Pastor Scott Andrews | July 14, 2024
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Luke 7:1-10
Jesus had just finished His first major sermon in the gospel of Luke. He’s had some strong things to say, but clearly the central theme of His message was love. It’s really the central theme of the Christian faith – God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The first and greatest commandment, then, is to love God back, with heart, soul, mind and strength. And further, by your love for one another, all will know you are My disciples. And so also, in this message, love your enemies and love your brothers and sisters in Christ. Love your enemies by doing good to them, even when they mistreat and persecute you. Love your spiritual family by judging appropriately, not condemningly, with their best interest in mind.
Now, as we began this study of Luke, I suggested most believe Luke is the only Gentile author of Scripture, and yet he wrote more in sheer volume than any other NT writer. That’s important. You see, in his gospel and the book of Acts which he also wrote, Luke demonstrates a clear love for Gentiles – I suppose, because he was one. It’s even more clear in the book of Acts, as the good news spread beyond the nation of Israel to surrounding Gentile territories. Further, we’ve found Luke demonstrated a special care, concern and love for the marginalized of society – those often overlooked. Women, children, Gentiles, lepers, tax collectors, sinners, slaves, and today, a centurion’s slave. I’ve said it many times, Jesus did not call society’s winners into His kingdom.
So don’t miss it – He’s just finished His first major sermon where He called us to love. Now, He goes out and does what He said. Why do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? He’s the greatest example of who to love and how to love. It’s a great story. One that should encourage us, because we are Gentiles.
Now understand, the Jews were convinced they, and they alone, were the people of God, after all, they were descendants of the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. They were convinced when Messiah came, He would overthrow the pagan, Gentile Romans who were occupying Palestine at this time. And those occupiers were the enemies. According to the 29th chapter of the apocryphal book of Second Baruch, when that overthrow was complete, there was going to be a great heavenly feast. All Jews were going to sit down and eat behemoth, a giant elephant, and leviathan, a giant sea monster – both symbolic of an unlimited amount of food – a Golden Corral in the sky. But, the most significant and appealing part of the feast is there would be no waiting in line, and no Gentiles there. You see, Jews alone would be in the kingdom.
There were even groups within the Jewish nation who said they, and they alone, would be part of the kingdom. There were the Essenes, for example. They were ascetics who believed holy and right religion meant separation from the rest of society. Get away from those dirty Romans and even sinners among their own people. They led very difficult lives in remote, barren areas such as the community of Qumran of Dead Sea Scrolls fame. They were convinced they alone, with their separateness, were the true people of God.
There were also the Zealots. They were fanatical nationalists who thought holy and right religion centered on radical political activism. They were the terrorists of the day. As revolutionaries, they looked down on any Jew who would not take up arms against Rome. Of course, they were convinced when Messiah showed up, He would lead them into battle, and ultimately, into His kingdom, alone.
But the most prevalent of all groups was, of course, the Pharisees. They too were convinced they alone had the answers – they alone would be acceptable to God. Do it their way, or you’d never make it. And their way was through fastidiously observing the law of Moses and every minute detail of the traditions handed down by the elders over centuries. Theirs was the way of ritual and tradition, legalism and self-righteousness.
As we have seen, Messiah did show up to overthrow a system, but not the one the Jews expected. As I’ve suggested for a year now, Jesus said, the kingdom does not belong to the people you think. It doesn’t belong to shiny, pretty people who’ve cleaned up the outside. No, it belongs to broken people who realize they have nothing to offer, who come to Jesus saying, my only hope is You. I bring nothing to the table to warrant Your grace.
Having made that message clear in His message we call the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus returned to Capernaum. His purpose? Here, let me prove it. Let me prove my kingdom comes to broken people. And He continues to heal the broken and hurting, saying, the kingdom belongs to you. In chapters 7 and 8 of his gospel, Luke intentionally records several stories with these specific purposes in mind. These were not randomly chosen. Luke shared these so we’d know, again, the good news is for those you’d never expect.
Also, up to this point, Jesus has been demonstrating who He is. Luke has made that clear in the book. His very coming was miraculous: born of a virgin, proclaimed by a heavenly choir. Further, Jesus claimed to be the anointed One who came to preach the gospel to the poor, release to the captives, give sight to the blind, set free the oppressed, proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And He proved all that by His amazing teaching and miracles. He was healing people of every disease. He will in this next chapter even raise the dead.
Now to this point, His teaching and miracles have centered on the Jews. To be sure, also to marginalized and ostracized Jewish people like lepers and tax collectors. But now, in Luke 7, He’s going to take it a step further – dare I call it a giant leap for mankind. He’s going to demonstrate the theme of Luke: Jesus came to seek and save the lost, regardless of race or gender.
