The Faith of an Outsider - Matthew 8:5-13

Well, welcome again to Redemption Church North Ogden.

I'm a glad to have all of you guys here with us.

We are in our series, the book of Matthew.

We walk through a verse by verse, chapter by chapter and

very slowly so that we can dig out all of the treasures that

are in the word of God. This was written by God himself

through men, of course, but we believe the Bible to be without

error, infallible, sufficient for everything we need in this

life. And so there's so much in it

that we don't want to Passover and, and, and even even in the

the efforts that we're doing to preach through this, there's

still things that we can't quite hit as much as we would want to.

And so, but thankfully we do get to handle this just chunk by

chunk, paragraph by paragraph. And that's what we're doing.

We're in chapter 8 of the book of Matthew.

And we last week started this section in the book of Matthew

where where the Holy Spirit has has chosen to focus on the

miracles of Jesus. We've seen, you know, the

teachings of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount.

And here we are. And it's a bunch of miracles

bunched together in this narrative, in this this book of

Matthew. And last week we talked about

how Jesus healed A leper and how that represented him saving us

from this infectious disease called sin that we all have that

only he could take away. And today we're going to look at

verses 5 through 13, and we're looking at the faith of an

outsider. This is the story that John,

Pastor John, read for us before we prayed about the centurion,

the centurion asking Jesus for his servant to be healed.

And again, as I've said, looking at miracles, you know, it's hard

to try to dig out of there. What does this mean for my life?

How does this apply? And as we look at the context,

the history, the background also, and each one of these

stories is written there for a purpose.

It's not just generally so, so we think, OK, Jesus does

miracles. That's great.

You know, it's more, there's so much more to the meaning of it

that we've got to dig out together.

And, and this story in particular is called a speech

story. It's it's it's a narrative where

the high point is not the event. The high point isn't actually

focused on the miracle itself, but it appears either during or

after the event. And a speech story then is, is

something where what is focused on is what is said rather than

the event itself. And so it's the words of Jesus

and the words of the centurion that we focus our time on here

and try to figure out what does this mean?

What does it mean for them? What does this mean for us?

I've got three points I want to look at as we look at the faith

of this outsider, A centurion. And my first one is this that

faithful friends intercede or appeal to Jesus for one another?

Let's look at verses five and six.

It said when he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came

forward to him, appealing to him.

Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home suffering

terribly. So this is kind of the the setup

of the problem in which Jesus comes and and kind of brings the

solution. A centurion comes up and says,

Hey, I've got this, this my servant at home and, and, and,

and Luke, Luke's version, if you didn't know, Matthew, Mark, Luke

and John are the gospels and it tells the narrative of Jesus

life. And, and some of the same, the

stories are in the other versions as well.

And in Luke version it, it tells us that this guy, the centurion

really loved this man. It said he was near and dear to

him. So this centurion who by the

way, is a Gentile Roman officer of the army of the occupation in

Israel under the authority of of Herod.

So this, these are the characters.

You've got Jesus, you've got the the the the servant who who is

being petitioned for or talked to Jesus about, appealed about

so for healing and then you've got the Gentile centurion.

What's a Gentile? A Gentile is someone who is non

Jewish, right. So in the Old Testament all the

way and even back to Jesus day, Gentile was just an outsider.

You see, God had chosen from one man, Abraham, to bring about

this nation called Israel. And he gave them the promises,

he gave them the law, and it was through them that the Messiah

would come. And everyone outside of this

nation, as you see in the Old Testament, is is an outsider, is

a Gentile. They weren't part of God's

chosen people yet at least. And so to the Jewish people,

Gentiles were unclean. They had to, they had to live

with them because the Roman Empire kind of came in and took

over Jerusalem and Israel at the time.

And so now they're, they're kind of living in oppression.

The Jews are. But this guy, this guy turns out

to be somewhat of a, a good guy. In fact, in the Luke version, it

says the the elders of the Jews came and talked to Jesus in this

narrative and interceded for him and said he is a worthy man.

