I’m going to actually start in Matthew 7:28, because we didn’t really touch on those two verses, so we’re going to do that real quick; and they fit into what we’re going to talk about today, anyway. It says,

When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.

So, first of all, going back to 28 and 29, the crowd was amazed at his teaching and it says here, “teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” More and more, I’m realizing that the idea of authority seems to be distant from us. I attribute that in part just to the sin nature of man — we don’t like people to tell us what to do. For whatever reason we kick against things, typically. And I also believe (and this is my own opinion, just from things I’ve been able to glean from the word, etc) that most towns, states, and countries actually have dominions over them; there is something that is a ruling party over that entity and it typcially is not a good thing. And one of the things that I believe rules over America is an independent spirit; an unwillingness to cooperate, and to actually submit to other people. It began in the very beginning with the Revolution itself, and it’s been the thing that has driven us for a long time. With that comes some good things, but mostly it ultimately translates itself into evil things —one of those being an unwillingness to actually submit to authority. We don’t do it very well. We are, from the day we’re born, taught to be independent thinkers and to do it our way. We raise children up and they do it their way. It means they kick against their parents at an early age. It means they kick against bosses. And in our country we get into politics and people are constantly kicking against each other. Sometimes I think, “I don’t even know if we have the ability to submit one to another like the scripture says.” We are so caught into our own self that we just cannot be separate from it. And because we’ve tied Americanism to Christianity, we assume that this American way of thinking is a Christian way of thinking, when in actuality it absolutely is not. The Christian way of thinking is always corporately minded. But we are rarely corporately minded. The Jews, of course, were the same type of people, so when Jesus came, they recognized his authority right away. They marveled at His teaching; said He was “teaching them as one who has authority; not as their scribes.” So, did the scribes have authority? Absolutely they did. Did the Pharisees have authority? They absolutely did. it was an authority imposed upon them, but it wasn’t an authority that was actually part of who they were. But Christ came with His own authority; one that was unique.

We just went through the Sermon on the Mount — we’ve been there a long time — and many of the things Jesus said would have put a staggering burden on the Jewish people. I mean, He was opposing so many of their “tried and true” ways of thinking. And yet when He was done, the people — not the Pharisees — were saying, ‘This man! Even though I can’t comprehend all that He’s telling me, I know that this man has authority. He’s not speaking to me like the scribes and the Pharisees.’ First of all, He talked to them as equals; not like somebody who was above them and always looking down. Secondly, He talked to them with a knowledge which was unheard of in their day and age. And people, then, were willing to submit to that authority of Christ. But I just find that in our culture (and day and age), we don’t do that very well. We’re just not good at it. At all. As saints of the Living God, I don’t know what it’s going to take for each one of us to yield, because it’s an individual thing that has to happen to make a corporate statement. Each one of us has to get to the place where we’re willing to actually yield to authority.

This might be a good example of what I’m talking about, maybe. When one of my girls was dating somebody, I actually broke them up when she was 17, because I wasn’t seeing fruit, first of all. Second of all, my daughter wanted out, and she wasn’t sure how to get out. So I stepped in. I said, ‘Alright, the relationship is over.’ These are two Christian kids, and the guy that she was dating was a nice guy; still is a nice guy, I think. He’s a believer and he’s a good man, as far as I know. But at that time, his relationship with her was not bearing fruit. And I watch for fruit all the time, in everything. I watch for fruit with all you people, I watch for fruit with my family, I watch for fruit with friends. I want to see what’s happening, because fruit is ultimately going to be the determiner with where you’re at with Jesus Christ. And fruit was not being born here, so I sat them both down. I said, “Alright, this needs to end.” And he said to me, “I love your daughter. You don’t understand; I think this is a God thing. The Lord wants us to be together.” And I said to him, “I understand how you feel. I understand your emotional content and how this is all playing out. But I want you to know that I’m her father. So whatever authority or God-thing you think you have with her? You don’t have it compared to me.” Now, when she grew up and she left the home and become independent? I’ve always let my kids go. I don’t hold over them this father thing for their whole lives. But when they’re in my home, I’m responsible. And I actually have authority over my home. And I told him at the time, “Someday you will have kids of your own, and you may have a daughter; you’ll understand at that time, what I’m telling you today.” And I don’t know if he’s ever even thought about it since then. But there is a unique authority given to parents, over their children. Children don’t always follow it. They kick against it, because they’re human and because — in my opinion — there’s a spirit constantly moving on them to do it. But that doesn’t mean authority doesn’t exist. And that doesn’t mean, as parents, we shouldn’t exert it when we have to exert it. Those of you who are parents — you have authority over your children. It’s a God-made, given right that you have to move your children down the paths that you perceive are the right ones for them. Whether they ultimately choose those paths or not — that’s on them. But your responsibility is to exercise that authority.

