Good morning, good morning. Hey, if you are new or visitor
guest just testing out church special welcome to you.
My name is Grant and I'm one of the pastors here at KPC and it's
good to be with you and it's good to be together.
We are in a moment going to open up Luke Chapter 7.
Luke is a gospel one of the books that accounts for and of
Jesus's life. It's kind of like a like a
documentary or a biography of many of the events of Jesus
life, this one written by Luke and we're 7 chapters in to
working our way through the entire book of Luke.
So to some of you who are jumping in, you, you may you
know, you may think that's not very far and you'd be correct 7
And like we've been here for a while, but this is one of the
things that I love about the church.
And I don't know if I think about it this way all of the
time. I don't know if maybe if you
have thought about it this way or not, but there aren't many
places in my life that encourage me to slow down, right?
And if you've seen me move, it's usually not slowly.
Having three kids at the various ages that they are also
encourages me to move quickly. Maybe you've had that
experience. Maybe if you grew up with
siblings, you had to eat quickly because you're like, if I want
seconds, I got to get the first down fast because, you know,
competition. But there aren't many places in
my life that that encourage me. And maybe you feel the same way
to slow down. And I love that this would be a
place like that that encourages us to slow down and to breathe
slowly and maybe a little deeper and to feel your feet on the
floor, your backs into the seat, maybe to feel your heart beating
and even to slow down. Because works probably not gonna
tell you slow down the highways aren't you're driving, everybody
flying past you. So I love that as we gather, one
of the things we get to do is interrupt all of that and slow
down. So I'm going to read through the
opening verses of Chapter 7 after we pray together, and I'm
going to do it hopefully slowly if I can manage it.
And then we're going to work our way through these verses because
I think there's something pretty powerful to say to us.
And I hope that you can settle into that, can slow yourself
into it. Let me pray, God, thank you for
your life and for your love. Thank you for your presence with
us. Yeah, thanks for that.
Your invitation is to a slowed down way of living and moving
and being. And thank you for rhythms and
habits and even disciplines that encourage us to do it.
Thank you that gathering together is one of those habits
and routines and even disciplines that invites us to
slow down and to listen. And so, God, I pray that you
would speak to us not because we managed to do things like in the
exact right way. So you know you answer, but
because that's your heart and that's your intention and
inclination toward us, toward those you created and love.
So God, slow us down. Let us hear your spirit.
Let us listen to these words, be it for the first time or for the
100th time. Yeah, they're pretty.
We would hear you in this, in your heart, toward each one of
us. I pray these things in the
strong Name, the name of Jesus, Amen.
So, Luke writes, when Jesus had finished saying all this to the
people who were listening, he entered Capernaum.
There a centurion servant, whom his master valued highly was
sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and
sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal
his servant. When they came to Jesus, they
pleaded earnestly with him. This man deserves to have you do
this because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.
So Jesus went with them. He was not far from the house
when the centurion sent friends to say to him, Lord, don't
trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under
my roof. That is why I did not even
consider myself worthy to come to you.
But say the word, and My Servant will be healed, for I myself am
a man under authority, with soldiers under me.
I tell this one go, and he goes, and that one come, and he comes.
I say to my servant, Do this and he does it.
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to
the crowd following, he said, I tell you I have not found such
great faith even in Israel. Then the men who had been sent
returned to the house and found the servant.
Well, soon afterward Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his
disciples and a large crowd went along with him.
As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried
out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a large
crowd from the town was with her.
When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her, and he said
don't cry. Then he went up and touched the
beer they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still.
He said. Young man, I say to you, get up.
The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to
his mother. They were all filled with awe
and praised God. A great prophet has appeared to
us, they said. God has come to help his people.
This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the
surrounding country. And so for for each of you, for
each of us, whether you come today to Scripture skeptical or
wondering, curious, with a little bit of faith mixed in
with doubt or full faith, boldly declaring, if you've ever asked
God for something, if you've ever wondered if he would speak
to you, I think these verses are for you.
And if you've wanted to ask God for something, if you've come to
him and you're not quite sure how to do it, you don't know
how, these verses are also for you.
