What Makes God Marvel? Matthew 8:5-13

4 views

0 comments

00:06
When you hear the word faith, what comes to mind? What probably comes to mind is religion.
00:13
As we know, Christianity is a religion of faith, but faith is not an inherently religious concept.
00:23
Every time you get in your car to travel somewhere, you are exercising faith.
00:30
You do not have certainty that everything is working 100%, but your faith in driving your vehicle is not blind faith.
00:41
You have very good reasons to trust your car, you just don't have absolute certainty.
00:48
When you drive your car, you don't check every little thing to make sure it's working just right.
00:56
It's the same with sitting in a chair or sitting in a pew. When you sit in a chair, you don't check everything to make sure it will hold you, but you trust your chair enough to sit in it.
01:11
Most of the time, it holds you. I can't think of many times in my life where I sat down and the chair crumbled down below me.
01:18
You trust these things so much that you don't even think about it, believing that what you trust in is reliable.
01:28
Now, in my reading of the Bible, faith is used in two different ways, and both of these are interconnected.
01:36
In order to become a Christian, these two ways of exercising faith are present. The first is that you believe the
01:43
Bible is true, that it is the truth, that it explains all of reality.
01:52
When you read it, you see that it is real history, and it describes real life.
01:58
You are confident that the 66 books of the Bible are not a fairy tale.
02:05
In this first way of using faith, you believe the historical eyewitness accounts that Jesus lived, died, and rose again.
02:15
You believe the Word of God as written. As Hebrews 11 .1 defines this aspect of faith, it is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
02:29
You believe the facts, even though you don't have all the facts. This is what
02:36
I mean. When you get into a car, you have some facts, but not all the facts.
02:42
When you sit in a chair, you have some facts, but not all the facts. And when you believe the truth claims of the
02:48
Bible, you believe the eyewitness testimony. You have the facts from the eyewitnesses, but you still have to exercise faith, since you were not there to see it.
03:00
But you trust the Word of those who saw it. The evidence that you are given is enough to believe.
03:12
After Jesus' resurrection, Thomas, one of his disciples, had to see Jesus with his own eyes to confirm that he really was alive.
03:21
But this is what Jesus said to those countless people who never saw him with their eyes.
03:28
And this includes us. In John 20 .29, he said, Blessed are those who have not yet seen and have believed.
03:38
Jesus is more impressed with those who believe the eyewitness testimony over the faith of the eyewitnesses.
03:47
This means that everyone in this room who truly believes in Christ, God is very pleased with you.
03:56
We do not have full certainty. We didn't see him with our eyes, but we do have enough certainty.
04:03
And this belief in the eyewitness account is called faith. As Hebrews 11 .1
04:10
says, Faith is the conviction of things not seen. Now there is another way that faith is used in the
04:18
Bible. And that is in regard to our trust in God's work in our life. Acts 4 .12
04:25
says, There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
04:31
So the other aspect of faith is this. You can't do it yourself.
04:38
You can't save yourself. You cry out to God and he counts you as his own.
04:45
In this, you are exercising faith in God. And this is a faith that continues with you all throughout your life.
04:54
The Christian life is one of faith because the Christian life is dependent on God working in your life.
05:02
As we lean on him, he works mightily in our lives. So these are two aspects of faith according to Scripture.
05:12
Faith is believing what we cannot see, and secondly, leaning on God for everything like a beggar.
05:20
This is the life that pleases God. When Martin Luther was on his deathbed, his last words were,
05:30
I am just a beggar. He's exercising faith right at the very end of his life.
05:38
And this is all of us who have a relationship with Jesus Christ. We are beggars leaning on him to carry us through.
05:48
So as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, sorry, not Genesis, Matthew. Genesis was two years ago.
05:54
As we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we are going to see a story of faith.
06:01
A model that all people are called to follow. At this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 8.
06:09
We'll be looking at verses 5 through 13. And if you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 966.
