[Morning Sermon] Who Is Worthy? (Luke 7:1-10)

When a man needs help from Jesus, the Jewish elders make his case. He's worthy, they say, to receive Jesus' help. But the own man gets closer to truth. He ISN'T worthy,  and it's in that faith-filled recognition of his need for grace that we see our own need. 

If you're looking for a church in Mount Juliet, TN, we'd love for you to come and visit us at 84 S Greenhill Rd (10:15 AM for Morning Worship and 5:00 PM for Evening Worship). For more information, please visit http://hickorygrovepca.org.

To give to the Lord's work at Hickory Grove, please text 'give' to (866) 860-7817 or visit https://www.hickorygrovepca.org/giving.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, I'll invite you to open your Bibles to Luke 7. This morning we'll be looking at verses 1 through 10. Luke 7, 1 through 10. What do I owe you? I'm not actually asking you that, I'm just saying those words. What do I owe you? That's a question that we tend to ask when someone provides us some sort of good and service, and we want to know how much we're supposed to pay. And the the presumption there, of course, is that this person that we're asking has earned their reward. They've done something for us, and now we owe them something in return. Now imagine if God were to ask you that question. What do I owe you? What would you say? The Christian knows the answer to that question. Nothing. God owes us nothing. He owes us nothing because of the distance between him and us as his creatures. And he owes us nothing because of our sin and rebellion against him. God is big. We are small. God is holy. We are not. There is no good or service that we could ever offer to God that would put him in our debt. Job 41, 11 says, God says, Who has first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. So God owes us nothing. And yet in Christ, God has given us everything. Romans 8 tells us that the one who did not spare his only son will give us all things, will give graciously give us all things in him. Not because he owes us anything, but because he has chosen to give us what we do not deserve. And so because of what Jesus has done for us, we could sing with uh Augustus Toplady from the rock from Rock of Ages, nothing in my hand I bring, solely to, simply to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace. File I f to the fountain fly, wash me Savior, or I die. Now there's a good chance that in what I just said, right, God owes you nothing, right? There's a good chance that I have offended you. Because perhaps somewhere in here, or maybe somewhere in you, you are saying, wait a minute. Like I go to church, I give to the poor, I put the toilet seat down when I'm done, all right? I'm a good person. See, that's that is kind of our default position, our default understanding when we think about how this whole religion things thing works. Like, God makes the rules, I keep the rules, and he rewards me. Like I do everything I can do to make myself worthy, and then God repays me according to my worth. And that's that's the way that so many of our friends and neighbors, maybe even you, think about and approach the religious life. Kids, lots of kids. Look at me. We pick this up when we're young, right? Uh we think that, you know, if we just keep our rooms clean, or if we share our toys, or if we're nice to our siblings, or if we if we do our schoolwork, then you know, God will owe us a favor. What we're gonna see when we come to our passage today is that that approach, that thought that we could simply make ourselves worthy of God's gifts and blessings is all wrong. We we can do all the right stuff. We can become the worthiest of all people in the sight of our friends and our neighbors and our family members. But when it comes to our moral status before a holy and righteous God, Jesus tells us in Luke 17 that we are nothing more than unworthy servants. Because of the sin that dwells within us, we simply cannot clear the bar. We cannot attain to the level of worthiness required to stand before a righteous God without any blame. But here's the thing: it's only when we recognize that we are not worthy. It's only when we come to the end of ourselves and realize our true standing in the presence of God. It's only when we come to that place that we find ourselves open and ready to receive what God freely gives. That's one of the great paradoxes of the gospel. It's only at the end of ourselves that we find Him. It's only in discovering our own worthiness that we recognize how worthy Jesus is and how willing he is to share his infinite worth with us. So that's where we're heading today. And with that said, I'll invite you to rise as I read our sermon text. Again, this is Luke 7, 1 through 10. After Jesus had finished saying all these things 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. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Father, thank you for your word. Please send your Holy Spirit now to understand it rightly, so that we might trust in Jesus more fully. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. You may be seated. So our passage this morning begins with a pretty deliberate transition from Jesus' Sermon on the Plain to His return trip to Capernaum. Verse 1 locates the trip specifically after Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hear of the people. In the Greek, it reads more literally like Jesus had filled their ears with his words. In other words, he had said everything that needed to be said in order to set them up for the life of genuine discipleship. Now, one of the themes that we recognized as we were working through that sermon on the plane was the golden rule, and how Jesus wanted his disciples to apply that golden rule not just to their friends, but to their foes. So love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, forgive those who would judge you, give to those who would withhold from you, and so on. And to sum it all up, do to others what you wish they would do to you, even if, or especially if they don't or they won't return the favor. Now that idea of the golden rule, that application of it, is a dramatic departure from the world's own version of the golden rule. To the average person in Jesus' day, the norm was that you'd only do good for those who have the ability to do good for you in return, either now or in the future. So quid pro quo. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. That was the idea. Today we see Jesus' version of the golden rule rub against the culture's version once more. Only this time, we're reminded how God does good to us even when we don't deserve it, and what it looks like to receive the ultimate good that God gives by way of faith. So in verse 2, Luke introduces us to this story's main character apart from Jesus, a centurion whose highly valued servant happens to be deathly ill. Luke doesn't tell us much about the servant or his illness. He doesn't tell us as much as Matthew does, as his in his version of the story in Matthew 8. And that's not because Luke lacked the information or forgot some of it. It's because the servant and the healing actually aren't the main emphasis of this narrative. As a theologian and a historian, under the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, Luke focuses not on the healing, but on the instrumental cause of that healing, which is the faith of the centurion. The centurion. That's where the spotlight is. Now, what is a centurion? The name would suggest, of course, that he was a commander of a hundred troops. He was something like a middle manager in the Roman army. And he was paid handsomely for that. He would earn something like 50 to 100 times as much as the ordinary typical Roman soldier, which explains how he had enough money to float the building of the local synagogue. In a predominantly Jewish village like this one, the centurion, his function there would have been something like an imperial mediator. He was a peacekeeper. He kept the peace between the Jews and the Roman Empire. And so, as a commander of troops and a representative of the state's power, he wielded a significant amount of authority over his soldiers and over the citizens in Capernaum. He talks about that authority in verse 8. He's a link in the chain of command. He's under authority, yet he also has authority over others. If he says go, they go. If he says come, they come. If he says do this, they do it. And so this guy, from a worldly perspective, this centurion, really has a lot going for him, doesn't it? He's got a good job. He's honored well in terms of public regard and financial remuneration. He's probably a pillar of the community. You could compare him to some civil leader around here, like you think uh the police chief of Mount Juliet, Tyler Chandler Chandler. I've met him, don't know him super well, but he seems like a good guy. He works hard, he appears to be genuinely invested in the community. He's a respectable person. Someone we would probably describe as a worthy fellow. And if you think about it for a few minutes, you could probably identify all kinds of other leaders in the community who fit that same mold. But of course, the dynamic here, the dynamic in Mount Juliet is a bit different than that of ancient Capernaum. America isn't an empire, and the police are not a symbol and tool of our imperial oppressors, like the Roman centurion would have been, the Roman soldiers in Judea. So centurions like this one typically didn't enjoy that much respect or admiration from the Jews. But this one, this centurion, and this story was different. In verse 3, it says that he sent some Jewish elders to Jesus. And at first blush, that, you know, if you know Matthew's version of the story, that might seem to contradict it. Because Matthew in Matthew 8 says that the centurion approached Jesus, and it doesn't mention anything about the elders or the friends. But the contradiction melts away when we realize that Matthew cut out the middlemen in order to tell a more streamlined version of the story. He didn't bother to spell out the centurion came by way of his representatives, which is a totally normal way that they could have wrote or told the story. He just streamlined it. While Luke, here in his version, he makes it a point to mention the middlemen. Because part of the whole purpose of the story is to highlight the contrast between the elders' view of Jesus and his, or sorry, the elders' view of the centurion and his worthiness over against the centurion's own view of his lack of worthiness. And so we'll talk about that tran that contrast as we go on. But first let's understand the elders' view of the centurion. When they come to Jesus in verse 4, they don't just ask him to go and heal the servant. It says they plead with him earnestly. They implore him to do it. Why? Because they say he is worthy. Now that's that's interesting, isn't it? They don't say he's powerful. They don't say he has authority to make trouble for the Jews if Jesus denies him. No, they say he's worthy. He's a good dude. You might even say he's earned this. And how did he earn it? What has he done in order to be called worthy by the elders? It's not that he's been kind, it's not that he's been upright, it's not that he's kept the law of Moses. This isn't a moral claim, this isn't a religious claim, it's actually kind of a political one. He's worthy to receive Jesus' help for two reasons. He loves the Jewish nation and he built their synagogue. Now remember what I've been saying about the Greco-Roman version of the golden rule, quid pro quo. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. That works on a personal level. It also works on a political level. You see this all over the ancient Roman Empire. If you are a politician and you want to earn the people's goodwill, you fund public works. Or if you're a centurion in charge of a Jewish fishing village like Capernaum, you fund the local synagogue. You scratch the Jews' backs so that they'll scratch yours by paying their taxes, by abiding by the Roman law, by staying in line, right? That was the typical arrangement. But there's something about this centurion that suggests to us that he wasn't just playing a political game. He actually loves the Jewish nation. You get that in the elders' words, of course, but you also see it in how he acts specifically towards Jesus, who he understands to be uniquely worthy of his respect. He doesn't go to Jesus himself, for one thing. He's a Gentile, and he knows that there are social norms that he'd upset if he did that. And so he didn't want to dishonor Jesus. And he sends his friends so that Jesus doesn't have to come into his house. Because he knows, again, that would defile him, that would dishonor him, that would scandalize him in the presence of the Jews. This centurion, you see, is putting on a profoundly considerate attitude for a man that you would consider, that you would expect to look down on the Jews. So clearly, the centurion, he has a positive figure in the story. He's a good guy who, even in spite of his Roman situation, loves the nation of Israel and has great respect for its people, for its leaders, for its laws, for its institutions. And so we come back to the elders pleading with Jesus to heal this servant. Not because they're afraid of the centurion, but because they respect him. If Jesus is going around doing favors for people, then in their view, this guy is a prime candidate. He is worthy of Jesus' wonderworking benevolence. Now, all of that makes a certain kind of sense to us, right? But do you notice the mistake the Jews are making here? They're not thinking like Jesus. They're not thinking according to his version of the golden rule that says we ought to do good to all. They're thinking like Romans who believe that you do good to the worthy. And they are projecting that understanding onto God by way of Jesus. They've ever so subtly bought into the lie that our relationship with God is transactional and that he only blesses those who make themselves worthy of his blessing. He only helps those who help themselves, right? You ever heard that before in a conservative church? Probably have. No, it's easy to recognize and reject the lie when I put it in those really stark terms and I use a really scary tone of voice with it. But it's not so easy to recognize, it's not so easy to reject, it's not so easy to sniff it out in our practical everyday walk with the Lord. I mean, let me ask you this. Have you ever felt like God has let you down? Have you ever felt like God has not kept up his end of the bargain? You've put in your work, you've read your Bible, you've prayed, you've come to church every Sunday, you have done your level best to do every single thing that God has asked you to do, and yet you haven't gotten the job. You're still not married. Your kids are off the rails. Your health is failing. Fill in the blank. Nothing is working out the way you want it to work out. If you've ever felt that way, or maybe if you're feeling that way right now, then odds are you've got more in common. Odds are I've got more in common with the Jewish elders than any of us cares to think. Because somewhere, somewhere in our hearts and minds, we have come to believe that the way this works is that you make yourself worthy and then God rewards you for your worthiness. Now, if that's where you're at, if that is your paradigm for your relationship with God and his blessings and all of that, then I want to warn you. Because if you keep down, if you keep on going down this road, you will end up joining the untold numbers of people who used to believe in God, but fell away because he did not give them what they believed they were owed. That's not where any of us want to be. Because it gets God profoundly wrong. It completely misunderstands the nature of our relationship with him and the character of the blessings that he gives us. And it leaves us without the hope and comfort that we need amid all of life's disappointments. And so we need to carry on with the story and head down a different path. Not the path that the elders of the Jews are leading us down, but the path that the centurion leads us down. We get back into the story, we see in verse 6 that he sends a second delegation to meet Jesus as he approaches the house. And this time it's not a group of Jewish elders, it's a group of the centurion's friends. And that's important to notice because when he sent the elders, we might have gotten the impression that he was trying to lean on the Jews, that he was trying to pressure Jesus by way of the elders into coming to help him. But these are friends, right? Who are these people? They have no sway over Jesus, they have no authority. They're not there to strong arm him. They are there to transparently and genuinely convey what the centurion really thinks and feels. And what do they say to Jesus on the centurion's behalf? 