But what a unique honor it must have been to be under the sound of Jesus’ teaching! His voice must have been powerful as it resounded through the crowd! Some were excited, others were captivated, and still others may have been confused and doubting. In the chapters leading up to this one, Jesus has already covered the beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and the issue of forgiveness.Īs Jesus spoke on marriage and divorce, prayer and fasting, forgiveness, and several other topics, the emotions of the people must have been varied. In it, Jesus unleashes a collection of teachings that have endured the test of time, and continue to be the standard for Christian life and living. This celebrated discourse is known traditionally as the Sermon on the Mount. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’” ( Matthew 9:11-13).Īs we enter into the seventh chapter of Matthew, we are stepping into the middle of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, recorded sermons of Christ. “And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard it, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But Jesus made a statement that would silence them – at least temporarily. The Pharisees, who without a doubt disagreed with nearly everything Jesus did, questioned Jesus’ presence there. Here, Jesus would be surrounded by the only people Matthew knew intimately: other publicans and sinners. Matthew would then in turn invite Jesus to his home for a great feast. This tells us the extent of his departure and his level of his commitment as he began his walk with the Lord. In Luke’s telling of this momentous event, he adds that Matthew (also known as Levi) “left all” ( Luke 5:28). ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. “As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. Matthew’s life would be dramatically altered with a simple, yet direct command from the Savior. Whether or not Matthew himself was as unprincipled as his counterparts we are not told, but when we first encounter Matthew, we find him sitting at a table, doing his job. Publicans, as they were known, had the freedom to set their own fees in addition to the taxes being collected, and were known to be unscrupulous in their dealings, hence gaining for themselves a terrible reputation. This was because they were seen as allies and tools of the Roman government, in collecting sometimes exorbitant taxes from the people. Matthew himself was a tax collector, who as a group, were despised by the people. Matthew is filled with references to Old Testament Scripture, indicating that Matthew’s goal in writing was to reveal Jesus to his Jewish brethren and to prove that He was the promised Messiah. The book of Matthew, where we find our verse, named for its author, was written to a specific audience.
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