Christ came, exercising an authority like that. The Pharisees were teaching similarly to what that young man tried to teach me — they were teaching from what they knew. The little bits they could understand about how the world worked and how the Bible was laid out and how the voice of God was. But they met up with Christ, and Christ had authority that was beyond what they were capable of comprehending, even. And the people were drawn to that. They were drawn to that authority in Jesus Christ. And we, as saints of the Living God, need to recognize that all of us, in some way, are kicking against authority somewhere; authority that we should not be kicking against. Because that authority is meant to protect you and keep you. It’s not meant to hold you down and to put you in a box, it’s meant to provide you a way in which you can absolutely be free in the field that God has chosen for your life. So I encourage you guys to consider those things in your life message, in the places you work, and in your family situations. Consider that aspect of authority. None of us have the authority that Jesus Christ does, because His authority is unique. When we run across it — in a Bible verse or a human being — we begin to realize that this is actually greater than just the reading or learning or hearing; there’s something going on beyond it. And honestly, I find it, more often than anywhere else, in reading the Scripture and watching it speak to me; just like the Scripture speaks to many of you. The authority of the Word — because of the authority of Christ and of the Holy Spirt’s insight — breathes forth deep things to us. And when that begins to happen to you, I encourage you by the grace of God: do not resist that. Let that Word speak to you, because that Word is going to change your life for the good, not for the worse. It is always going to protect you. It is always going to keep you.

So Jesus comes as someone with authority. And, by the way, one of the reasons that Jesus was so excited about the centurion was because the centurion recognized that. Because he experienced it. The centurion actually said, ‘I’m a man under authority, and I have people under me.’ That’s how he started his conversation with Jesus, in essence, after he had asked for the help. This centurion came along and actually recognized: ‘This man has authority. I understand authority. His authority is so much beyond mine, and I’m willing to yield to whatever he would do with my servant.’ So, in that message of authority, we even find Jesus coming to heal the centurion’s slave.

But before we get there, the first thing that happened was Jesus healed a leper. It says:

“When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

If you are someone who reads the scriptures every year, you’ll likely read past this story; oftentimes because it’s just one miracle among many. The book of Matthew is full of miracles; one after the other. As a matter of fact there are five miraculous things happening just in Matthew, Chapter 8, that we’re going to deal with here in the next several weeks. In this case, Jesus is dealing with this leprous man. One of the things we do when we’re reading the scriptures is wonder how things all fit into place. And one thing that we can safely conclude is that: through the leper’s encounter, Jesus was going to deal with his own people — the Jewish people — and He was going to pull all the outliers into His heart. (The lepers were, of all the Jewish people, the most removed from society.) And the second thing has to do with the centurion. Jesus is saying to them, ‘Soon even the Gentiles will be part of the kingdom of God.’ And in these interactions (some of the very first things He does at the beginning of His ministry) He is beginning to speak to His disciples; showing them what the kingdom of God is going to be like; what it’s going to be made of. From the Jewish culture, outliers; and others from the Gentile culture — He is going to bring them in. And not just any Gentile, but a hated, Roman centurion (which means that he was a commander of 100 soldiers). So Christ is always speaking this, His message, even in the events that we read about.

