Matthew 8:5-13
This is the story of a Roman Centurion showing great love for his servant, a slave, which was unusual amongst Romans who considered slaves were not even people. Yet he loved his slave enough to wish to relieve his pain and have Jesus heal him. So he asked Jesus to heal his servant. He told Jesus he was not worthy for Jesus to come to his house and told Jesus the healing could be done at His command without having to see the servant. So Jesus healed him.
This story is one of great faith. Here is a Roman Centurion. He was a gentile, not one of God’s chosen people. Yet this man possessed more faith than Jesus had seen in any Jew. Here was a man who recognised Jesus’ divinity and righteousness to the point where he considered he was not worthy to have Jesus come under his roof. This man also recognised that Jesus had the power to heal and could do it without even seeing the person he was healing. This gentile recognised authority and leadership when he saw it.
Jesus marvelled at his faith which was greater than He had seen in anyone in all Israel (including presumably His disciples).
Verses 10 to 12 contain a statement about Jesus that refers to several prophetic passages in the Bible, most notably Psalm 107:2-3, Isaiah 49:12, 59:19 and Malachi 1:11. These passages all refer to God’s redeemed being gathered from all four corners of the earth and being welcome at God’s table in the Kingdom with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. While this is happening those who grew up in ‘the faith’ are being cast out in the cold because they had no faith. What does this mean?
In the Message these verses are translated as follows:
“I’ve yet to come across this kind of simple trust in Israel, the very people who are supposed to know all about God and how he works. This man is the vanguard of many outsiders who will soon be coming from all directions –streaming in from the east, pouring in from the west, sitting down at God’s kingdom banquet alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then those who grew up ‘in the faith’ but had no faith will find themselves out in the cold, outsiders to grace and wondering what happened.”
In Jewish teaching about the Messiah, there was a belief that He would come and call all the Jews, His chosen people, to a Messianic banquet. In their belief, no gentile would ever be welcome here. Yet Jesus speaks of this gentile and others being welcome at the banquet while Jews would not. According to Messianic belief, the Messiah’s coming would herald the destruction of all gentiles and the casting out into the darkness of all non-Jewish people, yet here Jesus is speaking of the reverse, the gentiles being welcome while the Jews are cast out into the dark. Jesus’s point was that being a Jew, belonging to the Jewish nation, did not ensure a place in the Kingdom of God. Entry into the Kingdom was through faith not inheritance. Faith was in God through the true Messiah, Jesus.
As people who call ourselves Christian we need to be careful that we don’t fall for the same trap. We must have faith. Membership of a Christian group does not ensure our presence at the banquet any more than being a Jew ensured the Jews of Jesus’ time a presence at the banquet. When Jesus returns there will be many who call themselves Christian who, along with the Jews who do not acknowledge Jesus as their Saviour, will be cast out in the cold because they do not have faith.

Matthew 8:1-4
The discussion of the Sermon on the Mount concluded in the last blog, but as I indicated earlier, I will be continuing for a little longer to see the examples of living as a disciple that are set out in the chapters that follow the Sermon.
Before I talk about the story of Jesus healing the leper, I want to talk a little about the treatment of lepers in Jesus’ time. The leper was considered to be a dead person. Contact with a leper was the worst defilement next to touching a dead person. The leper was not allowed in a building, in Jerusalem and other walled cities. They had to announce they were unclean as they walked along the streets. People were not even allowed to talk to a leper. As I read this account of the life of the leper I thought of people in our society today who suffer a similar fate. I am referring to homeless people. For those of us who have homes the homeless person becomes someone to ignore, to walk past as though they are not there, to shun and avoid and not welcome into buildings but instead to chase them away. The leper of Jesus’ time was the homeless person of our time.
So what was particularly noteworthy about this story?
First, this marginalised man expressed a deep faith in Jesus. He called out to Him that He could make the man well if He chose. In many ways, his faith was as much an example of discipleship as Jesus’ willingness to heal him. In the same way, we are never so unclean as to not be able to approach Jesus and ask Him to heal us.
Second, the man was humble. He did not consider he had a right to demand Jesus’ healing. Instead he accepted Jesus’ greatness and stated that Jesus could heal him, if that was what He wanted to do.
Thirdly, the man had great reverence for Jesus. He recognised this was God and he worshipped Jesus because of this. Jesus’ reaction to this was one of compassion. He broke the laws of the day and actually touched the untouchable man. He healed him and risked being cast out himself by that act.
After the healing Jesus ordered the man to keep silent about what had been done for him. This is not the first time in the gospels that Jesus ordered a recipient of His healing to be silent. (see Matthew 9:30, 12:16, 17:9 and Mark 1:34, 5:43, 7:36 and 8:26). Why did Jesus not want His miracle of healing to be known? In the commentaries it is considered likely that it was because of the risk of the people installing him as their Warrior Messiah, because their desperation at being occupied had led them to create a picture of the Messiah as a leader who would go to war against the occupiers of their land. If you look at John 6, where Jesus fed the 5,000, there is reference to Jesus withdrawing from the crowds because He knew they wanted to make Him king by force. Every miracle He performed put Him at risk of being forcibly made King. Jesus wanted people to listen to Him and learn what He had to teach them. If they installed him as King, they would not have listened to Him, they would have insisted He free them and this was not the freedom God intended when He sent His son to die for our sins.

