0:0 - All right, well, let's have a, before we open God's Word, let's have a prayer together, a prayer of understanding.
0:7 - Lord, as we dig into your Word now and see the truths that you have for us here and the message you like to speak to us this morning, I pray that you would open our hearts to examine the scriptures faithfully.
0:19 - I pray that your hand would be on me, that there would be less of me and more of you up here.
0:25 - I pray that we will be aware and feel your spirit among us here this morning.
0:30 - In Christ's name, amen.
0:36 - All right, we are continuing to work our way through Luke.
0:40 - We've been working on Luke for a little while now.
0:43 - There are some conversations Pastor Brad and I've been having about trying something different in the fall, but it looks like we'll continue to work our way through Luke for the rest of the summer.
0:51 - And today we're gonna be looking at a story that in pretty much every Bible I've ever seen has been headlined, The Faith of the Centurion.
0:58 - So we're gonna talk a bit about the Centurion this morning.
1:0 - We'll talk about faith and we'll also talk a bit about the opposite of faith and even some physics.
1:6 - Anyway, let's see what the Lord has for us here this morning first.
1:9 - So Luke chapter 7 verses 1 to 10.
1:13 - When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum.
1:18 - There a Centurion servant who was master valued highly, was sick and about to die.
1:24 - The Centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant.
1:30 - 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.
1:39 - So Jesus went with them.
1:41 - He was not far from the house when the Centurion sent friends to say to him, Lord, don't trouble yourself for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.
1:50 - That's why I did not consider myself worthy to come to you.
1:53 - But say the word and my servant will be healed.
1:56 - For I myself am a man under authority with soldiers under me.
2:0 - I tell this one go and he goes and that one come and he comes.
2:4 - I say to my servant, do this and he does it.
2:8 - When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him and turned to the crowd following him.
2:13 - He said, I tell you, I've not found such great faith even in Israel.
2:18 - Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.
2:23 - This is the word of the Lord.
2:29 - Okay, so yeah, I kind of changed my, I guess where I thought was the main point of this passage a few times over the last month.
2:38 - I think I'd like to talk today about the faith of the centurion, but also to look at what is the opposite of faith and see how the centurion kind of wrestles with this through this story.
2:48 - So first we'll talk a bit about the centurion, we'll talk about what is the opposite of faith, and then we'll see what this has to do with us and how this message applies for us as well.
2:56 - But let's start with some physics.
2:59 - So you can take the teacher out of the classroom.
3:2 - So, thought experiment here, maybe some of you actually tried this experiment before.
3:8 - You're driving along in a car going 80 kilometers an hour.
3:13 - Passenger in the front seat throws a ball up in the air.
3:16 - What happens to the ball?
3:19 - It falls right back down, you catch it in your hand, right?
3:22 - Okay, slightly different experiment.
3:24 - You're sitting in the back of a half ton truck.
3:26 - You're leaning up against the tailgate, nobody would do this now, driving 80 km an hour across Royalty Junction when there was train tracks.
3:34 - Anyway, but in the 70s, such things were kind of normal.
3:38 - There were just as many seat belts attached in front as there were in the back.
3:41 - Anyway, so you and your cousins are sitting in the back of a half ton truck, and it's going 80 km an hour across Royalty Junction, somebody throws a ball up in the air, what happens to the ball?
3:52 - It's gone.
3:53 - Okay, next one, you got the tailgate down, one of your cousins decides to try something pretty cool.
4:0 - You're driving 80 km an hour across Royalty Junction, somebody jumps off the back of the truck.
4:6 - What's going to happen to your cousin?
4:9 - Nothing good.
4:10 - Trip to the hospital, right?
4:12 - It's going to be very painful.
4:15 - But, we think back to the first experiment, we get too much into the physics here, but like when you were inside a car, the ball stayed where it was.
4:21 - So, what happens if instead of just jumping off, stepping off the back of the truck, what if your truck is going 20 km an hour, one way, and you get up near the cab, and you run as fast as you can and jump off the back of the truck at 20 km an hour?
