I forgot to welcome those tuning in on the webcast as well today, so I appreciate Kevin's effort in getting that up every week. Welcome to those of you from wherever you are tuning in today. If you did not have or did not get a copy of the Harmony of the Gospels, we have a couple of extra copies here. You can raise your hands and Connie will pass it on to you.
We'll be looking at a couple of pages in that today, primarily page 21, but also the genealogy of Matthew that is given on page 2. So we'll be actually starting out on page 2 and then moving over to that. So let's get the show going here.
Today, we will be picking it up where we left off last time in our study of the Gospels here in the Harmony of the Gospels. We'll be talking about the Calling of Matthew, one of the twelve disciples. It's been a while since we have had these studies, actually a number of months. I believe the last one was in March, I believe, before the spring Holy Days. I didn't realize it had been quite that long. However, I did give two sermons back a couple of months ago about the Gospels, covering how the Gospels are indeed real history.
That can be demonstrated from archaeological and other historical evidence. Another sermon showing that the four Gospels are indeed independent and accurate eyewitness accounts of real historical events. If you've missed those, I would recommend that you go back and listen to them on our website, denver.ucg.org, because they are important. We will be using some of that information as a basis for our studies going forward. It is important to stay up with these if you do miss them.
Today we will be talking about one of my personal favorite characters in the Bible. I'm sure we all have our favorite figures, men or women, there in the Bible. We have that because we can identify with specific traits or characteristics or actions of those individuals that we may have in common with them. With me, Matthew is one of those individuals I can really identify with Matthew because, for one thing, he was a writer, a very good writer, a very detailed writer, and he gave us the longest and most detailed of the four Gospels, of the accounts, the biographies of Jesus Christ.
He was also a very studious person, which will become evident as we go through some of the material today. Also, he was a person whom God called from a dead end life to whom God extended grace and forgiveness and mercy and used in a powerful way. But before we get into the story of Matthew's calling, I thought this would be a good time to go over and review some of the background that we covered back several years ago when we first started into our studies of the Gospels and several sermons about the backgrounds of the Gospels. Some of that material is key to understanding where Matthew is coming from, to kind of getting inside his head and understanding what kind of person he was there.
So this will help us better understand the man that we'll be dealing with and talking about today. So just to go over a few key items from your review of material that we covered several years ago, what is the purpose of Matthew's Gospel? Why did he write? Well, the Jews at that time expected a Messiah. It's evident from various things we read in the Gospels. And Matthew's main purpose in writing his Gospel is to prove to Jewish or Hebrew readers that Jesus is their promised Messiah.
And he does this primarily by showing how Jesus in his life and ministry fulfilled the Scriptures pointing to the Messiah. Matthew also emphasizes Jesus being a descendant of King David as the Messiah was to be. And I'll go through these fairly quickly. If you would like my notes on it later, let me know. I don't have time to leave these slides up here for you to copy everything down word for word. But I do want to hit some of the high points so again we can understand where Matthew is coming from.
One thing we need to understand, you'll notice this going through the harmony, that Matthew is not written in a strict chronological order. This actually follows the order of Mark's Gospel instead of Matthew. Matthew generally follows a chronological order, but there are exceptions. And that is because Matthew, as is typical of other writers at that time, organized his gospel in a different way. And we can be thrown by that if we don't understand how his gospel was organized.
And this is how Matthew chose to write. He organized his material around five great discourses or dialogues from Jesus Christ. And those five are the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, the Commission to the Twelve in Chapter 10, the Parables of the Kingdom in Chapter 13, the Necessity for Humility and Forgiveness in Chapter 18, and the Olivet Prophecy in Chapters 24 and 25. And one reason this is evident, this is the way he organized his material is because he ends each of those discourses with a phrase like, When Jesus had finished saying these things are very similar words, and then he goes into some narrative material until he gets to the next of the discourses.
So it's obvious that he organized his material around these five great discourses or themes, you might say there. This is recognized by a number of different scholars there. Some would also add two other possible discourses, Matthew 23. I don't have this on the slide, but Matthew 23, which is Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees, where he condemns their religious hypocrisy.
And also the very end of his book, Matthew 28, 16-20, where he gives the Great Commission, Go ye therefore into all the world, preaching the gospel to all creatures, and so on. So those are two other possibilities, Matthew 23 and Matthew 28 verses 16-20. So who is the author, Matthew? Matthew, his Hebrew name would have been Matityahu, and you can see in the Yah, the shorter form of God, Yah or Yahweh, Matityahu, and it means gift of God.
Gift of God, a shortened form of Matityahu is Matay, from which we get Matthew, Matay or Matthew. That's how his name gets transliterated into English. And Matthew was indeed a gift of God, as his name indicates, because it is from him that we get his gospel, which is the most detailed record, again, of the life of Jesus the Messiah.
And there's been a great gift to God's people throughout the last 2,000 years, as well as all of mankind, because of what it records for us about the Gospels. Matthew was also, we talked about this quite a bit earlier, and that is that his gospel was written to the Hebrews or to the Jews. I use those terms somewhat interchangeably. They were, the nation of Israel at that time was primarily composed of Jews, but the Jews were only one of the 12 tribes of Israel. There were others from other tribes who were intermixed, so Hebrews would have referred to the larger group.
We know this because of several different points that I have here on screen. One is Matthew's emphasis on the fulfillment of prophecy, specifically prophecies that would be the Messiah there, and how he fulfilled many messianic prophecies. Second, and we'll talk about this more in just a few minutes here, his tracing of Jesus' descent from Abraham.
Abraham, of course, the forefather of the Jewish nation. We find that in Matthew 1, verses 1 through 17. In contrast to the other Gospel writers, Matthew just does not give explanation of Jewish customs of different things, whereas the other writers writing to audiences that included more Gentiles did go through and explain different Jewish customs. Matthew doesn't feel a need for that because, again, he's writing to a Jewish audience.
Also Matthew is the writer who consistently uses kingdom of heaven and similar Jewish terminology that were common among the Jews. He uses kingdom of heaven, whereas the other Gospel writers use kingdom of God. That is because of the Jewish prohibition about violating the commandment about not taking the name of the eternal your God in vain. Also, his emphasis on Jesus' role as the son of David, that's a phrase or theme that we see coming up again and again in Matthew's Gospel.
However, with all of these points that show that he was writing to a Jewish audience, this doesn't mean that Matthew restricts his Gospel to Jews. It does have a universal outlook, and we'll find that reflected in the material we'll be covering a little bit later on today in the message. Let me give you an example of how Matthew is writing specifically to a Jewish or Hebrew audience as well as a more general audience.
This is something I covered in a lot of detail earlier when we talked about the genealogies. I would like to hit just a few high points here in review. Where Matthew includes several interesting things that are easy to gloss over unless we're really paying attention to what he writes. Every word of the Gospel is important for us to understand the picture here.
Notice how Matthew begins his Gospel. This actually isn't review. This is something brand new I'm going to give you here. Matthew begins his Gospel, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. We see here again the themes. Jesus is the descendant of Abraham, he's a descendant of David, two of the themes we just mentioned, his bulleted points here earlier.
