Luke 7:1-10
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke’s gospel, to the seventh chapter. Our reading
today will be Luke chapter seven, verses one through 10. And you
can find that in the pew Bible on page 863. For the last many months now,
we’ve been making our way through Luke’s gospel. And today, when
we get to chapter seven, we hit a turning point. We hit a turning
point in the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
in this passage today, we’re going to hear a story or a illustration
of faith and faith we remember is. the tool or the means by
which we are justified. We are justified by faith alone. Faith is the instrument. We believe
in God. We believe on Christ. As the
Bible teaches us, faith is a gift. Faith is not something we work
up in ourselves that we may boast, but it itself is a gift of God.
And so in faith, we believe on God. And as the word says, it
is counted to us. as a righteousness. And so here
we hear a wonderful story about the faith of a Gentile, the faith
of a Roman, a centurion, a captain of their army. And so we hear
God’s word together beginning at verse one of chapter seven
of Luke. Speaking of Jesus and his previous
ministry out in the plain below the mountain, it says, after
he had finished all his sayings and the hearing of the people,
he entered Capernaum. Now a centurion had a servant
who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued
by him. When the centurion heard about
Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come
and heal his servant. And when they came to Jesus,
they pleaded with him earnestly saying, he is worthy to have
you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he is the one
who built us our synagogue. And Jesus went with them. When
he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying
to him, Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy
to have you come under my roof. Therefore, I did not presume
to come to you, but say the word and let my servant be healed.
For I too am a man set under authority with soldiers under
me. And I say to one, go, and he goes. And to another, come,
and he comes. And to my servant, do this, and
he does it. When Jesus heard these things,
he marveled at him. And turning to the crowd that
followed him, he said, I tell you, not even in Israel have
I found such faith. And when those who had been sent
returned to the house, they found the servant well. Let us pray
together. Lord, if you were to look at
our faith, we would wonder if you would marvel at it. So we
pray now that you would take our faith that is weak, our faith
that is often full of doubt, it is full of human weakness,
that you would make it strong. Make it strong by your word.
Assure us today of our salvation. Assure us today of our standing
in Christ Jesus. You see us as if we’ve never
sinned. You see us as if we’ve always obeyed. Give us peace
of conscience. Give us joy in the Holy Ghost.
Give us, especially this day, increase of grace as we seek
to have you encourage us, as we seek to have you affirm all
that we are in Christ Jesus. Help us, we pray in his name.
Amen. Do you ever wonder when things
are going well for you? Do you ever wonder when you’re
having a good time, what people on the other side are doing?
Are there people who don’t have it so good, things are not going
well for them? For example, today you are healthy,
you’re sitting in church. Did you think that maybe there’s
somebody who’s bedridden? They’re unable, they’re sick,
they’re unable to come to church. Or did you think when you were
having a good time over the weekend, especially if you’re a Tar Heel
fan, there’s some sad people, some Duke fans who lost twice
this year. Did you think about it that way?
But in all seriousness, do you think when things are going well
for you about what others are doing, what difficulty they may
be facing, or are we so caught up in our own life that we say,
if it’s going well for me, it must be going well for others. We don’t think about others who
live on the other side, whose days are less sunny and more
difficult. Well, I wonder that about the
people who were experiencing Jesus’ ministry in the previous
passages before we landed it. Luke chapter 7, we read that
Jesus had come down from a mountain where he had been praying. He
had come down from the mountain after asking the Lord to show
him who should be his apostles, his sent ones. And he comes down
from the mountain with those apostles. He gathers with disciples
who had been following. And then it says that multitudes
gathered from the north, the south, the east and the west.
