Man, the title of my sermon tonight is Greater Faith Than Israel.
Greater faith than Israel.
I'm going to focus in on the story at the beginning of this chapter about the centurion
whose servant is healed.
Jesus makes this startling statement about him.
He says in verse number nine, I have not found so great faith.
No, not in Israel.
So this man was representative of the greatest faith that Jesus had found out of all the
people that he encountered up to this point, mainly dealing with the Israelites.
This centurion, who's not an Israelite, had the greatest faith of them all.
So I want to point out some things about this man in the story here that had such great
faith that received this great commendation from Jesus Christ as being a man of such great
faith.
The first thing I want to point out is, let's start in verse number one here, I want to
show how he loved his servant.
It says in verse one, now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people,
he entered into Capernaum, and a certain centurion's servant who was dear unto him was sick and
ready to die.
And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that
he would come and heal his servant.
The first thing I want to point out is how much he loved his servant.
Usually in a story like this, where Jesus is healing someone for someone else, a lot
of times it's their son or their daughter.
This man, even though he's in a high ranking position of authority, he's a ranking officer
in the military, he's a centurion, meaning that he would command 100 soldiers, he says
that my servant is sick, would you please come and heal him.
It says that the servant was very dear unto him.
So this is not a man who's prideful and arrogant and puffed up, where he would just think of
a servant as a commodity or just someone that he owns and would mistreat.
This is someone that he actually values.
He values the little guy, right?
He's a humble man, is the first thing I would point out.
Look at verse number four.
And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly.
Now the they here are the elders of the Jews, because remember, the centurion sends the
elders of the Jews to go speak to Jesus.
He doesn't actually go himself, rather he sends the elders of the Jews, and they came
to Jesus and they besought him instantly, saying that he was worthy for whom he should
do this.
They're coming to Jesus and saying, look, the guy who sent us is worthy.
This is a great guy.
You should do this, okay.
For verse number five, he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.
Verse six.
Then Jesus went with them, and when he was now not far from the house, the centurion
sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself, for I am not worthy
that thou shouldest enter under my roof.
Now here's the thing that stands out about this man, and again, this ties in with point
one about him loving his servant and his servant being dear unto him.
This further shows the humility of this man, because he says, I'm not worthy that you should
come under my roof.
But here's what I thought was so interesting in this passage, is that the elders of the
Jews actually say in verse four, he's worthy.
You see that, the exact same word?
In verse four, the Jews are saying, this guy's worthy.
And in verse six, he about himself is saying, I'm not worthy, okay.
Now this is the mark of a humble, godly person.
They don't toot their own horn.
They don't praise themself.
The Bible says in Proverbs chapter 27 verse two, let another man praise thee, and not
thine own mouth, strangers and not thine own lips.
And he's a perfect example of this.
Other people are talking about how great he is, but about himself, he doesn't praise himself
or brag.
He actually does the opposite.
He acknowledges the fact that he's not worthy.
Now the Bible says in Proverbs chapter 20 verse six, most men will proclaim everyone
his own goodness, but a faithful man who can find.
So at the job interview, everybody's going to tell you what a great worker they're going
to be, but how many of them are actually going to be a reliable, good worker?
So most men, the majority of men are going to proclaim their own goodness, but yet the
minority of men are actually faithful men, okay.
And what I see here is that the same one who actually is a good guy is the one who's not
bragging and tooting his own horn, and often the people proclaiming their own goodness
are unfaithful, okay.
And this is what I hate about politics, is the continual bragging and praising themselves
that politicians do when they campaign.
And this is very unseemly, and people would say, well, you know, it's politics that's
supposed to be like that.
Wrong.
It didn't used to be that way, even in the United States of America.
In fact, in the early days of our nation, if you study history, it was a shame to even
announce your candidacy.
You were supposed to have other people actually compel you to that.
You weren't supposed to say, hey, I decided I'm going to run for this office.
It was like other people would nominate you.
You wouldn't even put yourself forth.
That was considered a shameful thing because it was something that would be considered
boastful or proud saying, hey, I'm the man for this job.
I'm going to be the president or whatever.
It was other people that would say, hey, you need to run, and to try to basically convince
you to take part in that race because of the fact that pride is wicked.
Now, I can't emphasize this enough.
Everyone that's proud is an abomination to the Lord.
That's what the Bible says, okay.
God hates a proud look.
Okay, pride, arrogance, boasting are things that God hates.
So you need to stop yourself if you ever catch yourself starting to brag or boast or praise
yourself or toot your own horn and stop and say, hey, this is something that God hates.
And we must be humble people.
Part of the reason why this man is so praised by Jesus is because he was a humble man.
That's the first thing that we see about him.
But other people are talking about how great he is.
So we don't want to make a mistake and think, oh, this guy must have been a really rotten
guy.
That's why he says, hey, I'm not even worthy that you should come under my house.
You know, what did he have in the house?
What kind of magazines were on that coffee table, you know?
What kind of videos were in the video cabinet?
No, no, no.
That's not the issue.
This man was a good man.
It's not that he was some rotten person or bad person.
He was a good guy.
Other people acknowledged his goodness, but he was a humble man.
And that's why he said, I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof.
Other people are saying that he is worthy.
The third thing I want to show you is that he believed in the power of God's word.
He had faith in the word of God.
