No One Is A Pariah To God

Matthew 9:9-13

Is there anyone in your community who is looked down upon by most of the people?  Perhaps they have cheated a number of people, or hurt their wife and children, or done any number of things that make them an outcast.  Maybe they held a job that people scorned.  Would they feel welcomed in your church or neighborhood Bible study?  In today’s Scripture reading we will read of a man that many of the “good” people in town would have scorned, and his calling by Jesus.

In the time of Jesus, there was one group of people who were scorned and hated more than any other, and those were the tax collectors.  Good and righteous people looked down on prostitutes, but one could ignore them, walking haughtily by.  No one liked the Roman soldiers either.  They were the foreign oppressors.  However the tax collectors were the most despised people in society.  They were Jewish people, their own countrymen, who were hired by the occupying Roman government to collect taxes for Rome.  For that they were considered to be traitors.  The tax collectors often would extort more money than was due for taxes, and would pocket what extra they could get.  Thus they were often thieves, in addition to being traitors.

No good, religious Jew would have anything to do with tax collectors.  Yet as we read in our passage, Jesus specifically called a man named Matthew, a tax collector, to be one of His chosen disciples (vs. 9).  In addition to doing that, He shocked and scandalized the Pharisees by going to their homes and eating with them (vs. 10-11).  Jesus often did this, and the Pharisees lost no time in pointing out this breach of approved conduct.  They said that if He was truly a religious man and teacher, He would never associate with such sinners.

The Pharisees were more concerned with their own appearance of holiness than with helping people.  They would rather criticize than encourage.  They wanted to look respectable rather than help a sinner come to God.  God loves everyone, including the sinful and hurting, and He wants them all to come to Him.  The Pharisees focused on outward rituals, neglecting the inward, eternal, and moral teachings of God’s Word (vs. 13).  They were harsh, judgmental, self-righteous, and scornful of others.

When someone is self-righteous, thinking they are morally superior, feeling they never sin, and that they are always right, they are not in a position to get saved.  We have to first acknowledge that we are sinners and cannot save ourselves.  The Pharisees thought they were well, religiously pure and whole.  Sinners know they are not.  Salvation can’t come to someone who is self-righteous until they admit that before God they are a sinner.

God’s message can change any life.  Jesus found and changed the life of Matthew.  In gratitude and thankfulness, he wanted to share Jesus’ message with his other friends, most of whom would have been fellow tax collectors and sinners.  Matthew invited Jesus to dinner, for Him to share God’s love with his friends, and for them to come to salvation just as he had.

When Matthew left his tax collector job, there was no turning back.  This was a very lucrative career that he was giving up.  He would never be able to get that job back.  Many of the disciples who were fishermen could always return to that if they so chose to, but no so with Matthew.  He gave up all to follow Jesus.

Do we follow God with a similar abandon?  Do we similarly obey and leave all behind, or do we cling to our things?  We need to let go of those things that would keep us from following Christ.  We also need to let go of any self-righteousness we may harbor in our hearts and welcome everyone who has turned to Jesus, no matter what their background may have been, into God’s family as our brothers and sisters.