Thursday, April 27, 2023
Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Brother Mike…
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Typically, my wife, Jeani, is here, but unfortunately, some schedules could not be changed.
Opening prayer…
Father, I thank you that you are with us because where two or more are gathered in your name, you are in their midst. We thank you that you are here. Help us to open our hearts to hear and receive whatever you have for each individual person here as well as corporately.
Intro topic…
I was thinking, “Okay, God, I’m going to be at least starting things or giving us some place to go from this morning.” I was feeling a little bit lost. I said, “Lord, I need something.” Jeanie and I were praying and she’s like, “Should we talk about things?” I said, “Just give me a minute.” And my Bible happened to be open from the other day just sitting on my desk. And I looked at it and I glanced at it. And then my eyes looked over and I was in Luke. There was something about… I was listening a couple of ministers and several different messages about healing. And some of the things they were talking about was “hearing and healing.” That’s what this minister was talking about. I was reading in Luke 7 about “The Healing of the Centurion’s Servant.”
Jesus was astonished at the faith of the centurion…
That’s kind of where I started. And then what followed later on when he was talking about John, that’s what really caught my eye. And so I wanted to start first with just thinking about that story of the healing of the centurion’s servant. The first thing that comes to mind is when Jesus was astonished. There was only two times in the Bible where Jesus was actually astonished. And what astonished Him was the faith of these people who were not Jewish. They were Gentiles. What that speaks to me is that even though somebody might be doing something good… God the Holy Spirit’s always moving. The Holy Spirit can touch people who are heathens. We don’t always know who God is touching. And the fact that it wasn’t a Pharisee, it wasn’t even a disciple or one close to Jesus, that their faith astonished Him enough to stop. Maybe you’re familiar with this story. But there’s a lot of things we’re actually familiar with in the Bible but we don’t actually hear and pay attention to what He might be trying to tell us.
The centurion’s request to Jesus to heal his servant…
And it talks about here in Luke 7:2, “And a certain servant of a centurion…” It wasn’t even the centurion. It was the servant of the centurion who was dear to the centurion. It says, “was sick and going to die. So when he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to Him, pleading with Him to come and heal his servant.” The centurion sent somebody else. He’s not even Jewish. “I don’t even know if I can go to Him, but I want them to go to Jesus. I want them to go to Him.” He sent the elders of the Jewish people to Him, meaning to Jesus, asking that if He came, He would cure his servant.
The message from the centurion…
And of course we always kind of go by what we read here. There’s so much, you know, like even in today, people will say something, we maybe just get the gist of it. We don’t always know all the details. But the fact that he said to these elders of the Jewish people, “Go to Jesus and tell Him, if you come, you will cure my servant.” Wow! He didn’t say, “Could you ask Him if He could come and maybe… hopefully… would He consider healing my servant?” Where does that kind of faith come from? That he would say, “If you tell Him to come, He’s going to heal my servant.”
Jesus agreed to come to the centurion’s home…
So they came to Jesus. It says, “And when they came to Jesus, they begged Him earnestly, saying that the one for whom He should do this was deserving, “for he loves our nation, and has built us a synagogue” (vv. 4–5).
“Then Jesus went with them. And when He was already not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying to Him, “Lord, do not trouble Yourself, for I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof.”
He says to Jesus, “I don’t want to bother you with this. I can’t really ask you but…” In essence, speaking for the centurion, they gave the message to Jesus, “I’m not worthy that you should come under my roof.” He sent for Him, having no doubt that if He comes, He’s going to heal his servant. But before He even got there, he said, “I’m not worthy that you should even come to my house.”
There’s so much in this that hopefully it just sinks into our hearts. He didn’t ask Jesus himself. He didn’t even want Him to come near his home because he didn’t feel worthy enough. And how many times are we thinking, “Oh, because of this or that, I can’t be healed, or I can’t get through this, or I can’t handle this relationship or this decision I need to make. Jesus, I’m just not worthy.”
The centurion didn’t feel worthy enough for Jesus to come to his house…
The fact that this man knew something about Jesus that even the people in Israel didn’t even know. How does one see that? It doesn’t give a lot of explanation for that, but I believe that is the Holy Spirit working in this man to give him something that somehow he knows that if Jesus comes… Maybe the centurion heard about Jesus. There was a lot of people in this time as Jesus kept doing… you can call it His ministry, but Jesus was just being Jesus. In some passages it says His fame or His recognition started going throughout the land. And stuff didn’t travel that fast like it does today. I mean, we could hear within seconds of something that’s going on halfway around the world, even if we don’t want to know what’s going around in the world. But the centurion said, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof. I wasn’t even worthy to come to you myself.”
Holy Spirit, I thank you that there’s so much in here of how much faith this man had.
