Reader Appeal: Mothers; Bible students; Teens Genre: Study Bibles FBSN Rating: B+ Envisioned by women, for women, and created by more than a dozen biblical scholars, The Study Bible for Women features the accurate-and-readable Holman Christian Standard Bible translation and a host of other study aids. Each book of the Bible is prefaced by a…

What if Matthew had said no when Jesus came calling (see Matthew 9:9-13)? We know that Matthew (also known as Levi) had mortgaged himself to gain a substantial portion of wealth in his world. We know that when Christ came around, he was forced to choose between that poverty of riches and the richness of…

Why all the hatred toward “tax collectors” in Jesus day? Sure, nobody really likes paying taxes, but everybody does it anyway. So why were tax collectors so universally despised? Tax collectors in that time were so reviled that their occupation (telōnēs in Greek) became synonymous with the word “sinner” (see Matthew 9:10-11). In fact, the…

Walking through Capernaum (“his own town”—Matthew 9:1), Jesus came across Mathew sitting at a tax collector’s booth. Christ plucked the man out of obscurity with these two words, “Follow me” (Matthew 9:9). Here’s what we know about that man: The name Matthew means “gift of Jehovah,” or “gift of God.” Matthew was also called “Levi”…

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