Matthew's Call
"I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to
repentance." (Matt 9:13 NKJV)
Matthew gives us a genealogy of Jesus
Christ, and for reasons of his own he mentions four women who were ancestors of
the Messiah. And all four would have been despised by the religious types
of Matthew's day.
There was Tamar, the daughter of Judah who
played the harlot and conceived twin boys out of wedlock.
There was
Rahab, the liar and "innkeeper" who harbored the Israelite spies.
There
was Ruth, the Moabite widow who abandoned her own people to live with the people
of God.
And finally there was Bathsheba, the adulterer whose husband
David murdered and who later gave birth to Solomon.
Of Jesus female
ancestors, he makes the point of mentioning three Gentiles and three women of
questionable moral backgrounds. No mention of Sarah and none of Rebekah.
Instead he singles out these four women. That's a strange way to introduce
the Messiah! Unless you have a questionable background yourself.
In
the ninth chapter of his gospel, Matthew reveals a bit of his own history.
Matthew was a tax collector, one of the most despised of professions in first
century Israel. The tax collector was an agent of the hated Roman
occupiers. Not only were they hated because they were traitors, they were
hated because they were thieves. Under the rules of the game, the Romans
demanded a fixed levy from their subjects. Anything collected above that
belonged to the tax collector personally. This privilege was often
abused.
So when Jesus called Matthew, and Matthew responded - and not
only Matthew but many other publicans and sinners - these people experienced the
grace of God. Lifted from them were their past indiscretions. Lives
were changed and sinners came to repentance.
But it also caused
consternation among the religious types of the day: "Why does your master eat
with publicans and sinners?" Jesus answer? "They that are whole need not a
physician, but those who are sick."
Matthew understood the grace of
God. He had experienced it, as had those four women. So Matthew
wrote about not despising the little ones (18:10), that the Son of man has come
to save that which was lost (18:11) and about the joy of finding the lost sheep
(18:12-13). He wrote of Jesus being a "friend of publicans and sinners"
(11:19). He was the only one to record Jesus words: "Come to Me, all you
who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you
and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest
for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Matt 11:28-30
NKJV)
Matthew understood the grace of God, and he wanted us to understand
that he
understood.
~ Lenny C.
