Say the Word
Luke • Sermon • Submitted
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· 4 viewsIt's not the presence of Jesus's body, but the power of Jesus's word.
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Introduction
Introduction
Everyone loves the “last-minute save” when it comes to stories or movies. It’s the hero or heroine you thought lay dead under a pile of rubble that suddenly “resurrects” and saves the day. The battle raging on and the good guys are losing hoping for reinforcements and just as the battle is about to be lost, the cavalry appears. Even in the Bible we see stories like this—true stories like the disciples rowing in a boat all night in the midst of the storm and just when all seems lost, Jesus comes walking on water. We love that kind of stuff!
Last minute saves are nerve-racking and energizing all at the same time. And this morning we see a last minute save in our text. But I want us to notice that within this text you have a man who displays goodness toward others. We see this good focused in two different ways. But he also displays marvelous faith. So we see three displays of good. The first good is a compassion toward his slave. The second is a love toward the nation. And then he displays a faith toward Jesus.
Compassion Toward His Slave
Love Toward The Nation
Faith Toward Jesus
After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum.
Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him.
When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant.
And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him,
for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.”
And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.
Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed.
For I too am a man set 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.”
When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well.
Compassion Toward His Slave
Love Toward the Nation
Faith Toward Jesus
Compassion Toward His Slave
Compassion Toward His Slave
The first display good comes in a display of compassion directed toward the slave of a centurion. Jesus had finished his teaching, left the steppe that he had been preaching from, and entered into the city of Capernaum. And as he is just minding his own business, some elders of the Jews come to talk to Jesus. Now, don’t confuse the elders with Pharisees or Scribes. Elders were leaders within the Jewish community. They were men of influence. They were generally part of the synagogal government, making decisions about the synagogue, its use, and its speakers. In other words, they were men highly respected, but not necessarily teachers, scribes, Pharisees, or Sadducees.
I think it is important to remember that this is taking place in Capernaum. Remember what Jesus said to those in the synagogue of Nazareth.
And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘ “Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’ ”
And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.
Jesus has already performed many miracles in Capernaum. And here, Luke wants us to know he is back and is about to perform a huge miracle. The elders of the Nazarene synagogue had rejected Jesus. These elders in Capernaum are coming to him. And Luke tells us that they are coming to Jesus because there is this slave of a centurion who is on his death bed. But it isn’t just any slave. This is a highly valued slave. That may not seem like much at first, but it really is.
This isn’t just a utilitarian word. It’s not just that the slave was useful and therefore, his value was in what he did. This is much more of an internal value. This is not a common word in the New Testament, but it is used elsewhere. Let me give you a couple of places.
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,
That word precious is the same word as highly valued. Another place is in Luke itself.
“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him,
Jesus warned not to sit in the place of honor lest someone more distinguished, valuable, precious to the host is invited. This isn’t about usefulness, but about how one sees and loves the other. They are precious, distinguished, honored, valued by a person. That’s what this slave was to his master. That sounds weird doesn’t it? That a slave would be precious to his master, that he would be honored by his master!? That’s weird. We don’t usually hear that to be the case.
Jesus who has just been speaking on doing good is now confronted by a man with that kind of goodness. The kind of goodness that honors his own slave. This is a slave that can offer no good gift back to his master. At best, he can work hard for him. But he would never earn enough to give his master a gift or to throw a party on his behalf. Yet, the master honors him, values him. To be a slave was to be on the lowest of the class system. To be a Roman centurion wasn’t the highest, but it was high. As we’ll see in a moment, he had enough money to help build the community’s synagogue. So here is this Roman showing love and compassion to someone who was considered beneath him.
I had a friend growing up who was poor—very poor. He and his sister were from a broken family and they lived with their grandmother who had some health problems. He would come to my house and I’d go to his. I never thought much about it. I knew he was poorer than us, but he was my friend. When I was 12 or so, he moved to New Hampshire and I never saw him again. About ten years or so ago, he found me on Facebook. He asked if I remembered him and then asked how my parents were doing. He was sad to hear about my dad passing, but he asked me to tell my mom thanks. He thought of my parents as his own. They loved him and accepted him in spite of his poverty. They treated him as their own. I tend to think that is what this centurion had done with this servant.
Let me ask you: is there someone in your life that you can show this kind of love to? Is there someone who can do you no good, but to whom you can do good to? Not as a project but as a person?
Love Toward the Nation
Love Toward the Nation
But it wasn’t just that the centurion was good to his slave who could do nothing for him. He also displayed love toward the people of Israel. As a centurion—a Roman official and soldier—this guy could have commanded the elders to go and they’d have to go. But when they got there is was clear that they were not commanded, but came willingly.
When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant.
And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him,
for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.”
Notice that the elders of the Jews plead earnestly for the centurion. It wasn’t only clear that this centurion was compassionate to his servant but a man who loved the community. There was no pretence, only earnestness. And they saw him as worthy. Think about that! This Roman occupier was considered worthy of Jesus’s miraculous power by the Jewish leadership! How good of a reputation must a guy acquire so that those who are haters of your people actually respect you and consider you worthy of this miracle?
Back when I was a kid, I would watch a cartoon called The Flintstones. It was watching this cartoon that I first heard of a man called Dr. Livingstone. Dr. David Livingstone was actually a real person. He was a missionary and an explorer. But he was determined to find the source of the Nile. It was his hope that if he could do so, it would make him famous enough to end the African slave trade. His explorations took him deep into the heart of Africa which no white person typically was willing to do for fear of being killed. He never found the source of the Nile, but he worked constantly to evangelize and end the slave trade. At one point he was thought dead—killed by some tribe. But he was found to be alive by Henry Stanley, who uttered the famous words, “Dr. Livingstone I presume?” While he was never able to find the Nile, he had witnessed the brutal killings of the slave trade in Africa and wrote about it, sending his report to the UK. It was soon published and has been credited with ending of the African slave trade. America and England had already ended it on their own, but it was flourishing in Arab countries. After the King of Zanzibar read of Livingstone’s account, he outlawed it in his country which was the number one slave trading nation. The practice soon died altogether.