Regarding this event, Edersheim says this: “His work began where that of the rabbis ended.” There was no rabbinical method to heal leprosy. There were rabbinical methods to heal everything but leprosy. Leprosy was that thing they constantly were facing. So what they did was create an atmosphere in which you were set outside. In the Old Testament, if you’ve ever read the book of Leviticus, chapters 13 and 14 both are long chapters dealing only with leprosy. Today we don’t have the same dismissiveness of human beings that the rabbis did in reference to this type of a disease. The physical condition of the disease was horrible in and of itself. I’ve heard that leprosy, to put it very simply, is where your autoimmune and nervous system basically shut down and everything that can happen to you will happen to you because you have no way to stop yourself from being injured because you can’t feel pain, etc. Lesions start to form on your body and you become … leprous. And when the Jews began to add things to the Old Testament, they added several other laws. One of the laws in the Old Testament says that when a leper is walking where other people are, he is supposed to cry out, “Unclean!” so that people know that he’s a leper. Also, lepers were not allowed to be in a walled city. So they couldn’t go into the temple, for instance. They could go into a synagogue, but had a special room. Basically it would be like everybody is standing outside waiting to come in; the lepers would come in first and go to this really small room. And then everybody else came in. And then after everybody else left, the lepers got to go. They came in first, they left last, so that nobody would have to be around them. The rabbinical law was such that, if you got within 6 paces of a leper you had to actually be ceremonially cleansed. Most of the rabbis thought that it should be at least 20 paces. And if the wind was blowing, it was 100 paces. One rabbi said he always carried stones with him; to throw at lepers so they make sure they didn’t come too close to him. These are the leaders of Israel! These are the religious leaders of Israel, who are so afraid of this thing. The only thing worse, in the rabbinical laws, was death itself. You didn’t touch lepers, didn’t hang around lepers, didn’t want lepers to be part of your life. It was a horrible disease because not only did one have to deal with the physical aspect of the disease, but there was the emotional thing that was involved too. They were shut off from society; no longer allowed to be part of the culture. And it wasn’t like a childhood disease where this was all they knew. Most leprosy probably would have come along in an adult life somehow. And, by the way, the leprosy of today is actually defined as a specific disease and we know exactly what it is and there are actually certain treatments for it. The leprosy of Jesus’ day would have been something different. It would have been a disease that was defined by multiple things. So, for instance, if somebody would have come along who had lesions on their body, (and in our day and age this wouldn’t be considered leprous or contagious; it would be something that would go away) they were considered to be lepers. They actually had to be dealt with as a leper. So many things fell under the leprosy category: eczema fell under leprosy, which many people in our culture have today. Things that, for us are common and recognizable things: all those would be considered to be leprosy and would have to be dealt with in these extremely emotional ways. If a leper were to walk up to our building and stick his head in the door — just his head — this whole building would be considered unclean, and we would have to deal with that. It was crazy! But it was the way they tried to protect themselves from it spreading, and they believed they were actually doing God’s work. And remember, the Jewish rabbis and the leadership thought, ‘If you have leprosy, it’s because you are a sinner.’ Period. ‘If you have a disease, what sin have you committed?’ There wasn’t anything about germs and bacteria and how things spread, it all had to do with, ‘Oh, there’s a guy who is a sinner.’ A leper would have to be a really bad sinner because of the extent of the disease that God had placed upon him. So these people lived in these emotional struggles; physical struggles.

And then Jesus comes along.

Two things are amazing to me. One is that the leper approached Christ and spoke to him, “Lord if you are willing, you can make me clean.” The appearance of this passage is that he approached Jesus and came right up to Him. So, obviously the man had heard about Christ and he wanted to be taken care of in a unique way. He walked right up to Jesus, knowing that Jesus would not push him away. I mean, the faith of this guy is amazing, when you consider it! His humility and his ability to address Christ the way he did. I am confident that if we could have been at this scene, one of the things that we would have seen, as he walked up, (because Jesus never travelled without people around him) everybody else would have scooted back. They had the 6 pace thing in mind at the least, and the best was to be back 20 paces. Everybody else would have backed up, but Christ stood there. And the guy speaks to him and Jesus said, ‘Yeah, I am willing.’ And he touched him; the thing you never do with a leper. You never touch a leper. Jesus made Himself unclean at that moment in time. And, by the way, there’s no indication that Jesus did anything to change that. No indication that Christ went then to the temple and said, ‘Hey, I touched a leper. What am I supposed to do?’ Although Christ was somebody who tried to fulfill the law to the very best — the law as He saw it through the framework of the Old Testament, the law as God meant it to be. As a matter of fact, the centurion, as we’ll talk about in a minute; that was his story. So, this leper walks up, Jesus touches him, and then He says, “See that you tell no one.” In other words: please don’t go around and tell people about what just happened to you. That is the statement Jesus speaks numerous times in the gospels and I’m always amazed because, how are people going to be quiet about this? If you were blind and all of a sudden you cab see and Jesus said, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ It’s like, ‘My goodness, how can I not tell people?’ In one story, the guy went out right away and told everybody he knew; he was disobedient to the words of Christ. But it’s like, ‘I cannot keep this quiet.’ But Christ said, ‘No, don’t tell anybody.’ And part of that was because of the infancy of His ministry; He’s making sure that the thing was not going to explode at that moment in time. Because He had a plan. He and God had a plan. And they were going follow that plan to the very end.