4:35 - The truck is going 20 km an hour this way, you jump 20 km an hour this way, what happens?
4:41 - You should nail a perfect landing.
4:44 - The truck drives off and everything is okay.
4:48 - What if the truck is now going 80 km an hour?
4:51 - Well, you can't run 80 km an hour off the back.
4:53 - But what if you built a rocket sled and you had a longer bed truck, and the rocket sled shot you at 80 km an hour off the back of the truck, while the truck is going 80 km an hour this way, would you just nail a perfect landing?
5:8 - Physics tells us yes.
5:11 - There's a bunch of guys in Slovakia called DD Squad, and they like to try these ridiculous, dangerous kind of stunts.
5:16 - They decided to try this out.
5:17 - They got a truck with an extra long bed.
5:19 - They went to an airport runway, there was no planes landing and stuff, and got this truck up to 80 km an hour.
5:25 - They had this sled all set up, rocket sled to shoot this guy off the back at 80 km an hour, and he was wearing a helmet, with of course a GoPro.
5:34 - Anyway, they shot this guy off the back.
5:37 - Who's going to volunteer to go first?
5:39 - Suddenly, your faith in the laws of physics goes to another level because now you're actually putting yourself in harm's way.
5:46 - So, they filmed this video, and you can Google this, not right now, but you can look this up on YouTube sometime later this afternoon before the soccer game starts, and see this guy getting shot off the back, and it's exactly as he expected.
6:0 - The guy nails a perfect landing, and everybody's whooping and cheering and stuff, and the truck's still driving off 80 km an hour.
6:6 - But that act of turning your faith in the laws of physics into an actual experiment with consequences if faith is misplaced, that's an interesting thing about faith.
6:19 - I think actually doing something shows how real your faith is.
6:25 - So we'll talk about faith this morning, but we'll come back to these DD guys a bit later in the sermon.
6:31 - So a bit of background, where are we in this story?
6:33 - We read through Luke, but we're doing parts of it like a week, separated by a week.
6:38 - What was the last thing we saw?
6:39 - What was Jesus doing?
6:40 - This passage starts off with, after Jesus said all of these things.
6:44 - Jesus just spent a whole big couple of chapters of Luke, doing some teaching.
6:49 - It's called the Sermon on the Plain, usually, and it's kind of like Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount.
6:53 - And a lot of the stories actually kind of overlap.
6:56 - The wise man who builds his house on the rock, and there's a bunch of things like this.
6:59 - And then Jesus is done.
7:0 - He goes back to Capernaum.
7:2 - We often think of Jesus as being from Nazareth, because that's where he grew up.
7:6 - But actually, as an adult, Jesus left Nazareth and moved to Capernaum.
7:9 - This is Jesus' hometown.
7:11 - When we talk about this synagogue here in this story that this centurion built, that was Jesus' home church.
7:16 - That was his synagogue that he went to.
7:18 - So Jesus is kind of going home after an extended time of teaching.
7:23 - And so then what happens?
7:26 - Well, actually, let's talk about the centurion to be here first.
7:28 - Because I saw Roman centurion.
7:30 - I thought, okay, this is pretty good.
7:33 - Ancient history background.
7:34 - Let's talk a little bit about centurion.
7:35 - So I did some dives into like, what exactly qualifications do you have for a centurion?
7:40 - What would a centurion be like?
7:42 - What part of Rome would these guys have come from?
7:44 - All that kind of stuff.
7:46 - And then during my research, I found out that this guy was almost definitely not a Roman centurion.
7:52 - I looked back in the text, doesn't say anywhere he was a Roman centurion, just as he was a centurion.
7:58 - So, I don't know how clear the map is here, but the Romans would not have had any soldiers in Capernaum, or actually anywhere in Galilee.
8:8 - So the Romans, their garrison was based, it's a lot of work, but it's based on the coast there in Caesarea.
8:14 - See Samaria and the kind of like gray part there.
8:17 - Caesarea is on the coast, that's where the Roman headquarters were.
