Wednesday Night, October 14, 2020 PM

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Michael Dirrim Pastor of Sunnyside Baptist Church OKC Wednesday Night, October 14, 2020 PM

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Bibles and turn to Luke chapter seven, Luke chapter seven, and we're going to read verses through ten.
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So we're going to talk about a man that Jesus met, but did he really meet him?
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We're going to talk about a place where Jesus spent a lot of time, and we're going to talk about something that Jesus marveled at.
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Have you ever marveled at something? Have you ever looked at something that was extremely interesting and you ever wondered how in the world did
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God make that? Well, we're going to talk about a marvelous faith tonight.
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Let me tell you a story. It's talking about Jesus.
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Discourse in the hearing of the people, he went to Capernaum and a centurion slave and was sick and about to die.
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When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders asking him to come and save the life of earnestly implored him saying, he is worthy for you to grant this to him for he loves our nation.
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And it was he who built us our synagogue. And when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends saying to him,
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Lord, do not trouble yourself further, for I am not worthy for you to come under my roof.
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For this reason, I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you, but just say the word and my servant will be healed.
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For I also am a man placed under authority with soldiers. One go and he goes into my slave, do this.
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And he does it. Now, when Jesus heard this, he marveled at him and turned and said to the crowd that was following him,
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I say to you, not even in Israel have I found. When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good.
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We remember about the town of Capernaum. Anybody remember, or maybe something about who
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Jesus, any ideas?
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It was up north in the region of Galilee. It was on the...
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Who did Jesus meet there for the first time? Peter, Andrew, James, and John, right?
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Fishermen, they fished in the Sea of Galilee. They lived in Capernaum.
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Jesus spent a lot of time in the town of Capernaum. It's been called his town.
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He grew up in Nazareth, but very often when we read the Gospels, we find that Jesus is in...
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And in fact, after Jesus died and was raised from the dead and went up to heaven,
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Peter's house became a church, a church building. And they would gather in Peter's home and have church services there.
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Archaeologists have dug down and they have discovered that beneath... There was actually another church built on top of that and then another church built on top of that.
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But they discovered that in Peter's house, somebody had installed a baptistry, some place to baptize people when they came into the faith.
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So it was kind of the official, first official church building. It had a baptistry in it.
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One way, Capernaum was a special place for Jesus. He did miracles there, but not everybody believed.
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In fact, Jesus found striking unbelief in Capernaum.
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In Matthew 11 verse 23, he said, and you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you?
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You will descend to Hades. For if the miracles had occurred in Sodom, which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.
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In other words, Jesus said this about Capernaum. If I did all the miracles in Sodom that I did in your town,
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O Capernaum, Sodom would have repented. There would have been enough righteous repenters there in Sodom to save it from destruction.
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But Capernaum, because of your unbelief, because of so many people there who reject the gospel, there will be judgment.
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Of course, that happened when the Romans marched through. Also, if we wanted to, we could go to John chapter 6, the scary verse in the
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Bible, right? Remember that number, 666? Everyone's always so scared about. By the way,
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I'm sure you've seen this, and this has nothing to do with the lesson, but if you take and you divide it by 666, you get financial support to the
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Biden campaign. So that's just for free. It always goes.
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But I'm telling you the number because it is 666. Verse 66, and it says that many who bore because they rejected his teaching, and that happened at Capernaum.
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I bring all this out because in Capernaum, Jesus encounters someone who has great faith, and Capernaum was not known in the as a place of great faith.
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And we read in the story about this for the Jews who live there. Now, when you think of a very similar function, in a bottom floor, there'd be a row of chairs all downstairs, and one of the chairs was called the seat of Moses or the chair of Moses.
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If you were 13, synagogue, and then all the women and children would go to the upstairs room reading, and you would have scripture teaching, and the synagogue was a place where all the community for meetings, and it was very important.
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He built a synagogue for this town for the gesture to the
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Jews, the things of God, that he would be even compelled to build something for the
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Jews. Even the archaeologists have dug down beneath a very large synagogue to the one that this centurion had common in the area.
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So they have found the ruins of this synagogue that this centurion built. And so he was probably somebody who probably pay attention to some of the things that were said.
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Perhaps he even attended synagogue from time to time to listen. These people were known as God -fearers in Jewish communities.
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They weren't proselytes. Come and listen to the reading of God's word.
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Now, who is a centurion? We don't really have centurions around anymore, but when you think of a centurion, what do you think of?
