The Sojourn at Tyre and Sidon

156:2.1In en­ter­ing Sidon, Je­sus and his as­so­ciates passed over a bridge, the first one many of them had ever seen. As they walked over this bridge, Je­sus, among other things, said: “This world is only a bridge; you may pass over it, but you should not think to build a dwell­ing place upon it.”

156:2.2As the twenty-four be­gan their labors in Sidon, Je­sus went to stay in a home just north of the city, the house of Justa and her mother, Ber­nice. Je­sus taught the twenty-four each morn­ing at the home of Justa, and they went abroad in Sidon to teach and preach dur­ing the af­ter­noons and evenings.

156:2.3The apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were greatly cheered by the man­ner in which the gen­tiles of Sidon re­ceived their mes­sage; dur­ing their short so­journ many were added to the king­dom. This pe­riod of about six weeks in Phoeni­cia was a very fruit­ful time in the work of win­ning souls, but the later Jew­ish writ­ers of the Gospels were wont lightly to pass over the rec­ord of this warm re­cep­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ings by these gen­tiles at this very time when such a large num­ber of his own peo­ple were in hos­tile ar­ray against him.

156:2.4In many ways these gen­tile be­liev­ers ap­pre­ci­ated Je­sus’ teach­ings more fully than the Jews. Many of these Greek-speak­ing Sy­rophoeni­cians came to know not only that Je­sus was like God but also that God was like Je­sus. These so-called hea­then achieved a good un­der­stand­ing of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings about the uni­for­mity of the laws of this world and the en­tire uni­verse. They grasped the teach­ing that God is no re­specter of per­sons, races, or na­tions; that there is no fa­voritism with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; that the uni­verse is wholly and ever law-abid­ing and un­fail­ingly de­pend­able. These gen­tiles were not afraid of Je­sus; they dared to ac­cept his mes­sage. All down through the ages men have not been un­able to com­pre­hend Je­sus; they have been afraid to.

156:2.5Je­sus made it clear to the twenty-four that he had not fled from Gal­i­lee be­cause he lacked cour­age to con­front his en­e­mies. They com­pre­hended that he was not yet ready for an open clash with es­tab­lished re­li­gion, and that he did not seek to be­come a mar­tyr. It was dur­ing one of these con­fer­ences at the home of Justa that the Mas­ter first told his dis­ci­ples that “even though heaven and earth shall pass away, my words of truth shall not.”

156:2.6The theme of Je­sus’ in­struc­tions dur­ing the so­journ at Sidon was spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. He told them they could not stand still; they must go for­ward in righ­teous­ness or ret­rogress into evil and sin. He ad­mon­ished them to “for­get those things which are in the past while you push for­ward to em­brace the greater re­al­i­ties of the king­dom.” He be­sought them not to be con­tent with their child­hood in the gospel but to strive for the at­tain­ment of the full stature of di­vine son­ship in the com­mu­nion of the spirit and in the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers.

156:2.7Said Je­sus: “My dis­ci­ples must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only be cleansed from all con­scious sin, but you must refuse to har­bor even the feel­ings of guilt. If you con­fess your sins, they are for­given; there­fore must you main­tain a con­science void of of­fense.”

156:2.8Je­sus greatly en­joyed the keen sense of hu­mor which these gen­tiles ex­hib­ited. It was the sense of hu­mor dis­played by No­rana, the Syr­ian woman, as well as her great and per­sis­tent faith, that so touched the Mas­ter’s heart and ap­pealed to his mercy. Je­sus greatly re­gret­ted that his peo­ple—the Jews—were so lack­ing in hu­mor. He once said to Thomas: “My peo­ple take them­selves too se­ri­ously; they are just about de­void of an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of hu­mor. The bur­den­some re­li­gion of the Phar­isees could never have had ori­gin among a peo­ple with a sense of hu­mor. They also lack con­sis­tency; they strain at gnats and swal­low camels.”