Matthew, who is writing to a Jewish audience to prove that Jesus is the Prophesied Messiah, states up front that Jesus is a descendant both of David and of Abraham. Then he proves it, going through the next chapters again, you can find that on page 2 of your Harmony. He goes on to prove it from genealogical records. Incidentally historical sources like Josephus record that the Jews kept very detailed genealogical records there that were stored in Jerusalem and at the Temple, records which anyone in that day reading Matthew's Gospel or Luke's Gospel could have gone to Jerusalem and looked up these actual genealogical records there and proved that indeed, yes, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Bethlehem at that time, being born in Bethlehem, could have was indeed descended from Abraham and David.
They could have proved that from the records at that time. Unfortunately, all of those records were destroyed during the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, from the Temple and the city were destroyed by the Romans. But it's possible Matthew and Luke access those records there in Jerusalem or is also fairly common for different families to memorize their genealogies as well, all the way back to Adam.
So it's possible they interviewed Mary, possibly Joseph or Jesus' half-brothers and sisters and so on. The point is, it could have been verified by anyone going to Jerusalem to look up those actual records at the time. Notice again how Matthew starts his Gospel by saying this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ. I talked about this before I talked about the subject of Rimes. But actually there is a Rimes here that any Jewish man or woman would have recognized and understood immediately here. So what is it a Rimes to? It's a Rimes back to the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis is actually composed, we tend to think of it as being written by Moses.
Well, it is true that Moses compiled the book and edited the book, but what was Moses' source material? He actually gives us his source material. The book of Genesis was composed of a number of documents that Moses strung together in chronological order. These are what we would call the source documents. And Moses actually lists us the source documents as follows. And he gives the names of them. And here they are, Genesis 2 and verse 4. This is the history or genealogy. The same Hebrew word is translated history or genealogy or generations, depending on which Bible version you look at.
So his first source document is a document called the history of the heavens and earth when they were created. Genesis 5 and verse 1, he gives his source document too. This is the book of the genealogy of Adam.
Genesis 6, 9 is his third source document. This is the genealogy of Noah. Now we read that and we think, well, it's just a genealogy. But actually, it's not because we read through the stories. It's the historical account of the lives of those individuals. It's more than just strictly a genealogy. This is why it helps us to understand these are source documents that he's listing here. Going on, Genesis 10 and verse 1, now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Genesis 11 and verse 10, this is the genealogy of Shem. Again, genealogy is interchangeable with history or generation. So it's a history, a biographical document of these individuals that are mentioned here.
And going on with genealogy of Terah, genealogy of Ishmael, Adam's son. Genesis 25.19, this is the genealogy of Isaac, Abraham's son. This is the genealogy of Esau, who is Edom, and the genealogy of Esau, the father of the Edomites and Mount Sarah. Genesis 37 verse 2, this is the history or genealogy, same Hebrew word there. This is the history or genealogy of Jacob. So these are the source documents that Moses used in compiling the book of Genesis because, after all, Moses is living around 14-1500 BC.
But these events go back, in some cases, up to 2,000 or more years earlier than that. Probably these source documents are cuneiform tablets there, which are virtually indestructible there. Ancient records that Moses would have had access to in compiling the book of Genesis. Documents which probably were carried by Noah aboard the Ark and preserved through the Flood and eventually passed down in this way. If you want some more information on that, you can go to our Bible reading program at ucg.org slash brp for Bible reading program and read about this in the introduction to Genesis.
You'll find more evidence of this there. But notice, again, this is where the Rimes comes in. How do all of these documents start? The genealogy of so-and-so. This is the genealogy of so-and-so. This is the book of the genealogy of so-and-so. And how does Matthew start his gospel again? The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. It's a Rimes back to all of the genealogical records or historical records that were given back in Genesis.
And again, any first century Jewish male or female would have instantly recognized this. So what is Matthew saying by doing this? Well, it's a reminder to his readers to look back to Genesis where God begins his work of creation and then begins working with people like Abraham, like Noah, like Adam, Shim, Isaac, Jacob, other faithful people like that.
So what Matthew is doing in starting his gospel this way is sending a message that God is beginning a new creative work through Jesus Christ, not a physical work of creating the world, but a spiritual work of creating a holy and spiritual people for God through Jesus Christ.
That God is creating a new generation of faithful men and women like Noah, like Abraham, like Isaac and Jacob. And that also Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of these prophecies of a Messiah and a Savior who would be a descendant of Abraham and David and so on. Matthew doesn't have to spell that out. That's all implicit when he begins his gospel with the words, this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.
It's a very powerful Rames. Again, if you don't know what a Rames is, that sermon is online at our Denver.ucg website. You can find it there. It's a very powerful teaching tool used throughout the Gospels. We see Jesus Christ using it. We see John the Baptizer using it. Here's an example where Matthew himself is using it, and the other gospel writers do as well. Again, you miss out on a lot of the story of the Gospels if you don't understand the concept of Rames. Go back and listen to that sermon if you missed it.
I won't read through the whole genealogy here as I did in the introduction to Matthew and Luke, but I do want to point out again a few unusual things here in Matthew's genealogy. For instance, how were women commonly viewed at that time in first century Judea? Well, they weren't very highly regarded. They were pretty much ignored for the most point.
But they were basically supposed to be seen and not heard, and sometimes not even seen at all. But it's interesting that Matthew breaks the mold there and includes five women in his genealogy there. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary, or Mariam, as she would have been called in Hebrew, the mother of Jesus, who was named after Mariam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. But notice something about this list of five women.
Not only was it unusual to include women in a genealogical list, but also these particular women. Notice what is interesting about these. First of all, four of them are Gentiles. Four are Gentiles, the first four. One is a prostitute. Two others are women who committed adultery. So this would have been highly unusual to include in a genealogy.
It's like the black sheep of the family that you don't ever talk about there. But yet Matthew includes them. Not just women, but some pretty immoral women who were nevertheless a part of the genealogy, the lineage of both King David and of Jesus Christ himself. So what's the point? Why does Matthew include this? This gets back to my point earlier about Matthew's gospel being primarily oriented toward Jews or Hebrews, but also being oriented toward all people, toward a universal audience as well.
And the main lesson is found over in Galatians 3, in verse 28, where Paul writes, there is neither Jew nor Greek, Gentile. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So this shows that even God Himself could and did make exceptions and used both Gentiles and Israelites and women in His plan to bring the Messiah to earth. And that even such a notable historical figure in Israel's history as King David was the grandson of a Gentile woman, a Moabite at that, by the name of Ruth.
And the point again is that God is willing to accept all and to forgive all and to use all. So we are not to turn away people based on their gender or their background, that Jesus came to earth to be ultimately the Savior of people of all backgrounds, not just Jews only, not just Hebrews only. So this is key. This is again an example of Matthew orienting his gospel toward not just Jews and Hebrews, but toward all people.
Let me point out another point that's easy to overlook too, and that is that the Messiah was not to be just the descendant of Abraham and David, but He was also foretold to be the descendant of a number of other individuals as well. I'll just read these off for you, and the Scriptures that just mentioned that. He was to be a descendant of Abraham. We'd find that in Genesis 22 18. In your seed, singular seed, referring to one, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. He was to be a descendant of Jacob. In Numbers 24 and verse 17, a star shall come out of Jacob, a scepter shall arise out of Israel. Israel being another name for Jacob. So here's two prophecies of the Messiah that He would be a descendant of Jacob or Israel. He was to be a descendant of Judah, one of the twelve sons. Genesis 49 verse 10, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between His feet until Shiloh comes. He would be a descendant of Judah as well. He would also be a descendant of Jesse, the father of David, in Isaiah 11 verse 1.