He is worthy for you to do this miracle for him.

Why? Because he's, he loves our

nation and he even built us a synagogue.

So this guy, this this Gentile Roman officer who should have

been the enemy, was liked by the Jewish people and has done some

nice things for the Jewish people, even building them a

place of worship. Now, before I get to my point

about how he, you know, appeals to Jesus for his beloved friend,

his servant, there are just some things I want to point out in

this text. You know, is 1 is that this

really reveals to us where the Jewish people didn't quite

understand all the teachings of the Old Testament and the coming

of the Messiah and living by faith.

Because these elders of the Jews appeal to Jesus and say he's

worthy of you doing this miracle for him.

That just kind of points out their misunderstanding of

worthiness. You know, a miracle is grace.

If God chooses to do something in your life, in my life, to

come in and step in miraculously and change your situation, it's

not because he owes it to you or me.

Because of the way that we live, don't we live like that?

Sometimes, though, even we misunderstand the grace of God

and we think, if I live a good life, if I do some good

religious things, doesn't God owe it to me?

We even hear people say, you know, people that don't quite

understand the Gospel, that aren't even Christian.

They have this idea if I do more good than I do bad, I think I'm

going to heaven. It's probably a majority of

people, you know, that are not believers.

They think it's just fair, right?

That's their idea of fairness that they've made-up in their

own mind. If I do some good things and my

good outweighs my bad. This, though, is where they're

wrong. Now, the servant.

Let's focus on this servant for a little bit.

He's a young man, bedridden, possibly because of some

accident. Maybe it was malnourishment,

Maybe he had been overworking because he was somewhat of a

slave to the Centurion or a bond servant.

Nevertheless, he's paralyzed, he's suffering, and Luke tells

us again in his narrative to the point of death.

So he's not only suffering terribly, laying at home, not

able to move, but he's almost about to die in this centurion.

This guy who's basically to them, a non believer, comes from

this place of desperation and love, not for himself, but for

the servant as he was dear to him.

He's asking for help. Now I this isn't even the main

part of, of of the message, but because it's in God's word, what

I see here is this idea of intercession.

That's why I made it my point as faithful friends intercede for

one another or what does intercession mean?

It means to appeal on their behalf to another person.

It's actually a legal term. If you were in court, you know

your your lawyer would make intercession for you or a

witness would make intercession for you before the the judge.

That's what I call praying for other people in your life.

That's what the Bible would call praying for others in your life.

In a sense, you could say, although Jesus is there

physically in front of him, you could say the centurion is

praying for his servant. This is something that faithful

people do. Faithful Christians, faithful

followers of God, they intercede for other people.

It's not a selfish thing. We're not focused on ourselves.

We're we're, we're, we're concerned and we love other

people around us so much so that we are willing to spend our time

praying for other people. There are stories like Abraham

in the Old Testament. He interceded for Lot to God.

When when God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah,

Abraham said no, what if there are some righteous people in

there thinking about his cousin Lot the whole time, right?

Praying and praying, trying to get God to stop and eventually

God let him go and take Lot out of there.

Moses often prayed for the people every time that they

would sin and God would cause a a discipline or a curse to fall

on them, Moses would would plead on their behalf so that God

would have mercy on them. Did you know that even the Holy

Spirit and Jesus intercede for us?

In Romans 834 it says, Who is to condemn Christ Jesus, the one

who died? More than that who was raised?

Who is at the right hand of God? Who indeed is interceding for

US? Jesus Christ sits at the right

hand of the Father in heaven, ever making intercession.

In fact, in in Hebrews it says it beautifully.

Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw

near to God through Him, since He always lives to make

intercession for them. Think about this for a moment.

When you are in trouble, when you've messed up, when you've

sinned. Yes, Christ atoned for that sin

on the cross, past, present, and future.

