It is all too easy to convince ourselves that we are fearers and worshipers of God because we attend church and sing songs. Yet Scripture clarifies for us that external shows of worship do not always reflect the heart: “…this people honors me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13).

Revelation 19:5: And from the throne came a voice saying, “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great.” (ESV)
There is something striking to me about the idea of fearing the one for whom I live.  A moment’s thought leads me to consider that the fear of God is one way of describing the entire motivation for living for him in the first place. If there is a supreme reason for living our lives and an ultimate aim to which they ought to be directed, then it stands to reason that not living for him should strike the greatest fear in our hearts by definition. What could be more fearful than missing the entire purpose of our existence?
And yet, there is something positive here as well. It is not just that we fear the lack of God, but that we fear God himself. The fear of God is not fundamentally one of privation (“What if I don’t have God?”), but is intensely God-directed. It is not the absence of God that we fear, but God himself.
And not only that, but it is a fear that is marked not by servile subjection but by heart-filled praise. The fear of God is a wondrous thing! It is the first step in an entire economy or ecosystem of dynamics in the relationship between us and God, us and each other, and us and the rest of creation.
Fear and Worship
This train of thought, combined with continued meditation on this passage, leads me to something closer to the reason why fearing the one for whom I live is so striking: fear and worship are inseparable. This may not break new ground for many, but I have never explicitly drawn some logical inferences which now present themselves to me: if fear and worship are connected, then our fears and our gods are also linked. We cannot separate what we fear from who or what we worship.
Nevertheless, we do this often enough. We prefer to limit our conception of worship to lip service. There may be a root of motivation in laziness here. Worship is so intrinsic to our being and nature, so deep in the well of our hearts, that it takes work to draw it out and know it. Oftentimes, we prefer to leave our hearts on autopilot to taking hold of the controls and attempting to steer in the proper direction.
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We must put up firewalls against evil influence; yet, we don’t shun sinners as a plague. Instead, we offer them the humble summons of the gospel. We invite them to see Christ as the doctor of salvation and to repent as sinners. Wisely, we do not sit with scoffers, but we do plead the gospel to them in order for Christ to be glorified in everything.

What shapes our character and personality? Well, one of the most significant influences is other people. Parents mold us. Sisters and brothers affect our personality. Friends pull and push us in this or that direction. Teachers inspire our ambitions and interests. And since peer pressure has such horsepower, we want our influences to be good, positive.
Basic wisdom tells us to avoid bad characters. It is foolish to expose yourself to prolonged sinful company. Sadly, we all know people who got mixed up in the wrong crowd and went south. Good kids were corrupted away from the path of truth and faith. And this is in part why we create communities, to form an arena of positive influences and to defend against wicked ideas and practices. The apostle Paul’s warning, “Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals,” is a red-flag waving.
And this is not just a Christian thing; everyone does it to some extent. It is both biblical wisdom and natural law prudence. And yet, when it comes to this common grace principle, our Lord didn’t conform. He looked the fool and not the sage. Though, as we will see, Jesus had the best reason for his exceptional practice.
Jesus calls a tax-collector named Levi, who is an Israelite employed by a pagan overlord.

He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:13-17)

