Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on August 25, 2024.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Will be up on the screen. But it’s always good to follow along in the printed word. We’re talking today about mainly phenomenal faith. Jesus was amazed, according to Scripture, at only two things while he was on earth. He was amazed at the unbelief of the religious Jews that had God’s word and should have seen and acknowledged who he was.
He was amazed at their unbelief. But he was also amazed at at the belief of this Roman heathen centurion. He’s an example to all of what real faith is. But the good news is that faith doesn’t have to be phenomenal or spectacular in any way to receive the gift of salvation. Jesus said, just the simple faith of a child is sufficient.
And the other thing we’ll see today that if you have small faith, it can grow. God desires that, and he provides a way for that. Let’s begin reading in Luke 7:1. When he had concluded saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. A centurion’s servant, who was highly valued by him, was sick and about to die.
And when the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, requesting him to come and save the life of his servant. When they reached Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, he is worthy for you to grant this because he loves our nation and has built us a synagogue. Jesus went with them. And when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, lord, don’t trouble yourself, since I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. That is why I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to you.
But say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under my command. I say to this one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes. And to my servant do this, and he does it. Jesus heard this and was amazed at him.
And turning to the crowds following him, he said, I tell you, I have found so great a faith. I have not found so great a faith even in Israel. And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant good health. May we ask for God’s blessing on his word? Thank you, Father, for your word today.
We thank you that it gives us this example of faith so we know how to follow it in accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen. First we want to talk about what faith is not in our culture. According to Guy Richard, people say that Christian faith is just a blind leap in the dark, believing for no reason at all.
But he says that’s not true. Faith, according to the Bible, is not irrational or silly. It is not a blind commitment or an arbitrary feeling of closeness to God. These things are not faith any more than it is faith for a man to pick a person out of a crowd, sight unseen, and ask that person to perform open heart surgery on him. That is not faith by any standard.
It is silliness, it’s plain and it is simple. So faith according to the Bible is not irrational, it’s not balanced, blind, it’s not arbitrary. So what is it? Historically, orthodox Christianity has answered the question by distinguishing three main elements. And all of these comprise what saving faith is.
According to Scripture, the Latin words are noticia, which means knowledge, a census, which means assent, fiducia, which means trust. And if I didn’t pronounce those right, please forgive me. You can instruct me. I only took one year of Latin in high school and I don’t remember much of it, as you probably don’t either. Real faith is knowledge, its assent and its trust.
What does this mean? Richard goes on to give a really good definition. The first element of saving faith is noticia, or knowledge, which points to the fact that genuine faith must believe something. You can’t have faith that believes in nothing. There has to be something there that you believe in.
In other words, it must have an intellectual content. It cannot be empty or blind, but must be based upon the knowledge of certain fundamental truths. You have to believe something. There has to be content. There has to be truth in real faith.
Let’s look at Romans 10, verse 9. It says if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. What is the knowledge that we have to have? We have to have the knowledge that Jesus is Lord, he is God in the flesh, and we have to have the knowledge that he died on the cross, he was buried, and he was raised from the dead. So our faith is based on knowledge of this.
And we believe this evidence because it was presented by the New Testament writers and hundreds of people in Jesus Day that witnessed the miracles and his ascension into heaven. At one point, after he rose from the dead, there were over 500 people in attendance. And those that were opposed to Jesus during this day, they couldn’t disprove the facts. They could not find a body. And believe me, the Jewish leaders and the Roman leaders that were against Christ did everything they could to possibly find the bodies.
They also tried to get people to say this was a lie and it wasn’t the truth. They were not able to disprove the knowledge and the facts of the day. And because they could not disprove these facts about Jesus, death, burial and resurrection, they resorted to killing anyone who was proclaiming these things. It was the only hope that they had to eradicate the knowledge that’s necessary for faith. Let’s go to first John, chapter one, verses one through three.
And he gives us this great testimony of Jesus. He says what was from the beginning, what we have heard with our ears, what we have seen with our eyes. And he’s saying we didn’t only hear it and we didn’t only see Jesus, but we observed Him. We watched him because closely. And we physically touched him with our hands.
Concerning this word of life, Jesus Christ, John says that life was revealed and we have seen it. And we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us that we have seen and heard. We also declare to you so that you may also have faith fellowship with us. John is reporting knowledge to us that is necessary for faith. We have to have something that we believe in.