Look what the Bible says in verse number seven, because he said, look, I'm not worthy that
thou shouldest enter under my roof.
Verse seven, wherefore, neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee.
So he's saying, this is why I didn't come in person.
This is why I'm sending friends to go and deliver this message to you.
I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof.
And I'm sending other ambassadors to speak to you, because you are a great man of God.
You are a great prophet in Israel.
You know, we don't know if he knew yet, of course, that he's the Messiah or anything
like that.
But Jesus at this time, we're going to see later in this chapter, is known as a great
prophet in Israel, a great man of God.
So that's probably his perception at this time.
And he thinks, well, I'm not worthy to just approach someone like that boldly.
But I love my servant.
So I'm going to send ambassadors of some of the elders of the Jews, people that have clout,
you know, and let them go and intercede to Jesus on my behalf.
And then I'm going to send some of my friends to say, look, I know you don't have to physically
be here to do it.
You can just speak the word, and my servant will be healed.
Look what the Bible says, wherefore, verse seven, neither thought I myself worthy to
come unto thee, but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.
For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, go,
and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, and to my servant, do this, and he
doeth it.
He believed in the power of God's word, that basically the man of God here, Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, the Savior of the world, could just speak the word, and his servant would
be healed.
The word only, and my servant shall be healed.
Now, this is similar to the story with Naaman the Syrian in the Old Testament.
You know, we look at Old Testament Bible stories about people being healed.
Naaman the Syrian's a great example where he comes to the prophet Elisha, and he expects
Elisha to come out and meet him face to face.
He's kind of the exact opposite of this centurion.
Instead of saying, oh, I'm not worthy to meet you, he's like, I demand to meet you, okay?
So he actually shows up at Elisha's house and demands an audience with Elisha.
Instead, Elisha sends a servant, and the servant says, you know, go dip in the Jordan River
seven times, and you'll be healed.
And he gets angry, like, well, he's not going to come out and talk to me himself?
And you know, he said, man, I thought that he was going to, you know, call upon God,
and do this in a more grandiose way.
But who cares?
At the end of the day, what matters is that you get healed.
Who cares how bombastic it is?
You know, you just want to get healed of the leprosy.
But you see, the problem with Naaman at that point was that he thought that it was something
about the dipping in the river that somehow the water in the river was going to cure him.
Like that there was something about the Jordan River that some nutrient that's going to get
in there and heal his flesh.
And that wasn't the case.
That's why he says, well, what about the river of Farpar back home?
You know, why don't I go dunk in some of my own local rivers?
You think I came all the way out here to dunk in the Jordan River?
And you know, when we were filming Beyond Jordan and we looked at the Jordan River,
we kind of understood why he turned his nose up at it.
It's not a very impressive river, and the water's brown and everything.
And that's why he looked at that and said, hey, there are better rivers than this.
This isn't the freshest, coolest, you know, cleanest water that's going to cleanse me
because it has the right minerals or something.
That wasn't the point.
Do you really think that he had to dunk in water in order to be healed of his leprosy?
Absolutely not.
The point was that he had to have the faith to do what he's telling him to do.
He tells him, oh, go dunk in the river seven times.
He could have told him, you know, God could have told him to have him stand on his head
seven times or do seven somersaults or something.
That wasn't the point.
It had nothing to do with the river itself.
It had to do with his faith and God healing him, okay?
And of course, the good thing in that story with Naaman is that Naaman has people take
him aside because he's angry.
He's going to storm off.
And you know what?
He would have just stormed off angrily and he'd still have leprosy.
He wouldn't have been healed.
But thankfully, he had some good people there that took him aside and talked some sense
into him and said, look, if the prophet would have asked you to do something hard, you would
have done it.
If he would have sent you on some quest to Ireland for a four-leaf clover or something,
you know, he probably would have done it.
He probably would have traveled all the way to the boundaries of the known world and gone
to Ireland and found that four-leaf clover and come back years later having completed
the quest or something.
Folks, how much easier is it just wash and be clean?
But this is the same mentality that people have today when we preach the gospel to them
and they think it's too easy.
Hey, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, that if thou shalt confess
with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in that heart that God has raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Oh, it can't be that easy.
I think I have to repent of all my sins and I have to turn over a new leaf.
I have to live a good life.
I have to join the church.
I have to get baptized.
I have to receive the Lord's Supper.
I have to do all these things.
Wrong.
I have to do one thing to be saved and that is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Just wash and be clean.
Look and live.
Right?
Just look on me and be saved, the Bible says.
So being saved is easy.
It's as easy as looking to Jesus and being saved.
It's as easy as when the Israelites looked at the brazen serpent on the pole and as many
as looked at it were healed.
And Jesus said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of
Man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal
life.
So it's just as easy as eating a piece of bread, looking to Jesus, drinking a glass
of water.
It's not hard to be saved.
Jesus did the hard part, okay?
It's just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
So the centurion, he gets that.
He understands that God is able to do anything.
He understands that the God who can say, let there be light and there was light, the God
that can just speak the sun, moon and stars into existence can easily just speak the word
and his servant will be healed.
So this man has faith in the power of God's word.
He's read Genesis chapter 1, okay?
And maybe he's even read the story about Elisha and Naaman, he gets it, okay?
And so he has faith in the power of God's word.
And then Jesus' response to that in verse 9, when Jesus heard these things, which things?
