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Father, we do adore you this
morning through your Son, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy
Spirit, who lives and reigns within us. Turn us now to your
holy word, Father, and let your presence be known through the
preaching and proclamation of this, your word, we pray in Jesus'
name. Amen. And you may be seated. For those of you who are visiting,
we've been many weeks, few months in the Gospel of Matthew when
we got to the place of Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, which comprise
what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. And we've been talking
about the precepts Jesus taught there in the Sermon on the Mount.
We got through that. last week and entered into chapter
8, and we'll begin again with chapter 8 this morning. So if
you'll turn to Matthew chapter 8, I will read to you from verses
5 through 13. 5 through 13. And so Matthew writes, when Jesus
had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him pleading with him.
saying, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully
tormented. And Jesus said to him, I'll come
and heal him. The centurion answered and said,
Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but
only speak a word and my servant will be healed. For I also am
a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say
to this 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
this, he marveled and said to those who followed, assuredly,
I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in
Israel. And I say to you that many will
come from east and west Sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will
be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth. And Jesus said to the centurion,
go your way. And as you have believed, so
let it be done for you. And his servant was healed that
very hour. Father, we praise you for this,
the reiteration of one of the great gospel miracles. Make it
new and fresh to us this morning. Through your word, we pray in
Jesus name. Amen. And so we have a Centurion,
a Roman presumably, who was in the city of Capernaum. That was
where Jesus headquarters was at this time in his ministry
in Galilee, Northern Israel. And so this Centurion, this great
man, as we'll find out as we go through the story of his life
here in Matthew, and of a sliver of it that Luke gives us as well
on the same man, we will find that this is a man who came out
who probably could have demanded some things among the Jews, but
we find him not to be that at all. We find him to be a man
well-versed in Scripture. a man who actually recognized
something special about Jesus, perhaps not his deity, but certainly
his prophet status. Jesus had, of course, by this
time healed many people. He had demonstrated his power
and his compassion. And so this man felt as though
he could come out and ask a favor from the Lord. And so we read,
the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that you
should come under my roof, but only speak a word, and my servant
will be healed. This is the quintessential gospel
message. It has all the elements of a
true salvation message. Like any real confrontation with
the Savior, it begins with humility. We can't come before the Lord
as we are. We have to humble ourselves before
the Lord. And this man seemed to recognize
that. And also he recognized it on
behalf of another needy, we could say needier person. And you see
the compassion, not only in Christ here, but in the centurion himself,
who's very concerned about a servant, probably a slave that was in
his household. But like any real confrontation
with the Savior, it begins with humility. It begins with a confession
of our own unworthiness. Jesus once said when the religious
elite of the day accused him of fraternizing with sinners
or those who are undeserved, he said, only those who are sick
need a physician. What they probably didn't realize
is their own sickness, which is unfortunate. But a confession
of our faith always begins with a confession of our own unworthiness.
Why would we ask for grace of God if we already had it? If
a man is worthy, he has no need of a savior. If a man only needs
a physical cure, he can go to human physicians. You saw some
of that in the scriptures where they went. But for a spiritual
cure, there is but one place to go, one source of healing.
And so the story in the scriptures that we have before us is a story
of power. It's a story of divine power
spoken into the world. It's the power of God to call
things that are not as though they were. But it's more than this. It's
the story of a man who begins with a plea and ends with a blessing. It's the story of the graciousness
of a holy God who, we're told by the Apostle Paul, is able
to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that works in us. So there are a number of considerations
that I'd like to elaborate on this morning. This will be Should
we have time? A four-point sermon. We're going
to break the mold. Number one, I'm concerned with
the man's view of his own unworthiness. This is a man of power and status,
a man who's used to demanding things, a man who understands
authority, as we've seen, who at the same time knows the extent
of his power and the worth of his status. Solomon wrote these
words, even the king is served from the field. Friends, the
servants pick the potatoes and wash the potatoes and get the
dirt off them, and maybe they even mash the potatoes, but the
king's still eating from the same field that the servants
and all the rest of us eat from. It's humbling to recognize that.