There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
So again, the Messiah would descend from Jesse and also from David. At 2 Samuel 7 and verse 13, I will establish the throne of His, referring to David's kingdom, forever. So for that throne to be established forever would require a descendant who would live forever in the form of the Messiah.
And actually, I missed a scripture here, but there's also, it was also foretold he would be a descendant of Zerubbabel. You could write this down. I somehow missed this slide, but Haggai 2 verses 22 and 23 indicates that. This is written as though it's speaking of Zerubbabel himself, but it was physically impossible for Zerubbabel to do these things that are described here in this prophecy. So it is speaking of one of his descendants, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
And we do find that Matthew does show in his genealogy there on page 2 that Jesus is descended from all these individuals. And verse 2 shows that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham, Jacob, and Judah. Verses 5 and 6 show He's descended from Jesse and David. And verses 12 and 13 show He's a descendant of Zerubbabel. So you do see Matthew showing how Jesus is a fulfillment of all of these promises and prophecies of the Messiah. So the Messiah didn't have to be just a descendant of Abraham and David, but all of these others. And Matthew documents that Jesus did fulfill all of these prophecies. One final comment here. I'll cover this as briefly as I can in the genealogy of Matthew 1 and verse 17. And this again demonstrates how this is written primarily to a Jewish or Hebrew audience as well. And this is how he concludes his genealogy. So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations from David until the captivity in Babylon are 14 generations. And from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ or the birth of the Messiah are 14 generations. Now that's an interesting set of statements about the number of generations, but what's the point? Why this 14, 14, and 14? Why throw that in there? Well, you can go back and look at the actual historical records from back in the earlier scriptures and you'll notice a few interesting things. For one, you can see this right here, you can count up the names in the third set, and there's only 13. There's only 13 names there, not 14. And if you go back and compare, the other sets of 14 leave out several generations at each one. So why would Matthew do that? What's going on here? And what would be the significance of any of Matthew using this 14 and 14 and 14? Three times here. Well, when I talked about this earlier, I mentioned the term Gematria. It's spelled G-E-M-A-T-R-A. G-E-M-A-T-R-I-A. And a short definition of the term Gematria is that it assigns a symbolic value to numerical value or a symbolic value to numbers. There, we're familiar with some of that. For instance, we all know that in the Bible, the number 7 and 12 represent completeness and perfection, whereas in contrast, the number 6 represents Satan there. So that's common. We understand that. But we get that from the Bible because that's what those numbers symbolize here. Now, in our writing system today, we have numbers, numerals, that are separate from our alphabet, A, B, C, D, and so on, and then numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. Now, in the ancient languages, most of the ancient languages, they did not have that. So letters stood for numbers. And typically, the way it worked was the first letter A would have a numerical value of 1, the letter B would have a numerical value of 2, the letter C would have a numerical value of 3, and so forth. Now, that sounds odd to us, but we probably all had to memorize Roman numerals back in grade school, if you remember that. For instance, the I was 1, V equals 5, X equals 10, L was 50, C was 100, D was 500, and M is 1000. It's very helpful for figuring out which number of Super Bowl it is this coming year. That's the only practical use I've seen for it, but that's where that comes from. Super Bowl X, V, L, I, I, what does that mean? But that's where it comes from.
You know, you used to have to memorize those things back in grade school. But the same thing was true of Hebrew as well. A, the A-Lef in the Hebrew alphabet, had a numerical value of 1. B, Bet had a numerical value of 2, and so on. But what's significant for our counting here today is D, Dalit, the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, had a numerical value of 4.
And V, or Vov, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, had a numerical value of 6.
So how did this work? Well, Matthew is actually using this numerical system to embed a hidden meaning, if you will, maybe a coded message in verse 17. And this isn't the only place this happens in the Gospels. It happens in other places it will cover when we get to them later on.
It happens at least several other times where Matthew, or another Gospel writer, embeds a coded message, you might say, using the numerical values of letters that are in there. A good Jewish reader would have known to look for these things. When it would come across a number, he would think, hey, what's the deeper meaning here? Because this is used in the Old Testament scriptures as well. But we don't have time to go over that. So what is the meaning that Matthew is embedding in here?
Well, let's start by asking a question. That is, who was Israel's most famous king?
Who was his most famous, Israel's most famous king? Most of us know that. It's David. David is kind of our George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and George Patton all rolled into one. He was their greatest king. He was their national hero. There. Now, whose name is mentioned twice in this verse? David. David is mentioned twice in this verse. How is David's name spelled in Hebrew?
And keep in mind that in Hebrew, the way it was originally written, it didn't have vowels, just consonants. So David's name would have been written DVD. DVD. Again, no vowels in there.
What are the numerical values of DVD? And then we're not talking something you stick in your DVD player. We're talking David, David there. D has a numerical value of 4. V or V is a numerical value of 6. And D, again, has a numerical value of 4. You add up those numbers and what do you get?
DVD. 14. And there. So what is the number that Matthew is emphasizing in his genealogies, even manipulating them to come out with 14, 14, and 14? Again, so a Hebrew reader reading that would have understood that that Matthew is putting a coded message in there by emphasizing the 14, 14, 14. Now to a Jewish reader of the first century, they associated different numbers with significant things or people, like David, 14. When the number 14 pops up, they would immediately think David in the same way that if you mentioned 10, they would think of 10 commandments. Or if you mentioned 12, they would think of the 12 tribes. Or if you mentioned 7, they would think of 7, the Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week, this type of thing. So when you mentioned 14, they would automatically think of David. So what has happened here is that Matthew has embedded this coded message that only works in Hebrew, if you're thinking like a Hebrew, that again, David, that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of David. You might say, not only is he a physical descendant of David, but all of the great promises of David being a great king and sitting forever on the throne of Israel, all of those prophecies and promises are fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. It's a very, very interesting thing. This is something we would never do in English in that way, but it is something that you do find a number of times in the Bible that scholars have come to recognize that.
So what Matthew is saying here in code, you might say, is that Jesus is the prophesied son of David who would sit on David's throne as king over Israel.
And again, how does Matthew introduce David in verse 1? As this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David there. So he mentions that a number of times. So again, he's emphasizing both overtly and hidden there the link between Jesus Christ and David, that Jesus is the fulfillment of these prophecies and promises to David.
So this is something to keep in mind as we go through the Gospels when you do see a number there.
And I'll cover this as we go through them, that sometimes there is a deeper message there that the author is embedded for us. Now, one other point I want to mention here. This again is something new. I've mentioned to you before that I think that Matthew probably wrote his Gospel originally in Hebrew, but I haven't gone into detail for the reasons why I think that. And let's see, Derek just asked me this question. So pay attention, Derek.