Multitudes had come to hear him on this plain, this level place
below the mountains. And the word of God tells us
Jesus was doing two things. He was preaching and teaching
and they were hearing him. And then he was speaking and
healing and power was going out from him and people were cured
of their diseases, their unclean spirits. He was teaching the
Beatitudes, the blessed are statements. He was pronouncing woes upon
those who did not believe him. He was teaching his disciples
the ethics that we should have. in our relationships with those
who are our enemies. He was teaching them what it
means to judge, what it means for a person to show forth fruit
from their heart. And then in the last message
of his little sermon series on the plane, he gives the message
that the wise man built his house on the rock and it is able to
withstand the storms of life. Meanwhile, all that taking place,
people receiving from God, being healed by God over in Capernaum,
the little town next to this place where Jesus had been preaching,
there was a centurion. And his most prized and valued
servant was ill. In some translations of this
story in Matthew’s gospel, you pick up other bits and pieces
of it. And this servant was like a child,
like a son to this centurion. And the Bible tells us he was
very valuable to him, but he was deathly ill. Matthew’s account
says he was in agony. He was in turmoil. He was paralyzed
and he was near death. The word of God tells us all
this during the same time where Jesus had been ministering to
the crowds and the multitudes, they were hearing him and they
were being healed by him. But all during this time, can
you imagine the turmoil, the panic, the sadness in this centurion’s
household, his prized servant, his right hand man, this one
who was like a child to him. was ill and near death. Well, Jesus has made his way
from the plain where he preached. He has made his way from the
level place where he has healed. And he’s come back into Capernaum,
which we know from our previous studies was sort of like a home
base for Jesus in Galilee. It was, in a sense, Jesus headquarters. Remember that after preaching
and teaching and healing at one point, they go back to Simon,
one of his apostles, one of the disciples house. His mother-in-law
was ill and he spoke and healed her and she began to serve them
again. He goes out of Capernaum. He
goes out preaching. He goes out praying. He goes
out healing. But he always comes back to Capernaum,
which is something of a base to Jesus and his ministries.
And inside Capernaum, Jesus had taught. He had taught with authority
in the synagogue. He had taught with power and
people were amazed at his teaching, but he had also healed demon
possessed people. He had cured their diseases there
as well. And it’s in this synagogue where
Jesus has done ministry before that our passage tells us this
very building, this very place of worship, this very place of
ministry was donated. It was given out of the benevolence
of this centurion who comes to Jesus for help. Capernaum was
a place that was familiar with Jesus. He was a frequent preacher. He was a frequent guest. He was
a frequent healer in that city. Now we have to understand that
Capernaum, and in fact, all of Palestine was occupied. It was
a Jewish nation, but had been occupied for some time now by
Romans. And many Jewish people did not
like the Romans. They did not like their occupation,
their rule. They did not like their presence
in their nation. And so here was a centurion who
had found favor with the Jewish people. He was a God fearer. A God fearer in those days was
one who was an outsider. He was a Gentile, but he looked
in on the worship of God through Israel’s Yahweh and he took interest
in it. He believed in that God. He participated
as far as he could as an outsider in their worship and in their
understanding of the law and the prophets and the writings
of the scripture. This passage tells us that according
to the leaders, the elders of the Jews, he loved the nation
of Israel. He was respected and he was revered. And his sick and dying servant
was in dire straits. And these people love this man.
And so therefore, they loved his servant. And they go to Jesus
and say, come and heal. or in fact to use a strong word,
a salvation word, come and save this man who is near death. One of the things you’ll notice
as you read through the gospels and you see Jesus heal a blind
person, or you see Jesus open a man’s mouth and he’s no longer
mute but can speak, or you see him touch a woman who has been
ill for her lifetime and she has become well, or on and on
you go through these gospel accounts of Jesus healing people. We often
think Jesus is just touching people and making them whole.
He’s touching them and healing them from their physical sickness.
But isn’t there always an aspect? of him healing them all the way.
He heals their sin sick souls. He takes them from death to life. He takes them from darkness to
light. He takes them from unsaved and at death’s door to saved
and to life everlasting. And that’s exactly what we see
in today’s passage here in Luke’s gospel account of this centurion
who had faith. His sick and dying servant needs
to be saved. And the people go to Jesus. They
leave Capernaum as Jesus is entering. And they come to him and say,
your help is needed. They’ve called 911 as it were.
They’ve said, this man is worthy for you to come. He’s worthy for you to do this
for him. Now they have a different set
of standards of worthy, don’t they? Their worthy standard is
from their own minds. This is a faithful man. This
is a generous man. This is a good man. He’s got
a key to the city of Capernaum, you might would say. He has the
mayor’s awards. We love him. Yes, there’s all
that Roman occupation business. Yes, there’s all that. This is
our nation business. But this man is a God fearer
and we love him. He is faithful. And you can imagine
that in addition to him being generous and building their synagogue,
he’s done so much else. He’s helped the poor. He’s gotten
the streets repaved when there was a pothole in the cobblestones.
