Humility and Faith - Luke 7:1-10 - December 11, 2022

 Luke 7:1-10 Humility and Faith

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 7. This morning we are going to look at verses 1-10, that’s on page 863 in the pew Bibles.

We missed you very much last Sunday but Sam and I successfully completed our Outdoor Emergency Care Technician training and we start work on the Ski Patrol at King Pine this afternoon. Thank you very much for your prayers, they were needed and felt all along the way.

As we turn our attention to the Gospel of Luke I want us all to keep in mind one simple phrase. It’s from both James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5, a quote from the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, from Proverbs 3:34: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

What we are about to examine is an actual account of this principle at work in the ministry of Jesus is Galilee. Luke 7:1-10.

After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2 Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him. 3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, 5 for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.” 6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I too am a man set under authority, with 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.” 9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 10 And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well.

Let’s pray.

It’s not lost on me that it’s Christmas time. It seems every year I have to explain why I don’t like Christmas but if I give my reasons a spiritual spin I usually get away with it.

Busyness, and pressure, and noise aside, there is a reason that this season is troubling to me that is evident in our text this morning. Though God, in His grace, gave us Christmas by being born in humble human likeness, to humble parents, in the most humble way and place possible, culture has turned Christmas into a celebration of pride. Even Charlie brown’s Christmas pointed that out years ago that Christmas had gone commercial, everything showy and flashy, it’s nonsense!

Here in our text for this morning we can see the exact opposite at work in the life of the Centurion in Capernaum.

Now Jesus had been in Capernaum before, half of the Apostles were from Capernaum so it’s no surprise that when He returned there everybody in town heard about it. It wasn’t a big place after all.

One of the people that heard He was back was the Centurion. A Centurion, as the name suggests for you Latin scholars, was the commander of a company of a hundred soldiers. This was a person of influence in Capernaum for sure. But what else do we know about centurions? 

They’re Romans, those soldiers that they commanded were Roman soldiers, which tended to make them not friends of the Jewish people, after all, they were an occupying army in Israel.

And because they’re Romans they are also Gentiles. A Gentile is anyone who is not Jewish, anybody who is not descended from Abraham. I am not Jewish, I am Welsh, which makes me a Gentile. For the Jews at the time Gentiles were unclean and the Jewish people were forbidden from even sharing a cup or plate that had been touched by a Gentile. Entering the home of a Gentile would make them unclean so needless to say, they didn’t hang out together.

But this particular Roman Centurion had a more friendly approach. He showed his love for the Jewish people by building them a synagogue and had good relations with them. This wasn’t a mark of his office but of his character. Centurions had to be a certain kind of person, reliable, steadfast, and steady. They needed to be able to stand their ground even to the point of death, but that didn’t mean that they were required to be nice to anybody. This particular Centurion however was.

In verse two we learn that the Centurion had a servant who was very sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him.

This also speaks to the character of the Centurion. Servants in Rome were not employees they were slaves. As slaves they were legally treated as property with no rights of their own. It was recommended that when farm implements got old or broken they should be replaced and the same was true about slaves according to one historian.

But this Centurion didn’t see his servant this way, Luke says that he highly valued him. And when he got sick the Centurion looked for a solution. It just so happened that Jesus was in town again.

Verses three through five also show us that the Centurion was a person of influence, not just because of his station but because of his character.

3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, 5 for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.”

The elders of the Jews in Capernaum were not coerced into saying these things. The Centurion had been good to them and their village and they wanted to return the favor and Jesus had the power to do so. 

For the elders to say that he is worthy to have Jesus heal his servant was a big deal, these were not the words of the oppressed but of friends. Either way, Jesus agreed and started towards the Centurion’s house when He was greeted by another envoy.

6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I too am a man set under authority, with 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.”

So the Centurion starts by sending his kind of outer circle to Jesus. “Jesus is Jewish so I‘ll send the Jewish elders with a formal request.” But now he sends his friends to Jesus saying that he was unworthy to have Jesus in his house. He also recognized Jesus’ authority as he would have known that Jesus cast out demons in Capernaum before and had healed other people there as well.

To be clear, the Centurion is not claiming authority over Jesus, he is recognizing the authority OF Jesus, that He has the power to say the word and things will happen, just say the word and my servant will be healed.

And how does Jesus respond? He marvels!

9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 10 And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well.

This is only one of two places that New Testament records Jesus marveling, the other is when He marveled at the lack of faith of the people when He was rejected in Nazareth in Mark 6:6.