Further, in doing so, Jesus will continue to demonstrate He cares about every aspect of our lives. He cares about our physical lives – about disease and sickness and He even has the power to do something about it – He healed all who were ill. He cares about our spiritual condition – and even has the power to do something about it – exercising authority over the forces of evil, even forgiving sin. And He cares about eternal life – He even has authority over death, raising people from the dead as a picture of His authority to do that, once and for all at the end of time. Through all these miracles, Jesus is demonstrating who He is.
But again, through these intentional interactions, He’s showing He cares about all people – even people the religious didn’t care about. He cares about lepers and Gentiles – that’s right, even oppressive Roman occupiers. He cares about women. He tells us, it is to these kinds of people with whom the religious won’t even eat, that the kingdom will come. The kingdom, Jesus says, belongs to lepers and Gentiles and women – all the religious think unworthy. All the people who don’t meet their standards. All any decent, upstanding, righteous, religious, church-going person would ever have anything to do with. They have nothing to offer. They are simply those who realize Jesus is their only hope.
It was not an accident His first miracle in Luke was casting out a demon – from a man no doubt despised by the religious. It’s not an accident while healings are mentioned, His first healing story was healing a woman – Peter’s mother-in-law. The next was a leper – remember that? The physically disgusting leper – the outcast, the dreg of society. He was second to worst on the list, right next to a dead person. Not even allowed to be around people. When he walked into town, he had to announce his presence with the word, “Unclean” so that people wouldn’t come within six feet of him. Rabbis threw stones at him to keep him away. The disease was foul, it was contagious, and it was incurable.
Not only that, leprosy was a picture of sin – people with leprosy were seen as literally having sin all over them. So they were despised. And this man came desperately to Jesus, through the midst of the crowd that hated him. He didn’t care what people thought. He needed to get to Jesus. And as he came, he bowed to the ground and said, Jesus, my only hope is You. You can, if you want, make me clean. And Jesus said, I want. I am willing – be cleansed. He reached out His hand and touched this filthy man and healed him on the spot.
The point is, people who come to Jesus filthy and foul, broken and bowing, get redeemed. The good news is the kingdom belongs to that kind of person. Not to people who are clean on the outside and full of dead men’s bones on the inside. Not to the self-righteous. It belongs to people who realize they aren’t clean, inside or out. They aren’t trying to put on a show, to look good. They realize no matter what masks they wear, they’re still unclean. They bow at Jesus’ feet and say, if you are willing, you can make me clean, inside and out. And the answer from Jesus is always the same – I am willing.
After the leper was the paralytic – his friends had to rip a hole in the ceiling to get to Jesus. But that day the man walked away, carrying his bed. Soon thereafter, Jesus called Matthew, a tax collector, to be His disciple. And if that wasn’t enough, He attended a party of other sinners at Matthew’s house – because, you see, it is the sick who need a doctor. On and on the stories go as Jesus demonstrates to whom the kingdom belongs.
This week, He does it again – but it gets worse, at least from the religious Jewish perspective. It’s not an unclean Jew, it’s a Gentile. And it’s not just any Gentile, it’s a centurion – a hated oppressor. And we’re going to see something else: Jesus blesses faith wherever He finds it, and He finds it in the strangest places. The kingdom is an equal opportunity employer. It is not about being a Jew or Gentile, black or white, rich or poor, religious or pagan. It is about being broken and coming to Jesus in faith. It’s about what’s inside, not outside. It’s about the heart.
And Jesus finds that kind of faith in the strangest of places. The people of Jesus day would never have expected the Messiah to care about lepers. But He did. They never would have expected Him to care about Roman centurions. But He did. And they never would have expected Him to care about women. But He did. You see, it was with these outcasts of society that faith was found. You would expect faith to be found with Essenes, or Zealots, or Pharisees. But it wasn’t. It was found in the strangest of places – with the dregs of society. So finally, let’s read Luke 7:1-10 to see the healing of the centurion’s slave boy. Several religious strikes against him.
I could give you an outline, but I’m simply going to tell the story. After finishing His Sermon on the Plain, Jesus returned to Capernaum. Luke tells us there was centurion’s slave who was sick. Usually, doctor Luke is more specific, but he simply tells us the slave was at the point of death. Without intervention, he was going to die. Who cares – he was slave? Jesus did. But first, what is a centurion?
You know the Roman Empire was occupying Palestine at this time. After taking over a country or a region, the Empire would leave an occupation army to take care of Rome’s interests, namely taxes and to quell any uprising. The backbone of that army was the centurion. He was an officer, like captains of our day. They were each responsible for 100 men, hence the name, centurion. At this particular time, the Roman occupation army in Galilee was under Herod Antipas.
