Will God be impressed with you? If that sounds wrong to think about keep listening. God was impressed with people. He was impressed with Job and it showed in how he spoke about Job to Satan: “Have you seen my servant Job? I have no one else like him on the whole earth.” (Job 1:8)
He was impressed with Abraham’s faith and in Hebrews 11 it says God was not ashamed to be his God. God was impressed with Moses’ faith, and in Hebrews 3 God says Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Paul said to seek the praise that comes from God (Galatians 1 and 1 Corinthians 4).
You want to see a contrast to all these faith-greats? Luke 18 Jesus talks about a Pharisee who entered the temple reeking of arrogance and making the fatal assumption that God was as impressed with him as he was with himself!
But there is one and only one way to impress God. And that is with our faith. Hebrews 11 says it is impossible to “please” God without faith. In Luke 18 Jesus said that he is looking on the earth for faith. Over and over again we see God “answers” faith. Today we see in yet another way how God responds to faith: He is impressed. Here in Matthew 8 a centurion approaches Jesus and Jesus is literally in awe of the man’s faith. “When Jesus heard this he was amazed…”
The word amazed means just that: amazed. It means to marvel at and to be in awe over. This same word is used numerous times throughout the NT.
- After Jesus calmed the storm the disciples were amazed at him for his power to control the weather.
- When the crowds heard him preach they were amazed at his wisdom and authority.
- When Peter healed the man who could not walk the crowds were amazed.
- Paul was amazed in a negative way at how quickly the Galatians were getting confused about the Gospel.
- When Jesus comes back all of us believers will be amazed as we behold Him in his glory.
Here the word is used to describe how JESUS was reacting. He was awed at this centurion. Why? Because of his faith! “I have not found anyone with such great faith” he said to the crowds. Its interesting because usually we go tell the crowds about Jesus, but here Jesus tells the crowds about this man! He was truly impressed with the man’s faith.
I pray each of us would have an impressive faith. I pray all of us would seek not to impress God by our religious, moral or spiritual resume, but rather by our unflinching confident faith in Him. After all, that’s the only thing that impresses Him.
- Impressive Faith Seeks out Jesus (5-6)
- Reverence for Jesus (7a)
- Confidence in Jesus’ Power (7b-9)
- Commended by Jesus (10-13)
IMPRESSIVE FAITH SEEKS OUT JESUS (5-6)
The situation is that this centurion has a servant who is sick. He loves this servant and is very distressed about his health. So he seeks out Jesus to heal him.
Impressive faith seeks Jesus out. What does that look like? It means going to him first, not last, as a last resort. It means a repeated, driven, focused, undeterred going to Him. Like the widow in Luke 18 going back to the judge everyday and not leaving him alone until he gave her what she asked. Like the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7 who would not let Jesus deny her and so impressively persisted with him until he changed his mind and answered her request. Impressive faith seeks out Jesus from the beginning to the end, and doesn’t quit, but persists. Impressive faith will NEVER say, “I tried praying but it didn’t work.” That’s not even faith.
The reason impressive faith seeks out Jesus is because impressive faith is impressed with how great God is. We know who Jesus is and so we know He is who we have to seek out.
APPLICATION: Impressive faith today is seen in the following ways: Prayer, Learning God’s Word, Obeying God’s commands, Fellowship with Believers. Prayer is the most direct way of seeking Jesus. We seek Him when we seek the Scriptures because its there that we are taught all about who He is. That is why Sunday morning is so important, why discipleship and bible studies is so important, why reading at home is so important. We seek Jesus by obeying Him, because in obedience that is how we walk WITH him and stay near Him and follow Him. We seek Him by fellowshipping with other believers because wherever 2 or 3 are gathered there Christ is in their midst. In other words, we show our desire to seek Christ by our desire to be with others who belong to Him. Do you seek Jesus? Do you seek Him in prayer, in learning the Bible, in obeying Him and in fellowship?
