Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us online at Madison Church.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Thanks, Robert.
So we wanted to give just a little background about what we're going to be doing this quarter. So Robert and I did a class on first, 2nd, 3rd John about two years ago. And we adopted this method the way we teach most nights. If both of us are here in town, both of us will be up here as we present the material and we will sort of have a conversation. Robert and I are very different people, and we approach the study of scripture very differently. And we found that as we did that class, we really enjoyed actually sort of discussing our differences in the way we look at the scripture as we teach the class. And so a lot of what we're going to be doing is it will be a discussion between Robert and I, and we want you guys to be a part of that discussion as well.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: So our prayer there is that it's not a distraction to you, rather that it helps keep your attention and make you feel more invited to participate and be part of our Bible study.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: You want to tell them about our readings like we were talking about?
[00:01:44] Speaker C: We are going to have readings for each week in the class.
We're going to show those. I'm not going to lay it all out up front, but rather we'll roll it out week by week unless we decide to do things a little different. But let's just go ahead and take note. Let's read chapters one and two for next week, and tonight's going to be a little more introductory and context setting type of night, and we may wind up doing some more of that next week. We feel like that's very important and that's some of what Dave's going to cover.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: So, as you said, next week, to prepare for class, read chapters one and two every week. We will not go any further in the book than the reading assignment. And when you go to read Matthew one and two, I'll go ahead and tell you. The first chapter is a genealogy.
[00:02:34] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Everybody's going to be pretty familiar with that. And the second chapter gets into John the Baptist a bit. And so for the first couple of weeks, we're going to do a little bit of background about Matthew, the person, the time period that he was writing this book, and sort of the culture and everything around what he was doing when he wrote this book. And so we'll be doing that this week. And next week we won't always do slides. Okay. Tonight we're going to be doing some slides because we are reusing some material in particular from a class that I've taught here before. So we are going to start out with a practical exercise. Anything you want to say before we do our practical exercise?
[00:03:25] Speaker C: Let's just see where it goes.
[00:03:26] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Let's see where it goes. I need a volunteer for this practical exercise. Who would like to be a volunteer?
Larry, you've set in just the perfect. No, no, I want you.
[00:03:39] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: I'm going to put something up on the screen, and I'd like you to read it.
[00:03:44] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: And you read it however you think you should read it.
[00:03:47] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:03:50] Speaker E: Hey, paw.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Paw.
[00:03:51] Speaker E: Your legs cold?
[00:03:53] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: What do you think that means?
[00:03:57] Speaker E: Looks like somebody's asking their grandpa if their legs are cold.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Somebody's asking their grandpa if their legs are cold. So you pretty confident with.
I guess. I guess that's fair. I guess you can kind of see maybe I'm setting you.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: Ideas.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Any other ideas? Thanks, Robert.
Any other ideas what that might mean?
Now, I'm going to give Larry some credit.
That's the most obvious answer, right? That it's somebody asking their grandfather if his legs are cold.
Makes sense, right?
What?
Say again?
I hadn't thought of that.
That's off the wall, but that's creative. She said maybe they're eating frog legs and they're cold.
You are creative.
All right, we're going to move on. So I'm going to tell you when this was said, this was said near the end of September, 2023. Does that help anybody?
Does that help anybody think maybe?
No? Okay.
It was said in the Grand Canyon near the end of September, 2023. Anybody have any other ideas? Roger, you're smiling like you may have an idea.
[00:05:23] Speaker E: I believe you all were at the Grand Canyon.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Who's y'all? Who's y'all?
Okay, so. So what do you think? The meaning?
[00:05:31] Speaker E: I still have no idea.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: You still have no idea.
[00:05:34] Speaker E: I'm thinking more and more.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: We don't want to know.
All right.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: Are you thinking about what you don't know, why? You don't know the answer to it.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: You got no context. Okay, but you've said, now you know that Robert and I and our wives were in the Grand Canyon near the end of September, 2023. So who do you think said that? I'm just curious.
[00:06:00] Speaker F: You are not the only one in the Grand Canyon, so you might have heard somebody else.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Good.
Let's move on. It was said to Robert, Bobo, what do we think?
Yeah, that's the correct punctuation.
How did you say it again? Read it. Read it. Can you say it again like you said it?