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. Like we said before, he knows he's a Gentile. He knows it would be inappropriate for a Jewish leader like Jesus to come into his house. But when we put his words in parallel with the elders, we see something deeper here than just a nod to dietary laws and social norms. The elders may think he's worthy, but he knows he's not. And what is it about him? What is it about the centurion that makes him unworthy? Part of the answer to that question, we sort of have to infer from what we've seen so far in the Gospel of Luke. For one thing, he is a Gentile, which makes him an outsider and makes him a sinner, just like the tax collectors and the assortment of riffraff that Jesus hung out with in chapter 5 and then got him in all sorts of trouble with the scribes and Pharisees. But there's more to it than that. There's more to it than just the centurion's ethnic background. Because this episode right here very deliberately echoes one we saw earlier between Peter and Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. Do you remember that? Do you remember what? What Peter said to Jesus, what Peter did when they miraculously caught all these fish. Luke 5, 8 says, He fell down on his knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. Do you see the centurion is the garth to Peter's wane? We're not worthy. We're not worthy. And only three of you were worthy to recognize that reference. But why not? Why are they not worthy? Why do they respond in that sort of way where it's like, ah, get away with get away from me, Jesus? I don't deserve to be in front of you. The reason they know that they are not worthy is because they are sinners. And Jesus is Lord. The centurion, he acknowledges Jesus' lordship when he goes on to talk about his authority. As I said before, this guy knows a thing or two about authority himself, because he's both under his superiors and he's over his inferiors. And so he recognizes and he understands that Jesus is a man set under the authority of God. That is to say, Jesus is God's servant, which means Jesus has been given authority not just over people, but even over the sicknesses that plague them. So don't miss this. What the centurion outright affirms here is that Jesus is sent by God. And if Jesus says the word, even from a distance, if Jesus says the word, his servant's sickness will obey him and leave, just like if the centurion commanded one of his soldiers to go and dig a hole. That is an absolutely stunning acknowledgement on the part of a non-Jew. It falls short in certain ways, like he's not saying things about, yes, Jesus is fully man and fully God. And we need to understand that in the context of Luke's gospel. But thinking about this Roman, this non-Jew, this outsider, that he would recognize who Jesus is and the kind of power and authority he possesses, this is stunning. And it's precisely this acknowledgement that gets Jesus' attention. In verse 9, it says that Jesus marveled at the centurion. I mean, that's an amazing thought, isn't it? Can you think of anyone in your life who's hard to impress? Like that person in your life where you can balance the national budget, you could cure cancer, you could figure out how to fold a fitted sheet, you could do anything. And they just won't be impressed, right? All you'd hear from them is, huh, cool, good job. I think we can all think of a person like that, someone who's seen and done so much in life that it really takes a lot to impress them. Well, think of what Jesus has seen and done. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not made anything that was made. He was there. Jesus was there when the light flooded the darkness. Jesus was there to watch the Spirit hold back the chaotic primordial waters. Jesus was there when God literally hung the sun, moon, and stars in the sky. He was there when we turned a lump of clay into the first human being. Jesus was there. And not merely as a witness. The eternal Son of God was not just a bystander. He was the word by which all of these things were spoken into existence. And even in the incarnation, as he walked the word, uh walked the earth, he remained the word by whose power the universe was, is, and forever will be held together. And so if there were anyone in all the history of the world who had the right to not be impressed by even the greatest thing any of us human beings could offer, Jesus would be that individual. And yet here, he's impressed. He's impressed, he's amazed. Jesus marvels at what? He marvels at the faith of a Roman centurion. He marvels at the faith of a sinner who, by his own admission, is unworthy to have Jesus come into his house. Imagine that. Imagine that. When you and I repent of our sin and turn to Jesus in faith, when we take our eyes off the things of this world and we fix them on Christ, he responds with the same awe and wonder that we would have felt if we were there to watch him hang the moon. It's incredible. Jesus marvels at our faith. Jesus is impressed by the centurion's faith, so much so that he uses it as an object lesson. Verse 9, it tells us apparently a crowd had been following him to this guy's house, and he turns to the crowd and he says to them, I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. Talk