"Only the Unworthy Can Come"
Notes
Transcript
Imagine with me a quiet Friday evening in the home of a family. Not my home or your home, just one of the pretend ones that we only see in the movies. You know what I’m talking about…one of those big, white, two-story houses that has a green lawn out front and huge, four-paned windows with drapes pulled back so that as the movie camera starts the picture from the curb, we can move slowly in through those big windows to see the family who lives there gathered around a beautiful dining room table indulging in pizza and soda. For the carb police in the room, remember the story started with a Friday night. They had a long week. Let them.
After a while, the youngest son in the family heads upstairs to bed. He’s had an especially tiring week and he’s not going to fight the oncoming carb-coma. The rest of the family stays down stairs and after some tidying up, everyone but that boy make their way to the living room to watch a movie. Everything was going smoothly until the smoke detectors started blaring - there was a fire raging in the kitchen. What happened was that one of the other kids who stayed up, thinking he may take a movie intermission to grab another slice of pizza, slid the box in the oven and, out of routine, set the oven to bake and not warm. By the time anyone could make it to the kitchen, the fire was beyond their ability to control, so the parents ordered everyone outside and called the fire department.
Everyone made it out, but that youngest boy. Long asleep while his family watched a movie, he was awakened by the blaring sound of the smoke detectors upstairs. By then, he couldn’t make it down the stairs so he climbed out on the roof just outside his bedroom window and he was overtaken by fear. The smoke was so thick from the first floor that the little boy couldn’t see anything down below the roof. Not only was the smoke blindingly thick, it was suffocating. He couldn’t control his coughing and his eyes watered terribly. He could feel the heat as the flames licked upwards from the edge of the roofline and he could hear two distinct sounds. The first was the sound of sirens in the distance, getting closer. He knew help was coming but there was no telling if it would get there in time. The other sound was his daddy’s voice. “Son, jump!” “My son, jump! I’ll catch you! Just jump!” Between his coughing fits, the boy said, “But daddy, I can’t see you!”
What would you do if you were that kid? Could you jump blindly over the edge of the roof, fire lapping at your feet while smoke billows around you? You don’t know what waits below from where you jump - it might be anything, right? Maybe a hedge awaits to cushion your landing…or maybe a cement sidewalk. Conventional wisdom doesn’t let you jump…isn’t it said that “seeing is believing?”
As we read this morning, Thomas, among those twelve apostles who walked with Jesus during his ministry said that he’d have to actually lay his own eyes on the supposedly resurrected Jesus Christ to believe that Jesus had indeed returned from the dead.
What would it take for that little boy to jump over the edge of his roof into the arms of his father waiting below? What would it have taken for Thomas to have believed that Jesus was risen from the dead?
Faith. A simple, five letter word that if you lack it or you misplace it, you will suffer the consequences of your actions. So this morning, I want us to prepare to seek to answer this question:
What is faith?
What is faith?
And as we set our heading to answer this, I would like to start by offering a word of gratitude to Pastor Carlos for the message he delivered last week to conclude our time in Romans 12. We studied that chapter to reinforce what Jesus preached in Luke 6 concerning the kingdom of transformation that has been ushered in. I hope from the messages you’ve heard over the last nine weeks, you’ve come to understand that saving faith in Jesus Christ is not something that only affects what comes after your death. Faith in Jesus Christ not only affects your eternity, it most certainly changes your present life. Here’s a reality of the gospel that is just so difficult for us to grasp:
Jesus died for you just the way He found you
Jesus died for you just the way He found you
Jesus loves you and won’t leave you the way He found you
Jesus loves you and won’t leave you the way He found you
Despite conventional wisdom, you don’t need to clean yourself up for Jesus Christ to save you but you can rest assured that if he has saved you, he begins a work of cleaning you up from the inside, out. And this is confusing to so many of us because we probably haven’t heard it preached much because it’s difficult stuff. It’s difficult to motivate people towards accepting change and so often times to get something done, people will use one of the greatest motivational techniques there is - fear.