And if you've ever been afraid to ask God for something, I I
think these verses are equally and also for you.
When Jesus had finished saying these things, this is how it
begins. When Jesus had finished saying
all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum.
So have you been tracking with us?
Jesus has been teaching and he's taught quite a bit.
He has spoken words about the Kingdom.
He has sat with his disciples, some of whom he called apostles,
with the crowds who had gathered to unveil the Kingdom of God, to
say this is how the Kingdom is, how it looks like, what it means
to be a part of the Kingdom of God.
It's not a this is what it will be like.
It's not a if you can all manage to do this, then it will be
here. He says this is how the Kingdom
is. This is what it is like to live
inside the Kingdom. So we talked about the Sabbath,
and he's just finished saying all this to the people who are
listening. All of this is a whole lot of
teaching. It's teaching about the Sabbath.
It's Jesus calling the 12 apostles.
It's all of the sermon on the plane.
It's blessing to those who are hungry, who are poor, who are
grieved, hated, excluded, insulted.
Its woes to those who are rich. Warnings of grief to those who
are well fed, laughing, well spoken of, who are rich, he
says. Love your enemies, bless those
who curse you, pray for those who persecute you.
Turn the other cheek, give your shirt.
Also, don't judge, don't condemn, stop judging, stop
condemning. Just don't have anything to do
with it, he says. Choose your teacher wisely.
Be ones who forgive and give extra measures.
Be ones who bear good fruit. Choose your Kingdom wisely, he
says, and build your entire life around it.
His teachings touch on a lot of different things.
Jesus finishes saying all of this to the people.
And then he entered Capernaum. This is an intention.
There's intentionality here. There's connection.
And, and what I want us to see just from the very beginning by
way of entering into these two stories of healings is that for
Jesus, they're not separate, they're not distinct, They're
not, I'm going to say the words about the Kingdom and then I'm
going to go and I'm going to live my life and see what
happens. Jesus speaks words about the
Kingdom. This is how the Kingdom is.
This is what it looks like, This is how you live into it.
And then he simply continues living out what he has just
spoken. There's no difference.
There's no disconnect between Jesus speaking the Kingdom and
Jesus doing the Kingdom things, living the Kingdom life.
He enters Capernaum, he carries the Kingdom with him, and as he
goes, we're going to see a couple of significant things.
Today we get to see what the Kingdom is like in fleshed
housed in a human body, in action.
But it's also gonna confront sickness and death and it's
going to include a Gentile or someone who is considered at
that time a complete outsider to the will and act and move of
God. So it's going to confront
sickness and death and it's going to include those who are
historically excluded. So he goes, we're having said
all of this finished the teaching, people who are
listening, Yantis Capernaum, their centurion sermon servants
on sermon who his master valued highly was sick and about to
die. So sick not only sick, he is
sick unto death. He's sick at the brink of death.
The centurion heard of Jesus and then sent some of the elders to
the Jews, or of the Jews to him, saying, Come and heal Jesus.
Would you come and heal his? My servant, the centurion was is
a middle ranking officer stationed in Capernaum.
He's a gentile. He's non Jewish.
This is a way to think about it. He's a Roman citizen.
Here's the reality of somebody in this position of centurion in
Capernaum. He probably typically the person
in that position wouldn't have liked the people around him very
much, wouldn't have liked the people that he was ruling or
that he was controlling. Chances are, actually, he would
have despised the local people and devalued them.
They wouldn't have felt much different about him in return.
That was the general relationship between these
commanding officers, these centurions, and the people that
they were tasked in subduing and ruling.
He, the centurion, was part of the Roman occupation in Galilee.
He was an occupier, They were occupied.
He was a symbol of oppression. They were the oppressed.
He was a reminder of their lack of freedom that they lived with
every single day. He commanded the soldiers that
kept them in line, that reminded them of their place.
He was, for lack of a better word, their enemy.
Or should have been. And they were his enemy.
And so here's one of the reasons why there's no disconnect.
