Now the second thing I see in the story is that Jesus in his compassion for the masses works to help them through other people. You find that in Matthew 9, which I mentioned was where Jesus had compassion on the people because they were harassed and helpless. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plenteous, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into the harvest field” (v. 38).

We come now in our series to the story of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, which is the only miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ that appears in all four Gospels. That tells us that this story is important. I sometimes say that if God tells us something once we should pay attention. If he tells us something twice we should pay strict attention. And if he tells us something three times we should obviously give serious rapt and most obedient attention. But this story appears four times! 

Now here is Matthew’s call following that story of the healing of the paralytic, and it is a way of saying as clearly as he can possibly say it that Jesus Christ came to save him. Everybody would agree to that, wouldn’t they? If anybody needed to be saved it was that tax collector because tax collectors and sinners are the very same thing. Everybody knew that forgiveness is what he needed, which is precisely what he received. Jesus came not only to call Matthew to a different life, but to save him.

Have you ever noticed as you read through the Gospels that whenever the word tax collector appears, usually it is coupled with the word sinners? Imagine what it would feel like if for whatever profession you are in, the word sinners was always connected with it. Well that’s the way it was with Matthew. You see, what I’m trying to say by that is if you were talking about people in that day who were at the very bottom of the scale of social acceptability it was certainly the tax collectors. And Matthew was right in there fighting for the bottom position.