Just Say the Word

I said this a couple weeks ago. I I don't really like math, but I can get down behind that equation right there. Before we get started with the message today, we talk about generosity in this house, and I'm so grateful for the generosity. I think about the impact we get to have uh because so many of us have said yes to going, God, I'm going to trust you in all parts of my life, and that includes my finances. And so, before we begin the message, I just want to take a moment to pray over our giving. We talk about tithe, we talk about offering because this really is a matter of trusting God with all parts of our life. and he's so faithful and he's so good. And so I want to pray for our giving today and then we'll get started with our our message as we continue the authentic series. God, we thank you. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the generosity of this house. I thank you that God, you invite us in to know you more, to trust you wherever we are. God, it is it's a moment to address finances, but God truly what you're after is our heart. That you want our hearts. So God, we trust you in all parts of our life. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, glad you're here. Uh my name is Stephen. I have the privilege of being the location pastor for a live church. If maybe you stepped in a minute late or a couple minutes late. We're a multi-sight church and we exist so as many people as possible fully alive. I love that we have locations here at a location here in St. and in two in Virginia in the Philippines. And we're all running together behind what God calls us to just to create space and environments for people to encounter Jesus together. And as I said, we're in a series called authentic. Look at your neighbor and say authentic because we don't need any more fake. We just are after the authentic that we do our best as as a team to be authentic and and to share what God's doing in our heart. And so we're not up here, Pastor Michael or I or any of our teaching team. We're not up here saying we've got it all figured out. But God's working on us in the same way that he's working on all of you. And so really, as we've studied through the book of Luke, which is where we're at these last several weeks, and we'll continue the next several, is studying God's word, understanding the story of Jesus, and and learning more about the authentic Jesus that we get to know. And so, we're going to be in Luke 7 1-10. And I know you just sat down, but would you stand to your feet as we honor God's word today? pastors getting work out a little bit. Luke 7 1-10, we often often honor stand to honor God's word. And if your Bible is titled like mine, it says the faith of the centurion. And these subheadings give us context what we're going to be reading about even though they don't fully explain, but it tells us of this gentleman, this man of faith. And so in chapter 7 verse one it says when Jesus had finished saying all of this to the people who were listening how y'all know it's important to listen to Jesus. He entered into Capernaum. There was a centurion servant whom his master valued highly was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him asking him to come and heal his servant. 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. So Jesus went with him. He was not far off 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." That is why I do I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you, but say the word and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man am a man under authority with soldiers under me. I tell this one go and he goes and that one come and he comes. I say to my servant, do this and he does it. When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him. And turning to the crowd following him, he said, I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel. The men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant. Let's pray. God, I thank you for your word. Thank you that's living and active. I thank you that we read a story that was written so long ago. But there's there's principles and practices that we can take away. But more importantly, God, you I pray that your word pierces our hearts so that we learn how to how to live differently, how to trust you more. God, we we understand that that faith is so important to our We put our faith in you more today. Pray we're encouraged when we leave here. God, pray our words to be your words in Jesus name. Amen. You high five like two or three people as you sit down. There's nothing there's a few sweeter sounds in the world than a good high five. I just imagine because this is how my imagination works. When I when you go home, you practice your high fives to make sure that when you come to church, you're like, I got them on point. I got an all play to start today. And what I mean by an all play is audience participation. It's kind of a softball to get us started. But let me ask you in the room, who likes to be in control? Does anyone elbow your neighbor? Stop it. Just stop it. Like we do. If your hands down, there's at least aspects of your life that you like to be in control of. Students, I'm sorry. There's much of your life that you are not in control of. Your school has your calendar. Your parents have your calendar. But there are things that you probably wish you could be more in control over. Like we we like to have control. I like to I like to plan. Like I like to have control over my own schedule. I like to have control over my finance. I like to know where my