human being. On the positive side, I have also learned through watching these great detectives solve their cases, the fine art of observation. When Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Adrian Monk arrive at the scene of the crime, they always observe what is most obvious because they know that is often what can and will be used to solve the mystery. In a similar manner, when we arrive at this first verse of our text, we should make some careful observations of the obvious, recognizing that what is ordinary may in fact be extraordinary.
So look again carefully and observantly at verse 9: “As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him.” Question: Why Matthew? Why did Jesus approach and call this man? In Mark’s version we are told that “all the crowd was coming to him [Jesus]” (Mark 2:13), which is then followed by, “he saw Levi... sitting at the tax booth.” As I envision this scene, the one thing that strikes me as being most peculiar is that Jesus, who is mobbed by a crowd that is showing great interest in him, approaches the one man in town who seems to show no interest in him.
It is not that Matthew didn’t know anything about Jesus. As a tax collector whose booth was likely set up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he knew more than most people about what was going on in town. And if he hadn’t already met Jesus face-to-face, he most certainly had heard about him. Everybody in Capernaum had at least heard about him. And still Matthew sits. He is apparently uninterested in Christ and his ministry. He is not even curious like the crowd or the scribes, some of whom traveled a great distance to see Jesus in action and to judge for themselves.
As Jesus passes by, with a large crowd following him, Matthew doesn’t even budge to see this great rabbi, this new prophet, this miracle-worker. Matthew may be Jewish in name. His given name is Levi, named after one of Jacob’s sons. But he shows no interest in this “King of the Jews.” Why? I surmise it is because, like most tax collectors of his time, he bows the knee to the god of money. He is the ancient equivalent to today’s Wall Street workaholic who regardless of the uproar around him is busy at work, “sitting” behind his desk, convinced in his mind that time is money. So of all the men, women, and children that day surrounding Jesus, you would think Jesus would show interest in someone in the crowd. But instead what does he do? He goes to Matthew, the one man who is not going to him.
It is strange enough that Jesus goes to Matthew and that he specifically says to Matthew and to no one else in the crowd, “Follow me” (9:9a). But surely it is more striking that Matthew actually responds positively! In one brief sentence we are told, “And he [Matthew] rose and followed him” (v. 9b). Luke 5:28 adds that Matthew “left everything behind” (nasb.) We know the story. But imagine if you didn’t. Imagine reading this for the first time. Wouldn’t you be surprised when you read that this too-busy tax collector, with one simple call, leaves his lucrative occupation to follow this controversial itinerant preacher who has nowhere to lay his head?
So, why did Jesus call Matthew, and why did Matthew follow Jesus? What do these odd occurrences teach us? What are we to learn from Jesus’ unpredictable selection of Matthew and Matthew’s unexpected response? We are to learn that Christ’s call unto salvation is completely sovereign! How else can we explain what happened?
While it is not explicitly stated here, if we shine the full light of the rest of Scripture upon this one verse, we must recognize that Matthew was called by God’s irresistible grace (cp. Galatians 1:15). What happened to Matthew is what happened to James, John. Peter, Andrew, you, me, and every Christian who has ever come to follow Christ. It is what Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ [at creation], has shone in our hearts [at re-creation] to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” As Matthew looked into the face of Jesus Christ and heard Christ’s command, he experienced the powerful call of God, a God who “saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Timothy 1:9).
Christ’s call unto salvation is sovereign—it is specific and effectual. Thus, Jesus’ call is far different than the man who is all dressed and ready to go, yelling up the stairs to his family, “Come on. Let’s go. We’re going to be late.” Jesus’ call here is met with immediate obedience. We are not told that Jesus said, “Come on, Levi, let’s go,” and Matthew replied, “Hold on, I’m coming, I’m coming. I’ll be there in a minute; first let me take care of this transaction,” or “First let me pack my bags,” or “First let me grab a bite to eat, comb my hair, and brush my teeth.” No. To the leper Jesus says, “Be clean,” and he is immediately clean. To the paralytic he says, “Rise,” and he immediately rises. And to Matthew Jesus says, “Follow me,” and he immediately follows. Is this not as much of a miracle as any miracle we have seen in chapters 8, 9? Jonathan Edwards said it well: “I am bold to say, that the work of God in the conversion of one soul ... is a more glorious work of God than the creation of the whole material world.” Amen to that.