06:16
This sermon is titled, What Makes God Marvel? What Makes God Marvel?
06:23
And here's our big idea. Here's our big idea. An ordinary human incredibly brought joy to God's heart.
06:33
An ordinary human incredibly brought joy to God's heart.
06:39
And we're going to see two reasons why. But before we jump into our text, let me give you a little recap of where we were last time.
06:46
We were in Matthew. Two weeks ago, we were in Matthew. We looked at the story where Jesus healed a leper.
06:53
What we saw is that lepers were the outcasts of society. And yet Jesus did not run from this man, but healed him.
07:01
We saw that Jesus is different from the Messiah the Jews were expecting. They thought he would come in power, drive out their enemies, and reign with them.
07:11
But Jesus came as a suffering Messiah. As Isaiah 53 predicted.
07:18
Because of the false expectations many Jews had concerning the Messiah, Jesus told the leper, don't tell anyone that he healed him.
07:27
But as we read, the word got out. He did tell. But the main point of the passage is that we are to believe in Jesus for the right purpose.
07:37
We need to believe in Jesus for who he really is and what he came to do. He came to this earth on a rescue mission to save sinners.
07:46
He did not come for fame by drawing large crowds to wow people.
07:52
He came to suffer first. And then in the future, he will come in power when he reigns.
07:59
Now this leads us to our text this morning. We will begin by looking at verses 5 -7 of chapter 8.
08:08
When he, Jesus, had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him,
08:16
Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.
08:22
And he said to him, I will come and heal him. Now after Jesus preached the
08:32
Sermon on the Mount, he was still in the region of Galilee. This is where Jesus spent most of his ministry.
08:39
As verse 5 says, he arrived in the town of Capernaum. He would not have done this publicly, as Jesus said in the previous passage, but even though he came privately into Capernaum, a soldier was aware that he was there.
08:57
Word always seemed to get out when Jesus was around. The soldier that came to him was known as a centurion.
09:08
A centurion soldier is a high -ranking soldier. The word century means 100, and the word centurion means that this man was in charge of 100
09:23
Roman soldiers. What the end of verse 5 says is that the soldier appealed to him.
09:31
The form of this Greek verb tells us that his appealing was continuous.
09:37
He asked Jesus repeatedly to heal his servant. But what the
09:43
Gospel of Luke tells us in chapters 7 verses 1 through 5 is this appealing did not come from the soldier himself, the centurion.
09:53
It came from the elder of the Jews, the elders of the
09:59
Jews. The centurion had an excellent relationship among the Jews. So the centurion, by the way, he's a
10:06
Gentile. A Gentile is a non -Jew, but he had an excellent relationship with the
10:11
Jews. They even told Jesus that he got the synagogue built in Capernaum.
10:18
So he fought for it, and they put up this synagogue where the Jews could worship. In this passage, we are going to see what a remarkable man this centurion was.
10:29
What we see first is his concern for his servant. In Roman times, servants or slaves were considered sub -human.
10:40
There was a Roman writer named Vero who said that the only difference between a slave, a beast, and a cart was that the slave talked.
10:52
The Greek philosopher Aristotle said a slave is a living tool just as a tool is a non -living slave.
11:02
But this servant is different. His ethic agrees with the ethic of the
11:08
Bible. Colossians 4 .1 tells masters to treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
11:19
What he told Jesus in verse 6 is that his servant is paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.
11:26
The centurion is describing the continuous suffering of his servant, and there seems to be no end.
11:32
And he looks on, and he says, can anyone heal him? And he hears about Jesus, and he's thinking, this man can heal him.
11:44
In verse 7, Jesus says to the elders of the Jews, I will come and heal him. So he's saying point blank,
11:51
I will do it. Without batting an eyelash, Jesus agrees to do this.
11:58
What you'll notice as you read the gospel accounts is that Jesus does not turn down opportunities to heal people.
12:04
As people come to him to be healed, he heals them. And all of them are healed in an instant.