So, that’s what we have. This centurion was not only a Gentile, pagan, godless and unclean – he was an officer in the occupation army. Not only was he a hated oppressor, according to Josephus, it’s possible he was a Samaritan. You could hardly describe someone more despised than this man. Any God-fearing, self-respecting, religious person would never have anything to do with him. You could hardly find someone who would be a less likely candidate for the kingdom, at least as far as the Jews were concerned. Which made him the perfect candidate to be a recipient of God’s grace.
Now notice, this slave was highly regarded by the centurion. It could mean he was a valuable slave, a valuable piece of property, but the text seems to indicate something different. This centurion cared deeply for this slave, who is later referred to as a young child. That’s significant. This slave was either very young or the son of one of his slaves. During this time, slaves were property, tools. And they were treated as such. If you break a hammer, what do you do? You throw it away and get another one. Same thing here – if your slave got sick, you simply threw him away and got another. This whole story is about people no one cared about – centurions, slaves, children. No one cared, least of all, religious people. No one, except Jesus.
It shows you a little of the heart of this man. Now, while we know historically centurions were despised by Jews, you wouldn’t know that from the NT. Most of the uses of the title appear in Luke’s writings – Luke and Acts. And almost every time a centurion is mentioned, it is in a favorable light. There is this one, there is the one at the foot of Jesus’ cross who says, surely this man was the Son of God, and there is Cornelius in Acts 10 – a righteous, God-fearing man who came to faith in Jesus through the ministry of Peter.
If they were so despised, why are they mentioned in such a favorable light in the NT? Is it because they really were good guys after all? No. There’s purpose here – the people who come into the kingdom are the ones who don’t deserve it – it really is made up of despised, broken people. And it serves as a confrontation to the religious who, number one, think they’re in the kingdom because they’re so good, and number two, think that lousy people could never get in – guess what? They did – centurions made it, and the religious, didn’t.
So, this Capernaum centurion had heard about Jesus – clearly His miraculous healings. So, he sent a delegation of Jewish elders to implore Jesus to come heal a gravely sick boy. Matthew tells us he was lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented. Now, this must have been some centurion for a group of Jewish elders – probably civil leaders or religious rulers – maybe both – to come represent a centurion. In fact, the elders suggest something very interesting – this guy deserves it. Don’t miss that. This guy deserves your grace. He’s worthy of Your attention. After all, he built our synagogue (centurions were well-paid and often rich), and he loves our nation. Meaning, he could be a God-fearer, like Cornelius. Interesting description – the Jewish elders actually thought he’d done enough, He was worthy to deserve Jesus’ attention. Do you see? That was their system – keep the rules, and God will like you, He’ll accept you.
Jesus said He would come and heal the boy. Where was the boy? Lying at home in the centurion’s house. That’s a Gentile house. A good Jew would never go to the home of a Gentile. If he did, he would become unclean. He’d have to go through all kinds of ceremonial washing nonsense. But just like when He reached out and touched the leper, or partied with sinners, Jesus wasn’t worried about getting dirty. He wasn’t worried about what the religious said. He was only concerned about bringing people into His kingdom – and He was finding faith in the strangest places. He would go, He would defile Himself, and He would do kingdom work.
Do you get it? Kingdom work isn’t done with just the clean people of society. It isn’t just done in church, where it’s safe – where we all sit together, hold hands and sing “Kum By Ya.” We have to go out to where yucky, unregenerate sinners are. And we might just get dirty in the process. And the religious probably won’t like it – they never do. That’s a kingdom truth – religious people never like the real work of the kingdom. They always oppose it.
I want to make sure you get that this morning. The word on the street with Jesus was He was a friend of sinners. The religious were talking about Him, saying, “He doesn’t care about sin. He touched a leper, I saw Him. He went over to a tax collector’s house. He was going to a Gentile’s house. Can you believe it?” Why? Because He blessed faith wherever He found it – and He found it in the strangest places. And it wasn’t with the religious people. It was with the scum of society. Because scum know they’re dirty. Scum know they need help. And scummy people, broken people, get the kingdom. It’s not the righteous who need repentance, it’s sinners.
So, at this point, someone probably ran ahead and told the centurion Jesus was on His way. Really? At this point, the centurion seems to come to his senses. His response is the same as Peter’s in chapter 5 – go away from me, for I am a sinful man. The elders said I’m worthy, I’m not. This story contrasts the apparent worthiness and actual unworthiness of a person. We see some very significant things in the centurion’s words. His was a response of reverence, humility, unworthiness, and faith. When the centurion said, “Lord,” coupled with, “I am not worthy for you to come under my roof,” it was obviously a recognition of who Jesus was, to some degree – it was an expression of reverence. And even though this man was a centurion, used to people obeying him, used to places of honor wherever he went, he said, “I am not worthy for You to come under my roof – I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to You.” It was an expression of unworthiness and humility – I’m not worthy enough to have you in my house. That’s a broken person – to whom the kingdom was coming.