8:20 - When Paul gets in trouble later and almost gets beat to death in the temple, they send him to Caesarea to meet with Governor Felix and all that kind of stuff.
8:27 - The Romans also would have had soldiers in Jerusalem, but that's a long way from Galilee.
8:31 - So who's a centurion in Galilee?
8:34 - Galilee was under the control of King Herod, the same Herod that during his trial with Pilate and all that stuff, and Pilate sends him to see Herod and all that sort of stuff.
8:44 - This is King Herod, and he would have had his own soldiers, his own army and stuff modeled on the Roman style.
8:50 - So this centurion in the story is almost definitely not a Roman citizen, or a member of the Roman army, SPQR, all that kind of stuff.
8:58 - But he would have been a centurion for all that in Herod's army.
9:2 - He probably would have come from Syria or Phoenicia, and lived not too far away from Israel, which I think makes a bit more sense that he was a devout follower of God.
9:12 - I mean, this guy not only goes to synagogue every week, but he actually paid to build the synagogue.
9:17 - He would have been wealthy.
9:19 - He definitely would have been a gentile, not somebody that the Jews would have looked on too kindly with.
9:24 - Probably a second-class citizen in the synagogue, despite the fact that he spent all this money to build it.
9:30 - So then what about a centurion?
9:31 - What kind of modern rank in our army would fit with a centurion?
9:36 - So I looked this up too.
9:37 - I'm not a huge military guy, but a centurion would in some ways be like a captain, because he commanded a hundred men.
9:44 - A centurion commanded a hundred guys.
9:47 - So that's a bit like a captain, higher the lieutenant, lower than a major.
9:51 - But a captain is also like a commissioned officer.
9:55 - In those days, if you were a commissioned officer, well, nowadays, you're a commissioned officer, you probably went to military school, you have an education, you have a degree, all that stuff.
10:4 - A centurion wouldn't have come from that background.
10:9 - He wouldn't have had the right family connections and the money.
10:11 - He worked his way up through the ranks.
10:13 - So this guy's probably been in the army, probably in Herod's army, for anywhere from 15 to 20 years.
10:18 - He would have been tough and feared.
10:21 - He would have been a disciplinarian, maybe a bit like a sergeant major, the kind of guy that's used to kind of like yelling at people and having respect, but also a regular working guy.
10:32 - You can almost picture this centurion coming across some poor soldier who makes the mistake of calling him sir.
10:39 - Sir, don't call me sir, I work for a living.
10:42 - You will address me as centurion flavius.
10:44 - Do I make myself clear?
10:46 - That kind of guy.
10:48 - When he says in the passage he used to giving orders and having obeyed, that's the kind of stuff we're talking about.
10:55 - So this centurion is a drill sergeant, pretty tough guy.
10:58 - He's also got some power in the community.
11:0 - He would have become wealthy by the time he became a centurion.
11:3 - He probably didn't come from wealth, but now he's got wealth and power and influence.
11:5 - In a small town like Capernaum, he's a fairly big fish.
11:9 - Not a Roman fish, but a big enough fish anyway.
11:14 - Skip that part, skip that part.
11:16 - Now the centurion says to Jesus, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.
11:25 - No, actually.
11:26 - See, I make up these sermons, and then I think they're going well, and then I try them out usually on Friday or Saturday and realize, oh, 40 minutes.
11:35 - Nobody's gonna sit still for that, so I have to cut some stuff.
11:39 - You guys have to send my slideshow into Diane Friday morning.
11:43 - So there's usually a lot of changing back and forth.
11:45 - I think it's better to put in a bit more and go buy some things and cut some stuff than it is to at the last minute realize, 10 minutes sermon.
11:52 - Actually, maybe you guys wouldn't mind a 10 minutes sermon.
11:54 - Anyway, sorry.
11:56 - That's all we'll say about this century and for now.
11:58 - The other stuff wasn't key to our story.
12:0 - Let's talk about faith.
12:3 - I think to understand faith, let's think of what is the opposite of faith.
