--- title: "Why Does Jesus Want to Eat With Me?" description: "Discover why Jesus welcomes those who feel unworthy, inviting them to His table and offering healing grace to all, regardless of their past." type: blog version: 1 version_id: "886742ff-6bc4-4bf3-8127-f5b3c0094211" generated_at: "2026-06-09T20:34:42.313Z" author: "New Covenant Church" date_published: "2026-06-09T20:30:38.000Z" date_modified: "2026-06-09T20:30:38.246Z" language: en reading_time: "10 min" word_count: 1995 keywords: ["Why Does Jesus Want to Eat With Me?", "Related Posts"] url: "https://www.new-covenant-church.com/blog/why-does-jesus-want-to-eat-with-me" --- # Why Does Jesus Want to Eat With Me? > Discover why Jesus welcomes those who feel unworthy, inviting them to His table and offering healing grace to all, regardless of their past. ## Key Takeaways - Seeing Like Jesus When You Feel Too Messy for God - Why Jesus Sits at Our Table, Not Just in Our Church - From Waiting Room to Mission Field: Joining Jesus With Others - Listen to the Sermon - Support the Mission ## Contents - [Seeing Like Jesus When You Feel Too Messy for God](#seeing-like-jesus-when-you-feel-too-messy-for-god) - [Why Jesus Sits at Our Table, Not Just in Our Church](#why-jesus-sits-at-our-table-not-just-in-our-church) - [From Waiting Room to Mission Field: Joining Jesus With Others](#from-waiting-room-to-mission-field-joining-jesus-with-others) - [Listen to the Sermon](#listen-to-the-sermon) - [Support the Mission](#support-the-mission) # Why Does Jesus Want to Eat With Me? [ ##### By New Covenant Church ](https://www.new-covenant-church.com/blog/author/new-covenant-church) ###### Share - [ ](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://www.new-covenant-church.com/blog/why-does-jesus-want-to-eat-with-me) - [ ](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=I+found+this+interesting+blog+post&url=https://www.new-covenant-church.com/blog/why-does-jesus-want-to-eat-with-me) - [ ](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://www.new-covenant-church.com/blog/why-does-jesus-want-to-eat-with-me) ## Seeing Like Jesus When You Feel Too Messy for God When Jesus shares a meal with tax collectors and sinners, He shows us that the Great Physician moves toward spiritual sickness, not away from it. If you ever feel too messy, guilty, or far from God, this story is a reminder that Jesus wants you at His table, right where you are, not standing outside, trying to “clean up” first. If you have thought, “God probably loves people like Mother Teresa, but not someone like me,” you are standing right where Matthew once stood. He was a tax collector, someone who earned a living by taking extra money from neighbors to support the Roman system and himself. Historians tell us tax collectors could take as much as 40% from people’s income or goods. It was not a harmless mistake; it was a way of life that deeply hurt others. In Matthew 9:9–13 and Luke 5:27–32, Jesus walks right up to a person like that, sitting at that very booth, and simply says, “Follow me.” No long introduction. No trial period. No, “Let’s see if you can fix yourself first.” Jesus sees Matthew exactly where he is and invites him into a new future that no one else could have imagined. Imagine how surprising this would have felt if you were one of the fishermen disciples. Earlier in Luke 5, Jesus filled Peter’s boats with so many fish that they began to sink. That miracle was not only a display of power; it was a gift of provision. Those fish were income, possibly the very catch Matthew had been taxing for years. Yet Jesus brings both the ones who were taken advantage of and the one who benefited into the same circle. Today, that might look like Jesus welcoming both a person struggling with addiction and someone who once profited from that struggle to sit at the same table and discover a new way of life together. The religious teachers in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees, watched the same moment and reached a very different conclusion. They assumed holiness meant keeping a careful distance from “sinners,” so that God would be pleased and bless the nation. Many of them came to believe that being holy meant making sure plenty of other people were clearly on the “worse than me” side of the moral line. Jesus refuses that way of thinking. He answers their complaint with a saying, a Scripture, and a clear purpose: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick… I desire mercy, not sacrifice… I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” In other words, if you feel spiritually worn out or unwell, you are not on the outside. You are exactly the kind of person Jesus came to welcome and heal. As you watch this sermon to learn more, listen for one turning question, not “Why does your teacher eat with them?” but “Why does your teacher want to eat with me?” Hold that question close. Let the answer settle into your heart: because He is the Great Physician, and He is present for people who know they need His healing grace. ## Why Jesus Sits at Our Table, Not Just in Our Church In the Gospels, sharing a meal is a warm sign of welcome and belonging. So when Jesus eats with outcasts, He is bringing God’s mercy right into everyday places, around dinner tables, in VBS classrooms, and on mission trips, not only in formal worship services. Whenever we open our tables and our lives to others, we are joining Him in that loving work. In the first century, meals were slow, thoughtful, and deeply meaningful. As one commentator notes, every dish represented hours of planting, harvesting, cooking, prayer, and careful preparation in a Jewish home. Sharing a table was a way of saying, “You belong here with me.” So, when Jesus sits at Matthew’s table “with many tax collectors and sinners,” He is not just stopping by for a quick bite. He is showing everyone who is truly welcome in God’s kingdom. That is why the Pharisees are so rattled by Jesus’ actions. The Pharisees are deeply invested in a plan: make Israel very strict and outwardly religious so that, they hope, God will step in, set everything right, and remove the Romans. Their approach is careful separation; no sharing meals with anyone who might appear impure. They even point