I appreciate y'all allowing me to be here today. Brother Glenn and I met months back through some insurance work with both of us. We talked and became fast friends. We prayed together and visited some and emailed each other a lot. One day he asked me if I'd be interested in praying up here. I said, if you need me sometimes, I'll do that. I kind of volunteered, I thought I was going to have an ankle surgery, and I said, if you need me for there, I'd be glad to do that. And he said, well, really, if you could do it this weekend. So here I am on that. And so I will mention again that he mentioned that he'll be back at 6 o'clock tonight, and be doing 1 Corinthians 10. OK, first I'd like to have a prayer for myself here, for all of us. I know we've prayed, but can't pray too much. So let me go ahead and offer a prayer. Our Father in heaven, you're creator of the heavens and the earth. And You have created every living thing in each one of us. And I know I'm a sinner. We're sinners saved only by Your Son Jesus and His blood. I do thank You for that gift. And Lord, I pray that You guide me and guide us as I speak today, that it would be pleasing in Your sight and give You glory. And guide me in everything I say. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Can y'all see me out there? I've been told my wife used to teach kindergarten and I'd go in there and see the little kids and they'd say, you sure are big and you sure are tall. And I think about it, I used to be a little taller too. But anyway, I promise you I was a little bit. Since I was new, y'all don't know me, I thought it would be good for me to give a little testimony about myself and a little bit more about me. But it also, in a way, does fit with some of the things that will be in the message today, which later will be Matthew 8, in case you want to be there. Matthew 8, 5, 13, a little bit before I get there. But I was born in Meridian. My mother's family and her side of the family were strong Christians, had a good Christian life. I saw that as a young person. My dad and his side didn't have that, just very minimal. Dad wasn't going to church. There were big reasons for it, I believe. One thing, my dad, he was a veteran of World War II, and this is important because he was wounded severely and crippled, and he was on crutches. He was a pretty nice fellow most of the time, but I don't know if you can say most, but part of the time. He would get into his moods and he was a verbal abuser. Along with that, he's passed away now, but he was a verbal abuser. He didn't beat me or anything, but he would put me down a lot. You know, just, you're dumb, stupid, and idiot, and all these kind of things. Like the expression, I wish I had a nickel for every time he said that I'd be rich. But the reason that, you know, I never really hated him or anything for it. I knew he had problems. I was young. I think as I've gotten older, the Lord helps me understand that better, but at the same time, so I don't hold that against Him. But because of that, I didn't feel a very big inside. I mentioned earlier, can you see me? It's pretty obvious. I'm like I've always been big to folks, but I didn't feel big inside. When I was a young child, what I saw in my mother's side of the family and my dad's side caused me to want to accept Christ at an early age, and I did. I think the Lord knew that I needed Him to help me through some of those difficult times I was facing. However, I did not continue to go to church like I should. I mean, I did, but it was sporadic, and I didn't study my scriptures as I grew through my teen years and went on to college. And so, just sporadic, but I was very lukewarm, to use a biblical expression. And I wasn't terrible, but obviously was not doing as I should. I met my wife Nan, some of y'all have met her. We met in college. We dated through college, and about the time we finished, we married. And I had two children. My daughter was first. She's 33 now, and she teaches up in Brandon. My son is 30 and he's graduated from seminary in Jackson and I'm proud of both of them. I do mention their ages in a way because that does fit in with the Lord changing some of my attitudes about things. I was hired, first I was a Youth Corps counselor at Jones County Youth Corps and then I was hired as a counselor for JCJC, of course down at Jones. And later became an instructor, a teacher, and I've been doing that for many years, the last 20 or so years before I retired. But going back to when my daughter was born, that was about 33 years ago, the Lord's Spirit made it clear to me that I needed to change and be a better example and live more closely with Him. It just seemed to hit me there was a renewal in our church and a lot of events caused us to pray. business soul-searching, and so I realized that I remember my grandparents who were very instrumental with their walk with the Lord that influenced me that I saw. And I realized I wasn't being that example, and I had this little dollar here just born, and I realized I needed to do that. So he caused me to refocus. And I had been a Christian, but I had, like I said, not really been growing as I should. But he refocused my attention and gave me a new kind of enthusiasm about the faith. Came away with my church attendance, reading the Bible, prayer. However, another thing back at the junior college occurred. I was, of course, young. I wanted to make a little extra money. They had some night classes come up, like at Raleigh. They had some veterans who were being taught. And so I never had taught before. And so they asked me, since I have a degree in psychology, would I be interested in going and teaching a psychology class up there? I never had taught before, but money seems good to make a little extra money. So I said, yes. And then I discovered about how much of a fear I had about getting up in front of people. And you mentioned not feeling real comfortable eating music or whatever, those kind of things, or not used to it. I had never taught and I never thought I'd get up in front of people. So that really was a major problem there. was teaching, I would literally be having to have a handkerchief in my hand. I'd be perspiring so much, I'd better word be saying sweat, if I can say that here. But anyway, I don't just perspire a little bit. But