This is a man that seems to recognize that. A second point, he said,
I'm a man under authority. I think the whole concept of
authority has fallen on hard times in our age. The whole reason
in medieval times why the saints of God broke away from what was
universally recognized as the Church of God, the Roman Catholic
Church. The reason they broke away was on the basis of authority. Who indeed is authoritative? Who really speaks for God? Is
it his written word? Or is it a man in Rome? Authority
is important. We have to go back to understanding
what this man understood, and that is we are under authority. Someone gives us orders, and
if we obey them, we please him. In fact, he marvels at us. If we disobey, we disobey for
the moment, but there will be consequences. And so he recognizes
he's a man under authority, so he claims his own unworthiness,
But he doesn't claim ignorance. He knows that the people of God
must come to a place where they recognize the authority of God.
For what is a God who is not sovereign? What is a God who
cannot call light from darkness? It's the very essence of Christianity. If you must know, it's the very
essence of all religion. Every religion claims exclusivity
of divine authority, don't they? And so do we. The difference,
it seems to me, is our God claims us for himself. Our God gave
himself for our salvation. So we're men and women under
authority. It seems to me today that the
church would rather revel in antinomianism. You familiar with
that? It means lawlessness. We think
today lawlessness is freedom. I'm free to do anything I want.
I'm free to be anything I want. It's not a righteous authority
that we look to today. A third point, and this is the
reason I chose the passage again. We've already looked at this
passage somewhat, but I chose it because I was driving along
in the truck the other day down the highway, 495, and I was listening
to last week's sermon. And I heard myself on the recording say that when
Jesus heard it, he marveled, and it was like a thunderbolt
from God. I wonder, have I ever made God
marvel? And why wouldn't it be the purpose
of our lives to make him astonished at the things we believe and
the things we do, the things we're willing to sacrifice because
we're men and women under authority to God? Have I ever made God
Marvel, it's time to make the Savior marvel. Imagine doing
something and impressing Jesus, and he's there with a smile on
his face, looking at the work you had just done, and looking
at these other people around and saying, this is the kind
of thing kids get mad at their parents about, why can't you
be more like your older brother? Why can't you be more like this
centurion? I have not found such great faith,
not even in Israel, where everyone's supposed to have faith in me. What a truly wonderful thing
it would have been for the Lord to say of us what he said of
the centurion that day. I have not seen such faith, not
even in Israel. A fourth point, should we get
to it, Something tells me we will. If there is a fourth point,
it would be this one from the reading today. How do we know
who is truly born of God? The sons of the kingdom, he said,
will be cast out. Do you find that troubling? I
do. That means you can think you're in the kingdom of God.
All your life has undoubtedly every Jew in that company that
day thought of themselves. And he said, the sons of the
kingdom will be cast out. Clearly, there are those who
believe they belong to the kingdom who do not belong. Amen? I think
there's a lot of people who think they belong who do not belong.
Friends, there is a lot of bad theology floating around. Have
you been to a funeral lately? Renee has been to one. It's a
lot of bad theology floating around. Friends, we can't afford
bad theology because our lives depend on the truth. There are those who believe they
belong to the kingdom who do not belong. Jesus even calls
them sons of the kingdom, and they'll be cast out. John wrote
of this very thing when he said, these things I have written to
you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may
know that you have eternal life. Friends, assurance of salvation
based on truth is almost as good a gift as salvation itself. It's good to go through life
knowing you have a Savior who died for you. You have a Savior
who has invited you into the very throne room of grace. And
he didn't say tiptoe in like some undeserving servant. Come in as a son of God and ask
favors of God and God will hear you. And you can be expectant
to receive what you ask. And so John said, I wrote these
things that you may believe that you have eternal life and that
you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. So
let's take the first point first. I am not worthy, the man said.
Now I am certain from the two accounts in the gospels of this
man that he has a genuine understanding of worthiness. A genuine understanding,
a biblical understanding. This is a man who reads the Bible.