Fear works even in a church. Did you know that it’s way easier to scare people to Jesus by talking about the fires of Hell? And yet, it’s incomplete to speak about these spiritual matters without addressing the totality of what it means to be drawn into Christ’s gloriously transforming light. So, as we surrender to Jesus as King , it is Jesus who has the say in our lives and Jesus starts to clean up our lives so that you and I who have been adopted by the Father who is in Heaven by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, act and think less and less like the world with each passing day while more and more we begin to live lives that honor and please God. This is all done by the Spirit of God who applies the gospel to our hearts, renewing our minds and our passions.
This is what Jesus began to preach in Luke 6 and is reinforced all throughout the Bible. And now Jesus is moving from that grand sermon that outlines the aim of God’s kingdom to moving to the characteristics demonstrated by citizens of God’s kingdom. And as we see here in the opening of Luke 7, we are told of an interaction between the Lord Jesus Christ and two different groups of emissaries who are representing a Roman centurion.
This centurion is a man who resides in a city named Capernaum, which wasn’t far from where Jesus was preaching in Luke 6. If you’re curious who this centurion is, let me ask you, how many cents makes a dollar? If you’ve used cash anywhere lately, you’d know that the answer to this is apparently more difficult than ever for cashiers to answer, but it’s one hundred cents makes a dollar. And centurion isn’t the man’s name in this passage, it’s a description that indicates that he is a man who has been given authority over one hundred Roman soldiers in his service under Herod Antipas, who if you remember, is the ruler of the region. A centurion wasn’t a commoner, you might say that he was a somebody around the streets of Capernaum. And whoever this particular centurion was, he was a man who had many servants under his authority as well, apparently one of which he was particularly fond of who had fallen ill about the time that Jesus had come to town.
This centurion prized his servant, and dare I say, loved this servant. And the condition of the servant had become increasingly dire to the point, as it says that the servant
Luke 7:2 (ESV)
...was sick and at the point of death...
The servant’s condition had moved to critical stages and now life was fleeting. And when the situation got out of the ability for anyone to control, we find the centurion reaches out to Jesus. Before we jump into investigating how this centurion reaches out to Jesus, I need to point out to something briefly that I hope will serve to encourage you.
I know I’m not alone this morning when I share with you that there are people that I love dearly who do not know the Lord. I desperately want them to come to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I’ve shared with them and I’ve received all sorts of reactions and responses. “That’s nice” or “thanks” or just blank stares. That’s the response I get. I have been praying for years for some of them to come to the place of faith and have had to fight off the urge to just resign to hopelessness. And what I have realized is that the focus of my prayer needs to change. This may come across as something of a disbelief, but as I pray for the salvation of souls, my prayer must be for the Lord to bring those souls to a place of brokenness where they can see the limits of their worldly comforts and they can no longer rely upon their strength or their smarts or their beauty.
Pray that the lost be broken
Pray that the lost be broken
This centurion has no one to turn to and just at the hearing about Jesus, as it says in Luke 7:3, he appeals to Jesus for help. For those of you who are fighting the urge to give in to hopelessness for the salvation of those you love, pray that they be broken.
Maybe you are that person who is broken today. Maybe you’re here, angry at your situation, angry at God, even. You’ve come to the right place and I need you to know right now that though your world may be crumbling around you, Jesus Christ has allowed all of this to come because he loves you and wants to save you. It’s not the promise of God to bring you health or wealth, but your brokenness has been brought about because a relationship with Jesus is far richer than all the world’s riches.
And I know we can wonder why so many resist the gospel. Yvette and I attended a Christian concert hosted at a Baptist church last Saturday night and we experienced what I believe to be a miracle. This’ll be difficult to imagine, but that night, 1200 Christians clapped, on beat, in harmony, for four straight songs. As miraculous as that seems, it was probably because most of that 1200 were Pentecostals. No, what really stood out to me was what happened before the concert. The tickets were all general admission and doors were supposed to open at 6:15 p.m., so we got to the church at about 5:30 p.m. To my shock…something I’d never before seen…people were in a line, desperate to get into a church. Oh, how I pray that such were the case at churches all across this nation! Lines formed by people weary from the week and eager to hear the gospel!