But just having the knowledge is not enough. The next Latin word has to do with assent. It’s a little bit different. This is the intellectual conviction that the knowledge one possesses is factually true and it personally is beneficial. It is not enough simply to know certain things.
We must also believe that those things are true and actually meet our needs. It’d be like that person that needs heart surgery and they hear about a doctor that has performed heart surgeries. That’s the knowledge aspect. It becomes a scent when that person says, hey, that doctor can help me. That doctor can personally benefit me.
He can meet my need. And when it comes to true faith, we have to not only know about Jesus, but we have to understand that he can personally benefit us by providing salvation for us. Let’s go back to First John, Chapter 1 3.
What we have seen and heard, we also declare to you so that you may also have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. Chapter 2, verse 2. He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.
The assent is that Jesus Christ personally benefits us by restoring our relationship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. He also benefits us by allowing us to have fellowship with one another. And he benefits us by Atoning for our sins, meaning that on the cross he took the penalty upon himself that should have been placed upon us. We have to have knowledge, but then we have to have a sense that we understand that it’s beneficial for us. Those two things aren’t enough.
Biblical faith says that there also has to be a personal trust in Christ as he offered in the Gospel, and a complete reliance upon him for salvation. That word fiducia is where we get the term fiduciary. A fiduciary is a trustee. There’s someone who manages our money and our property completely so that we can just step back and say, I don’t have to be concerned about that. If you have a financial advisor, that if he is a fiduciary, that means that he’s taking care of your finances, he’s making sure that you’re earning money.
But the very specific key is by being a fiduciary, he says he’s doing it for you, your benefit, and he’s not doing it for his own. We have a knowledge of Jesus. We assent to the fact that he can personally benefit us. But then we have to come to this point of trust that we say, jesus, you are my eternal fiduciary. I don’t have to worry about my salvation.
I don’t have to worry about my relationship with God, because if I completely trust you and nothing else, then you will take care of it. This is biblical faith. What are some terms that Scripture used to describe this trust that we have in Jesus? Let’s go to John 3, 15, 16, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. There’s this belief and trust in Jesus, alone and completely in him.
For God loved the world in this way. He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him and in nothing else will not perish but have eternal life. Then we have this idea about leaning on the Lord from Psalm 71. For you are my hope, Lord God, my confidence from my youth. I have leaned on you from birth.
This would be like a blind person. They can’t find their way. And they have to trust somebody completely to lead them. And they lean on them, they hold onto their arm, or it’s a person that’s crippled and there’s no way that they can walk unless someone is there right beside them that they can lean on. And they completely trust that person not to let them fall or anything to happen to them.
So this is what it means to place your trust in Jesus Christ, that we lean on him to provide for what we need. 2nd Timothy 1:12. Paul said, that is why I suffer these things. But I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day. Paul said, I’m willing to tell everybody I have the greatest fiduciary in the world.
And I am so confident that I believe in him, and I am completely persuaded that he is able to guard me, to do whatever I need to do, everything I need. That’s the type of trust you have to place in Jesus. Therefore, the psalmist says, commit your way to the Lord. Say everything I do, everything about my life, I’m handing over to you. I trust in you.
And then he will act, and he will make your righteousness shine like the dawn and your justice like the noonday. Matthew 11:28 29 what does this trust look like? Jesus said, we have to come to him, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. In other words, the yoke, like you would put on two oxen. Jesus is on one side and you’re on the other.
You’re binding yourself to him. You’re completely trusting him to meet your need. Faith is knowledge, faith is assent, and faith is trust.
This story comes from Guy to help us to understand. He Sundays, there are three men, and they are facing a large field that they know is filled with land mines. The first person has knowledge. He says, yep, I know there are land mines. And he just takes off running.
Well, you know what’s going to happen to him.
The next man, he has knowledge. He knows about the danger. He’s aware of it. And then this helicopter flies overhead, and there’s a man hanging out saying, I can help you. I can tell you where to go.
And man number two says, okay, it’s going to benefit me. I have knowledge. I’m giving you a scent you can help me across. And so he listens to what the man says and he goes across the minefield. But the third man, he wants to have not just knowledge.
He doesn’t want to just recognize that the man in the helicopter can benefit him. He wants to know if he can trust this guy. So he says, well, how do you know where the mines are? And then he says, who do you work for? Are you really for me, or is this a trap?