Now we can clearly see that Jesus has the power to heal, He has the power to work at a distance, He shows compassion on the Centurion and his servant, and he is worthy of our praise for those things.

There are some things about the Centurion that I think we can all learn from.

First, the Centurion had two options when his servant fell ill, pride and humility.

If the Centurion chose pride things would have gone very differently. He could have sent soldiers instead of friends and commanded Jesus to come and heal his servant on pain of death. Or, he could have tossed out the sick and dying slave like a broken farm implement and gone out and bought a new one. He could have blamed the God of the Jews for the sickness and impending death of his servant. Any number of things could have been different if the Centurion responded to this difficulty with pride.

But instead he responded in humility. The elders of the Jews were willing to seek out Jesus for him because of his love for them and their nation. His friends were willing to go to Jesus because they loved the Centurion and most likely loved his highly valued servant. Love only grows in the soil of humility.

Johann Heinrich Majus (1653-1719) said, “The better a man knows God and himself, the humbler he will be.”

The Centurion knew the reality that he was unworthy to have Christ in his home, he was unworthy to even go speak to Him in person but he had the faith that Jesus could do for his servant what he was asking and so did his friends that sought Jesus on his behalf.

This is exactly how we all should come to Jesus. As Alistair Begg put it, “When we come to Christ we come face down.”

The Centurion came to Christ in humility, in faith, even without full understanding. The Centurion knew that the power of God was in Jesus though he may not have understood that Christ Jesus is God manifested in the flesh.

His friends came in faith on behalf of their friend, bearing his burdens to Christ, an act we now call “prayer.”

In Matthew’s record of this event in his Gospel in chapter 8 verse 13, Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

John Calvin wrote, “Hence it is evident how graciously Christ pours out His grace when He finds the vessel of faith open. Though he addresses these words to the Centurion, there can be no doubt that, in His person, he invites us all to strong hope. Hence we are also taught the reason why God is, for the most part, so limited in His communications to us: it is because our unbelief does not permit Him to be liberal. If we open up the entrance to Him by faith, He will listen to our wishes and prayers.”

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Amen.

How Firm a Foundation - Luke 6:46-49 - November 27, 2022

 Luke 6:46-49 How Firm a Foundation

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, verses 46-49, that’s on page  863 in the pew Bibles.

Over the last few months it seems like we have been talking a lot about old time Sunday school and flannelgraph and all of that. Well I’d like to teach you all or maybe remind some of you of an old timey Sunday School that I remember from my youth.

“The wise man built his house upon the rock, The wise man built his house upon the rock, The wise man built his house upon the rock, and the rains came tumbling down.

“The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, and the house on the rock stood firm.

“The foolish man built his house upon the sand, The foolish man built his house upon the sand, The foolish man built his house upon the sand, and the rains came tumbling down.

“The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, and the house on the sand went SPLAT.”

Let’s pray together.

As you may have guessed today’s text from the Gospel of Luke concerns the wise and foolish builders, the one who built his house upon the rock and the other that built his house upon the sand.

Let’s look at the text and try to discern the Lord’s message for us today.

46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

Now again, just like last week, we can’t remove this parable from its context. Jesus had been teaching on blind guides and those that followed them, on the hypocrisy of examining our brother’s and sister’s faults without dealing with our own, and, most recently, good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bearing bad fruit.

This parable about the wise and foolish builders is most closely related to that last one, knowing a tree by its fruit.

Now just to state the obvious, we all want to be good trees, right? We all want to bear good fruit? And likewise, we all want to be wise builders with houses that don’t go SPLAT?

I love that song, and there is a third verse but it misses Jesus’ point in this parable, and pretty much the one point of this sermon.

I’m happy to give away the ending at the beginning. What is the rock that the wise builder built on?

Our Sunday School answer is: Jesus, the song’s answer is: Jesus, build you life on the Lord Jesus Christ and the blessings will come down…

But is that what Jesus said? No, it isn’t.

Jesus asked a very important and introspective question, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”

We all said that we want to be good trees that bear good fruit, here is a question that will expose whether or not we are in fact a good tree and whether or not we can bear good fruit.

JJ vanOosterzee wrote that this question from Jesus exposes a “fourfold relation to the Lord; there are men who 1. Neither say Lord! Lord! nor do His will; 2. say, indeed, Lord! Lord! but without doing His will; 3. do His will, indeed, but without saying Lord! Lord! (upright but anxious souls); 4. as well do His will, as also say Lord! Lord! The last, the concurrence of deed with word, is in every respect the best.

