Well, welcome again to Redemption Church North Ogden.
I'm a glad to have all of you guys here with us.
We are in our series, the book of Matthew.
We walk through a verse by verse, chapter by chapter and
very slowly so that we can dig out all of the treasures that
are in the word of God. This was written by God himself
through men, of course, but we believe the Bible to be without
error, infallible, sufficient for everything we need in this
life. And so there's so much in it
that we don't want to Passover and, and, and even even in the
the efforts that we're doing to preach through this, there's
still things that we can't quite hit as much as we would want to.
And so, but thankfully we do get to handle this just chunk by
chunk, paragraph by paragraph. And that's what we're doing.
We're in chapter 8 of the book of Matthew.
And we last week started this section in the book of Matthew
where where the Holy Spirit has has chosen to focus on the
miracles of Jesus. We've seen, you know, the
teachings of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount.
And here we are. And it's a bunch of miracles
bunched together in this narrative, in this this book of
Matthew. And last week we talked about
how Jesus healed A leper and how that represented him saving us
from this infectious disease called sin that we all have that
only he could take away. And today we're going to look at
verses 5 through 13, and we're looking at the faith of an
outsider. This is the story that John,
Pastor John, read for us before we prayed about the centurion,
the centurion asking Jesus for his servant to be healed.
And again, as I've said, looking at miracles, you know, it's hard
to try to dig out of there. What does this mean for my life?
How does this apply? And as we look at the context,
the history, the background also, and each one of these
stories is written there for a purpose.
It's not just generally so, so we think, OK, Jesus does
miracles. That's great.
You know, it's more, there's so much more to the meaning of it
that we've got to dig out together.
And, and this story in particular is called a speech
story. It's it's it's a narrative where
the high point is not the event. The high point isn't actually
focused on the miracle itself, but it appears either during or
after the event. And a speech story then is, is
something where what is focused on is what is said rather than
the event itself. And so it's the words of Jesus
and the words of the centurion that we focus our time on here
and try to figure out what does this mean?
What does it mean for them? What does this mean for us?
I've got three points I want to look at as we look at the faith
of this outsider, A centurion. And my first one is this that
faithful friends intercede or appeal to Jesus for one another?
Let's look at verses five and six.
It said when he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came
forward to him, appealing to him.
Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home suffering
terribly. So this is kind of the the setup
of the problem in which Jesus comes and and kind of brings the
solution. A centurion comes up and says,
Hey, I've got this, this my servant at home and, and, and,
and Luke, Luke's version, if you didn't know, Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John are the gospels and it tells the narrative of Jesus
life. And, and some of the same, the
stories are in the other versions as well.
And in Luke version it, it tells us that this guy, the centurion
really loved this man. It said he was near and dear to
him. So this centurion who by the
way, is a Gentile Roman officer of the army of the occupation in
Israel under the authority of of Herod.
So this, these are the characters.
You've got Jesus, you've got the the the the servant who who is
being petitioned for or talked to Jesus about, appealed about
so for healing and then you've got the Gentile centurion.
What's a Gentile? A Gentile is someone who is non
Jewish, right. So in the Old Testament all the
way and even back to Jesus day, Gentile was just an outsider.
You see, God had chosen from one man, Abraham, to bring about
this nation called Israel. And he gave them the promises,
he gave them the law, and it was through them that the Messiah
would come. And everyone outside of this
nation, as you see in the Old Testament, is is an outsider, is
a Gentile. They weren't part of God's
chosen people yet at least. And so to the Jewish people,
Gentiles were unclean. They had to, they had to live
with them because the Roman Empire kind of came in and took
over Jerusalem and Israel at the time.
And so now they're, they're kind of living in oppression.
The Jews are. But this guy, this guy turns out
to be somewhat of a, a good guy. In fact, in the Luke version, it
says the the elders of the Jews came and talked to Jesus in this
narrative and interceded for him and said he is a worthy man.
He is worthy for you to do this miracle for him.
Why? Because he's, he loves our
nation and he even built us a synagogue.
So this guy, this this Gentile Roman officer who should have
been the enemy, was liked by the Jewish people and has done some
nice things for the Jewish people, even building them a
place of worship. Now, before I get to my point
about how he, you know, appeals to Jesus for his beloved friend,
his servant, there are just some things I want to point out in
this text. You know, is 1 is that this
really reveals to us where the Jewish people didn't quite
understand all the teachings of the Old Testament and the coming
of the Messiah and living by faith.
Because these elders of the Jews appeal to Jesus and say he's
worthy of you doing this miracle for him.