[00:06:28] Speaker E: Hey, Paul. Paul, your legs cold?
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Okay, that's not bad. That's not bad. I'm going to go to the next bit, and this may help you some.
It was said by me to Robert. What do you think it means? Why was it said? What do you think it means? Just curious. Now that you know that, does that help any?
[00:06:52] Speaker E: Maybe you're repeating what y'all heard somebody else say previously.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: It could be that.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: I'm surprised. I figured we'd have a few more ideas. I think this is confusing people.
Any other ideas?
[00:07:05] Speaker E: Do his kids or grandkids call him paw paw?
[00:07:09] Speaker A: No, they don't.
[00:07:13] Speaker D: What?
[00:07:14] Speaker E: Hey, older gentlemen, are you afraid? You scared?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: The plot thickened. Okay, so let me give you the full context. The full context was I was making fun of my friend who had asked me to pass him a blanket. We were on a little tour, and they had blankets for us. And we were going out to sit to watch the sunset. And he said, hey, pass me a blanket. And the way I said it was, hey, paw, Paul, your legs cold, right? So it was. It was a younger man making fun of an older man. Right?
[00:07:49] Speaker C: That's the way I took it.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Okay, before we go any further, just so you all know, he fat shamed me mercilessly the rest of the trip. Okay?
And I can lose weight. You can't get younger. All right, so enough of the jokes there. But here's my point. Now that you know the whole context, what do you think it sounded like when I said it? And I've said it for you.
[00:08:18] Speaker D: Right?
[00:08:18] Speaker A: But go ahead now and read it knowing all that.
Come on, hollywood it up. Come on.
[00:08:27] Speaker E: Hey, papa, your legs cold?
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Here's the point.
You have to have the context to make sense of an isolated phrase, okay? And I really was just doing this to make a point. Why do we do that with scripture? Why do we take a scripture and look at a scripture and think about when you read it, or even when we read it in class or when we read it in front of the congregation?
A lot of times we read it very flat because we don't know the context. And context is extremely, extremely important. And so, for the next two weeks, we're going to be setting the scene for the book of Matthew. We're going to talk more in the next two weeks about what was going on around the book of Matthew and less talking about the book of Matthew. Okay, so tonight, what I'm going to be covering, if you've ever been to the class that Trey Westmoreland and I teach called twelve ordinary men, I'm going to be teaching about Matthew the man. And Robert's got some material that he's going to be presenting next week about sort of the time frame and that sort of thing. So let's jump on in.
Go ahead.
[00:09:46] Speaker C: And there's emphasis on this, too. We're not just doing it to set the context and then go on into umpteen chapters of Matthew. We want you to remember that context every week when you do your weekly reading. And when you think about this, we want that to keep coming to mind. So we're going to re emphasize it every week.
And it's important, as we may do, a little comparison of Matthew to the other synoptic gospels and see the perspective there in their audience. And I think you'll potentially glean a little something different, maybe, than one of your prior studies from Matthew. That's our desire that we see something a little different this time through it.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: And I'll also point out, and this is something that I've heard said, and thank you for saying that, because that reminded me, it's something I've heard said in the last couple of weeks, and it's something that I am trying to change about my language.
[00:10:39] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: And that language is too many times, I think, we talk about Bible stories, and that word story seems to lend itself to fiction, and this isn't fiction. Matthew was a real man. He wrote these words through inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
And it's real. It happened. And so that's the point we're trying to make. And as we go through this, we want that on your mind every single week as you read it. We want that on your mind every single week.
So Matthew names, he's actually got two names that are used in the scripture, the first one is Matthew, which is Hebrew for gift of Yahweh or Jehovah. And that name is used five times. Matthew nine nine, matthew ten three, mark 318, luke 615 and acts 113. He's named Levi, son of Alpha, which is also a hebrew name which means joined in harmony. And that's mentioned three times, twice in the book of Luke and once in the book of Mark.
His occupation was a tax collector or publican, as it's called. We're going to go into quite a bit of detail about what that meant tonight.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Before we get too far off of the name, look at those scripture references for each one of the names. Do you notice anything interesting there about maybe where the name Matthew is referenced versus the name Levi?
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Matthew doesn't function himself as Levi.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Have you ever noticed that, in fact, where the other gospels mention Levi, it's in reference to a tax collector or publican, and then they shift to Matthew in the other references to that individual?