It’s clear that two of these conditions do not make for good trees, it is impossible to be a good tree without confessing Jesus as Lord, without saving faith in Him. It is the other two conditions that Jesus is most concerned with in this parable, saying Lord, Lord, but without doing His will, and doing His will as well as saying Lord, Lord.

As Martin Luther said, “It is faith alone that saves, but faith that saves is not alone.”

So what is the rock that the wise builder built on?

46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

Other places in the New Testament say that Jesus is the Rock not made by Human hands, the Chief Cornerstone that the church is built on, but here Jesus says that the rock that the wise builder built on was His Word, calling Him Lord, Lord, hearing His words, AND doing them.

I want to point out that Jesus does not make a distinction between the two houses other than the fact that one has a foundation and the other doesn’t.

This reality still exists in the world and, most troublingly, in the church.

There are those who build lives of apparent faith, those who appear to have a relationship with Jesus because they do all the right things and seem to say all the right things. They faithfully attend church, they know all the words to the songs, they have a lot of Scripture memorized, and seem to have the Lord’s best interest at heart, they know all the right things to say. These are the folks that JJ van Oosterzee said, “do His will, indeed, but without saying Lord! Lord! (upright but anxious souls).”

So how do we know for sure which one we are? Christian Ludwig Couard, a German Lutheran theologian born in 1793 wrote on “The confessing of Jesus Christ in Christendom. It comes to pass that 1. With many the confessing of Christ is wholly wanting (they deny the Lord); 2. with many this confession is the thoughtless language of custom (they are Christian in name); 3. with some only an assumed pretence of godliness (hypocrites); 4. with others a matter of the heart and expression of living faith (true Christians).”

And that’s all well and good but how do we really know if we’ve truly built our house upon the rock?

The rains came down and the floods came up… And the house on the rock stood firm…

It is adversity that exposes the true nature of our building, whether or not we have a firm foundation.

John Calvin wrote, “True piety is not distinguished from its counterfeit till it comes to the trial.”

When the rains come tumbling down, what happens then? When trials come we often ask the question, why me? Why is this happening? Why God, what are you doing? He is exposing our foundations.

Jesus didn’t say that it wouldn’t be hard, that the trials were a piece of cake. Nowhere in Scripture are we instructed to paint on a smile and trip around like giddy idiots. But if our life is built on the Word of God, if our understanding of the world is based on how God has defined it in the Bible, when trials come our house will not collapse. Exposing our foundations is a good thing, Jesus bring the rain!

When people walk away from the Lord because things didn’t go according to their plan, God somehow didn’t come through for them in the way that they wanted, or somebody who claimed to be a Christian did or said something awful to them, that’s evidence of a house with no foundation.

This is how we can measure what kind of tree we are, what kind of fruit we will produce, if our faith is in Jesus and our life is built on His Word, not just knowing His Word but doing it.

James 1:22-25 says, 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

Paul wrote in Colossians 2:6-8,

6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Amen.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!

Trees and Their Fruit - Luke 6:43-45 - November 20, 2022

 Luke 6:43-45 Trees and Their Fruit

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, today we are going to look at verses 43-45, a section entitled, “A Tree and Its Fruit.” That’s on page 863 in the pew Bibles.

This is an extremely difficult passage. It’s short, seems relatively simple, but it is a hard one. It’s hard for several reasons not the least of which, as a woodworker, is the statement from Jesus, “Each tree is known by its own fruit.” What about the bark and the leaves and the grain, that’s how I know what kind of tree I’m dealing with!

Though Jesus was a carpenter, he knew His audience and they clearly weren’t carpenters so He just stuck with knowing trees by their fruits. Whatever.

Let’s look at the text and get to work.

43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Let’s pray.

It’s not by accident that this parable comes right on the heels of the last one. To refresh your memory, just a few verses back Jesus said, “41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.”

I’m not going to repreach last week’s sermon but I just want to remind us all that the picture of the plank in our own eyes and trying to help others with the speck in theirs is an invitation to introspection.

Introspection simply means to take a look at ourselves, to examine our own lives and make sure that we deal with our own sins and defects before we go pointing out anybody else’s.

And so this picture of knowing a tree by its fruit starts with a bit of self examination.

It starts simply with the question, “what kind of fruit am I producing?”