IMPRESSIVE FAITH REVERES JESUS (7a)
Next we see that an impressive faith reveres Jesus. Look at verse 7a, “….” The centurion holds Jesus in very high esteem. You see it in his humility: “I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.” One of the characteristics of true humility towards God is that we understand we are not worthy of Him. He did not have any sense of entitlement, he did not come swaggering up to Jesus like some big shot, he did not come saying, “Listen, I’ve done a lot around here in helping build the temple (Luke 7) and so if you’re going to do anything for anyone it should be me.” He didn’t come to Jesus thinking highly of himself – he came to Jesus thinking highly of Jesus.
Think of Luke 18, go there with me. READ….The Pharisee felt he was worthy, the tax collector felt he was not. The Pharisee revered himself, the tax collector revered God. It showed in the way each saw themselves in God’s presence.
Think of Peter in Luke 5, when Jesus calls his disciples. Jesus performs the miracle where they catch so many fish they can’t haul them all in. Peter fell on his knees in front of Jesus, so overawed by him, and he said, “Go away from me LORD; I am a sinful man.” You are truly seeing Jesus when you are truly seeing your own unworthiness next to Him. Isaiah was taken up into heaven and saw the LORD seated on the throne, and Isaiah beholding the Eternal One in all His glory said, “Wow, its about time you brought me up here. This place has been missing me. Have you seen me down there? I’ve been rocking it.” No, he said, “Woe to me! Woe! Because I am a man of unclean lips and I live amongst a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the Lord.” Isaiah was not conscientiously revering God, it was the overwhelming effect on his spirit in seeing his holy Creator that led him to blurt out his own unworthiness.
And here the centurion’s impressive faith is seen in the reverence he has for God: “Lord, I do not even deserve to have you come under my roof.” Humility, reverence is seen in unworthiness compared to God.
IMPRESSIVE FAITH IS CONFIDENT IN JESUS (7b-9)
Next we see that impressive faith is confident in Jesus. Look at verses 7-9 with me…..
Impressive faith understands authority. You see his standpoint as a soldier helps his faith: he understands authority. He says that he himself is under authority of someone else. The implication is that when he is commanded by someone above him with authority he responds and he gets it done. He also says that he is a man who has authority, and when he gives an order, people respond by obeying him and getting done what he commanded. That was his life: orders and obedience. And he saw clearly that Jesus had authority – some very serious authority. Like Nicodemus said, “No one could do the miraculous things you’re doing unless God were with him.”
What this means is that the centurion had absolutely no doubt that if Jesus said it, his servant would be healed. It wasn’t even possible in the universe, as far as the centurion was concerned, that if Jesus commanded something that it would not be done. Like the leper in Mark 1 who said to Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” In other words, “I know you can, so are you willing?”
Like the centurion, he came to Jesus showing profound respect and reverence as he made his request.
This is impressive faith: absolute confidence in Jesus’ power to do anything.
IMPRESSIVE FAITH REWARDED (10-13)
Lastly, lets focus on how impressive faith is rewarded. There are two rewards I want to point out: first is praise and second is a place at the table for the feast of .
First, Jesus will personally commend us. Look at verse 10 and how Jesus turns to the crowd to praise him for his faith. Jesus does this a lot – someone will approach him and ask him something or say something and he will pause, turn to the crowd around and use that person’s request or statement as a teaching moment for the whole crowd around him. “Lord, tell my brother to split the inheritance with me!” Jesus turned to the crowd and warned them about the many faces of greed.
At the end of the day – and at the end of time – the only praise that matters is the praise that comes from God.
