EVENNING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
6/3/2026 8:16 PM
My
Worship Time Focus: PT-2
“Calling A Wretched Sinner”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke
5:27-29
Message
of the verses: “27 ¶
After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at
the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” 28 And leaving everything, he rose and followed
him. 29 And Levi made him a great feast
in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others
reclining at table with them.” (ESV)
“All of that was anathema to the
Jewish people, who believed God was the only one to whom they should pay
taxes. Tax collectors were viewed as traitors
to them people, where classified as unclean, and were barred from the
synagogues. They were also forbidden to
give testimony in a Jewish court, because they were considered to be liars. Repentance was deemed especially difficult
for tax collectors” writes John MacArthur.
He goes on to write “The Talmud
listed two types of tax collectors, the gabbai, who collected the more
general taxes such as the land, poll, and income taxes, and the mokhes, who
collected the more specific taxes mentioned above (Alfred Edersheim, The
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974],
1:5515-18). There were two kinds of mokhes,
the great mokhes, and the little mokhes. The great mokhes did not himself
collect taxes but employed others as substitutes. The little mokhes would be employed by
the great mokhes to actually sit in a tax booth and collect taxes. Because they were the ones in contact with
the people, they were the most despised of all tax collectors. Since Jesus found him sitting in the tax
booth, Matthew would have been a little mokhes—one of the most hated
men in Capernaum. That his booth was
located near the shore (Mark 2:13-14) suggests that he collected taxes from the
fishermen, which would have made him even more despised by them than the
average little mokhes.
“Undeterred by Matthew’s status as a
social outcast Jesus stopped at his tax booth and said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ The Lord knew his heart. He saw that Matthew was wretched and
miserable; that he was distressed and burdened by his sin and hungering and
thirsting for righteousness. Matthew
undoubtedly knew of Jesus, since the Lord had made Capernaum His home base
(Matt. 4:13) and the word of His powerful preaching and the miracles He
performed had spread far and wide (Luke 4:37).
Although he may not have understood at this point that Jesus was God,
Matthew certainly recognized Him as a great prophet and preacher of God’s
Word. Like the Old Testament saints,
Matthew knew that he was a sinner, and that his only hope for forgiveness lay
in God’s mercy…In time Matthew, like the rest of the Twelve, would come to
understand and fully believe the truth that Jesus is God. Jesus forgave him based on his repentant
heart and called him to be a disciple, and later to be an apostle (6:15).
“Matthew’s immediate response
revealed the genuineness of his desire for righteousness and salvation: he
left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Jesus. The change in his life was miraculous. The tough, hard-nosed little mokhes became
a humble man; in fact, there is no record in the Gospels of him speaking. In his gospel, Matthew refers to himself only
in his account of his calling (Matthew 9:9) omits any reference to leaving
everything behind further indicates his humility. His willingness to forsake everything and
follow Jesus is in stark contrast to the rich young ruler. When the Lord said to him, ‘Go and sell all
you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and
come, follow Me’ (Mark 10:21), he ‘was saddened, and he went away grieving, for
he was one who owned much property’ (v. 22).”
Now as we look at this passage of
Matthew’s conversion we see that his decision was final; as he was abandoning
his career. The great mokhes for
whom he worked would have someone else manning his tax booth almost
instantly. Matthew, therefore, made a
far more drastic break with his past than the other disciples of Jesus as they
were fishermen and could go back to their job, in fact there were who did that
as seen in the end of John’s gospel, but the Lord reminded them (mostly Peter)
that they were forgiven for leaving Him at the cross, and in Peter’s case for denying
that he knew the Lord.
Now the aorist tense of the verb anistemi
(got up) coupled with the imperfect tense of the verb akoloutheo (began to follow) illustrates Matthew’s
response. There was a decisive decision
to break with his past, then a continual patter of following Christ. Matthew began to experience then a continual
pattern of following Christ. He began to
experience new longings, and also new aspirations, new affections, a new mind,
and a new will; so in short, he became a new creature: “17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has
passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The traitor, extortioner, robber, and outcast
sinner became the apostle and evangelist of Jesus Christ, and he would later on
become the author of the first book in the New Testament, although he probably
did not know that. Matthew lost a
temporal career, but gained an eternal destiny; he forfeited material
possessions, but he gained “an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled
and will not fade away, reserved in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4); he lost sinful
companions, but gained the fellowship of the Son of God.
6/3/2026
9:08 PM
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