That’s not a problem we have in church, is it? Let me ask… Did you come eager to hear the gospel today? Why not? I think there’s a symptom revealed to us in Luke 7:4-5 that the first group of emissaries sent by the centurion reveals. Notice with me that it says:
Luke 7:4–5 (ESV)
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.”
The text doesn’t explain why the centurion sends the elders of the Jews in Capernaum to Jesus. Maybe we conclude that the centurion assumed that Jesus, who was a Jew himself, would be influenced by fellow Jews. Who knows? But beyond explaining the need of the centurion, these Jewish elders take it upon themselves to justify why Jesus should entertain the request. Notice, they say that the centurion’s worthy, he is an ally to Jews, and he rolled out enough dough to pay for their church building. What these elders were doing was pleading with the King of the cosmos to give this guy his due. Do you see that? They said, “Because this guy’s done so much for our people, surely the God of our people will act for his benefit.”
Speaking on matters of disbelief, the concept of grace is difficult to believe, isn’t it? Do you remember that about a month ago we defined grace together? We said
Grace is getting what you do not deserve.
Grace is getting what you do not deserve.
What these elders were saying is exactly the opposite. “Jesus, give this guy what he’s earned. He deserves it.” And there’s a symptom here that’s shared by those who have rejected the gospel call as well as those who have responded at some point in the past and are now calloused Christians. Both have no need for grace.
For the non-believer, they believe that they’re genuinely good people and in the life that awaits them beyond death, there’s angels on clouds playing harps already warming up with their favorite songs on the basis that they’re not like the murderers or pedophiles or Hitlers of the world. This applies to the people of faith, too. Remember, these are Jewish elders speaking with the Lord. And for the believer, they’ve been around the block a few times in the life of church and they’ve come to believe that they’ve put in their time, kicked in enough coin, taught enough Sunday school lessons, gone to enough youth camps, whatever… And both perspectives bring utter ruin upon the lives that embody this symptom because they have both arrived at the place of living out of individual ability and denying the grace of God. They both have subscribed to the world’s wisdom that there a’int nothing free. We’re told, there’s always a catch. And sure, in every scenario in life, those statements have proven themselves true in the systems of humanity, but they crumble before the cross of Jesus Christ. They both need a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit who has given to us God’s Word which declares
Ephesians 2:8–9 (ESV)
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Let me put it in personal terms: I did nothing to earn my salvation. Jesus gave that to me. I cannot stand before you or anyone else, not even God himself, and point to anything worthy in and of myself. I could have even done a very noble thing, say, given my life in exchange for that of a child, but that still wouldn’t address the issue of my sin in my life. Why? Because my life is not worth enough to make amends with God for the terrible actions and thoughts and defects that exist in Dan Newburg. Someone says, “I haven’t done anything that terrible. I’m a good, Christian person.” If that’s in your head this morning, my friend, you may not be Christian because you don’t know the vileness of your sin before a holy God and you lack any sense about the value of the life that the Father willed to sacrifice with the life of Jesus Christ to redeem sin.
And this is the importance of the gospel spoken regularly to us. I’m reminded of Pastor Tim Keller’s summary of the gospel, which he described in this way:
“We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
And friends, if I don’t preach that to myself every day of every week, I cannot dare think about standing before you. For our Bible teachers, thank you for your service, but let me warn you, if you aren’t preaching this to your own heart every day of every week as you’re preparing your lessons, resign your post. I’m serious. No church is built up by prideful people ministering the Word of God. We don’t need anyone in any position pleading on the basis of deservedness or worthiness, we need every one in every corner of every hall and every room of this campus pleading the grace of God that willingly shed the blood of Jesus Christ for sinners.