He’s, he’s, he’s done many good things and they can recount them.
They can tell, and they know that he loves this servant and
they know the benefit of Capernaum from this man and that this man
without his right hand servant, the one who was like a boy to
him, they would not be blessed as well. And so they go to Jesus
and they say, here is a man with many good deeds. He deserves. He is worthy of your good deeds. But we know God has a different
standard of worthiness. We know what the Bible teaches,
that God’s standard of worthiness is to know of your need, to know
of your emptiness, to know of your sin and to know of your
sickness and your disease and your desperate condition. It’s
to know that you deserve nothing but God’s wrath and his justice
and his condemnation. and that you deserve nothing
but death. This passage shows us something about Jesus and
the gospel in our own words. We, from time to time, will tell
others about Jesus and we’ll say it in our own words. We’ll
run it through our life experience. And maybe you’re a sports person
and you use sports analogies. You like what Paul says about,
I fight the good fight. I press on, I run the race. We
like the sports analogies. Maybe you’re a historian and
you love to speak of the gospel in historic terms, or maybe you’re
a little on the poetic side and you love the poetry of the Bible. Well, the centurion had the gospel
in his own words, in a sense. He was a powerful man in Rome.
He was a powerful man in Capernaum. He was a powerful man in Palestine,
in the Promised Land. He had heard stories about Jesus
and his job was to be a security force to make Capernaum and the
surrounding areas safe so that the Roman Empire would remain
healthy and whole and peaceful. They looked for potential uprisings.
They looked for security. breaches and dangers. He had
received his security briefings. He knew about Jesus and his band
of disciples out on the hillside. He knew about Jesus’ ministry
and he had heard about what he had taught and he had seen and
heard about his healings. It was his business as a centurion
to keep the place safe, to keep the empire at peace. And it was his business to know.
He had heard about Jesus’ teachings. He had heard about the healings
and the work of Jesus. And as he speaks the gospel in
his own words, in a sense, he says to Jesus, I know your type. You’re one with authority. And
this is where his faith is simple. He simply says this, I know that
if you speak because you’re one with authority, you can heal
my servant. There’s no need for you to come
under my roof. There’s no need for you to enter
my door. For I’m a man under authority
and there are people under authority of me. I say go and they go.
I say come and they come. I say do this and they do this. And so Jesus, he says by faith,
you say the word And you let my servant be healed. He knows
about pecking order. He knows about authority. He
knows about speaking a word and the thing is done. And somehow,
some way, by God’s grace, it has come into the centurion’s
heart and it’s come into his mind. By God’s grace and the
hearing of Jesus’ words of ministry, this man can speak and he can
heal. This man can speak and he can
create. This man can speak and All authority is given to him.
And even the demons listen and run. He has faith like Abraham. He believes that God can raise
the dead. He believes that God’s word is
powerful. And so we see the gospel run
through the mind and the framework of this powerful centurion, who
is a captain, who is a leader in the army of Rome. And Jesus
speaks, he speaks of He speaks of this man’s faith and he’s
speaking of this man’s faith being strong. But in a sense,
he’s saying to Israel, he gets it and y’all don’t. Here’s an
outsider, a Gentile. Here’s a Roman. Here’s here’s
a man outside of Israel. He gets it. And you all don’t. You’ve got the law. You’ve got
the prophets. You have the centuries, the millennia of my rule and
reign in your country. And here’s an outsider, a Roman,
a transplant. He gets it, but you do not. You see, because they believe
that this man was worthy. He was worthy of Jesus. He was
worthy of salvation. He was worthy to have Jesus do
something for him. It was all merit based. You see,
they were caught up in religion, but here was a man caught up
in Jesus. They were caught up in the religion,
the rules of the do’s and the don’ts and the must and the must
nots. But here was a man who was caught
up in the simple fact that Jesus is mighty to save. Jesus is able
to do what no one else can do. This man realized he was unholy,
he was undeserving. Jesus should not even enter his
house and come under his roof. He may have done a lot of things
right. He may have done a lot of benevolent things, a lot of
good things and kind things. He may have built the synagogue,
but in the eyes of God Almighty, so what? Empty, we come to Christ,
nothing in our hands we bring, but simply to the cross of Jesus
we cling. And so here is a man who is caught
up not in religion, but he’s caught up in Christ and he has
received Jesus. He’s rested in him alone for
his salvation. He’s come to the end of his resources.