money goes. I like to have control over where I'm going on vacation. I like to have control. Like most of us in the room like to have control. I'm going to ask another question. If you you can speak a little bit of yourself in this moment. How many of you all when you're in a room and you're in the I'm about to watch TV that you like to be in control of what show that you watch. Like you I don't know if this is still the case, but if there's a remote control, it is in your hand. Anybody? Okay. All right. Let me ask this maybe a specific group of people. Um how many like to be in control of the thermostat in your house? Anybody? You're typically the people who pay the bills for your house. You like to be in control. In fact, we've been able to to expand technology where we have control at our fingertips where we can be a thousand miles away, but yet we can control the temperature of our home by simply downloading an app and hitting a few buttons. If your kids are at the house, you look at it and you're like, there is no way that house is going to be at 76. I'm going to 68 degrees. That's where it's going to be. It's going to be chilly today. We like to be in control. I think about this with my my family. I've got five kids. My my oldest is 21. And in fact, this weekend was a big weekend. We had her first wedding shower as she's getting married in May. So, that's a big moment. Um, and then on the same day, my oldest son turned 20. So, we we're like basically we feel really old, my wife Susie and I. Why are you applauding at me getting old? That's what I don't understand. We got five kids. Our youngest is 10. And he's the one who keeps us young. And we laugh because we say that Everett is an only child with six parents is kind of how this works in the house. And so, he's got people telling what to do all the But as I talk about temperature, if it was reminded of a few months back whenever um I was in sleeping and about 2 am I wake up, I'm like, gosh, it was just freezing. And I asked my mom's like, "Are you cold?" She's like, "Yes, it's freezing in this house." And I wondered, I was like, "Is there something up with the the HVAC system? I'm worried we're going to have to call somebody in." And so I just layered up that night. And in the morning, I got up and and went downstairs like it is not only freezing in our bedroom, but it's freezing through this entire house. what in the world is going on? And so I go down and I check I I check to see make sure that the filters are on and like we've got all the stuff with with the HVAC unit that is is taken care of. And then I did what I should have done first and I went and checked the thermostat and I realized that our thermostat had been set to the lowest possible temperature that it could be. I think it was 50 degrees is how far down it went. And I'm just like, okay, how does this happen? So then I I I get it to a normal level and then I'm like, okay, so who who in our home would be responsible for causing the temperature to go this low? Now, I don't want to um I'm not trying to stereotype, but typically in our home of five children, three girls and two boys, uh typically it's the boys who get blamed for most things. And that's not out of I mean they're not always responsible but often I'll say often responsible. And so so I ever comes down the stairs that's our 10-year-old and I'm like hey Red um do you have any idea why the temperature in our house would be about 50 degrees and he says yeah I just hit that button to see how low I could get it and I got it as low as I possibly could. I I I said, "Okay, uh, please don't do that ever, ever, ever again." But I learn, as much as I thought I had control, I didn't have control. I think about how this ties to our to our story for what we're learning about. And in a heavier setting, you have the centurion who had a lot of authority. He had control over a lot of things, but he didn't have the authority to set the temperature of his own home because someone he loved and cared about was sick and was dying. Like you and I, we think we have control. It's an illusion. More often than not, there's a few things we have control over and typically it's a mindset and it's an attitude. Like that's what we can control when situations come our way. Last week, Pastor Michael was talking to us and finishing up chapter six, which had so much just great depth of teaching and and learning about what Jesus principles were, principles of the kingdom. But it ends in that in that chapter talking about how we build our life. He says you can build your life in two different ways. You can be foolish and build it on the sand or you can be wise and build it on the rock. What what happens is we don't have control over the storms of life that come our way. What we have control over is our mindset and who we put our faith in. So we put so as we as we learn this like there's dayto day that there's things that happen that we just kind of go with the flow that we like this is part of life. I don't have control. You know we get stuck at a stoplight we don't want to. Traffic is worse. We're in a line at the grocery store. We're wanting to go out to dinner and it's a 45 minute wait. Those are things that are all out of our control. There's moments in life that hit us like a ton of bricks when something comes upon us and we truly recognize going, "God, I don't have control." Like, there's nothing I can do about this situation. Maybe it's because I get a phone call of a de devastating news of somebody that I care about. Maybe it's something that happens