Lon Solomon Ministries
People Jesus Met Part 7
You know, it's a word we all use all the time, in fact it's a word that punctuates virtually every conversation here in Washington, D.C. It's the word amazing. And, of course, when we say something amazes us, what we're really saying is that it surprises us. It shocks us. For example, this week I was amazed when I heard about the bonuses that AIG paid. This week I was amazed when I heard about the plan by Ryan Eyre to install credit card readers on their airplanes and charge people to use the lavatories. And I am always amazed when I reflect on the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross to redeem a rotten scoundrel like me. You say, "Well, this is wonderful." So, you get amazed. A big deal. So, but what difference does any of this make to the point of this morning? Well, the difference it makes is that today, in part seven of our series, People Jesus Met, we're going to watch as the Lord Jesus meets a man whose faith amazes him, whose faith shocks him. And we want to talk about what kind of faith this man had that caused Jesus to react like this. And then we want to bring all of that forward and ask the question, "Well, what difference does that make to us? How can we have in our modern world a faith like this?" So, here we go, chapter seven, verse one. The Bible says, "When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he entered Capernaum, his hometown, and there was a centurion servant there who meant a lot to his master who was sick and about to die. So, the centurion heard of Jesus and sent some of the elders of the Jews in the town to Jesus to ask him to come and heal his servant. When Jesus arrives at his headquarters in Capernaum, he's met by a delegation of Jewish city leaders who ask him to come help a local centurion." Now, we should stop for a moment and make sure that we understand what a centurion is, because it's a germane of the story. A centurion was a professional Roman soldier, an officer, a military officer. Centurion's commanded a group of roughly a hundred soldiers. You know, you get it Latin, century, a hundred centurion. You got it. And they roughly corresponded in our modern army to the rank of about a captain or perhaps a major. They were the backbone of the Roman army. Centurions were the only Roman officers to wear silver armor into battle, and they were the only ones whose plume on their helmet went from side to side, from ear to ear, instead of back to front. The reason for this is so that soldiers could always spot their centurions quickly in the heat of battle. Centurions were known for their toughness. They were known for being battle-hardened. They were even known for their brutality sometimes. In fact, maybe you've heard the term a centurion's cut. What that is, is centurions would often grab insubordinate soldiers around the neck from behind and take their sword and reach around and slice their abdomen open horizontally so that their bowels came out as a way of punishing them for their insubordination. Usually there was the last punishment that they got, but the point is, as one commentator said, and I quote, "The reason the Roman army was so fearsome in battle is that they were more afraid of their centurions than they were the enemy." And that's true. But this centurion that we're going to meet is different. In fact, he was different in two ways. Number one, he was different in that he was a compassionate man. You say, "How do you know that?" Well, because the Bible says he had a servant who meant a lot to him, a servant who was dear to him. You know, in Matthew 8, we learned that this servant was a little boy. And in Matthew 8, we learned that this little boy was paralyzed and in great pain, he probably had polio or something like that. And in the Roman world, people didn't care about slaves like this. Slaves were considered merchandise like livestock. An owner could sell a slave, buy a slave, be to slave, kill a slave. Nobody, they didn't make any difference to anybody. So to find a man who cared about a slave was unusual to find a centurion who cared about a slave was positively noteworthy. This was a compassionate man. But he was different in a second way as well. And that is, this centurion was also a godly man. Listen to verse four. "When the Jewish leaders came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, saying, this man, that is the centurion, deserves to have you do this because he loves our nation and he has built our synagogue." Now, does this strike you as just a little odd to have a group of Jewish people speaking well of a Roman soldier? Well, it should because in the days of Jesus, Jewish people hated the Romans. In fact, they hated Roman soldiers even more because they saw them as occupiers, foreign occupiers of their land. But here, we have these Jewish people pleading for Jesus to help this Roman soldier. Why? Well, what does the verse say? Well, because this Roman loved the Jewish nation and even built in town there in Capernaum, even built the Jewish people a synagogue. Now, in Capernaum today on the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee when the archeologist excavated the city, it's interesting. They actually found this very synagogue that the Bible is talking about here in Luke chapter