Trinity Baptist Church

Making a Difference in the World

Matthew, the Quick Change Apostle

Luke 5:27-32; 3:12-13

 

Today we are continuing our study of the Twelve Apostles.  These were men whom God used to make a difference in the world.  The thing that strikes me about these men is their commonness.

 

When you think about the coming of the Messiah, you would think the religious establishment of Israel would have embraced Him. After all, it was the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests and the priests and the scribes and the local rulers of the synagogue who constituted the religious establishment. They were the ones who were the students of the Old Testament. They were the ones who were the scholars and interpreters of Scripture.

 

And on the other side,, it would have been a fair assumption that when Jesus came He would have chosen some of them to be His closest disciples.  After all, if you are coming as Jewish Messiah, it makes all kinds of sense you would choose as your personal representatives some Jewish religious leaders.

 

After all, these men will be your ambassadors to the world.  These are the ones who will carry on the work of the Kingdom and preach the gospel.  It just seems like the right thing to do is select some from those who were students of the Old Testament.  After all, that’s how we do it, right?  We elevate the value of experience and education and literacy.

 

 

But the fact of the matter is, none of the Twelve was chosen from among that group of religious leaders.  There wasn't a priest, or a scribe, or a ruler of a synagogue, or a Pharisee, or a Sadducee among the Twelve.

 

In fact, there wasn't anybody in the religious establishment. In fact, we can't be sure about the religious connections of any of the Apostles, other than they were believers in God and had some knowledge of the Old Testament and were looking for the Messiah.

 

In fact, with the exception of Judas, they were all from Galilee, which was predominantly rural with lots of towns and villages and farms and very little education. They were not the elite; they were the commonest of the common.  They were fishermen and farmers, just common men.

 

It makes me wonder if Jesus were to come today if He would have to ignore the mainstream of Christianity in order to find followers?  The mainstream of religion of His day was ignored.

 

And that is an amazing thing.  Even though all the promises of God through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, promises reiterated through David, promises repeated to the prophets were given to the people Israel and should have been keenly understood by the religious students of the time by the religious leaders.

 

And yet Israel's religion was so corrupt, they were the blind leading the blind.  So when the Messiah showed up, they couldn't see Him as the Messiah.

 

Rather, they saw Him as an imposter and a phony and even accused Him of being energized by Satan.  As far as they were concerned, he was an enemy and from the very beginning they were looking for a way to get rid of Him.

 

So when Jesus went looking for disciples and apostles, he had to find them in some place other than the mainstream of Judaism.

 

And so as we study their lives, we are seeing the most common of the common who were called to the highest of callings.  And here’s the takeaway from that:  If He called them to the Highest of callings, certainly He does and will call us to the task He has for us. In fact, He does it all the time. That’s why we are studying the lives of these men.  They remind us of the power and purpose of God.

 

Now today we come to a guy named Matthew.  I recently preached on Matthew’s calling and conversion in our study of the Miraculous Power of Jesus from Matthew 8 and 9.  But those messages were preached on Sunday nights and many of you either can’t or don’t come at night,, so I want to briefly revisit some of that material.

 

Now Matthew’s name is familiar to us.  And because of that one would assume we know a lot about Matthew.  After all, one of the four gospels records bears his name. But the fact of the matter is, we know very little about Matthew. In fact, in his entire gospel he says nothing about himself except for two very simple sentences found in Matthew 9.

 

Matthew 9:9

 

That's it. That's all Matthew says about himself. And the only thing beyond that we know is what Luke records in chapter 5.

 

Luke 5:27-29

 

So we know he followed Jesus, and then, following his conversion, he threw a big party in Jesus honor at his house that was attended by a lot of other sinners.  And there we get a little insight into

 

 

Although Matthew had a big house and a lot of money, his life was a mess because he was a tax collector.

