Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10

“And without faith it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:6a

When I was in school, my daddy would try to help me with some of my math problems. He could work the problems and get the correct answers, but he didn’t do the problems the way my math teacher had done them so I rejected Daddy’s help. He did the right thing, but not in what I thought was the right way.

Have you ever asked God to do something specific for you and then told Him how to do it? Have you said, “No, God, You’re not doing it right?” How rigid we can be in our ideas and expectations! Other people may do things the wrong way, but surely we can trust God to do the right thing the right way! Our faith in God is very pleasing to Him and our lack of faith in Him is a great disappointment to Him.

A centurion had a servant who was very sick. In fact, he was about to die. Centurions were officers in the Roman army, usually commanders of around 100 men. This centurion highly valued his servant and sent for help for him. The Roman soldier was a member of an occupying army sending for help to a Jewish rabbi, one of the subject people. This was most unusual. The Romans were not known for humility and ordinarily would definitely not have displayed humility before their Jewish subjects. But this centurion must have really loved his servant. He showed him compassion--one person’s pain in another person’s heart.

Luke gave this version of the story. The centurion sent some elders of the Jews to Jesus to ask Him if He would come heal the centurion’s servant. When they came to Jesus they pled the centurion’s case, saying, “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” Luke 7:4-5.

Jesus went with the elders to the home of the centurion. As He drew close to the house, He was met by friends of the centurion who came with this message to Jesus, “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to You.” Luke 7:6-7. The centurion was being thoughtful toward Jesus. Strict Jews would not enter a Gentile house. The centurion wanted to spare Jesus the embarrassment of being put on the spot. What an amazing person this centurion was--a man of great humility, compassion for his servants, kindness to the Jews, and thoughtfulness toward Jesus. And we have yet to see another of his admirable traits.

The centurion told Jesus just to say the word, and his servant would be healed. The centurion was a man both under authority and with authority over the soldiers under him. His soldiers obeyed his commands. He believed Jesus had the authority to heal with a word.

Jesus was amazed at the faith of this centurion. He told the crowd that was following Him, “I tell you I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”

The centurion is an example for us in humility, compassion, kindness, thoughtfulness, and faith. He simply trusted Jesus to heal the servant, and the servant was healed. Do we lay our needs before Him and simply trust Him to take care of them in His own time and His own way?

Father, it’s foolish of me to try to tell You how to do Your business. May I lay my needs and desires at Your feet and trust You do what’s best for me in Your time and Your way. Amen.

Do you choose to trust and obey?

Matthew 7:24-27

“‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.’” Matthew 7:24

In the almost 25 years that I was the Teaching Director for Community Bible Study in Decatur, Alabama, we boiled down the essence of what we had learned into three words: trust and obey. Then we amplified this synopsis into eight words: choose to trust and obey, abide and pray. We called obedience the “O word” because we encountered it so often and saw how crucial obedience was in living the Christian life. Some of my first words to the new class every year were: “I teach for application. The main point of learning God’s Word is to put it into practice. Teaching the Bible should result in changed lives.”

We are all in the process of building our lives. A firm foundation is essential for a stable life. We choose our foundations, but our choices have implications for the success or failure of what we build. Jesus talked about this in a parable about the wise and foolish builders. The wise builder built on rock, and when the rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, it did not fall. The foolish builder built upon the sand. When the rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, it fell with a great crash.

What was the difference? What do the rock and the sand represent? Both builders heard the word of God, but the wise builder put God’s word into practice, and the foolish builder did not apply what he had learned from God’s word. The rock represented obedience, application, putting into practice what God tells us to do.

James gives us the same advice in James 1:22 when he says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” James also says, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?” (James 2:14) and “...faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17)

Father, may I not only learn what Your word tells me to do, but may I do what it says. Amen.

Do you pick figs from thistles?

Matthew 7:15-23

“Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” Matthew 7:17

My friend Howard Ball used to say, “You can spot a Christian every time--if you’re God.” There are people who profess to be Christians, or who pretend to be Christians, who are not. How can we, who are not God, tell the difference?

Do we need to know the difference? Indeed,we do. Why? So we will not be deceived and misled. John warned us in 1 John 4:1, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Jesus Himself warned us. We read in Matthew 7:15, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

God has given us a way to recognize false prophets and others who are not really believers. Matthew 7:16-18 tells us how we can know the difference between real Christianity and false religion. These verses say, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”

Not only does God want us to use discernment so we will not be misled by false prophets, but He also wants us to discern where people are in their spiritual lives so we can minister to them more effectively. To have discernment, we need to be fruit inspectors.

By what kinds of fruit will we recognize true believers? What “fruit” are we to inspect?

1. The fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; Christian character; true righteousness.
2. John indicates in the book of 1 John that a real Christian will love others.
3. One fruit of a Christian life is that lost people are won to Christ through that person.
4. Christians bearing good fruit serve God, doing good works, good deeds, for others, not to earn their salvation but in gratitude for it.
5. Real Christians display their fruit by their commitment to God. They obey God and keep His commandments.

The trees that do not bear good fruit will be “cut down and thrown into the fire” --destroyed.

Not everybody who goes to church or talks about God will enter the kingdom of heaven. There is a spiritual that says, “Everybody Talkin’ ‘bout Heaven Ain’t Going There.” Only those who obey God, who do His will, will be admitted to the place that God has lovingly prepared for those who belong to Him. Those who have never come to God by way of accepting His Son will be turned away. What a sad day that will be for those people.


Father, give us the discernment to be good fruit inspectors so we will know best how to minister to different people. May we bear good fruit to be examples and encouragement to others. Amen.

Are you on the road less traveled?

Matthew 7:13-14

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14

Robert Frost wrote, in his poem The Road Not Taken: “I shall be telling this with a sigh some ages and ages hence; two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Frost wasn't referring to the broad and narrow roads of Matthew 7:13-14 but if we take the narrow road, the road less traveled, it will truly make all the difference in our lives.

Obviously the small gate and the narrow road lead to Heaven while the wide gate and the broad road lead to hell. We all start out on the broad road. We are all born sinners. Romans chapter 3, verse 23, tells us that, “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. In other words, all we have to do to end up in hell is nothing, just by traveling down that broad road. But in order to get on the narrow road to heaven, we must make a conscious decision to change. It is not true, as many people think, that all roads eventually lead to Heaven. Proverbs 14:12 says, “there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end leads to death”.

The broad gate might be entitled “self-sufficiency”, while the narrow gate might be named “surrender” or “commitment”. 

Many people visualize the two roads side by side but the people on them are going in different directions. Others imagine that the narrow road runs right through the middle of the broad road, but again with the people on the two roads going in opposite directions. It is true that Christians on the narrow road are, in a sense, swimming upstream or going up the down staircase - going against the general grain of society. 

Jesus said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 No other way will lead to heaven. Only faith in Jesus Christ will shift us from the broad, easy, popular way of the world that is headed toward destruction and put us on the narrow way that will take us to an eternal home in heaven. 

Our present choice of which road we take has eternal consequences, so now is the time for us to choose wisely. Moses challenged the Israelites, and us, with his words found in Deuteronomy 30:19-20a, “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” 

I hope each of us who reads these words will take the narrow road, the one less traveled. It will make all the difference! 

Father, we are all sinners and started out traveling on the broad road to destruction, but you sent Jesus so we can move over to the narrow road and go in the opposite direction to spend eternity with you. Thank you; thank you; thank you. Amen.