Is there anybody else that you’ve helped through this minefield that you can give me a reference? And the man answers all his questions, just like Scripture answers Our questions about Jesus. And by all of these answers we say, you know, I really trust this person. And I believe that if I do exactly what he says, I can make it through the minefield all the way to the other side safely. That’s what it means to completely trust Jesus Christ with your salvation.
Let’s look now at the centurion. How does he show this to us in the text? Remember, faith is knowledge. It points to the fact that genuine faith must believe something. It must have intellectual content, and it must be based upon the knowledge of certain fundamental truths.
Well, the centurion had knowledge. He had knowledge about what Jesus was doing. When the centurion heard about Jesus, when he heard about his miracles, when he heard about his teaching, he had this knowledge. There is someone out there that is healing people. When he heard that, he sent some Jewish elders to him, being Jesus, and he requested him to come and save the life of his servant.
The centurion had knowledge about Jesus. He, he had heard about him, but he also has assent. He believed that what he heard was factually true. He believed that there was something personally beneficial here, that Jesus could actually help him. And he believed that those things are true and they would actually meet his need.
When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, requesting him to come and, and saved the life of his servant. He not only heard about Jesus, but he knew that Jesus could do something for him that was personally needed.
But there was also trust there, a personal trust in Christ alone as he is offered in the gospel. And it was a complete reliance upon him for salvation. We go back to Luke 7, 7. This is why I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to you. He said, but say the word and my servant will be healed.
It was the complete reliance on Jesus alone. He didn’t say, jesus, I’ve got a doctor here at my house. Would you come over and pray that the doctor knows what to do? He didn’t say, you know, I’m doing everything I can for my servant. Will you come and help me me to heal my servant?
No. He’s got this complete reliance upon Jesus, a personal trust that all Jesus has to do is say the word.
He didn’t say, I have to touch the hem of Jesus robe, which was fine. He didn’t say that I have to see him do something physically like Jesus did for other people, like touching them or placing mud on their eyes. The different things that Jesus did were fine. But, but this man’s faith was so great. He said, you only have to say the word.
You don’t have to be in the room, you don’t have to be in my house. You don’t even have to be on my street. But from a distance, I’m relying upon you, and I know for certain that you can heal my servant. This was complete trust in Jesus Christ.
Next statement about faith. Faith is both for the weak and for the strong.
In college, I had a professor, and when we talked about our faith, her response was, well, faith is just a crutch for needy people. I’m sufficient. I’m able to take care of myself. If I were an emotional wreck, yeah, I might place my faith in Jesus. If I had a lot of physical problems, I might trust him, But I’m strong.
And what we see here in the text is we have this very strong centurion and we have this very weak servant, and both of them need Jesus to interact in their life. This centurion, he was a commander of 100 soldiers. No telling what rigor he had to go through, the leadership skills that he had to have. His prowess in, in military feats he had to have in order to be a commander of 100 soldiers. He was strong.
He could tell anybody to do anything, and they obeyed. But he was also a very wealthy person. He had built this synagogue, or at least paid for a majority of it. Imagine if you just said, today, well, I’m going to build another building like this facility here, and I’ll pay for all of it. That would be pretty, pretty magnanimous of you.
So here we have this centurion. He’s very powerful and he’s very strong. He needs Jesus. But we also have his servant who was highly valued by him, who was sick and about to die. The Gospel of Matthew uses a word here in the Greek that means that this slave was probably just a child, possibly a teenager, and he was very ill, he was paralyzed, and he was in terrible suffering.
You have to understand the attitude at the time of what slaves or servants were. A master could do anything to their servant that they wanted to. They could beat them, they could abuse them, they could kill them, and there would be no questions asked.
Rod Mattoon shares that there was a Roman writer who gave information or advice on how to manage your estate as a farmer. And part of his advice was to every year examine your implements and throw away anything that is old and broken. And then he added, and do the same with your own slaves if they’re old. If they’re broken, just throw them out. This slave wasn’t Even a powerful adult.
This slave was a child who was paralyzed and couldn’t do anything that would help this centurion. Completely weak, he needed Jesus. And completely strong, the centurion also needed Jesus. Faith is for everyone. Weak and strong and everyone in between.
The next thing that faith is, faith is necessary to please God. Hebrews 11:6 tells us, without faith, it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. And that’s what the centurion did. He had faith in Jesus Christ that he would reward him if he sought after him. Luke 7:4 5.