seven. And this was the synagogue that this centurion actually had his soldiers build for the people of Capernaum. And if you ever go to Israel with me, I'll actually let you stand right in the synagogue that's right here out of the Bible, the one that Jesus attended and he preached in and that the centurion built. The point is that this centurion had rejected idolatry. He had rejected all that Roman mythology with Jupiter and all those other gods. And he had embraced and developed a love for the true and living God of Israel, which means he had also developed a love for the people of God, the Jewish people. Verse six, so the Jews come and they say, "You should do this." So Jesus went with the Jewish leaders and he was not far from the centurion's house when the centurion sent friends to Jesus and they said, "Lord," he said, "Please, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. This is why I didn't come to you myself," the centurion said, "for I do not consider myself worthy." The centurion said, "Hey, Jesus, listen, I'm a Gentile. I'm a Roman soldier. I mean, I've killed people in battle, lots of people in battle. I'm an occupier of the Jewish land. I am not worthy for you to come to my house." Verse seven, "But just speak the word," the centurion said, "and my servant will be healed." And the centurion had a logic to this. Let me tell you, I'll show you his logic. Verse eight, the centurion said, "For I myself am a man with authority, with soldiers under me." And I tell this one, "Go," and he goes. And I tell another soldier, "Come," and he comes, and to another soldier, I say, "Do this," and he does it. Do you understand what the centurion was saying here? He was saying, "Hey, Lord Jesus, look, I understand how authority works. As a man with authority, my personal presence is not needed somewhere for me to get something done. If I want something done, I just tell the sergeant who tells the corporal, who tells the private to go get it done, and it gets done. I don't have to go myself." And so, Lord Jesus, you're the same way. You have all the authority in the universe. You don't need to personally come to my house. All you need to do is speak the word. All you need to do is give the order, and some angel, some seraph, some cherubim, some heavenly creature will come to my house and heal by this servant. You don't have to come here, you self-lord. And when Jesus heard this, he was amazed. There's our word. He was amazed at this centurion. And turning to the crowd, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, I have not found such great faith, not even in all Israel." The word that's translated here, amazed, the Greek word thalmaso, is used a number of times in the New Testament referring to Jesus' reaction to things. For example, the Bible says Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. Jesus was amazed at their hardness of heart, but this is the only time in the entire New Testament where this word is ever used positively, where Jesus was ever amazed at someone in the good sense. And what amazed Jesus was this centurion's faith. Here was a man, a Gentile, no less, who had a deep and thorough understanding of who Jesus really was, so deep that it went beyond his disciples or any other Jewish person he'd ever met, who should have understood who he was and it amazed Jesus. It blew him away. Here was a Gentile who viewed all of life, every problem, every circumstance, every obstacle in light of Jesus' unlimited power and Jesus' boundless authority. It amazed Jesus. Verse 10, "Then the men whom the centurion had sent returned to the house and they found the servant well." Jesus took advantage of the platform that this centurion's faith created and he didn't go to the guy's house. He turned around and went someplace else, never did show up at the centurion's home and yet when the friends of the centurion got back, they found the little boy healed and completely well exactly the way the centurion knew that Jesus could do. Now that's as far as we want to go in our passage because it's time now to ask our most important question and all you folks at Loudon and down in the edge and around the world on the internet, I expect you to be part of this too. So when we say three, are you ready? Okay, here we go, nice and loud. One, two, three. Yeah, you say, Lon, so what? Say, all right, great for this centurion. What a wonderful faith, props to him, but what difference does any of this make to me? Well, I want to talk to you about that. You know, I'm convinced that God loves everybody the same but that he likes some people more than he likes some other people. Are you convinced of that? You should be, you should be, for example, Abraham. The Bible says that Abraham was the friend of God. The Bible says that David was the apple of God's eye and a man after God's own heart. The Bible says that God liked Moses so much that God spoke to him face to face as a man speaks to his friend. And then there was Caleb and Joshua and Esther and Deborah and Ruth and Daniel and Daniel's three friends and Elijah and the Apostle Paul. In fact, God liked all these people so much that he wrote them into the Bible for all of eternity. And what caused God to like these people so much? Well, folks, the reason is that these people saw the world