The centurion loved Israel and the Jewish people…
The centurion had to have been hearing all these things, hearing all the stories about Jesus healing. There was a part of him… there was something in him because when the elders came and said, he loves our nation. He loves our people. That in itself seems impossible. It’s like someone who’s a Gentile, who is part of the Roman military, who were there occupying that area. He’s saying he loves our nation and he built a synagogue for us.
It clicked with the centurion that Jesus was a man with authority…
Whether the centurion saw anyone get healed or if he just heard all these stories, something stirred inside of him. It doesn’t say it was desperation. In other stories, we hear about people who are basically, “I’ve got nothing else. I’ve got to go to Him.” This man, from all what we know, only saw or heard one thing. As much as we can tell… that Jesus was a man of authority. And that clicked with him because he was a man with authority as well as under authority who knows what Holy Spirit can really do in someone’s life. And I’m even including the believers’ life in that.
Father, I thank you that your Holy Spirit is doing so many things in us, through us, for us, as well as for others that we even as those who are believers would still have a sense of awe.
Are we really hearing what someone is saying…
I’ve been hearing a lot of messages on healing lately because I’m facing some issues. But one thing I keep hearing over and over is that we listen to what somebody might be saying, but are we really hearing it in our innermost being? Sometimes “yes,” but it feels like a lot of times like “No, I’m not.” It’s like the man who prayed, “I believe, but help my unbelief.” People have studied that out and said it’s like “I believe you are who you are, but I have so many doubts.” And how many of us have so many doubts? And eventually that’s what I’m going to be getting to.
The centurion sent his Jewish friends with a message to Jesus…
The centurion sent his friends to intervene on his behalf, because he’s like, whatever that was about where if he really felt unworthy in the sense of, “Oh, I don’t deserve this,” or he was thinking, “Well, I can’t have Jesus come because if Jesus comes, this is the guy that’s stirring up a lot of things, you know, in the social aspect of our lives. If I invited Him to my house, what’s that going to look like?” But he sent the Jewish leaders to speak to Jesus. Then as he was getting closer, he even sent some friends with a message: “Therefore I did not even think myself worthy to come to You. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
The centurion recognized something in Jesus…
What’s interesting is that he recognized something in Jesus. He said, “I am also a man under authority.” He recognized Jesus was not only a man of authority, but that he was under authority. Jesus was still under authority of God. He said, “I only came to do what I saw my Father doing and say what My Father was saying.” And there are so many mysteries of that… how Jesus is God but He had to come as a man to demonstrate how even as a man, He’s under the authority of God. But then He actually used His authority. He had no problem using His authority.
The centurion understood about authority…
But that centurion said, “I am also a man under authority.” So he knew that He was under authority, probably from… again, who knows! But he recognized that it had to have been the Holy Spirit. I don’t know… that he recognized that Jesus was also not just doing things because that was good. He was also… somebody was telling Him what to do and He took that as if it was His own and He started doing that.
Jesus was amazed at the centurion’s faith…
“When Jesus heard these things, He marveled at him, and turned around and said to the crowd that followed Him, “I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” And when Jesus heard these things, He was amazed at him. And after He turned to the crowd that was following, He said…” He had a bunch of people and who knows… did He have eight people with Him? Did He have 50 people with Him? He stopped right there and turned to everybody who was traveling with Him and said, “I say to you not in Israel have I found so much strong faith?”
“Will I find faith on the earth?”
And even it says, and I don’t know the verse, but it says, “When Jesus comes, will I find faith on the earth?” You know, maybe it happened other times, but this one is amazing. He didn’t have hands laid on him. He didn’t tell them, “Okay, make sure Jesus knows what’s going on. Make sure Jesus knows all the things that’s going wrong with my servant. Make sure you tell Him he’s been dealing with this for six months… He’s been dealing with this for 20 years. Make sure you let Him know all these things that my servant is going thru. It doesn’t say he said anything. All he said was, “Go tell Jesus if He comes to my house, He will heal my servant.” He already saw it as done.
He will heal my servant…
What’s interesting is he told Him, if He comes, He will heal my servant. But then as he gets closer to his house, he’s like, “Go out and tell Him I’m not worthy for Him to come in my house. Just wherever you are…” whether He was a block away or however far He was, they came up and said, “We don’t want to bother you, but here’s what this man of faith said. Just say this…” and because he understands where you’re coming from, Jesus. And Jesus was like, “You got to be kidding me. I’ve been walking around for however long at this point. I’ve got my tight-knit group is seeing everything I’m doing. They’re hearing everything I’m saying and they don’t even get it.”
So Father, right now, I pray for everyone, believers and non-believers that can sense something about who you are but either don’t know what it is or can’t acknowledge it… that we truly understand that there’s a difference between knowing what you’ve done and knowing who you are. In everything you did, you did as a man under the authority of God, but you were only doing what our amazing Father in heaven has already done and wanted to do. Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” And even in this moment of this, I’m going to say… I’m challenging us… “Do we really see Jesus for who He is?”
