Making the first United Nations S31e105 Matt8:5

Listen to me blab on and on (actually for an extra minute) about Jesus making the FIRST UNITED NATIONS.

He starts with a non-Jewish, non-native, gentile Centurion.  He welcomes him to what will grow into a poly-cultural family of God.  The rest of the New Testament opens the doors further to all who have faith, no matter their nationality.

It's a great story that I told non-efficiently today. Sorry about that! Subscribe and watch me do a better job tomorrow. 

https://youtu.be/LknBsPq6RN8

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Our brothers and sisters, watch with me as Jesus today makes the first United Nations. This is going to come from Matthew chapter 8, verse 5, starting with the faith of the centurion, from someone from a different uh religious background. When he had heard, when he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. And he said, I will come to 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. For I too, then he explains, for I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. 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 this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, Truly, I tell 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 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom of uh sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place 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. So the story starts with this man explaining to Jesus that he understands submission and authority. So he's over some people in the story, the servant and his hundred or so soldiers, and he's also under, so he's a man of authority in that he has bosses. So when it comes time to put himself under Jesus, this isn't his first time. So submission is this voluntary relational attachment of myself under a designated person, or in this case, the Lord Himself. That we all have to wrestle with that. So the purpose is this way to live, this submissive way to live, is a beautiful way to live. Scripture talks a lot about it in the New Testament. Everybody's called to submission. Children are called to submit to their parents, workers to employers, wives to husbands, church members to elders and pastors, etc. So, most importantly, the reason that this pattern is is so that when it could your day comes to submit to the Lord, it's not your first day. So do you have submission right in your life? Otherwise, life is going to be hard. Okay, next, faith is what is faith? Faith is the trust in the person of God before the promises of God are evident. So it's knowing something is real before that you actually see that it is real. And for this situation, knowing that Jesus could and could heal and didn't need to come to his house and walk, walk him right to the door. So this guy is voted by Jesus, the only vote that counts, that he has so much faith that he's not just the regional champion, he's the national champion of faith. You know, he says, then the whole country, you're number one. And this is a guy you definitely want to have lunch with in heaven. So, just another question: do you have your faith right? Do you have the recipient of your faith, your target of faith, not just having faith in, you know, in general, it's hoping for the who, and then who is that person with you? Then he gets this, he has so much faith, in fact, that he makes Jesus marvel, which is you know awesome. He says, I found faith in the skies in this guy. He kind of stops Jesus in his in his tracks, he amazes Jesus. Now, normally we talk about amazing, glorious Jesus. Our amazement is in Jesus, and today it's actually the guy in the story that is the object of wonder, which is fantastic. So the man is this uh admirer and is the person that Jesus is admiring. Now, the Bible is full of people that had sufficient faith, eventual faith, enough enough faith, one inch more than you need, enough to count. And here this man has surprising non-native stopping Jesus in his tracks, faith. So let's marvel with them just a little bit today. All right, I want to talk about the kingdom of God, the United Nations. So many are gonna come from the east and the west and recline at the table. So, how many? A lot. This is gonna be a normal thing. So God had uh up to this point, God had been drafting in, grafting in some individuals and some unique people. But we see here that God is gonna build a kingdom that's not limited by geographical boundaries, the boundaries of Israel, or social boundaries, or occupational boundaries, or ethnic boundaries. This guy breaks the rules in all those categories. And it's gonna be illustrated by this act of, hey, come to my house, enter into my house. Verse 6 Lord my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly, and he, Jesus, says to him, I will come and heal him. But the centurion says, I'm not worthy to have you come into my house. So Jesus's willingness to go to his house, and also by I'm extending here just a little bit, enter his house, because the servant is lying in the house, shocked the centurion. And why was that? Well, because Jews were banned from doing this. So there's this great story about 10 years later, uh, in Acts chapter 10. And Peter has been getting messages from God, actually, dreams and and and verbal uh commands not to be separate, not to separate the Jews and the Gentiles. He was a total knucklehead. It took him many times to get the story right. The point was God was saying, all people of all nations are welcome in the family of God. And the point is to understand Peter, who's in and who's out of the kingdom. And Peter was making the separation, and God was rebuking him and saying, No, I want Jews and Gentiles both in my family. And he was wrestling with, hey, does circumcision count? And who can I can I associate with Gentiles? And he gets it wrong so many times. That's one of the things I love about the books of Acts, is he gets it wrong so many times, and the Lord corrects. All right. Then fast forward, uh uh so why were Jews and Gentiles not allowed to go into each other's house? Well, it was a closely held belief. He says it's unlawful that they come into your house, but that was really not from the Bible, it was from the Jewish traditions that they kind of made a false law about. So bad theology bred a bad rule, and then the bad rule illustrated the bad theology. So God has always had a place for non-Jews in his kingdom. So it takes about a decade for Peter and the early church to get this right. Then there's another story in uh Philippians about Lydia, this was this woman, strike one and strike two, she's not a Jew, and uh she becomes a believer uh because of Paul's teaching. And she says this thing in Acts 16, verse 14. One heard that her one who heard was this woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a Gentile city, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. But she didn't know Jesus until this explanation by Paul. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. So she believes. Then verse 15, after she was baptized, and her whole household as well, she urged us, saying, If you had judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. In other words, put your money where your mouth is. If you really think I'm in the kingdom of God, you come stay stay in my house. And she prevailed upon us. So by the by Acts 16, they finally get this right. Okay, we gotta stop. More tomorrow. That's enough for today.