And what was the Bible? It was the Old Testament. It's
all that they had then. Matthew wasn't written. He's
writing it years after this event happened. This was a man well-studied
in the Word of God, and we know that for a fact. And Luke makes
that a little more apparent than Matthew does, so we'll compare
the two. But friends, why do I say he has an understanding
of worthiness? Because he's the man in charge
on the scene. He's a centurion. What is a centurion? It's a man who is in charge of
a century. And a century is a hundred men.
He can command a hundred men. They are at his disposal. He
could enforce his will on that population of Capernaum. But
instead what he sees when he sees the savior is not only his
divinity, but his own unworthiness. That's a gospel message, friends.
That's the relationship we have to have. We don't get into the
presence of God by having a higher view of ourselves than we must
have, and we don't get into the presence of God by having a lower
view of Christ than we must have. It is through Christ, and Christ
alone. Worthiness comes from the Greek
word ikanos, and it has to do with weight. Worthiness is weight.
The lexicon compares worth to weight as if the worth of goods
at the market or the weight of a precious metal. That's where
the concept of worthiness comes from. Its actual definition in
this context is sufficient or satisfactory. What the man is
saying, I am not satisfactory, Lord. I need help. I am not sufficient. A born again believer, which
I think we all claim to be, infilled with the Holy Spirit of God and
renewed in his own spirit has to grapple with this concept
of human unworthiness. We have to wrestle with that
because our own spirit wants to exalt us and we must not let
it have its way. So a born-again believer who
has the Holy Spirit in him and is renewed in his own spirit
grapples with this sense of unworthiness that this, quote, great man had
reconciled. He knew he was unworthy. And
in biblical theology, no one measures up, do they? We have
a wonderful doctrine called total depravity, don't we? None of
us has what I'm going to call intrinsic worth before God. None of us has intrinsic worth.
God has to impart our worth to us. We don't come to God on the basis
of our own credentials. At the judgment, you're not going
to hold up your resume. Please don't try that. I love
you too much to have you try something like that. I've got experience in all these
things. I've done all these things, Lord. I laid at your feet. And
then you start walking in the door and it's like, hold up just
a second while I read this to you. We dare not hold up our
resume for him to see that we are valuable to him. We would rather throw it in the
dirt and declare our utter worthlessness in the moral realm. Worthlessness
friends is helplessness. Until the disease is probably
diagnosed, the cure remains a far off. Many of us know that in
the human realm, don't we? They try things and try things
and they're doing tests to find out what's wrong. Finally, they
hit it. Finally, the right medicine and the disease is cured. I've
been there a few times. Paul quotes from the psalmist
for this very thing when he writes to the Church of Rome, he said,
there is none righteous, no not one. He could have stopped there.
That's pretty final. You know, I understand those
words, don't you? They're very simply stated. There's
none righteous, no not one. See you next week. But he went
on, he said, there's none who understands, there's none who
seeks after God. They've all turned aside, they
have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good,
no not one, and that's not even the end of his diatribe. Isaiah
said it this way, all we like sheep have gone astray. Sheep
love to go astray. My pastor Ken used to compare
us to sheep all the time. And when he said, we're like
dumb sheep, I always knew he meant somebody that was sitting
right there. Probably me, I don't know. Something tells me, though, as
I read this passage, that the centurion is not simply mouthing
off doctrine. He's not giving us the first
point of his reformed theology. He's not just mouthing off doctrine.