at work and they're downsizing and I was expecting a promotion. Maybe it's a relationship that I thought was going the right direction. I get a text message or a phone call or a conversation over dinner that says it's over. There's things that just overwhelm us that are completely out of our control. It's what happened to the centurion. He had so much power in the human realm and human authority, but something happened to someone that he loved deeply and he recognized I don't have control. And so we see in this story what we it begins and it's so interesting to me because the way the story is told is it just explains in two short sentences. It says that the the servant was sick and the only that it has to the man who's actually dealing with the problem. What's going on his life is at the very end when it says that he's well. The rest of the story deals with the centurion and those encounter. It was his measure of faith that gets talked about. We don't have control over so many things. What we get, what we have the opportunity to do is how are we going to respond to life when it comes our way. It's fascinating about this story is it's one of two times in the gospels whenever Jesus is amazed by faith. like he's blown away by the centurions faith. And if you if maybe you're new to the historical context of what's going on in the story, the Romans were those that were that that were in charge of Israel, like they were the dominant power, the empire during the day. And so they were ruling over Israel and in a lot of ways, not in a kind way. They would they would dominate and they would they would persecute and they would do things to belittle the Jewish community. They were considered Gentiles, not part of the FA. But yet Jesus takes a man who's on the outside, not a part of the Jewish community, and says, "This man has great faith. I've never seen I've never been so amazed by someone's faith." The other time that he uses the word I'm amazed is not based on the positive side of the of faith, but instead by the negative side of unbelief. Those who should actually know who God is, know the character of God, the Jewish community, like those who have been raised, those those in leadership. He's like, "I'm I'm amazed that you don't understand But on the positive side, you see this gentile, this man on the outside, Jesus that he gets it. He understands, I've never seen faith like this. So today, we're going to walk through what does great faith actually look like. What does great faith look like? Not just on the pages of a story that's that builds faith in us to see how big God is, but it's also to read in the story how it impacts our life. What can we do today with that information? How can we be known as a people of faith? Wherever we are on this journey of following Jesus, maybe it's it's new to us. Maybe we've been a Christian for a long time. God invites us in to be a people who build our faith. Put our faith in him. It's not a quantity of faith. It's a quality of faith in him. And so, as you're taking notes today, I encourage you to write this down. What does great faith look like? Great faith begins with humility. Like, great faith recognizes that I I need help. The centurion in And the reason he's called Centurion is round about he was he was over about a hundred soldiers. He had a lot of authority. There was a lot of things that he was responsible for as he describes he's like I'll tell people to go do it and they'll go do it. Like this is what it looks like. But he recognized in his own life. He said there's there's things that I I don't have control over. Now, if you look at the process and the trajectory of the story, it's interesting to me because it begins by him going to the Jewish leaders, the leaders of the synagogue, and talking to them and having them go approach Jesus. That means that he had heard about Jesus. Maybe he had people in his circle that had been talking about it. Jesus reputation of miracles and teaching came back to him. And so, he says, "Those that should know, I'm going to send them to go have a conversation with Jesus." But then what happens in that conversation is that these the people the Jews were like these these elders of the church they said they began to talk to Jesus about how good he was about how good the centurion was in the conversation they say hey listen he's a great guy they build him up he's a good man like he loves our people he's built a synagogue for us he's building up his character in front of Jesus the elders are like you got to do something because the mark. He has checked the box. Like he's done all those things. So you have to go and take care of him. Yet what happens along the way is that on the other side of it as Jesus approaches and it was probably a few hundred yards because that was Jesus hub and his home base and so he was very familiar with the area but it wasn't a large space. So he's walking towards there and these friends of the centurion approach Jesus and they have a message specifically from him that says, "Listen, I'm not I'm not I'm not worth it. I'm not worthy." Like Jesus, you're great. You're amazing and you've done all these great things. I'm not worthy for you to come in my house. Do you see the difference in the conversation? Like we think we measure up and we have to speak to God about how good in these things that we do. But what what appeals to God's We recognize that there's a lot of lot of things that we missed the mark on. And I think it's interesting that it was the leaders who went to Jesus and approached him with the things that the centurion had done well. But it's those who knew the centurion the best were more than willing to go to Jesus and say, "Hey, he's in his heart like he's humble. He doesn't have it all. He doesn't have it all figured out." I can't tell you exactly what the if it was a shift of a mindset or if it was just miscommunication. I like to put myself into the story. Maybe along the way the centurion realizes that that he has a change of heart and says, "I told him one thing, but I need to appeal differently because I really know what's going on here. If he walks in my house, I don't know what I'm going to do." I think if I'm if I'm inserting the story, what I think happened is the centurion had a message that got misrepresented. Any leaders in the room who feel like you have a message and then you have somebody go tell that message and then when you hear how the message was communicated, you're like that's not what I meant at all. Anybody ever experienced that? Like that may have been what the words I use, but the attitude behind it is not at all what I meant to actually say. Like I that's how I think about it. The elders are like, "Hey, let's appeal to all the great things." And the guy's like, "That is not what I'm trying to do." He's like, "I I don't want that to be the case." So he catches Jesus before he gets to the house and says, "I'm I'm humble. I'm not worth it. I'm not worth it. Like we have to we when we appeal to Jesus, when we recognize in faith, like it takes a heart of humility. The Bible tells us that he he he is so kind to the humble. Like he gives grace to the humble. And we live in a time and a place that we often feel inside of us that we have to talk ourselves up and think about how good we are and communicate all the things that we get right. Like that's not how I designed you. I designed you to walk in humility, not that you think less of yourself. You just think about yourself less and recognize that I love you and that you need me. That's ultimately what it comes down to is us recognizing that we need God in our life. Like he never designed our life to be to be mutually exclusive away from him. He designed our life to be reliant on him. So great faith requires humility. What does that look like for you? What does that look like for me? I think often what happens is that God is is constantly trying to refine our lives that we create this persona that we put off to other people. This facade of making sure we have it all together. And he's refining that process to remove the persona so that we would truly become the person that he created us to be. And that requires humility. God, I just I need you. Grace to the hees. Faith begins in knowing begins with hum. We need to humble ourselves. God, I need you. What's beautiful about that is he approaches us in our humility. He doesn't push us off, but he welcomes us in. But it begins with humility. Great faith begins with humility. Secondly, great faith trusts the authority of Jesus. faith trusts the authority of Jesus. He says, "I I see something about you, Jesus, that I'm a man of authority. I understand how this system works. I have authority in the area of of leading all these guys and I tell them to go do something and they go do it. I know how authority works. I understand how this process is in the system of authority and I see authority in you." See, he'd heard the stories of of Jesus and what he had done, but he saw something others may not have. He saw Jesus was not able just as a miracle worker or somebody had some good teaching. No, he saw it. This man has authority. He calms the storms. He silences demons. He heals the sick. He He raises those who can't walk so they can walk. He allows sight for the blind. Like he has authority. I recognize this authority. If we have great faith, we have to recognize that Jesus is actually in control. Like I can't have it's I can't have faith. I can't have true faith unless I recognize that Jesus is in control, that he has authority. What areas of our life do we need to recognize that God, you got authority in my workplace, God, you got authority in my home? God, I truly believe that you can actually do something to change this, to change people's hearts, that you can lead and guide us to follow you. Like we believe that like Jesus is actually when he says nothing is possible, I don't think it's a good idea. I think it's actually true. CS Lewis, the author and theologian. He said this about our our view of God as he writes in mere Christianity. He says, "I'm I'm trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people people often say about him being Jesus. I'm I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God." That's the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God or else a mad man or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and claim him Lord and God. But let us not come away with any patronizing about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Great faith believes in the authority of Jesus. Do we live our life? Do we believe that Jesus is in charge? He has authority. Next, great faith trust the power of Jesus. Not just Jesus, but Jesus word. Great faith trust the power of Jesus word. So if I if I'm humbly approaching God going, God, I need you. I recognize that you're in control. Then I'm going, God, when you say something, I'm going to believe it to be true. I recognize that there is power in the words of Jesus. I'm grateful that we have the Bible that that tells us about God's word, that tells us the heart of God. And if you're new to church, I don't know what you've heard about God in the past, but what I read when I read and study the Bible is a God who's loving. The way he describes himself is loving and compassion and his word says that. I believe it. Think about words having power. We know that in our own lives that words can build worlds or they can destroy worlds. Words words can build relationships or they can destroy relationships. Words have power. The very first words in the book of the Bible is God speaking in the book of Genesis. And what what happens when God speaks? Light comes like speaks a lot light comes when Jesus when God says let there be life it shows up there's power in that there's power in his words the Bible tells us that in God's word in the book of Psalms that whenever God spoke the worlds were created the stars were formed there's power in his words yet sometimes in our own lives if you're anything like me that I can think that's really great on the macro on macro layer scale that's the Like I was making up words. That's what we do as pastor. We make up words on a macro scale. You're like, "This is great, but in my own life, can it actually be true?" I come to humility. I think that's important as we come to God in humility to actually believe that he can move in our life. That's able to do these words. Why would we not think that he wants to do the same? Why would I not think that God wants to peace in my life when everything else feels so chaotic around me. Why would I not believe that he would be willing to give me peace? Why would I not think that when I read God's word that he's willing to forgive me no matter how many mistakes that I've made, no matter how many times I've gone my own way? Do I believe in faith that he would actually be able to forgive me? Do I believe that he can reconcile relationships? Do I believe that he truly cares what's going on? It's the power of his word. Do I believe that his sufficient in our lives. Do I believe that he gives grace in my life and in your life? That it covers a multitude of sins. Like this is what God's word says. There's power in God's word. Great faith takes God at his word and it believes it to be true. It trusts him that his word is true over your life and it's true. That's what great faith looks like. The book of Hebrews, it's a letter to the to the church and we're actually who wrote this book. But chapter 11 is known as the Hall of Fame of Faith. And it goes through all these different people who were considered faithful in the Old Testament. Great crowd of witnesses to God's faithfulness. But it begins chapter 11 begins with this verse and he explains the definition of what faith is. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. That's what faith is. We can over complicate faith. But this is what it is. Believing it's confidence in God. It's that he is actually who he says he is. That I can trust him. I can take him at his word. That he is in control. The next thing faith does it trust who Jesus is. Great faith trusts who Jesus is. Like if I think that he has authority, if I humble myself before God, if I believe that his words have power, but I don't actually trust the character of God, then that faith is mistaken. Like I have to believe in my life that he really is good and he really is for me. This is what's beautiful about when we study the story. This is why I'm so grateful that we get to walk through the book of Luke and we study the gospel and we see the character of Jesus lived out. This is what I mean there's we began our study of the book of Luke when when John describes Jesus and he says that he came to make the crooked places straight to to bring the mountains down to bring the valleys up to level the playing field like that's the character of Jesus these systems that we put in place putting some more important than others he said he brings those that are low and brings them up and brings those that are high and brings them down he straightens the pathway of understanding what the kingdom of God looks like do I believe Jesus really is who he says he is. Not just another idea that someone else has concocted that I've seen on social media. Maybe I've known about him or I've got friends who might know about. No, this is I trust. True faith is trusting that Jesus is who he says he is. One of the best ways that I can think about this is with my got an older brother, only just him and I. So then when I had five kids, that's a lot of kids, a lot different than what I grew up with. But he's older than me and we are about as polar opposite as I can possibly think. Here's two things we have in common. We have the same parents and we both love Jesus. That's it. Like very different. He's intellectual. He's way smarter than me. He studies like thousand page books. Anybody else do that? No. No. Okay, cool. That's good. Yeah, I like this one person goes kind of. I'm gonna talk to them after. That's good. That's great if you do. I'm just not that smart. So he's like and he speaks on a whole another level and we'll talk pretty often and and he he's dealt with a ton of difficulty healthwise like he's experienced he's got ongoing health issues and and about 10 years ago or longer he he experienced this like just where he's not able to move his neck anymore. So his his neck is completely static where he has to move his whole body. So physically he's not able to do what other dads would want to do. He can't play with his kids. He can't be active. Driving is difficult. Physical ailments, internal, external. And we talk often, and he'll