But in a sense Christ is now our Mediator standing before God the

Father and saying as as almost a remembrance, although God

doesn't need to remember because he has perfect memory and he

knows everything. But symbolically, Jesus is

saying I died for them, I died for them.

They're clean, they're they're mine.

You gave them to me. Remember that.

Remember that because God is the wrathful God and and sin needs

to be dealt with. But every time the His children

sin or our suffering, we can have this picture in our mind

that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father ever always

praying for us is what the Bible says.

Now let me flip that then. If this is all going on and we

see this in this Scripture, my question to you is, do you love

people enough around you to go before Jesus and plead to Him on

their behalf? I know that we all think about

praying for one another and it's a thing in the Christian life,

you know, as maybe you're new to the faith, then you you, you're

not quite in that prayer life thing.

But as you grow your, your prayer life grows and you start

to figure out what am I praying for?

Who am I praying for? And one of the things that we

should always have on our prayer list almost every time we go to

him, rather than just saying, Lord, do this for me, please

help me, please save me. I know we're, we're, we're a

selfish people. I can tend to even lean that

way. I want to jump right into all

the things that I want in my life.

But there's something about this guy's faith that is an example

that he, he pleads for his servant.

Are you pleading for and praying for people in your life when

they're sick, when they're not doing well, when they're

struggling financially, when they're struggling in their

marriages, You husband, wife, are you regularly praying for

your spouse? I know.

Let me just, I'm going to be honest with you guys and just

reveal that we all know that we want to change our spouses,

correct? Be honest.

There's things about them that we wish were different.

And instead of constantly telling them that and trying to

do the work of changing them, why don't we go to the one who

can go to the one who will? Or maybe they don't need

changing and it's you that needs changing.

Just saying. I mean, it's probably a bit of

both on both sides, right? But are we praying for the

people that we love? We need to be praying.

And are they in sin? Not just sickness, but are they

in sin? Are you praying for them then,

right? Knowing that you yourself are

not without sin. And so as much as we want to get

angry at others and what ends up happening in our own self

righteousness, we forget to pray for those closest to us.

Even if they sinned against us, we should be going to God on

their behalf. Save them, forgive them, O Lord,

as you've forgiven me. I've done so many things as

well, Lord. And, and so God, you've brought

me out of that. Now please bring them out of

that. Faithful friends, appeal to

Jesus for one another. That's one thing I see in these

verses. But let's move on.

I have another point. Humble faith reveres Christ's

authority. It goes on and it says, And he

said to him, I will come and heal him.

But the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come

under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be

healed again. We see the compassion of Jesus

as we saw last week to the leper.

He says I will make you clean, I will do what you've asked.

Says the same thing in this one. I will come and heal him.

I want to. It is my will.

It's his desire. And what we see here though, is

something interesting about this man who who is who is

interceding his humility. Here again, contrary to what the

Jewish pals thought, he is not worthy of this gracious act,

although it the religious people thought he was.

He says, no, they've got it wrong.

I'm not worthy. I am not worthy of Jesus Christ,

God in the flesh who stepped down on earth, the sinless 1 to

come under my roof. There's something major about

that. He's not worthy, but he still

wants something done, a good thing done.

He's coming, you know, with with good character.

Now I'm going to just give it away and say that this guy has

saving faith and that's what he's representing is saving

faith. So we can call him a Christian

now. And so let's let's look at this

scenario. Grace is unmerited favor.

It's a gift, OK? He wants to do something nice

for other people. He's helped the Jewish people

build their own church so that they could worship.

How does this apply to us? What would be a good

application? You know, maybe it's a church

member who is very generous and has outstanding character,

humble enough to know that that that that the actions that that

person does doesn't make them worthy of any special privilege

or for that matter, grace from Jesus Christ, right.

We all know as Christians that God's salvation is a gift and is

not owed to us. And so therefore, how could we

come in to the House of God or even in our relationships in the

world? And when we do the things that

we're just supposed to do because Christ's nature is in

US. Humility.