12:13
As we saw in our previous text, Jesus' primary reason, however, was not to come and heal people, even though he did it.
12:24
The primary reason Jesus came was to seek and to save the lost, as Luke 19 .10
12:32
says. Jesus came to save sinners, not to put band -aids on people, as everyone will eventually die.
12:41
We don't want to put so much emphasis on people feeling good physically, because 100 years from now, you know what? It's not going to matter.
12:46
We'll all be dead. The spiritual is what counts, because that's eternal. When we pray for people, we should pray for physical healing, yes, but more importantly, we should pray for someone's spiritual health.
13:01
If you're praying for an unbeliever, don't just pray that their physical needs are met, pray for their salvation.
13:08
If you're praying for a fellow believer, don't just pray for their physical needs, pray for their spiritual growth, in whatever circumstance they find themselves in.
13:19
But as I mentioned, Jesus healed many, and we are seeing that right here.
13:28
Now we are getting to the extraordinary part of our text. We would expect the centurion soldier to take
13:36
Jesus in, have him heal his servant, and then go from there.
13:43
We would even expect the centurion to officially profess his faith in Jesus. Frequently in the
13:49
New Testament, when Jesus healed someone, they also became his genuine followers. But something happens in this story that is different from the other healing stories.
14:01
The centurion knows who this man is. Think about how remarkable this is.
14:08
The centurion is a prominent member in society, and usually prominent members in society think very highly of themselves.
14:18
A while back, Maya told me the story of a lesser -known country singer who was opening for a very well -known country singer.
14:26
The lesser -known singer went out on the stage when no one was around to introduce himself to him.
14:33
The very well -known singer called for security to remove the man from the stage.
14:39
Pretty much saying, this guy can't be in my presence. Doesn't he know who I am? Doesn't he know how great
14:44
I am? An episode like that is ugly, but it's all too common.
14:49
There are scores of people in our world who are like that. Influential, famous people who think you're not worthy to walk the ground that I am walking on.
15:02
But this is not the case with the centurion soldier. Remember, this is an influential man. This is a well -known man.
15:08
He commanded 100 soldiers in the most powerful army in the world at this time.
15:17
We're going to see humility here in verses 8 and 9. But the centurion replied,
15:24
Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.
15:31
For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me, and I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.
15:45
Anybody reading this passage for the first time does not expect a response like this from the centurion.
15:52
As the Gospel of Luke tells us in chapter 7, verses 6 through 10, the centurion sent word to Jesus through his friends.
16:03
He didn't even think he was worthy to be in his presence. So he had his friends go on his behalf.
16:10
The centurion tells Jesus through his friends that he knows what it is like to be one who is in authority.
16:19
He knows that Jesus is something special. We're about to see that here in a little bit. This man knows what it's like to be in an important position, right?
16:29
He commands 100 soldiers in the Roman army, the powerful Roman army.
16:36
As Americans, we understand that our military has been arguably the best military in the world for the last 80 or so years.
16:45
You could argue that the United States military has been the most powerful military in the history of the world.
16:52
If we flash back 2 ,000 years, the Roman army was the most powerful army in the world, no question about it.
17:00
And to be a centurion was a high level position. Every one of his military colleagues probably had massive egos, but not this centurion.
17:12
It's refreshing to meet people who are in high up positions, who are really down to earth people.
17:17
Sometimes you do meet them, but more times than not, it's not that case. He knows what it's like to be one in authority.
17:25
And in this moment, he knows that he is a speck compared to the man standing in front of him.
17:32
In verse 8, the first noteworthy observation is that he calls Jesus Lord.
17:39
This is the second time he called him Lord. He already used this title in verse 6.
17:46
Now the Greek word for Lord can mean master, and it can mean so much more.
17:53
We saw this with the leper when he addressed Jesus as Lord. By addressing him as Lord, the centurion believed in Jesus' deity.
18:04
The Greek word in this verse for Lord is the same Greek word used in the Greek translation of the
18:10
Old Testament, referring to Yahweh, the name of God.