Why do I tell you this? A city was named after Livingstone in what is now Zambia. When the British colonizing of Africa had ended, the people of Africa changed the names of their nations, and every British named city was renamed as well. Every single one, except one: Livingstone, Zambia. The Africans tore down every British statue that had been erected, except for those dedicated to Dr. Livingstone. He is the only white man of the 19th century that is dearly beloved throughout Africa. Why? Because he loved them first. He won the hearts of a continent because he gave them his own heart.
Here are people who hated the Romans and so we’d expect them to despise every Roman centurion, and yet they are pleading earnestly to Jesus to perform a miracle for him because he was worthy. His love toward this community and toward nation as a whole was extraordinary. Those who ought to have seen him as an enemy and who ought to have seen them as the enemy showed love to them all. Wouldn’t you call that kind of love extreme? Loving not only those who love you, but also loving your enemies. Doing good to not only those who could do good to you, but to those who would normally be opposing you.
God can often give us examples in his word that catch us off guard. But as one commentator wrote, this was an example that “if even Jews thought such a man worthy of help from Jesus, Jewish Christians should see no barriers to the acceptance of similar people. . . into the church,” as we saw in Act 10 with Cornelius entering.
Faith Toward Jesus
Faith Toward Jesus
But lastly what we see on display is this faith that he has toward Jesus. There’s compassion for the slave, love for the nation, and now faith toward Jesus. Before Jesus is able to even get to the centurion’s house, he sends out some friends to stop him.
And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.
Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed.
For I too am a man set 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.”
The centurion knew that he had earned the love and admiration of the people. But that didn’t make him worthy to have someone like Jesus under his roof. Incidentally, that word a “worthy” is a different word than the people used to describe him. The people saw him as worthy—as good enough—to have a miracle performed on his behalf. But when he considered himself, he realized that he was not good enough—important enough, adequate enough—for Jesus to come to his house. Think about this for a moment, a Roman centurion who commanded 100 Romans soldiers did not consider his military rank and his power over the community as sufficient to have Jesus come into his home.
If you’re the President of the United States, you don’t get summoned to other people’s offices. They get summoned to you. It’s beneath the position to be summoned to a lesser office than your own. The centurion must have realized that he had sent the elders to Jesus summoning him to his house, and then realized that he was summoning someone who could cast out demons, heal leprosy, and any other diseases. How could he bring him to his house. So he sends more out to stop him.
This man understood how authority works. Just a word will do. That’s all he needs from Jesus. One who has authority does not need to be present to exert that authority. Giving a command by proxy—whether another person or by letter—is still authoritative. The commander does not need to be present.
If only we could learn this lesson. We want Jesus here. We’d love to see him present in our homes when things are going wrong. We want him with us when trials come our way. But it is not the presence of Jesus’s body but the power of Jesus’s word that really makes the difference.
You see, we’ve been talking about the centurion this whole time, but this story is not really about the centurion as much as it is about Jesus. The centurion understood Jesus more than the people of Israel did. He was the one with authority. I know it’s been a bit because we spent about 9 weeks on the sermon on the plain, but you may remember that authority has become a theme in Luke. Does Jesus have the authority to do and say what he does and says. The centurion saw that he did indeed. And that is the faith that caused Jesus to marvel.
None of the Jews got what this Gentile understood. One could argue that this man’s faith was bigger or stronger. After all, we read:
When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
But whether it was bigger or stronger is not the point. The point is that the faith was based on his understanding of Jesus and his authority. Luke was writing to Theophilus, so that he would have an orderly account so that he would have certainty concerning the things he’d been taught. So every account is to point us to the reality of Jesus. And this is no less. While it almost seems like this is more about the centurion, it is really about Jesus.
A man who understood authority—who had been trained by the greatest army of the day and had lived under authority and was in authority himself, saw that despite his position, he was unworthy because of Jesus and his own authority.
It was this revelation that caused him to keep Jesus from coming his way. It was this understanding that brought him to believe that Jesus need only say the word and his servant would be healed. It was this understanding that led him to believe in Jesus’s spoken word. And it was that which caused Jesus to marvel and heal his servant from such a distance. Yes, we want the body of Jesus but it is really the word of Jesus that we need. Though his body is in heaven in its glorious state, his word is always present with us. And in addition, he has also given us his Spirit—his indwelling, filling, leading Spirit.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we finish Luke 7:1-10, we have seen that this centurion had a compassion for his slave and a love for the nation, but his faith was not just in Jesus, but in Jesus’s word. Remember last week; it wasn’t just a “Lord, Lord” from this centurion. He actually trusted what he said. It was enough. Is it enough for you? In this life, when those you love are sick, when those you pray for are not yet converted or repentant, when those whom you seek a miracle for have not yet received it, will you trust in his authoritative word? When your son is struggling in his soul or you daughter is rebelling from the faith will you continue to trust?
Some of you may not yet believers. You think you’ll somehow get by judgment with your outward works. Compassion and love and such. Yet, I want you to notice that the only thing—the ONLY THING—that caused Jesus to marvel was the centurion’s faith. While others were impressed with his compassion and love, Jesus was not impressed until he saw his faith. It is only your faith that will save you from God’s wrath. Do not put your hopes in your own doing, but put your hope and faith in Jesus—his death and resurrection.