When they reached Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, he is worthy for you to grant this. He’s worthy because he loves our nation and he has built us a synagogue. In other words, they were saying, jesus, you owe it to this man because of the money he spent, because of the actions that he’s performed. But it was not the man’s good intentions and it was not his good deeds. It was not the money he spent that led Jesus to heal the servant.
Instead, it was his faith. And if he didn’t have faith, it didn’t matter what amount of money he had bought to Jesus. He could not have bought what he needed, because it’s faith that pleases God. The religious leaders expected Jesus to heal the servant because this particular centurion was a good man. But Jesus didn’t heal the servant because he was a good man.
He healed him because he had faith. And it is faith that is necessary to please go, we come last. Faith is something that grows. This man had exemplary faith. He had great faith that amazed Jesus.
But we don’t all have that amount of faith. And we find examples of this in scriptures where people had little faith. There’s an incident in Matthew chapter 17 where the disciples had been asked to drive out a demon. But they were unable to do it. And when they approached Jesus, they said, why couldn’t we drive it out?
And they were asking Jesus this because Jesus was able to. And he said, it’s because of your little faith. For truly, I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting.
The mustard seed was the smallest seed that you could plant in a garden that you might have in your yard. And it grew into a large tree, into a large plant, this tiny seed. Jesus said, disciples Your faith isn’t even as big as this very small seed, but that small seed, that small amount of faith can still do a lot. All we need is a little bit of faith to place in Jesus Christ and he can save us. But Jesus gives us encouragement here that he says, but if you spend time in prayer and you spend time in fasting, your faith can increase.
We might say that our faith is too small, but praise the Lord. And it can increase through prayer and fasting, but it can also increase just by asking God to increase our faith. We go back to the verse, faith pleases God. If faith pleases God, he wants us to have it. And it’s going to please him more and more as our faith grows.
So if you want to have more faith, you can know for certain that God is going to answer positively and says, yes, I will increase your faith because it pleases me more and more. Mark, chapter nine. We have another example. The Father is saying many times it talking about a demon has thrown him, my child, into fire or water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.
And do you hear the lack of faith there? He says, if you can do anything. The centurion said, I know you can do something. But this man, he’s got some doubts there. And Jesus questions him.
He says, if you can. What do you mean, of course I can do it. Everything is possible for the one who believes. He’s encouraging the man. If you believe, if you have faith.
But immediately the Father or the boy cried out, I do believe, but help my unbelief. And if this man could ask Jesus to increase his faith in the same way we can ask God to increase our faith and he will. How are we supposed to apply this today? There are just a number of questions we need to be asking ourselves. First one is, is my faith true Biblical faith?
Do I have a knowledge of Jesus? Do I understand that he can personally benefit me? But have I made that third step where I’ve said, you know Jesus, I’m depending completely on you. I’m handing over my life, my finances, my home, my family for you to take care of all of this?
Secondly, do you recognize that everyone, weak and strong, needs faith where you are in the continuum from the dying child servant to the rich powerful man? If you’re at those extremes or in between, we all need to acknowledge the fact that we need to place our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. Next thing is, do you have faith that pleases God? Is your faith growing? Do you have faith at all.
Because if you don’t have faith, you can’t please him. And then do you expect God to bless you because of your good works or because of your faith? That’s what the religious leaders thought. Jesus will bless this man because of good things that he’s done. And a lot of people think that we can have salvation and be blessed by the Lord because we do good things.
Some people might go out and build a great cathedral and pay for all of it and think, because I’ve been this cathedral for the Lord, it means that I am saved. But God says, no, that doesn’t mean anything. You just need to have faith. The last thing is for all of us that are believers, we need to desire that our faith grows. We need to spend time in prayer and fasting and asking God to help that to grow in us.
As always, if one of these questions causes you to really think and you’re not sure about something, we have a lot of people have name tags on any of us would love to talk to you after the service. Just pull us aside. We wouldn’t love nothing more than to see you pray, to place your faith in God Almighty that Jesus Christ is the Savior of your life. May we pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you only ask of us that we have a little faith to place in you. And then you benefit us so magnanimously with the great cost that you went to that we might have salvation through the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Father, not only that, but we have have the benefit of the new creation when everything will be made perfect and we will rule as your children, as heirs, with your son. Father, it’s just amazing that you’ve provided all this for us. There’s nothing that we can do to pay for it.
There’s nothing that we can do to deserve it. Because all that has been taken care of by Jesus Christ. It’s in his name that we give thanks and praise today. Amen.