Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Savior Who Sits With Sinners | The Gospels | Matthew 9:1–17

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Who gets a place at Jesus’s table? Why did religious leaders object when Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners? And what does his response reveal about the kind of people he came to save? In today’s episode, Jensen explores Matthew 9:1–17 and shows us that Jesus has the authority to forgive our sins and welcomes those who recognize their need for him. Want to become a more consistent Bible reader? Download our free Ten Minute Bible Guide and start building a simple, sustainable habit of meeting with God through his word. Grab your guide here. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Matthew 9:1–17

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. Who is welcome at your dinner table? Now, we would probably all love to say anyone is welcome, but in reality, we probably have limits. Like how often are we inviting strangers or even just new acquaintances over? Because dinner tables, they feel intimate. They require connection, conversation, and sharing of food.

It's scary. to invite people in, to welcome anyone. Now, in the ancient near-eastern culture, to dine at someone's table was far more intimate and meaningful than we can even fully comprehend. To be invited into another's home was to honor each other, to share in a mutual understanding of peace and protection. The people who eat at your table could actually elevate

or devalue your social status. Who sat at your table mattered. The tables you chose to sit down. mattered. It said something about you. Now, this is the culture that Jesus was born into. He knows the rules as a Jewish man, growing up in this culture, and he makes calculated choices. In today's passage, we'll see him make a powerful statement about who he is and who is invited to his table. But before we get to a table, we read about a miracle. And like most of Matthew's miracle stories, it's designed to teach us something about Jesus's authority

and the transformative power of the kingdom he has been proclaiming. Matthew chapter 9 verse 2. Some men brought to him to Jesus, a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven. At this point, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, this fellow is blaspheming. The teachers of the law say that Jesus is blasphemy.

because he has said that he is forgiving this man's sins. And the teachers of the law know that the only one who can do this is God, and it is only done through the ritual sacrificial system of the Jewish religion and tradition. Ancient Jews were expected to atone for sin to bring offerings and sacrifices as at precise times for precise reasons to be washed clean of their sin to be forgiven. And only God. God can forgive. So it's actually kind of really reasonable for these men to push back on what Jesus is saying. They have an entire system of sacrificial tradition to stand on, a system that was given to them by God. The thing they miss, though, is who Jesus is, which is precisely what Matthew is interested in drawing our attention to through these miracles, verse four. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said,

why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk. But I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the paralyzed man, get up, take your mat and go home. Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe and they praised God who had given such authority to man. See, Jesus essentially tells these men, it's not blasphemy for me because I am the son of man, the Messiah. I have the authority to forgive sins. And when he tells the man to get up and walk and he does, the people are filled with awe. They can see that God has given Jesus the authority to forgive sins. Jesus is who he says he is. See, the Jewish people may have come to offer sacrifices in the past for

the forgiveness of sins, but now Jesus is telling us he has come. His kingdom is here. He has the authority to forgive sins. And as we will see in the crucifixion and the resurrection, he becomes the final authoritative sacrifice for all of sin. See, Matthew is making a point with this story. As God, Jesus is the one with the authority and power to cleanse us of our sins and invite us into the kingdom of God. With this very thing in mind, Matthew transitions to the story of his own conversion. Verse 9. As Jesus went from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me, he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. Now it feels like maybe we're missing more to the story. Did Jesus really just say follow me and then Matthew got up and left his job and did? But as John Mark Comer says in his book practicing the way, in Jesus' day, rabbis would have asked the best of the best of young Jewish men to follow me. This would have been an invitation to study under this rabbi, to spend time with him, to become like him, to be taught by him, and then to become a rabbi someday with their own disciples. And so here,

