TEXT: Luke 7:1-10

SUBJECT: Luke #22: A Centurion’s Faith

Today, with God’s blessing, we’ll move on in our study of Luke’s Gospel. Luke himself was a Gentile; he wrote to a Gentile; and—in today’s story he praises a Gentile, whose name we don’t know, but whose faith he wants us to admire—and follow.

The story begins right after the Lord had finished His great Sermon on the plain. After the people were sent home, He and the disciples made their way into the nearby town of Capernaum.

Capernaum was a place He knew well. It was only a few miles from Nazareth, where He had grown up. It was also the hometown of Peter, Andrew, James, and John. Of more significance, though, is that Capernaum was the place He had introduced Himself as Messiah. Some months before, the Lord had gone to the synagogue in that town, read from the prophecy of Isaiah, and preached the shortest—and most powerful—sermon in history,

What He said then, He’s going to prove now.

A Roman officer lives in town whose servant is lying at the point of death. Because the man is very dear to his master, he cannot be permitted to die. But what can you do when human powers fail? You can only cry out to a power than is above the human. And that is just what the Roman does.

He calls for the leading Jews of the town and tells them to fetch the Lord Jesus, who surely has the power and mercy to heal the dying slave. The men are happy to run the errand.

They come to the Lord and beg Him to help their Gentile friend. The Lord is an Observant Jew, of course, and a busy man, and they feel the need to justify their request. Why should a Great Rabbi waste His time on a Gentile dog?

Here’s why: "For he loves our nation and has built us a synagogue".

Most Romans hated the Jews, or more often, despised them. You can see this attitude in Pontius Pilate, for example, who mocked them by naming a crucified Man,

But this Roman was different. I suppose he was a God-fearing man, that is, a Gentile who had not formally converted to Judaism, but who respected the God of Israel.

Seeing the Jews of Capernaum had no fit place to worship, he paid for a synagogue out of his own pocket—and won the respect of every good man in town.

When the Lord heard their story, He agreed to go to the man’s house and to heal his servant.

This says something about the Lord’s generosity of spirit. He had been up all night praying, then followed up the vigil with a long sermon, preached outdoors, to a giant congregation. Now, I can tell you that preaching is hard work and by Sunday afternoon I’m good for nothing but a nap. The Lord must have been shot that day, yet despite His weariness of body and mind, He remains eager to help someone who needs Him—even if he’s a Gentile!

And so off he goes to the Centurion’s home.

As the Lord gets near the Roman’s house, the man starts feeling ashamed of himself. He turns to some friends and tells them to bring another message to the Lord.

The man’s military training has served him well! A Centurion is a low-ranking officer in the Roman Army, something like a lieutenant or a captain. Through his sergeants, he commands 100 men, but he, too, is commanded by superior officers—colonels, generals, and with Caesar at the top.

Now, if a Centurion needed the help of the Emperor, would he expect Caesar to do it himself? Of course not! If he saw fit to help him, he would give the order—and it would be done. After all, in Rome,

The Centurion feels this way about Christ too. Though he needs His help desperately, he doesn’t demand a personal appearance. Just give the order!

That’s all it takes—one Word from the Lord Jesus Christ. His Word carries authority; it contains power; it gets the job done—all by itself!

The Centurion must have known this from the stories circulating about the Lord Jesus. In the last few months, the Lord had cast out devils, healed the sick, cleansed a leper, raised a paralytic from his bed, restored the use of a man’s hand—and more. All these things had been done by the power of His Word.

If demons and leprosy and paralysis were subject to the Word of Christ, then—the Centurion reasoned—so is the disease that’s about to kill my dear servant.

Commentators and preachers often praise the man’s modesty—and that’s true, he was a remarkably humble man. But that’s not what our Lord says about him—and it is not the moral Luke is drawing from the story.

No, what’s really impressive about the man is his faith,

In other words, the Lord is blown away by the Centurion’s faith. He had seen faith before, of course—even great faith. But never had He seen a faith stronger and more sure than what this man had.

I wonder what the disciples thought of the man? They believed in Christ, of course, and had closely followed Him for months. Yet here’s a man who had never met the Lord, it seems, but his faith far surpassed their own.