Christian, in the cross Jesus has set your sin as far as the east is from the west, but if you’re calloused to grace, pray that God bring to you a fresh perspective of the grace that bought you as well as a renewed love for the King of grace who lavishes you with it. Lost sinner, God’s grace is available to you. But you need to pay attention to what happens in the second group of emissaries to understand how you receive it.
Jesus heard the plea of the Jewish elders and the text says that Jesus went with them. I don’t believe that it was because the elders wooed him so much as it is the Lord’s intention to reveal to them the nature of God’s kingdom that they their pride blinded them to. And as Jesus was on his way to the centurion’s home, the centurion’s friends reach Jesus with a new message from the centurion. It reveals two things about the centurion’s understanding of Jesus Christ and faith itself. Let’s look first at
Luke 7:6–7a (ESV)
...“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.”
Where the Jewish elders said to Jesus that the centurion deserved God’s blessing, we see the nature of a heart that’s been transformed by the gospel. A man who would’ve been among the city’s elite, this centurion did not believe himself worthy to receive Jesus nor did he believe himself worthy to be in the presence of Jesus. As sinners, we are anything but worthy to be in relationship with God. In fact, the Bible says that we are separated from God because of our sin. Let me ask you, do you think you’re worthy of God’s grace? Do you think God’s so lucky to have you?
This centurion’s faith in Jesus Christ has given him a sense of who he actually is before the King of all. The only proper way to come before this King Jesus is in recognizing our unworthiness and praising him for his grace. And it leads me to issue you this warning today:
"Hell is full of people who think they deserve heaven. Heaven is full of people who know they deserve hell."
That’s a terrifyingly sad reality. For those of us who are children of God by faith, we can certainly be confident that Paradise awaits us, but that’s on the certainty that it’s Jesus who called us into his kingdom. If we think we’re owed it, we’re wrong. By the way, this is what the Bible says. This isn’t Dan Newburg’s take that you can decide if you like it or not. This is God’s Word that you can submit to or reject.
This centurion recognized he didn’t deserve anything from Jesus and interestingly, he recognized who Jesus is. Look with me at what else these friends share with the Lord:
Luke 7:7b-8 (ESV)
“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.”
What’s the centurion saying, exactly? Well, he’s making a minor-to-major comparison. The centurion is essentially saying, “As a member of the Roman army, when I issue a command to any of the one hundred in my charge, they obey and yet, I am also a man under authority. And Jesus, just as I obey commands and those under me obey commands, because of who you are, you don’t even need to enter my home. You rule over all and all you need do is speak and the forces of this world obey the sound of your voice.”
This centurion, this man, who likely had no sort of upbringing in the faith, is testifying to his faith that Jesus Christ is God himself, the one who John 1:2–4 “was in the beginning with God [and through whom] all things were made and [in whom] was life.”
Unlike that boy who was afraid to step out over the edge, this centurion took a step of faith in trusting Jesus. What gave him such confidence? He heard about Jesus.
Luke 7:3 (ESV)
When the centurion heard about Jesus...
All of this started because he heard about Jesus. He didn’t need empirical data. He didn’t demand corroborated testimony. He heard about Jesus and believed. What does hearing have to do with faith? EVERYTHING.
Romans 10:17 (ESV)
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
It’s the word of God that all points to Jesus, which brings faith and
Faith is the knowledge of, trust in, and commitment to Jesus Christ
Faith is the knowledge of, trust in, and commitment to Jesus Christ
Do you know who Jesus is? He’s King of all creation. Of waters, earth and sky.
Do you trust in Jesus? He died so that you can live, free from the burden and consequence of your sin. He is faithful in every way.
Are you committed to Jesus? Well, faith isn’t something you just muster up as a one-time deal. Once you have arrived at the place of faith in Jesus Christ, faith is at the core of who we are as recipients of God’s grace. And in the same way that this centurion stepped out on faith, I want to invite you to step out on faith with me. We are arriving at a critical time in the life of our church and I believe strongly that God is calling us to step out in faith, but all I can do is tell you about it. It’s up to you to decide to follow.