 

Now we need to keep in mind, when Matthew records his testimony in Matthew 9, he is is writing 30 years after the fact.  Most scholars agree that he wrote his gospel 30 years after his conversion.  And as he looks back he remembers that Jesus came along and saw him there, sitting in the tax office.

 

And even though it had been 30 years since he sat in the tax office, it was still stunning to think that Jesus would call a tax collector to be an Apostle.

Now why was that so strange? Because tax collectors were the most despised people in Israel. They were the most hated and vilified people among the Jewish society. They were hated more than occupying soldiers. They were hated more than Roman rulers.

 

Why? Because they bought tax franchises from the Romans and then they extorted taxes from people to feed the coffers of Rome and to pad their own pockets.

And they strong-armed the money out of the people with the use of the thugs. They were despicable traitors, social pariah, the rankest of the rank, religious outcasts, they were forbidden to enter the synagogue, they couldn't even go into the local place of worship with the others they were so despicable.

 

And by the way, Luke references Matthew as Levi.  That name is rich in Jewish history.  Levi was one of the original twelve sons of Jacob.  His was the priestly tribe.  These were the direct descendents of Aaron.  His history and ancestry were rich in Jewish tradition, and now he has turned his back on all of that, and has become wealthy at the expense of his own people by working as a tax collector.

 

Now tax collectors had the responsibility of collecting taxes for the Roman government and there was a certain amount required.  But anything else they could collect, they could keep for themselves.

 

Now some of you will remember, there were two kinds of tax collectors, as I told you a few months ago.  One was a regional guy who was behind the scenes and hired people to actually collect the taxes, and then there were the ones who actually were stationed at offices and points of contact with the people throughout the towns and cities and villages.

 

Matthew was the second. He was the face-to-face tax collector. He was the one the people saw, the people resented, the people hated. They hated him because he had linked up with the Gentiles and in that sense he blasphemed God and abandoned his people.

 

 

They hated him because he was an extortioner.  They hated him because he was part of an idolatrous operation, because the Romans were idolaters. It was the worst of the worse, nobody in their right mind would ever choose a tax collector for any position.

 

If he couldn't go in a synagogue, if he couldn't go in the temple and worship, how in the world could he be THE Apostle of the Messiah? And so it must have been a stunning reality to Matthew all his life that Jesus chose him.

 

And yet that is exactly what happened.  Watch how it happens.

 

 

One day Jesus approached Matthew's tax booth and made a simple request: "follow me!"  What a surprise and shock this must have been to Matthew!

 

He wasn't permitted in the synagogue and he couldn't be a witness in court even if he was the sole witness to a crime, yet here was Jesus asking him to be a follower and to come and be a witness for Him!

So Matthew simply gets up and leaves everything and follows Jesus!

 

Now think about the impact of that decision.  Up to this point, Jesus had called primarily fishermen.  IF things didn’t work out for them following Jesus, the sea and the fish would always be there.  In fact, that’s exactly what Peter decided to do after the resurrection.  He’d just go back to what he knew.

 

 

But with Matthew, that wasn’t a possibility.  When Matthew walked away from that table, believe me the Roman government would have somebody there the next day. And somebody was in line to buy into that and he was cutting off his career for good.

 

Why did he do that? He knew what He was.  He didn’t need anyone to tell him how sorry he was or convince him of his sin.  And he follows Jesus because there is forgiveness there.

 

And he is so overwhelmed with what Jesus has done for him that he wants everyone to get in on it.  He wants everyone to meet Jesus, so he throws a party at this house and invites his friends.  But I thought no one like these tax collectors!  Who would he invite to a party?

 

Matthew and Mark tell us there were tax collectors and sinners.  Luke adds the word “others”. And Jesus is the guest of honor at the feast.

 

And the scribes and Pharisees who are hanging around to see what Jesus is up to say, “Why does He hang around with tax collectors and sinners?”

 

Notice how Jesus responds.