we have a tax collector. Matthew, someone who the Jewish community hated, a traitor, left out, ostracized, despised. And this is who Jesus calls to study under him. Much like a dinner table, the people a rabbi had following him said something about the rabbi, and Jesus chooses a tax collector. Now, Matthew had probably heard of Jesus, heard of his miracles. The people were just praising him for healing this paralyzed man. Jesus just said he was a rabbi with the authority to forgive sins, and now Jesus is calling him, choosing him. And so Matthew immediately gets up and follows him. And the passage says that Matthew throws a dinner party for Jesus in his house where many other tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. Now what follows is two groups

of people asking Jesus questions about his choices surrounding this dinner table. The first is a group of Pharisees who ask his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? See, the Pharisees understand what dining at a table means. They wonder why Jesus defiles himself, makes himself unclean, lowers his status by sitting with sinners. To eat with them is to accept them. to associate with them, to make peace with them, to call them friends. Now, a second group, a few verses later, some of John the Baptist disciples, they ask, how is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast? Now, these men are referring to fasting that happened on certain days of the week,

and these fasts were part of the rules that Pharisees and religious leaders had added onto the laws of the Old Testament. They in some ways went above and beyond the law to be sure they were exceptionally clean, exceptionally holy, exceptionally moral. And so these men, these disciples are asking why Jesus' disciples don't do this. Essentially they're saying, why are you all eating at Matthew's table when you should be fasting? Now the two questions, they're similar in nature. Jesus and his disciples seem to be breaking some religious norms in their presence at Matthew's table. And these two groups are concerned. Similar to those saying that Jesus was

blaspheming by forgiving sins, everyone is concerned that Jesus is breaking religious norms. He is breaking rules. He is pushing boundaries. He is not following in the footsteps of religiosity. Now let's hear what Jesus has to say back to these two questions. To the Pharisees, he says, it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. So Jesus is quoting Josea 6-6, for I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. See, Jesus says that he came to save the sinners, the sick. He came to spend time with to call to heal those in need. He isn't interested in acts of religiosity in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

not because those things were bad, but because those things had become masks. They were becoming checklists. They had become status symbols that made people feel like they were good, moral, righteous. These Pharisees had convinced themselves that because of their adherence to religious norms, they were not sinners. Their question exposes their pride. They saw Matthew and the tax collectors as other. But Jesus says that he came precisely for the sinners. He calls the sinners. He wasn't saying that the Pharisees aren't sinners, that he didn't come for them, but that until they recognized that they were sinners, they wouldn't come to the doctor. They wouldn't see their need. They would continue to offer religious acts instead of humbly seeking mercy.

And then to John's disciples, Jesus merely says, there's a time to fast, but today, I am here. My disciples see who I am. They see their need, and they choose to be with me, to dine with me, to eat at my table. The forgiveness of sins that Jesus offers to the paralyzed man is something that Jesus offers to all. The call to follow Jesus is given to all. Jesus' table is open to all. The scribes were concerned with religion. The Pharisees were concerned with religion. The disciples of John were concerned with religion, and they let religion keep people from coming to the feast to the table of God. They kept themselves from coming to the table. Pesia 25 paints a portrait of a final feast, a feast of God's people where God is the host.

On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will repair a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, and the finest of wines. When we come to Jesus, when we realize the way to Jesus is surrender, he says, follow me, following him, his ways, devoting ourselves, our lives to him, because we see we know our need, we know that he is the one that can make a way who can forgive our sins when we do that we are welcomed at the dinner table. It is open and waiting for all, all who come, all who surrender will sit at the table of the Lord one day. Don't let religiosity, don't let rules, don't let the belief that you're good enough, that you're righteous enough,

moral enough better than those people keep you from the table of God. 1. Timothy 115 says here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. God's dinner table is open to all. It is a table full of sinners, full of tax collectors, full of profits, full of problems, prostitutes, full of liars, full of cheaters, full of people who are sick and know that they desperately need a doctor. God's dinner table is open to all, and that is the best news, because that means it's open to you and to me, the worst of sinners, forgiven, called,

and beloved by Christ Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Thank you.