But what was most significant, which even amazed the Lord, was his response of faith. All you have to do, Lord, is say the word, and my servant – literally, slave boy – will be healed. How did he know that? I mean, we have the New Testament, we know Jesus had the power to heal at a distance. How did he know that? How did he know there wasn’t some magical, supernatural power in the touch. Everyone else was bringing sick people to see Jesus. But here, this centurion says, all you have to do is say the word, and it will be done. How did he know? God was doing a work in his heart.
The next thing he says, 8, “For I also am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me. I say to this one, go, and he goes, to another come, and he comes, to my slave, do this, and he does it.” Obviously, this man understood the authority of the spoken word. If I can just speak and people obey, how much more do you need to just speak, and your word will be accomplished. That is great faith. We don’t know if this had been done in Jesus’ ministry before. But this man’s faith was so great in the Person of Jesus that he said, I know You can do it.
But, look at the beginning of the verse – “For I also am a man placed under authority…” What did he mean by that? He understood delegated authority. As a centurion, he received his power from Rome. He was a man under authority, and it gave him authority, ultimately, the authority and power of the emperor himself. And he recognized that same authority in Jesus – he somehow understood Jesus received His authority from another – God Himself. And all Jesus had to do was speak, and it would be done. It was amazing faith.
So amazing, it amazed [we’ll come back to that] even Jesus. Basically, what Jesus says is this. I’ve looked for faith like this in Israel, I haven’t found it. It wasn’t found among the Jews, even though they can call Abraham, Isaac and Jacob their fathers. It wasn’t found among the Essenes, as separate as they were. It wasn’t found among the Zealots, as committed and zealous as they were. It was found among the Pharisees, as self-righteous and legalistic as they were – with all the rules they kept, they lacked one thing – faith. This, Jesus said, is where I found a faith that amazed even me – in a Roman soldier. In a Gentile, good-for-nothing centurion. That’s where I found faith – and this guy gets the kingdom.
In Matthew’s account, Jesus goes on to pronounce some rather difficult and heart-wrenching words. He says, the many who will be in the kingdom – the many who will eat at that great messianic banquet will come from all over the place – from the east, from the west. There will be Gentiles running around all over. But, there’s another thing – there won’t be many sons of the kingdom there. Who’s that? Jews. Jews who are counting on their nationality, their heritage, their bloodlines to get them into the kingdom. People who are counting on rules they’ve kept, things they’ve done. People who are counting on any other thing than Jesus won’t make it.
Not everyone who thinks because they’ve been born into the right family, because they’ve got the right bloodlines, because they’ve even grown up in a Christian family, will make it into the kingdom. None of those who are relying on anything they’ve done. Only those who come the way the leper came, the way the centurion came.
Broken. Bowing low to the ground in reverence. Recognizing who Jesus is and what He has done. Realizing in humility Jesus is their only hope. And understanding Jesus has the power and authority to forgive, heal, and grant grace. Which is exactly what Jesus does here. In response to this man’s humble, reverent faith, when the delegation returned home, they found the slave boy healed – Matthew says, that very hour.
Let me ask some questions as we close. First, you may be here and this is all new to you. You’ve been counting on belonging to a certain group – a Catholic group, a Jewish group, maybe even a Baptist group, to get in the kingdom. You’ve been counting on your birth or your life to get you in. And you realize this morning that it only takes one thing – Jesus – and you don’t have Him. I invite you to come desperately this morning, bowing humbly in reverence before Him – telling Him, Jesus, my only hope is You.
Listen, in verse 9, when Jesus heard about the centurion’s faith, He marveled. People all over the gospels were astonished at Jesus – marveling at Him. But there are only two times Jesus marveled at people. Here, when He saw the centurion’s faith, He marveled. Back in Nazareth, when He saw their lack of faith, He marveled. Do you see – Jesus marveled at great faith, and He marveled, despite His teachings and miracles, that His own hometown didn’t believe. Which one are you? Will Jesus marvel at your great faith; or will He marvel, be astonished, after all your benefits of hearing who He is and what He’s done, that you don’t believe.
But second, let me ask the rest of us some other questions. What are the marks of a good church? What we see happening here? Good things, to be sure. But I would suggest the marks of a good church include when broken, messy people are loved. When they are touched. When lepers and Samaritans and Gentiles and undesirables are brought into the kingdom. And Pharisees are hating every minute of it. That’s the mark of a great church. Where slave boys are healed and Pharisees are confronted, not the other way around. Listen, I want us to reach a lost, yucky world. We need to be salt and light. If we do that, we’ll get a bad reputation among religious people. Some of you may not like it. But I want to say to you this morning, it’s kingdom work.