That just kind of points out their misunderstanding of
worthiness. You know, a miracle is grace.
If God chooses to do something in your life, in my life, to
come in and step in miraculously and change your situation, it's
not because he owes it to you or me.
Because of the way that we live, don't we live like that?
Sometimes, though, even we misunderstand the grace of God
and we think, if I live a good life, if I do some good
religious things, doesn't God owe it to me?
We even hear people say, you know, people that don't quite
understand the Gospel, that aren't even Christian.
They have this idea if I do more good than I do bad, I think I'm
going to heaven. It's probably a majority of
people, you know, that are not believers.
They think it's just fair, right?
That's their idea of fairness that they've made-up in their
own mind. If I do some good things and my
good outweighs my bad. This, though, is where they're
wrong. Now, the servant.
Let's focus on this servant for a little bit.
He's a young man, bedridden, possibly because of some
accident. Maybe it was malnourishment,
Maybe he had been overworking because he was somewhat of a
slave to the Centurion or a bond servant.
Nevertheless, he's paralyzed, he's suffering, and Luke tells
us again in his narrative to the point of death.
So he's not only suffering terribly, laying at home, not
able to move, but he's almost about to die in this centurion.
This guy who's basically to them, a non believer, comes from
this place of desperation and love, not for himself, but for
the servant as he was dear to him.
He's asking for help. Now I this isn't even the main
part of, of of the message, but because it's in God's word, what
I see here is this idea of intercession.
That's why I made it my point as faithful friends intercede for
one another or what does intercession mean?
It means to appeal on their behalf to another person.
It's actually a legal term. If you were in court, you know
your your lawyer would make intercession for you or a
witness would make intercession for you before the the judge.
That's what I call praying for other people in your life.
That's what the Bible would call praying for others in your life.
In a sense, you could say, although Jesus is there
physically in front of him, you could say the centurion is
praying for his servant. This is something that faithful
people do. Faithful Christians, faithful
followers of God, they intercede for other people.
It's not a selfish thing. We're not focused on ourselves.
We're we're, we're, we're concerned and we love other
people around us so much so that we are willing to spend our time
praying for other people. There are stories like Abraham
in the Old Testament. He interceded for Lot to God.
When when God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah,
Abraham said no, what if there are some righteous people in
there thinking about his cousin Lot the whole time, right?
Praying and praying, trying to get God to stop and eventually
God let him go and take Lot out of there.
Moses often prayed for the people every time that they
would sin and God would cause a a discipline or a curse to fall
on them, Moses would would plead on their behalf so that God
would have mercy on them. Did you know that even the Holy
Spirit and Jesus intercede for us?
In Romans 834 it says, Who is to condemn Christ Jesus, the one
who died? More than that who was raised?
Who is at the right hand of God? Who indeed is interceding for
US? Jesus Christ sits at the right
hand of the Father in heaven, ever making intercession.
In fact, in in Hebrews it says it beautifully.
Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw
near to God through Him, since He always lives to make
intercession for them. Think about this for a moment.
When you are in trouble, when you've messed up, when you've
sinned. Yes, Christ atoned for that sin
on the cross, past, present, and future.
But in a sense Christ is now our Mediator standing before God the
Father and saying as as almost a remembrance, although God
doesn't need to remember because he has perfect memory and he
knows everything. But symbolically, Jesus is
saying I died for them, I died for them.
They're clean, they're they're mine.
You gave them to me. Remember that.
Remember that because God is the wrathful God and and sin needs
to be dealt with. But every time the His children
sin or our suffering, we can have this picture in our mind
that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father ever always
praying for us is what the Bible says.
Now let me flip that then. If this is all going on and we
see this in this Scripture, my question to you is, do you love
people enough around you to go before Jesus and plead to Him on
their behalf? I know that we all think about
praying for one another and it's a thing in the Christian life,
you know, as maybe you're new to the faith, then you you, you're
not quite in that prayer life thing.
But as you grow your, your prayer life grows and you start
to figure out what am I praying for?
Who am I praying for? And one of the things that we
should always have on our prayer list almost every time we go to
him, rather than just saying, Lord, do this for me, please
help me, please save me. I know we're, we're, we're a
selfish people. I can tend to even lean that
way. I want to jump right into all
the things that I want in my life.
But there's something about this guy's faith that is an example
that he, he pleads for his servant.
Are you pleading for and praying for people in your life when
they're sick, when they're not doing well, when they're
struggling financially, when they're struggling in their
marriages, You husband, wife, are you regularly praying for
your spouse? I know.
