{"id":12288,"date":"2021-08-10T22:38:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T22:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=12288"},"modified":"2021-08-10T22:38:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T22:38:00","slug":"matthew-being-a-tax-collector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/12288\/matthew-being-a-tax-collector\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Being a Tax Collector"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Pastor John,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I am just curious about something.\u00a0 What would have been the perks for Matthew to be a tax collector?\u00a0 It must have been hard for him to have everyone hate him.\u00a0 I would think he was not forced by Rome to do it; otherwise, the Jews would not have hated him, but would have just blamed Rome.\u00a0 I am getting that from them saying Jesus sat with tax collectors and sinners.\u00a0 So there must have been something that drew him to be a tax collector.\u00a0 I feel like I know a lot more about Paul than I do Matthew.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">It made me think that Matthew might have been somewhat prepared for the persecution after Jesus touched him because he was familiar with being hated. Or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Beth D.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">==========<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#0013a3;\"><em>Hi, Beth.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#0013a3;\"><em>Matthew could have been drawn to being a tax collector in order to have a steady income.\u00a0 WE don&#8217;t know.\u00a0 If so, there were many in Israel who was like him in that regard.\u00a0 The devoutly nationalistic Jews would have looked down on Matthew for &#8220;working with the enemy&#8221;, and Jesus had such a Jew as a disciple.\u00a0 Simon the Canaanite, it appears, belonged to a group whose goal was to drive the hated Romans out of the holy land (hence, &#8220;the Canaanite&#8221;).\u00a0 That Jesus was able to have a tax collector and a Canaanite as disciples at the same time says a lot about their hearts and his power.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#0013a3;\"><em>You are right in saying that we know far less about Matthew than about Paul.\u00a0 There is nothing we can do about that.\u00a0 But hopefully, Jesus will let us meet Matthew one day and find out what history was.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#0013a3;\"><em>Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pastor John,\u00a0 I am just curious about something.\u00a0 What would have been the perks for Matthew to be a tax collector?\u00a0 It must have been hard for him to have everyone hate him.\u00a0 I would think he was not forced by Rome to do it; otherwise, the Jews would not have hated him, but would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}