12:6 - So we'll play the opposite game.
12:9 - Can you tell I'm missing school here?
12:10 - All right.
12:11 - So I say something.
12:12 - You don't have to say it out loud.
12:13 - You can think like, what's the opposite?
12:14 - So the opposite of up, actually, maybe you should say it.
12:16 - What's the opposite of up?
12:18 - There we go.
12:18 - What's the opposite of dark?
12:20 - Okay.
12:21 - Opposite of hot.
12:22 - There we go.
12:23 - This is easy.
12:23 - The opposite of dog?
12:26 - What?
12:28 - How is cat the opposite of dog?
12:29 - They're actually very similar.
12:31 - No, the opposite of dog is a clean, fresh smelling house with...
12:40 - I'm not a pet person, sorry.
12:43 - Anyway, but we get this, right?
12:45 - Dog, cat stuff.
12:46 - Okay.
12:47 - What's the opposite of faith?
12:49 - Now, a lot of people, including me, would at first glance think, well, the opposite of faith is probably doubt, right?
12:57 - You believe something, you have faith in something, or you doubt something.
13:2 - So, I'm going to suggest it's something actually different than doubt.
13:5 - Let's talk about doubt for a second here.
13:7 - And there's a very similar story in the gospels that are very similar to the Centurion story where the guy's wrestling with doubt.
13:14 - And so, I would suggest to you that doubt is not the opposite of faith.
13:19 - Doubt is actually necessary for faith.
13:23 - If you don't have a little bit of doubt, it's not really faith.
13:29 - Now, I'm not talking about the kind of doubts that are like big nasty doubts like, oh, there's no God, this is all just made up or whatever.
13:35 - Like, not that kind of doubt, just the little picking kind of doubts that just fly across your head from now on.
13:41 - Like, is there anybody really listening when I'm praying?
13:45 - Is this, has God really noticed me?
13:48 - Can I really trust everything in the Bible?
13:50 - It's these little like woodpecker doubts, woodpecker just pecking on your, sorry, I don't know if I have a wooden head.
13:55 - Anyway, these little woodpecker doubts, just the little tiny ones.
14:0 - But of course, faith is overcoming those little doubts, saying, no, no, when I stop and think about it, I know that of course Jesus loves me.
14:8 - I've seen so much evidence of God in my life.
14:10 - I know the Bible is true, but the little doubts are still there.
14:15 - Sometimes I thought when I was younger, it would be great to be older, and just like when you get older, all your doubts are gone.
14:20 - Your faith is super strong, you never have any more questions.
14:23 - I realize as I'm like halfway through my life, maybe, that's not quite the way it happens, right?
14:29 - I actually probably have more little tiny doubts now than I did when I was younger, because when I was 18, I knew everything.
14:35 - I don't know if there's any people in their late teens or early 20s in here, but if you feel like you know everything, yep, a lot of us have been there, right?
14:43 - I was never so sure of anything in my entire life as I was when I was 18 years old.
14:48 - Then the older you get, you realize, actually, maybe I had a couple of things I could just adjust here a little bit.
14:53 - So doubt.
14:55 - Without doubt, it's not really faith.
14:57 - So if you've been to a wedding so far this summer, you may have heard 1 Corinthians 13, right?
15:2 - This is the love is patience, love is kind, a lot of stuff.
15:4 - And sometimes in a wedding, they read right to the end of the chapter, verse 12.
15:9 - For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face.
15:14 - Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known, then I shall know fully.
15:21 - When we get to the kingdom, there will be no more doubt, because there will be no more faith.
15:28 - We'll see God face to face.
15:30 - I mean, no more questions, I mean, no more woodpeckers with the little doubts, because we'll be standing in God's presence.
15:35 - And so there'd be no more doubt, but also no more faith.
15:38 - Faith is something that happens here on the earth.
15:40 - Just to the next verse, which I guess I didn't show, is that the greatest of these are faith, hope, and love, right?
15:45 - But the greatest of these is love, because faith and hope will not be present in the kingdom.
15:50 - Only love.
15:51 - Love endures forever.
15:53 - Faith and hope are temperates.
15:55 - Anyway, I'm gonna beat this to death.
15:56 - But doubt, if you're feeling doubts from time to time, don't let that sidetrack you.
16:2 - Don't let that get you down and feel like maybe there's something wrong with you, or that your faith is not as strong as it should be, because you get these little pecking doubts.
16:13 - I think a lot about this father in Mark 9, very similar story.
16:17 - Father comes to see Jesus, my kid is really sick, and can you come heal him?
16:21 - And the father makes either the mistake or the slip of the tongue or something, he says, if you can do anything, and Jesus says, stop right there.
16:28 - If I can do something, if I can, everything's possible for him who believes.
16:32 - And the father's like, I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief.
16:37 - At first glance, this seems like the total opposite of the centurion, right?
16:40 - The centurion seems so full of faith.
16:42 - I tell this guy, do something like, Jesus, you can tell the guy, you can tell the sickness be gone, it will be.
16:46 - And this guy's like, ah, I just want to believe.
16:49 - But it seems like, what?
16:51 - I want to believe?
16:53 - I don't know.
16:53 - It seems, but Jesus does the exact same thing.
16:56 - He heals this guy's son.
16:57 - He heals the centurion servant.
16:59 - He doesn't really differentiate between the two of them.
17:2 - Help me overcome my unbelief.
17:4 - I think we all have those little tiny, based on the reactions on some faces I'm seeing, I'll have those little tiny, fleeting little like, just questions sometimes.
17:12 - I think this is a very sincere and good prayer to pray.
17:16 - Lord, help me overcome my unbelief.
17:18 - And those little doubts come.
17:19 - Lord, remind me of how faithful you've been, because that is one thing that does happen.
17:23 - As you get older, you pause for a second, you look back at all the ways you've seen God being faithful.
17:28 - That's really actually a blessing.
17:29 - And it doesn't take too long for you to realize, of course, like what was I thinking by having that quick little doubt?
17:34 - Help me overcome my unbelief.
17:36 - So, the opposite, where are we going with this?
17:39 - The opposite of faith is not doubt.
17:40 - If the opposite of faith is not doubt, what is the opposite of faith?
17:44 - I'd like to suggest that the opposite of faith is control.
17:50 - There we go.
17:51 - The opposite of faith is control.
17:55 - When we try to control situations, when we try to do it ourselves, we try to like, I don't need to go to God with this, I can fix this, I got this.
18:4 - We want to control things around us, we want to control people around us, control situations.
18:9 - That's where we're getting to the opposite of faith.
18:11 - And this is where I think the centurion has a big revelation in us.
18:17 - One of the biggest things, of course, where we feel a loss of control is when we get financial scares or health scares.
18:24 - You know, people talk about how like everything in your life, like there's lots of things seem important.
18:27 - You go through a health scare and suddenly there's only one thing that's important.
18:30 - Whether it's a sick little kid that just seems so tiny to be this sick, and you rush them, you're waiting in the emergency room, and you don't know what the doctor is going to say.
18:38 - Sometimes it's something really big like cancer.
18:40 - Sometimes you're worried it's something life-ending.
18:42 - Sometimes you...
18:43 - anyway, there's lots of different ways we can have health scares, financial scares.
18:47 - I heard this podcast recently, they were talking about Maid.
18:51 - This is medical assistance in dying.
18:55 - Basically, you see the end coming, you go to the doctor and they end your life for you.
19:0 - So Maid, of course, has been rising every year in Canada.
19:3 - It's now about 5.6% of all deaths in 2025 were because of medical assistance and it's been growing every year.
19:10 - 5.6% might not sound like a lot, but to me, that sounds like a lot.
19:14 - So they interviewed a bunch of people that were opting for Maid before they actually had the procedure.
19:19 - And I think they were expecting people would say, I've got this diagnosis, my life is getting sore, I don't want the pain.
