Daily Devotional For Thursday, October 9, 2025
Good morning Southside. It’s Thursday and thank you for taking the time to spend some time with the Lord today. We are making our way through Matthew’s Gospel and we are currently in Matthew 9 – specifically – Matthew 9:9-13:
“As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow Me and be My disciple,’ Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed Him. (10) Later, Matthew invited Jesus and His disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (11) But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with such scum?’ (12) When Jesus heard this, He said, ‘Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.’ (13) Then He added, ‘Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices. For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners’” (NLT).
We saw yesterday for Jesus to call Matthew to be one of His disciples would have been scandalous in that day. Of all Jews, Jewish Roman tax collectors were hated and despised. They were viewed as unclean and traitors. Yesterday, we left off with verse 11 and following. While Matthew and his friends may have thrown a party for Jesus including him in His band of brothers and them in His circle, not everyone else was ready to party.
In that day, sharing a meal meant that the people you were with were close and intimate. It meant acceptance and inclusion. Today, we have meals with people we do not even know. The religious leaders would never associate with such filth until they gave up their profession and repented to them. The religious leaders have several challenges here. What do you do with Jesus who will associate with such filth? The main problem is that Jesus taught with great authority and the people loved Him. Everyone they excluded He included. They didn’t know exactly what to do with this new young Rabbi on the scene.
The religious leaders were such legalists to keep the law and remain pure. They would never condone sin by eating with well-known sinners. To eat with commoners was considered humiliating. They never questioned Jesus’ understanding of the Law nor His use of it. Jesus quoted verbatim from the Old Testament. Yet, in their eyes and opinion, He lowered His status by eating and fellowshipping with the poor, the uneducated, the commoner and even sinners. By eating with all these Roman tax collectors, in their opinion, Jesus had broken every cultural law on this. He was an embarrassment to all of them.
The Pharisees believed in separatism – separating oneself from others so as to not conform to their lifestyles. This is not wrong in and of itself, but void of love, it is sinful. We Christians separate ourselves from the world in order to be light to them in hopes they would see Jesus in us and how much better our lives are. And in doing so, come to Christ. Back in the 1950s, some protestant churches refused to work with Billy Graham when Catholic and black churches began to come to his crusades. That didn’t stop Billy Graham. He asked African-American, Ethel Waters to join his team. No one could sing, “His Eye Is On The Sparrow,” like her.
This story warns us about how far we take our separatism. Yes, we are to have totally different lifestyles from the lost world. But, it is wrong to think that we are to have no contact at all with lost people except when forced to at work or school or in the supermarket. It is impossible to share the Gospel with people we choose to avoid and not associate with in life.
Well, it seems these Pharisees’ questions reached the ears of Jesus. His response was blunt and brutal. Well people do not need a physician. Sick people know they do and will seek out a doctor. It seems that authorities on the Old Testament Scriptures did not know it as well as they led everyone else to think. Jesus told them to go learn the Scriptures first. Did Jesus have a specific Scripture in mind? Yes, He had Hosea 6:6 in mind specifically because He quotes it.
Jesus was condemning their attitude of legalistically obeying the intent of Hosea. If we mechanically live out our Christian faith without love, then it is no good to anyone, ourselves included. God does not want our rituals; He wants a relationship with us. God’s word to Hosea was that our worship is empty when it is void of love for God and love for others, especially those deemed unworthy. What God desires is our loving obedience and penance, not our sacrifices and rituals. Look at these following verses: Psalm 51:16-19, Jeremiah 7:21-23, Hosea 6:6, Amos 5:21-24, Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 9:13. The restoration of the sinner is more important to God than our pious rituals and holier-than-thou attitudes. The main point of Hosea 6:6 is that mercy takes priority over religious rituals.
Jesus’ point to the Pharisees was to inform that His reason for being with these sinners is that these sinners saw their needs, their spiritual sickness and came to Him, The Great Physician. This was Jesus’ audience. This is why He came to earth. He made that clear in Luke 19:10. I think one of the proofs that Matthew’s conversion was real and legitimate is that he invited others just like him to come and meet Jesus. Do you know that that tells me? The Gospel gets compromised more often by our failure to share it than our willingness to share it with others. I love what Chuck Swindoll writes on this passage:
“There, in front of everybody, Jesus schooled them in Bible 101! How humiliating and offensive it would have been to the Pharisees to be given homework assignments from Jesus—who seemed to be just a common carpenter” (Source: Charles R. Swindoll, Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary, “Matthew,” Vol. 1A, p. 172).
Assignment: How would you answer this question? Is your approach to non-Christians more like Matthew’s or the Pharisees? The religious leaders preferred to cozy up to others just like themselves. Jesus’ ministry was to reach sinners and call them to repentance. Jesus preferred to associate with people who were trapped in the muck and mire of life rather than squeaky clean religious people. Are you more concerned about your reputation than the regeneration and repentance of sinners? If we are not like Matthew, bringing people to Jesus, then we are sending them to hell. Which is for you?
Scripture To Meditate On: Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Lord, I do not want to be such a separatist that people die and go to hell. I do not want to be so holier-than-thou that I cause people to choose the culture over You, Christ. I do not want to compromise the Gospel by not sharing it rather than sharing it. Help me to be like You, Jesus to seek out the lost and bring them to You. Please teach me as You taught those Pharisees to love as You love the lost and the sinners. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly