Harbor Church - Mid City

Investigating Jesus—On Faith

Mid-City 6/20/2010 Lk. 7: 1-10

We’re in a series called investigating Jesus and we’re doing so by looking at the Gospel of Luke to give us a view into the life of the man around who Christianity is all about. This morning we’re going to look at what Jesus has to say about faith. And in this particular story you see one of only 2 instances where Jesus is amazed in the Bible. One is in Mk. 6 where Jesus is flat out rejected in his hometown, and it says that Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. Here we have the opposite—Jesus is amazed at the faith of this Gentile centurion. So there is much for us to learn from him on the subject of faith. And the way we’re going to go about that this morning is by asking 3 questions of this text: (1) Who has faith? (2) What is faith? (3) Who benefits from faith?

(1) Who has faith? Here is the short answer: everyone. It is impossible for you to live in the world without faith. Let’s start with the obvious: religious people have faith. In our story, the Roman centurion has a slave that he loves very much who is on his deathbed. The doctors have done everything they can do and, unless a miracle occurs, then his beloved servant will die. But, the centurion has heard rumors that there is a Jewish miracle worker on the loose.

So he does what any of the rest of us would do. He begins thinking about who he knows that might know this man and he says, “Aha. I have some Jewish, religious friends. He isn’t into cold-calls. Surely they must know him or have friends of friends who know him. And so he goes to them to see if they would go contact this Jewish miracle worker on his behalf and they agree.

Here is what they say in v4, “When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” Now they have gotten off message. This isn’t what the centurion told them to say. We know this b/c he sends another group of trusted friends to get the message right a few verses later. But we’ll get to that in a minute. This message does, however, reveal the faith of the religious leaders. They say, ‘Jesus, he deserves your attention.” Why? B/c (1) he loves our nation & (2) he has built our synagogue for us. Now let me explain a bit why they would say this.

Let’s dig back into the historical context here. See the centurion was a commander over 100 soldiers—hence the name centurion. His post was Capernaum—a fishing village that some guestimate to have been about 1000 people or so around this time. So he commands roughly 1/10 of the town, and, when you consider family and people who serviced his men, then a much larger portion of the town is under his influence.

Think of his influence this way--You know how when people say, “This is a college town.” What do they mean? They mean that the impact of the college is really felt everywhere through the town. Charlottesville was like this in Virginia when I was there. As of the 2000 census, it had about 45,000 people. The University of Virginia itself has about 20,000 students, then you throw faculty and staff and service workers connected to the University on top of that number and you have over half of the town connected to the university. That is a college town. It’s impact is felt everywhere, and, believe me, the president of UVA could get a meeting with anyone he wanted in the town of Charlottesville.

Well, with an outpost of 100 soldiers, Capernaum was a military town. That means that the Roman Centurion, as the head of this outpost, would have been the equivalent of the president of UVA. And his job was to represent the interests of the Roman empire to the people of Capernaum. Sometimes Roman leaders in his position did this through force. They viewed the Jews with disdain and peered down their noses at them. Not the centurion in our text. We see that he was very fond of the Jews. He had affection for them. Moreover, he became their patron and built them a synagogue.

Let me take just a minute here to talk to those of you who doubt the historical validity of the Bible. You see it as a myth—helpful, but not historical. Well, this synagogue built by the centurion is an archaelogical reality. You can see the ruins here. The temple built by the centurion had a foundation of black basalt which is from the region. It was destroyed around 70 AD when the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, then another temple was rebuilt on the site in the 4^th century made out of white limestone that was imported. I show you this to help you realize this isn’t a mythical story we’re looking at—but this is rooted in historical reality. We’re still in this same story.

Back to the story. So, the religious leaders go to Jesus and say, “Jesus, we have a major donor that we need you to take care of. He is good guy. He isn’t Jewish good. He is a Roman, but you can overlook that, b/c he is a friend of the Jews, if you know what I mean.

Ah, my friends, if you have read the gospel of Luke or been here or this series you had to see this one coming. This is Barney Fife being Barney. Religious people blowing it once again. See religious leaders throughout the gospel of Luke operate in the same religious grid that all other religions operate out of: karma. You get what you deserve. If you are worthy of God, then he’ll bless you and save you. If not, then you are out of luck.

Don’t you see, there faith is ultimately in themselves, not God. If they are moral enough and good enough, then they deserve god. They have created leverage over him.

And this is the grid that so many people I talk to in San Diego live in. Your faith is in your self and your own morality. See religious people, my friends, have a faith position—it is simply that they have put their trust in themselves. They have done what Allah or God or Buddha or Confucious required, and, as a result, their god of choice will reward them. This is where Jesus is so radically different than all other nations.

There was a great piece in Harper's last month, "The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong'' stating three out of four Americans believe the Bible teaches this: "God helps those who help themselves.'' The Gospel according to Mark? Luke? Actually, it was Ben Franklin who came up with these words to live by.

"The thing is,'' McKibben writes, "not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counterbiblical. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.''

Friends, just as gravity only works one way, so Jesus only works one way. Some of you are here and you would consider yourselves Christians, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Chriistianity is all about. You think apples fly up; you think you’re a Christian b/c of something you have done.

For instance, my mentor, who began the first Harbor church downtown, would have been in that 75% until he was 27 years old. Bradford and I had dinner with my mentor this week. We were talking about when he became a Christian. He had grown up Lutheran and would have considered himself a Christian. Why? B/c he lived in the religious grid. He was worthy of God saving him because he was generally a good person—and if you know him, then you know that, by anyone’s standards, he is a really good person. But he said himself, “Though I would have called myself a Christian, I was kidding myself—my faith wasn’t in Jesus, but in myself.”

But some of you push back and say, “I am not like the religious guys in the text. I am not a religious person at all. In fact, I am an atheist or agnostic. But either position—the atheistic or the agnostic—is a faith position. You hold your position that there isn’t a God, or that we can’t know if there is a god, on faith.

Tim Keller addresses this really well in his book Reason for God, and also in his preaching. He mentioned an example from one of my favorite all-time books that I read right after college called A Severe Mercy. What I love about the book is that it is one of the most powerful love stories you will ever read and it also chronicles this very intelligent couple’s faith journey from agnosticism to faith in Jesus as they were dialoguing, through letters, with CS Lewis.

After much dialogue between Lewis and Vanauken and months of back-and-forth, Vanauken was beginning to be persuaded by the evidence and rationality of Christianity. Listen to him, “Christianity—in a word, the divinity of Jesus—seemed probable to me. But there is a gap between the probable and the proved. How was I to cross it? If I were to stake my whole life on the Risen Christ, I wanted proof. I wanted certainty. I wanted to see him eat a bit of flesh. I wanted letters of fire across the sky. I got none of these. And I continued to hang about on the edge of the gape.

Davy & I, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, were reading Dorothy Sayers’s tremendous series of short plays on the life of Jesus. In one of them, I was forcibly struck by the reply of a man to Jesus’ inquiry about his faith: ‘Lord, I believe, help mine unbelief.” Wasn’t that just my position? Believing and not believing?...

One day later there came the second intellectual breakthrough: it was the rather chilling realization that I could not go back. In my old easy-going theism, I had regarded Christianity as a sort of fairy tale; and I had neither accepted nor rejected Jesus, since I had never, in fact, encountered him. Now I had. The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him—or reject. My God! There was a gap behind me, too. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble—but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that He was not. If I were to accept, I might and probably would face the thought through the years: ‘Perhaps, after all, it’s a lie; I’ve been had!” But if I were to reject, I would certainly face the haunting, terrible thought: ‘Perhaps it’s true—and I have rejected my God!’This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was one more thing to do, once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.

See Vanauken said I have already made a leap of faith to not believe in Jesus and that leap is actually much scarier and much less supported by reason. There is a gap behind me that I have already leapt over, and then there is that haunting suspicion, deep in his gut, “What if it is true, and I get to the end of my life and realize I have rejected my God!.

So, everyone has faith. Religious people have faith in themselves, in their morality; anti-religious people have faith in themselves as well, that they have figured out there isn’t a God or that no one can know. But this just begs the question—what is faith. We haven’t defined it. If everyone has it, then what is it.

(2) What is faith?

Well, to figure this out, let’s look at this amazing faith of the centurion. We’re going to back into a definition through the text. V6, “Jesus was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him.” So this time he doesn’t send the religious leaders, but rather his trusted friends, who would communicate his message with a little more accuracy. They stop Jesus before he gets to the house and relay the centurion’s message, v6 “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you.” Now let’s stop there. Quite a different grid or paradigm that the centurion is operating under. He says exactly the opposite of what the religious leaders say in v4, “This man deserves to have you do this, b/c he loves our nation and has built our synagogue;” The centurions says, “I don’t deserve you. I am not even worthy to come to you.” But notice he doesn’t say, “I am not worthy, so don’t come. Or I don’t deserve you, so don’t heal my servant.” If he did, he would be operating under the same religious grid that the religious leaders were operating out of, only in the negative. I am a sinner, a loser, so I know you won’t do anything for me.

See the centurion’s faith is rooted in the grace of Jesus and this is what is so glorious and amazing to Jesus. Jesus was encountering person after person operating on the religious grid in Israel—finally, one whose faith was built on a foundation of grace. See what he says, “I am not worthy, but say the word.” He gets what Jesus had just taught in Lk. 5—that he didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners, so I am a perfect fit for you.

And then look at what he does—he transfers his trust to a person that he hasn’t met or seen (this is Heb. 11 right here). Herein lies a defintion of faith—it is a transfer of trust from yourself to Jesus. He says, “My wealth or influence or morality—nothing will save my servant. And none of that will save me—neither of us are worthy Jesus, we’re sinners, so say a word of salvation.

Only you have that kind of authority (v8). The centurion e says I myself know about authority. I myself have it over 100 men. But your authority is ultimate. I have to have others carry out my authority, but you—you simply speak and salvation happens. See the Greek word for salvation and healing are the same. So simply say the word of salvation, of healing Jesus—I trust in you to bring healing & salvation to my servant & me.

See my friends, the centurion figures out what the gospel writers would clarify. John 1 says all creation is under Jesus’ authority. Jesus was with God as the logos—the word—and he spoke and fish appeared in the ocean, he speak and planets formed. But then, the one who had this type of authority that only God has took on flesh, and the centurion recognized that this was an authority unlike he had ever known.

But what the centurion didn’t know at this point in the story is that while Jesus had all authority on heaven and earth, he took on flesh with one purpose in mind—laying down that authority. See on the cross, the great warrior, who had authority to speak and get off the cross, remained silent in his suffering. See he laid down his authority and made himself a servant; on the cross, the great warrior lays down his life as a ransom not just for a 100 under his command, but for all of those sons of Adam and daughters of Eve who would be willing to say the name, to transfer their trust to Him.

(3) Who benefits from faith?

Quickly, I am going to close with this. Think about our story. The salvation, the healing of Jesus, came to his household, to his servants, as a result of his faith. One man transferred his trust to Jesus and his whole household is blessed. Think about what will happen if we will. This reminds me of I Cor. 7:14 that says “the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband.” It is Father’s Day and I want to talk to close by talking to Fathers. Oh, that you and I would be men like this centurion. That we would transfer our trust to Jesus daily, hourly. Just think, men of how gracious our God is, of how far and wide he will fling his grace in our households, in our city, if we will be men and trust Jesus

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