The First to Follow by John R. Claypool

Author:John R. Claypool
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Church Publishing Incorporated
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

1. Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Free Press, 1989).

2. Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr, The Question of God (New York: Free Press, 2002), 46.

3. Nicholi, The Question of God, 85.

Simon and Matthew

Unlikely Companions

In this chapter, I have linked together the apostles Simon and Matthew for a reason. If you read about the twelve companions of Jesus without much background knowledge, you might not notice some details that provide clues as to why these two make an intriguing pair to study together. From Scripture, we only know one thing about Simon and three things about Matthew. That is why we have to rely on Christian tradition as well as the biblical record to fill out the portraits of all twelve disciples. All that we are told about the disciple who goes by the name of Simon is that he was identified as Simon the Zealot, and some knowledge of his cultural context is needed in order to understand the significance of that affiliation.

In the time of Jesus, there were three great parties or movements that made up the texture of first-century Palestine. The Pharisees were the primary religious leaders of that time, and they had a great concern for meticulous faithfulness to the religious law. Their name comes from the Hebrew root that can mean “to separate,” so they may have sought purity by separating themselves from anything unclean. Opponents of the Pharisees belonged to a second party called the Sadducees. They rejected any belief in the resurrection and were principally interested in the upholding of Temple ritual to safeguard the covenant with God. Sadducees belonged to the ruling elite, who held most of the power of government in their hands. Those who belonged to the third party were called the Zealots, and it was with this party that Simon was affiliated and identified.

The history of the Zealots is very interesting. By 1300 BC, the descendants of Abraham had come out of Egypt, wandered in the wilderness, and then entered the land that had been promised to their ancestor, Abraham. At first, they simply took little portions of that land and settled down. Thus, for the first two hundred years, they were simply another migrant refugee people who had taken root in a land to which they had moved. In time, they grew much stronger, and evolved into a coherent and powerful political state under King David. During the period between 1050 and 1000 BC, David emerged as the principal political figure in the whole Mediterranean basin, at a time when Egypt, Syria, and Babylon were all weak. Israel came to its political zenith under David, and they relished what it meant to be the rulers from the Nile to the Euphrates. However, political supremacy was never the role that God intended for his “chosen” descendants of Abraham. This problem is found throughout the Old Testament, for the Hebrew people always dreamed that being “chosen” meant being on top of the heap and powerful, rather than being witnesses to God’s mercy and love.

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