The Daily Audio Bible

The calling of Levi

¹³ Once more Jesus went out beside the sea. All the crowd came to him, and he taught them.

¹⁴ As he went along he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the toll booth. “Follow me!” he said. And he got up and followed him.

¹⁵ That’s how Jesus came to be sitting at home with lots of tax-collectors and sinners. There they were, plenty of them, sitting with Jesus and his disciples; they had become his followers.

¹⁶ When the legal experts from the Pharisees saw him eating with tax-collectors and sinners, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”

¹⁷ When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “It’s sick people who need the doctor, not healthy ones. I came to call the bad people, not the good ones.”

Questions about fasting

¹⁸ John’s disciples, and the Pharisees’ disciples, were fasting. People came and said to Jesus, “Look here: John’s disciples are fasting, and so are the Pharisees’ disciples; why aren’t yours?”

¹⁹ “How can the wedding guests fast,” Jesus replied, “if the bridegroom is there with them? As long as they’ve got the bridegroom with them, they can’t fast.

²⁰ “Mind you, the time is coming when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. They’ll fast then all right.

²¹ “No one sews unshrunk cloth onto an old cloak. If they do, the new patch will tear the old cloth, and they’ll end up with a worse hole. ²² Nor does anyone put new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the wine will burst the skins, and they’ll lose the wine and the skins together. New wine needs fresh skins.”

Teachings on the sabbath

²³ One sabbath, Jesus was walking through the cornfields. His disciples made their way along, plucking corn as they went.

²⁴ “Look here,” said the Pharisees to him, “why are they doing something illegal on the sabbath?”

²⁵ “Haven’t you ever read what David did,” replied Jesus, “when he was in difficulties, and he and his men got hungry? ²⁶ He went into God’s house (this was when Abiathar was high priest), and ate the ‘bread of the presence,’ which only the priests were allowed to eat—and he gave it to the people with him.

²⁷ “The sabbath was made for humans,” he said, “not humans for the sabbath; ²⁸ so the son of man is master even of the sabbath.”

Healing of the man with the withered hand

3 Once more Jesus went to the synagogue. There was a man there with a withered hand. ² People were watching to see if Jesus would heal him on the sabbath, so that they could frame a charge against him.

³ “Stand up,” said Jesus to the man with the withered hand, “and come out here.” And he said to them, ⁴ “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath, or to do evil? To save life or to kill?” They stayed quiet.

⁵ He was deeply upset at their hard-heartedness, and looked round at them angrily. Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out—and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him.