 

Luke 5:31

 

The point of the banquet then was for Jesus to call sinners to repentance. The common thread of the entire story is confession of sin, repentance and forgiveness and Matthew drops himself in there because nobody in the world knew better his sin than Matthew knew. He knew he was a sinner. He knew his his abuse, his extortion, his greed.

He knew that he had betrayed his people. He knew that he could be bought for money. He knew that.

And I believe he despised it. I believe he wanted out. I believe he wanted a way to get away from it and he had heard about Jesus and he had heard Him preach because he was in that little town of Capernaum. And I believe when Jesus came to him and said, “Follow Me”, it was like a dream come true.

 

This was the way out.  This was the solution to the hopelessness of his life, and he was willing to say goodbye to his career and everything else because he wanted forgiveness.

 

What kind of people does God use? It is the stained glass saints at the church? No. It is the vile, wretched, rotten sinners, the most despicable people in society who are willing to be forgiven.  And I know there is a tendency for the high and mighty to say, “Yeah, but He can't use them for much.”

 

Oh really? How about writing the gospel that introduces the New Testament?  Matthew, unlike the others could read and write in Aramaic and Greek because of his education and wealth.

 

Because of that, it is he who has given us a treasure trove of information in his Gospel account.  It is Matthew who records many of the “money” stories like:

- Like the laborers who all worked different hours, but who all got paid the same in the end!

- The debtor who owed much money but was forgiven much, yet he did not forgive the brother who owed him little.

- The story of paying taxes to Caesar or giving to God.

- He alone tells us about the guards being paid to lie about Jesus’ body being stolen.

- Matthew alone tells us about Judas throwing the 30 pieces of silver back into the temple before his suicide.

 

Matthew was a Jew who knew the Old Testament. We know he knew the Old Testament because in his gospel, he quotes the Old Testament more than any of the other writers.

 

That knowledge of the Old Testament is an amazing thing.  He must have been a disciplined student who studied on his own because here is a man who couldn’t even enter the synagogue because of his occupation.  He couldn’t listen to the rabbis explain Scripture.  He couldn’t take advantage of public reading of Scripture.

 

And he not only quotes the Old Testament, he understood that Jews divided the Old Testament into three parts, the law, the prophets and the holy writings and when he quotes Scriptures he identifies its source from those parts.

 

And because he knew Scripture, he knew and understood messianic prophecy and we see that in his gospel as well.  He believed in the true God. He knew the record of God's revelation and he understood the coming of Messiah.

 

So sitting at the crossroads in a tax booth one day, even though he was an outcast and a scoundrel and crook that everybody hated, he knew about this miracle worker who was banishing disease from Palestine and casting demons out of people and doing miracles.

So when Jesus showed up and called him to follow Him, he did just that.  It must have been something to witness the other disciple’s reaction to Jesus calling Matthew to join their group. But Jesus knew exactly what He was doing when passed by that tax office and said, “Follow me!”

 

God is in the restoration business. He takes the unqualified and transforms them. That's His business.  How do we know he meant business?  It’s obvious now.  Here we are 2,000 years later and he wrote a gospel and all that.  Of course he meant business.  But initially, when Jesus first called, what are the indicators he was serious about following Jesus?

 

Notice the little phrase in Luke 5:28

 

“He left all”

 

I think the genuineness of his repentance is found, first of all, in his

 

 

He turned his back on everything that meant life for him and gave it all up to follow the Lord.  That’s consistent with what Luke recorded in Luke 14:33: “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”

 

Somewhere along the line, folks decided they could just add Jesus to the list of everything else that was important in their life and He would understand and they just kind of fit Jesus in when it’s convenient.

 

If there’s some money left over at the end of the month, maybe Jesus could use a little tip.   If there’s nothing more important or fun planned on Sunday, maybe it would be nice to go to church and impress God.

 

If I want to have a little drink or maybe keep an illicit relationship on the side or be a jerk to people or gossip or backbite or be hateful and shoot off my lip whenever I feel like it, that will be my business.  After all, that religious stuff needs to be kept down at the church.

