publicans

173:3.2And the peo­ple spoke with one ac­cord, say­ing, “The first son.” And then said Je­sus: “Even so; and now do I de­clare that the pub­li­cans and har­lots, even though they ap­pear to refuse the call to re­pen­tance, shall see the er­ror of their way and go on into the king­dom of God be­fore you, who make great pre­ten­sions of serv­ing the Fa­ther in heaven while you refuse to do the works of the Fa­ther. It was not you, the Phar­isees and scribes, who be­lieved John, but rather the pub­li­cans and sin­ners; nei­ther do you be­lieve my teach­ing, but the com­mon peo­ple hear my words gladly.”

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.

138:3.7And 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.

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.

139:7.8Mat­thew 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.

139:7.10When 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.

181:2.14“Levi, I know much about your anx­i­eties, sac­ri­fices, and labors to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished which your breth­ren do not know, and I am re­joiced that, though he who car­ried the bag is ab­sent, the pub­li­can am­bas­sador is here at my farewell gath­er­ing with the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. I pray that you may dis­cern the mean­ing of my teach­ing with the eyes of the spirit. And when the new teacher comes into your heart, fol­low on as he will lead you and let your breth­ren see—even all the world—what the Fa­ther can do for a hated tax-gath­erer who dared to fol­low the Son of Man and to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. Even from the first, Levi, I loved you as I did these other Galileans. Know­ing then so well that nei­ther the Fa­ther nor the Son has re­spect of per­sons, see to it that you make no such dis­tinc­tions among those who be­come be­liev­ers in the gospel through your min­istry. And so, Mat­thew, ded­i­cate your whole fu­ture life ser­vice to show­ing all men that God is no re­specter of per­sons; that, in the sight of God and in the fel­low­ship of the king­dom, all men are equal, all be­liev­ers are the sons of God.”

167:5.1On the way to Judea Je­sus was fol­lowed by a com­pany of al­most fifty of his friends and en­e­mies. At their noon lunchtime, on Wednes­day, he talked to his apos­tles and this group of fol­low­ers on the “Terms of Sal­va­tion,” and at the end of this les­son told the para­ble of the Phar­isee and the pub­li­can (a tax col­lec­tor). Said Je­sus: “You see, then, that the Fa­ther gives sal­va­tion to the chil­dren of men, and this sal­va­tion is a free gift to all who have the faith to re­ceive son­ship in the di­vine fam­ily. There is noth­ing man can do to earn this sal­va­tion. Works of self-righ­teous­ness can­not buy the fa­vor of God, and much pray­ing in pub­lic will not atone for lack of liv­ing faith in the heart. Men you may de­ceive by your out­ward ser­vice, but God looks into your souls. What I am telling you is well il­lus­trated by two men who went into the tem­ple to pray, the one a Phar­isee and the other a pub­li­can. The Phar­isee stood and prayed to him­self: ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, ex­tor­tion­ers, un­learned, un­just, adul­ter­ers, or even like this pub­li­can. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the pub­li­can, stand­ing afar off, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven but smote his breast, say­ing, ‘God be mer­ci­ful to me a sin­ner.’ I tell you that the pub­li­can went home with God’s ap­proval rather than the Phar­isee, for ev­ery one who ex­alts him­self shall be hum­bled, but he who hum­bles him­self shall be ex­alted.”

171:6.1When the Mas­ter’s pro­ces­sion en­tered Jeri­cho, it was near­ing sun­down, and he was minded to abide there for the night. As Je­sus passed by the cus­toms house, Zac­cheus the chief pub­li­can, or tax col­lec­tor, hap­pened to be pres­ent, and he much de­sired to see Je­sus. This chief pub­li­can was very rich and had heard much about this prophet of Gal­i­lee. He had re­solved that he would see what sort of a man Je­sus was the next time he chanced to visit Jeri­cho; ac­cord­ingly, Zac­cheus sought to press through the crowd, but it was too great, and be­ing short of stature, he could not see over their heads. And so the chief pub­li­can fol­lowed on with the crowd un­til they came near the cen­ter of the city and not far from where he lived. When he saw that he would be un­able to pen­e­trate the crowd, and think­ing that Je­sus might be go­ing right on through the city with­out stop­ping, he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree whose spread­ing branches over­hung the road­way. He knew that in this way he could ob­tain a good view of the Mas­ter as he passed by. And he was not dis­ap­pointed, for, as Je­sus passed by, he stopped and, look­ing up at Zac­cheus, said: “Make haste, Zac­cheus, and come down, for tonight I must abide at your house.” And when Zac­cheus heard these as­ton­ish­ing words, he al­most fell out of the tree in his haste to get down, and go­ing up to Je­sus, he ex­pressed great joy that the Mas­ter should be will­ing to stop at his house.