18:16
Yahweh. So by calling him Lord, the centurion believes that Jesus is the
18:23
God -man. So we can see why he tells Jesus that he is not worthy to have him under his roof.
18:32
Jesus was willing to go in to the centurion's house to heal him.
18:37
But the centurion tells him that he's not worthy to have Jesus under his roof.
18:45
So what is so significant about Jesus entering this man's house? One author
18:51
I was reading said this. He felt genuinely unworthy for Jesus to go to that much trouble for him, and no doubt also did not want him to break the
19:02
Jewish tradition of not entering the house of a Gentile in order to avoid ceremonial contamination.
19:12
So he didn't feel worthy to have Jesus travel all that way. It's also interesting that this centurion knew these traditions that said a
19:22
Jew cannot enter the home of a Gentile. What this tells us is that this is a Gentile believer.
19:29
These lived during Old Testament times. It wasn't just that the Jews had a relationship with God.
19:34
There were some Gentiles who had a relationship with God also. In Acts chapter 10,
19:40
Cornelius is an example of this. A believer in the
19:45
God of Israel, the one true God. Israel was the vehicle that God used to reveal himself to the world.
19:54
And so this is how evangelism worked in the Old Testament. It wasn't sending people out to tell everyone about Yahweh.
20:02
It was, let's be a nation that looks like God, and then people would look on and be drawn to God through that.
20:13
The centurion knew who Jesus was, and he knew he was a worm compared to Jesus, even though he was a mighty
20:24
Roman soldier. The historic British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said that we are all worms, but at least
20:34
I'm a glow worm. So Churchill did not have the humility of this centurion.
20:40
But Churchill was right about one thing. We're all worms. We're just specks compared to God.
20:46
We shouldn't think anything special of us. We are so tiny compared to him.
20:55
We have so many limitations, and God is infinite. He has no limitations.
21:05
But so often when a title is in front of one's name, or they're famous for something they did, we don't see a lot of humility, do we?
21:15
Whether it be a president, a vice president, a CEO, or a doctor, there are many who have these titles who think the world should bow to them.
21:24
The centurion would have had many companions who would have been like this. Soldiers who stuck out their chest and wanted everyone to fear them and respect them and think they were something special.
21:36
But not this centurion. He knew he was in the presence of greatness. And he knew that he was small compared to Jesus.
21:47
He knew he was in the presence of the God -man. And he didn't feel worthy to have
21:53
Jesus come into his house. So what we see here in this first point is an ordinary human incredibly brought joy to God's heart.
22:02
And the first reason why is that he trusted in the highest authority to do what no one else can.
22:09
He trusted Jesus to miraculously heal his servant. So he calls him Lord, believing that he is the
22:14
God -man, and that he believed that he could heal him, believing he is the God -man. So that's the first reason why.
22:21
The second reason why it's incredible that this ordinary human brought joy to God's heart is he knew the secret of having a true relationship with God.
22:32
We'll see this in verses 10 through 13. After the centurion says this through the
22:39
Jews whom he sent, asking Jesus to heal him and saying he's not worthy to have him come under his roof,
22:46
Jesus is blown away by this. To read what we are about to read is truly remarkable.
22:54
Verse 10. When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him,
23:03
Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
23:11
Yes, you read that right. Jesus marveled at a mere human.
23:18
If you ever wonder what brings joy to God's heart, what pleases him, we read it right here.
23:25
Jesus marveled and we know by what he said, following his astonishment, that his surprise is a good surprise.
23:33
Sometimes you can be surprised by something and it can be bad, right? But sometimes you're surprised by something because someone does something and you're like, man, that is wonderful.
23:45
As he says in the second of verse 10, truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
23:52
I feel this sometimes, maybe you do, if you see someone in the secular world say something and you're like,
23:59
I didn't expect that. And what they said was right. And it's refreshing. And it's encouraging.