Let me just, I'm going to be honest with you guys and just
reveal that we all know that we want to change our spouses,
correct? Be honest.
There's things about them that we wish were different.
And instead of constantly telling them that and trying to
do the work of changing them, why don't we go to the one who
can go to the one who will? Or maybe they don't need
changing and it's you that needs changing.
Just saying. I mean, it's probably a bit of
both on both sides, right? But are we praying for the
people that we love? We need to be praying.
And are they in sin? Not just sickness, but are they
in sin? Are you praying for them then,
right? Knowing that you yourself are
not without sin. And so as much as we want to get
angry at others and what ends up happening in our own self
righteousness, we forget to pray for those closest to us.
Even if they sinned against us, we should be going to God on
their behalf. Save them, forgive them, O Lord,
as you've forgiven me. I've done so many things as
well, Lord. And, and so God, you've brought
me out of that. Now please bring them out of
that. Faithful friends, appeal to
Jesus for one another. That's one thing I see in these
verses. But let's move on.
I have another point. Humble faith reveres Christ's
authority. It goes on and it says, And he
said to him, I will come and heal him.
But the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come
under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be
healed again. We see the compassion of Jesus
as we saw last week to the leper.
He says I will make you clean, I will do what you've asked.
Says the same thing in this one. I will come and heal him.
I want to. It is my will.
It's his desire. And what we see here though, is
something interesting about this man who who is who is
interceding his humility. Here again, contrary to what the
Jewish pals thought, he is not worthy of this gracious act,
although it the religious people thought he was.
He says, no, they've got it wrong.
I'm not worthy. I am not worthy of Jesus Christ,
God in the flesh who stepped down on earth, the sinless 1 to
come under my roof. There's something major about
that. He's not worthy, but he still
wants something done, a good thing done.
He's coming, you know, with with good character.
Now I'm going to just give it away and say that this guy has
saving faith and that's what he's representing is saving
faith. So we can call him a Christian
now. And so let's let's look at this
scenario. Grace is unmerited favor.
It's a gift, OK? He wants to do something nice
for other people. He's helped the Jewish people
build their own church so that they could worship.
How does this apply to us? What would be a good
application? You know, maybe it's a church
member who is very generous and has outstanding character,
humble enough to know that that that that the actions that that
person does doesn't make them worthy of any special privilege
or for that matter, grace from Jesus Christ, right.
We all know as Christians that God's salvation is a gift and is
not owed to us. And so therefore, how could we
come in to the House of God or even in our relationships in the
world? And when we do the things that
we're just supposed to do because Christ's nature is in
US. Humility.
Remember, Christ was the ultimate humble one as well.
The king of the universe who stepped down to be born like one
of us. That's called the humiliation of
Christ. How then can we go around doing
good works, having good character and thinking that own
owes us any special privilege or grace?
It doesn't. It's just we're doing what's now
coming out of our new nature, right?
We're being generous because Christ was generous, because God
was generous. We're wanting we're praying for
other people, not so that we can earn brownie points with God in
heaven. We're praying for other people
because Jesus prays for you and me.
We're doing good things. We are serving.
The reason we serve it's it's because we're under the
authority of Christ and we're his servants not to gain
anything. This is just who we are.
We fall in line, we're willing to take the marching orders and
do his will because not only is he our master, but we love him.
And he said, if you love me, you keep my commands.
And we want to, even though we don't do it perfectly, we want
to, right? And now with this guy, as I
said, he's a Roman officer, gentile, Roman officer of the
army, high-ranking officer, and he has a special place of honor
actually. I mean, the interesting thing
about his humility, we see it in the next verses here.
It says for I too, I'm a man under authority with soldiers
under me. And I say to 1 go and he goes
into another, he come and he comes and to my servant do this
and he does it. So in his request, humble
request, he recognizes Christ's authority even over his own
authority. You know, the military and our
and our culture in America, especially in the Christian
Church, there are a lot of Christians, men and women that
have went and joined and fought and been a part of our military
in America. And so then we give them honor
and respect, rightfully so. We thank them for the duty that
they've carried out to keep us safe, to keep us in religious
freedom in this country so that we can continue to be the light
of the world, hopefully. But in all of their
accomplishments, they're still unworthy of coming anywhere
close to the Lord Jesus's glory and authority.