anyway, I would be rubbing the sweat, and I'd be looking down like this, holding on to the lectern, you know, couldn't even look up at anybody. And so the deans kind of, somebody must have called them, and they were being real nice one day, and they asked me how things were going. I said, why? You know, a little defensive. They got in a car or something and they said, well what teaching method are you using? I said, I guess I'm pretty much just reading what I have in the book. They said, well Hank, we know it's hard first teaching. So I said, I'll try to do better. So in the Christian praying, I had to do some real praying there because I did not know that was going to end up being what the Lord was going to have me do a lot of my life. It was not the psychology that I had taken in college so that I could be a counselor that didn't help me with those fears of insecurity. What it was, was the scriptures and particular sermons especially that helped me really turn a corner there in my fears about getting up and speaking in front of people. I ended up enjoying doing that as a teacher for many years. There was a story a minister told. Another minister he knew at his church, a lady. had gotten into a depression and they had tried medication and counselors and she had actually gotten to where she was being institutionalized because she was getting almost catatonic or what we call it, you just sit there and don't seem to respond to anybody. And they were worried that she was going to end up permanently institutionalized because of this depression. And so he said that the couple from the church said, can we go speak to your wife? And the husband said, yes. He was desperate. And so they went and shared to her about putting on your spiritual armor in Ephesians and talked to her and encouraged her just to, you know, don't even have to say it out loud in your mind or say it out loud to anyone and put on that spiritual armor every day before you go out into the, you know, get up or whatever. And so she started doing that and they said within about a week or two she was out of that facility and back at home and a month or so she was back to almost normal. We all have problems, so when you say normal, we still have difficulties. And I heard that, and I was sitting there saying, Lord, I can't get up in front of people and speak. And I said, I looked at the scriptures, and I went through Ephesians, and then I noticed what was an interesting thing. It said, you put on the armor, and then pray. And the sermon the minister preached pointed out that a Roman soldier, and that's what was tied to an analogy in there, he said he doesn't get out and go around in the day and start doing his duties and then put on his armor if something happens where he might need it. He said he gets up and puts it on immediately so that he's prepared for the day. And I realized I was praying, but I wasn't putting on my spiritual armor. And it made a big difference. Now I'm not saying that's healed everything that I've had difficulty with in life, but it did begin to change that greatly. And I began to grow in my confidence in getting up in front of people. Somehow, like I say, the shield and the helmet protect you from the flaming missiles. We know our enemy is not of this world, you see, and so it made a difference. Okay, and so all this, of course, increased in my enthusiasm and love of the Lord and brought me to where we are today. Alright, so today I want to ask you a couple of questions just before we get into the Matthew 8 section. How well can you see? Now, I don't want to fool y'all just because I'm old. I do have contacts on, or I wouldn't be able to see anything up here. But, can we see better as we get older? I think normally the answer would be no to that, but I'm going to be talking about different kinds of vision today. When I was young, I heard scriptures read that puzzled me. It's simple, and y'all have heard it many times. Jesus would say something like, may those that have eyes see, and those that have ears hear. And I did not understand what that meant, because I figured, well, people have eyes and ears. What does he mean by that, you know? And so I just didn't understand or didn't get it. And so let's look at three points I want us to consider as I'm going through this section. I'm sure there are many more. But one is the authority. We'll look at a major point, I believe, about authority there. How important is an understanding of authority? Another point will be faith. I kind of think of that as like a glue that holds all that we know together. And then seeing as God would have us see. So those three points. Let's look at Matthew 8, 5 through 13. And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant, why I fit home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus said unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this man, go, and he goeth. To another, come, and he cometh. And to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said unto them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast into the 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 filled in the same hour. This is the word of the Lord. All right, let me again pray, please. Dear Father, I do thank you again as we have and we need to many times a day. I just thank you for bringing us safely here and each one of us. your scriptures that we just read, that are your word to us. I pray that we will trust in you and begin to see things as you would have us see through your Holy Spirit. Please pray that the things I say in relation to your word is pleasing to your sight and remove it from our hearts and minds if it's not. I pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. First point I'd like to mention is that of authority. How important is authority? Of course, we are familiar with the first commandment that says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. The Father, as we realize and know, is above all things in the heavens and the earth, and everything that lives and moves, He's created, plus things that we don't even see that's not of this world. We're familiar with passages in the Bible where people see things that are not of this world. So, over the seen and unseen. Now, here's an interesting point to me, that this story is always one of my favorites as I was reading through Matthew, and you've got a centurion that saw something that others did not see. Look at verse 9, and the centurion said this, and this is especially for understanding authority. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, go, and he goeth, to another come, and he cometh, and to my servant do this, and he doeth it. I've noticed before in life, now myself and others, I see how God can prepare us in our occupations, and in those occupations sometimes it trains us to see things maybe that we wouldn't see if we were in a different occupation. I think of an example. A man and I were on a vacation many years ago, and I'm sitting on the boat of transportation we were on, and this man next to me was a policeman. And I was a youth court counselor at that time, so we had a little connection in the law enforcement field. And so we talked a little bit, and he said something interesting to me. He said, you know, I have trouble enjoying a vacation. And I said, why is that? He said, well, he said, I looked over there, and I looked through this person. He said, they're about 5'11", about 180. And he said, I look over here, and that person's 6'2", 200. And that person looks like they don't fit in right here. I have trained myself to constantly be ready to be able to answer questions about people's height and size in case I have to testify and all these kind of things. And so he had trained himself to constantly, and it's hard for him to shut that off. And so whatever occupation I've seen people that are accountants and they seem to notice things about numbers, that's why I would use one instead of trying to do it all myself. So they see things that I wouldn't see. And so, the centurion, as some of the books have left in, would say, he's probably a captain of about 100 men. And so, being in the Royal Army, we realize at that time in history, of course, they were very dominant, and so there'd be many things that we could understand would probably be descriptive of him. Because the Royal Army was very organized. He wouldn't be where he was unless he was organized. He was disciplined. He had probably proven himself in battle. He was brave. He was probably intelligent and a leader of men, or he would not be put in that position. The Roman army from out here was very strict, like many armies can be, but even more so than some. He understood unquestioned obedience was expected to those in authority above him, and of course he expected the same of the men below him. He realized something about authority that nobody else seemed to say because look at Jesus' response in verse 10. When Jesus heard this, what was so amazing is that Jesus heard this and he marveled. There is a section in the Bible where you read something about that and I'm thinking, how would it be to marvel Jesus? To make a statement that was so profound that it impressed him. What we realize here is we realize something about authority that we miss sometimes. When did disrespect for authority come into play? Sometimes our mind might run back to the Garden of Eden, and we realize that that's not really the place where it truly began. And, of course, there are a couple sections, but I chose one that I'm going to just read to you in Isaiah 14, 12 through 15, and we're going to look at the Old Testament and see a glimpse of where rebellion against authority began. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine own heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north, I will be like the Most High, yet thou shalt be brought down to hell. to the size of the pit. In verse 14, of course it always struck me, he said, I will be like the most high. And if you study a little bit more scripture, it seems to indicate that Satan was a high angel, was beautiful, and he was first to suffer from the sin of wanting to be replaced God, I guess you'd say, or be a God, I guess you'd say. And so what happened is the rebellion began with Satan. He led other angels with him in rebellion. They were cast out as we know. And he next appears in the Garden of Eden. And Adam and Eve eat of the fruit. And we rebelled against God. And mankind has now been blinded by it ever since then. But also look back at, I think also, why Jesus marveled. Look at verse 8, the centurion said, but speak the word only and my servant will be healed. See Jesus was volunteering to go to this house and the Roman soldiers realized that that wasn't even necessary. Can you know something without understanding it? The answer is yes, and I'll explain in a minute. Can you understand something without knowing it? No, and I'll explain in a minute. Well, let me go ahead and say now, the television. I know that signals come in through sometimes a hair through a cable, and it comes on the screen, and the colors are in the right places, and whatever it is moving around is in the right place. Now, I know it works, but I couldn't explain it. Somebody with an engineering degree could explain that. Also, not too long ago, I had to go fly on a plane, which I don't do often. I know it's supposed to, most times, take me safely and bring me back, and it did, fortunately, but I don't really understand about how powerful the engines have to be for how much weight the plane is and the pitch of the wings and the thrust that has to go through for the air to come over the wings, provide the lift, keep it in there, but an aeronautical engineer needs to understand all that. So, I tell you, if an aeronautical engineer understands all the mathematics and physics involved, he will know that it will fly. But you can't know something without fully understanding, you see. And that was the point I'm saying here. And that's what was so amazing to me, was the centurion understood it. He just not only knew that Jesus could heal him, he understood he didn't even need to go to his house. You see how deep of an understanding I think the centurion had. And here's a man that's a soldier and he understands that if somebody bows and says it's got to be done, he's saying it's going to carry it out. So that was an amazing thing to me. Alright, now the next two points here, or the second three points that kind of blend together somewhat is about faith and then seeing. I'll read just a couple of shorter verses, one from Hebrew 11.1 and another 