The Faith Of The Centurion

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. We are in our second week of this new series. I guess it's not new now it's the second week, but the second week of this series called Come Follow Me as we kind of journey with Jesus through the gospel of Matthew on the way to the cross. That's the destination. He set that up pretty quickly in this whole series and we saw last week that discipleship is the three R's, revolutionary, ruthless, and resurrecting. We all go through death, resurrection events in our lives and that's what discipleship is. It takes us out of ourselves and puts us into Jesus. That is God's goal in your life to take you out of yourself, get you out of yourself, and get you into Jesus Christ. Isn't that kind of a cool way of thinking about it? Last week we started in Matthew chapter 4 with the first call of the disciples and Matthew 4 happens after his Jesus temptation in the wilderness and his baptism right before that. So it's the start of his public ministry and he looks to Andrew and James and Peter and John and says come follow me and they drop everything and follow him. Then right after that is what's called the Sermon on the Mount and we've actually done a pretty thorough job in the past couple of years going through the Sermon on the Mount in a number of different ways. So even though it's a great discipleship passage Matthew 5 through 7 we're kind of leapfrogging over that to this next section which is Matthew chapter 8 where we're going to start with question or we'll ask the questions about these would-be disciples. There are three different stories I think that fit together in this text of Matthew chapter 8 and we're looking at verse 5 through 22 today. So when he had entered Capernaum a centurion came forward to him appealing to him Lord my servant is lying paralyzed at home suffering terribly and he said to him I 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 will be healed for I too am a man under authority and the 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 this he marveled and said to those follow who followed him truly I tell you with no one in Israel have I found such faith I will tell you many will come from east and west and reclined at the table with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown out into outer darkness in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and the centurion 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 and when Jesus entered Peter's house he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever he touched her hand and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve him that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick this was to fulfill what was spoken by the Prophet Isaiah he took our illnesses and bore our diseases now when Jesus saw a crowd around him he gave orders to go over to the other side and a scribe came up and said to him teacher I will follow you wherever you go and Jesus said to him foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head another of the disciples said to him Lord let me first go and bury my father and Jesus said to him follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead Wow what a way to end huh so we're going to be looking at this passage backwards today I know that seems kind of odd but one of the questions you have to always ask when you read the Gospels or anything in the Bible actually is why is this here there are many things that happen in Jesus life the end of the Gospel of John John writes that if I were to write down if we were trying to write down everything that Jesus ever said and did all the books in the world couldn't fill it especially if you know John's perspective which is Jesus has been involved in everything from the word go of creation I mean so yeah that's true but you have to ask why these healings why this instance why this and why in this order you know when I grew up as a kid I always thought well just because it happened one after the other well there's a lot of things that happen in between probably each of these as well why aren't they recorded why are these put together how does this fit and I think if we look at it kind of with the last instance of these two wannabe or would-be disciples and move then to Peter's mother-in-law and then to the centurion I think we're going to get a grasp at what's going on here what discipleship is all about and I know these three words might well seem a little what would be insulting to you okay I maybe I feel a lit...