Matthew 9:9–10

The Jews hated the tax. They had to pay it against their will. Worse still, it was proof that they were slaves to the Gentiles. They had lost their privileges as the free people of God. Their own countrymen often took this office under the Roman knights. Their bitterness was very great, and they hated such a man as a treacherous traitor to the religion and the nation.

Anyone who knows the binding power money exerts on the human mind may almost call what verse 9 records a miracle. Matthew sat in his tax office, busy with the pleasant task of taking in the cash. Then he heard two words from the lips of Jesus — "Follow Me." The "ME" became so great in his eyes that it pushed the money aside and broke its charm — a wonderful thing indeed! He got up and followed Jesus.

He goes out and calls Matthew as he was sitting at the tax booth. Other people had brought the paralysed man. But Matthew does not seem to have shown any faith before the call of Jesus. It was not Matthew who sought Jesus, but Jesus who called Matthew, busy about the tax he had a licence to gather. People always classed the tax collectors with the sinners. And the Lord goes and calls the tax collector Matthew while he is at work, sitting at the tax booth.

He was called, as it were, in the very act, "sitting at the tax booth." We hear nothing of any earlier process. There may have been one, but nothing is revealed... When God acted in grace, it had to come from Himself and for Himself, entirely above the creature. Nothing in man gave a ground for showing him such favour. If there were any reason in man, it would altogether stop being the grace of God.

Who do we hear announcing the shame of Matthew but his own mouth? Matthew the Evangelist tells us of Matthew the tax collector. His companions call him Levi, unwilling to lay a finger on the stain of his unpleasant profession. He himself will not hide it or whitewash it at all. He publishes it to all the world in thankful recognition of the mercy that called him. He is glad that his lowness should serve as a fitting background to set off the glorious brightness of the grace of Him who chose him. What does it matter how vile we are, O God, so long as Your glory may rise in our lowliness?

The place given to it is significant. The Lord had shown Himself in His power to be Jehovah. Now He shows Himself in His grace to the lost and outcast sinner. What a scene it is that this one little verse sets before us! There he sits gathering in the tax, with no thought of Him, no knowledge of Him... Matthew follows. He leaves the table. There is no bargaining on his side, no request to think it over, no wish to go and do something else first. The first thing he did was obey the voice that had spoken.

Levi comes on the scene, and he illustrates the fact that grace supplies an Object for the heart. When Jesus called him, he was busy with the pleasant task of receiving money. His mind and heart were instantly turned away from his money and he began to follow the Lord... Levi invited a great company of tax collectors and others to his feast, showing how his thoughts had at once been brought into harmony with his newly found Lord, and that he had caught the spirit of grace.

And this is very fine. It is Luke and Mark who tell us all the pleasant things that did Matthew such credit. No envy on their part kept his fellow apostles from recording them. But Matthew himself gives only the shortest, plainest account. Notice: he does not even say that it was his own house they sat in. Still less does he say that it was "a great feast" he was giving, to which he had invited all his old tax-collector friends. He is like Jacob, "a plain man." He is too honest and genuine a man to be ashamed of his old friends or of his new master.

He was indeed following the Lord, for he had invited a great company of tax-gatherers and sinners, no doubt in desire for their hearing the word of God.

Tax collectors are, I think, nowhere very welcome visitors. In Matthew's time and country they collected the taxes for a foreign, conquering power. On top of that they "farmed" the taxes, squeezing out of the oppressed people, as was believed, far more than was right or wise. So as a class they were disliked twice over. The ancient Jew hated them and lumped them in with sinners — "tax collectors and sinners," as the common phrase went.

Here a company of tax collectors and sinners have come together. And He, the Holy One, the One who had come to seek and to save the lost, sits at the table with them and eats with them. Again we say, what a scene of grace! He who created the heavens and the earth now stands in the creature's place, in living touch with those who rebelled against Him! And there they stand, the poor, miserable, self-righteous Pharisees. Their religion was all about keeping the outside clean. They would not even touch a tax collector, much less speak to him. To sit down and eat with them would have been in their eyes an almost unpardonable crime.

This gives the Pharisees occasion to vent their unbelief: to them nothing is so offensive as grace, either in doctrine or in practice. Here they question and reproach His grace, when they see the Lord sitting at ease among tax collectors and sinners, who came and sat down with Him in Matthew's house.

He goes and eats with tax collectors, having called Matthew who was one. It was not the outside which governed His path. God was there, and the work was to be the effect of His presence and grace, not dependent on what He found... He came not to find, but to bring what was needed.

In a moment He turns from guest into host, as He did another time with the disciples walking to Emmaus. He makes Levi's feast His own. He answers the Pharisees: "Do not complain; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. I came, I spread the feast, not Levi." Levi had spread the feast, but he spread it in deep-hearted sympathy with the mind of His Master. Have you ever had in your house a table of which the Lord could say that He spread it, and not you?

The Lord has His joy in the whole-hearted and devoted disciple, and feasts with him, as He does with all His faithful ones; and Levi as the true disciple expresses the heart of His Lord to those around him, for he invites to his table not the righteous, but sinners, those whom Jesus came to call.