JESUS THE MERCIFUL DOCTOR
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Opening Prayer
Father, thank you for your gift of the Holy Spirit, who brought me to faith in Jesus and helps me to walk with him each day.
Read MATTHEW 9:9—13
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Matthew
Matthew 9
The Calling of Matthew
9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Reflect
‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love’.1
When most people looked at Matthew, they saw a wealthy, successful man who was both unscrupulous and unpopular: a social outcast. Certainly, that was how the Pharisees saw him (v. 11). They thought their own meticulous outward righteousness was pleasing to God, and they scorned ‘sinners’ like Matthew. Jesus, however, doesn’t see people as most do. Yes, he saw Matthew the sinner, but he also saw a prospective disciple. ‘Follow me’, he said—and Matthew simply obeyed (v. 9). Following Jesus means not only following his teaching and example but following him on the way of the cross–following him through suffering, through death, to ultimate glory.
Verse 12 reveals that Jesus views the conversion of a sinner as a healing. Matthew needed a doctor to deal with his sin, and he found one in Jesus. A divine doctor who changed his life forever. The depth of his conversion is shown by the fact that he used his own home to introduce many of his tax collector and sinner friends to Jesus (v. 10). The genuineness of a forgiven sinner’s conversion is demonstrated in their befriending not-yet-forgiven sinners.
The Pharisees, watching all this, were unable to comprehend two things. First, that God is much more interested in what lies inside a person than the Pharisees were. Second, that God regards individual people as more important than ritual worship. He rates mercy above sacrifice (v. 13). Mercy is seen in Jesus’ readiness to eat at Matthew’s house, with all those sinner friends who were also in need of him. Indeed, mercy is the reason why Jesus came to earth (v. 13b). Mercy was central to his whole character and ministry. Is it equally central to ours?
Apply
Reflect on your own experience of God’s mercy. How might you show mercy to someone today?
Closing prayer
Lord Jesus, I lift up to you mercy-based ministries of Christians in my nation and around the world, asking that you bless the work they do in your name.
1 Ps 51:1 2 See also Hos 6:6.
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