So, our Lord is back on the road again. After staying put in the city of Capernaum for a handful of days, Jesus must keep moving and continue to preach and bears east towards the sea of Galilee. The crowd of people are following Jesus while he is teaching them and the group comes to a check-point. This is likely a border crossing; the officer on duty is named Levi, the son of Alphaeus. The regular practice was to name your child after a distinguished ancestor. To pick Levi most likely means that this man is a Levite.
He belongs to the famous tribe of Levi. The high-priestly line of Aaron belonged to the Levitical tribe, and all the other family lines were temple servants to assist the priests. When the family business is temple service, this comes with a higher expectation of piety. Levites were supposed to be experts in the Old Testament, masters of ritual holiness, and devoted servants of the temple. With a name like Levi, we expect a Bible-thumping, goody two-shoes, but then we are told his job. He is a tax-collector. His office is a toll-booth on the road. Instead of working for God, he is employed by a pagan overlord.
Now, there were numerous types of taxes levied on Galilee by Rome. At this time, Rome didn’t collect taxes firsthand in Galilee. Instead, Rome imposed its sovereignty through a tetrarch, or governor. The governor of Galilee was Herod Antipas, and just east of Capernaum was a border with another region governed by Philip. Herod and Philip had the privilege of taxation, a healthy portion of which did go to Rome. And at the border crossing, there would be a check-point to pay a toll. This was a tariff, a custom, a denarius for the tax-officer to pass.
Levi was supposed to be a pious servant in the temple of God, but instead he signed up for a lucrative career with the enemy.
The business of taxes is key to appreciating the reputation of Levi. In order to get his tax, Herod would offer contracts on which private businessmen would bid. The highest bidder got the contract. These private “tax-farmers” most often did not belong to the local population. They were foreigners, and they would turn around and hire natives to do the actual collecting. This was the first sting against tax-collectors: Levi is a Jew working for a foreigner to confiscate taxes from his own people. Socially, this was nearly an unforgivable betrayal.
Next, there was how the tax-men got paid. They earned their salary by charging higher rates. For example, Herod may set the toll at one denarius per person. The businessman orders his collector to charge one and a half denari to get the half for himself. Then, the collector may levy the toll at three denari to keep one and a half for himself.
In such a system, there is unlimited opportunity for corruption. When you paid the 3 denari toll, you had no idea how much went to Rome and what percentage was skimmed off by greedy middlemen. Additionally, tax-collectors were often wealthy, and they hired muscle to wield violence against you to pay up.
Levi was supposed to be a pious servant in the temple of God, but instead he signed up for a lucrative career with the enemy. Rather than helping you with your holy offering, Levi was squeezing cash out of you to pay the man and to live in the mansion down the street. Instead of suffering with his fellow Jews, Levi was feasting with greedy Gentiles.
When Christ calls, the person comes.
As a tax-collector, Levi was essentially categorized as an apostate. He had been corrupted by keeping bad company and he was a lost cause. The pious name and the immoral job are meant to make you sick to your stomach. Yet, Jesus speaks kindly to Levi, “Follow me.” And with no drama, Levi gets up and follows. There is no two-week notice. Levi immediately quits his job to follow Jesus and not look back. Nothing is said about Levi’s faith, repentance, or any other emotion. Jesus speaks and Levi complies. The stress here falls on the power of our Lord’s Word.
When Christ calls, the person comes. The Shepherd knows his sheep, and they know his voice to fall behind him irresistibly. The Lord comforts and assures our faith by the effective force of his call. Yet, this call of Levi is structured to match that of Simon and Andrew in chapter one. Next to the sea, Jesus called Peter to be both a disciple and an apostle in training.
In the same manner, he summons Levi as disciple and apostle. Christ saved Levi, and he made this tax-collector part of his inner circle. Thus, in his version of this story, Matthew calls Levi by the name of Matthew. It was common for people to have two names. So, Levi’s other name is Matthew, and in all the lists of the twelve apostles, they include Matthew the tax-collector.
Those we deem to be lost causes are not beyond the power of our Lord’s gracious calling and words.
Christ is the cornerstone, and the apostles are the foundation for the church. This tax-collector is part of our foundation as members of the church. Our Lord used sinners of the worst sort to lay the bedrock footing for the gospel. Those we deem to be lost causes are not beyond the power of our Lord’s gracious calling and words.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, July 30, 2022
It is suffering that forms character (Romans 5), and it is our character that God got into this business for in the first place. There’s a lesson, a treasure, for each of us to find. And here’s the secret that they rarely tell you in church: it can only be found at the bottom of the pit. What’s the secret? There’s a better gift than the one you lost. And it’s God himself, given to us in Christ. Not such a big secret, but the bit we sometimes miss is that we only grasp this in the muck at the bottom of the pit.

We all know how the world should be run. It’s simply obvious to us: the best people should run things, and everyone should get what they deserve. If you put that to 100 people, I suspect you would find the vast majority would agree that this an innately good idea.
They call it a meritocracy—a country ruled by those who merit the positions. Beyond politics too we would like most things to run this way. It’s attractive to most of us, but of course there is a sticking point we rarely think through: who gets to define the ‘best’?
For lots of things from ruling countries to who should organise the village fete, it is not simple to distil the definition of greatness to such a degree that we could objectively declare that Dave is invariably the best possible person to do this activity—if Dave fails then it simply couldn’t be done, no recriminations required.
To peel our hearts back another layer, it’s difficult for a deeper reason: we all inherently think we’re the best. Or, because it’s hard to sustain the cognitive dissonance required to assert that you’re the best at something without material evidence, we assume we’re distinctly above average. Of course, some of us are right—that’s how averages work—and some of us are not. Most of us are above average at some skill or ability we possess. There are a lot of people in the world so that isn’t necessarily saying a lot. We assume, without voicing it loud enough that we can hear ourselves in the quiet of our minds, that the world would be better if they let us run it.
This is what we really mean when we think the world should be run by the ‘best.’ This is why we think that meritocracies would be better: we, or someone even better than us who shares our opinions, could fix it.
Here’s the thing, friends—whether you happen to indulge in the same disgusting level of pride as I clearly do, or not—it is very good news that the world is not set up this way.
As Andrew Wilson points out in his book God of All Things: the world is not a meritocracy. The best do not get the best. The most beautiful places are not inhabited by the most morally pure or more capable people. Good food does not only get served to the pure. The rain does not only fall on those who do good.
Which is good news. As Jesus put it:
For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matthew 5.45b
We get the gift of rain and the gift of sunshine however righteous or unrighteous we are. Which, since without the gift of righteousness from the hand of Christ none of us would get a passing grade, is phenomenally good news.
The world does not run on a principle of merit. I’m glad, because I would never have seen a sunrise, enjoyed a rainstorm, tasted bread fresh from the oven, or smelled sweet peas in bloom, if it did.
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