However, such obvious sovereignty does not discount Matthew’s genuine response. Matthew is not some kind of robot whom Christ reprograms and then flips on the power switch. As much as this is a perfect illustration of Christ’s sovereign calling, God does not do our believing for us. It is no little statement that Matthew “rose and followed him” (v. 9). That showed a converted heart, mind, and will. It demonstrated a genuine faith. In Matthew's following, his faith is evident.
Yet, with that said, we miss the point here if we see Matthew’s conversion as an act of self-will or as if his conversion happened as an act of random kindness—that he was just the right guy in the right place at the right time. Verse 9 does not allow for such an understanding. Instead it displays to us “the radical character of Jesus’ call”—a call that, like a king summoning a servant to become an heir, is graciously sovereign.
Think about this truth as it relates to us and to those in our lives. If Christ can and does call an uninterested and undeserved sinner like Matthew, then there is hope that no one we know is too far removed from the sovereign call of Christ. If Christ sovereignly calls a person, we can trust that individual will respond. This truth should bring us great encouragement and hope. When we read this passage of Scripture—when we hear the wonderful news that Matthew gets up and follows Jesus—we should never despair over those people in our lives who seem farthest from the kingdom of God. Their disinterest in God is not a valid indication of God’s disinterest in them. Every soul you know, no matter his or her reputation for unrighteousness and a refusal of religion, is only one call away from following Jesus. So pray to the Lord of the Harvest. Pray for Christ’s call upon their lives.
Years ago I traveled to Malawi, Africa, where every night for nearly two weeks I gave talks to college students. In one of the universities I was preaching to a packed and for the most part compliant crowd. But to my right in the balcony was a group of rowdy college girls who, I believe, had had a bit too much to drink.
Throughout most of my talk one girl in particular was an annoyance. Sometimes she yelled; other times she taunted me. One time she even got up and sang and danced. After a while I simply got used to her and virtually forgot she was there. That night I was preaching on the Gospel story of the rich young ruler. I walked through the way Jesus dealt with this self-righteous and sinful man, and I talked about the impossibility of salvation by works and the possibility of salvation through faith in Christ. At the end of the talk, instead of giving a traditional invitation to come forward, I reversed the call of commitment. I said, “If you are interested in giving your life to Christ, simply stay where you are. Stay in your seat, and someone will come to talk to you.”
Nearly everyone left rather quickly, except for a few, most notably this girl. Sometime during my talk this drunken soul was sobered by the Gospel. She sat there in that balcony all alone, and repented. Now that’s power! Not my power, but God’s power. That’s inexplicable power. You explain it to me. I can’t figure it out. She sat there with tears of sorrow and joy. That night I witnessed a fat camel being pushed through the eye of a needle!
Matthew received the gospel for the same reason this girl received the gospel and the same reason that we received the gospel—because God worked sovereignly and powerfully through his Word, calling all of us to Christ.
Christ's Call Is for Sinners
For some years now some Christians have had red-letter Bibles that conveniently highlight the words of Christ in red. Perhaps soon, when these Christian publishers get their acts together, we’ll have an electronic Bible that lights up the main point of the text when you open to the passage being studied. However, until that heroic day arrives you have my permission to underline, star, circle, or highlight the end of verse 13, where Christ says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus “came... to call... sinners.” That is the main point of this passage. That is what should be flashing before your eyes!
Matthew was a tax collector, which may mean little to us. We may think of him as working for the Roman Empire’s equivalent of the IRS, that he had a kind of respectable but slightly reviled occupation. But that certainly was not the case. To most first-century Jews, tax collectors “were easily the most hated men in Hebrew society.” They were viewed as religious and political traitors, trained extortionists, and thugs among the highest criminal element. The Mishnah and the Talmud, two ancient rabbinical documents, “register scathing judgments of tax collectors, lumping them together with thieves and murderers.”
So Matthew was a tax collector, officially excommunicated from the synagogue and unofficially from respectable society. But don’t feel sorry for him, for he freely chose this seedy occupation, likely compelled (as I said earlier) by greed. Like today’s casino boss, perhaps he accepted his somewhat socially and morally exiled (but government-approved) occupation because the paycheck was nice.
As Matthew is retelling his own story, he wants us to know that the type of person he was—a tax collector—is the type of person Jesus approached and called. The story we have here is not so much about how Matthew was converted, but who was converted. This casino boss, mobster, thug got saved!