He feels this in his heart, in his soul. He knows men are unworthy
before God. Yet he has observed that Jesus
heals anyway. Jesus healed other people. He
knew they were unworthy, but by compassion and mercy, he chose
to heal them anyway. So why not me? That's what we
all ought to ask. That's what the gospel preacher
ought to prompt us to ask of God. Why not me? I know my unworthiness
and I recognize who you are. This is what he's saying. So he knows we're unworthy, but
he's observed that Jesus heals anyway. So why does he heal? Must be love. Who knew the Messiah
would come with love? He provides the cure out of mercy. He could do anything he wants,
but this is what he chooses to do. He could strike us dead,
but instead he heals. He could tell us we're unworthy
and send us to perdition, but he doesn't. He makes the offer,
the gospel offer, and not for anything that we deserve. What
a merciful, wonderful story. I've said to you many times,
God's love is not deserved because it's not deservable. You couldn't
possibly deserve it. How do you deserve a gift? It's
too bad we corrupted Christmas time with the whole gift thing.
If you're naughty or nice, the nice kids get the gift. God doesn't
work that way. The bad kids get the gift too.
Because the nice kids should have recognized they too were
unworthy of the gift, right? God's love is not deserved because
it's not deservable. It is a gift. Friends, you can't
deserve a gift. Once you deserve it, it's a payment.
It's wages. Right? It's a gift. It's like a tip that just came
to me. A tip. If a thing is deserved, it ceases
to be a gift, and the real healing is the gift of God, not of works
that anyone should boast. So when we finally receive the
gift, we recognize it comes from God, and it's only out of his
mercy. Having said all those things,
however, what is undoubtedly the notion that the centurion's
concept of worthiness contains is his concept of Jewishness.
This is a man who's read the Old Testament. He knows that
the Jews are the people of God. They are the receptacle. They
are his own special people. They're the custodians of the
Word of God. It was given to them and their
prophets wrote it down. He sees them as special. He sees
that a Jew cannot have a Gentile in his house or vice versa. A
Gentile can't invite the holy man in. He's not allowed to come.
Do you remember at the crucifixion?
They, they went to, uh, they went to Pontius Pilate's house,
essentially his place of living, but they couldn't go in. It was
Passover. If they went in, they were unworthy
and couldn't partake of Passover. And you can't be a Jew and not
partake of Passover. That's your atonement, right? I don't think Pilate thought
too highly of them thinking his house would defile them. This
man understood his concept of worthiness was connected to his
concept of Jewishness. This is a man, as we shall see
from Luke's account, that is respectful of all things Jewish. He's undoubtedly immersed in
the old Testament. He recognizes God from the written
word. a man under authority. All these
concepts are working in this man's mind. And so he recognizes
that the Jews are the special people of God. Surely this man
has read Moses, and Moses wrote this, for you are a holy people
to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen
you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all
the peoples on the face of the earth. And here's this guy, I
am but a mere Roman. And he found out that the God
isn't one of the Roman gods. It's the God of the people that
he is given charge over. They are the chosen race, by
God's own words. And like so many examples of
this thing in the Bible, It provides for us, it gives
us hope that close proximity with this Jewish prophet will
put him in the favor of the God he has read about. He knows Jesus
will bring him closer to God. So he tries to get closer to
the Lord. Now it seems odd to us in the
present time, these issues of race. This man knows he's the
wrong race to get into heaven. There, I've said it. That today we're so fearful and
sensitive in our culture. We're always very careful what
we say because matters of race are ignite whole riots in the
streets today. We're always trying not to put
people into classes of being. We're careful not to interpose
stereotypes in order to offend, in order not to presume that
one particular person with all of his personal characteristics
represents a whole race or ethnic group of people. But this man,
this man is very content with this differences of race, and
he's the wrong race to be worthy before God in his own view. Now I say race because that's
the way they said it. We would say ethnicity today,
or ethnic background, right? But they're really, historically,
a kind of interchangeable. And we know that there is one
race, the human race, and all are from one blood. And we've
got that because we have a New Testament, and this poor man
doesn't have that. All right? So we're confronted with the
testimony of a man, a socially powerful man, a man of honor
and achievement, a leader of a hundred soldiers, who claims
that he's unworthy. And he's unworthy because he's
un-Jewish, in his view. And Jesus is going to straighten
out his theology and he's not going to be plagued by this anymore.