24:06
And Jesus, remember during his ministry, he didn't see a whole lot of faith. He saw a lot of rejection. And so when he sees it, he's impressed by it.
24:16
And he sees it right here. He says, truly I tell you. And whenever Jesus prefaces a statement by saying, truly
24:23
I tell you, we know that what he is about to say is very important. He says, write this down.
24:31
Hear these words. Follow this example. Hebrews 11, 6 says this.
24:38
Without faith, it is impossible to please God. If we want to please
24:43
God, we need to demonstrate faith in him, to trust in him, to deliver. And this is what the centurion was doing.
24:50
He believes that Jesus can heal his servant. And even more than that, he doesn't just see Jesus as a miracle worker like so many did.
24:58
He sees him as Lord, as the God man, as the long awaited
25:05
Messiah predicted in the Old Testament. Let me ask you this.
25:11
What was the great hope of the Old Testament believers? The answer is this.
25:20
The coming of the Messiah. Where he would reign forever with his people. This is why
25:27
Jesus says in verse 10, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. The Israelites were the ones who were supposed to believe in this.
25:37
And most of them didn't. And now we have this Gentile believing what they were supposed to believe.
25:48
So he's complimenting the centurion, a Gentile, and rebuking the
25:53
Israelites with this statement. It is a fact of Scripture and history that most of the
26:00
Jews did not believe in their Messiah. In fact, even today this is a fact. Most Jews do not believe in their
26:06
Messiah. And so when Jesus says he sees more faith in this Gentile than from Israel, this is what he means.
26:16
Jesus weeped over the unbelief of Israel. He lamented in Matthew 23 verse 37,
26:22
Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.
26:28
How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her broods under her wings.
26:34
And you were not willing. The kingdom was offered to Israel and Israel rejected it, largely speaking.
26:44
But this centurion did not reject the Messiah. He had faith. And he demonstrates this faith by believing that Jesus is who the
26:52
Old Testament says he is. That he is who he said he is.
26:58
It's astonishing when you think about this. As Jesus says this, he's probably a couple years away from his crucifixion.
27:06
Jesus' ministry was about three and a half years. And this is still pretty early on in his ministry as we see this.
27:12
Who are the ones who killed Jesus? Well, Pontius Pilate and the
27:18
Roman soldiers, they nailed him to the cross, right? But who are the ones really responsible for killing Jesus? It was the
27:24
Jews. Think about that. God's own people killed their
27:34
Messiah. And of course God in his wisdom made it that it would be that way so that salvation would come to the world through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his resurrection.
27:45
But we need to stop and think about that sometimes. Isn't that remarkable? The Jews killed their Savior by hanging him to a tree.
27:56
And yet this centurion knows who Jesus is and he believes Jesus is who he says he is.
28:03
Now it's interesting here that we see that Jesus is astonished. Jesus is
28:08
God, yes, but he's also human. In his divine nature, God cannot be astonished, right?
28:14
Because astonishment means that you learn something and God never learns anything. He has complete knowledge of everything.
28:20
If you were to ask God how many pebbles of sand are in the St. Croix River, he'd be able to tell you in an instant.
28:28
There's not one thing that God doesn't know. He knows every thought you've ever had. He knows everything about your life.
28:36
He knows more about your life than you do. Far more. But in Jesus' humanity, he learned things.
28:45
In his human nature, he learned things. And he's astonished right here. When he sees the faith of this centurion, we shouldn't say, how can we surprise
29:00
God? But rather, how can we please God? Because remember, this astonishment that Jesus has is an astonishment of being pleased.
29:08
He's pleased with the faith of this centurion. And this passage has enormous implications for our lives.
29:16
As the verse I mentioned above says, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Hebrews 11, 6.
29:24
So let's ask ourselves the question, how are we doing in trusting God? As I mentioned in the introduction, we exercise faith at conversion by believing the truth of the
29:34
Bible. And this includes the gospel, which tells us that the only one who can save us from our dreadful, sinful state is
29:42
Jesus. And faith is something that continues throughout our journey through life.