Here, because some of this is in response to your question. We've just covered two of the reasons why I believe that. One is that Matthew clearly wrote his Gospel to the Jewish or Hebrew people, so it does stand to reason that he would have written his Gospel in Hebrew to them. And also, as we just covered here, Matthew embeds this hidden message in there that only works if you're thinking like a Jewish person or a Hebrew person. The numerical values or the translations of the names in Greek or Latin or other languages just don't work. They only work in Hebrew.
So that's another reason why I think Matthew probably wrote his Gospel originally in Hebrew.
But I would like to share an interesting quote with you from one of what is called the early church fathers. That's not a group of people I'm going to quote hardly ever here, but I'll mention that here. Who were the church fathers? These were early writers about Christianity writing from roughly the 100s to the 300s AD. We don't give a lot of credibility to them, and I don't either, because I wrote during a time when Christianity was transforming from the Christianity of Jesus Christ and the apostles into this recycled, syncretic, paganized mixture of beliefs that we see today.
Most of these writers, the church fathers, were advocates of that change in doctrine and teaching to this recycled pagan beliefs and so on. A few of them did teach biblical truths or some biblical truths, and we can glean some interesting facts from them. Plus, a number of them do record historical facts. That's why I mention this particular quote here, because of its historical relevance to the point I'm making here. One of those church fathers, or words recorded by one of the church fathers, was named Papias. Papias. P-A-P-I-A-S. He was the bishop of Heropolis in Asia Minor in what is today Turkey. Heropolis, Connie and I have actually visited Heropolis. It's about 15 miles from the city of Colossae, to which Paul wrote his official to the Colossians. It's also about 10 or 15 miles from the city of Laodicea, one of the seven churches to which the book of Revelation is addressed. So Papias wrote about 130 AD. We do not have his original document but we have part of what he wrote preserved in another writer who wrote in the 300s by the name of Eusebius. It's kind of a long chain and explanation for this quote, but I wanted to help you understand. So we don't have this original quote, but we have it preserved in the later writings about two centuries later. And this is what Papias wrote around 130 AD.
He says, Matthew collected the oracles, and this is written in Greek, so I'm going to do a little translate in here. He collected the oracles, the oracles is a Greek word logia, which means words or sayings. In the Hebrew language, it's literally tongue or dialect, and each interpreted them as best he could. So we see a couple of things here. This gives us some interesting information. He tells us that Matthew collected the words or the sayings of Jesus in the context is what's being talked about here. And he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue or dialect, which would mean either Hebrew or Aramaic, depending on whether you believe Jesus spoke Hebrew or Aramaic. I personally think he spoke both. They're quite similar there. But this would explain this coded message that we just saw that Matthew embedded here in his genealogy, which again only works if you're thinking in Hebrew. So this is somewhat vague. It's easy to read a lot more into this than what it actually says. On the surface, you would tend to read this and say, well, it's very evident Matthew wrote his gospel originally in Hebrew and preserved it. But it's not quite the same because it says Matthew collected the sayings or the words of Jesus. But Matthew's gospel actually includes much of it. It's not his words, but his works, his miracles, that sort of thing. And the part that says, and each interpreted them as best he could, Matthew's gospel doesn't take a lot of interpretation there. It's pretty straightforward for the most part there. So some scholars believe, and I don't know the answer to this, I'm just putting this out there for your consideration, some believe that Matthew just collected the sayings of Jesus and then later used that as the basis for a gospel that he wrote in Greek. That's one possibility. Another possibility is that Matthew, and I lean in this direction, Matthew did write his gospel originally in Hebrew and then later translated it into Greek himself, or someone else did. I tend to lean in that direction. I think that's the best evidence for this. Some believe that Matthew wrote first based on this, and then Mark and Luke copied portions of Matthew into their gospels. I don't believe that. But these are some of the ways this brief statement here is interpreted by different scholars here. So again, my position I think Matthew did originally write in Hebrew and that formed the basis for his gospel, which he or someone else translated into Greek. Why do I say that? I say that because there's not a scrap of a Hebrew gospel of Matthew anywhere until about the year 1000 AD. So it seems if Matthew did indeed write a gospel, and it was widely circulated in Hebrew, that we should have some scraps or fragments of manuscripts before 1000 AD, and we just don't. So the earliest translation of Matthew into Hebrew shows up about the year 1000 AD, full-blown, altogether. There's questions about where that document originated. Something, it was actually translated from Greek Matthew into Hebrew by the Jews, not to support the fact that Jesus was Messiah, but to give them a material to attack Christianity there. We just don't know, bottom line. Scholars don't know. We don't know because there are no original manuscripts. What we have are copies of copies of manuscripts because the originals were written on papyrus or parchment, which has long since disintegrated and fallen apart. All we have are documents, the most complete ones dating from the early 300s AD.
There is debate and questions about this, but I do want to help you understand some of these issues and why scholars have questions, why some scholars say some of the things they do. Because we don't understand the background. It's easy to get misled or deceived by some of the scholarly arguments out there. That's quite a bit of background, but again, I think it's important for us to understand because it helps us understand where Matthew is coming from when he is called and when he starts writing his gospel for us. It helps us to understand his thinking. But as we'll see today, he didn't start out in this place. He didn't start out as this great thinker, this great writer here. He started in a very different place.
But with God working in him and being in personal contact alongside Jesus Christ for several years, this is the person that he did become. So this is a natural breaking point. Any questions about what I've covered so far here? I've got a lot of ground to cover today, so I don't want to have a big discussion, but if you do have any questions, raise your hand. Yes, Tina.
Interesting. Tina's question is, because David was such a notable figure, such a famous historian in Israel's history, why are there no other men named David in the Bible?
That's an excellent question. It had never occurred to me. But you're right. I can't think of a single David in the Bible. I know of several others in history who were named David. Maybe my guess would be it's probably a matter that he was so highly regarded and revered that, as a sign of respect, they didn't name somebody else after him. That would be my guess.
No son I'm going to name is ever going to live up to the greatness of David. So, yeah, it would be almost blasphemous to call my son David. That would be my guess, but I don't know. Great question. Depending if I come across a rabbi sometime, ask him that question.
That's a great question. Now let's move on. By the way, if you do have any questions, you don't want to raise your hand, feel free to ask me later. Give me a call sometime this coming week. Now let's set the stage for what we'll be reading on page 21. You might turn over there. And let's take note of a few things. Page 21 at the top of the page. We might first note that other Gospel writers refer to Matthew as Levi or Levi, as it's probably more properly pronounced here. However, Matthew refers to himself as Matthew, so that's what we'll call him.
