A Word in Season: The Divine Doctor (Luke 5:27-32)

The Calling of Matthew the Tax Collector

Three of the four gospel writers tell the same incident, record the same history, of a man called Matthew, also had a name Levi, who was a tax collector. Now, as a tax collector in that context, Matthew, who was a Jewish man, was essentially both a traitor and a thief.

He was a traitor in the sense that, being a Jew, he was working for the occupying power, the Romans, and he was a thief, in that it was very typical of tax collectors to skim some of the money. They would put their own interest on top of things, so that they, and anybody who worked for them, would get a cut of whatever they took.

So on both levels, Matthew would have been a despised man. But when the Lord Jesus saw this despised man, he called him and told him to follow him, and Matthew stood up, turned his back upon the life that he had been living, and followed after the Lord Jesus.

A Feast for Sinners and the Pharisees' Offense

Now, one of the first things that Matthew did, having come to Christ as a disciple, was to throw a great feast for the Lord in his home, and he invited all his friends, and the Bible describes them as tax collectors and sinners.

They were people who, the polite members of society, especially the outwardly religious members of that society, that the Pharisees, men who prided themselves on their own righteousness, that entitled them, in their view, to God's favour, that kind of gathering was obnoxious to these Pharisees.

And when they saw the Lord Jesus sitting among these sinners, as they saw them, and as they really were, they were offended, and they complained against Christ and his disciples, saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

They were mortified, they were horrified that Jesus, who claimed to be this religious teacher, and this man from God, should associate with what they considered the scum of the earth. And the Lord Jesus responded, those who are well have no need of a physician, a doctor, but those who are sick.

Christ the Divine Doctor for the Sick in Sin

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. Now, he's not saying that the Pharisees were actually well, but they certainly thought that they were. They didn't see themselves as having any need of a saviour from their sins.

They could see the sin in others, they had no sense of sin in themselves, and so they didn't go to a doctor, they didn't go to anybody who they thought would help them, because they didn't think they needed any help.

But Matthew and his friends were there, because they knew that they had the sickness of sin in their souls, and Christ was there, because he was the doctor who could do them good. Now, obviously, we're in an environment where, when people are falling sick, they're crying out for medical assistance.

But the point we need to take from this is, that there's a sickness of our souls, which is always with us. It may be that you're in a situation at the moment where you're finding that the pressure of what you're about, the things that you're having to deal with, are forcing sin out of your soul in ways that you've perhaps not seen before, or never needed to acknowledge before.

Repentance, Trust, and the Need for a Savior

And I want you to understand, from God and from his word, that you need a doctor for your soul, and you have a doctor for your soul. When sin bubbles up out of your heart under such circumstances as these, it ought to remind you that you need a saviour.

You need someone to make you clean, you need someone to make you well, you need somebody who is able to deliver you. But if you have acknowledged your sin, and if you've come to Jesus Christ, you have a divine doctor.

Christ didn't come for the people who thought themselves good. Christ didn't come to deal with the people who thought they had no need. Christ came to minister to those who are sick in sin, and sick of sin, to call sinners to repentance.

And if you and I are in that situation, if we're finding sin bubbling up out of our hearts, then it is to Christ that we must go, hating our sin, repenting of our sin, and trusting in him, because he can make us well.