29:49
Every day is an opportunity to exercise faith in God. Every time we pray with sincerity, we are exercising faith in God.
29:58
That's what prayer is. It's trusting God. Pleading with Him, saying,
30:04
Lord, I believe that you can do this, and I pray that you would. We exercise our faith in so many ways in our life.
30:14
We exercise our faith when a charge is made against Christianity. But we defend the authenticity of our faith against the attacks of sinful men and Satan.
30:26
Students, when you start the school year, you should say, Lord, get me through this school year.
30:32
That's faith. Parents, when you realize so much of your kids' life is out of your control, you pray,
30:38
Lord, take care of my children physically, and more importantly, spiritually, that they would follow in your ways.
30:46
So much is out of our control. So we pray, Lord, help us. When you are tempted to be anxious, pray,
30:52
Lord, that I would rest before you. Please give me your peace. We exercise faith when we pray for something and we believe that He will answer our prayers.
31:03
We exercise faith when we look forward to the return of Christ. The Apostle John, at the very end of the
31:09
Bible, says, Come, Lord Jesus. He prayed, and we should do the same.
31:16
We exercise faith when hardships come. But we realize that God is in control and He will work everything out for the good of His children.
31:28
We experience this right now. Do we not in America? Some of you have been alive a lot longer than I have, but in my lifetime,
31:36
I've never seen anything like this. The turbulence that we see, God's in control.
31:42
He knows what He's doing. The worst possible outcomes can happen and it wouldn't matter because the battle's already been won and if we get so anxious, like somehow it's all up to us to fix this, or all up to someone else to fix this, or even a political party to fix this, we are fooling ourselves.
32:09
It's not up to that. It's up to God. He knows what He's doing. And I remind you that the only group of people that will endure forever are the people of God.
32:23
Everything that we experience today, every government structure, every nation, everything will pass away, but God's kingdom goes on forever and He always works everything for the good of His children.
32:36
And if we exercise faith in every area of our lives, we please God just like the centurion did and these are the people who will dwell with God forever in His kingdom.
32:51
And what we're about to see here in the next two verses are the inhabitants, the faithful.
32:59
Jesus describes the faithful in verse 11 and 12. He says, I tell you, many will come from east and west and require a table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven while the sons of the kingdom, this is the flip side, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.
33:21
In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So what Jesus says is that people will come from east and west to sit at the table and eat with Him in the kingdom of heaven.
33:34
But the sons of the kingdom He will cast in the outer darkness. Those who come from east and west are the
33:40
Gentiles in this passage. Yes, there will be Jews who are saved, of course, but they're not
33:46
Gentiles. They're going to come from east and west, which means all over the place, including
33:52
Eureka, Wisconsin, to recline at the table of the kingdom of God.
34:00
The sons of the kingdom here are those Jews who thought they would dwell in heaven forever in God's kingdom because of their descent.
34:10
They believed because they descended from Abraham they were God's true people. But what the
34:16
Bible makes clear is that it is only those who have true faith in God who are
34:21
His. Those are the children of God, not your ethnicity. What those
34:28
Jews failed to see is that Abraham was justified by faith, and he was not right before God because he was an
34:35
Israelite, but only because he had faith in God. Faith is the difference.
34:43
The difference between the centurion and these Jews who held tightly to their family heritage, their national heritage, is that the centurion had faith.
34:57
And if you think about it, the centurion, we don't know what his family line was like. His dad could have been one of the worst people in the world.
35:03
His whole line might have been horrible people, but it didn't matter. He had faith in Christ, and so he belongs to God.
35:15
Faith is what pleases God. We bring nothing to the table. It doesn't matter where you're born, who you know.
35:23
The question is, do you have faith that Jesus is who He said He is and believe in what
35:28
He did on your behalf? When we exercise faith in God, we tell
35:33
Him, I can't do it. I need Your help. And that's hard for sinners to do.