The things about how, hey, all you have to do is just speak the word, hey, I know how
this works.
I'm under authority and I have soldiers under me and I just tell my servant, do this and
he does it.
And you know what?
Basically he's saying, I know that you can just say the word, just command and it will
be done.
You don't have to do it personally.
Just like I don't do everything personally.
I give orders to people and they do it for me.
When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him and turned him about and said unto
the people that followed him.
So Jesus is, get the picture, Jesus has his followers, right?
And as he's going to do this healing, his followers are going with him.
He's got his entourage, you know, people that follow him everywhere he goes.
He's got the disciples and other people that are following him.
And when these ambassadors from the centurion show up, you know, and they say, they give
him this message about how all he has to do is speak the word.
You know, he turns, he stops talking.
He turns around to his followers and he's basically saying, why don't you guys get it?
Right?
Because he said, look, I haven't found this great of faith.
No, not in Israel.
You know, you bunch of Israelites need to catch up.
This Gentile is getting it more than you.
And all throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we have these foreshadowings of the
fact that the Gentiles get it and that the Israelites don't, that the Jews don't get
it and that the Gentiles do get it.
And this is a foreshadowing of the fact that the gospel in the book of Acts is going to
go out to the Gentiles and the Gentiles are going to receive it and the Jews by and large
are not going to receive it.
It's mainly going to be the Gentiles that end up getting saved.
And that is foreshadowed all throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
You should see that coming when you get to Acts because there's so many little foreshadowings
like this where we have the Gentiles getting it, okay?
I've not found so great faith.
No, not in Israel.
And it says, and they that were sent returning to the house found the servant hold that had
been sick.
So when the ambassadors go home, they get there and the guy's just out of bed.
I mean, he's sick.
He's dying and the guy's just up and feeling great and just, he's well, he's whole.
And so his prayer was answered.
Go to Matthew chapter 8.
So this story is found in two gospels, it's found in Matthew and it's found in Luke.
So now we're going to read the account in Matthew of the same story starting in verse
5 of Matthew chapter 8.
And I'm going to point out some differences here and explain them.
Matthew chapter 8 verse 5, and when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto
him a centurion beseeching him and saying, Lord, my servant lies at home sick of the
palsy, grievously tormented, and Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I'm not worthy that thou shouldest come into my
roof but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed.
For I'm a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he
goeth, and do another, come, and he cometh, and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it.
When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to them that followed, verily I say unto you,
I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
But Matthew gives us a little bit more of what he said.
And I say unto you that many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom
shall be cast out into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done
unto thee.
And his servant was healed in the self-sane hour.
So another thing I want to point out before I explain the differences here between Matthew
and Luke is that this guy who believed that he was unworthy, right, he said I'm not worthy
for a great prophet to come unto him because that's what he's looking at Jesus most likely
as a great prophet because in Luke 7 16 it says there came a fear on all and they glorified
God saying that a great prophet is risen up among us and that God hath visited his people
and this rumor of him went forth throughout all Judea and throughout all the region around
God.
So the rumor is this man's a great prophet.
So whether he realizes at this point that he's the son of God or not we don't know exactly
how much he knows because Jesus didn't reveal that openly in the beginning of his ministry.
That's something that comes toward the end when he starts to reveal that he's the Messiah,
he's the son of God and so forth.
He wasn't always forthcoming with that early on.
But isn't it interesting how Jesus says that this man who feels that he's unworthy to receive
a great prophet is going to sit down in the kingdom of God with great prophets.
With who?
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
He says many will come from the east and west and he's saying people like this guy because
this guy's a gentile.
Many will come from the east and west meaning they're going to come from all over the world
in the kingdom of God and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
That's a cool verse because that means that we're going to sit down with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob.
So when people talk about, hey, when I get to heaven I want to meet this Bible character.
I want to meet that Bible character.
That's where they're getting this from and that is a biblical concept.
It's like, you're not going to get to talk to Abraham.
Well, yes I am.
Actually I am.
All right.
Well, I don't think you're going to be able to talk to this guy.
Now my strategy is I'm going to pick some more obscure Bible characters that way the
line's shorter and kind of get to those guys right away.
Wait till the line dies down a little bit to Abraham because that's going to be a long
line, right?
So stick with some of the more obscure guys, you know, seek out Lot and people like that
and talk, you know, and you know, have fellowship with them.
And so basically that's pretty cool that we get to sit down with these great men.
So the man who is not worthy in his own mind to sit down with a great prophet basically
is being told, hey, you're going to sit down with some great prophets someday, Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.
I remember the first time I read this as a child in the book of Matthew, I got a little
bit confused by this verse here because he said that they'll sit down with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob and the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom.
And I'm like, kingdom of heaven, children of the kingdom, what kingdom?
I don't understand why the children of the kingdom are going to the lake of fire.
I remember trying to kind of figure this out as a small child when I read this for the
first time, but when he talks about the children of the kingdom in verse number 12, he's talking
about the literal physical kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of Israel.
He's talking about basically the Israelites when he says the children of the kingdom.
He said people from, because there's a contrast, right?
The people are coming from all over the world are not Israelites.
They're sitting down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then the people who are Israelites,
they're thrown into hell.
So basically they don't get to sit down with anybody because they're in weeping and agony
and gnashing of teeth.
So we see there what he's saying.
So don't let that confuse you that the kingdom in verse 11 and the kingdom in verse 12 are
different kingdoms.
