Humble Faith and Powerful Grace

Introduction

When we see true humility it is inspiring isn’t it.

John Dickson in his book Humilitas defines humility as: “the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.”

It’s when we see the rich or the powerful doing things they ought not do, or don’t need to do, but they do it anyway.

Of course the best stories of humility are probably they ones that go untold, but nonetheless

When I first moved to Melbourne I met each week I was at Bible College in the home of the then Principal Peter Adam for a new to college small group. And each week he’d welcome us in, make us tea and coffee and clean up after we’d left. Once he was away and he still let us into his house for our small group.

Now when you’re the Principal of a theological college and you’re a published author and world renowned preacher, you don’t need to worry about a few insignificant first year students, let alone welcome them into your house. But he did. It was an act of humble leadership from a deeply humble man.

Recap - we’re slowly but surely working our way through the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel when we’re not interrupted by other things.

You’ll remember in Luke 6:1-49 Jesus calling us to radical trust and obedience in Him and reliance on Him to produce in us the kind of radical counter cultural life he is calling us to.

This is followed by the two stories in our reading. And as we’ll see these two stories show us both the act of humble obedience and an example of God’s power to transform our lives.

Humble Centurion (Luke 7:1-10)

Luke 7:1–3 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. There a centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was ill 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.

An Officer in the Roman Army. Having command of some 100 troops. He’s kind of a big deal in this part of the world.

He has a sick servant and he’s heard the news that Jesus has been healing people.

Knowing Jesus is Jewish, he sends some Jewish elders to Jesus to ask Jesus to heal his sick servant.

The go and they say

Luke 7:4–5 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

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.’

Here is a man who has proven his worth as far as the Jewish leaders are concerned. He deserves your help Jesus.

And Jesus goes with them.

But of course as Jesus is approaching the centurion’s house the centurion has found some more people to go to Jesus and they say:

Luke 7:6 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

So Jesus went with them. He was not far 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.

Luke 7:7 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.

Here is a military man, with rank, and yet as he approaches Jesus he considers himself unworthy of having Jesus in his house, let alone meet him in the street.

So he requests that Jesus simply give the order.

Luke 7:8 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

For I myself 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 doesit.’

Jesus is amazed.

Luke 7:9 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

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.’

He’s amazed at his humble faith.

We’ve seen this kind of humble response to Jesus before in Luke’s gospel.

In Luke 5, when Jesus calls his disciples he meets them on the beach washing their nets. He borrows their boat to teach the crowds and then he tells Simon Peter the Fisherman to go fishing again. They protest, they are the experts after all. And yet they obey. And when they obey they have the biggest catch of fish in their life.

How does Peter respond when he realises he is is the presence of Jesus, who controls the fish in the sea?

Luke 5:8 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’

He humbles himself just as the centurion does in our passage today.

More on the centurions humility and what it means for us today in a moment, but of course the next story is the raising of a widows son from vv11-17.

Raising the Dead (Luke 7:11-17)

Here Jesus comes upon a Jewish funeral.

I remember when Ellisa and I went to India we went to the city of Varinasi on the river ganges. For Hindu’s this is the holy city on the holy river and the best place to be laid to rest by being cremated and having your ashes placed in the river. As you would twist and turn your way up alleyways from the river bank, you would have to dodge out of the way of mourners carrying dead bodies down to the river banks to be cremated.

I imagine something like this is what we have here. Jesus is in the town of Nain and as they are walking towards the town gate they come upon a funeral party taking a dead person. For a widow to lose her only son is tragic enough, but in Jesus’ day this was to become destitute and so he has compassion on her and seeks to rectify the situation. He walks up to the dead man and says, get up (v14). And instintaneously

Luke 7:15 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

The people are amazed (v16). And call Jesus a great prophet (v16). That’s because both Elijah (1 Kings 17) and Elisha (2 Kings 4) performed similar miracles.

The people don’t have clarity about who Jesus is, thinking he is a prophet rather than the son of God, the messiah, but they are sure amazed by what he can do!

In both stories, Jesus demonstrates his power to heal. In the first story, Jesus is sought out by a humble leader. In the second story, Jesus simply has compassion on a poor widow and helps her out.

What does all of this mean for us today?

We need to be humble like the centurion

We need to be people of grace

Humility

We need to be humble like the centurion.

We don’t deserve God’s love, salvation, yet God has poured it out on us anyway.

The centurion is only too aware of his inadequacy before God, and yet he trusts in his power to heal and save.

The centurion’s humility actually points us to Jesus doesn’t it. He is the true example of humility.

He forgoes his status as God and takes on flesh, and then choses in life to teach us how to truly live, and then dies to enable that new life to be possible. He acts for our interests and our benefit.

And he calls us to have humble faith, just like the centurion had.

What does that look like for us as we head into 2019?

Think back to John Dicksons’ definition: “the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.”

Forgo status

One of the key blockers to evangelism in our society is the holding on to status.

We want to be well liked. We want to get along at work.

And we often think that expressing our faith, making it known that we’re people of faith, telling the truth about what we believe will negatively impact our status.

Well humble faith lets go of all of that and choses to trust in Jesus, who can raise the dead, knowing he will care for us as we humbly speak about him to our work mates, friends, and family.

Not only that but when we speak, we speak not as people who are right, but people who are sharing their perspectives and listening to others.

Deploy resources and influence for the good of others before yourself

We ought to use the gifts, skills and talents God has given us in humility.

What are you good at? Have you been blessed with financial resources? How will you deploy them for the good of others before yourself?

Grace

We need to be people of grace.

Jesus sees a widow in need of help, and he helps her. He has compassion on her and he raises her son back to life. God’s grace is powerful!

We need to spread the grace of God in our community.

Our community is full of people with problems and they don’t know Jesus can help. He can make them whole.

The widow didn’t know Jesus could help her and yet his love for her overwhelmed her and gave her what she needed.

We need to ask God to work powerfully in the lives of our community, our friends our family. And we need to ask God to use us to bring his grace to bear on the lives of those whom we interact with. And to do this we need to remember we are the humble recipients of God’s grace.

If Jesus can heal the sick and raise the dead, he can grow his church and change the lives of the people of Lindisfarne. We can’t. But he can. Let’s make 2019 a year of humble faith seeking God’s amazing grace to work powerfully in ways we can’t even imagine.

God loves us, and he loves the people of Lindisfarne, so much that he will pour out his powerful grace as we submit ourselves humbly to him.