Do you think they were embarrassed? They should have been. And we should be too. After all, what did the Centurion know about Christ that we don’t? Indeed, we know far more about the Lord than He did. Yet where’s the trust? Where’s the confidence? Do we pray with the same expectation that he had?

The end of the story tells us that the man’s faith in Christ was not misplaced. What he asked of the Lord—what He expected of Him, even, he got,

Note the word, "well". He wasn’t better; he was well—right then and there. By the power of Christ’s Word.

That’s the story.

You already know the message. You’ve heard it a million times, but you still don’t obey it. I know you don’t because I don’t either. What is it?

Have faith in Christ.

By "faith", I don’t mean a one-time act of faith that justifies the sinner, but live in faith. In other words, trust the Lord Jesus Christ—keep putting your confidence in Him.

What is it about the Lord that makes you doubt Him? All of us would confess we wonder about Him at times. But why?

Is there anything in the Bible to make you doubt Christ?

Is there something lacking in His power?

Our story says otherwise. Here’s a man about to die, but one Word from Christ and he’s well. In the next story, we see the Lord has power, not only over sickness, but even death submits to Him. Read the Bible from cover to cover and you’ll not find one instance of the Lord wanting to do something, but unable to do it. In short,

Is there something lacking in His mercy?

Maybe He’s able to do something for you, but He’s too stingy to do it. He likes to see you suffer or doesn’t care. Luke covers this objection too, telling the story of the leper who came to the Lord begging,

What answer did he get?

Is there something lacking in His wisdom?

He may want to do you good and has the power to do it, but He doesn’t know how to do it. Is that possible? Again, it isn’t. The knottiest problems are brought to the Lord and He cuts through them all. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, but,

Is there something lacking in His character?

Some people can get things done—and want to—most of the time. But because they’re fickle, you can’t count on them. Is the Lord that way? Is He up one day and down the next? Generous on Monday, selfish on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday?

Not at all. The Gospels present to us a Man who is wonderfully, even perfectly, consistent. Like the rest of us, He got hungry and tired and disappointed, but unlike the rest of us, these things didn’t affect His conduct. Weariness did not make Him cranky; disappointment didn’t make Him withdrawn.

No, there’s nothing in Christ at all—nothing, not one thing—that would make you doubt Him.

But, of course, we don’t get our doubts from the Bible, but from our experience. We have all prayed for things and not gotten them; we’ve begged Him to do something for a loved one and He didn’t do it. The job you needed was given to someone else. The mother you prayed for didn’t pull through.

We don’t like to admit it, but these are the things that make us doubt the Lord Jesus Christ.

But we shouldn’t. For the power and mercy and wisdom and character of Christ are the same when He says no as when He says yes. Faith lives—not on getting what we ask for—but on Christ Himself. Hebrews 11 is a case in point.

For most of the chapter, we see the great blessings that come through faith—Abraham inherits a land; Sarah has a son at 90; Moses beats Pharaoh; Joshua brings down the walls of Jericho; Gideon routs an army; David subdues kingdoms; Daniel stops the mouth of lions, on and on it goes.

But they’re not the only ones mentioned in the chapter—

Does the author of Hebrews ridicule these men for their stubborn foolishness of trusting Christ even when He didn’t come through for them? No. He praises them for trusting the Lord, even when things didn’t go the way they wanted them to.

The object of faith is not the blessing of Christ, but Christ Himself. Most of the time, He give us what we ask for. But other times, He does not. But whether He does or not, He is still worthy of all our confidence. Nobody put it better than Job,

David’s life was full of turmoil, full of danger, full of heartache, but in victory and in loss, he said,

That’s what faith does. It counts on the Lord. Who is worthy of being counted on.

The Centurion’s faith was put down in the Bible so that you would follow it. Are you? You don’t need a religious background to do that, for he had none. You don’t need superior knowledge of the Bible, for what did he know compared to the rabbis of Israel?

What you need is the knowledge of Christ—who He is and what He is to you. If you’d meditate on His Divinity, His character, and His relationship to you, you’d trust Him more than you do.

Now go do it. And the love of God be with you. Amen.