What a blessing to hear your testimony, brother and sister. Thank you. It's always encouraging to hear God's work in someone's life, is it not? My text tonight is the gospel of Luke chapter seven and verses one through 10. I'm scheduled to be in your pulpit today, and again, not until August 18, I believe it is, and then September 8. So I took a chance in having a series on Psalm 139, knowing that you wouldn't remember every sermon from one to the next. So I'll review just briefly when I get back to Psalm 39 on August 18. And then on September 8, I plan to finish Psalm 139 by preaching the last two messages in the morning and in the evening. But tonight we're in Luke chapter 7, verses 1 through 10, and following your copy of the scriptures as I read it in your hearing. After he had finished all his sayings and the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. And by the way, the sayings were at the end of chapter six, which is a summary in many ways, very similar to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, six, and seven. So now he's in Capernaum. That was his hometown, the hometown of Peter. And it's a beautiful little town, so I'm told. And you can see the Sea of Galilee from Peter's house. We've seen it, actually. Well, let me not talk too much and read the scripture, okay? Here we go. 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, 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. So the reading of God's holy, inspired, inerrant word, we thank God for his word. Now, notice here what Jesus says in verse nine. What's said of Jesus, I should say, in verse nine, it says, when he heard these things, he marveled at him. He was amazed at him. And, Why was he amazed? Because it says, I tell you not even Israel have I found such faith. Now I think our ESV does us a disservice by translating that word such as such, because it's a very big word. It's a word that means, well, let me tell you what the lexicons say. It's a word that means great quantity beyond normal expectations. So much, so great, such a large. So what Jesus is saying, and by the way, it's the word that's used to describe the crowd, of 4,000 that Jesus fed in Matthew chapter 15, it says that he fed such a large crowd. So what our Lord is saying is that this faith of the centurion is such a faith. It is beyond expectations. It's a huge, great quantity of faith that this man had, we read. So Jesus marveled at it. What do you marvel at? Are any of you going to watch the Olympics this week? Well, probably I'll watch a few of them. We don't have time to watch them all. But don't we marvel at the great feats of the Olympians and the various sports in which they participate? Well, Jesus marveled at the faith of this man. And he was, in fact, it says that he was, marveling means he was amazed at it. He was amazed at it. As the God-man, he was amazed at the great faith of this centurion that came to him. Now, ultimately, all the miracles of Jesus prove that he is the Son of God, the true Messiah. This miracle also shows the great compassion, as many of the miracles do, that our Lord performed. He spoke the word and the boy was healed. But since Jesus speaks about the great faith, the theme of this message has to be great faith. Because Jesus is amazed and he's marveled at the great faith of this centurion. Now, I want to make something very, very plain. And that is, not everyone has great faith. And it doesn't take great faith to save a man. It takes faith, faith alone in Jesus Christ. There's some faith that is small, some faith that is medium, and some faith that is great, such as this centurion. You remember the father who had the demon-possessed son. And he said to our Lord, if you can do something, and Jesus says if, all things are possible to him who believes. And the father replied, oh, help my unbelief. I believe, help my unbelief. And the boy was healed. He had tiny faith, but the Lord answered his prayer. If you've read the second part of Pilgrim's Progress, where Christiana and her sons take the journey to the Celestial City after Christian has already died, when you get to the end of that second part, you read, well, all through it, you read about two interesting characters. There's Great Heart. He had great faith. And then there's Ready to Haul. He made his way to the Celestial City on crutches. He just could, he always had doubts and difficulties and just wasn't sure of things until he got to the river. And then as he was crossing the river, that is, into glory itself, he cast his crutches aside. He says, I will them to my son, who also has little faith, you see. And he walked through the river into the glories of heaven. So I say that because I don't want some of you here to think you have little faith, and there may be some of you like that. I think many times that's the way I am, frankly, that somehow you can't serve the Lord or make it to heaven. No, it is faith alone in Jesus Christ that saves us. But there is such a thing as great faith. And what I want to do is to explore this whole matter of great faith with you tonight by asking three questions about great faith. That is, what are the characteristics of great faith? Secondly, what is the source of great faith? And then thirdly, What are the results of great faith? Or what should great faith produce in us? That'll be application. And I think it's an important application. And as I hope to show you, it's an application that Jesus Christ himself brings to this miracle. Well, having said that, let's look at three characteristics of great faith. Now, I'm going to give you a memory device to help you remember these three characteristics. The memory