Jesus has just said love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you. And immediately Jesus goes and
encounters one who would have been considered an enemy, one
who persecuted the people where the rubber meets the road for
life inside the Kingdom. Except that we're told this man
wasn't an enemy. He wasn't their enemy, and and
they weren't his enemy. The Centurion had come to love
and respect the people, not despise them and and they had
come to respect him and to not live in fear of him.
This centurion, he's heard about Jesus likely simply just because
he lived in Capernaum and worried about Jesus is
spreading. In Luke chapter 5, there's an
opening line that said word about him spread and they were
sending to him people who were sick and demon possessed.
He healed them. So word about Jesus is
spreading. People are hearing, including
this centurion. People knew who Jesus was.
They saw what he could do. And so this man, like many of
them, does the same thing. He sends the sick to Jesus only
in his case he sends people to Jesus asking if he would heal
the sick servant. There's some level of faith in
this centurion. In fact, in my Bible, this story
is not called Jesus Heals the Centurion, Servant or servant.
It's called the faith of the Centurion.
This is a story about faith and and so the centurion he sends
for Jesus, he sends these messengers on his behalf to
bring Jesus back to where he was staying to heal the servant.
I love this line. When they came to Jesus, they
pleaded earnestly with Him. On the one hand, I think you
want friends like this. You wanna be a friend like this?
You want friends who will go to Jesus on your behalf and plead
with Him. One of the things that I so
appreciate about our church and our church culture, and it's
growing and it seems to be contagious, is the way in which
we pray for others on their behalf.
The way in which you pray for others on their behalf every
Sunday morning. Just as one example, there are
many every Sunday morning as I'm praying and preparing and
rereading and sometimes rewriting sermon messages and
trying to just tweak little points and how is this going to
sound and how is this going to land?
And praying through all of that movement toward the service.
And as our bands are gathering and tuning instruments and
warming up and practicing and praying their way through,
preparing to lead us in worship, there's a group of people who
meet in one of the rooms to pray and who prey on your behalf
about all that will happen this morning.
About everything that takes place from the moment your foot
hits the the the pavement on our property until the moment you
leave and beyond, people are praying on your behalf that you
would encounter God. That as God shows up, that we,
each one of us, would do the work necessary to to calm and
centre and still ourselves so that we can be met by Jesus.
Everything we do on a Sunday morning soaked in prayer.
None of it, I'm convinced, worked without prayer.
Maybe more urgently is the way in which you many of you, pray
for one another during times of crisis, illness, sickness and
even death. The way in which words spreads
and prayers happen on behalf of others.
The centurion, he has a a servant who is sick and he is
about to die. That's what we're told.
And so he sends these Jewish elders to go and, and to
persuade Jesus to come in to heal the the servant.
They are ones who on his behalf are pleading to Jesus.
Jesus come and heal him, they're pleading on the servants behalf.
Jesus come and heal him. And there are moments in your
life where you need this kind of friend or intervention, where
somebody drags you to Jesus or goes on your behalf in an
attempt to bring Jesus to you and pleads to him on your behalf
for him to come and heal you. You need ones in your life who
will plead with Jesus on your behalf for God to show up and do
the thing that He is capable of, forgot to heal and amend and to
restore and bind together what is broken.
What the Church for centuries have called prayers of
supplication and prayers of intercession, prayers that are
given on your behalf. But on the other hand, when I
read this, I see these these people come to Jesus and they
plead earnestly with him. But this is their prayer, He
says. This man deserves to have you do
this because he loves our nation and he has built our synagogue.
They plead with Jesus based on the merit of the centurion, what
he has done for them. They say he loves our nation.
He's built our synagogue. He's acted with love and
kindness toward us. He's provided us with a place of
worship. He respects our religion and our
culture. Therefore, God, would you do
this? Would you do this for Him?
And so as much as we need to be ones who go and plead with God
on others behalves, and as much as we need others to go on our
behalf and to plead with God, God, would you do this?
I wonder if we can fall into the same relationship with God that
these first messengers do and think that maybe if we rack up
enough points, then then God is gonna do the thing.
We ask. If we can list enough things
that we've done and that we've completed inside of the week,
then maybe, just maybe, God will answer my my prayer on Sunday
morning. If finally I just I show up to
church and I do the thing, then maybe God will answer me if.