to verses like Psalm 1, “Blessed is the one who does not… sit in the seat of scoffers.” From their perspective, Jesus is not merely bending a social rule; He seems to be challenging their entire vision for how spiritual renewal should happen. But Jesus understands something they are missing: God’s renewal does not arrive through keeping people at arm’s length, but through drawing near with costly, compassionate presence. As one commentary on Luke explains, Jesus rejects the idea of “purity by separation.” Instead, He shows a holiness that reaches out in mercy and changes people from the inside out. He is never stained by their sin; they are transformed by His grace. That has everything to do with how we live as a church family today. Picture a week like Vacation Bible School. More than eighty children fill the building. Some come from homes with strong Christian roots; others arrive carrying hard questions, quiet grief, or very little church experience at all. From a distance, it might be easy to sort them into “our kids” and “their kids.” But Jesus will not let us do that. He steps right into the noise, the mess, the squabbles, and the sugar highs and says, “These are the children I want at My table.” Or think about a mission trip to Jamaica or another community in need. It can be easy to picture yourself as the healthy one going to help those who are “sick.” Yet Jesus’ words gently remind us that we are all sitting together in God’s waiting room. Every one of us brings needs—pride, fear, hidden sin, doubts—to the same loving Physician. When we serve, we are not the heroes. We are patients who have met the Doctor, inviting other patients to come and meet Him too. So how might this look in everyday life? It could be as simple as who sits at your actual table. Is there a neighbor, coworker, or classmate who would be surprised, in a good way, to be invited to share a meal with a follower of Jesus? Someone whose past, politics, opinions, or reputation might normally keep them at a distance? Jesus’ example suggests that this may be exactly the kind of person He is placing on your heart to welcome. Watching this sermon can reshape how you see your own spaces: your home, your church, even a school cafeteria as places where Jesus loves to be present. As you listen, you might pray, “Lord, who are You inviting me to welcome, not only into a pew, but into my everyday life?” ## From Waiting Room to Mission Field: Joining Jesus With Others When we begin to see that we are all sitting together in God’s waiting room, in need of the same mercy, something softens in us. We let go of comparison and competition, and instead we join Jesus in gently inviting others, especially those who feel unworthy, to come and meet the Great Physician for themselves. In Ezekiel 34, God confronts Israel’s shepherds for not caring for the sick or seeking out those who are lost. Then He makes a beautiful promise: “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.” When Jesus steps into Matthew’s dining room, He is living out that promise in person. He is not a distant advisor offering suggestions from afar; He is the loving Shepherd-Physician who comes close and makes house calls. Notice how Jesus chooses to work. He does not send the fishermen ahead to “test things out” with Matthew. He calls Matthew first, brings him close into His inner circle, and then uses Matthew’s own friendships as the bridge. Matthew hosts a feast, invites the very people others tend to avoid, and Jesus sits right in the middle of them. In God’s hands, mission does not start with a program; it starts with one person whose life has been interrupted by grace. That pattern is still true today. When Jesus calls you, He is not only rescuing you from your own “tax booth,” those stuck places, quiet compromises, and hidden shames. He is also sending you back into your everyday circles with a new purpose. The question begins to shift from, “How far can I stay from those people?” to “Lord, how can I share Your mercy with the very people who know my story best?” This is where the question, “Why does your teacher want to eat with me?” becomes so powerful. Picture hearing it from a child at VBS who quietly thinks, “Church is not for kids like me.” Or from a neighbor who worries that a divorce, an addiction, or a past failure has put them beyond God’s care. Or from a person at a free clinic or in a community recovering from a storm where our mission teams serve. How might you answer that question? You could say, “Because I know what it is to be unwell and still invited. Because I remember where I was when He called my name. Because His mercy is big enough for both of us.” That is not just an idea; it is your story, and it turns what you believe into an open invitation. This is also why coming to the Lord’s Table each week matters so deeply. Every time you hold out your hands for the bread and the cup, you are stepping into Matthew’s dinner scene again. You are saying yes to Jesus’ invitation to sit at His table, not as someone who is “all together,” but as someone who is deeply loved and forgiven. The table is not a prize for the spiritually strong; it is nourishing grace for those still in the care of the Great Physician. If it is hard for you to believe this, you are not alone. Let this week be a gentle turning point. Bring your own version of Matthew’s toll booth to Jesus: the compromise at work, the unforgiveness you hold onto, the secret sin you hide, and simply ask, “Lord, why do You still want to eat with me?” Then listen, in Scripture, in the preached Word, and at the Lord’s Table, as He answers again with kindness: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” To go deeper into this story and let it reshape how you see yourself, your church, and your neighbors, set aside some time to watch the full sermon. Let it help you move from the waiting room into the mission field, walking with the Great Physician who still calls Matthews, still fills tables with unlikely guests, and still delights to be asked, “Why do You want to eat with me?” ## Listen to the Sermon ## Support the Mission Help support the church's mission by clicking the Donate button below. 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