Here was a man who could get what he needed. He could ask
for it to be done and it would be done. Everything was at his
disposal. But there was one thing he couldn’t do, and that was
save his servant. But only Jesus could. And it’s
a good reminder to us to get close to people who believe like
this. Get close to people who love the kingdom, who put their
heart and their soul and their money and their efforts into
the kingdom of God. You’ll be blessed if you’re close
to them. I mean, what if this had been someone else’s servant?
They probably would have been dead. But he was the centurion,
the God-fearing centurion servant. And so you see the benefit there
is to be in the covenant family, to be in the covenant community.
Earlier today in the new members class, we were talking about
the requirement that the denomination has. If you’re a Christian and
a member of an ARP church, it is required that you make a diligent
use of the means of grace. One of those means of grace is
fellowship. We give of our time, our talent, our energy. But we
come when the church doors are open, when the elders call the
church to be together, we come together and there’s benefit
from that. We like to say, what was that old American Express
commercial? Membership has its privileges. It’s the same with
the church. Here is a man who was deathly
ill and needed saving. And because he was in the household
of this man, this master, he was near to the Lord Jesus. In this passage, we’ve seen Jesus
out in the countryside ministering, preaching and healing. We’ve
seen him come into Capernaum and do the same, preach and to
heal. We see Jesus on a mission. I mentioned earlier that this
is a transition for Jesus. We’re seeing him open up the
gospel to the Gentiles. We’re seeing him spread the love
and truth of the gospel, the love and truth and goodness of
Almighty God. in the land of Israel, but it’s
going out and about. People are coming from the far
east, west, north and south, but it is also going out to Gentiles. And here’s a Gentile, a Roman,
a centurion who has faith. And Jesus marvels at his faith.
He says, not in all of Israel have I found faith like this.
You know, there’s only two places in the New Testament where Jesus
marvels. He marvels here at the faith of the centurion. But in
Matthew’s gospel, or I’m sorry, in Mark’s gospel in chapter six,
he marvels again. But at that point in time, at
that case, he doesn’t marvel at faith. He marvels at lack
of faith. He marvels at the unbelief of
the people. What is this passage showing
us? Well, it’s showing us two powerful men. There’s a centurion
who rules and leads and commands. His headquarters is in Capernaum.
And then there’s Jesus, the Lord and master who his headquarters
is at Capernaum as well. And he rules and he leads and
he commands. But only one of them is Lord.
Only one of them is supreme. And this centurion understands
it. And he bows his knee in submission
to the Lord God Almighty. Now, before we forget our lessons
from previous passages in Luke’s gospel, this is one continuous
story. If you read Luke’s gospel and
continue on through Acts, you read of the acts of Jesus, the
acts of Jesus as he’s come to earth from heaven to usher in
his kingdom. And he’s just preached a little
sermon. That the wise man builds his house on the rock. And don’t
you see here this centurion, he’s a God fear. No, he’s more
than a God-fearer. He’s caught up in Christ. He’s
left behind empty religion that will do nothing for you except
hollow you out and burn you out. And he is like the wise man who
digs deep until he finds the rock. And that rock is Christ.
And on that rock, his household is built. And we see that his
servant, before Jesus even reaches the house, he is healed by the
word of God. When the storms come, when the
wind breaks, the water rushes against this man’s house because
it’s built on Christ, he sees great blessing. And so what faith,
what would Jesus say about our faith? Would he marvel at it? Would he marvel at it with sadness
because it’s really not faith, it’s unbelief? Or would he say,
never have I seen faith like that before in me who has died
for you. Let us pray together. Our Lord
and God, we pray that today you would strengthen our faith. We
have so many voices speaking into our ear, bending our ears
for our allegiance. We think we can do it ourselves
because we’ve got enough money. We think we can get better because
we have great health care. We think we can rule and reign
and govern ourselves because we’re pretty smart people. We’re
well educated. But in the end, in the end, it
is it is false. It is not true. And so we receive
Jesus, we rest in him alone for our salvation. And we want by
your word and by your spirit to know Jesus more and to trust
him more and to rest completely on him, knowing that we ourselves
are empty. We are not worthy, but there
is one worthy one and we trust in him and him alone. And we
pray that you bless us in this way and we pray it in the name
of Christ. Amen.