I can rack up enough points or we do the like Visa credit card
approach to prayer, right? So the like if this then that
like God, if you do this then I will owe you and then maybe I
will do that God, like if you do this for me, then I will what
does it sound like? Then I will live my life in a
certain way. Then I will commit to a certain
thing. Then I will give a certain
amount. Then I will do certain things.
Insert whatever bargaining chip you may try to use.
We think we need to earn the response we want from God.
But here's where I love how Jesus acts.
Says so. Jesus went with them.
That was it. There's no like intervening
sermon. There's no message.
There's no hey, wait, like you gotta get this thing correct
first. I'm gonna do this, but let me
tell you why Jesus just goes and says, So Jesus went.
We see Jesus as love and we see Jesus as compassion for them,
for the servant who is sick, for the centurion.
I don't think Jesus is convinced.
Like, OK, I mean, he's done Tell me again this he's built a a
synagogue. And you know, how is he acted
again toward you? And has he acted with love and
kindness? Like he doesn't chronicle a
whole list or check things off a box.
He simply goes, and I think he goes because what do we see many
times in Scripture? He goes because he has
compassion on them. It's a line repeated over and
over again. Jesus goes with them where he
was not far off from the house when the centurion sent friends
to say to him, Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not
deserve to have you come under my roof.
That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come
to you. But say the word and my servant
will be healed. So Jesus is on his way.
He's going. He is in the process of doing
what this centurion has begged him to do, which is heal the
servant. And the centurion sends a second
group. And this second group is
fascinating to me. AOK friends.
So he's sending another group. He's sending this time a group
of friends to say to Jesus, Lord, don't trouble yourself.
I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.
That's why I didn't even consider myself worthy to come
to you. And so I wonder if another error
or another false belief that we can act in as we approach God is
in some ways the opposite of the first.
Not a let me show you how worthy I am, but in a you know what?
I don't even deserve a second thought and and I wonder if we
can fail to pray and ask and request and plead on our behalf
on others behaves out of shame and guilt because we don't feel
worthy like God's not gonna pay attention to us.
Says don't trouble yourself. I don't deserve it, but then we
get this beautiful statement, he says.
This say the Word and my servant will be healed.
See this This belief in his worthiness or unworthiness
doesn't waver the Centurion's faith.
If anything, it emboldens him. He says listen, just say the
word and he will be healed. I think the centurion recognizes
Jesus as authority, even over sickness and death.
He believes that it's not the touch of Jesus that will heal,
it's Jesus doesn't need to show up.
All he needs to do is speak the Word and his servant will be
healed. I like to read this story and we
won't read it, but I like to read it in parallel with Jesus
raising Lazarus from the dead. Because in that story, Jesus is
sent for. Lazarus is his friend, his good
friend, and he has sent for. Lazarus is sick, he's dying, and
Jesus stays. It's this really odd passage.
Jesus, we're going to get there eventually.
Jesus stays there and then a couple days go by and then he
goes. Lazarus in those days has died.
And what is the one thing that Jesus is confronted?
Yes, he, he's he, he comes. Lazarus is dead and and marries
there and they say if you had been here, if you had been here,
Jesus goes into that tomb, he speaks a word and Lazarus comes
out of the grave. So yes, Jesus's presence is
important and powerful, but Jesus needs to speak the word.
He doesn't need to be there in this century.
And he recognizes that authority that Jesus has over all of the
created order. And to your right puts it like
this. He says this faith isn't
abstract. It's not an abstract belief
about God or the learning of dogmas.
It is the simple, clear belief that when Jesus commands that
something be done, it will be done.
He regards Jesus like a military officer like himself, right with
authority over sickness and health.
If Jesus says that someone is going to get well, they will.
What could be simpler? He says, Except I read this and
I go, yeah, the centurion is a gentile.
Where does his faith come from? He didn't have the cultural
memory or the religious tradition of Israel.
He didn't have a framework for understanding Jesus as Messiah
and Savior and all of what that meant for him to heal and to
raise up dead to life. He, the centurion, didn't have
the stories. He didn't grow up in church or
synagogue. He was an outsider, but we're
told he had great faith. He had heard about who Jesus was
and what Jesus could do and trusted that Jesus would do it.