This just struck me as odd, that it's unique, and I think it points to the different perspective of those that wrote those gospels.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I didn't know that. I've taught this class multiple times and I never noticed that. Thank you.
And then the author of the Gospel of Matthew mentions himself twice in his own gospel, and he mentioned that where he is called. And then in a listing of the Twelve Apostles.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: And to continue on that change just a little bit, Matthew is not a.
I got to be careful how I put this, but he's not an outstanding character of the Bible. Throughout the New Testament scripture, he is a very important character. But how often do we read Matthew or Levi throughout New Testament scripture? Very limited. Very limited.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's very true. As Trey and I would always prepare for the twelve ordinary men class sort of naively, the first time we taught it, we said, oh, so there's twelve apostles and 13 weeks in a quarter. So we'll do one night of introduction and one night on each apostle. And one of the things you'll see is like, for instance, Matthew was mentioned, I think we said nine times in the New Testament, there's a couple of them that are mentioned, like once. The only thing that is mentioned about them is the list of names. So that's very true what you were saying, robert. The apostles, and then in particular, Matthew. Matthew is actually one of the ones that is not mentioned a whole lot at all. Now I want to go back and talk about publicans or tax collectors in this day and time. Now, there were two types. I'm going to try to say the names. I'm not positive I've got it exactly. But there were the Gabi and the moats.
[00:14:47] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:14:48] Speaker A: There were two kinds. The Gabi were general tax collectors. They collected tax on things like property tax, income tax, and poll tax.
The men that were doing that had much less opportunity to cheat people than the mokes.
[00:15:07] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:15:08] Speaker A: So the mokes were the ones that could really cheat people. And the reason they could cheat people is that they collected taxes on import, exports, goods for trade, and anything that was moved by road. And I want you to remember that anything that was moved by road, that's going to be important in just a moment. And there was a tremendous opportunity for them to cheat people. One of the things I read said, one of the things they could do is essentially, they would sit there in their tax booth, and as somebody was coming by today, maybe the toll was one coin, and tomorrow it could be two, just because they wanted to do that, they wanted to make extra money. So they had a tremendous opportunity to cheat people. And there were two types of mokes. There was a greater moch, and those were hired other people to collect taxes. That's what Zacchaeus was. So when you hear about Zacchaeus in the New Testament and what he was, and think about what kind of man he was, he was wealthy, and he know, in their eyes, he was probably the worst of the worst. He wasn't just a tax collector. He was a tax collector who had tax collectors working for him. And then the little mokes, and they dealt with people face to face again. Remember, road and face to face. That's what kind that Matthew was. And I'm going to log in here and take a look at my notes, because I think I've got some things in my notes, but my computer has gone to sleep.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: And as we look for those, keep this in mind, try to recall Matthew. And tonight, a little bit later, I want us to talk about what kind of person, what kind of traits.
[00:17:02] Speaker D: That.
[00:17:02] Speaker C: Career that he chose might have led him to have.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Okay, now, there were only three publicans mentioned in scripture.
Does anybody know what they are? And I think I've given you two of them here.
Zacchaeus, Matthew, and what was the third one?
You got it. Ziegfried, what is parable? The parable.
[00:17:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: And it's interesting. Okay.
As I studied Matthew, there are some people that try to say that maybe that wasn't a parable, maybe that was Matthew. No scriptural reference to it. But here's one thing I would say.
Think about how that parable affects Matthew, right? He is a tax collector. He's there. He's hearing this, and he is a tax collector. Now we're going to move on.
Here's where it gets really interesting to me, and it actually gets very emotional for me.
Matthew purchased the right to collect taxes from the roman emperor.
[00:18:17] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:18:17] Speaker A: So Matthew made a decision. He had a lot of ways he could make a living, but he chose to buy the right to collect taxes from the roman emperor. And what that meant, I'm going to jump down here. It meant a couple of things to the Jews.
It meant that they were national traders, okay? So their country hated them. They were religious outcast. They couldn't go into the temple or any synagogue. They couldn't even go into the court of the Gentiles, okay? So they were hated. So their nation has turned their back on them. Their faith would have turned their back on them. They were completely cut off from their people and their God.
