Today, we find Jesus, again, willing to reach the undesirable. A Roman centurion came to Jesus to seek Jesus’ assistance in healing the centurion’s servant. Please understand. The centurion is a member of the Roman ruling army. The average Jew in the first century hated the Romans, and especially, they hated the symbol of Roman power—the army. The centurion was not necessarily a welcomed guest in decent company. As a Gentile, he was impure and he could not even enter the temple courts for worship.

After the centurion pleaded for his servant Jesus asked him (paraphrasing a little): “Do you want me to go to your house and heal him? Because if that is what you are asking I am willing to go right now.” While the centurion could not have entered the temple courts, the God of heaven and earth was willing to enter into the man’s house. Imagine that. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day would not make God accessible to the centurion in the temple, but Jesus (the God of the universe that cannot be contained by human temples) made Himself accessible to the centurion in the centurion’s house! Don’t you find this amazing? Jesus’ willingness to enter the man’s house speaks of Jesus’ mission—He came to seek and to save ALL that were lost.

Jesus’ question, “Do you want me to go to your house”, had two purposes. First, the question was telling the centurion that Jesus was ready to assist him. He had come to Jesus in faith and Jesus was going to honor that faith. The second purpose is as big as the first one—Jesus was about to reveal one of the greatest truths about faith through this man. (To be continued….)

What is Matthew’s message? His message is that sinners are spiritual lepers. However, only the spiritual lepers that recognize their illness and are desperate enough to be healed will come to Jesus in humility. The leper came to Jesus with a visible physical disease. But the leper is a metaphor for sin and spiritual brokenness. Every person is a spiritual leper in desperate need to be healed. The fact that many do not recognize their need does not mean they are not spiritual lepers. It means that they had lost hope. Listen to the interaction between the leper and Jesus.

The leper said: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus answered: “I am willing.” Did you get it? Jesus is so willing to cleanse us that He had already come down to earth. He was so willing that He left the Father’s side and “emptied Himself” of His glory to cleanse every sinner that comes to Him. Jesus was not just saying that He was willing. He had already done it. Jesus was willing to cleanse men of their sins and to prove His willingness, Jesus told the man: “Be Clean.” WOW! If you are a spiritual leper, just ask Jesus for cleansing and Jesus will respond, “Be Clean.” He already told us that He is willing to cleanse us. I don’t know about you, but I think this is awesome.

Several years ago an article suggested that when we are criticized we ought to ask ourselves whether the criticism contains any truth. If it does, we should learn form it, even when it is not given with the right motivation and in the right spirit. The article then offered these four suggestions: (1) commit the matter instantly to God, asking Him to remove all resentment or counter-criticism on your part and teach you the needed lessons. (2) Remember that we are all great sinners and that the one who has criticized us does not begin to know the worst about us. (3) If you have made a mistake or committed a sin, humbly and frankly confess it to God and to anyone you may have injured. (4) Be willing to learn afresh that you are not infallible and that you need God’s grace and wisdom every moment of the day to keep on the straight path.

When we are criticized, let’s accept what is true and act upon it, thereby becoming a stronger person. He who profits from rebuke is wise.

Grace teaches us that God does for others what we would never do for them. We would only make an attempt to save those that are not too bad. God starts with prostitutes and then works downward from there. Grace is a gift that costs everything to the giver and nothing to the receiver. It is given to those who don’t deserve it, barely recognize it, and hardly appreciate it. That’s why God alone gets the glory in our salvation. Jesus did all the work when he died on the cross.

In the end grace means that no one is too bad to be saved. God specializes in saving really bad people. Do you have some things in your background that you would be ashamed to talk about in public? Fear not. God knows all about it, and His grace is greater than your sin. But some people have an unfortunate response to grace: ungratefulness. They receive all the blessings of God’s kingdom and creation, but respond to it with disdain, contempt, and in some cases with rejection. And do you know what God does? He lets people reject Him, and then, He waits for them for as long as it takes for them to return. This too is grace.

In God’s world if there is a behavior, there is a seed that eventually gave the fruit of the behavior. If there is a character quality, there must have been a time in which the seed, or seeds, that produced that character quality were sown into the person. Nothing happens to us, or we never do anything, without a reason. We may not always be conscious of the reasons we do things, but there is always a reason. The reason does not have to be good. It only has to make sense to us at the time of the decision.

Since every thing we do (sowing) will result in some consequence (reaping), we need to be very careful what we choose to sow into our lives. This is where Jesus’ words come into play. Jesus said several things about His words. (1) A wise man builds his life around Jesus’ words (Matthew 7:24). This means that Jesus has a greater insight of how we ought to think and behave than we do. Thus, following His words is sowing healthier seeds into our lives, which in turn will return a healthier fruit. (2) Jesus’ words are eternal (Mark 13:31). His words will never pass away. Or said in another manner—whatever Jesus has said about Himself, God, man, sin, salvation, faith, and life, etc., do not change. That is, if we receive Jesus’ words and put them into practice we cannot fail because Jesus’ words cannot fail. (3) Jesus’ words give life. Listen to His own words: “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life” (John 6:63).

Application: We need to sow Jesus’ words into our lives to reap eternal life, for “a man reaps what he sows.”

While people are focused on the physical, God is focused on the spiritual. God does not care about out race, place of origin, culture, historical background, or how attractive or unattractive we might be. We look at those things. With God our physical appearance is irrelevant. This was a principle that God shared with Samuel more than 800 years before Christ, and some of us have not yet learned it. Read it with me: “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). As you can see, God does not care how you look or where you come from.