He's humbly respecting the prevailing racial ethnic differences pertinent
to his time. He didn't say, make me Jewish. In fact, he didn't even say,
make me worthy. He said, you're showing mercy
to some. Maybe you'll show mercy to my
friend. He's Roman, friends, and the
Romans have their own gods. You know, by this time, if you're
very careful in your reading of history, the Romans were getting
kind of savvy about all this god stuff. They were discontented
with the idea of these many capricious, lustful gods who rape women and
do other wicked things in the earth. The Roman and Greek pantheon
is full of those. This man's come to know the God
of the Bible. He has heard the God who called the universe into
being just by declaring it. By fiat, we like to say in Latin. He just decided one day to create
a universe. So he called it into being. This
man's read about that God. And he's recognizing this is
an emissary of that God. He's heard of the God who called
the universe into being, and so he pleads for a miracle from
this new Jewish prophet who's already demonstrated his wisdom
in the Sermon on the Mount, right? And his power by healing the
multitudes who came before him. Why not me? The gospel should
inspire that in everyone. If you can be right before God,
why not me? Instead, our pride tells us,
what makes you think you know something I don't know about
God? And so he pleads for a miracle
from this new Jewish prophet. He may or may not know that he's
face to face with the Messiah. He may not know that, but he
knows that the prophesied one will come with healing in his
wings. He's read that from Malachi.
Or maybe he's read Isaiah who wrote, by his stripes we are
healed. These prophets of God come with healing. He read about
Elijah and Elisha who did great healings for people, right? The widow's son, Naaman the leper,
right? Did great healings. So he respects
the mores of the moment, that's the social norms of the moment,
with regard to racial barriers. It reminds me quite like the
prodigal son. Remember the prodigal son? His
life became so unbearable that he remembered a few things about
his father. He remembered if he's rejected
as a son, you know, the servants are treated pretty good over
there too. Maybe he'll take me in as a servant. It's a demotion,
but it's better than nothing. It's better than being with the
swine, right? So he reminds me of the prodigal. If he's rejected as a son, he
would be content to be a servant or a guest in the master's house. Just let me in. Let me have close
proximity to you. Proximity is almost as good as
affinity. It's a nice phrase, isn't it?
I coined that for you. So remember it. So he says to the Savior, I'm
not worthy that you should come under my roof. If this man lived
in our day, he'd be marching around with signs, beating on
five-gallon drums, gathering a following to protest his racial
barriers to unworthiness. And he and his supporters would
be shouting those inane, rhyming protest slogans. I tried to think
of one to put it in there, and I thought, that'll just be stupid.
You know, they beat on a drum, and they say, one, two, three,
four, however, you know, and they have this rhyme. Christians,
we don't do that, right? But I'd like to point out that
this is not what this man did. He didn't protest that the Jews
have greater access to God than him. This man didn't claim humility,
i.e. unworthiness as a badge of honor.
It's just who he was. He simply displayed it. He owned
his humility. He didn't claim his right as
an official of the occupying force in Israel to have my servant
healed. If you're going to heal them,
then you must heal him. He didn't do any of that. But
rather he brought himself lower than he otherwise might have
for the sake of another man's healing, a beloved servant, an
obvious friend. Now Luke's version of the event
gives a little more detail. We find that the centurion is
utterly respectful of the racial barriers between he and the Jews.