Use your imagination. Picture Jesus gathering his first four disciples— James and John, Peter and Andrew—and saying to them, “Now, fellas, I have decided to increase our number.” Excitedly they respond, "Who, Lord? Who’s it going to be? One of the scribes visiting from Jerusalem? That would be nice. Some worthy candidate from the crowd?” “Ah, no, no, I’ve decided to call Matthew to join us, you know the greedy, godless guy down at the tax office.” Stunned silence follows.
Peter, presumably unable to stop himself from talking, pulls Jesus aside and says quite frankly, “Lord, if you choose that man you will alienate everybody in this area. It is bad enough that you only have a bunch of fishermen to call your closest associates. But if you pick Matthew, you will wreck your cause. I don’t yet know what your cause is, but I do know that if you choose him you’ll wreck it.”
Assuming Peter said or thought something like that, like so many today he was just being pragmatic. How often at our campaigns do we think that if we just have some famous Christian athlete, musician, or intellectual share his or her testimony, our culture will be won to Christ? Thankfully Jesus was never pragmatic in his ministry, for if he wanted to impress others, especially the movers and shakers of his society, he never would have shown interest in Matthew, a most unfavorable candidate for his cause. But our Lord was not interested in the big names or the religious elite. He was and is interested in sinners from every walk of life, especially those sinners with whom no self-righteous person would dare associate.
That’s what we see with Jesus calling Matthew (v. 9), and that’s what we see with Jesus attending a banquet in verses 10-13:
And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’ [Hosea 6:6]. For I came not to call the righteous [those who already think they are good enough], but sinners [those who know, or at least others know, they’re not good at all].”
The great missionary C. T. Studd once wrote, “Some want to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” I think Jesus would have liked that missionary motto, for it seems to be the precise missionary model he employs.
The word “sinners” occurs three times in these four verses. Jesus is running a rescue shop one foot away from Matthew’s dinner table. He is at a tax collector's house eating with tax collectors and sinners. He is reclining and eating with the outcasts (cp. 11:19; 22:1-10), with those who were known for flagrantly breaking the moral law of God as well as being unobservant of scribal traditions.
Just as we normally sit at a table to eat meals, so did ancient Jews share this same posture for most of their meals. They sat at a table. Yet for formal dinners and special banquets they usually reclined on couches or carpets. They would lie down with their heads facing the table and their feet extending outward from it. So here is Jesus, the son of the God of the universe, reclining with the reprehensible, dining with the detestable, communicating with the unclean, supping with the scum of society. Here is Jesus, the Messiah of Israel sharing meal fellowship (the most intimate social custom in Jewish society) with unclean Jews and Gentiles, extending “to them fellowship with God" And according to Mark’s Gospel, it appears that Jesus’ message of mercy and forgiveness was well received that night—“there were many who followed him” (Mark 2:15).
While in graduate school I went on a weekend outreach to Cook County Jail, where I was assigned to witness to the inmates of the First Division, the division reserved for the worst of Chicago’s convicted criminals. Everyone I spoke with was a murderer.
At this time in my life I was regularly doing college at a local community college (as I shared a few chapters ago), a place where I rarely found a student who would acknowledge that he or she was a sinner. They didn’t like the label or the idea. They might say “Jesus is the Son of God” but not that they were “sinners.”
What a difference it was with the inmates of the First Division! Of the men I talked with (even the ones who weren’t interested in the gospel), all of them admitted to being a sinner. They took that label and stuck it right on their chests. Not because they were proud of it, but because they were realistic about it. The worst sinners often make the ripest candidates for God’s mercy because, unlike the “righteous”—the religious person with no blemishes on his background check—the sinner knows his need and longs for a cure.
Christ stands (or even reclines) close to those who know they are far from him. Why? Because that’s why he came. He “came... to call... sinners,” not after they have shown interest in him or cleaned up their act, but while they are still ten feet deep in their sins.
If I had to pick a favorite Bible verse, I would pick 1 Timothy 1:15: “’Unsaying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Sinners! Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners! Yes, Jesus was a teacher. Yes, he was a miracle-worker. Yes, he was a King. Yes, he was the perfect moral example of how we should live our lives. But if that were all he was, there would be no hope for us fallen creatures suffering from a fatal disease, dying physically and spiritually from the plague of sin. Jesus was and is a Savior for sinners. He is a Savior who so loved us that he came to give us God’s medicine for our eternal relief—the forgiveness of our sins.
Open up now and take it in.
“I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew did. They did. I do. Do you?
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)