And the second thing is, He said to him, “I want you to go and show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commended as a testimony to them.” So it’s now a testimony to the priests that leprosy can be cured. And who did it? Jesus Christ did it. It’s also a testimony to the priests that Christ is not coming to ruin their legal system (at least not in that point in time, because the cross had not yet happened). He is willing to abide by it, but it’s like: ‘You go, show yourself to the priest, do whatever they say to do, and this will be a testimony to them. It’s going to always be on their mind then, that, this guy healed a leper.’ And this story is going to start to spread around. And Christ, in all of His wisdom, recognized that not only would the story spread around (even though He asked for quiet), but every time something like this happened, and a healed man went to the priest, the priests were going to have to deal with who Jesus was. When they stand before God in the last day, they will not be able to say, “We had no idea who He was.” It’s like, ‘No, you had every opportunity to see what He was doing.’ He consistently did things in front of them; consistently told people to follow the rules of law, with whatever came from their healing. He did it more than once. And so everybody was going to be responsible.

The second story is the one of the centurion. He says, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented…” The “fearfully tormented” caught my attention today; the idea that being paralyzed at home is one thing, but this man also recognized his torment. How the man got paralyzed we don’t know. He was a servant, so at one time he wasn’t paralyzed; but now he is paralyzed, and tormented by this fact. And again we’re back to that thing of, Jesus not coming just to heal, but also to integrate one back into society. It’s like, ‘Your healing is one thing, but I’m not just going to heal you. I’m actually going to place you back in society, because that’s where you belong.’ And this man is fearfully tormented because no longer is he “in society.” For the rest of his life, he’s going to be outside of the realm of the normal functions of mankind. He’s fearfully tormented about about possibly never walking again, never being able to move his body again. And I can’t imagine what that would be like; but that would have to be a loud voice in anybody who is going through something like that. So, Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” And the centurion right away answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.”

This man recognized the nature of humanity in a way that astounded Christ. You think about the elements of what this man is talking about. He’s a centurion, so he understands that concept of authority, but he also is a man who, when Jesus says, ‘I’m going to come to your house and heal him,’ backs away immediately and says, ‘I’m not worthy for you to be under my roof.’ I’m going to put this in a Christian perspective, because the message is actually for us: the reason Christ was blessed was that the unworthiness of our condition should be something that is the center of our Christian walk. I fear that, oftentimes, that’s not the case at all. Think about somebody who won’t even allow Jesus to come into his house because he recognizes that he is not worthy to have someone like Christ there. We don’t know, but chances are he didn’t recognize Him as the Son of God, he just recognized Him as somebody who was going to potentially heal his servant. But Jesus is astounded because He looks at him and He says, ‘Now this is the center of the message of the gospel.’ That paradox of being able to know that you absolutely have no worth in the presence of Jesus Christ, yet at the same time – at the same time – to have faith enough to go and ask Christ to take care of something for you.