Matthew 7:28-29
The sermon is now over and the crowds are amazed at Jesus’ teaching. We are told that is because Jesus spoke as one who had authority, not in the way the teachers of the law spoke. In the Message, verse 29 is written as “It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying – quite a contrast to his religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard.”
So what was different about Jesus? He spoke with the authority given him by the Holy Spirit, not in the tentative way the teachers of the law spoke. They spoke like a student who has to present a speech on a topic of the teacher’s choosing in which there is no personal interest. The work is well researched and presented but it lacks the conviction and passion of owning what is said. Jesus’ accused the religious leaders of His time of being empty vessels, of not knowing God. There is a world of difference between the teaching of one who, full of the Holy Spirit, and full of the joy of the knowledge of God and the salvation given to us by our Saviour Jesus, proclaims the joyous facts of God and our salvation and one who has read the Bible and all the books on doctrine and is following some plan to do this section of the Bible today but has no passion for what is being taught because he does not know God.
My question to you is do you know God? Do you live Jesus’ salvation every day of your life? Do you hear the Holy Spirit guiding you?
In a recent post, Chip Brogden spoke about the growing number of people who have decided that the social benefits of going to church are not able to compensate for the lack of spiritual life they receive in church. These people actually consider that the religion of the church is hindering their relationship with God. One man commented that he has long considered Christians to be settlers, people who belong to a denomination, who are taught doctrine that allows them to continue to belong to these denominations but that teaching cannot sustain them. He considered those who are journeying with Christ are Disciples. He cites Matthew 28 where Jesus said to go and make Disciples not Christians. He believed God calls us to be disciples of Jesus.
It is a challenging thought and a question we all must ask. How is my spiritual life? Am I growing in the Lord? Do I live His salvation every day? Or is there still emptiness within me that all the faithful adherence to my church’s doctrine cannot fill? For me, it is true that I have grown more, spiritually, outside church and for most of my Christian life I felt oppressed by the sermons I heard. They seemed to be preaching simplistic and often unfactual things about the God I knew. I always found more inspiration in my own personal relationship with God, and when my children started reporting the same thing my husband and I decided it was time to leave the church system.
I am not saying that church attendance is bad, but it must be reviewed regularly. You need to stop every so often and consider your spiritual growth. What does God say about your growth? Are you where He wants you to be? Is it more important for you to identify with a particular denomination or church building or are you delighted to be a disciple of Jesus? Why not spend time today asking God to search you and reveal the answers to these questions? Also ask Him for the courage to do what He directs you to do next, even if it involves asking you to leave the safety of a church.

Matthew 7:24-27 part 2
In the last blog I discussed the summation of Jesus’ teaching in His command to hear His words and act on them. I discussed Barclay’s comments on these verses. His first comment was that Jesus was asking His disciples to Listen to His teaching.
The second thing Jesus asked of His disciples was that they put His teaching into action. William Barclay speaks of the thousands who go to church every Sunday and listen to teaching about Jesus. These people then leave church and go about their lives never once putting that teaching into action. In order to put what we hear into action we must obey. This is our sure foundation, obedience that ensures we obey Jesus, even when we think His command doesn’t make sense. He has far greater insight into the future than we do and He knows better than us the ripple effect of disobedience. There are many times in our lives when Jesus says no. How many times have you obeyed that no, even when it didn’t make sense to obey? Have you passed up a fantastic job offer, or ignored an instruction to leave a great place now? I know there are times in my life when I was told not to accept a job or to leave and I argued. Once I was told to walk away from my Christian friends because they were no good for me. I argued with God and didn’t do it. I discovered later that these women were spreading malicious lies about me to discredit me. Had I obeyed God I would not have endured as much pain as I did. I have gone into jobs I was told not to and discovered what nightmare the job actually was. I have stayed when I was told to leave and suffered for it. It is hard to obey, but I am getting better at it. I just want to state here that you may be confused by me interspersing Jesus and God in my discussion. My only explanation is that sometimes God tells me things and other times Jesus tells me. I don’t know why. I consider it impossible for a mere created human to understand The Holy Trinity. Perhaps that is something we can learn in heaven.
I am nearly finished the Sermon on the Mount because it finishes at the end of Chapter 7. However, I will also be studying Chapter 8 because this is the “doing” chapter, when Jesus’ teaching of Chapters 5-7 is put into action.