35:42
That's very hard. We love to rely on ourselves, but when we say, Lord, help me, that pleases
35:50
God. Jesus was astonished with the faith of the centurion.
35:56
We need Christ to save us, and we need Him to carry us through the life of faith. It pleases
36:02
Him, and those who have genuine faith are the ones who will please Him forever. However, the faithless, like many
36:10
Jews that Jesus grieved over, will not be in the kingdom because they did not exercise faith.
36:18
The destiny of the faithless is a horrible destiny. As the end of verse 12 says, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
36:28
I always wondered what that meant, and I heard a theologian say this. I thought it was so helpful.
36:35
Weeping and gnashing of teeth describes two different types of people in hell. The weeping are those who thought they would be in heaven, like the
36:42
Jews here, or maybe someone who goes to church but really isn't saved. They weep because they say,
36:48
Lord, I thought I belonged to you, but I find out that I don't. Those are the people who are weeping.
36:55
And then the gnashing of teeth, think of the most ardent atheist, the person who spends his whole life trying to prove that God doesn't exist and then ends up in hell.
37:03
There are no atheists in hell. Every atheist in hell hates God. They hated
37:09
Him in this life, and they continue to hate Him. That's the enemy here. That's the gnashing of teeth.
37:16
Pushing those teeth together in anger. So this is the destiny of those who do not have it, the faithless.
37:28
Revelation 21 .8 says that the faithless will be in the lake of fire. Now at the end of this narrative, we read that Jesus granted the centurion's request, both to stay away and also to heal his servant.
37:46
Isn't that interesting? Jesus doesn't just say, he honors the request. He says, okay,
37:52
I'll stay away. And he gives the word. And suddenly, his servant is healed.
37:58
Verse 13. And the centurion, Jesus said, go let it be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed at that very moment.
38:06
Remarkable. The greatest physician in the history of the world was Jesus Christ. He was dead.
38:20
Think about that. Remarkable. But most importantly, he heals us spiritually.
38:26
And that's what we must remember. So through his supernatural power, he heals the servant. Okay, so let's bring this all together here in conclusion.
38:37
An ordinary human incredibly brought joy to God's heart. And we see two reasons why in this text.
38:43
The first is he trusted in the highest authority to do what no one else can.
38:49
He trusted in the God man to do what no one else can. The second reason why is he knew the secret of having a true relationship with God.
38:58
And that is faith. Faith is what brings you into a relationship with God. Faith is what pleases
39:04
God. I once heard wise counsel that said, when we look at a passage of Scripture, the real human is never the hero.
39:16
They may be a sub -hero, like we see today with the centurion, but they're never the hero of the story. God is always the hero of every story in the
39:25
Bible. This text reveals Jesus to be God through the title
39:30
Lord and his supernatural ability to heal. But still, the main idea of this story is still the centurion.
39:38
It is his faith that we are to model. To follow this example pleases the one who made our faith possible and sustains our faith.
39:48
So may this be our goal in our lives, as a church, as the
39:54
Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5 -9, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
40:03
By God's grace, may we please God through our faith. Now next
40:10
Sunday, we will look at Jesus' heal once again, but we're also going to see something else that happens, and that is
40:17
Jesus tells us the cost of following him. There is a cost, and we will look at that next
40:23
Sunday. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father, thank you,
40:30
Lord, that you show us the way. We don't have to wonder how to be in a relationship with you.
40:36
You tell us, and it's through faith. Thank you for the
40:41
Bible. Thank you for Jesus Christ. The Bible points to him. We worship him, and I pray that everyone in this room would have a sincere relationship with Christ.
40:52
I pray that everyone maybe watching on Facebook Live would have a sincere relationship with Christ, and anyone who listens would as well.
41:02
Lord, my big prayer is that our faith would be sure that we would grow in the area of faith.
41:12
Our faith is feeble so often. Help us to grow in that area. Lord, may we be amazed that we can please you.
41:21
We can please you with our faith. May we do that more and more as we walk with you.