And the Talmud taught that it was righteous to lie to and to deceive publicans, okay? So that's the way they would have been treated. And keep in mind, this was a decision he made. He made the decision to go do that, and he would have known that that was coming.
The publicans are compared to, in scripture, various scriptures. We see sinners, Matthew, 1817, they're compared to gentiles. They're compared to swindlers, unjust and adulterers in Luke and prostitutes in Matthew 21 31. Okay, so these were people that were hated, and they were hated bitterly by the Jews. Now we're going to jump over to the book of Mark, and I'm probably going to need some people to read. And here's where it's important. Where did I say Matthew would have been collecting his taxes? And we will see this in the scripture on a road. Okay, so mark, chapter one.
[00:20:12] Speaker D: All right?
[00:20:13] Speaker A: In Mark, chapter one, and I don't have the verse in here, but Mark, chapter one puts Jesus and Peter in Capernaum.
Who in here knows what Capernaum later is actually called? In Matthew nine one, what does scripture say about Capernaum and Jesus? Does anybody know this is home? Called it his city.
[00:20:38] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Capernaum was a city of about 1500 people, so roughly the size of this church or this congregation. Okay, so if you lived in Capernaum and you were a jew, do you think you knew the other jews in Capernaum?
[00:20:56] Speaker D: Do you?
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah, more than likely. Okay, now, mark, chapter two, verse one. Somebody read that for me, please.
[00:21:09] Speaker E: When he returned to Capernaum, after some days, it was reported that he was at home.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Okay, so where is he? Capernum. Jump down to verse 13 and read that.
[00:21:22] Speaker F: Then he went out again by the sea, and all the multitude came to him and he taught him.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Okay, so he's gone to the sea from where?
Capernaum. Okay, Mark, Matthew, chapter nine, verse one. It's similar.
He's in his city. Somebody read that one. Does somebody have that? Matthew nine one.
[00:21:49] Speaker F: So he got into a boat, crossed over and came into his own city.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Okay, which was capernaum. And then in Matthew nine nine, what did he do?
Somebody read that as Jesus passed on.
[00:22:02] Speaker F: From there and he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.
Follow me.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Okay, so what can we get here from looking at these different verses? So Jesus was in Capernaum. In one of the scriptures. He's in Capernaum and he's going out to the lake, and what does he do? He sees Matthew. So he's going from where? Capernaum to the lake.
In Matthew nine one. He's in capernaum, or, excuse me, he's at the lake and he's walking into capernaum. And who does he see?
Matthew. Okay, now who else did we say was in capernaum back in Mark, chapter one, Peter, what did Peter do?
What was his occupation?
Fishermen. Okay, so when he caught his fish in capernaum, or, excuse me, in the sea of Galilee, where did he probably take them into capernaum.
And who would have been there taking his tax?
Matthew.
Okay, now I'm going to be clear. Scripture never says that that occurred. But if you look at it closely, I think it's highly probable that Peter, Andrew, James and John were probably hauling their fish up to Capernaum and they would have to stop and they would have to pay their tax to Matthew.
[00:23:38] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:23:39] Speaker A: And this is all going to get more and more important. But think about that. This guy, even if he cheated them or not, human nature, what do you think they thought about him? If they were paying their taxes to him, did they like.
No, no, they didn't. And I don't want to go too far into a study of the apostles, but what's interesting is he purchased the right from the roman emperor, and then we had another guy named Simon the Zealot. And what did zealots do?
They like to kill romans.
All right. And so just with these six people, half of the apostles here, we've got a roman officer possibly cheating the men he's now serving with, cheating them out of money on their taxes. And they've got a guy who likes to kill roman officers.
[00:24:36] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:24:36] Speaker A: To me, that's incredibly interesting when you think about that. Think about what Jesus was able to do with those men, right?
The power of Jesus, the power of his love to bring those men together. Now here's the next place I want to go, something else. We'll talk briefly about Matthew. Matthew references the Old Testament 99 times in his gospel.
[00:25:02] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:25:03] Speaker A: Straight references back to the Old Testament, more than Mark, Luke and John combined.
What was he?
He was a jewish outcast, but he clearly knew the scripture. What does that say to y'all about Matthew? I'm curious. I've got an opinion, and we've gone back and forth in some of these classes about that, and I will go ahead and put out there. As I said earlier, certainly Matthew was under inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he wrote the gospel of Matthew. But what do you think it means that Matthew referenced 99 times the Old Testament in his gospel?
