Training the Kingdom’s Messengers

138:3.1The next day Je­sus and the six went to call upon Mat­thew, the cus­toms col­lec­tor. Mat­thew was await­ing them, hav­ing bal­anced his books and made ready to turn the af­fairs of his of­fice over to his brother. As they ap­proached the toll house, An­drew stepped for­ward with Je­sus, who, look­ing into Mat­thew’s face, said, “Fol­low me.” And he arose and went to his house with Je­sus and the apos­tles.

138:3.2Mat­thew told Je­sus of the ban­quet he had ar­ranged for that evening, at least that he wished to give such a din­ner to his fam­ily and friends if Je­sus would ap­prove and con­sent to be the guest of honor. And Je­sus nod­ded his con­sent. Pe­ter then took Mat­thew aside and ex­plained that he had in­vited one Si­mon to join the apos­tles and se­cured his con­sent that Si­mon be also bid­den to this feast.

138:3.3Af­ter a noon­tide lun­cheon at Mat­thew’s house they all went with Pe­ter to call upon Si­mon the Zealot, whom they found at his old place of busi­ness, which was now be­ing con­ducted by his nephew. When Pe­ter led Je­sus up to Si­mon, the Mas­ter greeted the fiery pa­triot and only said, “Fol­low me.”

138:3.4They all re­turned to Mat­thew’s home, where they talked much about pol­i­tics and re­li­gion un­til the hour of the evening meal. The Levi fam­ily had long been en­gaged in busi­ness and tax gath­er­ing; there­fore many of the guests bid­den to this ban­quet by Mat­thew would have been de­nom­i­nated “pub­li­cans and sin­ners” by the Phar­isees.

138:3.5In those days, when a re­cep­tion-ban­quet of this sort was ten­dered a promi­nent in­di­vid­ual, it was the cus­tom for all in­ter­ested per­sons to linger about the ban­quet room to ob­serve the guests at meat and to lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion and speeches of the men of honor. Ac­cord­ingly, most of the Ca­per­naum Phar­isees were pres­ent on this oc­ca­sion to ob­serve Je­sus’ con­duct at this un­usual so­cial gath­er­ing.

138:3.6As the din­ner pro­gressed, the joy of the din­ers mounted to heights of good cheer, and ev­ery­body was hav­ing such a splen­did time that the on­look­ing Phar­isees be­gan, in their hearts, to crit­i­cize Je­sus for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in such a light­hearted and care­free af­fair. Later in the evening, when they were mak­ing speeches, one of the more ma­lig­nant of the Phar­isees went so far as to crit­i­cize Je­sus’ con­duct to Pe­ter, say­ing: “How dare you to teach that this man is righ­teous when he eats with pub­li­cans and sin­ners and thus lends his pres­ence to such scenes of care­less plea­sure mak­ing.” Pe­ter whis­pered this crit­i­cism to Je­sus be­fore he spoke the part­ing bless­ing upon those as­sem­bled. When Je­sus be­gan to speak, he said: “In com­ing here tonight to wel­come Mat­thew and Si­mon to our fel­low­ship, I am glad to wit­ness your light­heart­ed­ness and so­cial good cheer, but you should re­joice still more be­cause many of you will find en­trance into the com­ing king­dom of the spirit, wherein you shall more abun­dantly en­joy the good things of the king­dom of heaven. And to you who stand about crit­i­ciz­ing me in your hearts be­cause I have come here to make merry with these friends, let me say that I have come to pro­claim joy to the so­cially down­trod­den and spir­i­tual lib­erty to the moral cap­tives. Need I re­mind you that they who are whole need not a physi­cian, but rather those who are sick? I have come, not to call the righ­teous, but sin­ners.”

138:3.7And truly this was a strange sight in all Jewry: to see a man of righ­teous char­ac­ter and no­ble sen­ti­ments min­gling freely and joy­ously with the com­mon peo­ple, even with an ir­re­li­gious and plea­sure-seek­ing throng of pub­li­cans and re­puted sin­ners. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes de­sired to make a speech at this gath­er­ing in Mat­thew’s house, but An­drew, know­ing that Je­sus did not want the com­ing king­dom to be­come con­fused with the Zealots’ move­ment, pre­vailed upon him to re­frain from mak­ing any pub­lic re­marks.

138:3.8Je­sus and the apos­tles re­mained that night in Mat­thew’s house, and as the peo­ple went to their homes, they spoke of but one thing: the good­ness and friend­li­ness of Je­sus.