Here's the kingdom of heaven and then there's the children of the kingdom, you know, God's
kingdom on earth there of Israel that he had established and that monarchy that was set
up with Saul and David and all those descendants and so forth.
You know, right now they've got King Herod, right?
But that kingdom, those people he's saying, and obviously not all of them, he's just saying,
isn't it ironic how many Gentiles are going to get to hang out with Abraham and then these
people, the physical seat of Abraham are going to hell because they don't believe in me by
and large.
Obviously there are many Gentiles going to hell and many Jews being saved, but Jesus
is just pointing out that irony and then the last thing we see of course is that God rewards
faith because he says in verse 13 as thou has believed, so be it done unto thee.
So let me explain the difference here between Matthew and Luke because there's one big difference
that probably jumps out at you right away.
When we read the story in Matthew, we would come away with the impression that the centurion
actually went and talked to him, right?
So if you were just reading Matthew, like if you haven't read Luke yet, you're starting
in Matthew, you're starting at the beginning of the New Testament, you're reading.
When you read this, you would assume reading this that the centurion comes to Jesus in
person and says these things.
That's how you would understand the story if you were reading it.
But then when you get to Luke chapter 7, you're given this detail that he actually
didn't say those things face to face or personally, but that he actually said it through someone
else.
Okay, he sent someone else.
Now a lot of people, they get overly bothered by things like this, like they, oh, what's
going on here?
They start panicking when something is different between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But in reality, there are many differences between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but
that does not take away from the fact that Matthew is 100% true and that Luke is 100%
true.
There's no error.
There's nothing false.
There's nothing untrue or wrong.
These are different perspectives and different details.
Now I'm glad that God did it the way he did, and let me tell you some reasons why.
Because first of all, if God were to have just dumped it all into one gospel, let's
say we just took Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and just synthesized them into one gospel,
and some people have done that over the years.
I'm against it.
I think we should read the Bible in the format that God gave it.
I don't think we should just start mixing it into the chronological Bible or something
and doing it that way.
I don't like that.
Okay, if you did that, there'd be too many details in every story, and then it would
slow down the story, and then different things that should stand out in each gospel wouldn't
stand out anymore because they'd get lost in the other details.
What I mean by that is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are each emphasizing different
things.
Okay, so when I read this story in Matthew, I have a totally different focus than when
I'm reading this in Luke because different points are being emphasized.
When you read this in Luke, the centurion is emphasized more.
You kind of see him as an individual, as a person.
We learn more about him, and we're really focused on the fact that he's humble and that
he has all this faith, and he's sending the elders of the Jews.
They're talking about what a great guy he is.
He's being humble.
He sends his friends.
This guy's got a lot of friends.
People like this guy.
He's humble.
You kind of get a bigger picture of the human side here with the centurion.
Whereas I think in Matthew, the emphasis is more on the centurion just representing a
Gentile because there's this big contrast of the children of the kingdom being cast
into outer darkness and the men from the east and west.
You don't have that in Luke.
The big deal isn't about the fact that this guy's a Gentile.
Now it mentions the fact, you know, I haven't found so great faith, no, not in Israel, but
in Matthew, it's really driving in the fact this guy is a Gentile and the Jews aren't
getting it.
That comes through stronger in Matthew, whereas in Luke, what comes through stronger is more
of the man's humility and his character, kind of learning from him as a person, as a role
model for us, okay?
So different things are emphasized.
If you just dumped it all together, you know, it would take you longer to get to the crucifixion
and the resurrection of Christ.
I like the way God did it where he breaks it into four gospels because then, you know,
people with a shorter attention span, people that are slow readers, you know, they get
to the gospel sooner.
You know what I mean?
They start reading Matthew and they get to the end sooner.
They read John.
You know, we can tell people, hey, start in the book of John.
And it's this short book.
They can reach that goal.
Couple hours, they're done, versus if it was all mixed together, it would take several
hours and a lot of people might bail out before they got to the really important thing.
But one thing that we need to understand about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is that they
are four witnesses of Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and the Great Commission, okay?
So they're witnesses of that.
And think about this.
What if I went into a courtroom and I have four witnesses and they get up and they all
give the exact same testimony, they all saw the exact same thing?
You know what?
You'd say, oh, that's a really strong case.
Well, not really because, you know what, it seems like they got together and sat down
and said, hey, let's get our story straight here.
Because sometimes stories agreeing too much is a sign of collusion and it's a sign of
witnesses that are not truly independent witnesses, but rather they are just one person's story
being echoed by other people.
Whereas if I went into a courtroom and we have four witnesses get up and they give four
different stories, different details, and maybe even, you know, one of them describes
the car as, you know, blue and the other one says it's navy and, you know, another one
says, whatever different descriptions.
One of them says it's turquoise, another one says it's blue, another one says it's green
or whatever.
And you get these details and they all jive, they're all telling the same story, but they're
coming from different angles, one of them's leaving out things that someone else is including.
You know, then it's like, okay, these are four independent witnesses here.
I'm getting four different stories and then I put those four stories together and I can
see what the truth is, okay?
And let's say all four witnesses, everything they're saying is accurate, but are they going
to have the exact same story?
No, if you and I lived through the same event, we're going to tell that story differently.