He knew the scripture.
I don't think we'll get into this tonight. He was not a young man when he wrote it.
So what else can you infer?
Again, I'll give you my opinion in just a second.
[00:26:07] Speaker E: I was going to say that it probably indicated that his parents had ingrained that into. And that would have made their relationship very strained.
A lot of this stuff, if you like, the chosen series, a lot of this kind of stuff was portrayed in that. A very strange relationship. Basically an outcast, rejected.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: And you got a very good point. As a jew growing up as a boy, he would have been required to memorize the Torah, which is our pentateuch.
[00:26:46] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: So the first five books of the Bible, he would have committed those to memory when he was a child, but he wasn't a child when he wrote the book. My opinion is he had to be somebody that even though he was cut off from his people and his religion, he had to still be studying. I just don't see how he couldn't. Now, again, I'm going to tell you, that's my opinion. That's not in scripture, but that is my opinion.
Now, Luke 527, Jesus walks up to him and calls him out of the tax booth. And what does he immediately do? He immediately gives up that career and he follows Jesus. Again that says to me, and then in 529, he immediately starts bringing other people to Jesus that says to me again, no proof of this, but I think we can infer this.
I think Matthew is a tortured man.
Just my opinion. I don't have any proof of that. But I can't see how a man could have, and I'm going to go back, whoops, gone the wrong way.
I don't see how a man can go from that, knowing what that decision would mean to that without some real personal internal turmoil.
Again, just my opinion, and I've been in this class before or presented this before, and I've had others say, well, I don't believe that. And that's fine. It is okay, because I'm not saying the scripture teaches that, but that's what I take away as I study the scripture.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: I agree with you. And to stomp it a little bit, think about how radical a change in a view of Matthew when he chose that career, that he chose the view from the other jews.
But again, when he dropped everything, he had what I'd call a cushy role there, somewhat unlimited ability to collect money from folks.
[00:29:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:06] Speaker E: One thing I was thinking is that he seemed to recognize the savior and a zillion people didn't. They were looking for the messiah. And here's a guy that seems to recognize him. He knows the scriptures. And we have Weisman coming from the east over here. And most of the Jews did not recognize their own savior. That's pretty astounding. But he knew the scriptures well. It just seemed like he just saw him. He's like, this is the guy. He fits all the markers.
[00:29:36] Speaker D: That's a thing.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: This is the point.
[00:29:38] Speaker C: And when, when Jesus asked him to follow him, jumped right in and followed him with a primary objective of convincing the jewish nation that Jesus was a.
[00:29:52] Speaker E: Messiah, he knew the scripture well, but he had issues with the oral tradition and all the extra things that were being added.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: That's possible.
That's another one. I think that's as valid as what I'm saying.
I don't know, but I think as I study it and as I've studied each apostle and considered them as a man and not just words on a page and tried to think about them as men, as people that actually lived, it changes things. Matthew, for me, and that's why I'm taking so long talking about it, Matthew for me, is one that I love because I'm going to tell y'all, I think the chances that he did not know Peter, Andrew, James and John are zero.
[00:30:44] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:30:46] Speaker A: I think they knew each other.
Like I said, I think they walked by. They probably, as you know, he's sitting there in his booth with his hand out and they're dragging nets full of fish up to compurn him.
I don't know, that's the way I think it went. And again, I want to be clear. It's not in scripture, okay? But as I've studied the apostles, again, that's what I try to do. Just try to put more meat on the bones that are laid out there in scripture. Try to think about what it really meant and what some of these passages meant to these men, okay? Some Matthew facts, most of this, all of it. None of this here is in the scripture.
And this one is kind of funny to me. He stayed in Israel for a while after Jesus'death, and he ministers to the Jews. That's about all we know about him. And it was Irenaeus. And Clement of Alexandria claimed that he preached to the jewish community in Judea and then left to preach in other countries. At some point we know he left.
Don't know when, but they know he left. And the Muslims teach that Matthew and Andrew went to Ethiopia.
[00:32:10] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: We don't know how he died.
Clement of Alexandria quotes arachlion and says he died naturally. And then I say here, church fathers. Some say he was burned, stoned, stabbed and beheaded about 60 ad. So he lived about 30 years after Jesus died when he was stabbed. I don't have this on here, but I remember it because I was shocked that I said this last time and somebody knew it. He was stabbed with a halberd. Does anybody know what a Halberd is?
I thought I saw somebody shaking their head over there. We had one guy one time. A halberd is like an axe on a big long stick. It's like kind of like an axe spear hybrid. You may have seen them in movies and stuff, but that's pretty much the rest of what we know about Matthew.
[00:33:10] Speaker F: Do we know when he wrote the book close to his death?
[00:33:13] Speaker A: We do know, and a good teacher would have looked that up, but I did not. Do you know when he wrote it, robert?
[00:33:24] Speaker C: Certainly before the 80, 70.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I'm going to go out on a limb and say he wrote it before he died.
Fifty s or sixty s. Fifty s.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Is where I was headed. With the data points that we do have and can deduce the approximate time.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Is it the earliest of the gospels?
Again, many think that, yeah, but I think most think that it's the earliest gospel that was written.
Okay.
[00:34:04] Speaker C: I think it would.
[00:34:04] Speaker E: You can find references between 40 and 130.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I was going to say David Morrison. I was getting all over him earlier. He's scared. I'm going to ask him to come up here. I was getting on him earlier. He did a really great minor profits class last quarter and talked about how we get these ranges of dates a lot of times. But when you think about it, if we're in a date range of about ten years, 2000 years ago, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good accuracy.
I like to put this up there. This is some trivia. And then I think Robert's got some closing thoughts for us. This is the last Supper, and I don't know how they know, but that one is Matthew.
[00:34:58] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: So that one is Matthew. And I don't remember who that one is, but that one is Simon, the zealot.
[00:35:05] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: And that is something that they do talk about that. It's interesting that the painter put again the roman officer with the zealot there, Robert.
[00:35:18] Speaker C: And before we end our discussion about the man, the writer I mentioned earlier, let's go back and think about his perspective, his writing style, maybe. Let's think about what characteristics, traits might a tax collector have. The type that he was, where he was stopping people on the road.
And again, we're venturing outside scripture. We only know where he was and what he did, but just get the juices flowing. Start thinking about what his characteristics might have been and see if we notice any of that in his writings as we study them.
What would you guess?
There's no wrong answer.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: I think.
[00:36:10] Speaker E: Meticulous record keeper.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: That's one I had.
[00:36:15] Speaker E: You'd have to be willing to confront people.
[00:36:18] Speaker C: Yes.
Not shy. Willing to have that person to person interaction. I think the record keeping would have been a characteristic, probably pretty detailed genealogy.
[00:36:34] Speaker E: And they recorded very detailed account of the sermon on the mount.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
So anything else that a tax collector might have been?
[00:36:45] Speaker A: While you all are thinking about that, this just hit me as you all were talking. Okay, we're back to this one. That the Jews would have hated him, but who did he minister to?
What would have been the easier thing for him to do? Probably get out of town, go minister to somebody else.
And yet he chose to minister to the very people that probably hated him.
[00:37:15] Speaker C: It's a lot of them he saw every day.
[00:37:17] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:37:18] Speaker G: Being the outcast, he didn't really have any friendships he had to worry about.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: That's probably true.
[00:37:24] Speaker G: That would make it easier, because I would think for somebody to handle that job if you weren't worried about so much about what? People.
[00:37:32] Speaker C: Right. And we may see a little bit of that in the way he tries to convince folks with his writing.
[00:37:40] Speaker G: I think you can compare him to Paul. You see a drastic change in his personality, which would say that.
[00:37:52] Speaker F: Two names like hall.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Good point. Pretty radical lifestyle change both ways. Had quite a bit to give up when he dropped everything.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: And you think about it, he gave stuff up twice.
[00:38:08] Speaker D: Right.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: That's going both ways because he gave up here and he gave up here as well. So twice he gave up pretty much everything he had.
Any other thoughts?
Great thoughts.
[00:38:29] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:38:29] Speaker E: I wonder if, based on his profession and how often he referenced the Old Testament, if he had a very traditional or, like waffle view of scripture.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I have no clue. That's a great question.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:38:45] Speaker G: It.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Okay, we've exhausted our material. You guys have a good.
