Who is welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven? S31e104 Mt8:5

Jesus will rock the ancient world as He welcomes a non-Jew into His Kingdom.  In fact, Jesus praises the centurion for faith that surpasses anyone in the nation of Israel.

Come for 7 minutes to meet a man who understands authority, submission, compassion and FAITH.

https://youtu.be/9rJI5pESGYg

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My brothers and sisters, who is welcome in the kingdom of heaven? We're going to get this from Matthew chapter eight, and we're going to kind of ask, can a gentile make it? Well, let's see. This is from Matthew chapter eight. The the section is the faith of a centurion. When he, Jesus, had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. And he said to him, I, Jesus, 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 shall be healed. For I too am man 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. Verse 10. When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, Truly, truly, I say to you, no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from the east and the west and recline at table with Isaac, Abraham, Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And to the centurion, Jesus said, Go, let it be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed at that very moment. All right. First of all, centurion. That's a Roman officer in charge of uh hundred men, century, a hundred, uh, when it's fully uh staffed and maybe as little as 50 men. It's an earned rank, it's not uh purchased or just given. Um he is over a hundred men, but he's not over everybody. That is, he's in a hierarchy, and then there's the centurion, then there's the men he's over. So he's a guy who understands authority and submission. He's not a Jew, so that means he's not local to where Jesus is in Capernaum in northern Israel. Um, perhaps he was a Roman. If he's not a Roman, one of the reasons people did soldiering as a profession is that if you were uh a soldier for 25 years, you would earn your citizenship. So maybe in his like mid-40s, he would get that very valuable uh uh citizenship. Now, one of the really cool things about the story is how he understands submission. Now, submission is this voluntary relational attachment of an individual to an imperfect designated person who is acts in in that designated role. In this case, it's a soldier, uh, soldier to soldier and soldier to other soldier uh role. And scripturally, if you do this well, it demonstrates an imperishable, eternal adornment before God. God loves submission. See uh 1 Peter. And submission is always shown with words and attitudes and behavior, and it shows in relational practice what's supposed to be true in spiritual reality. So it understands that this works best when it's done for the Lord's sake. So read the rest of the New Testament to talk about this. But a couple things of note about this. This is his servant. So it's the person that he's caring about is actually down the chain of command. And he notices the person, their posture, that is, their lying, their location that he's at home, probably his home, which is cool, their condition, which is paralyzed, and what he calls terrible suffering. And then the the centurion says to Jesus, I am not worthy. And I think this shows two things: an understanding of who the centurion is, where how how big are people, and then how big is the Lord. So I think he he has an understanding of both of those. And then he says, Look, I'm a man under authority, I understand this chain of command thing. So faith is this trust, which he's going to be commended for in the person of God before he sees the promises of God, in this case, which is a healing, are evident. Write this down. Faith is the trust, is trust in the person of God before the promises of God are evident. It's trust in the character of God before you get this clarity of seeing how this all turns out. It's knowing before you see. And it's belief, it is belief that is real before it's seen, that the healing has taken place before you go home and see it. Um, and it's reliance on Jesus before you get this full revelation. And lots of our life is lived kind of in that in-between. It's knowing something's real before you see that it's real. Now, of note, he is not of the Jewish people. And he's compared with the Jewish people, however, with regards to faith. Verse 10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled, and he said to those who follow him, Truly, I say to you, with no the with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, from many will come from the east and the west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom of heaven will be thrown to the outer darkness. So he is praised for faith that's better than anywhere in Israel. And he could have a sign on his on his jacket, I have more faith than anyone in this country. Now he comes from this milieu or this faith faith in this Roman pantheons of God, small g, uh, and eventually a worship of the emperor. Faith is that trusting in in someone, uh, in if you're a Roman, it's trusting in the emperor or trusting in the small g gods. If you're this guy, you're trusting in the God of Israel. Now, if he's kind of like this sentinel, this first, he's the canary in the cage, uh, for the non-Jews that come to belief. Jesus says about him, just amazing, many are going to come from the east and the west. That means the whole world, and recline at the table with who? Well, then he gives us this uh sort of the top ten list of the Jews, uh Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And how many of the world is coming? He says a lot are coming. So the faith of the, though the faith of the Gentiles was rare at this point and had been rare throughout the Old Testament, it's it's not uh it's not unheard of. God has always carried this remnant of the Gentiles uh into his kingdom. He's been always grafting in uh others who pe other people who have faith. So where do they come from? The East and the West. So the kingdom is not gonna be limited by geographic boundaries or social boundaries or ethnic boundaries. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are gonna be brothers with the Gentile. All right, we're gonna stop here and for this story of the centurion, but we're gonna pick it up tomorrow because there's so many things that are important about this story. Who he is, submission, um, faith of a person that's not from Israel. And then we'll start tomorrow with making Jesus marvel. Thanks for listening.