Come and study Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen is a former Protestant pastor and Bible teacher in the Reformed Church,

but now an Orthodox priest serving at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia.

So verse 27, after these things, he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the

tax office. And he said to him, follow me. So he left all rose up and followed him.

So we've talked before about tax collectors, but it bears repeating again.

This isn't just people don't like the IRS, right?

Which people don't.

But tax collectors, remember, are Roman collaborators.

They're Jewish people who have decided to work with the Romans who are oppressing and terrorizing

the Jewish people in order to enrich themselves, in order to make themselves rich.

And the way tax collection worked, there wasn't a sliding scale or a percentage or you filled out a return.

It was the Roman governor would say, I need so much money now. And he would send out his tax

collectors and tell each of them how much money they were required to get. And the tax

collector's job was to get that money out of the people however he needed to do it

he could threaten them with prison he could threaten them with slavery he could threaten them with

execution for tax evasion whatever it took to get the money out of them and they didn't get a salary

from the roman governor they made their money by collecting more salary from the Roman governor.

They made their money by collecting more money

than the Roman governor wanted them to collect.

So if he wanted them to collect, you know,

10 talents of silver, they'd go out and collect 20

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