Jesus’ Early Manhood

128:3.1This year the fi­nan­cial pres­sure was slightly re­laxed as four were at work. Miriam earned con­sid­er­able by the sale of milk and but­ter; Martha had be­come an ex­pert weaver. The pur­chase price of the re­pair shop was over one third paid. The sit­u­a­tion was such that Je­sus stopped work for three weeks to take Si­mon to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and this was the longest pe­riod away from daily toil he had en­joyed since the death of his fa­ther.

128:3.2They jour­neyed to Je­ru­sa­lem by way of the De­capo­lis and through Pella, Gerasa, Phil­a­del­phia, Hes­h­bon, and Jeri­cho. They re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the coast route, touch­ing Ly­dda, Joppa, Cae­sarea, thence around Mount Carmel to Ptole­mais and Naz­a­reth. This trip fairly well ac­quainted Je­sus with the whole of Pales­tine north of the Je­ru­sa­lem dis­trict.

128:3.3At Phil­a­del­phia Je­sus and Si­mon be­came ac­quainted with a mer­chant from Da­mas­cus who de­vel­oped such a great lik­ing for the Naz­a­reth cou­ple that he in­sisted they stop with him at his Je­ru­sa­lem head­quar­ters. While Si­mon gave at­ten­dance at the tem­ple, Je­sus spent much of his time talk­ing with this well-ed­u­cated and much-trav­eled man of world af­fairs. This mer­chant owned over four thou­sand car­a­van camels; he had in­ter­ests all over the Ro­man world and was now on his way to Rome. He pro­posed that Je­sus come to Da­mas­cus to en­ter his Ori­en­tal im­port busi­ness, but Je­sus ex­plained that he did not feel jus­ti­fied in go­ing so far away from his fam­ily just then. But on the way back home he thought much about these dis­tant cities and the even more re­mote coun­tries of the Far West and the Far East, coun­tries he had so fre­quently heard spo­ken of by the car­a­van pas­sen­gers and con­duc­tors.

128:3.4Si­mon greatly en­joyed his visit to Je­ru­sa­lem. He was duly re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael at the Pass­over con­se­cra­tion of the new sons of the com­mand­ment. While Si­mon at­tended the Pass­over cer­e­monies, Je­sus min­gled with the throngs of vis­i­tors and en­gaged in many in­ter­est­ing per­sonal con­fer­ences with nu­mer­ous gen­tile pros­e­lytes.

128:3.5Per­haps the most no­table of all these con­tacts was the one with a young Hel­lenist named Stephen. This young man was on his first visit to Je­ru­sa­lem and chanced to meet Je­sus on Thurs­day af­ter­noon of Pass­over week. While they both strolled about view­ing the As­monean palace, Je­sus be­gan the ca­sual con­ver­sa­tion that re­sulted in their be­com­ing in­ter­ested in each other, and which led to a four-hour dis­cus­sion of the way of life and the true God and his wor­ship. Stephen was tremen­dously im­pressed with what Je­sus said; he never for­got his words.

128:3.6And this was the same Stephen who sub­se­quently be­came a be­liever in the teach­ings of Je­sus, and whose bold­ness in preach­ing this early gospel re­sulted in his be­ing stoned to death by irate Jews. Some of Stephen’s ex­traor­di­nary bold­ness in pro­claim­ing his view of the new gospel was the di­rect re­sult of this ear­lier in­ter­view with Je­sus. But Stephen never even faintly sur­mised that the Galilean he had talked with some fif­teen years pre­vi­ously was the very same per­son whom he later pro­claimed the world’s Sav­ior, and for whom he was so soon to die, thus be­com­ing the first mar­tyr of the newly evolv­ing Chris­tian faith. When Stephen yielded up his life as the price of his at­tack upon the Jew­ish tem­ple and its tra­di­tional prac­tices, there stood by one named Saul, a cit­i­zen of Tar­sus. And when Saul saw how this Greek could die for his faith, there were aroused in his heart those emo­tions which even­tu­ally led him to es­pouse the cause for which Stephen died; later on he be­came the ag­gres­sive and in­domitable Paul, the philoso­pher, if not the sole founder, of the Chris­tian re­li­gion.

128:3.7On the Sun­day af­ter Pass­over week Si­mon and Je­sus started on their way back to Naz­a­reth. Si­mon never for­got what Je­sus taught him on this trip. He had al­ways loved Je­sus, but now he felt that he had be­gun to know his fa­ther-brother. They had many heart-to-heart talks as they jour­neyed through the coun­try and pre­pared their meals by the way­side. They ar­rived home Thurs­day noon, and Si­mon kept the fam­ily up late that night re­lat­ing his ex­pe­ri­ences.

128:3.8Mary was much up­set by Si­mon’s re­port that Je­sus spent most of the time when in Je­ru­sa­lem “vis­it­ing with the strangers, es­pe­cially those from the far coun­tries.” Je­sus’ fam­ily never could com­pre­hend his great in­ter­est in peo­ple, his urge to visit with them, to learn about their way of liv­ing, and to find out what they were think­ing about.

128:3.9More and more the Naz­a­reth fam­ily be­came en­grossed with their im­me­di­ate and hu­man prob­lems; not of­ten was men­tion made of the fu­ture mis­sion of Je­sus, and very sel­dom did he him­self speak of his fu­ture ca­reer. His mother rarely thought about his be­ing a child of prom­ise. She was slowly giv­ing up the idea that Je­sus was to ful­fill any di­vine mis­sion on earth, yet at times her faith was re­vived when she paused to re­call the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion be­fore the child was born.