I know some people hate paradoxes. I love the paradoxes of the Scripture, and to me this is one of those. And by the way, when we think about unworthiness, I think I’ve told you guys many times about reading the Scriptures early on in my Christian walk and realizing I didn’t love people. Maybe for the first decade at least (and maybe more than that) I felt like I was a servant of God, but I didn’t love people much. I mean, I liked certain people, but loving people was kind of foreign to me in the sense of really wanting to bear my soul, or even to be that person people would come to for help. And I was praying about it one day and I ran across the passage where Jesus says that he who loves much is forgiven much, and he who loves little is forgiven little. (Luke 7:47) And it dawned on me: ‘That is my problem! I’m loving little because I think I’ve been forgiven little.’ My thinking was not that God got a treasure, but more like ‘I’m not as bad as a lot of people. When I came into the Kingdom, I was okay.’ And I started to think about that and the Lord really broke that; took that away from me. Through that event; through the text itself (again that idea about a text speaking to you) and then through events in my life, I realized, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m a wretched human being!’ And more and more, I have realized how we honestly don’t think of ourselves in that way. And you guys are maybe sitting there thinking, ‘This is the guy who’s always telling us who we are in Christ and how we need to live out who we are in Christ.’ But I want you to know, I mean that in terms of IN CHRIST. Who you are in Christ. I mean, Jesus, outside of you being in Christ, has no use for you. He can’t use you. He loves you, (because He loves the world) but He can’t use you like He wishes He could. And the idea about abiding in Christ: I’m starting to think that this is bigger than I realized before. To me, abiding in Christ used to mean that you just followed Biblical mandates to be a good person. At one time, that’s how I thought about it. Now I realize abiding in Christ takes much more than that; it means that I’m actually living in Christ. Because anytime that I don’t live in Christ, then my worthiness is somehow based upon myself.

This man came to Jesus and he said, ‘Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented. Will you come and heal him?’ And he asked that question purely out of a basis of grace. But how many of us, when we go to prayer, pray through the grid of rights? ‘I’ve prayed about this for a long time. When are you going to answer?’ ‘I’ve been a good pastor, I’ve been a good man, I’ve been a good woman. I’ve done this or that. When are you going to answer?’ Like it’s our right to be healed, it’s our right to be taken care of, it’s our right to be presented things that will be a blessing to us. You guys, that’s not true! It’s a grace of God. It’s a grace of Jesus Christ. It’s where the health and wealth gospels miss it, because they think it’s a right. It’s not a right! It’s full-on grace and mercy. You don’t have any rights; you’re unworthy to even be in the presence of Christ.

So Jesus, when He heard this man speak, said, “I have not found such great faith in anyone in Israel.” Everybody in Israel who should have known this, didn’t know it. This man actually did know. They thought that they were- you know, ‘We’re the one true religion. We have the true God. We’re the kings of the universe. We’re the kings of the world. We’re the best religion ever.’ Jesus is saying, ‘No,.’ This guy comes and he bows down and he says, “No, I’m unworthy even to have you in my house.”’ Because he recognized his frame. He recognized his frame.

I wonder how much of our lives would be different if we honestly understood our unworthiness, and at the same time walked in the grace that God has given us. There is nothing in us, the Bible says, that is good. But when we are in Christ, His grace is sufficient for us. And that grace is able to provide us this strength to walk up to him in all out unworthiness and say, ‘Lord, would you do this for me, or for somebody in my family. Can you help us in this way? Not because of anything I’ve done, because I’ve done nothing to earn anything from you. I can’t earn your love I can’t earn your grace, it’s freely given; it’s freely put upon me by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in my life.’ I mean, to know who you are in Christ is important. Because in the example I’ve given you — if you don’t know who you are in Christ, you are going to feel unworthy, and you will never approach Him. And that’s not what Christ wants; He just wants us to approach Him. In all of our unworthiness to still have the faith to say, ‘He died for my sins. I mean, it’s worth a shot to go to him and say, “Lord, help me.”’ And balancing that is going to be difficult for most of us; maybe impossible for some of us, I don’t know. But I encourage you, by the grace of God, to think about this centurion. Think about what you would do if Jesus showed up today. Have we done enough in the Kingdom of God that we think we would be worthy of His company? Or are you one who truly — honestly — understands that this isn’t about anything I’ve ever done. This truly is all about what Jesus has done.

The Lord bless you guys.

Go in peace.

Sermon Transcript
Rob Putz, Pastor