Now it wasn't unusual at all for people in that time to have two names. We see several examples of this in the Bible. Most prominent is a fellow by the name of Paul, who also was named Saul after Saul, the great king of Israel before David. Some others, Barnabas, the apostle Barnabas, is also called Joseph. If you turn over to page 25, you don't need to do it right now, but it lists the two sets of the twelve disciples that Jesus called. You'll see two names that are different in there. That's because that individual had two names. One of the Gospel writers records his name as Judas, not Judas Iscariot, but another Judas named after Judah of the twelve tribes, and the other one calls him Thaddeus. So he went by two names. So we see this in the Bible. There are also secular records of that. Josephus, for instance, records that the high priest Caiaphas, who plays a major role in the crucifixion of Jesus, was also called Joseph, Joseph Caiaphas. So he went by two names as well. So it's not unusual for people to have two names. So here we have Matthew, who is also called Levi, but he again calls himself Matthew. So that's what we'll call him. So now let's pick it up in Matthew 9, verse 9. Let's see if you notice something interesting as you read this verse. As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. Again, this is Matthew writing this. He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, follow me. So he arose and followed him. Now if Matthew is writing this, why does he write about it as though Matthew is another person? If we're thought about that, well, some critics have thought about that. And they say, well, aha! Matthew couldn't have written this because he's writing about Jesus meeting Matthew. And Matthew goes up and follows him and does this and that. Why is he writing about another person? Clearly Matthew wouldn't have written this about himself talking about himself in the third person like this. This is third person. It's first person. If you say, I did this or I did that, it's third person. If you're writing as though you were another person and describing the event, it says, no, you were an independent observer. Have you ever ever wondered about that before? Well, again, critics have. They use this as ammunition to say, the Gospel of Matthew wasn't written by Matthew because nobody writes like that, talking about themselves as though they were another person. And that is an argument that does throw some people there. You actually find this argument being mentioned today.
The sermons I gave a couple of months ago about the historical accuracy of the Gospel is Bart Erman, one of the scholars I mentioned, along with Richard Dawkins, is one of those who uses this argument to undermine the credibility of the Gospels. But is that true? Well, not so fast.
This style of writing was actually very common in that time. Another fellow I've mentioned many times in these Gospel studies, Josephus, writes about himself that way. Josephus wrote a number of historical books, History of the Jews, Antiquities of the Jews, Against Apollyon, this type of thing. And Josephus writes about himself in the third person, as he's describing a separate person there. Another figure, historical writer you might have heard of, obscure guy by the name of Julius Caesar, writes about himself in the third person.
You'll have to ask Don Harms to do his imitation of Julius Caesar sometimes, because he writes in one of his books about the Gallic Wars, something like the following.
Julius Caesar arose from his tent. He was looking especially handsome that day, as he strode to the door of his tent and gazed out upon the adoring hordes of his soldiers, who saluted him. This type of thing, this is kind of the style in which Julius Caesar writes, but he writes of himself in the third person. There are a number of other historians to do this, various Greek and Roman writers. You wouldn't recognize her name, so I won't give them, but you can research it yourself. But for a critic to argue that Matthew couldn't have written this, because it just wasn't done, is blatantly false. And this argument was actually first raised around 400 AD and was discredited then, because of the same evidence I just gave you. Julius Caesar writes in that way, Josephus writes in that way. A number of other writers of that period wrote that way, so it's just false. But again, this is a criticism you will sometimes come across from people to try to discredit the Gospels, but it just doesn't hold water. Yes, Connie?
True, yeah. Connie brings up that John does this, because John doesn't talk about himself in places. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, as though he were writing about somebody else. So yeah, I actually forgotten about that example, but that too. So yeah, when you see some of these arguments from critics, take them with a grain of salt. Again, many of these arguments have been raised in the early centuries and were discredited and dismantled them. So what a lot of these critics do is just recycle the same arguments over and over again, hoping that nobody will notice that they were discredited long, long, long time ago, as in this case. So how do we then know that this Gospel was indeed written by Matthew? Well, for one thing, all of the earliest manuscripts, again dating back to the 300s AD, we don't have the originals, but every one of the earliest ones does have Matthew's name on it there, attributing it to him. All of the early church historians and writers, when they quote this Gospel, they will say, as Matthew said, or something like that. So they all understood that Matthew was the writer. Also, no early writer quoting or referring to this book ever attributes it to anyone other than Matthew, which you would assume to be the case if somebody else had written it. There are other evidences that Matthew wrote the Gospel. One of those is that Matthew writes about money more than any other Gospel writers. There are about 40, let's see, I think 41 mentions of different coins or money in the Gospels. Daenerys, a widow's mite, things like this, money in general. Out of those 41 mentions in the Gospel, right at half, 20 of them are found in the Gospel of Matthew. So Matthew talks about money as much as the other three Gospel writers put together.
This would indicate the writer, somebody who's very familiar with money, that money was a major part of his life. And what was Matthew's occupation? He was a tax collector, so obviously money was an important part of his life. We'll see here as we go on along with it. So again, there are some other factors we'll cover in just a few minutes here that also point to Matthew being the author of this Gospel. Continuing on with our introduction to this, as we see in all three accounts, Matthew is a tax collector. Another word, depending on the Bible translation you're using, may refer to him as a publican. A publican and a tax collector was two terms for the same thing. Publican comes from Latin publicani there, so it's transliterated as publican. Matthew apparently lived and worked at Capernaum, the city where Jesus set up his headquarters or lives there on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
For a tax collector, this was a very lucrative spot for a number of reasons. First of all, Capernaum being a port, there was a lot of fishing that took place on the Sea of Galilee, so the fishermen would have brought their fish into the port to sell there.
Also, as we talked about several studies ago, Capernaum was located along the Via Maris, the way of the sea, this major international highway that ran from Babylon over at the right-hand side of your screen, on over through what is today Syria, through Damascus, down right by the Sea of Galilee, and by Capernaum, and down the coast, and all the way down to Egypt. This was the major international highway of the ancient world, kind of like an interstate highway of our day, except much more important due to the primitive conditions of travel in that day.
So that ran right by Capernaum there, within a few hundred yards at most. This was a major trade route, a major commercial route of the ancient world, ran through Damascus, which wasn't all that far to the north, so a lot of traffic going from Egypt to Damascus and back and forth would have passed along this highway right there at Capernaum. So Matthew was the tax collector in this particular city, an important city because of its location there. As a tax collector, Matthew worked for the local ruler who was Herod Antipas, another figure we come across in the Gospels, who lived in another port city several miles south of Capernaum, the city of Tiberius.
There, we've talked about that before. Now in areas where we tend to assume that Matthew worked directly for the Romans, well that's not how the Romans administered taxation at that period, at times they did, but it depended on the time period and the particular jurisdiction you were in. This particular area had some limited autonomy from Rome. It had its own ruler, Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great, in opposition to Judea, which is ruled by the Roman governor or proturator or Pontius Pilate. But here, in this particular area, the local ruler was the one who collected the taxes and then submitted the appropriate share to Rome. So he had a number of tax collectors working in his jurisdiction, his province or his region, to submit taxes to them. So Matthew would have been working for Herod Antipas as a tax collector and not directly for the Romans. Now in his capacity as a tax collector, Matthew most likely would have interacted with members of the administration of Herod Antipas. As I covered in my sermon several months back on Undesigned Coincidences, Matthew records conversations that took place in the palace of Herod Antipas between him and his servants. How would Matthew know that?
How would Matthew know about private conversations that took place in the palace of a ruler?
Actually, there's a simple explanation. You can read through Matthew's gospel. You won't find the explanation. But if you turn over to Luke 8 and verses 1 through 3, we find the answer there.