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A century, which means what? Right. You know what's really funny about a centurion?
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He commanded 80 men. Well, that's a little bit of trivia for you. So in the Roman system, a centurion commanded 80 men.
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Why not 100? That's so confusing. One of the little quirks of history. But this centurion is probably not employed by the
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Romans. The Romans didn't have any troops, official troops stationed in the area. Herod, Herod's son,
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Herod the Great, you know, the guy who tried to kill Jesus when Jesus was a small child. His son, Herod Antipas, was in charge of this area, and he had troops that he had brought in, not
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Jews, but other Gentiles in the town.
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A centurion's job was basically a cross between being a police captain and in charge of the local militia.
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So he's basically the sheriff, okay? So the centurion is essentially the sheriff, and he has 80 men under his command, and he makes pretty good money, but he used some of that to help build a synagogue for these people.
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Well, that's of the story, but let's think about what happened.
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What did the centurion believe about himself? You see this in the first six verses.
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We know he could have even forced matters.
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He could have sent some soldiers out to even forcibly make Jesus. He has plenty of money to help build a synagogue, and he's a, obviously, he's a slave owner, so he's got wealth.
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How did they describe him? Worthy. He is a worthy man, and they said he's worthy because of what?
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Right, yeah, he loves our nation, he's very kind. Synagogue.
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He's worthy because he has done good deeds, and that's what this centurion, and they must think a lot about the centurion because even by this point, even this early on, there's some tension between Jesus and the
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Jewish leaders, but they think so much of this between, and they'll go talk to Jesus for him, okay?
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That's what they say. What does he say about himself?
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What does the centurion say about himself? I am not a respected, honored position in the community.
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He has some significant wealth, but when he talks about himself, he says, I am unworthy to come to my house.
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I'm unworthy even to come in. That was his perspective, that he considered himself unworthy.
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That's part of what Jesus marveled at. Okay, so secondly, what did the centurion believe about Christ?
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Verses 7 and 8. How did the centurion think about Jesus? Yeah, he recognized, and how many stories had he heard?
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When you go back and you read Luke 4, you find out that like a wildfire in California, you know, it went all through the countryside, and so this centurion obviously had heard a lot about Jesus.
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Perhaps he had had some reports from his men come tell him some stories, and so he's heard a lot about Jesus, and he knows he has authority, but he also, notice how he says it,
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I also am a man placed under authority.
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Jesus, what had he, he knew that Jesus Christ was far more worthy than he was.
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I can't, he's like John the Baptist. I'm not even worthy to mess with your shoes, and that's the attitude that this centurion is.
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I'm not even worthy to be in your presence. I know my servant would be healed just by you saying the word.
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He says, I know you have the ability. He says, I know you have the greatness, but he also knows that Jesus Christ was under someone else's authority.
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He says, I also am a man placed under authority. He knew that Jesus Christ was under somebody else's authority, but that also
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Jesus Christ exercised great authority at the same time. So, what had he heard?
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I think he had heard the message of Jesus Christ that was declared at his baptism.
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This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased, and from his delight and his pleasure in his son, and then his son goes out and begins to do all these amazing, teaches with power and authority.
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He healed, and so this centurion is putting these things together, and he believes the authority of his father, the authority of God, but that he also has great authority to simply speak a word, and he could heal someone, someone he's never even met, someone he doesn't even know possibly the name of, but he can immediately just heal them.
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Look at the faith that the centurion has when it comes to Jesus Christ. This is the faith that Jesus marveled at.
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Now, what did Jesus think about the centurion's faith? We see that he, in verse 9, he marvels, but what more than that?
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Certainly in his humanity, in his divinity, Christ is not surprised at all, but in his humanity, he wonders at and admires the faith of this centurion, which again is a combination of these two things, that the centurion knows how unworthy he is in view of God, and that the centurion has such confidence and such trust in Christ's person and power, that he gets it.
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He knows that Christ, when he's preaching the gospel of the kingdom, that Jesus himself is under the authority of his father, but he is bringing great authority throughout all of the earth, even the authority to forgive sins, the authority to determine what the
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Sabbath means, and so on. Well, so he marvels, but what else does
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Jesus say about the faith of the centurion in verse 9?