Second, faith is the ticket to the feast. Notice verse 11 and 12… What is Jesus saying? There is a feast that is coming. Its going to happen in the kingdom that is coming. When this kingdom comes Jesus will sit in Jerusalem and reign over a restored Israel and from there over all nations around the world. This is also when Jesus will drink of the vine again with the disciples, like He says later in Matthew 26 – he told them at the last supper, when he instituted the Lord’s Table, that the next time he drinks of the vine with them will be in the kingdom! Notice 3 things here
FIRST: Gentiles will join Jews and will sit at this future feast. They will come from the east and the west. Here Jesus continues the OT prophetic theme that salvation includes the Gentiles. God never had in mind salvation merely for the Jews. Isaiah calls Jesus “the banner for all nations,” (11:10); a feast will be prepared for people from all over the world (25:5-6); and in Isaiah 42 God says of Jesus “I will make you a light for the Gentiles that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. Micah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah all describe the Gentiles traveling to Israel to worship and hear the Lord who sits enthroned. Gentiles will be in the kingdom, worshipping the reigning Christ, sitting at the feast, enjoying fellowship with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
SECOND: This feast will be with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus was shattering his Jewish audiences’ prejudices that Gentiles had no place in the coming kingdom of God. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were specifically and uniquely the identifiers of the Jewish people. The Jewish people were the physical descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and so they thought the kingdom was theirs merely for having the same blood. No way the Gentile “sinners” would sit alongside them at the feast. But God had always planned this. And it was planned even before the Jews ever came to be. God promised Abraham that he would bless his name, make his name great, and that’s what God did, and will still do forever. But God also promised that not only would a great nation come from Abraham – which is Israel – but that through Abraham God would bless all nations. So God’s plans included not only the unique, special nation he covenanted with (Israel), but also all nations.
THIRD: Those who should’ve been there won’t be there. Here Jesus is referring to unbelieving Jews. Jews who are merely Jews by the flesh – that is they are descendents of Abraham and circumcised – will not enter the kingdom. They must become what Romans 2 says are “true Jews,” that is, they must have their hearts circumcised by the Spirit of God. “Not all of Israel is Israel” Romans 9 says. They must like Galatians 2 says, believe in Jesus to be justified before God the same way Gentiles must believe and be justified. So Jews, who John 1 says trust in their ancestry, and their bloodline tracing back to Abraham, will not be born again, and we know John 3 says no one can enter the kingdom and participate in this feast without being born again.
So what Jesus is saying here is that the Jews who are the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown out – meaning that every Jew who rejects Jesus as the Christ will not enter eternal life and will not enter the kingdom of God and will not sit at the coming feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But every Jew that does believe, will sit and feast.
CONCLUSION: Clean
I don’t know if you noticed it but in verse 7 Jesus is willing to go to the man’s house. In Luke 7 it says he even started on his way to the man’s house. Here’s the thing: for a Jew to enter a Gentile’s home it was a serious thing. It defiled the Jew. It was so off-limits. It made a Jew “unclean” to enter the house of an unclean Gentile. In Mark 7 the reason the Pharisees practiced washing their hands after they came back from public places was because they may have touched something that had been touched by Gentile. In Acts 10 and 11 Peter entered the house of a Gentile and was criticized heavily for it by other Jews. This idea of Gentiles being so defiled and unclean and avoiding them was so ingrained in Jewish thinking that Peter would later stumble and pull away from Gentile believers because of the peer pressure from other Jews.
And here, without any hesitation, Jesus starts out to go to the house of this Gentile man. Here is where I’m going with this: Jesus cannot be defiled. You cannot defile the Holy One of God! You cannot make Him unclean who is Himself eternally pure and holy! No, when He comes to you it is YOU who are made clean. And that is exactly why He came: to clean that which is unclean, to purify that which is impure, to wash that which is defiled. “But that is what some of you were, you were washed, you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the LORD JESUS CHRIST” says first Corinthians 6.
Do you see the WILLINGNESS of Jesus? Do you see how ready RIGHT NOW He is in that moment? His sandals are on and he’s out the door to go help. He sits now at the right hand of God in heaven, alive from the dead, and He is as ready RIGHT NOW as he was back then to make clean anyone of you who would come to Him. Come to Him right now. Come in faith to Him, revering Him, and asking Him to cleanse you and He will get up and do it in an instant.