Jesus Touched the Ones Nobody Touched
Month 7: The Miracle Worker · Loving Others
Today's Scripture
Read together: Matthew 9:9-13
9 As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him, and Matthew got up and followed Him. 10 Later, as Jesus was dining at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Memory Verse
“This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.””— Matthew 8:17 (BSB)
📖 Bible-in-a-Year (optional)
Today's reading: Psalms 126-128
Reading the whole Bible in a year — do this when you have extra time. (Psalm 126:5 — "Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy." God turns weeping into harvest.)The Heart of It
Matthew is the man who wrote this Gospel, and here he tells us his own story. He doesn't make himself look good. He was a tax collector. In Israel that meant he worked for the Roman occupiers and was famous for cheating his own people to make money. Tax collectors were lumped in with "sinners" and despised. Then Jesus walked past Matthew's tax booth and said two words. "Follow Me." And Matthew got up and left it all behind. That very night he threw a party. He packed his house with his old friends, more tax collectors and "sinners," so they could meet Jesus. The religious leaders were shocked. "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" They thought being holy meant staying away from messy people.
Jesus' answer is one of the most beautiful sentences in the Gospels. "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." A doctor doesn't avoid sick people. He goes to them. Jesus came for the very people everyone else wrote off. And He still does. This is the heart of loving others the way Jesus does. We don't wait for people to clean up before we welcome them. We move toward the lonely kid, the difficult relative, the one nobody else will sit with. We don't do it to approve of everything they do. We do it because that's exactly what Jesus did for us. We were the sinners He came to call.
Around the Table
Jesus made friends with people that others didn't like. He wants us to be kind to everyone!
Let's do it: Think of one kid who seems lonely. Plan one kind thing to do for them tomorrow.
The religious people thought Jesus shouldn't eat with "bad" people. Why did Jesus want to be with them?
Let's talk: Who at school or in our neighborhood gets left out? How could you treat them the way Jesus would?
"I desire mercy and not sacrifice." Jesus cared about loving real people more than looking religious. Welcoming a sinner isn't approving the sin. It's offering the cure.
Let's go deeper: How can you love and welcome someone whose choices you disagree with? How do you do it without rejecting them and without pretending sin doesn't matter?
💬 Conversation Starter
Have you ever been the new kid, or felt left out somewhere? Who made you feel welcome, and how did it feel? You can be that person for someone else.
🛡️ Defending the Faith
Critics sometimes paint Jesus as just a harmless moral teacher. But a plain moral teacher doesn't get accused of partying with crooks and outcasts. The Gospels show us a Jesus who shocked the respectable people with His radical mercy. That picture is too uncomfortable and too specific to be something made up later.
For Dad · Go Deeper
"I desire mercy and not sacrifice" is a quote from , and Jesus uses it like a scalpel. The Pharisees had shrunk holiness down to keeping separate. They thought you stayed clean by keeping away from sinners. Jesus shows us that real holiness is rescuing love that moves toward the broken. Here's the searching application for fathers. It is frighteningly easy to raise kids who are morally tidy but quietly look down on "those people." The addict. The cousin who ran off. The family down the street with the loud problems. That's the Pharisee spirit. And our kids soak it up more from our offhand comments and our facial expressions than from our lessons. If your children are going to learn mercy, they will mostly learn it by watching whom you welcome to your table and how you talk about people who aren't in the room. Be the kind of dad whose home has an open door and whose mouth is slow to look down on anyone. Remember, you are not the doctor in this story. You are one of the patients Jesus came to call.
Draws on: Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God; D.A. Carson, The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Matthew.
Let's Pray Together
"Lord Jesus, thank You for coming to call sinners, because that's us. You welcomed us when we had nothing to offer. Make our family quick to show mercy. Make us slow to look down on anyone. And make us brave enough to befriend the ones who feel left out. In Jesus' name, amen."
Jesus came for sinners. So I'll welcome people the way I was welcomed, not waiting for them to be "good enough" first.