19:25 - It's gonna be very painful over the next six months, I want to end it now.
19:28 - And that's actually not really what people said.
19:30 - Pretty much everybody that was signed up for Maid said their reasons had to do with not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to be dependent on people, not wanting to be in a situation where they felt like they had no control over what was happening to them.
19:45 - It all basically came down to control, control, control, control.
19:50 - They want to control what their future was going to be.
19:53 - I think there's a lot of that out there in our society, whether it's health or anything, it's really hard to not be in control.
20:0 - We want to control stuff, and so when that leeches into our faith, that gets kind of challenging too, because we kind of want to control stuff.
20:6 - We want to do our own things.
20:7 - We like to be self-sufficient and kind of stand our own two feet and do things, and in our faith, that's not the important thing, because if you're trying to control, your faith is in you, not in the one who deserves your faith.
20:22 - So let's talk about giving up control.
20:26 - What does that look like?
20:27 - What does that look like for the Centurion?
20:29 - What does that look like for us?
20:31 - So I got a new car recently, and every time you get a new car, it's always like that change in technology from the last car you had, right?
20:38 - So we traded in a 2015 Corolla, and now we got like a 2026, and there's all kinds of new things they didn't have back in 2015.
20:46 - So there's all these, and Toyota has all these like little acronyms.
20:49 - They love these three-letter acronyms, these little TLAs.
20:52 - There's the adaptive cruise control, there's lane change assist, there's traffic jam assist, there's like park, anyway, there's all these things.
20:58 - I haven't figured most of them out, but I have figured out one thing that's pretty cool.
21:1 - You press a couple of buttons, and your car just follows the car ahead of you.
21:4 - If the car already slows down, your car slows down.
21:7 - The car already speeds up, your car speeds up.
21:9 - Awesome for road tripping to Ontario.
21:11 - And then the lane assist, you press another button, now it's gonna stay within the lanes.
21:14 - Even on PEI, where the lanes aren't always clearly marked.
21:18 - It'll stay between, and so you can actually take your hands off the steering wheel.
21:21 - It was weird the first couple of times to try this, because you know, you want to have control over the car.
21:25 - So you take your hands off the wheel and the car is just steering all the way into Charlottetown on the bypass.
21:29 - But of course, it's built in with this nanny kind of thing.
21:31 - So if you take your hands off the wheel for 15 seconds, I counted, then the car is like beep, I don't feel your hands on the wheel.
21:37 - You gotta put your hands back in the wheel.
21:38 - So it's not full self-driving, but it'll stay between the lanes.
21:42 - But sometimes the car doesn't want to let me do what I want to do.
21:47 - I want to pull over to the side and buy some new potatoes at this stand.
21:50 - No, no, no, I just look.
21:52 - And you're like fighting the car to go over to the side.
21:55 - You put on the signal light to pull over, and that just makes it worse for some reason.
21:58 - Things beeping off, people in the backseat are waking up.
22:0 - Anyway, so sometimes you have to fight the car for control.
22:6 - And this got me thinking on this long road trip to Ontario back about fighting for control.
22:14 - Sometimes I think there's this battle between us and God about who's going to be in control here.
22:20 - And we fight for control.
22:22 - Now, I've had to think a lot about the best way to put this, because I don't want to make it sound like we somehow limit God, or that God can't do something.
22:33 - That's not all I'm trying to say.
22:35 - But I think that sometimes when there's that fighting for control, I think a lot of times actually, God chooses not to fight us for control.
22:46 - If we are so determined that we are going to like be in charge of this situation, and we are going to do this stuff, and we kind of are ignoring the nudge of the Spirit, it seems like a lot of times God is like, okay, you want to go that way?
23:0 - I love you so much, I will give you what you want.
23:4 - And decides not to fight us for control.
23:6 - God could come in and just fix everything for us.
23:8 - I think the fact that he chooses not to do that is part of our faith journey.
23:12 - So I'm not sure in the car thing which one is God, whether it's me or the car, it's probably not good to think about that.
23:16 - But I think a lot of times, God chooses not to fight us for control.