First of all, what is fruit? Jesus gives us that answer in verse 45. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Jesus used the term, “good,” in the moral sense much like we do all the time when we say that somebody is a good person, He isn’t declaring anybody righteous based on what they do or say, he’s simply saying that decent people do and say decent things, and lousy people do and say lousy things.

So fruit in this context is the things that we do and say, our fruit is our effect on others.

Paul further explained this idea in Galatians 5:22-23

22 …the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

So if this is an invitation to introspection, we have to ask ourselves, “What kind of fruit am I producing? Does it look like the fruit of the Spirit? 

Do I speak and act in love with joy? Do I exhibit peace and patience? Am I kind and good to others? Am I faithful to the Lord, to my spouse, can I be counted on to keep my word and do what I say that I’ll do? Do I control myself when faced with temptation or difficult circumstances?

Good trees produce good fruit. 

In that same passage in Galatians Paul listed off some bad fruit as well to give us a little better definition and make it easier to discern a bad tree.

19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So the first step is to examine the kind of fruit that we produce, which list does it look like, the first one, the second one, or somewhere in between?

This is how we deal with the planks in our own eyes, we have to examine ourselves, our own fruit, and ask the Lord to deal with it so that we can move from being a bad tree to being a good tree.

But in the context of the rest of Luke 6 we know that Jesus is not just talking about just individual people but who they would look to as teachers as well. 

“Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

If our teachers are blind they certainly cannot lead us in the right way, we’re both going in the hole. A disciple is not above his teacher but when he is fully trained he will be like his teacher and if his teacher is blind and produces bad fruit guess what that means…

We must carefully examine the fruit of our teacher’s lives as well is it good or is it bad? Don’t expect to find good fruit growing on a bad tree, there are no figs nor grapes in the brambles and briars.

This sounds silly but it happens so often. People admit their need for God and go looking for Him where He will not be found. 

We want to be closer to Jesus so we start transcendental meditation or reading garbage books by garbage authors and we end up believing garbage and it’s reflected in the garbage fruit that we produce.

When we consider the fruit of our teachers in order to discern whether or not they are a good tree we have to examine the fruit that is their character, the fruit that is the content of their teaching, and the fruit that is the impact that teaching has on those who hear it.

How many of us have diligently followed a man that was a great speaker, with great charisma, and drew great crowds but cheated on his wife, or embezzled from the ministry, or abused those that worked for them? 

Or maybe the content of their message, as easy to listen to as it was didn’t point people to Jesus and their need for repentance, their need for the cross. 

They may have impacted thousands but the only real impact they had was making people feel good about themselves all the while they were still bound for Hell.

We have to measure the fruit of our teachers. We have to learn to discern the good from the bad.

And I tend to make a big deal about those we look to as teachers in the formal sense, teachers that we listen to or watch online that know that they are teaching, that’s what they are trying to do, but we must also measure the fruit of those that we look to as teachers in an informal sense, those that we look to for advice, those that influence us and how we live. Are we still looking for good fruit from bad trees?

This is much more difficult. 

If you don’t want to listen to that tv preacher anymore you can just turn it off but freeing ourselves from the negative influence of friends and family is much more difficult, it’s much harder... Just because it’s hard doesn’t make it bad.

Look for good fruit and you will find a good tree. 

So we know what good fruit looks like, but what makes a good tree?

45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Jesus doesn’t switch pictures here, it’s the same thing. The good tree out of the good treasure of his heart produces good fruit, likewise an evil tree out of his evil treasure produces evil fruit, for out of the abundance of his heart his fruit is produced.

What makes a good tree good, what makes a person good, what makes a teacher good, what makes fruit good? The simple answer is the best answer, it’s Jesus!

We were all bad trees producing bad fruit. On our own we are nothing but brambles and briars. But as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:17, …if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 

It is God who makes trees good and it is God that enables and empowers those trees to bear good fruit. The fruit of the Spirit cannot truly be produced without the Spirit Himself living inside of the believer and being the good treasure of his heart. He is the only source for good fruit through us who trust in Jesus!

So what kind of fruit are you producing? Where are you looking for fruit and what kind of fruit are you taking in?

These are important questions to consider as we examine ourselves to see whether or not we are in Christ Jesus and whether or not He is us.

And as we seek to bear good fruit we have to do the things that help trees produce, we have to dig deep in the good soil of His Word. 

In the words of the prophet Jeremiah 17:7-8,

7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. 8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Amen.