Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2493
“As Jesus passed forth from there, he saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and He said to him, Follow Me. And he arose and followed Him.” Matthew 9:9.
This is a little bit of autobiography. Matthew wrote this verse about himself. I can fancy him, with his pen in his hand, writing all the rest of this Gospel, and I can imagine that when he came to this very personal passage, he laid the pen down a minute and wiped his eyes. He was coming to a most memorable and pathetic incident in his own life and he recorded it with tremulous emotion. “As Jesus passed forth from there, He saw a man named Matthew.” The Evangelist could not have said much less about himself than this. “He saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and He said to him, Follow Me. And he arose and followed Him.” I do not think there is any part of Matthew’s Gospel that touched him more than this portion in which he was writing down the story of Divine Love to himself and of how he, himself, was called to be a disciple of Christ.
I notice a very grave distinction between Matthew’s way of recording his call and the very general style of converts relating their experience nowadays. Today the man seems to come boldly forth, with a springing step and a boastful air, and shouts out that he was the biggest blackguard who ever lived! And he tells with great gusto how he used to curse and to swear, and he talks as if there was something to be proud of in all that evil! Sit down, Sir! Sit down and give us the story in this style, “As Jesus passed forth from there, He saw a man named Matthew”—that is about as much as we care to know. Tell us as briefly as you can, how the Lord called you and enabled you to follow Him. There is a modesty about this narrative—not a mockmodesty, by any means—there is no concealment of the facts of the case, there is no obscuration of the Grace of Christ, but there is a concealment of Matthew, himself! He mentions that he was a publican. In the list that he gives of the Apostles he calls himself, “Matthew the Publican.” The other Evangelists hardly ever call him a publican—they do not even call him, “Matthew,” as a rule. They give his more respectable name, “Levi,” and they have more to say of him than he says of himself. It is always best for us, if there is anything to be said in our praise, not to say it ourselves, but to let somebody else say it. Brother, if your trumpeter is dead, put the trumpet away! When that trumpet needs to be blown, there will be a trumpeter found to use it—but you need never blow it yourself!
This verse reads to me so tenderly that I do not know how to communicate to you just how I feel about it. I have tried to imagine myself to be Matthew and to have to write this story. And I am sure that if I had not been Inspired as Matthew was, I should never have done it so beautifully as he has done it, for it is so full of everything that is touching, tender, timid, true, and gracious—“As Jesus passed forth from there, He saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and He said to him, Follow Me. And he arose and followed Him.”
Please notice—perhaps you did notice in our reading—where Matthew has put this story. It is placed immediately after a miracle. Some question has been raised, in a Harmony of the Gospels, as to the exact position of this fact, whether it did actually occur just when Matthew tells it or whether he rather studied effect than chronology. Sometimes the Evangelists seem to overlook the chronological position of a statement and put it out of its proper place, that it may be more in its place for some other purpose. Well, I do not know about the chronology of this event, but it seems to me very beautiful on Matthew’s part to record his call just here. “There,” he said, “I will tell them one miracle about the Savior having made the palsied man take up his bed and walk, and then I will tell them of another miracle—a greater miracle,
still—how there was another man who was more than palsied, chained to his gains and to an injurious traffic, yet who, nevertheless, at the command of Christ, quit that occupation and all his gains that he might follow his Divine Master.”
Whenever you think about your own conversion, dear Friend, regard it as a miracle, and always say within yourself, “It was a wonder of Grace! If the conversion of anybody was ever a miracle of mercy, it was /Byconversion! It was an extraordinary condescension on Christ’s part to look on such a sinner as I was—and nothing but a miracle of Grace could have saved me.”