23:22 - It's the moments that we finally give up control that God steps in and says, are you ready?
23:28 - Now let me act.
23:29 - I think this is what we see with the centurion.
23:33 - The centurion now, I'm gonna be a little bit uncharitable to the centurion.
23:37 - I hope I get to meet this guy someday in the kingdom.
23:39 - And if I do, I'll apologize if I got this wrong.
23:42 - But I'm picturing a guy whose last 20 years of his career is all about climbing the ladder, a guy who's in a position of power and authority and influence.
23:50 - And what does this look like when your servant gets sick?
23:53 - Well, the first thing he might have been thinking is, okay, I got a sick servant here, I need this guy.
23:57 - This is not like, give me some doctors here.
23:59 - He's got people, right?
24:0 - Give me some doctors, get some expensive doctors in.
24:2 - The doctors don't know what to do.
24:3 - Doctors are like, oh, we got nothing.
24:5 - All right, well, that's, somebody's got, okay, ideas.
24:8 - All right, give me some ideas here.
24:9 - What's he gonna do?
24:9 - He's like, well, there's that guy, Jesus at the synagogue.
24:11 - Jesus, yes, good.
24:13 - I've heard of Jesus at the synagogue.
24:15 - Okay, who's gonna get Jesus here for me?
24:17 - Get the synagogue rulers in here.
24:19 - He's not gonna try to track down Jesus himself.
24:21 - He's a centurion.
24:21 - Get the synagogue rulers.
24:23 - Now, getting the synagogue rulers to show up to your house, it's not just as simple as scanning a QR code back in those days.
24:29 - You have to like know people.
24:30 - Synagogue rulers are important, powerful men.
24:32 - So he puts out a call, the synagogue rulers come straight to his house.
24:35 - After all, this guy built the synagogue.
24:38 - I wouldn't suggest he built the synagogue just so he had some sort of power play stuff.
24:41 - But anyway, he built the synagogue, they come running.
24:44 - Listen, guys, get me Jesus.
24:46 - I got a servant who's sick.
24:48 - You can see this whole thing is about power and control.
24:50 - This is a guy that's used to having control and used to being in a position of power.
24:54 - Go get me Jesus.
24:55 - Jesus will fix this situation.
24:57 - And so the synagogue rulers run off to do it.
24:59 - And they even tell Jesus, this guy, he deserves to have you heal his servant.
25:3 - After all, look at how much money he has.
25:4 - He built our whole synagogue.
25:5 - And Jesus is like, I've been to that synagogue.
25:7 - I've seen this guy.
25:8 - Anyway, Jesus decides to come.
25:10 - Sometimes Jesus stops and has a teaching time something about this whole situation.
25:14 - Jesus is like, okay, I'll go.
25:16 - And I don't know, we're filling in some gaps here.
25:20 - At some point, it seems like the centurion has a change of heart.
25:24 - Does the Spirit speak to him?
25:26 - I mean, he is actually a believer, right?
25:28 - I've kind of made him sound like he's just about the power and stuff, but he is actually a Gentile believer in Judaism.
25:34 - He goes to synagogue every Saturday and stuff.
25:37 - Does the Spirit speak to him and say, really?
25:40 - Is it about control?
25:42 - Does he realize it himself?
25:44 - Is this actually his own faith kind of kicking in saying, wait a minute, no, I can't fix this myself, whatever.
25:50 - It looks like he has a change of faith and a change of heart and sends the message to Jesus and says, you know what?
25:56 - Listen, I was wrong.
25:59 - Just say the word.
26:0 - Like I turn it over to you, do what you need to do.
26:3 - I know you can heal my servant.
26:5 - I don't need to have the control over this situation.
26:8 - You do it.
26:9 - Jesus is very impressed.
26:12 - You know what's reading the passage?
26:13 - Jesus never actually says, by the way, the servant is, Jesus never actually like heals the servant out loud.
26:19 - At least Luke doesn't record it.
26:21 - Jesus just says, wow, this guy has awesome faith.