tell me, he doesn't hide the truth. Like, he's like, "This is what I'm walking through. It's really real." And I remember a few years back, he uses this statement as we were finishing up the conversation. He tells me, he goes, "Stephen, I got to tell you something." He's like, "This is what I know is true. Is that God is good and the moon is round." And I've told this before because this is so profound to me. I was like, when he says God is good and the moon is round, like what do you do with that? Like, you're really smart, John, but I don't understand what you're trying to say. Yes, I get the moon. He goes, "No, no, you got you got to understand this." He's like, "There's times and phases of the moon cycle, and you all know this because you look outside your your window at night and you can see there's moments in our life where the moon is completely full and it's lighting up the entire sky, and we can see things, you know, that are in our neighborhood that we normally wouldn't because the moon is so bright." And there's other times in the phase of the moon that maybe it's only half or maybe it's it's a crescent or maybe it's it's it's completely gone all together, but it doesn't truly change the shape of the moon, does it? It remains the same. What changes our perspective of what's going on around us? He tells me he's like, "God is good. That's unchanging. That's always true. Whether I see it and experience in my day today, I know that he's always good. And I know that every day this the moon is round." He's like, "That's how I live my life. I know that God is good. When I deal with difficulty, when when I'm struggling, you deal with difficulty, God is still good. Now, what would be beautiful is if our life is live like the centurion that we say, "Hey, we've got great faith." And then instantly what we prayed for would be changed. But that's not always the case. God's able. He has the authority, but sometimes the answer is wait. Sometimes not yes. Sometimes no. Like we want it to respond. We want God to respond the same way and sim. But I still know that God is good. John's prayed for years that he would have healing and he hasn't experienced it, but he still trusts God is good. See, this is the principle. Great faith believes the character of God is really good. It believes the character of God that he's for us and he loves us. When I experience when I when I experience that faithfulness, it may look different than I expected it to, but I know he's still. So, in our lives, what are we going to ch Would we be known as a people of great faith? Would we trust that that God really is who the Bible describes him to be? See, up until this point, Jesus had been performing miracles and he had to go and they would just ask him to go all the way and he would there was proximity made a difference. But what the centurion shows the people is that that God is capable at any distance at any time. It does not limit God based on how close he is. See what you and I we get to operate in now as New Testament believers is that after Jesus defeated death ascended to heaven, I got I'm gonna send the comfort. It's better that you would have the Holy Spirit then I would be there. So God's author is not limited on proximity, but we can believe in faith knowing that he's always working and that he's always for us. We can trust him. So, could we be a people of great faith? Could our faith tick in the right direction just a little bit? Could we have a reputation of faith with those that we work with? Could we have a reputation of faith with our family to say, "Even when it looks a little bit crazy on the outside, God, I know that you're still working on the inside. I trust you. I know your faith. And so I want to pray for us today that we would see this story and see ourselves in the story that we would recognize the authority that Jesus has and that we would live differently because of it. So would you close your eyes for me for just a moment? I want to pray for a specific group of people, but I just want I want to know who I'm praying for. that today if you're if you're in this place and you recognize that that you put your faith in the wrong things and you're trying to hold on to control and you just you want to take a moment to release that control. Say, "God, I just recognize I need to give you control to you. Would you just raise your hand? I thank you for every trust you. put our faith in you. We would stop trying to control things. God, thank you for meeting us where we are. Put your hand down. God, I pray for everyone else in the room, God, that we get to represent you every day. The reason the centurion heard about you was as people of faith shared the good news about you and God that we would live our life. Would you help us live our life differently because our faith is in you? God would you move in our relationships God in our workplaces God in our hearts that we would not just settle for something less than what you have for us. believe that is true. God, as we sing, as we're singing that song, God, that we would really believe that you would break every stronghold in our life. God, there's people in the room right now who need the faith to believe that they don't have to keep circling around that same mountain over and over again. But God, they would say, "No, this is broken off me because of Jesus. I'm humbly giving it to him right now." Maybe it's pride, maybe it's anger, maybe it's anxiety, we say depression. Yeah. whatever it is that we would give it back to you. God, what you move on our lives Jesus