Doesn't matter all your the medals and the badges and the
people that were put underneath you, even at your job, if you
want to talk about it like that, if you're a, if you're a leader,
if you're a manager, if you're a business owner, you're a
supervisor, whatever it is that maybe you have a pedigree of
academics and you've done so much and you've accomplished so
much. All of us probably have things
like that in our lives, but what we find is, is that all of those
don't bring us any worthiness before Christ, you see, And all
of those accomplishments that we have done are only possible
because of what Christ has done in US and for us.
And it's even his common grace that we're even able to have
gifts and abilities and health to do anything because all the
glory goes to him. The Bible says he's the giver of
all perfect gifts. Praise God, from whom all
blessings flow. So this Gentile military leader
in the world's greatest army at the time, a free Roman citizen,
a man who has household slaves, which means he also has some
money, thinks Jesus is so worthy that it's unthinkable that our
Lord should come over and just let himself in.
Because that's what Jesus was going to do, was going to go
into the house and heal him. And this is this is unthinkable.
Think about that for a moment. You know, it's like I got this
application from one of my commentaries that says it's like
the Queen of England coming to town, meeting you on the street
and saying, oh, I'll just stay at your house tonight.
What would you say to that? At first, you would be honored.
But then you'd come to your senses and I, I don't care how
upscale your house might be, you would suddenly recognize what a
dump it is, right? And you'd say, oh, she can't
stay here. That is this man's disposition.
But even greater than that, who cares about the Queen of
England, right? Compared to the Lord Jesus, he's
unworthy to have royalty. That's he is the king.
That's what Matthew's been setting up this whole time.
Jesus is the king of the universe and he is unworthy to
have royalty like this in his own house.
That's humility and that's reverence towards his authority.
Here comes that train. This happens every so often.
I make a big deal about it. If I didn't say anything, you
probably wouldn't care. But because I joke about it
every time. So a Jew did not enter the House
of a Gentile. Also, this was, you know, kind
of an Old Testament rule. Jews weren't supposed to go into
the House of Gentiles. It would make them unclean.
And and this guy somehow knew that because he had been sitting
around, probably worshipping with the Jews to some degree
because he helped build that temple, he would have heard lots
of teachings. This must be how his faith came.
He heard about the Messiah and somehow we know, we talked a
little bit about how salvation works.
It's not just because this guy's wiser than everyone else that he
got it and they didn't. But through the power of the
Holy Spirit and God, this is this is this man was made for
this moment because God knew this.
This story is going to be solidified in Scripture.
So we'd be preaching about it today.
It didn't happen by random chance, but this man has faith
enough to see the authority of Christ and it causes him to view
himself in a proper way as well. Even after all of his
accomplishments. He recognizes as in this analogy
that he uses, that I have people under me and they do what I say,
but even more so you, our Jesus, He's basically confessing that
Jesus is the boss on earth who can give commands and they are
carried out. Christ can command sickness to
be healed, He can command the dead to be raised, He can
command the demons to flee, and he can even command creation to
bow. And we will see more of that in
this section of Matthew's Gospel.
But one of the things, again, that is evident in in the book
of Matthew, the last chapter is something this man sees.
But Jesus tells his disciples in the end, all authority in heaven
on earth has been given to me and this guy sees it.
Here's the question. How about you?
Do you see that authority when you're in a desperate time?
Where do you run? Surely this guy could have went
to any number of doctors. He had money, He could have went
anywhere. But he knew only Jesus could
help this man. Only Jesus could fulfill this
request. How about you?
How about us, right? Is he greater than the advice
that we can get from someone else in a situation in our life?
We're so quick to run to so many other places in the world.
I mean, maybe even taking this back to prayer.
How many times do we search Google about a problem before we
dropped our knees? We think Google's pretty
authoritative. And I'll tell you what, it's an
amazing tool. You know, you can ask it
questions and it scans the entire interwebs of of
information to pull out a bunch of stuff, right?
But we understand that. But do we understand that God is
so much bigger and greater than that?
He is the authority on every subject in the world.
Can we not go to Him in prayer 1st?
And then because what we do first is where we really place
our faith right? Even when we trust our own,
when, when something's going wrong in our life, what is it
that we do? What's the first action that we
do? Well, people would say natural
reaction is to jump into action, right?
Some of us or there's fight, flight and freeze, whatever you
want to call it. But so yes, some people get
scared, start worrying a lot. Some people start trying to fix
problems. You know who you are, right?
And again, that's not a good recipe in marriage when one's
the other and one's that, when you're both opposite, one's the
fixer and one's the I need some time, you know, But just know,
where are we going first? We trying again, trying to tell
them all of our feelings first. Or maybe we all need some time.