device, have you ever heard of Charles Haddon's version? Most of you have. The great preacher of the 19th century in England, they couldn't find a venue large enough to hold the crowds who wanted to hear him preach. Well, the three letters of his name are Charles C. Haddon H. Spurgeon S. So my characteristics are CHS. So the first characteristic of great faith that I want you to think about is confidence. This centurion has confidence, and it's amazing the confidence he has because of who he is. He was a Gentile, and he believed as a Gentile. Even though there was increasing opposition to Jesus Christ at this time in his ministry, he believed. in spite of the fact that the Jewish leaders were turning against Jesus, and in spite of the fact that he had built a synagogue for the Jewish nation, and even though these leaders were opposed to Jesus, this man believed. He had confidence in Jesus. And furthermore, if you notice in our text in verse 6, we find out that he believed that Jesus Christ is God. Look at that verse with me. He says, and Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends saying, Lord, do not trouble yourself. Now, those of you who know the Greek language know that Lord in the Greek language can simply mean sir, and I can't mean that. Ah, but I tell you, that's not what he's saying here. When he says, Lord, he's saying it in the context of knowing that Jesus Christ could heal his son. My neighbor calls me sir, but he doesn't think I'm Lord. And furthermore, he knew that Jesus Christ could heal his son from a distance. Just speak the word. And furthermore, he uses this term Lord in that setting. So what he is confessing here, and which shows the great faith, he believed something that was yet to fully dawn in the minds of Jesus' own disciples, that here is God manifest in the flesh. Is it any wonder that Jesus marveled at his faith? He believed as a Gentile that Jesus Christ had all power that he could do whatever he pleased. And this is evidenced by the fact that he sent the elders to our Lord Jesus Christ. He had confidence that Jesus Christ could heal and that his request could be heard. Now, you see, faith always has confidence in Jesus. Even small faith has confidence in Jesus. No one comes to Jesus saying, well, if, well, I don't know if you can do it or not, Lord. I don't know if you're really able to do it, but maybe you can do something. I don't know if I'm really a sinner, but if I am a sinner, will you save me? No, faith has confidence knowing that we are sinners and comes to Jesus Christ with that confidence. Now this boy, furthermore, was paralyzed and in great pain. This may have been a paralysis that was combined with some type of muscle spasms, which may have affected the breathing, so that death seemed imminent. And is not this the way that we come as sinners? We heard testimonies tonight. We come as sinners, don't we? We come as sinners and say, Lord, I can do nothing. I must have you and I must rest in you alone. Faith comes, faith comes to believe that misery is a grounds for mercy. And so this father, so this centurion said, he came to Christ. Now, so we had confidence. So let me ask you this, what do you believe about Jesus? Is there anything you believe Jesus can't do? Can he do everything? Can he really do everything? Can he raise up rulers and take rulers down? Oh, yes, he can. He's able to save the greatest sinner. And he's able to save you. I don't know you all here tonight. Maybe all of you are professing Christians. But maybe some of you aren't. And maybe some of you, young or old or middle-aged, are still toying with the idea as to whether or not Jesus Christ can really deliver you from your sin, whether or not it's all really true, this whole matter of Christianity. I tell you it is, and you must have the confidence that Jesus Christ is able to give you light, forgiveness, and salvation in his name and his name alone. If you simply ask, if you simply ask, Some of you may be here with other problems in your life, perhaps it's physical illness, perhaps it's trouble in your soul, perhaps it's doubts that you have that keep arising in your own soul. And perhaps some of you are given to distress and even discouragement and maybe even into some form of depression. Is Jesus Christ able to deliver you from such a thing? He is able, He is able. And you must believe that He's able and cry to Him. because he can do that for his Lord. Well, so the characteristics of great faith. First is confidence. Second one begins with an H. A second characteristic of great faith is humility. We find this in verse six, when the centurion, verses six and seven, when he says at the end of verse six, He says, 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. You notice the contrast between what the Jews thought of him and what he thought of himself. The Jews said, he's worthy. He built our synagogue. Come and heal his son because he is worthy. And this man says, I'm not worthy. I'm not even worthy to have you come under my house, under the roof of my house. Now he's a Gentile. He understood that Jews don't associate with Gentiles. He understood that, but this was deeper and more profound than that. He was saying, you are so great. He'd already confessed him as Lord. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy for you to come. What is it that caused such a deep sense of unworthiness? It's because he had such a high view of Jesus. Such a high view. of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you feel unworthy? Or do you ever come, do you think that you're worthy, that you deserve to have God's answer to your prayers? I have a friend, whenever I asked him how he's doing, and he'll answer the same way every time. He's better than I deserve. That's true. How are you doing tonight? Better than you deserve. How am I doing tonight? Better than I deserve. We are unworthy of the least of the mercies of God. And dear sinner, if you're yet outside of Jesus Christ, you don't deserve to be saved. You're not worthy to be saved, but he'll save you. He will save you. And to the saints here tonight, have you forgotten the glory and the majesty of Jesus Christ, knowing that though we are not worthy of even the least of his mercies, yet he gives us everything. So great faith has confidence, great faith has humility, and thirdly, great faith comes to Jesus with simplicity. Confidence, humility, simplicity. I like simple things. and great faith has simplicity. How do we see the simplicity in this centurion? Well, verse 7b, he says, but say the word and let my servant be healed. That sounds like a little child who's about four or five years old coming to the father or mother and say, can you lift this heavy thing for me? They know he can or she can. A simple, simple thing. And, you know, our faith in Jesus Christ is simple. We simply believe. We simply believe that he's able to do what he's promised to do. And that's what the centurion said. So I trust that you are a simple person, and that in simplicity, you really believe all that Jesus says. You know, theologians are profound, and I love reading profound theologians. John Owen, who is better than John Owen? And his treatises, The Glory of Christ, oh, it ravishes the soul. His treatise on the Holy Spirit, or his treatise, if you really want to be convicted, read about the indwelling sin, that treatise, that essay. But you know what Owen said? He says, I would love to be able to simply say something as simple as Bunyan said in Pilgrim's Progress to reach the hearts and souls of men. Read Owen, but don't forget the simplicity of Pilgrim's Progress in the allegory. Ah, you see, there's this simple faith. So this is what this centurion had. Just say the word and it'll happen. Whatever your difficulty is as a believer in Jesus Christ, you can go to him and say, if you just simply say the word, I know you can help me. I know you can do it. I know you can help me. And there's a sense in which we have to do that every single day. I woke up this morning with dark, bad thoughts. What did I do? Well, I tried to get rid of them. That didn't work. And then I came to the Lord Jesus and said, help me, cleanse me. Give me, I repent of my thoughts. That's what we do, isn't it? We repent, we come to Jesus, and he, I said, how can I preach when I have thoughts like that? Well, if a preacher had to be perfectly sanctified before he could preach, there'd be nobody teaching you. It just wouldn't be. well we must move on here and uh... We must move on to our second thought. We've asked one question. That is, what are the characteristics of great faith? Now, second, what was the source of this great faith? And we have to ask this question because of this centurion and the great faith that he had. Where did he get this? Where did it come from? Well, it was not from a naturally good heart. We must understand that. There's good reason to consider this because it appears if you just look at it from a human perspective, that he was naturally good. This man had a servant that was dear to him. Now, in John MacArthur's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, where he deals with this miracle, he gives, as MacArthur's want to do, he gives a lot of resources about what this Roman man thought, what this Roman philosopher thought. And he quotes one by the name of Varro. And Varro said, the only difference that the Romans thought in their own minds between a slave and are about a slave was that between a slave and an animal and a cart was that the slave could talk, but he had no more value than an animal or a cart. Isn't that awful? Now, although that is what many Romans thought, we must remember that in the New Testament, centurions are always painted in a rather good light. which is fascinating. I don't know what that means, but people smarter than I will be able to tell you, I'm sure. But this centurion treated his slaves in such a way that this slave was dear to him, dear to him. He'd built a synagogue, as we said, But he was still a man who was lost in his sin, because the Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, no not one, not a single one. And the Bible tells us that there's no man who can come to God on his own. Jesus said, no man comes to the Father. No one has the ability. We must be drawn by the Holy Spirit. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.14, So what's the source of his faith? He was dead in his sins. The source of his faith is the source of your faith, the source of my faith, it is the grace of God. It is the gift of God. For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. The faith that you have, the faith that I have, came from God. Some people are raised in non-Christian homes. And yet God saves them. Some of us are raised in Christian homes, but God had to give us faith. So it is with this centurion. The faith he had was from God himself. As the Bible testifies many, many times, for to you, Paul says in Philippians 1 29, it was granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him. And as Ephesians 1 3 says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy. He had faith because he was chosen by God. Or 2 Timothy 1 9. who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. And this man had been given grace before time began. My wife and I listened to a sovereign