Remember, Christ was the ultimate humble one as well.

The king of the universe who stepped down to be born like one

of us. That's called the humiliation of

Christ. How then can we go around doing

good works, having good character and thinking that own

owes us any special privilege or grace?

It doesn't. It's just we're doing what's now

coming out of our new nature, right?

We're being generous because Christ was generous, because God

was generous. We're wanting we're praying for

other people, not so that we can earn brownie points with God in

heaven. We're praying for other people

because Jesus prays for you and me.

We're doing good things. We are serving.

The reason we serve it's it's because we're under the

authority of Christ and we're his servants not to gain

anything. This is just who we are.

We fall in line, we're willing to take the marching orders and

do his will because not only is he our master, but we love him.

And he said, if you love me, you keep my commands.

And we want to, even though we don't do it perfectly, we want

to, right? And now with this guy, as I

said, he's a Roman officer, gentile, Roman officer of the

army, high-ranking officer, and he has a special place of honor

actually. I mean, the interesting thing

about his humility, we see it in the next verses here.

It says for I too, I'm a man under authority with soldiers

under me. And I say to 1 go and he goes

into another, he come and he comes and to my servant do this

and he does it. So in his request, humble

request, he recognizes Christ's authority even over his own

authority. You know, the military and our

and our culture in America, especially in the Christian

Church, there are a lot of Christians, men and women that

have went and joined and fought and been a part of our military

in America. And so then we give them honor

and respect, rightfully so. We thank them for the duty that

they've carried out to keep us safe, to keep us in religious

freedom in this country so that we can continue to be the light

of the world, hopefully. But in all of their

accomplishments, they're still unworthy of coming anywhere

close to the Lord Jesus's glory and authority.

Doesn't matter all your the medals and the badges and the

people that were put underneath you, even at your job, if you

want to talk about it like that, if you're a, if you're a leader,

if you're a manager, if you're a business owner, you're a

supervisor, whatever it is that maybe you have a pedigree of

academics and you've done so much and you've accomplished so

much. All of us probably have things

like that in our lives, but what we find is, is that all of those

don't bring us any worthiness before Christ, you see, And all

of those accomplishments that we have done are only possible

because of what Christ has done in US and for us.

And it's even his common grace that we're even able to have

gifts and abilities and health to do anything because all the

glory goes to him. The Bible says he's the giver of

all perfect gifts. Praise God, from whom all

blessings flow. So this Gentile military leader

in the world's greatest army at the time, a free Roman citizen,

a man who has household slaves, which means he also has some

money, thinks Jesus is so worthy that it's unthinkable that our

Lord should come over and just let himself in.

Because that's what Jesus was going to do, was going to go

into the house and heal him. And this is this is unthinkable.

Think about that for a moment. You know, it's like I got this

application from one of my commentaries that says it's like

the Queen of England coming to town, meeting you on the street

and saying, oh, I'll just stay at your house tonight.

What would you say to that? At first, you would be honored.

But then you'd come to your senses and I, I don't care how

upscale your house might be, you would suddenly recognize what a

dump it is, right? And you'd say, oh, she can't

stay here. That is this man's disposition.

But even greater than that, who cares about the Queen of

England, right? Compared to the Lord Jesus, he's

unworthy to have royalty. That's he is the king.

That's what Matthew's been setting up this whole time.

Jesus is the king of the universe and he is unworthy to

have royalty like this in his own house.

That's humility and that's reverence towards his authority.

Here comes that train. This happens every so often.

I make a big deal about it. If I didn't say anything, you

probably wouldn't care. But because I joke about it

every time. So a Jew did not enter the House

of a Gentile. Also, this was, you know, kind

of an Old Testament rule. Jews weren't supposed to go into

the House of Gentiles. It would make them unclean.