26:22 - Okay, let's go back this way and the servant is better.
26:26 - Wow.
26:27 - The centurion seems to realize that it's not about his efforts.
26:31 - It's about the one in whom his faith is placed.
26:35 - He knows if his faith is placed in Jesus, Jesus is in control of the situation and that's going to be way better for him.
26:43 - So what about us?
26:44 - What are we trying to control?
26:46 - We talked about health, relationships with family members that maybe aren't going so well that we're trying to control, behavior of those around us, neighbors, finances that are fraying.
27:0 - If we just do this and do this and do this and just keep fighting, family member that's not walking with the Lord, and you're just doing everything you can, you never let a moment go by to try to just get in there with something.
27:15 - Sometimes these control things, like a lot of times these control things, they don't work out for us because our faith is placed in us and our ability to try harder and do something and be smart and think of the right thing, instead of just giving things over to God.
27:30 - I heard an interview with a guy a couple of weeks ago.
27:34 - He was a young seminary student.
27:37 - And while he was in seminary, he heard that his aunt was dying.
27:41 - And she was a really important figure for him.
27:43 - But he really had no idea what her spiritual status was.
27:48 - And so he decided he needed to go visit her before she died and make sure that she had trusted her life to Jesus.
27:54 - And so he was there for a long weekend and she was going downhill fairly quickly.
27:58 - And he kept sort of trying to bring up the subject of her faith and everything and she just kind of kept pushing him off.
28:5 - And finally, on the last day he was going to be there, she was fading quickly and this was going to be the last day.
28:9 - And he was getting more and more desperate.
28:11 - And finally he said, but Auntie, Auntie, do you know Jesus?
28:16 - And without opening her eyes, she kind of turned to him and said, the important thing is Jesus knows me.
28:25 - If the object of your faith is in Jesus, instead of in yourself, that's the important thing.
28:33 - Sometimes we get all worked up about like, maybe how strong our faith needs to be.
28:36 - I think a lot of times it's not how strong our faith is, it's what your faith is in.
28:40 - And if your faith is in Jesus, he's not going to let you down.
28:47 - Let's wrap up with the DD Squad again.
28:49 - Cause the other thing I found kind of cool about faith is at the end of this video, as soon as this guy jumped off, we're back to this, the guy jumping off the back of the truck, as soon as he did that, everyone was cheering.
28:59 - There's like eight other guys on this DD Squad.
29:1 - And you know what they all said?
29:4 - Give me that helmet, it's my turn.
29:6 - They all wanted to do it.
29:8 - His example, his taking a literal leap of faith, a rocket sled of faith, inspired everyone around him and increased their faith as well.
29:19 - The example that we can set, it's amazing how many people are looking on this island, you are being looked at, right?
29:26 - And maybe discussed, but people notice those around you and they see an example of faith and that helps everyone else too.
29:32 - It strengthens everyone's faith.
29:34 - It helps everyone to loosen the grip of control and to let Jesus go.
29:38 - How many people in that crowd there where Jesus says, this guy has amazing faith, how many people were inspired by that act of that centurion?
29:47 - It doesn't record, but I think a lot of people probably were.
29:50 - And so as we think about our faith and we think about letting control, I think it's also good to remember that we can have an influence far outside our small circle and that our faith examples could be a good example to everyone.
30:3 - Amen.
30:5 - Let's pray.
30:9 - Lord, I thank you for your faithfulness.
30:11 - I thank you that you have promised to never leave us and to always be with us and that you are always, you're always worthy of our trust and our faith.
30:23 - Lord, it's hard sometimes to give up that control and to just trust you and not know what's going to happen.
30:31 - Lord, remind us as we go through our days of all the times that you've been faithful in the past.
30:36 - Bring those to mind.
30:37 - Lord, when we have little doubts, banish those and remind us of your faithfulness and your goodness.
30:42 - Lord, help us to trust, help us to let off control, and Lord, help us to overcome our unbelief.
30:51 - In Christ's name, Amen.