 

But Matthew didn’t see it that way.  He left all.  No more cheating people.  No more dishonoring God.  No more stealing.  No more extortion.  He left it all behind and followed Jesus.    

 

I think his sincerity is found in his

 

 

He is absolutely humble. He has nothing to say about himself. He has nothing to say about his talent and what he has to offer the Lord.

 

The only thing he wants to say is “Jesus forgives sin and one of the ones He forgave was a man named Matthew who was really a sinner and whose only friends were a lot of other sinners, tax collectors and sinners”.

 

I think we see his sincerity in his

 

 

 

He had a heart for the lost. There are some people in this world who just kind of stick their nose in the air and have no pity or compassion on those who are less fortunate.

 

But Matthew had been there.  I don’t know if the disciples ever argued about it or not, but if ever there was a discussion about whether the disciples ought to get involved with some riffraff, I'm sure Matthew would have led the parade toward the riffraff, having been one.

 

What a man. A criminal, an outcast, the most hated of men, he was utterly convinced of his sin and when given an opportunity to believe, he believed and he followed. He became a man of absolute sincerity, quiet humility and deep compassion who loved the lost.  He was a man of great faith; a man of total and utter surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ;  a man who knew the Old Testament and a man that God used to share the gospel and point people to Jesus.

 

And he gives his own testimony. When Jesus said, "Follow Me," he rose and followed Him. And once he stepped out of that little booth, he could never go back.

 

And that story can be repeated over and over again. A more recent example is Mel Trotter.  He was born in 1870 in Orangeville, Illinois to an alcoholic-bartending father and a Christian mother.  He received very little schooling and by age 19, he was drinking and gambling heavily.

 

 

 

In 1891, he met and married Lottie Fisher. Sadly, Mel continued to drink and gamble, causing his family to lack necessities.  Following ten days of a drinking binge, Mel went home and found that his two year old son had died. He stood at the casket of his son and promised his wife he'd never drink again, but in just two hours he broke his vow.  Feeling guilty for the death of his son and embarrassed by his drinking, he hopped a train, landing in Chicago in January 1897 where he sold his shoes to buy another drink.

 

On his way to drown himself, Mel was pulled inside the Pacific Garden Rescue Mission and there he heard of God's redemption of another alcoholic and accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

 

Through Christ, Mel conquered his addiction and claimed 2 Corinthians 5:17 as his favorite verse: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." Mel quickly found a job, was reunited with his wife, and became very active at the Mission.

 

In January of 1900, he went with the Mission’s superintendent to Grand Rapids, Michigan.  There, Mel became the superintendent of a new mission. On February 24, 1900, it opened at 95 Canal Street and it is still operating today. In fact, from January through May of this year, it has

 

* provided 40,371 bed nights for men, women and children, an average of 269 people every night—

 

* the Day Center provided 10,321 individuals with a safe place to spend their time

 

   

- Assisted 32 families in finding permanent housing

 

* Received 257,042 pounds (116 tons) of food donated for our food programs, valued at over $871,528

 

     - Served 67,371 hot meals; an average of 3,062 per week and 449 per day

 

     - Provided 1,996 food boxes, totaling 74,850 meals

 

* There were 1,131 visits to our Vision, Chiropractic, and Dental Clinics—services performed valued at $125,574:

 

* Provided 584 nights of care for public inebriates, keeping them out of hospital emergency rooms

 

* Provided approximately 7,906 program hours, which included counseling sessions and group classes

 

* Provided low-cost transportation for 93 people through our vehicle donation and resale program

 

* Volunteers completed 3,952 hours of service, valued at $34,268

 

One can hardly imagine degradation any lower than that. And yet it was Mel Trotter that got picked up, cleaned up and turned into an evangelist. This is the work of God. This is what God does. He doesn't need the great and mighty and the powerful and the wealthy.  I promise you, He can work with a whole lot less than that when we forsake all and follow him.

 

Let’s pray.