He saw God's authority at work in Jesus and believed that it
could be for him too, that all of what Jesus represented and
brought and brings into the world could also be for him.
You don't need to have grown up in the church, or have a
cultural memory of Christianity, or think yourself to be perfect,
or rack up a list of credits to your name to understand that
Jesus is for you, too. But we do need to see Jesus's
authority as absolute, the centurion.
He risks his name, his career, potentially his life, because he
saw that God's ultimate authority was at work in Jesus
and he recognized that that authority, God's authority in
Jesus, excuse me, was greater than the authority that had been
given to him by Rome. He trusted that Jesus could do
something that no emperor or Caesar could do, that he could
heal the sick with a word. And so I wonder if, like this
Centurion, we need to risk a little more in the way we pray.
I wonder if we need to pray prayers that are a little less
safe because I don't know about you, but I like, I catch myself
praying these prayers and some of these prayers, they sound
like this. God, would you please do this?
I'm gonna beg, I'm gonna plead, I'm gonna sit here and I will
pray. Would you do this?
But only if you want to. And then we plead with God and
say, like, if only if you, if only you will God, would you
heal him? Would you do it if you are able
God free me from if you just maybe could, if I could
inconvenience you for a second. Listen.
Like the reality of prayer is that not every prayer is going
to get answered. Anybody who has prayed for
longer than one prayer will be able to tell you that.
And I think to myself, like, thank God for that.
Sometimes my prayers shouldn't be answered the way I want, and
absolutely prayers are only answered the way God wills them
to be answered. Yes, that's true.
But I think the danger is that we pray those prayers not
because we ultimately and absolutely believe that God will
do it if He wills. We pray those prayers to keep
ourselves safe and to distance myself from an outcome that I
don't want. Because if I pray and then I
said, but if you will, that's a safe prayer for me because I can
dismiss whatever happens if I don't like it or if it doesn't
happen, if it's not answered in the way I want it to be
answered. I remember praying for a kid and
this kid was 8 years old and he had had cancer since he was 6.
And we prayed and we prayed and we prayed and we prayed and we
prayed for this kid to be healed and eventually that that kid
died. And it's with Jesus.
And we wrestled with that reality.
And how teach us? How do we pray bold prayers that
aren't safe for me to pray and also surrendered to the absolute
authority of Jesus. Because again, the reality is
not every prayer is going to be answered the way you want.
But I think our task, if you call yourself a follower of
Jesus, is to pray boldly. Jesus sees the faith that's of
the centurion, the faith of of an outsider, of a Gentile, of
one who has his own authority, has his own mechanisms and
pathways to attempt to heal this servant.
And he sees his bold faith and his bold request for Jesus to,
with a word, heal him. And then it says, when Jesus
heard this, he was amazed. He was amazed.
Jesus is amazed by the man's faith.
He's amazed at him. Turning to the crowd following
him, he said. I tell you I have not found such
great faith even in Israel. The ones who have the stories
and the cultural memory and the faith handed down generation
after generation. Then the men who had been sent
with him returned to the house and found the servant.
Well, I find it interesting that Jesus doesn't even speak the
word. He doesn't say be made well.
What does he say? I tell you, I've not even found
such great faith even in Israel. And they return, and the servant
is healed. So yes, Jesus can speak a word
and they can heal. But Jesus doesn't need to speak
a word and he can still heal. The healing is significant.
Don't get me wrong, the healing is significant.
Jesus is love and compassion, is for the sick, and moves him to
heal the sick. But the point that we are meant
to see here that Luke is really trying to shape for us is to see
the faith of the Gentile centurion.
What ought to encourage us who are curious about faith in Jesus
but who didn't grow up in the church, is the faith of the
centurion. Well, not to challenge us who
did grow up in the church with the stories and the songs and
the prayers, is the faith, the bold faith of the centurion, the
faith that recognizes Jesus, faith to ask boldly and trust
that Jesus is who he says he is, that he will do what he says he
will do and that he is Lord of the world.