If you ask my wife the story about how she and I met and got married and then you ask
me the story about how we met and got married, those are going to be two completely different
stories, but everything I tell you is going to be true and everything she tells you is
going to be true, but the stories are going to be dramatically different.
And why?
Why are they different?
Because I'm a different person than her.
I'm a man.
She's a woman.
Different personalities, different perspectives, and look, 20 years later, I'm going to remember
totally different things than she's going to remember, but we're both telling the same
story.
It's both true and neither of us is lying and neither of us is even necessarily misremembering.
It's just a different way of telling the same story.
And that's how it is with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Everything in them is true and it can all be reconciled, okay?
But it's different because it's written by different authors at different times.
And a lot of times when people see a so-called contradiction, it's just they don't understand
the fact that these are different authors writing from different perspectives.
Let me give you a perfect example.
You know, if you're reading the timeline in the book of Matthew and he's talking about
the sixth hour and the ninth hour and so forth, right?
And then you go over to the book of John and you got the third hour and the sixth hour
and if you actually try to reconcile those, what you're going to end up with is there's
a time when Jesus should be on the cross and there should be darkness all over the land,
but yet in the book of John, Pilate's putting Jesus out in front of the people and saying,
behold the man and showing them how badly he's been beaten.
So you say, well, is that a contradiction?
No, once you realize that Matthew and John are on two different clocks, okay?
Because when the Jews talk about the sixth hour, they're starting the day at 6 a.m.
Okay, so when they say the sixth hour, it's what we would think of as noon.
And then when John is talking about, you know, the ninth hour, he's talking 9 a.m.
It's just a different timing because of the fact that one of them is written from a totally
different culture to a totally different culture.
So you can't expect them to both be on the same measurement system or the same clock
or the same even calendar sometimes because of the fact that, you know, one of them is
being written, Matthew is being written to a Jewish audience as far as trying to show
them the Old Testament scriptures and these different things.
And then John is writing to the whole world, so, you know, he's using a more worldwide
system of measurements and so forth.
So, you know, that right there, you say, ah, it's for sure a contradiction.
Really?
You learn a little bit more, realize that there are different clocks and different calendars,
and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, man, I was such an idiot to doubt the God
of the universe over something so stupid.
And you know what?
That's how every contradiction in the Bible is.
Every contradiction in the Bible is a lack of knowledge on your part, a lack of understanding
on my part and our part.
It's not that the Bible is wrong.
And here's the thing, when you're a kid reading the Bible, there are all kinds of things that
seem like a contradiction.
As you grow in knowledge, all of a sudden you're like, why did I ever think that was
a contradiction?
I just didn't know what I was talking about.
You know, another contradiction that could throw people is the idea of, you know, on
the third, Jesus rose again on the third day versus, you know, he's dead for three days
and three nights.
But here's the thing about that.
Once you study the Bible, you'll learn that the third day does not count or the third
year does not count the first year.
Why?
Because it's just like in a building when you're in Europe and you're standing on the
ground floor, that's not called the first floor.
It's called the ground floor.
Then you go upstairs in America, you go upstairs, you're on the second floor because we make
sense.
No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, no, you know, you go upstairs, you're on the second floor, right?
First floor, second floor.
But if you go to Germany and go upstairs, now you're on the first floor.
You have ground floor, first floor, second floor, third floor.
Okay.
That's why it talks about how Elijah shows himself to King Ahab in the third year.
So what's in the third year?
Well, James tells us it's three years and six months.
Three years and six months is the third year.
We would call that in the fourth year.
We'd say, hey, three years have gone by, you're halfway into the fourth year.
But is that how the Bible reckons time?
And here's the thing, you might even have different reckonings of time from one book
of the Bible to another because of the fact that the Bible is written by almost 40 different
authors over the course of 1600 years.
So what we have to understand is that the Bible is God's perfect word.
It is without error, it is 100% accurate, but it is written by human beings.
It's human authorship should not be disregarded.
Just like Jesus Christ is 100% man, 100% God.
The Bible is 100% divine and 100% human authored.
So that's a beautiful thing.
That's the magnificence of the Bible.
That's even greater than if God would have just dictated the whole thing from Mount Sinai
in a cloud.
The way that he did it is even more miraculous, more amazing.
And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are four amazing books that no person could ever write.
No person could ever write these.
And believe me, many people have tried.
You don't think other people have tried to, you know, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel
of Bartholomew, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, I mean, it's out there, folks.
People have tried to counterfeit these and you're like, well, how do you know we got
the right books in the Bible?
Here's just some basic logic for you.
If God created this whole world and we have all these beautiful, amazing plants and animals
and landscapes, right, nobody can deny the beauty of the sunset and the ocean and the
plants and the rocks and the trees and the valleys and the mountains, right?
No one would deny the beauty of these things.
It's rare that you look at an animal and say, this is a weird animal.
I mean, most animals you look at and you marvel at them.
They're pretty cool, right?
Most plants are pretty amazing, pretty marvelous.
And you know, the ugly ones are ugly for a reason, but, you know, God has a plan for
them too, right?
Ugly people in this world.
God's got a plan for you, amen?
All right.
But the point is that God, who creates all this magnificent nature that we see, and then
we behold the heavens, which are his handiwork and the stars and all the different constellations
and things, we marvel at those things.
Okay.
Is a God like that going to write a stupid book?
It makes no sense.
If the book is stupid, God didn't write it.
How hard is this to understand?
