27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” ~ Luke 5:27-32
No one can enter into the kingdom of God without a recognition of our sinfulness. This concept of Original Sin was foreign to the Jewish establishment at the time of the Lord Jesus. The day the Lord Jesus went into the synagogue He read Isaiah 61:1-2a, He announced He was the long-awaited Messiah.
And the people sitting in that synagogue that day were offended. They did not accept the assessment of their condition by the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not acknowledge that they were the poor, prisoners, blind, oppressed, and spiritually bankrupt. Admitting Original Sin is our starting block to entering into a personal relationship with God.
As indicated by our text today, the Lord Jesus didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. There is no salvation, no forgiveness of sin, no eternal life for anybody who thinks he's righteous in and of himself. As a result, the Lord Jesus' ministry was most accessed by the poor, by the prisoners, by the blind, and by the broken. These who had access to acceptance before God understood their true condition and subsequent need for the Savior.
In v.27, we are introduced to a Tax Collector named Levi. He was a crook of the worst kind. This dishonest tax collector is also known as Matthew which means "gift of YHWH." This is the Matthew who penned the first gospel, the first book of the New Testament.
In all four gospels, not one statement from Matthew is recorded. Nothing that Matthew said was ever recorded in the gospels. He only mentions himself twice; once in this incident when he names himself, telling the story about his conversion, and one other time in Matthew 10:3 when he includes his name among the list of the apostles.
Tax Collectors were the lowest of the low. Rome ruled the world and Israel was an occupied country. The Romans established taxation for their occupied countries and they established a certain tax amount for Galilee. Taxes were collected by Tax Collectors and then given to Herod Antipas who then paid it to Rome. And, these Tax Collectors were the scum of society back then.
Herod Antipas sold tax franchises to the highest bidder. Tax collecting was a very lucrative business and, if one didn't mind lying, cheating, stealing and abusing people, one would make bank. These Tax Collectors were considered traitors, because they abused their own people, extorting money from them, and giving that money to the Roman Gentiles.
Somewhere along the line, Matthew sold his birthright, bartered away his heritage and his reputation and any social place at all and perhaps dishonored his family and anybody and everybody who knew him and sentenced himself to a life of association with thugs by buying a tax franchise.
The Roman government established an amount at the end of the year to be paid. Anything beyond that, the Tax Collector would keep. There were fixed taxes, there were poll taxes, there were duties of all kinds. All of these kinds of taxes left room for larceny and extortion and exploitation. And then when someone could not pay their taxes, loan agents would loan the needed money at 50 percent interest or more. And if someone didn't pay, they were in great trouble with the most powerful in the land.
The Jewish people hated the Tax Collectors who were considered to be unclean animals. They were not allowed in a synagogue. In addition, they were forbidden to give testimony in a court of law because they were known to be liars. These Jewish traitors were some of the most hated people in Israel.
Matthew, according to v.27 was "sitting at his tax booth." He may well have been the most hated man in Capernaum, but the Lord Jesus saw him. The word "saw," means to gaze intently. He didn't just glance at Matthew, He fixed His eyes on him and God had a divine appointment with him.
In addition, according to v.27, the Lord Jesus said to Matthew, "Follow Me." Notice He didn't say to him, "If you can kind of clean up your act, you can be a part of my group." No, the Lord Jesus saw into Matthew's heart and saw that he knew he was wretched.
In v.28 we read, "and Levi got up, left everything and followed him." He recognized his need and he understood the risk. He walked away from a very lucrative career, never to be recovered again. The Lord Jesus calls him to follow and immediately he does. Unlike the paralytic who sought the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus sought Matthew.
In v.29 we read, "Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them." Having experienced meaning in life through God's forgiveness, Matthew gathered around him everybody that he knew in his world and introduced them to the Lord Jesus. He throws a big party. This is what happens when we move from the darkness to the light. Now that we see reality, that we have gone from death to life, we want to be a part of the rescue mission that so many around us need.
So, Matthew is there in the new joy of his conversion, the disciples are there, and then all the scum of the world. According to v.30, "But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" That day the Lord Jesus was ultimately and finally outed by the religious leaders. He was not welcomed in the elite group of supposed representatives of God.
The religious leaders were shocked, they were outraged that Jesus and His disciples would associate with this crowd. They were the moral majority. They were void of grace, they were void of God and salvation. The religious leaders were void of the heart of God because they had never presented their hearts to God.
Having overheard the complaints of the hard-hearted religious leaders, the Lord Jesus said in v.31-32, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." By their own admission these religious leaders were the sickest of the sick, but they were unaware of this reality. The heart of the gospel is this: God came to rescue sinners. The religious community hated the Lord Jesus for this. They did not understand that the law of God was given to convince us of our need for God's help. In order to be a recipient of the Good News, we must be first convinced of the Bad News that we are sick and in need of a Savior.
The only way anyone finds salvation is when God shows up in our lives and He calls us to place our faith in Him and we follow suit. If we look around identifying other sinners as worse than we, we are missing the point. The Lord Jesus came to call sinners to repentance from self dependence to God dependence. Like the religious leaders, we can not earn God's favor through our goodness.