I covered this earlier, so you won't spend a lot of time on it. But Luke says, in passing, totally different context, says Jesus went through every city and village preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve disciples, including Matthew, were with him. And certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons. And Joanna, the wife of Hootza, Herod's steward, or business manager, is what we call him today. Which Herod? It's not Herod the Great. Herod the Great has been dead for about 30 years at this point. Let's talk about Herod Antipas, the same guy that Matthew works for. And Susanna, and many others who provided for him from their substance. So one of the women who is following Jesus around with the twelve, with Matthew, is Joanna, who is the wife of Herod's business manager. If Matthew is a tax collector, who's he going to be interacting with? His tax collector. He's going to be interacting with Herod's business manager because that's who's going to get the money there. So probably before Matthew or Joanna were ever called as followers of Christ, Matthew probably knew the wife of the guy he reported to, Herod's business manager. So Joanna is going to be living there at Herod's palace since her husband is Herod's business manager and would have overheard or been privy to the different conversations taking place among Herod and his staff or his servants there. So there's a perfectly logical explanation that Joanna would have been shared some of those conversations with Matthew as they are following Jesus around there. So you don't really have to stretch. You don't have to invent or fabricate things. You look at the Gospels closely. You can see logical rational explanations for the things that we see there. And this is how we have a perfectly rational explanation of what is being said. And the privacy of Herod's palace ends up being preserved for us in Matthew's Gospel. Let's move to another aspect of this, and that is how were tax collectors viewed in Jesus' day. One of the study questions I sent out was, what scriptures can you think of? I jotted down several here. Matthew 9, well, I won't read the references, but just quote who and what they were associated with. Tax collectors and sinners.
This is what we'll be reading here in a few minutes. A glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. A heathen, or a non-believer, or a pagan, and a tax collector. Tax collectors and harlots are prostitutes. And another one, I thank you that I am not like the other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. So we can see the kind of people that tax collectors are commonly associated with. They're certainly not the respected members of society. So why were they so despised by people? Well, they were commonly viewed as thieves, and for good reason.
Because the way the tax system worked that way, there were not set tax rates. For instance, you didn't pay a nickel on each fish that you caught. You didn't pay set amounts like that. Some things were set amounts, but many things weren't. And the tax collector could set the rate as high as he thought he could get away with. And he had to submit a certain amount of that to his boss and to Rome.
But whatever the difference was, if he overcharged, he could just pocket it the rest. So tax collectors were commonly viewed as thieves, and many of them were. No question about it.
So what were some of the taxes that were charged? I'll go through this pretty quickly, but people had to pay a tax of 10 to 20 percent on their crops and produce. 10 to 20 percent. Actually, some of these rates sound low compared to what we pay today, but this is what they thought was outrageous. 10 to 20 percent of whatever crops they grew, grains, fruits, grapes, vegetables, that sort of thing. They had to pay a 1 percent income tax. They had to pay import and export taxes of 2.5 to 12.5 percent on goods that were imported or exported. People were taxed to travel on roads. They essentially had toll roads. The VMRs would have been one of these roads. People would have been taxed to travel on that road. They were taxed to cross borders from one jurisdiction to another. They were taxed to enter towns and harbors like Capernaum, which we're talking about.
They were taxed to enter the marketplace. For instance, if you went to a shopping mall today, you would pay a tax, maybe $5, to enter the mall. There would be the equivalent. There were taxes on pack animals like donkeys, mules, camels, that sort of thing. There were taxes on the number of wheels and axles on a cart. A cart that had eight wheels would pay much more than a cart with two or four wheels. There were taxes on goods that were bought and sold. They taxed pretty much anything and everything, pretty much like we have today. Tax collectors were hated because of that.
Tax collectors were also hated for their association with the rich.
Some tax collectors took bribes from wealthy people. They would work out a private deal. Okay, well, you give me x amount of money and I'll report that your income was this.
And I'll report that to the authorities. But it'll be less than what you were paying them, but I'll pocket the difference. So, in other words, the rich people would bribe tax collectors to underreport their income, but they would give more money than the tax collector would have made otherwise. And this worked out to the benefit of both of them while they are actually stealing from the government, what was owed to the government. Tax collectors, this is very key too, they were also viewed as collaborators with the Romans, which they viewed as a satanic system that was oppressing the people of God. They viewed God as their king.
And that was the basis of the zealot movement that we've talked about in a previous message here.
Tax collectors were therefore viewed as siding with the pagan gentile Romans over their own people.
After all, many tax collectors got rich by oppressing, stealing from their own countrymen, and working for the Romans. So they were hated for that. They were especially hated by the zealots who would murder tax collectors if the opportunity arose.
It's interesting, as I pointed out before, that Jesus called both a tax collector, Matthew, as well as one of the zealots, Simon the Zealot. That had to make some very interesting dynamics among the twelve around the campfires at night, around the meals. One guy who's been brought up collecting taxes for Rome, and another guy who's been brought up teaching, you stab the tax collectors there and do the world a favor. Because of this hatred for tax collectors, there were different rules in place that the rabbis put in place. Tax collectors were banned from the synagogues. They were viewed as unclean, just as an unclean animal. Consequently, you were not supposed to associate with them or touch them in any way. They were viewed as a criminal class. We see that reflected up here. They were viewed as nothing better than robbers and extortioners and murderers. But worst of all, though, was a particular category of tax collectors, and those were called the port tax collectors, the tax collectors who worked at the port towns.
Where does Matthew work? At a port town. Why were they viewed as the scummiest of the scum, or the lowest of the low? Well, because as a port tax collector, you had all kinds of creative opportunities to tax people, because you not only could tax the land goods, like most tax collectors, but you could also tax the goods that were transported across the Sea of Galilee or the Mediterranean, depending on your location. You could tax the different catches of fish in creative ways. Also, Capernaum is, again, right along the VMR. It's this major international highway. So Matthew has three great opportunities for taxing on the goods that were transported and gained from the Sea of Galilee, from the land goods around that area. This is a fairly fertile agricultural area, as well as the major highway that runs right by Capernaum. So Matthew is in a prime position as a tax collector to build a very wealthy lifestyle for himself. And apparently he does that, as we'll read a little bit further here. So Matthew here is a port tax collector, which means that he is viewed as a collaborator with the Romans. He's viewed as unclean. He's viewed as no better than a murderer and a thief and a robber. It was said by some rabbis that port tax collectors were so evil that they could never be forgiven, not even with 30 years of restoring all the money that they had stole and begging for forgiveness. They could never ever be forgiven.
So this is the story of Matthew. This is the position of Matthew. This is where Matthew is when we encounter him in his gospel. One of the questions I sent out last time was, how was Matthew like the leper who was an outcast, an ostracized man that we talked about earlier? How was he like the paralyzed man who needed to have his sins forgiven?
We covered how on page 20 last time that Jesus had the authority to forgive sin. This is a major theme of that story as recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. All three of them talk about it.
And it all leads up to Jesus saying to the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven, you rise up and walk. Jesus clearly had the authority to forgive sin. And he said so clearly, but a logical question then is, how much sin can be forgiven? And who can be forgiven?
Can anyone be forgiven? The rabbis taught that a poor tax collector can never be forgiven because he is so evil that he can never make restitution for everything he stole. Therefore, he can never be forgiven. He's unclean. He's not to be touched, not to be communicated with in any way. And again, Matthew. This is his story. We talked about earlier how Jesus' Hebrew name Yeshua means not only God saves, but God rescues. God rescues. We talked about it in the context of the leper and of the paralyzed man who needed rescuing in their condition as outcasts, as people cut off from society. Because now we come to a man who desperately needs to be rescued. Because he's cut off. He's unclean. He's in a position to never be forgiven by those of society around him.