Again, NT right? And one of his commentaries, he
says, he says this is the question like is Jesus Lord of
the world, the entirety of it, all of it or not?
Because if he is, then it's game on.
Finished with, if this works, our last story.
Soon afterward Jesus went to a town called Maine, and his
disciples in a large crowd went along with him.
As he approached the town gate. A dead person was being carried
out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a large
crowd from the town was with her.
When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her, and he said
don't cry, his heart went out to her.
This story is different. At first glance, there's no
faith. So we've just had this big
healing, this big story of a miraculous healing, all of it
centred around faith, bold faith, bold request of Jesus.
And here we have no faith seemingly present.
No one sends messengers to Jesus.
No one asks Jesus to raise the dead man.
No one pleads on his behalf. No one lists out everything that
this mom has done. Jesus, would you please come and
heal like this is her only son? Would you do it?
No one pleads on his behalf. The widow now alone, no family.
No one trusts that Jesus can do what he says except Jesus
himself. When the Lord saw her, his heart
went out to her and he said, don't cry again.
This is Jesus's compassion on full display.
This is the generous life giving over abundance.
Push back the darkness. Blessed are those who mourn now.
Way of the Kingdom on full display, the story concludes.
Then he went up and he touched the beer they were standing on,
or they were carrying him on and the bears stood still.
He said with the word young man, I say to you, get up.
The dead man sat up and began to talk and Jesus gave him back to
his mother. They were all filled with all
and praise God, a great prophet has appeared among us when they
said God has come to help his people.
There's a couple different ways of translating that line.
God has come to help his people, and one of those ways is quite
literally God has visited his people.
And that might not make as much sense to us today as it did to
people in Luke's time that he was writing to the way in which
he's crafting this story. Because God has visited his
people, His Old Testament language.
This is the language of God coming to save and rescue and
restore and redeem, coming to bring life to his people.
It's not just like God shows up and then leaves and nothing
changes, as God has visited with purpose and intention His people
to do the thing that He says He will do.
Excuse me? God still visits his people.
God visits you to lift you up and to restore you, to heal and
to bring life. Because the Kingdom of God isn't
just breaking into the world. The Kingdom of God is breaking
into your world. I wonder, though, if sometimes
we create lives that are too noisy to hear when God does
visit. I wonder in the midst of the
busyness and the chaos, we lose an ability for quiet
contemplation and prayer. And ultimately prevent ourselves
from hearing when God does show up.
And So what I want to do this morning is read that last story
again, slowly and quietly, and I want to provide a little bit of
space for you to pray and wonder and ask and listen for God to
show up. Only instead of listening and
hearing and seeing God show up for this widow and her dead son
and raising her dead son back to new life and giving him back to
her, I wonder if you can listen for where God might be showing
up in your life. And I wonder what it might look
like for you to allow God to show up in whatever situation
and circumstance that is leading toward death, Right?
It could be literal death and grief.
It could be sickness and fear. It could be anxiety and
depression. It could be addiction and shame.
It could be relationship and brokenness.
It could be life changing decisions decisions and and
paralysis like analysis paralysis.
It could be mundane and wrote. It could be messy diapers and
sleepless nights. It could be loneliness and
isolation. It could be hospital visits and
unknown futures. It could be sin and darkness and
death. There could be any day of your
life because Jesus's desire is to break in and to disrupt and
to shape and to form and to build and to rebuild and to
mend, to heal, restore, bring life.
Jesus's desire is to break in, and So what I hope we can do is
pause. Quiet.
Pray in the silence and plead with God to boldly show up as we
read. Soon afterward, Jesus went to a
town called Maine, and his disciples and a large crowd went
along with him. As he approached the town gate,
the dead person was being carried out, the only son of his
mother and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town
was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart
went out to her and he said don't cry.
Then he went up and touched the beer they were carrying him on.
The bearers stood still. He said.
Young man, I say to you, get up. The dead man sat up and began to
talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
They were all filled with awe and praised God.
A great prophet has appeared among us, they said.
God has come to help his people. This news about Jesus spread
throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Amen.