Hey, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are in the middle of Matthew chapter 8 talking about this deal with the centurion after the Sermon on the Mount gets done. Jesus comes down the hill, everybody's like, Alright, is this guy for real or what? How does this thing work? And then he needs to do a bunch of stuff so that people know whether or not he can back up all the things he said. And so, of course, he runs into the leper that we talked about a few times back, and he heals the guy with leprosy and overcomes social boundaries and all kinds of things, and no doubt this is messing with everybody's brain. Then they walk a little bit further toward this community of Capernaum, and when they get there, they are greeted, as we've talked about for the last couple of days, by this centurion, a guy who commands a bunch of Roman troops. Normally, this would be a pretty contentious character in a community, but we know from the larger context and from the similar account in Luke, that people like the centurion. He was a decent guy. He seemed to have the back of the Jewish synagogue, and so the leaders kind of liked him. But he does not go to the Jewish religious leaders when things get weird in his household with somebody he cares about. Instead, he goes straight to Jesus, who is more of an unknown factor, but it never crossed his mind that the religious leaders and the religion that Jesus frankly just got done criticizing pretty aggressively in the Sermon on the Mount could solve his problem. But maybe this weird homeless guy who speaks with authority and in a way that other people aren't used to could do that. So, well, I'll just read it to you. I mean, I can tell you the whole story, but it would take me twice as long. So here we go. Starting in verse 5, uh, Matthew chapter 8, when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him asking for help. Lord, he said, My servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly. And Jesus said to him, Well, shall I come heal him? The centurion replied, Lord, I don't deserve to have you come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed, for I myself am a man under authority with soldiers under me. I tell this one, go, and he goes, and that one, come, and he comes. I say to my servant, Do this, and then he does it. When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, Truly I tell you, I have not found any one in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and west, and will take their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then Jesus said to the centurion, Go let it be done as you believed it would, and his servant was healed at that moment. Now, as you listen to me read that passage, I think the most obvious theological question is, Are you riding in the backseat of your truck while your friend Rocky drives you to Yellowstone National Park on a family vacation day with friends? Because it sounds like you might be. And the answer is yes, yes I am, and that was incredibly intuitive of you. You are correct. So sorry about the racket. Sometimes you just gotta record in weird places, but I'm glad that we get to do this together, and seriously, thank you for tolerating my occasionally bizarre audio setups. So we've talked about the first half of the passage, right? And it's kind of fun to look at the history of that. Who is this guy? How would this have played for the original audience? And I think it's pretty easy to flesh all of that stuff out, but when we get to the second half, we get into something that is more shocking. And at this point, as much time as we've spent in the book of Matthew, you get the drill. You know that this is a document that was written to a Jewish audience. You know that this Jewish audience was sick of getting kicked around by occupiers and outside forces. You know that they had worked very hard to throw off their Greek or Hellenistic overlords that were left in the wake of the conquest brought about by Alexander. And you know that they came to blows with those overlords in the Maccabean Revolution or rebellion, whatever you want to call it, that they had their own independent Hasmonean kingdom state for a period of time, and that that collapsed under the conquest led by, well, ultimately Pompeii, Magnus, the buddy of Julius Caesar, who famously eventually finalized a very gradual conquest of the Jewish people in the middle of the first century BC, like a little more than 50 years before Jesus comes along. So, you know, there's all this political baggage, there's all this historical baggage, and when you're on the rough end of the deal for a long time, there are narratives that you craft that maybe are rooted in reality, maybe you're a little bit legendary, but they make you feel better about stuff. And they make you feel like, hey, I'm taking a beating right now, but I'm the good guy here and I will be vindicated here. And on the one hand, that is a completely reasonable thing for the Jewish people to do because that is what the Old Testament promises. There's all this language in the prophetic books, books like Isaiah, where we've read you know tons of passages together, that talks about everything being straightened out and made better and this promised king, this messiah is gonna show up. The the shoot coming from the burnt-out stump that is the line of Jesse that looks like it's dead and gone. It's not actually dead and gone. Things are gonna get better, and so there's reason for hope, but also the political pressure seems to have morphed that hope into something entirely militaristic or political once again, and a lot of the real depth of the messianic meaning of those Old Testament promises has either been lost or devolved into something else. So there is this misplaced belief amongst the original audience here that their ethnic heritage is what sets them apart from everyone else, is what means they will receive those promises and that deliverance from God. But if you've been paying attention as we've been going through the book of Matthew, there have been a lot of very subtle pushbacks on that assumption that the original audience had. And in a lot of ways, you would expect that to be a deal breaker, that nobody would even still be reading after what Jesus just said, who in fact had their hope in the whole Jewish ethnicity thing as their reason for believing that stuff was going to work out and their people were gonna be delivered. So when he says stuff like, Truly I tell you, I haven't found anyone in Israel with such great faith, to you and me, that would be like, oh, maybe like kind of a bummer