And and this guy somehow knew that because he had been sitting

around, probably worshipping with the Jews to some degree

because he helped build that temple, he would have heard lots

of teachings. This must be how his faith came.

He heard about the Messiah and somehow we know, we talked a

little bit about how salvation works.

It's not just because this guy's wiser than everyone else that he

got it and they didn't. But through the power of the

Holy Spirit and God, this is this is this man was made for

this moment because God knew this.

This story is going to be solidified in Scripture.

So we'd be preaching about it today.

It didn't happen by random chance, but this man has faith

enough to see the authority of Christ and it causes him to view

himself in a proper way as well. Even after all of his

accomplishments. He recognizes as in this analogy

that he uses, that I have people under me and they do what I say,

but even more so you, our Jesus, He's basically confessing that

Jesus is the boss on earth who can give commands and they are

carried out. Christ can command sickness to

be healed, He can command the dead to be raised, He can

command the demons to flee, and he can even command creation to

bow. And we will see more of that in

this section of Matthew's Gospel.

But one of the things, again, that is evident in in the book

of Matthew, the last chapter is something this man sees.

But Jesus tells his disciples in the end, all authority in heaven

on earth has been given to me and this guy sees it.

Here's the question. How about you?

Do you see that authority when you're in a desperate time?

Where do you run? Surely this guy could have went

to any number of doctors. He had money, He could have went

anywhere. But he knew only Jesus could

help this man. Only Jesus could fulfill this

request. How about you?

How about us, right? Is he greater than the advice

that we can get from someone else in a situation in our life?

We're so quick to run to so many other places in the world.

I mean, maybe even taking this back to prayer.

How many times do we search Google about a problem before we

dropped our knees? We think Google's pretty

authoritative. And I'll tell you what, it's an

amazing tool. You know, you can ask it

questions and it scans the entire interwebs of of

information to pull out a bunch of stuff, right?

But we understand that. But do we understand that God is

so much bigger and greater than that?

He is the authority on every subject in the world.

Can we not go to Him in prayer 1st?

And then because what we do first is where we really place

our faith right? Even when we trust our own,

when, when something's going wrong in our life, what is it

that we do? What's the first action that we

do? Well, people would say natural

reaction is to jump into action, right?

Some of us or there's fight, flight and freeze, whatever you

want to call it. But so yes, some people get

scared, start worrying a lot. Some people start trying to fix

problems. You know who you are, right?

And again, that's not a good recipe in marriage when one's

the other and one's that, when you're both opposite, one's the

fixer and one's the I need some time, you know, But just know,

where are we going first? We trying again, trying to tell

them all of our feelings first. Or maybe we all need some time.

The fixer. The fixer first needs to say,

man, I need to stop for a minute and I need to talk to the Lord.

And then then if I want to hear him.

And I think that's most people's complaints, but I don't hear

something from God right away. Well, that's to build your faith

#1 #2 He's already spoken, and it's in this book.

You want to hear I say this a lot.

You want to hear God speak audibly to you?

Read it out loud, right? Everything we need for life and

godliness in this book. Where's the authority in your

life or yeah, do you think because of your accomplishments

that you can fix this? You can solve this one?

This guy humbly knew he couldn't solve this one with all the

authority had, all the accomplishments he had and all

the money he had. He still knew he needed to go

plead with Jesus, cause only Jesus has the power and

authority to change this situation.

All right, my third, then and final point is this.

Salvation by faith alone is marvellous.

Let's read on. When Jesus heard this, he

marvelled and said to those who followed him.

Truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.

I tell you, many will come from east and West and recline at

table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven,

while the sons of the Kingdom will be thrown into out into the

outer darkness. In that place there will be

weeping and gnashing of teeth. Focus on that first sentence for

just a moment with me. Jesus marveled.

Isn't that interesting? Jesus was amazed, astounded at

this guy's faith because of his humility, because of the way he

cared selflessly about another person, and ultimately because

of the words he said about Jesus's authority.