But still, he gives his whole life to help the Jews of his
town of Capernaum, presumably. So in this version, rather than
ask the Lord for a favor, he sent friends among the Jewish
elders to prod the Savior to help a non-Jew. He was a non-Jew, but a good
non-Jew. There were some of those around. He's a Roman officer who's not
only friendly to the Jews, but who's genuinely inspired by Jewish
wisdom and respective of Jewish custom. If this man could become
Jewish, he would. And so we read this from Luke,
a certain centurion servant who was dear to him was sick and
ready to die. So when he heard about Jesus,
he sent elders of the Jews to him, pleading with Jesus to come
and heal his servant. And so in order not to defile
the new Jewish prophet, when he arrived at his house, we read
this. And when these Jewish elders came to Jesus, they begged him
earnestly saying that the one for whom he should do this was
deserving. Their view was the centurion
was deserving of the gift. Why? For he loves our nation
and has built us a synagogue. So now we know something else
about him. He's rich. He built a synagogue for the
Jews. A synagogue, he built a place of worship that he's not allowed
to go in. So there's the concept here that
to love the people of God and to do well by them is a favor
of God. And why wouldn't you have thought
that if you read the Old Testament where God said to Abraham, I'll
bless those who bless you. So he's blessing them because
he believes that God is good for his covenant word. So when
the Lord gets closer to the dwelling place, the centurion confronts
Jesus. He's fearful. This new prophet
might actually walk into my house. I can't have that. So he stops
them. And then the civil rights groups
all came out, clamoring for justice. And the state legislator would
enact a bill to outlaw anyone claiming to be Messiah if he's
not an equal opportunity Messiah. And if the Messiah was genuine,
they would have only seen the personal insult and missed the
divine test. It was a test. And once again, he would be crucified,
i.e. canceled. Those of us who glory in our
cause will forever miss the cause of Christ, friends. Demand your
rights from government, if you will, but before God, we have
no rights. We only have debts. Never demand justice from God. You might get it. demand nothing,
ask for mercy, and receive his grace. The centurion cared only
about Jesus' identity and nothing for his own. Verse 9 says, for
I am a man under authority, having soldiers unto me, and I say to
this one, go, and he goes. I say to another, come, and he
comes. I say to my servant, do this, and he does it. Seems to
me that there are Circumstances in everyone's life that help
us understand divine things. In this case, this man's military
service made him have access to the meaning of authority.
True, legitimate, absolute authority. And he knew it wasn't Caesar.
I don't know if you picked up on those nuances. But maybe that's
why Jesus uses so many parables, because he knows these things
give us access into understanding things like divine authority.
He compares the spiritual world with the physical world all the
time, doesn't he? He compares eternal life with
our day-to-day lives. He talks about agricultural things. He speaks about seeds and soils,
doesn't he? He speaks about wheat and tares
and mustard seeds, right, and vineyards. He talks about monetary
things like debts and revenue. He talks about loans. He talks
about profits. You should have deposited what
I gave you with the bankers and at least I'd have back with interest.
He talks about familial things like fathers and sons all the
time. If you then being evil know how
to give good gifts to your son, how much more will your father
in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? So when I saw this, I said, this
man's soldiering gave him access into an attribute of God, understanding
authority. It's from the top down. And I
said, what in my life gives me an understanding? And I've told
you this many times. And you look at your life and you'll
find something similar. But I always thought of my own advantage in
understanding theological things because I'm a builder. And what
does a builder do? You start with a design. And
if there is a design, there has to be a designer. And then there's
a plan, a print, something written before you. And you have to accomplish
what's on that paper, or you don't get paid, quite frankly.
You don't get approved. And so there's a plan, and all
the specifics of the project are laid out for me on that plan.
And I have to start here and go to the end. And when I get
to the end, I can collect my payment, because I've built according
to design. You learn quickly that when you
build, you must build according to the designer specification
or the work will not be approved. The inspector will come in and
give you the X. It's the same with the great
designer of the universe. There is a design for our lives.
In the case of the Centurion, he had his own view into divine
reality. He understands hierarchy of authority. He's a man under authority and
there are men under his authority. He gets that. He knows how authority
works. I give an order. No Roman soldier
would dare question an order. You know, in the military you
don't question orders. You don't say, well, can we talk
about this? Go take that hill. Well, let's sit down first and
have a conversation. You don't get to do that. No conferences, right? So you don't get to question
the order, much less refuse the order. Christians think they can refuse
God's commandments all day long and believe it's not indicative
of what's in your heart. And so his personal life path
prepared him for this face-to-face encounter with God. It was his
authority, it was his understanding of the military. He knows he's
in the presence of the designer or the general or the king. He
knows that orders come from the top down. And so he has this
dilemma. He pleads for a favor from the
only one who has the power. Yet the one to whom he pleads
is above him in the order of command. He knows that an officer
of the status of Jesus is too great a person to enter into
his humble dwelling as a Gentile. But he also knows that an officer
with such power and esteem need not be in the presence of the
servant to heal him. He can just say a word. He doesn't. He's worked this out because
he understands authority. He knows that the power of that
God of the Old Testament does not have to go into his house.