exactly the way this centurion in Luke chapter seven saw the world. They saw all of life. They saw every problem, every obstacle, every roadblock through the lens, get this now, they saw them through the lens of God's unlimited power and God's boundless authority. When they, these people, encountered a problem, when they encountered even what looked to be impossible seeming obstacles, what did they do? They came right up to those obstacles like Abraham did with the birth of Isaac, like Moses did at the Red Sea, like David did with Goliath, like Joshua did with crossing the Jordan, like Ruth did and staying with Naomi, like Esther did and going in to see the king, like the Apostle Paul did his whole Christian life, like the centurion did with the healing of his servant. They came right up to the problem and then they trusted God to move those obstacles right on schedule by the exercise of his awesome power and his boundless authority. That's how they live. That's why God liked these people so much. Their only limiting factor, the only limiting factor these people ever placed on God was God's own sovereign will, never their own puny human logic. Well, I just don't see how God's going to do that. Never their own puny human understanding. Well, I just don't understand how that could possibly happen. Never their own puny human doubts. Their outlook was if God decides not to do something for me, the only reason ought to be that God himself has chosen not to do it in his own sovereign will. The reason should never be that I robbed him of the opportunity to do it by my unbelief, that I limit his ability to do it by my unbelief. You say so long, what differences does this make to me? Oh, a lot. Because you know, the single greatest mistake that I see in followers of Jesus Christ in our modern world is that they limit God in their unbelief, in their weakness of faith, they decide ahead of time for God, what God can do and what God can't do, what God will do, and what God won't do. They're like the Israelites in the wilderness, Psalm 78, that said again and again in the wilderness, they, the Israelites, limited. Look at this, the holy one of Israel. And how did they do it? Well, the verse goes on to say they forgot his power that he displayed when he redeemed them from Egypt. Holy smokes, friends, the 10 plagues. God opens the Red Sea. God closes the Red Sea back on the chariots of Pharaoh. And then when they get on the other side, three days they go, we're out of water. Come on now. What are you kidding? Get a life here. Who's our God here? Hamahama. See, we dare not do this, folks. We dare not forget who the Bible says we're dealing with here. Our God is the mighty, omnipotent, omnipresent, all powerful, sovereign, God of every Adam in the universe. All right. Ephesians chapter 3, Ephesians 3 verse 20, the Bible says God is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or even imagine. Hey, I can imagine a lot. God says, law, not even close to what I can do. What did Gabriel say to Mary? Luke chapter 1, he said, for nothing, oh, there's the word, for nothing is impossible with God. In Genesis 18, you remember Sarah was eavesdropping outside the tent of Abraham when the Lord came to announce the birth of Isaac and the Lord caught her. You remember? And said, you were laughing. And she said, no, not me. And he said, oh, yes, you were. And he said, Sarah, is anything too hard for the Lord? That's a rhetorical question. The answer, of course, is no. Jeremiah 32, God says, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh, is anything too hard for me. Jesus said, Matthew 19 with man, this may be impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And finally, Jesus said, Luke 18, what is impossible with men is possible with God. You see, this is how every one of these folks that God likes so much, this is how they saw God. Abraham and Moses and David and Esther and Ruth and the Apostle Paul. And because they saw God this way as the mighty, awesome being that he is, it changed how they approached their problems. It changed how they approached their obstacles and their challenges in life. And friends, if we today as followers of Christ will simply learn to see God in the same way all these folks saw God, it will forever change how we approach our problems and our struggles and our obstacles in life. It will result, don't miss this, it will result in our never placing artificial human limits on what God can do and what God can't do, on what God will do and what God won't do. It will result if we see God properly in our taking God's invitation seriously in Jeremiah 33, where he said, call unto me, listen, and I will answer, watch, and I will show you great and mighty things that you know not. You call unto me and put no limits on me, God says, and you buckle your seat belt and you watch what I do. You know, as many of you know, my oldest son Jamie is a doctor in the Navy, actually an anesthesiologist. And he actually, he and Julia, my daughter-in-law, have my two grandchildren, the only ones I have so far. Well, back in July of 2007, Jamie finished his residency at Bethesda Naval here locally. And the Navy wanted him to go up to Boston for a year to Boston Children's and do a fellowship in pediatric anesthesia. But I didn't want him to move away