So Matthew tells his own story very tenderly, but he tells it very suggestively, putting it just after a most notable miracle! And I think that the Evangelist thought there was some similarity between the miracle and his own conversion, for there is nothing that palsies a man towards spiritual things like the lust of gold. Let a man be engaged in oppression and extortion, as the publicans were, and the conscience becomes seared as with a hot iron—and the extortioner is not likely to feel or desire that which is right. Yet here was a man, up to his neck in an evil occupation, who in a moment, at the Divine Call, is made to part with all his hopes of gain that he may follow Christ! It was a miracle similar and equal to the raising of the palsied man who took up his bed and walked! You, too, dear Friend, can trace a parallel, perhaps, between your conversion and some miracle of the Master. Was it, in your case, the casting out of devils? Was it the opening of the eyes of the blind? Was it the unstopping of deaf ears and the loosing of a silent tongue? Was it the raising of the dead, or even more than that, was it the calling forth of corruption, itself, out of the grave, as when Jesus cried, “Lazarus, come forth,” and Lazarus came forth?
In any case, I invite you who know the Lord, in the silence of your souls, to sit down and think—not about Matthew, but about yourselves. I shall think about “a man named Spurgeon” and you can think about “a man named John Smith,” or, “Thomas Jones,” or whatever your name may happen to be. If the Lord has looked upon you in love, you can put your own name into the text, and say, “As Jesus passed forth from there, he saw a man named James,” or “John,” or “Thomas.” And you women may put in your names, too, you Maries and Janes and so forth. Just sit and think how Jesus said to each one of you, “Follow Me,” and how in that happy moment you did arise and follow Him—and from that hour you could truly sing, as you have often sung since—
“‘Tis done! The great transaction’s done—
Iam my Lord’s, and He is mine!
He drew me, and I followed on,
Charmed to confess the voice Divine!
High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear
Until in life’s latest hour I bow
And bless in death a bond so dear.” With some degree of rapidity I will try to conduct your thoughts to various points of this interesting and instructive narrative.
I. The first is that THIS CALL OF THE MAN NAMED MATTHEW SEEMED ACCIDENTAL AND UNLIKELY.
“As Jesus passed forth from there,” just as He was going about some work or other, going away from Capernaum, perhaps, or merely going down one of its streets, it was as He “passed forth” that this event happened. As He passed, “He saw a man named Matthew.” That is the way we talk when we speak of things that, as we say, “happen,” we scarcely know why. Now, dear Friend, was that how you were converted? I do not know how long ago it was, but it did so happen, did it not? Yet it did not seem to you to be a very likely event ever to occur.
Looking back at the case of Matthew, it does seem, now, to have been a very unlikely thing that he should become a follower of Jesus. Capernaum was Christ’s own city, so He had often been there, yet Matthew remained unsaved. Christ had not seen that “man named Matthew” in the special way in which He saw him on this particular occasion and you, dear Friend, went to a place of worship a great many times before you were converted. Perhaps you had been there regularly since you were a child! Yet it was not till that one particular day of Grace that anything special happened to you, even as it was not till the time recorded in our text that something very special happened to the man named Matthew.
Further, at that time, Jesus seemed as if He was about other business, for, we read, “as Jesus passed forth from there.” And perhaps it seemed to you that the preacher was aiming at something else when his word was blessed to you.
He was, maybe, comforting Believers, yet God sent the message home to you, a poor unconverted sinner. Strange, was it not, both in Matthew’s case and your own?
I cannot tell how you happen to be here, my dear Friend—a stranger in London, perhaps, and a total stranger to this Tabernacle, yet I believe you are brought here that my Lord and Master may see you—you, “a man, named Matthew,” or “John,” or “James,” or “Thomas,” or whatever your name may be. And oh, I pray that this may be the time when you shall see Him and hear Him say, “Follow Me,” and you shall feel a blessed urge to follow Him without question, or hesitancy, but at once leave whatever your sinful life may have been and become a follower of Christ!
So, in the first place, this call of Matthew seemed accidental and unlikely, yet it was according to the purpose of God and, therefore, it was duly given and answered.
II. In the second place, THIS CALL OF THE MAN NAMED MATTHEW WAS ALTOGETHER UNTHOUGHT-