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It's like, right, anywhere in Israel, you know. Now, Jesus, of course, has been living in Israel for, you know, a little over three decades now, and he has not observed faith like this anywhere in Israel, and all of his pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the three annuals, and the hometown
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Jew, with a faith that this centurion and the people to whom have been given the law and the prophets in this
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Gentile, consider what
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Jesus declares this out loud.
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Gentile oppressor's faith. The son of Herod, the great
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Herod. He has
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Gentile faith, like the faith of the
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Gentiles that were given to him in the deal of Abraham and Abraham.
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He is, he is, he's, he's employing the taxing of who they hope to throw at him here in this place.
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The centurion, what he believed, managed to believe.
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His friends, he didn't really even have to come to the houses of the
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Gentiles, clean, and so he thought it through.
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My house, I don't want you to trouble you. He says, look, to relay that, hey, what he said about the centurion's faith message.
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And so they, hey, what he said about the centurion's faith, and then they went back, and the slave healed.
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All these friends of this centurion, he was a slave himself.
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First verse of the story, the slave let him die, and he had no other way.
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He was very sick, and when he got better, all of a sudden, the centurion would tell him to, has to come to grips with who
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Jesus is and what Jesus came to do. So the Jewish elders, the
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Gentile oppressor himself finds hope in the gospel of the grace of God.
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The Roman centurion believed the word and healed someone.
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Like, as he said, it's simple. They, my servant, that's what he believed about the liberty of Jesus.
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The challenge is, well, who do we think
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Jesus' kingdom attention profile would give to the centurion, right?
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We wouldn't look for faith. We wouldn't look for anything but Jesus.
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And then, consider how the man approached him for help.
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Do we approach him like the centurion, like the centurion?
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You know, one of the things that, with a sense of our unworthiness, is when we approach
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Jesus with a list of our complaints, right?
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Jesus, you see, Jesus is not somebody who is renting out houses, and we're paying him good money, and paying him good money, and we're his tenants, and it was very specified in the contract that the water's always supposed to be flowing well, and if the water's not, that we can, why is my water not running well?
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Right? Well, a tenant has some regard to do that.
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Things are supposed to run smoothly here. You're responsible for it. But when we come to Jesus, we're not king of the universe, and we deserve nothing.
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We deserve nothing. I've got, you know, it's a,
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I was promised a smoother ride, you know, and the complaints come from when we don't, when we don't start with this,
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I don't even, but here goes.
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I know who you are. I don't deserve to even ask this, and yet I know that you're able to be, will you?
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Kind of approach of faith that we need to have in our supplication, in our prayers.
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Okay, so those are some thoughts there. Questions or observations before we move to a time of prayer.
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Coming like the centurion and coming bold, this tells a story about prayer in which he talks about the importunity of who has guests come to his house in the middle of the night, and he's got nothing to set before them, so he goes to his neighbor's house and just pounds on the door, pounds on the door, until finally his neighbor opens up, and not because the neighbor is really happy with him at all, but just to get him to stop knocking on the door, he'll give him some loaves of bread for his guest.
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Same story with the widow who pestered the unjust judge and nagged him until finally he gave in and gave her justice, and he said, now
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God is your Heavenly Father, unjust judge, so shouldn't you have and he shows us an example that we should be importunate in some degree in our asking that we would not, that we would not give up and just pray once or twice, but to be, okay, so how do we reconcile that kind of approach with the humility?
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Well, I think it, I think it comes from the fact that the neighbor knows he doesn't deserve any bread from, from his neighbor, right, it's like,
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I don't, you know, and the widow knows there's, there's not a chance, consequence, they're not coming from a position of,
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I deserve this, not that I deserve this, but this is, this is what, this, this is what
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I believe that I need, and you come to, it's okay to pray that to God, right, he can handle that, okay, you know, we might need, we need the relief, you don't have to be perfectly spiritual and say, well,
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I guess I needed the suffering, there's no prizes for that, if you are in need, you cry out to God, he's your
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Heavenly Father, okay, and that God doesn't get annoyed with repetition, look how he made the world, how many things repeat in the world, right, how many things happen over and over and over and over and over, do you think
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God gets bored, he does not get bored with repetition, we do, okay, you need, but it's not what you deserve, it's not what we deserve, we don't deserve anything,
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I think that that's the underlying attitude, yes, sir, yeah, and it's okay to ask for really big things,
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Centurion was asking for a lot, right, this guy's going, that wasn't something small, humility in prayer doesn't mean that we can only ask for prideful, no, we can ask for the big stuff in all humility, okay, all right, well, let's turn our attention now.