We come now in our series to the story of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, which is the only miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ that appears in all four Gospels. That tells us that this story is important. I sometimes say that if God tells us something once we should pay attention. If he tells us something twice we should pay strict attention. And if he tells us something three times we should obviously give serious rapt and most obedient attention. But this story appears four times!
The second thing is that this story gives us a pattern for our evangelism. When Jesus went to Matthew’s house with these disreputable people, outside there were the Pharisees and the other reputable people. They were the people who lived in the nice houses and had the good jobs and were highly respected, and they looked in and they said, “Is he in there?” Then they got his disciples and said to them, “What is your master doing associating with these people?” Jesus had an interesting response to him. He said that those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick.
Now here is Matthew’s call following that story of the healing of the paralytic, and it is a way of saying as clearly as he can possibly say it that Jesus Christ came to save him. Everybody would agree to that, wouldn’t they? If anybody needed to be saved it was that tax collector because tax collectors and sinners are the very same thing. Everybody knew that forgiveness is what he needed, which is precisely what he received. Jesus came not only to call Matthew to a different life, but to save him.
Have you ever noticed as you read through the Gospels that whenever the word tax collector appears, usually it is coupled with the word sinners? Imagine what it would feel like if for whatever profession you are in, the word sinners was always connected with it. Well that’s the way it was with Matthew. You see, what I’m trying to say by that is if you were talking about people in that day who were at the very bottom of the scale of social acceptability it was certainly the tax collectors. And Matthew was right in there fighting for the bottom position.
Now it’s interesting to focus on Matthew because the one thing we know about him, almost the only thing we know, is that he doesn’t say anything in all of the Gospels. He never speaks a word, and we’re given very little to tell. But the one thing we know about him is that he was a tax collector, that is, he worked for the Roman government under Herod and was one who collected the revenue that kept this occupying power in business, that paid for the troops that occupied the land, subjected the people, and, in many cases, took advantage of them. It means he was an outcast, of course, because nobody liked tax collectors.