If it's lame, if it's bad literature, if it's low quality, it cannot come from an omniscient
God.
Okay.
An omniscient God is going to write an amazing book.
When the God of the universe writes a book, it better be amazing or I'm not going to believe
it came from the God of the universe.
And you know what?
Every book in this Bible is amazing.
That's why they're there.
And every single book that's left out is super lame.
Super lame.
Never, never do you read any of these apocryphal or pseudo bibliographic, however you pronounce
that word.
I've never pronounced it correctly in my life.
Or you know, these deuterocanonicals or these, whenever you read these books that are left
out of the Bible, never do you think, man, it's a cool book.
It'd be cool if this was scripture.
You're always just like, thank God this is left out.
This is junk.
What am I reading?
When you start reading Tobit and Judith and Maccabees, you're just like, good night.
Are you serious?
You start reading the Book of Mormon, it's like, are you serious?
You read the Quran and you're just like, maybe I'm ready to commit suicide too.
This book is horrible.
No wonder they're committing suicide.
This is their scripture.
It's garbage, folks.
Show me a book in the Bible that's not just awesomeness on every page.
You know, I read Proverbs.
It's awesome.
Just every verse of Proverbs is so profound.
Every chapter is just, there's so much in one chapter of Proverbs, you can't even process
it.
Okay, but then what about the imitations to Proverbs?
The wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, Ecclesiasticus.
Look up those books and start reading them and you're going to be like, huh?
So I don't need some Catholic council to tell me which books are in the Bible because you
know what?
God's word is self authenticating.
Now look, if something else authenticated the Bible, then that other thing would be
a higher authority than the Bible.
Since the Bible is the ultimate authority, since God is the ultimate authority, God has
to authenticate himself and the Bible has to authenticate itself.
So the reason that we know the Bible is God's word is because of the Holy Spirit and because
of the quality of the book itself.
Because in order for this to be our ultimate authority, we can't set up some other authority
over it.
So it's some council that decides which books are in the Bible, you know, that's not why
or else that church council would be our final authority now.
But no, it's the book itself that is self authenticating, self evident.
The word of God.
It's very important to understand that.
So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there's not one of those four where you'd say, oh,
this one's not really that good.
They're all so deep and profound and powerful and moving.
Even if we just had one of them, we'd have this amazing story of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.
Am I right?
Whichever of the four we had.
Whereas any of the ones that are left out are a joke.
And I mean that in the worst, sickest kind of way of a joke.
They're garbage is what they are.
They're junk.
Oh, the Gospel of Thomas.
Just try reading it.
It's so bad.
And you know what?
Even the world classifies Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as great literature.
Does the world classify the Quran that way and the Book of Mormon that way?
Do they classify these other, no, they're inferior in every way.
So when we come to a scripture like this where we have things that are different, there are
a couple different options when we see things that are different.
Sometimes things are different because they're different stories.
And sometimes they're just similar stories.
Like for example, you've got Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Chapter
5 through 7, and then you've got in the Book of Luke, I believe what, Chapter 6, it's the
Sermon on the Plain.
Different location, different time, different sermon.
Yeah, Jesus hits a lot of the same points because preachers are repetitive.
And especially Jesus Christ, he's got three and a half years, he's traveling all over
Israel, he's going to preach a lot of the same things in different places.
So sometimes when you have quotes that are different, it's because it's just two different
stories.
Well, this healing is different than this healing.
He healed a lot of people.
Now obviously in this situation, this is clearly the same story.
There's no question about it that it's the same story.
So sometimes it's obviously the same story.
So you don't want to go overboard with this thing of, oh, it's a different story.
The rooster crowed nine times and Peter denied Christ 18 times or something.
It's just like, come on.
You don't want to just say everything's a different story.
That's a silly way to read.
But sometimes things truly are just different events that are similar events, history repeating
itself.
If you wrote down everything he did, all the world itself would not contain the books that
should be written.
And if Jesus is serving the Lord 365 days a year for three and a half years, he's going
to have thousands of encounters.
He's going to have thousands of souls saved, thousands of healings, thousands of service.
And we have just this tiny fraction of that recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
So we don't want to just assume that things are always the same story.
But something like this, it would be ridiculous to say that these are two different stories.
These are clearly the same story.
So what is with the difference?
Look, Matthew is not distracting us with this fact about him being so humble that he sends
these elders and that these elders are praising him.
What a great guy he is.
That would distract from the point that Matthew is making.
Matthew is the strongest book rebuking the Jews.
And John is kind of a really close second.
But Matthew, because it's written to the Jews, it really hits them hard.
Lot of parables about them.
It just starts out right out of the gate in Matthew.
Think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham, Dorph, that's the first sermon in
Matthew.
So that's a big theme.
So that comes through clearer.
Okay, Luke is a really detailed gossip.
It's the longest.
Even though it only has 24 chapters, those 24 chapters are longer than Matthew's 28 chapters.
It's really long.
It gives all these details about Tiberius's ruling and we got this governor.
It's giving all these tons of details.
And it's just a different style, different person, different culture, different audience.
So there's a difference.
So you say, well, how can these both be true?
Look, Matthew never says, hey, he was physically there personally.
When Matthew says, look down at your Bible in Matthew here.
In verse 5 it says, when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion
beseeching him and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home, sick of the palsy, grievously
tormented.