He, Jesus, knew that this guy knew who he was, which was rare

at this time because the Jewish people couldn't see it.

They were blind, they couldn't see who he was.

Wouldn't that be great to think that our faith marvelled Jesus?

You can't say that about everybody in the Bible.

It's it's really few and far between that God is kind of

amazed at someone's faith. I believe those examples are

there for a couple of reasons. You know, one, to maybe strive

for that, have the type of faith that that is marvelous.

But secondly, I do think again though, that it's we're not just

saying that what this guy has, none of us can have.

In fact, faith in general is marvelous to Jesus.

He loves it. It's the only way we can come to

God is through faith, not by our accomplishments, not by our

works. And that's really what's being

brought out in this story, as we've seen the the elder Jews

have gotten it wrong. This guy's humility about

himself bringing nothing but only asking by faith.

Jesus is basically saying that this guy's faith surpasses

anyone on earth at the time, maybe even compared to his own

disciples. And we know if you know the

Bible man, these guys failed time and time again following

him. They were like doubting him.

Peter denied him three times. They didn't really understand

what he was doing. They did enough to follow him,

but it wasn't until later that they got the clearer and fuller

picture. This guy ultimately though, his

faith is, is is astounding because everybody around him was

rejecting him. It was a very small group of

people that really trusted in Jesus while everybody around him

didn't get it. Now, just a little side note.

It's interesting to think it's this.

This does not mean that Jesus was surprised.

Jesus is God, but as God and man while he was on earth, yes, he

has this emotional life with emotional reactions.

God has emotions in the Bible, and it's to help us understand,

to to relate to God. In fact, we have emotions

because God has emotions. Not only has Jesus been

astounded by this guy's faith, but he's also saddened and

troubled by the lack of faith in the people around him.

There's a beautiful and yet sad story in John chapter 6 where

John 6 · chapter mention

Jesus starts teaching these hard teachings and it says people

couldn't understand it and they started leaving him.

And Jesus turned to his disciples in a sad moment and

invulnerability even makes me emotional.

But he says, will you leave me to to his own disciples?

Jesus experienced emotions in this life and this one in

particular, Faith versus lack of faith.

Israel lacked any kind of faith that in fact they had it all

wrong and they only chose to listen to bits and pieces, but

didn't put it together about the prophecies of the Messiah to

come. And Jesus is standing right

before them as their Savior, sent to them as the chosen

nation, and they're still trying to earn their way.

They're still trying, not seeing that the law was given to them

to show them how sinful they were and how desperate they are

and how much they needed Jesus. And So what else do we see then

in this passage? He says many will come from east

and West and reclined at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

in the Kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the Kingdom will be

thrown into outer darkness where there will be weeping and

gnashing of teeth. That that passage right there

where it says many will come east and West.

He's now finally revealing something that was again, it was

in the Old Testament, but they passed it by.

This was this was saying that God was now opening up salvation

and his his privilege of being a chosen people is now coming not

is not just staying with Israel, but is now opening up to the

whole world. Many will come from the East and

the West, from from both sides of the earth, and they will come

and recline at table with the forefathers of the faith, the

patriarchs of the faith, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom

by the way lived by faith. Abraham is called the father of

faith. The law didn't come till Moses.

Abraham in Romans chapter 4 is righteous because of his faith.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

It's always been about faith. Yes, God has a standard and a

moral law, but it shows us how far we fall short and that by

faith and faith alone in Jesus Christ, the one who has come and

the one who already died, past tense for us, but for them is

going to die for them. Jesus is giving a glimpse of

what the rest of the Old Testament makes so much more

clear to us. Paul helps us understand that

that because of the rejection of the Jews, this was part of God's

plan so that it could be opened up to the rest of the world, and

then that the Gentiles faith us. You and I now make them jealous.

The people that were supposed to be the chosen ones.

Romans 930. It says, What shall we say then?