The fixer. The fixer first needs to say,
man, I need to stop for a minute and I need to talk to the Lord.
And then then if I want to hear him.
And I think that's most people's complaints, but I don't hear
something from God right away. Well, that's to build your faith
#1 #2 He's already spoken, and it's in this book.
You want to hear I say this a lot.
You want to hear God speak audibly to you?
Read it out loud, right? Everything we need for life and
godliness in this book. Where's the authority in your
life or yeah, do you think because of your accomplishments
that you can fix this? You can solve this one?
This guy humbly knew he couldn't solve this one with all the
authority had, all the accomplishments he had and all
the money he had. He still knew he needed to go
plead with Jesus, cause only Jesus has the power and
authority to change this situation.
All right, my third, then and final point is this.
Salvation by faith alone is marvellous.
Let's read on. When Jesus heard this, he
marvelled and said to those who followed him.
Truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
I tell you, many will come from east and West and recline at
table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven,
while the sons of the Kingdom will be thrown into out into the
outer darkness. In that place there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. Focus on that first sentence for
just a moment with me. Jesus marveled.
Isn't that interesting? Jesus was amazed, astounded at
this guy's faith because of his humility, because of the way he
cared selflessly about another person, and ultimately because
of the words he said about Jesus's authority.
He, Jesus, knew that this guy knew who he was, which was rare
at this time because the Jewish people couldn't see it.
They were blind, they couldn't see who he was.
Wouldn't that be great to think that our faith marvelled Jesus?
You can't say that about everybody in the Bible.
It's it's really few and far between that God is kind of
amazed at someone's faith. I believe those examples are
there for a couple of reasons. You know, one, to maybe strive
for that, have the type of faith that that is marvelous.
But secondly, I do think again though, that it's we're not just
saying that what this guy has, none of us can have.
In fact, faith in general is marvelous to Jesus.
He loves it. It's the only way we can come to
God is through faith, not by our accomplishments, not by our
works. And that's really what's being
brought out in this story, as we've seen the the elder Jews
have gotten it wrong. This guy's humility about
himself bringing nothing but only asking by faith.
Jesus is basically saying that this guy's faith surpasses
anyone on earth at the time, maybe even compared to his own
disciples. And we know if you know the
Bible man, these guys failed time and time again following
him. They were like doubting him.
Peter denied him three times. They didn't really understand
what he was doing. They did enough to follow him,
but it wasn't until later that they got the clearer and fuller
picture. This guy ultimately though, his
faith is, is is astounding because everybody around him was
rejecting him. It was a very small group of
people that really trusted in Jesus while everybody around him
didn't get it. Now, just a little side note.
It's interesting to think it's this.
This does not mean that Jesus was surprised.
Jesus is God, but as God and man while he was on earth, yes, he
has this emotional life with emotional reactions.
God has emotions in the Bible, and it's to help us understand,
to to relate to God. In fact, we have emotions
because God has emotions. Not only has Jesus been
astounded by this guy's faith, but he's also saddened and
troubled by the lack of faith in the people around him.
There's a beautiful and yet sad story in John chapter 6 where
Jesus starts teaching these hard teachings and it says people
couldn't understand it and they started leaving him.
And Jesus turned to his disciples in a sad moment and
invulnerability even makes me emotional.
But he says, will you leave me to to his own disciples?
Jesus experienced emotions in this life and this one in
particular, Faith versus lack of faith.
Israel lacked any kind of faith that in fact they had it all
wrong and they only chose to listen to bits and pieces, but
didn't put it together about the prophecies of the Messiah to
come. And Jesus is standing right
before them as their Savior, sent to them as the chosen
nation, and they're still trying to earn their way.
They're still trying, not seeing that the law was given to them
to show them how sinful they were and how desperate they are
and how much they needed Jesus. And So what else do we see then
in this passage? He says many will come from east
and West and reclined at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
in the Kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the Kingdom will be
thrown into outer darkness where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. That that passage right there
where it says many will come east and West.
He's now finally revealing something that was again, it was
in the Old Testament, but they passed it by.
This was this was saying that God was now opening up salvation
and his his privilege of being a chosen people is now coming not
is not just staying with Israel, but is now opening up to the
whole world. Many will come from the East and
the West, from from both sides of the earth, and they will come
and recline at table with the forefathers of the faith, the
patriarchs of the faith, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom
by the way lived by faith. Abraham is called the father of
faith. The law didn't come till Moses.