Look, the point is that he's coming to him with a request to heal his servant.
He doesn't have to have physically done that himself because we know from Luke that he
did this through someone else.
So basically, if I gave my son the credit card and I said, son, go pick me up a burrito
at Chipotle.
And then he goes and picks up a burrito at Chipotle and brings it back.
And then somebody says, hey, Pastor Anderson, what did you do for lunch today?
And I said, I got a burrito at Chipotle.
I bought a burrito at Chipotle.
Am I lying if I said I bought a burrito at Chipotle?
Because I sent my servant or my messenger or my proxy to go do that for me?
Absolutely not.
And this is where people get mixed up also between the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost.
Because a lot of times it says the Father did it over here, but over here it says Jesus
did it.
So, you know, Jesus is the Father.
No.
For example, the Bible says God created all things by Jesus Christ.
So if you said God the Father created the world, it's accurate.
But who's the one who actually did the creating?
It's Jesus, the Son, because he created all things by Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ was the one who actually did it on behalf of God the Father.
It's just like when it says, well spake the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David the prophet.
So who actually physically spoke?
David did.
But is it inaccurate to say the Holy Ghost said it?
No, because the Holy Ghost said it through his servant David.
OK.
And we could go through the Bible and show lots of examples of these kind of indirect
actions like you killed Uriah the Hittite.
Did David actually take a sword and kill Uriah the Hittite?
No.
He slew Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the children of Ammon.
So when the Bible says here, oh, you know, this guy came to him and besought him, he
did not do this in person.
He did this through proxy.
And there's nothing in the world contradictory about that.
Jesus said unto him, I will come and heal him.
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I'm not worthy that thou shouldst come to my root.
So this is coming really fast in Matthew 8 because, again, we're trying to get to the
main point that Matthew is led by God to make.
God wants Matthew to make a certain point.
We're getting there faster.
Instead of having the drawn out story where Jesus says I'm going to come and heal him,
then Jesus starts heading over, and then another set of messengers come and answer.
They get the message.
They bring the answer.
He's just condensing this.
And you know what?
None of the essence of the story is lost.
The essence of the story in Matthew 8 is the same as the essence of the story in Luke
chapter 7.
And you know what?
If you're going to sit there and just try to be pedantic and just pick apart every detail
and just freak out about it being described differently in two places, and it's just contradictory
or something, you're missing – you're not seeing the forest for the trees.
And I don't know about you, but I already decided when I was a six-year-old boy that
I believed the Bible is God's word.
And every time I open my Bible, I don't revisit that.
I don't just – and sometimes you wonder, like, are you even saved?
When people just say, open the Bible, and it's like, I've got to figure this out.
Okay, well, come back once you've figured out whether you believe the Bible or not,
I guess.
But I already settled that a long time ago.
And if you haven't settled that, why don't you just settle that right now?
Why don't you just put all of your faith on what Jesus did on the cross to save you?
And why don't you just put your complete faith and trust in the word that he's given
us here and not every time you open the Bible be like, I don't know, is this really true?
I mean, I don't know, it seems a little different than Luke.
Really?
I mean, look, if you believe the Bible, get past that.
And what was so great about the centurion again?
He had what?
So great?
Faith.
That's what you need to have.
You need to have so great faith so that every time you read the Bible, you're not trying
to pick it apart and find something wrong with it.
You know, that's a good way to not understand the Bible.
Because God is going to reward faith.
Without faith, it's impossible to please him.
For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek him.
So if you're just going to have your skeptic glasses on every time you read the Bible,
this seems a little different.
Or I've got to reconcile this or else the Bible is wrong.
It's like, no, sit down, shut up and read your Bible and figure, you know, what do we
need to learn from the story?
Hey, we need to learn about the importance of being humble and the importance of having
great faith and the fact that it doesn't matter what nationality you are.
You know, these are the things that are coming across loud and clear.
There's no Jew or Gentile to Christ in the sense that he's going to reward those who
diligently seek him whatever nation they come from.
These are the things that we should derive.
That's why I'm not against doing a study where you chart out Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
I think there's a place for that where you're reconciling them and figuring out the timeline
and everything.
I think there's a place for that kind of study.
But you know what?
That's not the main kind of study that I engage in.
I have engaged in that kind of study and I do think that that kind of study can be profitable.
But you know what?
I think we should spend most of the time looking at the Bible the way God gave it to us.
You know, he gave us the book of Matthew.
I think it's a more profitable study for most of our study of Matthew to be in Matthew and
understanding the book of Matthew.
What's Matthew saying?
What's Mark saying?
What's Luke saying?
Rather than just always trying to just make it jive because you know what?
God wanted us always to have it side by side.
Like I said, he would have delivered it to us in a big like quadruple gospel in one shot.
He broke it into four books for a reason.
Read those four books.
I think that's the primary way.
Now obviously we compare scripture with scripture but I'm saying the primary way we read the
Bible is in its context.
The way God gave us context of Mark with Mark, Luke with Luke, John with John.
That should be our primary starting point.
And so don't be bothered or get all hung up on these kind of things.
Instead just understand, look, it's true.
Now to me, this is not hard to reconcile.
This is like super easy to understand that Matthew is just leaving out a detail because
I believe God led him to leave out that detail because God is the one who's inspiring the
Bible and the book of Matthew is exactly the way God wants it to be.
Exactly.