When God looks at people He is focused on the spiritual aspect of the person: we are all sinners. From God’s perspective SIN is the great equalizer—it makes us all identical before Him. Since we are all sinners before God, and He only looks at the heart of men, then, our physical appearance is irrelevant. In a similar way that SIN is the great equalizer that makes us all worthy of death, FAITH is the great equalizer for salvation. Faith in Jesus eliminates the penalty for sin, but it is more than that. Faith makes the physical appearance of the person is irrelevant to God. The only thing God looks at is his faith—and we are all equal before God in this process. Thus, God does not show favoritism. God’s impartiality is demonstrated in two ways: (1) we are all sinners and are worthy of death, and (2) everyone that exercises faith in Christ will be saved. God does not show favoritism.

Application: There is a problem for us. We show favoritism. As long as we show favoritism we have not fully grasped the message of salvation. Listen to what the Bible says when people show favoritism: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Leviticus 19:15). This means that if we make decisions based on physical appearances such as race, culture, attractiveness, etc., we are perverting justice. God’s justice cannot be shown if we share favoritism. If you are not sure about this Old Testament passage, let me share a New Testament one: “But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers” (James 2:9). According to James (our Lord’s brother), it is a sin to show favoritism. It is a SIN to make decisions about people based on their appearances. James says that a Christian is a lawbreaker when they show favoritism. This is so because we cannot love our neighbor as ourselves if we are judging them by any external appearances.

This is a fair question. There are several defenses about this claim, but I will just say that the Bible is the only book that details God’s plan of salvation to include more than 300 prophecies about the person, life, sacrifice, and resurrection of God’s only Son Jesus Christ. No human person could have designed and carried out such a plan. Most of us cannot even carry out our plans from one day to the next, much less take a plan that covers a span of 2,500 (this is just making Abraham our starting point.) The evidence on this front is overwhelming, for anyone who wants to hear it.

The world will be judged not by what men say about God. The world will be judged by the words Jesus spoke. This is what He said: “There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day” (John 12:48). Jesus’ words can be summarized with His two great commandments: (1) Love God with all your heart, and (2) love your neighbor as yourself. These words will be the measuring stick for every man. Additionally, this means that Jesus’ words carry the weight of God’s commandments and people ignore them or alter them to their own peril. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself and His activity of creation, redemption, and salvation. Any other “sacred” writings are simply pretenders. (Tomorrow: The God of the Bible is impartial)

The Bible says: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Lets define a “god.” A god is something or someone that has controlling authority over our lives. If we neglect our prayer life because we have to take care of our car, the car has become a god—not because we pray to it, but because it exercises such controlling power over us that we neglect the things of the true God of the universe to “serve” the car. How does the filter works? It works when we are constantly asking the question: Is this project, item, political party, civic organization, or person a greater priority in my life than God? If the answer is yes, we may have created a false god for ourselves. If we answer no, but our behavior does not match our words, we still have created for ourselves a god, but refuse to acknowledge the truth. For instance: If you say with a whinny voice: “My car is not an idol for me” but you choose to miss Sunday services in order to wash your car, your actions speak louder than your words.

Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Okay, if Jesus is the way to God, then, no one else can fit the bill. Therefore, when some false prophet comes proclaiming that he is a different way to the God of the universe, or that he/she has a different way for our salvation, we can say ask him several questions: Were you born in Bethlehem? Have you walked on water? Have you ever raise the dead? Have you ever cured a man born blind? And last but not least, have you died and rise from the dead? NO? Oh that’s too bad! Well, then we can conclude that he is a fake, and impostor, and a liar.

Paul wrote: “If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!” (Galatians 2:7-9) If someone promises salvation outside of Jesus, he is a false prophet and a liar. If someone tells you that if you follow them you will find the truth, he is a false prophet and a liar. You see, we can do this all day long and it is not that hard.

You see, the Bible is a filter that protects us from false gods, false teachers, and false gospels. But in order for us to use the Bible as our filter in our relationship to God, our relationship to the world, and our relationship with other people, we need to know what IT MEANS BY WHAT IT SAYS about those matters. The information is there. Use it as a filter and you will be more secure and content with your faith walk.

Some people believe that a health care system that costs 2 trillion dollars is actually free. If you have an explanation for this, please write me note. I will be delighted to see how this would work.

Some people believe that a socialist system that killed more than 250 million people in the 20th century is actually benevolent.

Some people believe that if the government took care of all my needs, I will be happier. This works great when you are 25, but when you are 50 and the government denies your “benefits” because you are not as productive as you use to be, things get a little more complicated.

Some people believe that if you buy an electrical car, you do not need fossil fuels to power it. Question: do they actually believe that electricity is produce in the socket coming out of their house’s wall? Help me out here…how is the electricity used to charged their electrical car produced?

Some people believe that happiness is found in making the rich poor. They do not even realize that there is not one single poor person in the world that can employ anyone. Don’t they know the main reason anyone has a job is because someone invented something that produced wealth? Besides, these attitudes are the result of envy and jealousy—both attitudes described in the Bible as sinful.

Some people believe the reason they do not succeed is someone else’s fault.

Some people believe that God is being unfair to them because they are, __________________________ (fill in the blank). It does not matter what it is, its God’s fault.

Some people believe that God takes sides on baseball games, or any other game (including playing the slots machines in Vegas).

Some people believe that they can manipulate God—you say something like: “God I will dedicate my life to your service, if you just gave the Bentley Convertible I need to drive from point A to point B.

And some people actually believe that politicians (as a general rule) are interested in their personal wellbeing. They do not even realize that politics is about power, and not about your personal concerns.

Anyway, I can go one, but some people may get upset with the truth so let me finish here. The solution is simple: The LORD of heaven said: “Thou shall have not other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). This means that we, as believers in the God of heaven and earth, do not put our trust on the powers of earth. This verse of Scripture, as well as many others, serves as filters for the Christian.