with my grandchildren, you understand what I'm saying? And he kind of wanted to stay here, but the deal he cut with the Navy was if you go up there and you do it for a year, you can come back to Bethesda. Okay, so I, this was really hard on me. I mean, you know, I didn't have a grandfather involved in my life growing up, certainly not spiritually. And I understand the impact that a grandfather can have on children. And I wanted that impact and I wanted to be close with them. And so, but I thought, well, you know, for a year, I guess I can do it. They pulled out of the driveway, I'll never forget driving up to Boston. And I was standing there in the driveway weeping like a baby. And my wife turned to me and said, you know what? She said, you need help. She said, we, you need, you need some professional help. I said, no, I don't. But I kept saying, all right, it's only a year, 11 months, 10 months, you know, I was counting it down. Well, in January of 2008, my son heard from the gentleman out in San Diego who decides where all the Navy doctors go. And he told him they had changed their mind and they were sending him someplace else. Not back to Bethesda. Well, we were devastated. I mean, I was devastated. We all were. And I said, all right, here's what we need to do as a family. We need to take God seriously and take him up on Jeremiah 33. We need to call to him and expect him to do great and mighty things that we know not. And my son Jamie said, but dad, the guy told me when he called, it was 95% sure I was going this other place. And he said the, and when I get written orders, which he said are on the way, he said that it's going to be 99.5% sure I'm going somewhere else. And I said to him, Jamie, you listen to me. Nothing is over till God says it's over. I said, don't we're going to pray. I said, God is bigger than the Navy. Praise the Lord. And God's bigger than the Army. Praise the Lord. And some of you may not believe it, but God's even bigger than the Marine Corps. Praise the Lord. And so we prayed. Well, in March of two months later, he got his written orders and he called me up and said, Dad, it's over. It's over. I got my written orders and I said, it is not over, son, until the moving band pulls up in front of your house. And I said, with God involved in the equation, it may not even be over then. My son was like, you know, you are so frustrating. You don't understand the military. This does not have a military works. I said, don't tell me about the military. Tell me about God. Well, I kept praying. Nobody else was. He stopped praying about it. No, I'm serious. He stopped praying about it. My daughter lost, stopped praying about it. My wife stopped praying about it. She said, long, it's over. Just accept it. I'm like, I am not, what is wrong with you? No. But I got to tell you, my prayer changed. No longer was I praying, Lord Jesus, please let me be close to my grandchildren. No, no, that was way gone. Now, every morning I was praying, Lord, I want you to bear your mighty arm. And I want you to intervene supernaturally in this situation. And I want you to change the heart of that fella out in San Diego. And I want you to show your power to my wife, my son, my daughter-in-law, and everybody in this family that we never, ever limit God. And that's what I pray. Six weeks later, April, I got a call from my son one day. He said, hey, dad, he said, you are not going to believe what just happened. I said, I don't know, I might. Try me. He said, well, I was in the operating room up here in Boston, and I got beeped on my beeper, and I went out and called the number. And it was the fella out in San Diego who decides where everybody goes, you know, the one who had told him he was going someplace else. And he said, hey, James, he said, have you bought a house yet in this new duty station? Jamie said, no. He said, have you rented something, a contract that you can't get out of? He said, no. He said, well, don't. He said, I think I've got a way to get you back to Bethesda. And Jamie said, but I have written orders, sir. And he said, don't worry about written orders. I can deal with written orders. He said, just sit tight. And three weeks later, my son received new written orders not to go where they planned to send him, but to come right back here to Bethesda where he is today. And I said to him, I said, Jamie, look, this is wonderful. God's done this. You could have stayed in Boston. Just send the grandkids back. If you want to say that, that was okay. But listen to me, Jamie, the point here is not that you got transferred back to Bethesda. That's not the point. The point is God wants to teach you something, son. He wants to teach you something that you teach your children so that they teach it to their children, so that they teach it to their children. And that is we never, ever limit God. God is bigger than orders. Amen? Now, let me say by way of balance that God is not the genie in the lamp, that whenever we just rub the lamp and tell God whatever we want and tell him we're not going to limit him, that he's obligated to do it. No, no, that's not what I'm saying. And that's not what God claims. But what God does claim in the Bible is that he is a being of such unlimited power, such boundless authority that he invites us to bring every problem