He can heal him just by speaking a word from outside the house.
And being a military officer gave him all this insight. There's
things in your life that'll give you insight into the character
and purposes of God. He knows that this new prophet
on the scene simply needs to speak As he spoke in the beginning,
as he called light out of darkness, and the earth out of nothing,
and how he breathed the life into the first man. This is the
God who breathed the life into the human race. He knows that. He's seen him heal. He's seen
that this great authoritative personality is also a compassionate
personality. So he fears to insult this Jew
by not asking that he enter the home of a Gentile, but he respects
his position as the only one who can speak to the fever, speak
to the infection, and the servant would be healed. So he's worked
it out. My servant can be healed without
the prophet coming into the house and defiling himself. In other
words, I'm not asking too much, asking just enough. It's best
to come to Christ with no sense of personal worthiness. It's
best to come with an understanding of how authority works, how ultimate
authority works. Ask, plead, beg if you must,
but never, never demand, and perhaps the Savior will hear
you. Verse 10, when Jesus heard it, he marveled. And he said to those who followed
assuredly, I say to you, I've not found such great faith, not
even in Israel, where you would have expected to find it, right?
Not even in Israel. There's nothing so affirming
in life as a father's approval. Maybe you have a mean father.
Maybe you have a father that very rarely said anything affirming
to you. Fathers can be demanding. Fathers
can be unreasonable. Perhaps you had the kind of father
that was not given to encouragement or exhortation, not a lot of
attaboys. But such men, when they finally
offer approval, their words are highly esteemed by the son or
the daughter. When a hard father, a hard man,
finally gives his approval, it's worth more than the father that's
handing out participation trophies all day long. Right? Scarcity adds to the value of
a thing, doesn't it? And approval is a thing that
must not be too easily uttered. There are no participation trophies
in heaven, and if you can hear it, there are really none in
the earth either. They're worthless. And so from this verse, I'll
make my application. This is the application. This
is the point of the passage that moved me to preach a whole sermon
on it. Set out in life to make God marvel. The Greek word for marvel is
thamazo. It's a nice word, famazzo. And
the first definition in the lexicon is this, to gaze in wonder. Jesus gazed in wonder at this
man's profession of authority. He made Jesus marvel. Imagine
the Lord Jesus Christ, who always pleases his father, expressing
his approval of a simple, earthly creature, a sinful, earthly creature. And he's pleased. Imagine hearing the Savior say
such a thing in your behalf. I wonder has he ever thought
that of one of my sermons? I guess I can't know. I wonder if he ever thought that
of one of my sacrifices, something I gave up so someone else could
have something. And so the application of the
passage is this, with every moment of your life, strive to reap
the Savior's approval. Make Jesus marvel. And note this, divine approval
is the product of faith. What made him marvel? The faith.
The great faith of the man. I have not found such faith. And so it is written, without
faith, friends, It is impossible to please God for he who comes
to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of
those who diligently seek him. Hebrews chapter 11. I wonder if Jesus ever said such
a thing in my behalf. Do you ever wonder that? Well,
now that I brought it up, gee, I wonder if I ever made a marvel.