grace preacher my last year of college, my senior year of college. And she was actually teaching school already. And he didn't always believe in the grace of God, and he was a man that if you listened to him, he was an orator. You were riveted to him. And dear Pastor Paul Kirkman, Fairborn, Ohio. The church was located at five, as he would say when he came to chapel to preach, we're located at five points geographically and five points theologically. And Paul Kirkman said one time in a sermon, he says, you know, when I went to cemetery, that's what he called it. When I went to cemetery, he said, he was joking, of course. But he said, I didn't believe these things. And they were talking about God choosing us. He's like, I called my pastor. I says, pastor, you won't believe what they're saying in these classes. And he said, my pastor told me, maybe you better listen to him, just listen to him. And then he says, I ran across this verse in 2 Timothy 1, 9. that this purpose of grace was given to us in Christ before time began. I always thought that it was the devil cast one vote against me, God cast one vote for me, and I cast the deciding vote until I learned it was the election took place before I was old enough to vote. And it did. And this centurion, his faith was given to him in the purpose of God from eternity. The ultimate source of his faith was God himself. What a comfort that is. You have faith tonight. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you know why you believe? Because God chose you. And because in choosing you, he gave you the gift of faith to come to believe on Jesus Christ. No man believes unless it's given to him. and it was given to you before you were old enough to vote. And you did vote. You wanted to come to Christ, didn't you? You did believe, you did repent, you did believe and come to Jesus because you wanted to. But you wanted to because of the wonderful, mysterious, glorious work of the Spirit of God. Praise Him for that. Well, I want to move to my third question. We've seen what are the characteristics of faith, CHS. Confidence, humility, simplicity. And the source of faith is the grace of God. And finally, what are the results of faith? Well, it's very simple. Verse 10 says, and when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well. He was healed. That simple. Now I was thinking, what kind of application should we bring from this? I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful event, a wonderful miracle. And it's a glorious, glorious thing to talk about great faith. And some of you are here saying, well, my faith is far from great. God bless you. If you have faith, you can be thankful. That's a gift of God. Some of you may have great faith. Praise God. He'll use you. All of us can grow in faith, and I don't have time to talk about why. I'll just mention, can great faith be cultivated? Yes. How is it cultivated? By doing what you're hearing tonight. Hearing the word of God, singing the praises of God, taking communion, praying. Fellowshipping with God's people all these things will help. So what whatever application can we have? Well, how a great faith be? Illustrated how can I illustrate it? Well, I don't have to go far because in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus gives us the application I always like it when Jesus gives the application guys are good application and the application that he gives is this when When he talks about this great faith, he says to his disciples, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Here's the application Jesus gave. He said, here's what's gonna happen. You see the great faith of this centurion? I marvel at it, but there's going to be many, he says, many that will come from the East and the West. We're the West people, okay? We're way west of Israel. Many will come from the east and will sit down with Abraham and Isaac. So the application is simply this. This is what Jesus promised. So to show our faith is to pray the promises of Jesus. And to pray the promises of Jesus, the greater our faith, the stronger will be our prayers that the gospel will spread to the east and the west and around the globe. Oh God, send your spirit, save multitudes. build churches. That's the application that Jesus Christ gave and that's what we need to do. You know there's a wonderful promise in the scripture that I think is so profound and so great and it's repeated many times in different ways. It's Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 14 where we read that for the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. Now that's a big promise, a big promise. And great faith will pray great prayers. Oh Lord, may the knowledge of your glory fill the earth. And let's not forget Clarksville, and where I'm from, Rockford. Illinois needs the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, I tell you. Well, so does every state in our union, and so does our nation, so do the nations of the world. And let's pray that way. And then I would just say this. I'm observing something, and I hope my observations are accurate. Well, I know they're accurate, I just don't know how big it is. But what I've noticed is, as I'm acquainted with a lot of Reformed Baptist churches in our nation, is that God is blessed. He's saving souls. We've seen a couple of conversions in our church. I wish we could see dozens and hundreds, and you may be seeing some conversions. So let's pray. You see, great faith prays great prayers. And the greatest prayer we can pray is that God will save souls and build his church and add to it. God, hear us and bless us. And we all say, amen. Praise the Lord. Glory to his name.