about a shout-out, right? That's got to be worth at least a thousand retweets. I mean, nowhere in Israel had he found such faith. Not when John the Baptist Baptist, sorry, John the Presbyterian baptized him in the river. Not when Levi gave up everything to follow him. Not when Peter, James, and John did the same thing, not when the four friends lowered their friend down, their paralyzed friend down through a roof, not when the leper came to him for healing. He's never seen anything like this. He's never heard anything like this. And of course, Jesus isn't taking anything away from the faithful Israelites. He is simply spelling out the kind of faith that he commends and how he's making himself available to everyone who believes in him. Not just the sons and daughters of Abraham, but everyone. The centurion here, he responds to Jesus in a way that everyone is called to respond. Whether they're a Jew or a Gentile, a man or a woman, a soldier or a servant, anyone. He responds with a faith that is living and active. He responds with a faith that makes things happen, which is precisely what we see in verse 10 when Luke ends the story with this almost matter-of-fact report that when the friends go back home, they find that the servant is doing just fine. And that's all we get. We'd like to know more. But by leaving out the details about what happened and when it happened, Luke leaves one word ringing in our ears. Faith. And so this passage, this story, leaves us with a challenge. Will we believe? Will we have the faith of the centurion? Will we join him in the twofold confession of faith that stopped Jesus in his tracks? I'm not worthy, but he is. I'm sinful. He is sinless. My authority is small, it's limited. His is boundless. I am nothing. He is everything. That's the kind of faith that we're called to have. A faith that despairs of our own pretended worthiness and places its trust not in ourselves, but in the only worthy man to have ever lived. And the greatest obstacle to that faith, I mean, we know intellectually that that's what our faith is supposed to look like. But the greatest obstacle to that faith in him is our faith in ourselves. Too often we buy the lie that the Jewish elders bought. And we reduce God to the great HR manager in the sky whose job is to cut our hourly holy paycheck after we've done all the right stuff. We put our faith not in God and his grace, but in our ability to do and to say all the right things, to make ourselves worthy of Jesus' time and attention. But we're not worthy. And we never will be worthy, at least not in ourselves. And Scripture doesn't tell us that. It doesn't get real with us on that score in order to degrade us or to demean us. But because Jesus wants us to get off the treadmill. He wants us to stop trying to earn what he has freely given. He wants us to realize that when we try and make ourselves worthy of his love, we actually reject the love that he has already shown us on the cross. We look at Jesus up there, bruised and battered and bloodied, and we say to him, No thanks. I'll find my own way to be saved. I'll figure out my own way to earn God's love. I will make myself worthy. No, you won't. And you know you won't. Because you're the same as every other person who has ever lived. You and I have enough trouble living up to our own expectations, let alone God's expectation. So get off the treadmill. Stop living and acting as though you can make yourself worthy of God's love. You can't. But if you are in Christ, if you have come to the end of yourself, if you have reckoned with your unworthiness and turned to the only truly worthy individual to have ever lived, then what he gets, you get. What he deserves, you deserve. Not because you've earned it, but because he earned it in your place and for your sake. What does God owe you? In yourself, nothing. But in Christ, everything. So quit trusting in yourself and start trusting in Jesus. He alone is worthy. Let's pray. Father, how often we trust in ourselves in all the wrong ways. We look to our own gifts and abilities for security and comfort. We look to our own successes in order to exalt others and their fail ourselves over others and their failures. We look inward and we build our security on a bed of sand. We thank you, Father, that you sent Jesus to lift our heads, to straighten our backs, to lift our eyes to heaven so that we might not find our comfort, our hope, our security, our peace, our identity in ourselves and what we do, but in you and what you have done. Lord, for those who have put their trust in Jesus, help us to put our trust in him again and again every day, to repent of our self-sufficiency and find our sufficiency wholly and totally in him. And for those who have not yet trusted in him in any clear or definitive way, for those who have known him as maybe some kind of teacher or some kind of guide, some kind of benign influence that shows us the way to live before God, yet have not trusted him as Lord and Savior. Help them, Lord, bring conviction and bring illumination to know that he is more than just a role model, but he is the eternal Son of God, become flesh. The Lord and Savior, who has kept the law in our place and for our sake, and died to pay the price for our breaking it. Lord, we thank you for this grace. That though we are worthy of nothing, in Him you give us everything. Help us to more consistently and conscientiously partake of that grace as we live and move in the world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.