I wonder if a single faith filled act might cause the Lord to stand
up and take notice of how we approach him. or how we esteemed
him, of what we dared to ask of him,
of what we were willing to sacrifice for the sake of a godly approval. Make this one note, though. The
faith that pleases God is diligent faith, but let's not throw out
the word diligent. He's a rewarder, not of those
who seek him, but of those who diligently seek him. Diligence
is the hard part of faith, isn't it? Diligence is zeal. It is fortitude. Diligence speaks
to continuance. It bespeaks a spiritual tirelessness
in the face of a trial or deep concern, such as the concern
the centurion had for the one who he loves, for the one he
pleads for comfort for, like we do on Sunday mornings. We
want our friends who are sick to be comforted, Lord. Will you
comfort them, we say. And we know comfort can only
come from God. It has to come, it has to go
inwardly. Show your tireless faith in the
hard places and receive the commendation of God. Job said to his friends
who urged him to curse God, in his moment of affliction, Job
said, though he slay me, yet I will trust him. That's diligent
faith. Verse 12, and this is the hard
part, I think. The sons of the kingdom will
be cast out. And I said to you before, the reason I add this
is there's so much bad theology in the world today. So much bad
theology in the church today. Friends, the United States has
birthright citizenship. Heaven doesn't. Heaven is not
like the United States. And I've just done some traveling
and I can tell you, I hope the United States is not like heaven. I hope heaven's not like what
I've seen. It never ought to be rightly
questioned as to whether a believer can lose his salvation. We cannot
lose something that God gives. He didn't give it to you for
anything in you. He doesn't take it away from anything in you.
You can't make God love you more than he already does by doing
great things. And you can't make him love you
any less. It's like a child to a parent. So the question isn't,
can I lose my salvation? It's, did I ever have it in the
first place? That's the only right question.
Israel fell for the lie, friends. That's why the Baptist warned
them. See, the reason the Centurion thought it was by race is because
the Jews thought it was by race. I let them off the hook because
I think if all I had was the Old Testament, I wouldn't have
figured it out either. The New Testament is the best exegesis
of the Old Testament. John, the first New Testament
prophet or the last Old Testament prophet comes on the scene and
what does he say to the leaders, religious leaders of the day?
He said, bear fruits worthy of repentance and don't think to
say to yourself, we're sons of Abraham. That means less to God
than you might think. He can raise up sons of Abraham
from these stones. He doesn't even need Abraham
to raise up sons of Abraham. Paul writes of this faithlessness
of the Jews. He offers it as a warning for
us not to follow. And he said, with most of them,
God was not well pleased. Mr. Centurion, don't keep trying
to be Jewish for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
You remember that, right? Therefore, let him who thinks
he stands take heed lest he fall." Don't have a higher opinion of
yourself and your worthiness and your salvation than you might
have. Look at your works. They tell
the tale. And so Paul can write to the Romans, therefore consider
the goodness and the severity of God on those who fell severity,
but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness. Diligent faith, continuance. Otherwise, he said, you also
will be cut off, and they also, if they do not continue in unbelief,
will be grafted in, for God's able to graft them in again.
We get second and third chances, it seems to me, before God. When we stand before him, we'll
have no excuse. He said, look at all the chances
I gave you. And so the apostle writes to
us saying, examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith.
It's one thing to proclaim it. It's another thing to examine
and find some cracks in it. Things that trouble you about
your own faith, about your own diligence. Test yourselves. Paul wrote, do you not know yourselves
that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless you are disqualified.
In other words, if he's not in you, you're disqualified. You
can't come of your own righteousness. He has to be there, but we're
not left hopeless. Not by any means. We're not left
without assurance because once we find in the examination that
we are truly the receptacles of the Holy spirit. that were
new creatures that all things have passed away and all things
become new, then we have assurances like this, and I'll close with
it. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus. Or he could have said, for those
in whom Christ Jesus dwells, which he said other places. They
are those who do not walk according to the flesh or the desires of
the flesh, but according to the dictates of this spirit. born
again by the Holy Spirit. Father, we praise you for your
word. We praise you for these tests, Father, and also for the
assurances. We praise you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Jesus Marveled P19
Series Sermon on the Mt: Beatitudes
| Sermon ID | 72725155710896 |
| Duration | 52:40 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 8:5-13 |
| Language | English |
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