He's in a very bad place. And this is an underlying theme of the story of the calling of Matthew. It's not spelled out because, again, they didn't see a need to spell that out. They knew it. They knew what the rules were by the rabbis at that time. So they don't repeat all of that. They assume it's understood. When you're talking about a tax collector, especially somebody who's a tax collector at a port, everybody knew. They were the scummiest of the scum, the lowest of the low.
So this is an underlying theme of the story of the calling of Matthew because the earlier stories of the leper and the paralyzed man flow right into the story of the calling of Matthew. They're all building up to this question of who can be forgiven? How much sin can be forgiven? This is an underlying theme that we reach here.
So now back to the story. Page 21. Let's start reading from Mark's account. We'll read from it primarily and then bring in some details from the others. So Mark 2 verses 13 through 17.
Then he, Jesus, went out again by the sea, and all the multitude came to him, and he taught them.
Excuse me a second here. I bumped my adapter and disconnected it.
Yeah, here we go. Then he went out again by the sea, and all the multitude came to him, to Jesus, and he taught them. So notice that now Jesus is no longer teaching in a private house, is when he healed the paralyzed man or in the synagogue, when he healed Peter's mother-in-law. Now he's helped by the seashore there because the crowds are so big they won't fit in the synagogue or in a private house anymore. He's got a large number of people coming to hear him.
As he passed by, as he's going along the seashore, he saw Levi, or Matthew, the son of Alfea sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, Follow me. So he, Matthew, arose and followed him. A few things to point out here, because again this is to address some misconceptions we might have. First of all, the way this is worded, it sounds like Jesus and Matthew see each other for the first time, and Jesus says to Matthew, Follow me. And Matthew gets up and walks away and follows Jesus. Is that the way this played out? Well, no, not really. All you have to do is think about it a little bit, because after all, how long has Jesus been in Capernaum? He's been in there a minimum of a few months, because as we read earlier, he's gone teaching all around Galilee after moving to Capernaum. He's performed great miracles. He's healed Peter's mother-in-law. He's healed a demon-possessed man at the synagogue. He's healed the multitudes, masses of people who came after sundown, after they heard about the healing of Peter's mother-in-law. He's healed the nobleman's son several months earlier there. So what's Matthew's job? He's a tax collector. He's a tax collector to collect taxes. He's going to know about everything that's going on in the town. So obviously he knows about Jesus. Obviously he's been familiar with Jesus' teachings and sayings. He's obviously aware of this miracle working rabbi who's moved right into town there. So certainly this is not the first encounter between the two of them. Matthew may have actually already gone and heard Jesus teach on a number of occasions. He probably has because, again, his job is to know what's going on in town so it can be taxed there. That's part of his business there. So surely Matthew knows about all of these things being right there in Capernaum.
So Matthew certainly knows who Jesus is. And Jesus, after all, who's Jesus associated with? He's already called some of his followers, James and John and Peter and Andrew, who are fishermen. Well, who do the fishermen have to interact with? The tax collector. Every time they catch fish, they're going to come by Matthew's office or booth there and shell out however many fish are owed and the tax is there. So Jesus probably already knows Matthew at this point as well.
So what does Jesus say? He says, follow me. One of the study questions I sent out last night was, what does this phrase mean? It's a phrase that appears 19 times in the Gospels there. So what does it mean? Well, it means simply be my disciple. It doesn't mean just follow me around like a pet dog or something like that. It means become like me, become my disciple, become my talamit. I've given a sermon here on what it means to be a disciple several years ago early in this series. You can go back and listen to that. It means submit to my teaching. It means commit yourself to becoming like me in every way. It means give up everything and anything to follow me and become like me. That was the whole point of becoming a disciple and following the rabbi around. So you could see what he did in every circumstance so you would know what to do in those same circumstances of life. It was a very hands-on experience there. It means that's what becoming a talamit, becoming a disciple, means. And it's the same invitation that's been extended to us today as well. Christ has called us to be his disciples, his followers, to become like him in every way. Notice that Luke includes a little detail that Mark does up here about Matthew's reaction. Luke says, so he left all, referring to Matthew, so he left all, rose up, and followed him. He left everything. Matthew understood what that calling entailed, so he walks away from his job as a tax collector from that lifestyle and all of that entailed and followed Jesus. Again, he had quite a lucrative livelihood going on there as a tax collector in a port here. And he walked away from it and gave up everything. Notice also, you can read across the page, Matthew's account. Matthew doesn't say that. Matthew doesn't say. Matthew left all and followed him. No, because Matthew is a humble man. That's another indication why I think evidence that this is Matthew's writing here. He doesn't say that about himself because that would be boastful.
And Matthew is a very humble man, as we'll see. But Luke does. Luke records that Matthew made a great sacrifice, gave up his wealthy livelihood and lifestyle to follow Jesus. Actually, I meant to project that up here. Matthew 9 and verse 10. You can see that phrase is left out. Continuing on back here in Mark 2. Oh, wait a minute. Nope. Sorry, I got mixed up here.
Yeah, Luke then goes on to say in verse 29, Then Levi gave him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. But notice how Matthew words the same thing, same event. But notice how differently it's framed in Matthew.
Now it happened, as Jesus said at the table in the house, does it say whose house it was?
That behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and with his disciples. Now notice Matthew doesn't mention it's his own house, doesn't mention that he's the one who put on the big banquet and paid for all of these people to come and enjoy this banquet there. Now Matthew downplays it almost like it's a potluck or something. People are eating. Jesus is eating with his disciples and all of a sudden these people show up and start eating. It's a drastic difference because Matthew, Luke puts the focus on the calling of Matthew. Matthew, though, who is writing this puts the focus where?
Not on himself, but on Jesus, on the Messiah. There, Matthew recognizes it's not about him, as the saying goes. It's about Jesus Christ. That's the key to the story. It's about Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God. So again, this is another indicator that this is indeed written by Matthew because his humility is evident in the way he describes things here. Now since this was a great banquet with large numbers of people in Matthew's house, one of the questions I sent out was, what does this tell us about Matthew's social status? Well, it tells us he was a pretty wealthy person because, after all, to have a house large enough to host that many people and to pay for a meal for that many people does indicate Matthew is a pretty wealthy person.
And indeed, that fits in with everything we would know about tax collectors from that period. Yet, Matthew is willing to walk away from all of that to become a follower, a disciple, a talmud of Jesus. This answers that study question, which was, what does this tell us about Matthew's social status? He is quite wealthy in that community. Notice also who is mentioned most prominently as attending this banquet, that it is tax collectors and sinners. And another question I ask is, what does this tell us about Matthew? Well, it tells us, like I discussed a few minutes ago, that Matthew is ostracized by the community that the people he hangs out with are other tax collectors and sinners. Sinners doesn't mean literally sinners, as we would understand it.