Abraham in Romans chapter 4 is righteous because of his faith.
It's always been about faith. Yes, God has a standard and a
moral law, but it shows us how far we fall short and that by
faith and faith alone in Jesus Christ, the one who has come and
the one who already died, past tense for us, but for them is
going to die for them. Jesus is giving a glimpse of
what the rest of the Old Testament makes so much more
clear to us. Paul helps us understand that
that because of the rejection of the Jews, this was part of God's
plan so that it could be opened up to the rest of the world, and
then that the Gentiles faith us. You and I now make them jealous.
The people that were supposed to be the chosen ones.
Romans 930. It says, What shall we say then?
That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it,
That is a righteousness that is by faith.
But that Israel who pursued a law.
That would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching the
law. Romans 910 and 11 paint a
picture of of God's plan of opening up salvation to the
whole world and some parts of it are hard for us to understand
that this was God's eternal plan and this is how in his
Providence he's using that Romans 10.
He says, Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for
them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that
they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking
to establish their own, they did not to submit, submit to God's
righteousness for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes. This is where we get faith
alone. It's all over in Scripture.
God wants us to come to him by faith.
This story of the centurion is a Gentile who wasn't even a part
of the chosen nation without any of the privileges of God is able
to come to him by faith. And as I said in in Romans 11,
this plan, this mysterious plan that God is doing, it says.
So I asked, did they stumble in order that they might fall?
But by no means. Rather, through their trespass,
salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel
jealous. Why is this significant?
Because without God opening it up to the Gentiles, you and I
wouldn't be here in church today.
We wouldn't be headed to heaven. We would not have a relationship
with Jesus Christ. This is a marvelous truth.
It is also a mysterious one. In fact.
First, Peter says this amazing thing in verse 12, chapter one,
verse 12. It was revealed to them that
they were serving not themselves, but you in the
things that have been announced to you through those who preach
the good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into
which angels long to look. Even the angels are astounded at
this whole grace through faith alone in Christ.
The Gospel angels are looking at this like wow.
Now we're the chosen race, the royal priesthood, a holy nation
of people for his own possession.
As Peter goes on to say, this thing's been opened up.
All people come to Jesus by faith.
Faith is a gift. The Providence of God gets us to
this point. And So what do we do with that?
Then? We look at each other, we look
at ourselves, and we say, how did I get here?
Again, with the humility of the centurion.
I don't even know why me? Why did I?
I did? Did I humble myself enough to
get to this point? I don't dare to say that grace
is a gift, and as Ephesians 2 says, a gift of God so that no
man can boast. So here we are.
We should marvel at the fact that we get to be a part of
this, that we get to know who Jesus is because there are so
many people in our world that don't get it.
If you're here today, if you don't get it, I would, I would
ask you, I would plead with you. Do you see something here that
you haven't quite seen before? Are the words of God starting to
penetrate your Stony, stubborn heart and your mind?
Is God letting you into this marvelous faith?
It seems so simple that all I have to do is believe that Jesus
came, He died on the cross. I went against God, but that
atoned for everything I've done against God.
But yet you haven't come to that point yet of saying Jesus is
Lord like this man has. Will you do that today?
If you can and if you will, he will answer that prayer and come
into your life and heart and change you from the inside out.
As the story ends, it says into the centurion Jesus said go, let
it be done for you as you have believed.
And the servant was healed at the very moment.
The main idea what can we learn from this miracle?
The speech story as as it is called, we ought to be praying
for those that we love, not just for their physical bodies, but
for their souls also. And no matter what we've
accomplished in this life, Jesus Christ has accomplished so much
more and has earned his place of authority in everyone's lives.
There's no excuse. Nobody can say that Jesus Christ
hasn't earned the position as Lord.
It's just, will you submit to it?
And lastly, we come, we must come to him in faith to receive
the marvellous benefits of the gospel.
This thing that we can't earn and we don't deserve, yet we're
going to be transferred from from earth to heaven one day in
perfection because of nothing we did but by faith alone.
Where do you stand on this today?
You have a marvelous faith. I pray you do.
Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you again for your
word. Thank you for all that you've
done for us by revealing the truth to us, by sending your son
to die for us. Help us Father, in our faith.
We have weak faith at times. Help us to be strengthened
today. Even why we gather on the Lord's
Day to be filled up so that we can be strengthened for the rest
of the week. Help that be today.
Moving forward. Help all of us to walk out of
here full and rich so that we can go on to please you, to love
other people, to do your will and to make you famous.
I pray in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
Did you stand and see?