That the human authors goofed whatsoever because God is leading them.
They're being moved by the Holy Ghost to speak and to write these things in the way that
they are.
So what we see is that Matthew is just glossing over this fact about the back and forth because
it would slow down the story.
And the most important thing at the end of the day is that we have the Gospel of Matthew
in its current form teaching us the teachings that are being emphasized there.
I'm trying to think of the best way to explain this.
I think what it is is that in 2019 America, we're just obsessed with science and history.
So we have these modern conceptions of history and science that we're just obsessed with
and then we want to make the Bible fit our standards.
There's a whole movement called the historical Jesus movement where they're going to learn
about Jesus as a historian.
You know, like we're going to go back and just examine this like we would examine any
other historical figure.
That's not the way that you learn about Jesus.
Okay.
This historical Jesus thing is stupid.
It's a flop.
Even many scholars think it's stupid and a flop because it's impossible.
Our main source for Jesus is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
And you know what?
They don't read like a history book.
They're filled with preaching and miracles and theology.
It's a wrong way to approach the Bible with just this, you know, wanting it to just fit
a standard of what we think a history book should be like.
Or just having this pedantic, scientific, well, did the cock crow once or twice?
Folks, what if I told you that there were probably hundreds of cocks crowing that night?
What if I told you that the cock crowed a thousand times because there's not just one
cock.
A cock is a rooster.
Listen to me, friend.
Do you really think that there's just this one Jerusalem rooster and there's one rooster
and I, did he cock crow?
You know what?
Whether the cock crowed once or twice depends on where you're standing.
Depends on which rooster you're talking about.
Think about how dumb that is.
Let me just clue you in on what Jesus meant when he said, before the cock crow twice you're
going to deny me thrice.
Here's what he meant by that.
He meant tonight you're going to deny me three times.
It's just a poetic way of saying you're going to do it tonight.
And if you've ever had a rooster, they crow all the time.
You think, oh yeah, the sun comes up and it's like, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It's like, no.
They crow at one in the morning, three in the morning, five in the morning.
Who knows what I'm talking about?
They're not that predictable, friend.
To get hung up on stuff like that is just ridiculous.
Which one is it?
It's both.
The reason why Jesus said it in that way, instead of just saying tonight, he said, hey,
before the cock crow twice you're going to deny me thrice.
Part of it is that Peter heard the rooster.
So when he hears the rooster, it comes into his mind, oh yeah, that's what Jesus said.
He goes out and weeps bitterly.
So that's where the significance is.
But to get all worried about whether it was once or twice, look folks, you're missing
the whole point.
Neither of those accounts are untrue.
They're both true.
And I'm out of time, but a third thing that I would point out, besides the fact that number
one, sometimes you're looking at two different stories.
Number two, different perspectives of the different human authors could be different
cultures, different measurements, different timings, different calendars, different perspectives
from the different people.
Not only could it be that, but the third thing is that sometimes things are being translated.
So the Bible is written in Greek, right?
But Jesus's everyday language was Aramaic and the Bible will often record things that
he said in the original Aramaic, like the Eli, Eli, lama, sabachthani, and then also
ephatha, talitha, kumi, and all that kind of stuff, right?
Those are all Aramaic.
Those aren't Hebrew, as some people mistakenly think.
So yeah, he says all those Aramaic things.
And so what about this?
What if Jesus preaches a sermon in Aramaic and then Matthew's writing it down in Greek
and John's writing it down in Greek and Mark's writing it down in Greek and Luke's writing
it down in Greek, they might not translate it the exact same way, even though it's saying
the exact same thing.
There could be a word different or a different spelling or a different synonym that means
that one of them...
It's like in English.
There's more than one way to translate things correctly.
So what if you say eternal versus everlasting or everlasting versus...
It's the same thing.
Is that wrong?
Some of the Bibles before the King James, like let's say you're reading the Tyndale
Bible from 1534 or you're reading the Bishop's Bible, a lot of those Bibles before the King
James will word something slightly differently than the King James, but it's saying the same
thing.
One of the biggest things that the King James did was just really improve the style.
The Bishop's Bible was a great Bible.
Even if you read the introduction of the King James, they even say, hey, we're not replacing
a bad Bible with a good Bible, we're just replacing a good Bible with a better Bible.
It's not that the Bishop's Bible had all this doctrinal heresy.
It's just that some of it was awkward.
And then the King James really spiced up the style and just made it better.
I could translate something and make it perfectly accurate in English, but then someone else
could translate it and just make it magnificent, even though we're saying the exact same thing.
That's what the King James, it's a magnificent translation.
So my point is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, sometimes the reason the quotes are a little
different is just because they're what?
They're just translating it differently, but it's the same point being made.
So don't let that hang you up, and I'll close on this thought.
Humility and faith are the two things that you need to have.
Look, humility will take you very far in life.
You have no limit to where you can go if you're a humble person, but you know what?
If you're prideful, God can't allow you to succeed, because then it's going to go to
your head.
So God has to constantly keep you down to make sure you don't get a big head.
But if you're a humble person, you humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he'll
lift you up.
Faith and humility.
If you have this combo, you're going places.
All right, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your magnificent, beautiful word, Lord, and help us to have
faith in it and help us to be humble, help us to tremble before you and to realize that
we are not even close to being on your level.
Help us to have the humility and faith so that we can do great works for you.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.