Basically, it would refer to non-observant Jews who were Jewish but didn't observe the law, or could also refer to Gentiles, people who weren't familiar with the law, didn't know it, didn't keep it, and so on. So this is a fairly broad term. It's not talking about people who are actively robbing, murdering, committing adultery, things like that. Just people who don't know the law, couldn't care less about it, that sort of thing.
Another study question I asked was of the different groups of people who lived around Galilee, the Samaritans, the zealots, the religious Jews, the Herodians, the Samaritans, and so on. Which group would Matthew have most likely been associated with?
I think we can see from this now, he's most likely associated with the Herodians, because who were the Herodians? Well, they were the government, like Herod Antipas. Herod was one of the sons of Herod the Great. These are the people who were in bed with the Romans. They're helping the Romans administer the government. What is Matthew's occupation? Again, he's a tax collector for this group. So these are the people Matthew worked for and worked with, as other people who were part of the governmental system there. And many of those were also part of the wealthy class, which Matthew, as a tax collector, appears to have been apart as well. So I'm starting to rush through this a bit because we're getting low on time. But Mark 2, continuing the story, now as it happened, as he was dining in Levi's house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many, and they followed him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him, saw Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to his disciples, how is it that he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?
Now we read this because we kind of know how the story plays out toward the end of the Gospels.
And we assume that this is a hostile argument because, after all, what is familiar with Matthew 23, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, because you do all of these things and you neglect the way to your matters of the law. So we're conditioned to think that all of these encounters we see between Jesus and the scribes and the Pharisees are hostile when that's not necessarily the case, as I'll demonstrate here. And we tend to think that all the Pharisees were evil and hard-hearted and rejected Jesus Christ and this sort of thing. But keep in mind what was Paul? He was a Pharisee.
In the book of Acts, when he's brought before the Sanhedrin there, in one of the legal hearings, what does he say? He doesn't say, I was a Pharisee. He says, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. The book of Acts records how many Pharisees were called into the church. So we tend to think that all Pharisees were cut from the same mold and they weren't.
Just like Christianity today has many different denominations and beliefs, there were different denominations, well, not denominations, different beliefs and different practices among the Pharisees of Christ's day, depending on who was their rabbi, what their rabbi taught. So there were some Pharisees who were very conservative. There were some who were quite liberal. There were some who would have fit in very well with Jesus's teaching. In fact, Jesus at times quotes or says things that are directly parallel with the teachings of other rabbis at that time. So my point is we shouldn't assume that all Pharisees are automatically antagonistic toward Jesus and all of them hate Him and want to undermine Him. That's just not the case. Now, certainly later on, that is the predominance of what is going on. But at this point, early in his ministry, that is not.
We shouldn't assume that this debate or all debates are hostile, even though later on most of them would be. But sometimes those debates are over legitimate religious questions, and that is the case here, like this one. The question is, could a rabbi, could a teacher like Jesus, eat with tax collectors and sinners? I've already said how one of the rabbinical teachings was tax collectors are unclean. You're not to touch them. You're not to associate with them. So this is a legitimate question that the scribes and Pharisees bring up to Jesus's disciples.
Some rabbis taught that tax collectors are no better than robbers and murderers.
So how can a rabbi sit down and eat with them? There are also, well, many, a number of scriptures in the Old Testament. We don't go there, but they say, don't associate with sinners. Don't walk with the unrighteous. Don't do that, because you'll be tempted. What they are will rub off on you. So they understood these scriptures about associating with sinners and so on. There are also legitimate food issues. After all, they're eating a meal. How do they know if these are tax collectors and sinners, like Matthew is putting on this banquet? How do you know all the food is clean from a biblical standpoint? Had the food been tithed on? Because you weren't supposed to eat any food unless it had been properly tithed on. You weren't supposed to drink any wine unless it had been properly tithed on. What if Gentiles had handled the food?
Because a Gentile who's considered an unclean person handling the food makes the food unclean.
Therefore, you are not to eat it. So these are legitimate questions when the Pharisees and scribes do that. So some of the rabbis explicitly taught that a rabbi should not eat with ordinary people, nor that the follower of a rabbi should serve food at a banquet unless the follower was sure that the food had been properly tithed on. These are from written records from later on there. So from the standpoint of the Pharisees asking this question, why does your rabbi eat with tax collectors and sinners? It's a legitimate question, especially of a rabbi like Jesus who is becoming more popular every day in that area there. And notice Jesus' response, which is not hostile. Notice his response, verse 17, when Jesus heard it, he said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Now we tend to read that as a put-down of the Pharisees, but there's nothing here really to indicate that because after all, you analyze it, you just don't see it because breaking it down, he mentions three things. He mentions the physician. Who's the physician? Well, it's Jesus, obviously. Who are the sinners? Well, everybody knows who the sinners are. It's the tax collectors and sinners. So who are the righteous? The righteous are the scribes and the Pharisees. If anything, this is a compliment toward them because they are keeping the law. They are obeying what God has told them to. It's the tax collectors and sinners who need the help, who need the physician, who need Jesus to show them the right way there. So Jesus is saying he doesn't need to eat with the Pharisees because they're well. He needs to eat with the sick people because they're the ones who need the doctor. They're the ones who need the physician. They're the ones who need the healing. So I read this, I don't see a put-down. There again, it's not a hostile interaction. Notice then how, and we'll wrap up with this verse, how Matthew concludes his account in Matthew 9 and verse 13. Matthew records this, the others don't. Matthew says, 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 is quoting here from Hosea 6 and verse 6, which says, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Now, why does Jesus say this? Why does he tell the Pharisees and the scribes to go and learn what this means? Well, if he has to tell them to go and learn what it means, obviously they don't fully understand what this passage says. So what's his point? What I think he's doing here is contrasting his approach to the tax collectors and sinners with the approach of the Pharisees toward them. Both of them want the same thing. Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees want the same thing. They want the sinners, the tax collectors, to repent and come to a right relationship with God.
But they have totally opposite ways of going about that goal, that desire. The Pharisees thought that they did that by ostracizing the sinners, the tax collectors, to remind them of how evil they are, how not right they are with God, and by following that they need to follow strict rules of separation and being scrupulous about sacrifices and the rituals of the law.
Jesus, on the other hand, said that you lead a person into a right relationship with God by showing mercy, by showing self-giving, by being compassionate, by being merciful, as he mentions here to them, by reflecting the loving nature and characteristics of God, the Father, and of Himself. And actually, if you think about it, that's the whole lesson of the calling of Matthew that we're talking about here. That Jesus could have been like the Pharisees and saw Matthew as a conniving, greedy, unclean thief who could never be forgiven by God and become righteous like they were, or Jesus could look at Matthew and see in him what God sees in us. But he sees someone who's a sinner, who needs God's grace and forgiveness, and whom God can then mold and shape and use as a tool for his purpose and ultimately raise to eternal life in his kingdom as one of his immortal and eternal sons and daughters. Other people saw Matthew as a despised tax collector, but Jesus saw in him a man who could write a book that would change the lives of millions of people. And that, I think, is the lesson that Jesus is trying to convey here to the Pharisees. I think that also leads naturally and flows naturally into what we'll cover next in the Gospels, but that we'll have to wait for next time. So that concludes today's study. Again, if you have any questions or whatever, feel free to catch me later about that.