to him, Jeremiah 33-3, to come to him boldly with our problems and to not impose any limits, to not impose any preconditions on what he's going to do or what he's not going to do, but rather to simply leave it wide open for God to be God. For God, if he wants to limit himself and tell us no, fine, but that's not our job to do that for him, let him be God. Don't you try to be God? Yes, it's true. We need to humbly tell God that we'll accept his will, whatever it is, even if it isn't what we want. I told him that about my son moving back, but we don't start there. Do you understand what I'm saying? We don't start by going away. You're probably not going to do it, so it's okay. No, don't know. No, we start by saying God, you can do anything. So here's what I'm asking now. You do what's best for your plan for my life, God. No limits on you. Our attitude ought to be that of William Carey, the father of modern missions who said attempt great things for God, and I love the second part, expect great things from God. We have a great God. We should be expecting great things, things that we know not. You say, all right, Lon, that's wonderful, but I just have one final question, which is good, because I only have time for one final question. You say, how do you get a faith like this? I mean, this is wonderful to talk about this, but how in the world can I get my faith to grow? So it's like the faith of all these people you talked about today, Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Deborah and Ruth. How do you do that? Well, folks, that's the wrong question. The wrong question. Listen, the size of our faith is directly proportional to the size of our God. If you have a big concept of God, a correct concept of God, you will have a big faith. And if you have a little concept of God, you will have a little faith. The question we ought to be asking is not, how do we get our faith to grow? The question we ought to be asking is, how do we get the size of our God to grow? And the answer is found in Romans 10 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Folks, it's by getting into the written word of God, the Bible, that our understanding of God grows and our conception of God grows. And our view of God grows, our view of his awesomeness, his eternity, his power, his authority, his majesty, his sovereignty grows until it reaches a level that is worthy of God. And you know what? You get in the Word and you stay in the Word and you live in the Word and you let God use his Word to expand your concept of God to what it ought to be. And I promise you, you know what? Your faith will grow large all by itself. You don't have to do a thing. It'll grow all by itself into the kind of faith that amazes God. Now that won't happen from Time magazine and it won't happen from Newsweek and it for sure won't happen from the Washington Post. But it will happen. You get into the Word of God because one of the reasons God gave us the Word of God is to teach us who he is. Let me say in closing, how cool would it be to be one of these people that God is amazed by the faith we show? Would that be cool, huh? Wouldn't it be cool to have God sit up in heaven and punch Gabriel in the ribs and say, Gabriel, you see her down there, you see him down there, you see the way they're living. But I love that person, Gabriel. If we were still right in the Bible today, I'd write him or her in it. No, we're not right in the Bible today, but you understand what I'm saying. How cool would it be to have God say that about you? Well, you can have that, friends. Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Ruth, these people weren't made of different protoplasm than you. These people didn't have different genetic material than you. What they had that was different than most people is they had an enormous view and understanding of who God is. And that's why they live their lives differently. Friends, you can have that. You get into the Word of God, and I promise you, read it every day, not asking yourself, now, what does this teach me about theology? No, no, no, that's the wrong question. We ought to pick up the Word of God every day and say, what does this passage teach me about God? Who he is and how he works, how he thinks, and why he does what he does. What does this teach me about God? You get into the Word like that, and I promise you, your faith will grow to become like the centurions. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thanks for challenging us today with this wonderful story of this gentleman, the centurion, and the amazing faith that he had. Lord Jesus, remind us today we can have that same kind of faith, but we're only going to get it when we get into the Word of God. Remind us, Lord, that we cannot build a big faith on an anemic devotional life. And so make us men and women of the book, Lord, make us men and women who are in the book, studying the book, memorizing the book, meditating on the book so that we might become people whose faith amazes you. Change our lives because we were here today, Lord. Change the very way we approach the problems and situations of life, because we sat under the teaching of the eternal Word of God, and we pray these things in Jesus' name, and God's people said amen. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]