SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/28/2021 9:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Respected Man: A Gentile”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 8:5-13
Message of the verses: “5 And when Jesus
entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, 6 and saying,
"Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented." 7
Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him." 8 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. 9 "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." 10 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. 11 “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; 12 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." 13 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.”
I
mentioned in our last SD that we will continue to write about this centurion as
we begin today’s SD. Let me begin by
talking about how slaves were actually treated during this period of time, and
that is that they were property and property could be done with what the owner
of the property desired including having the slaves killed. It is very rare I would think to find a man
like this centurion who actually cared for this slave of his, cared so much for
his servant to set him apart from the typical Roman soldier, who as stated
could have had him killed because he could not function like he was suppose to.
John
MacArthur writes “But the centurion from Capernaum had no such inhumane ideas. He was a seasoned and capable fighting man or
he would not have been a centurion—who, as the title indicates, was responsible
for a hundred men. He was a man’s man, a
soldier’s soldier. Yet he had deep
compassion for his dying slave boy and felt unworthy to approach Jesus
personally. Jesus knew the man’s heart
and did not need to hear a direct request, either from the centurion or from
the Jews who came in his behalf. He
simply responded in love, saying, ‘I will come and heal him.’”
When
Jesus came to heal the centurion’s slave the centurion saw Him and then sent
some friends out to meet Jesus as seen in Luke 7:3. In the centurions behalf they ‘answered and
said, ‘Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof.’ This man felt genuinely unworthy for Jesus to
go to that much trouble for him, and he had no doubt also did not want Jesus to
break the Jewish tradition of not coming into the house of a Gentile, for the
centurion would have known all about this tradition being friends with Jews and
even building them their Synagogue.
We
can see also that the centurion twice addressed Jesus as Lord which indicates
much more than courtesy. Jesus testified
of this man who He had never seen that he had such greater faith than seen in
all of Israel as seen in verse 10. This centurion
knew that Jesus was indeed God and consequently had the power to heal his
paralyzed servant. Now because his
servant was too ill to be carried out to Jesus and because he felt unworthy to
have Jesus enter his house, the centurion said to Him, “Just say the word and
my servant will be healed.” This is
amazing faith on his part, something that had to have come from the Spirit of
God. I have to believe that one day when
I get to heaven that I will meet this man there.
3/28/2021 9:30 AM
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