St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (Remembrance Day September 21)

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means `I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Matthew 9:12-13

We often upbraid the world for neglecting the gracious gift of God's Son. The world's systems are devoid of real life, morally bankrupt, and yet the charade of life goes on as if everything were under control. James puts it rather succinctly in James 4:2 "You do not have because you do not ask." When we do detect any turning of those in the world to Jesus Christ, we are quick to applaud it. Yet James cautions us further in verse 3. "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures." There are times when it suits the unregenerate of the world to court the favor of Jesus Christ, to quote from the Word of God, to put on the outer trappings of acceptable religion. It may be political expediency, it may be inner turmoil, it may be acute practical need that forces them to do so. In such cases we must not be too quick to declare a conversion, because the coming to Jesus Christ must, at first, be for one purpose only, to have one's sins forgiven. As the Apostle John declared at the manifestation of Jesus Christ, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ (John 1:29). Or as Paul wrote concerning the gospel in I Corinthians 15:3 "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures..." Jesus Christ can be many things - healer, friend, comforter, confidant - but first He must be Savior. And it is the man who is willing to bow his head and mourn for his own sinfulness, whose only prayer is "God be merciful to me a sinner" who will possess the kingdom of God. Such a man was Matthew, the tax collector.

The New Testament only mentions Matthew seven times with four of the references being to list him with the chosen apostles. This much we can glean. He names himself Matthew, the "gift of Yahweh" in the gospel which bears his name. The gospels of Mark and Luke refer to him as Levi, the name of one of the twelve sons of Jacob. Mark identifies him as the son of Alphaeus. His calling is recorded for us in Matthew 9:9, Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27. Matthew records that Jesus crossed over [the lake] and came to His own city (Matthew 9:1) which Mark identifies as Capernaum (Mark 2:1). It was in Capernaum of Galilee that Matthew collected taxes for the Romans under Herod Antipas' rule. He was therefore by residence a Galilean, although the historian Eusebius, declares that he was Syrian by birth. And it is here in Capernaum that the gospels record that Jesus went out, took notice of one sitting at the receipt of custom, and said "Follow Me." The record is consistent. Matthew stood and followed at the Lord's command, Luke adding that he left everything behind. The gospel accounts then state that Matthew gave a great feast (Luke calling it a reception) at which Jesus and His disciples were honored guests. Matthew is honest in his account, recording that the feast was filled with other tax-gatherers and sinners. He does not exempt himself from these categories. It is an honest evaluation from an open heart.

And at this feast, the Lord is first challenged by the Pharisees for eating with sinners, to which He replies that it is the sick, not the righteous who need healing. He is then challenged by the disciples of John who ask why both they and the Pharisees fast while the Lord's disciples do not. To this He answered that the marriage attendants cannot mourn and fast while the bridegroom is among them. How much in conflict was the message of Jesus Christ to the status quo of religion and self discipline. Their conceptions of the Messiah-Savior were so shallow that Jesus likened it to trying to put new wine into old wine skins. The old wine skins of Phariseeism could not contain the fullness of the Kingdom which He was proclaiming. He stood ready to give not only the new wine of the kingdom, but also a new vessel to contain it. All this Matthew took in and by the end of the feast we must judge that his heart was that new vessel.

Matthew has been called the evangelist to the Hebrews. When he looked upon Jesus Christ he saw the true Messiah, the one in Whom all the promises of God were both revealed and fulfilled. For him the question asked later by John the Baptist "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" was never an issue. His entire gospel reflects his conviction from its first sentence which proclaims it as the "book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Matthew exalted Jesus Christ from the very beginning as the holy seed promised to Abraham in which all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and also as the one who would sit upon the throne of his father David, whose kingdom would have no end. This was the Lord who made covenant. Matthew undergirded this theme by making generous use of the Old Testament, and he was especially fond of quoting the prophets making it clear that what was spoken by them was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. His gospel was the first written, probably about 40 to 50 A.D. The Church Fathers of the first three centuries claim that the gospel was written in Hebrew specifically for the Jewish nation, and Pantaneus in 180 AD claims to have seen a copy of this Hebrew gospel in southern Arabia, borne there by Bartholomew in his missionary journeys. Regardless of which language it was first written in, Matthew's only purpose was to "preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children..." (Acts 13:32).

Why does the good news not grab at the hearts of our generation? Perhaps it is because this generation has lost the dread of sin and its effects. Perhaps we are so sin-deadened that we have grown somewhat tolerant of our condition. How can there be any good news after all, if there is not first a recognition of bad news? I think it is interesting that in all of the lists of the apostles (there are four, Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13), Matthew alone chooses to list himself as "Matthew, the tax-gatherer". This was not a title to be proud of. Matthew recorded the Lord's rebuke for the unrepentant brother in Matthew 18:17 "Let him be to you as a heathen and a tax-gatherer." He understood the title to be a curse upon his soul. But to Matthew this was only one more testimony of how mighty the grace of God was, in that it could restore even such a one as he to righteousness. Perhaps it is Matthew's life we find mirrored for us in a story, more than a parable, which the Lord told and which is recorded in Luke 18:10. We are left to ask how powerful is the grace of God in cleansing sin? How far down is it able to reach to restore a human soul? Consider the transformation. "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." In that moment a publican and notorious sinner was made an apostle and evangelist. May Matthew's life be ever an example for us that it is only the sinner, not the self righteous which can be healed, and it is to such that the promise of the Kingdom is ever given.