Matthew 9 - Hanging Out With Tax Collectors

click here to read Matthew 9

The Calling of Matthew

9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
At this point in Matthew's gospel, Jesus moves from doing the ministry of preaching, teaching and healing to equipping others to do it. He realizes that unless he teaches others to do what he is doing, the movement he has started will die when he leaves.  Interestingly, the first person he calls is a tax collector, named Matthew.
Why is it interesting? Because tax collectors were hated by the Jews in Jesus' day.  They were in charge of collecting exborbitant taxes for Rome and then charged a surplus to make their money.  Rome was bad enough, but a fellow Jew to do this caused bitter resentment among the Jews.  But Jesus obviously saw some redeeming value in Matthew, so he called Matthew to follow him. And sure enough, Matthew got up and followed him.  Whatever there was a bad about Matthew, he decided to follow Jesus perhaps because he knew he was a sinner in need of a Savior.    

Not only did Matthew follow Jesus but his friends became interested in him as well. Perhaps Matthew told them about Jesus, or they were curious. Whatever the case Jesus is invited to Matthew's house and has dinner with them.  And the self righteous Pharisees, who avoided such filthy sinners, scoffed at him and questioned him for doing it.  The Pharisees looked down at sinners like Matthew, while Jesus hung out with them.

 If Jesus took this approach in recruiting one of his first disciples, who would later likely write this gospel, should not we use the same strategy?  And what would this mean?  It would probably mean getting out and rubbing shoulders with sinners like Matthew in our day. After all, as Jesus will say later in the chapter, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."  Sinners knew they needed a Savior. The Pharisees looked at everyone else's sin but were oblivious to their own.

My question today is, "Are we more like the Pharisees or Jesus?"  A good indicator might be how do you look at and treat sinners like Matthew.

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