for everybody else at church if somebody was like, That guy, he does the best at Christianity, he's the most Christian, he sings the worship songs with his eyes closed the hardest and his hands raised to the highest, and like he sweats but not too much when he sings it. It's just like passionate sweat, but not like gross old man work sweat. That's the most Christian anybody could be, and the rest of us would be like, Oh, we need to aspire to be more Christian. It's not like that at all. This is completely different. What he's saying here is that the people who are chosen by God and whose birthright it is to be connected with God are not understanding what God is about nearly as much as this Gentile occupier outsider. Now, why is Jesus saying that? Well, it's very simple. The people who should know professionally who Jesus is, the people who should have been pointing to the Messiah this entire time, they haven't done that. They've pointed toward cold external religion, which Jesus just got done giving a whole speech in contrast to. And so the fact that they don't recognize their king when he shows up, they don't recognize the kingdom when this is happening. And instead, this weird outsider is like, oh, I know authority when I see it. That's what that looks like. I might not know any of your religious words or have read any of your religious texts or anything, but that guy is legit and I will assume a position of submission before him. He gets it. He's responding to Jesus exactly like Jesus just said in the Sermon on the Mount. You ought to respond to Jesus. Remember the Lord's Prayer, like our Father in Heaven, all that hallowed be your name and your kingdom comes stuff. That oath of total submission, this dude is on point and everybody else isn't. So it wouldn't have been like a nice religious compliment that might make everybody else kind of feel like a fire's been lit under them and they need to go a little bit harder to be more religious or whatnot. This would be earth-shattering, angering, like maybe pick up rocks to hit the guy who said it kind of outrageous. But Jesus isn't done. He goes on after giving this compliment and takes it even further. He says, I say to you that many will come from the east and west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. From the east and west, here is an artistic flourish, it's a metaphor for Gentiles. People who are not Jewish are going to be sitting with, let me see, who is it again? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Oh, like the most Jewish people of all the Jewish people. The people that everybody looks forward to getting to hang out, like like the rock stars, like your Babe Ruth and your Joe DiMaggio and your Lou Gehrig of baseball. That's what these guys are to Judaism. These are the people that everybody celebrated and looked up to. These are the heroes of the faith and the ethnicity and the people. And Jesus is saying that sitting at the feast is going to be people like the centurion, outsiders, people who theoretically have no business being apart. But then he goes on even further, as if that wasn't awkward enough, and he says, But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness. Now, kingdom there is not referring to the kingdom of heaven. He uses that particular phraseology in verse 11 about the people who will get to hang out with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But here he says, But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness. He didn't forget what he said in the last sentence. Rather, what he's saying here is that the world kingdom, the kingdom that you guys are used to, the one that has vaguely religious overtones, it is the wide road. It's the one that leads to darkness, to being outside at the Christmas party looking in while everybody else celebrates, and they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then Jesus said to the centurion to wrap the whole thing up, alright, uh go, let it be done, just as you believed it would. And then the servant gets healed, and so that anybody that would like to be like, well, you know what? Jesus is a blowhard who just says stuff, he doesn't understand our religion, he's an agitator, and he just makes things up. Well, you might say that, but also, what's the deal with that centurion being healed? Because then that's sitting right there. And also, what's the deal with that leper who it looks like he kind of broke the rules to hang out with? Well, what's the deal with his leprosy going away right in front of everybody's eyes? I mean, you just can't write this stuff off. And I think that's part of the reason that this got such traction coming off the hill on the Sermon on the Mount, is Jesus is pointing out that he can back up all of these bold things he said about the kingdom. He's saying even bolder things now. He's backing it up with things that just absolutely no one can refute. Like imagine that you're listening to uh talking head on cable television who you disagree with, and they're saying some stuff and opining and giving opinions about the affairs of the day or whatever, and you're like, that guy's an idiot. He's wrong about all this stuff, and that's insulting to my things. And then that guy walks offset, and like, I don't know, maybe somebody has a heart attack or something behind a camera, and he walks over and he's like, Be healed, and while we're at it, let's grow back your arm where that prosthetic limb is, and then that just happens. Like all of a sudden, the talking head on cable would at least make you I mean, you'd have to think about what they were saying, if they could do things like that. Likewise, Jesus simply cannot be dismissed because of what is happening here miraculously. And as we've talked about before, what we're gonna see with Jesus and the miraculous is that miracles are always connected to making a theological point and moving things forward to demonstrate what is happening spiritually, and you'll see that pattern play out throughout all of this. Okay, if you are still hanging out with me, it means that you have driven a solid 12 or 15 miles toward Yellowstone, and even though we won't get to go see grizzly bears together, it is like we are on a little vacation together. So this was fun. Thank you for hanging out this way, and there's more to unpack here on this whole issue with the centurion and what Jesus said. We'll dig into that deeper tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm gonna go to Yellowstone. Thanks for hanging out with me in my car. I'm Matt, this is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.