That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it,

That is a righteousness that is by faith.

But that Israel who pursued a law.

That would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching the

law. Romans 910 and 11 paint a

picture of of God's plan of opening up salvation to the

whole world and some parts of it are hard for us to understand

that this was God's eternal plan and this is how in his

Providence he's using that Romans 10.

He says, Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for

them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that

they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking

to establish their own, they did not to submit, submit to God's

righteousness for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness

to everyone who believes. This is where we get faith

alone. It's all over in Scripture.

God wants us to come to him by faith.

This story of the centurion is a Gentile who wasn't even a part

of the chosen nation without any of the privileges of God is able

to come to him by faith. And as I said in in Romans 11,

this plan, this mysterious plan that God is doing, it says.

So I asked, did they stumble in order that they might fall?

But by no means. Rather, through their trespass,

salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel

jealous. Why is this significant?

Because without God opening it up to the Gentiles, you and I

wouldn't be here in church today.

We wouldn't be headed to heaven. We would not have a relationship

with Jesus Christ. This is a marvelous truth.

It is also a mysterious one. In fact.

First, Peter says this amazing thing in verse 12, chapter one,

verse 12. It was revealed to them that

they were serving not themselves, but you in the

things that have been announced to you through those who preach

the good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into

which angels long to look. Even the angels are astounded at

this whole grace through faith alone in Christ.

The Gospel angels are looking at this like wow.

Now we're the chosen race, the royal priesthood, a holy nation

of people for his own possession.

As Peter goes on to say, this thing's been opened up.

All people come to Jesus by faith.

Faith is a gift. The Providence of God gets us to

this point. And So what do we do with that?

Then? We look at each other, we look

at ourselves, and we say, how did I get here?

Again, with the humility of the centurion.

I don't even know why me? Why did I?

I did? Did I humble myself enough to

get to this point? I don't dare to say that grace

is a gift, and as Ephesians 2 says, a gift of God so that no

man can boast. So here we are.

We should marvel at the fact that we get to be a part of

this, that we get to know who Jesus is because there are so

many people in our world that don't get it.

If you're here today, if you don't get it, I would, I would

ask you, I would plead with you. Do you see something here that

you haven't quite seen before? Are the words of God starting to

penetrate your Stony, stubborn heart and your mind?

Is God letting you into this marvelous faith?

It seems so simple that all I have to do is believe that Jesus

came, He died on the cross. I went against God, but that

atoned for everything I've done against God.

But yet you haven't come to that point yet of saying Jesus is

Lord like this man has. Will you do that today?

If you can and if you will, he will answer that prayer and come

into your life and heart and change you from the inside out.

As the story ends, it says into the centurion Jesus said go, let

it be done for you as you have believed.

And the servant was healed at the very moment.

The main idea what can we learn from this miracle?

The speech story as as it is called, we ought to be praying

for those that we love, not just for their physical bodies, but

for their souls also. And no matter what we've

accomplished in this life, Jesus Christ has accomplished so much

more and has earned his place of authority in everyone's lives.

There's no excuse. Nobody can say that Jesus Christ

hasn't earned the position as Lord.

It's just, will you submit to it?

And lastly, we come, we must come to him in faith to receive

the marvellous benefits of the gospel.

This thing that we can't earn and we don't deserve, yet we're

going to be transferred from from earth to heaven one day in

perfection because of nothing we did but by faith alone.

Where do you stand on this today?

You have a marvelous faith. I pray you do.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you again for your

word. Thank you for all that you've

done for us by revealing the truth to us, by sending your son

to die for us. Help us Father, in our faith.

We have weak faith at times. Help us to be strengthened

today. Even why we gather on the Lord's

Day to be filled up so that we can be strengthened for the rest

of the week. Help that be today.

Moving forward. Help all of us to walk out of

here full and rich so that we can go on to please you, to love

other people, to do your will and to make you famous.

I pray in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.

Did you stand and see?