2 Corinthians 4.8. to make a point on this. Now, faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Also, 2 Corinthians 4.18, while we look not at things which are seen, but at things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. There can be a temporal faith inside, that means a worldly or just world faith inside, and there can also be a spiritual faith inside that only God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, can help us see. Let's look at some temporal examples. I mean, most of us have faith that our cars don't crack every day. That's kind of a faith, you see, a simple one. And we also, I've thought about some of these shows on TV, like crime scenes, they're investigating and they've got equipment. Find things that we can't see with the human eye, they're still in this world, they're tangible, but special equipment is needed to see those things. So there's things that can be hard to see, or we need help, but still it's in the temple world. And then also upon myself and all of us, we realize that as a child we grow up and we see things one way, and we get older and we begin to see things differently. So whether a person's a believer or not believer, they could have those kinds of faith and things, like the car cranking and scientific investigation, I guess, and also mature and see things differently as an adult. But that's what we can all do, but they do not have the other part of the scene that I'll get into in just a moment. Now, there's one more story that's closer that to me has been just a little illustration in my mind that is a story that helps you about understanding something new. even though you've been exposed to it a long time. I was told many years ago of a man that wanted to take an art class. He always felt like he had a little artistic ability, but because of his work and things, he just never had time. So he retired and signed up for a class at the junior college there to take it for enjoyment. And so, of course, they showed him how to draw some basic shapes. You practice on first, and they moved into shading. And then they moved into, like if you were drawing something with a light source, where the shade would have to fall. And so he realized, if you've got enough lights this way, the shadow's going to be on this side of everything, whatever. And so he said, right after that class one day, he gets up the next morning to leave, to go somewhere. And on the street, he's lived for 20 or 30 years. He said, as he's pulling out, it's about 7 30 in the morning. He said, the trees are there. There's a shadow on the road. And the street is lined with trees, no shadows anywhere. And he thought to himself, you know, if I was going to draw a morning scene with some of these trees at 7.30, I'd need to draw the shadows here. And then he comes back late in the afternoon, and he's driving back. He said, well, you know, the shadows are in an entirely different place. He said, so I would have to draw the shadows in another place. Now, the point was that he said, I mean, he had seen those shadows for 20 or 30 years that he'd lived in that home. But he'd noticed the shadows, but he hadn't even really thought about time of day and little extra things if he was an artist. Now, a new appreciation of the shadows would not make him a skilled artist, but he might improve in that skill. And yet, that is similar, in a way, to what God does when we're born again in the spiritual sense. God puts his Spirit in us, and we have faith, and we begin to see many things differently than we have seen them every day prior to then. This also should begin to affect the way we live. If we continue to read God's Word, to pray, and to come together and worship, God will guide us and will heal us in the ways and at the time that is needed for His glory and our growth. I told you about spiritual needs that I had a little bit earlier. I told you about my needs earlier, that I had in my life, that I needed the scriptures by putting on some spiritual armor. And He had healed me of that need that I had at that time to be able to teach and do my job. Now does that mean that He is going to heal me every time and every way and at the moment that I want it? I don't think that is necessarily so, but at that moment in my life is what I needed to be able to do what I believe God had intended me to do for the next twenty or so years. Now some things have seemed to be tougher and I still pray about those. But the thing we still need to remember is through that prayer and faith it will bring us to Him. One more special point that we need to understand, I believe spiritually, that's also I saw in the story. There are many stories where Jesus touched people and healed them. And we could read about that and say, well that's back in the Bible times and Jesus touched them and healed them. But He's not here today. But this story is even special in a sense because the centurion realized Jesus does not have to be here in person to actually touch us. The centurion, all it took was Jesus' word and he'd be healed. So he realized he didn't have to be here today to still heal us of our needs. And that was a very important one that also stood out to me. And so again we look back and it says, Jesus said unto the centurion, go thy way as thou hast believed. So be it done unto thee, and his servant was healed in the same hour. May we honor our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the authority of God, and continue to learn to live by faith, and by a sight not of this world, but a sight that you can have only if given to you by the Holy Spirit, and so that we can turn our lives over to God every day. Let's bow our heads and I'll close with prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, I do thank you for this day. I do thank you for your provisions for us in so many ways that it's hard to understand in all the ways that you watch over each and every one of us. And I thank you for that. I thank you for the love that's shown to me and friendship and coming today to this body of believers. And I pray that you will be with them. Be with us through the coming week until we come together again and pray for Brother Glenn's safe return tonight and pray that you will guide us in all that we do. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.