The Twelve Apostles

139:7.1Mat­thew, the sev­enth apos­tle, was cho­sen by An­drew. Mat­thew be­longed to a fam­ily of tax gath­er­ers, or pub­li­cans, but was him­self a cus­toms col­lec­tor in Ca­per­naum, where he lived. He was thirty-one years old and mar­ried and had four chil­dren. He was a man of mod­er­ate wealth, the only one of any means be­long­ing to the apos­tolic corps. He was a good busi­ness man, a good so­cial mixer, and was gifted with the abil­ity to make friends and to get along smoothly with a great va­ri­ety of peo­ple.

139:7.2An­drew ap­pointed Mat­thew the fi­nan­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the apos­tles. In a way he was the fis­cal agent and pub­lic­ity spokesman for the apos­tolic or­ga­ni­za­tion. He was a keen judge of hu­man na­ture and a very ef­fi­cient pro­pa­gan­dist. His is a per­son­al­ity dif­fi­cult to vi­su­al­ize, but he was a very earnest dis­ci­ple and an in­creas­ing be­liever in the mis­sion of Je­sus and in the cer­tainty of the king­dom. Je­sus never gave Levi a nick­name, but his fel­low apos­tles com­monly re­ferred to him as the “money-get­ter.”

139:7.3Levi’s strong point was his whole­hearted de­vo­tion to the cause. That he, a pub­li­can, had been taken in by Je­sus and his apos­tles was the cause for over­whelm­ing grat­i­tude on the part of the for­mer rev­enue col­lec­tor. How­ever, it re­quired some lit­tle time for the rest of the apos­tles, es­pe­cially Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Ju­das Is­car­iot, to be­come rec­on­ciled to the pub­li­can’s pres­ence in their midst. Mat­thew’s weak­ness was his short­sighted and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic view­point of life. But in all these mat­ters he made great prog­ress as the months went by. He, of course, had to be ab­sent from many of the most pre­cious sea­sons of in­struc­tion as it was his duty to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished.

139:7.4It was the Mas­ter’s for­giv­ing dis­po­si­tion which Mat­thew most ap­pre­ci­ated. He would never cease to re­count that faith only was nec­es­sary in the busi­ness of find­ing God. He al­ways liked to speak of the king­dom as “this busi­ness of find­ing God.”

139:7.5Though Mat­thew was a man with a past, he gave an ex­cel­lent ac­count of him­self, and as time went on, his as­so­ciates be­came proud of the pub­li­can’s per­for­mances. He was one of the apos­tles who made ex­ten­sive notes on the say­ings of Je­sus, and these notes were used as the ba­sis of Isador’s sub­se­quent nar­ra­tive of the say­ings and do­ings of Je­sus, which has be­come known as the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew.

139:7.6The great and use­ful life of Mat­thew, the busi­ness man and cus­toms col­lec­tor of Ca­per­naum, has been the means of lead­ing thou­sands upon thou­sands of other busi­ness men, pub­lic of­fi­cials, and politi­cians, down through the sub­se­quent ages, also to hear that en­gag­ing voice of the Mas­ter say­ing, “Fol­low me.” Mat­thew re­ally was a shrewd politi­cian, but he was in­tensely loyal to Je­sus and su­premely de­voted to the task of see­ing that the mes­sen­gers of the com­ing king­dom were ad­e­quately fi­nanced.

139:7.7The pres­ence of Mat­thew among the twelve was the means of keep­ing the doors of the king­dom wide open to hosts of down­hearted and out­cast souls who had re­garded them­selves as long since with­out the bounds of re­li­gious con­so­la­tion. Out­cast and de­spair­ing men and women flocked to hear Je­sus, and he never turned one away.

139:7.8Mat­thew re­ceived freely ten­dered of­fer­ings from be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples and the im­me­di­ate au­di­tors of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings, but he never openly so­licited funds from the mul­ti­tudes. He did all his fi­nan­cial work in a quiet and per­sonal way and raised most of the money among the more sub­stan­tial class of in­ter­ested be­liev­ers. He gave prac­ti­cally the whole of his mod­est for­tune to the work of the Mas­ter and his apos­tles, but they never knew of this gen­eros­ity, save Je­sus, who knew all about it. Mat­thew hes­i­tated openly to con­tribute to the apos­tolic funds for fear that Je­sus and his as­so­ciates might re­gard his money as be­ing tainted; so he gave much in the names of other be­liev­ers. Dur­ing the ear­lier months, when Mat­thew knew his pres­ence among them was more or less of a trial, he was strongly tempted to let them know that his funds of­ten sup­plied them with their daily bread, but he did not yield. When ev­i­dence of the dis­dain of the pub­li­can would be­come man­i­fest, Levi would burn to re­veal to them his gen­eros­ity, but al­ways he man­aged to keep still.

139:7.9When the funds for the week were short of the es­ti­mated re­quire­ments, Levi would of­ten draw heav­ily upon his own per­sonal re­sources. Also, some­times when he be­came greatly in­ter­ested in Je­sus’ teach­ing, he pre­ferred to re­main and hear the in­struc­tion, even though he knew he must per­son­ally make up for his fail­ure to so­licit the nec­es­sary funds. But Levi did so wish that Je­sus might know that much of the money came from his pocket! He lit­tle re­al­ized that the Mas­ter knew all about it. The apos­tles all died with­out know­ing that Mat­thew was their bene­fac­tor to such an ex­tent that, when he went forth to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom af­ter the be­gin­ning of the per­se­cu­tions, he was prac­ti­cally pen­ni­less.

139:7.10When these per­se­cu­tions caused the be­liev­ers to for­sake Je­ru­sa­lem, Mat­thew jour­neyed north, preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. He was lost to the knowl­edge of his for­mer apos­tolic as­so­ciates, but on he went, preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing, through Syria, Cap­pado­cia, Gala­tia, Bithy­nia, and Thrace. And it was in Thrace, at Lysi­machia, that cer­tain un­be­liev­ing Jews con­spired with the Ro­man sol­diers to en­com­pass his death. And this re­gen­er­ated pub­li­can died tri­umphant in the faith of a sal­va­tion he had so surely learned from the teach­ings of the Mas­ter dur­ing his re­cent so­journ on earth.