This church is growing. Praise God! If you’re not aware, this county is growing and this city is growing. You may have read in the Devine News this week that Lytle is buying more water rights due to their growth. Feed lots and ranches immediately outside of Devine have already been sold and are already being subdivided. I have been telling you for over a year there were already 21,000 people within a 15-minute drive of this church and soon thousands more will be settling in.
There are people coming from all over the country who will soon be our neighbors who need to hear about Jesus and we need to focus on investing in our campus, church. We need a new sanctuary that will make room for our existing church family as well as those that we know that God will add to our church family. We need to do extensive remodeling around other areas of our campus to make this place friendlier to guests and safer for our flock. We need more paved parking.
I’m not coming to you today with plans in hand but I am coming to you like I told you I would some months ago. I am coming to you asking you to trust my heart. I believe we need to take a step out in faith that would see us begin taking action now in light of what God’s already done and what we know God will continue to do. I believe God is calling us to prepare to reach the potential of what God wants us to be as we minister to Devine and beyond. And we must prepare to become that. We must be people of faith, like what the author of Hebrews says,
Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
We don’t see all our new church family yet, but I believe they’re coming. And that means we need to prepare.
So how can we prepare? I believe we can start to do that in a few ways.
Pray
Pray for the pastoral team. Pray for our congregation. Pray for our unity. Pray that we are a people of a big faith who are not blinded by things like our comforts with how things are or our personal preferences. For if we are stuck in our comforts and preferences, we are like the young boy I told you about - we can hear the Father’s voice but be too afraid to trust it because we believe only what we see.
2. Be flexible
I believe we need to introduce temporary changes for the sake of preparing for the future God has in store for FBC Devine. These temporary changes include the addition of a third worship service and second Sunday school hour to our morning schedule. Uncharted territory for us, I know, but the seven last words of a dying church are, “We’ve never done it that way before.” And I will tell you that I believe that we will only need to amend our schedule for a season. “How long is that?” you wonder? Well, the answer to that is entirely up to you, because this brings us to our third step of preparing...
3. Give
New services and Bible studies give us breathing room to receive new people, but faithful giving by faithful Christians is what raises and renovates buildings. I’ve tasked our Budget Committee with streamlining our operating expenses for next year so that you, God’s people, can be free to give beyond your tithe to join in this work. I will tell you, we have a Building Fund that presently stands at a balance of $52,000. That’s not insignificant, but it’s going to take much more to accomplish what needs to be done here. Some of you have means to give large amounts and frankly, you’re going to need to. Some of you can’t give large amounts, but God honors all contributions made to the advancement of God’s kingdom. There are newcomers today who are absolutely thinking, “Great. I just barely got here and he’s talking money.” I don’t usually do, but I am today because I’m inviting you to join us in this work because this work God’s calling this church to includes you.
4. Simplify
This will also mean that each of us will need to pray about which of the multiple hats we currently wear on Sunday mornings we will need to pass on to others. Unless any one of us knows how to be at multiple places at the same time, we will need to simplify our commitments.
All I’m doing this morning is inviting you to step out on faith as I share with you the conviction I have as the leader God has given to you. It’s up to you to decide about what we will ultimately do. And just as I promised you that I will ask you to trust my heart as your pastor, I am promising you that there will be plans for what we can do around here to be shared.
Did you notice how the Lord responds when we step out in faith?
Luke 7:9–10 (ESV)
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.
Stepping out in faith was not common in the days of our text but I hope that we are a people like this centurion, believing in, trusting in, and committed to Jesus. Jesus praises humility mixed with deep faith. Billy Graham said
Fear can paralyze us and keep us from believing God and stepping out in faith.
Fear can paralyze us and keep us from believing God and stepping out in faith.
Don’t live in fear. Yes, you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, yet at the very same time you are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than you ever dared hope.
Maybe for a few of us today, the call is to step out in faith this morning and trust this gospel that we are loved and can be healed by God. For all of us today, let’s be a people of faith, committed to Jesus Christ and the future he’s calling us to prepare for. None of us are worthy, but yet…grace.