Whose faith amazed Jesus?

A Roman soldier's. In Matthew 8:5-13, a Gentile centurion shows greater faith than anyone in Israel, and Jesus marvels. Dr. Toby Holt explains what real faith looks like.

A Roman officer came on behalf of his paralyzed servant. He did not ask Jesus to come — he simply said, "Speak a word, and my servant will be healed." As a man under authority who commanded soldiers, he recognized Jesus' authority over sickness itself. Jesus marveled, saying He had not found such faith even in Israel. Holt notes the warning: many outsiders will feast in the kingdom while some who assumed they belonged are shut out.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did Jesus marvel at the centurion's faith? Because this Gentile trusted Jesus' word alone, without needing a sign. His simple confidence stood out above all Israel.

2. What was unusual about his request? He said there was no need for Jesus to come to his home; a word would be enough. He understood Jesus' authority was greater than any distance.

3. What warning did Jesus give? That many outsiders would share in the kingdom while some who presumed on their heritage would be left out. Faith, not background, saves.

"Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!" — Matthew 8:10 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

Of all of the miracles that our Savior performed, the most frequent ones involved healing.

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Wherever Jesus went, people approached Him who were sick and hurting, and Jesus healed them all.

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What does this tell us about Christ's person and work?

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We'll find out in today's study of Matthew 8.

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You know, of all the things that are not easy to do,

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It is not an easy thing to surprise or astonish Jesus.

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Now, why is it a hard thing to amaze or astonish or surprise Jesus?

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Well, for the obvious reasons.

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Because he's Jesus, and Jesus is divine, and Jesus knows all, and Jesus is God in the flesh.

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And because Jesus has that advantage, you're really not going to surprise him or amaze him or startle him or cause him to marvel.

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And yet, there are two times in Scripture where we see that someone does just that.

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Jesus prompts Jesus to stop and to marvel. He's not necessarily surprised, but yet he marvels.

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Now, one of those occurrences comes in today's reading, Matthew chapter 8. In Matthew 8,

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which we just read a portion of, Jesus is going to marvel at the faith of the most unexpected person,

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the faith of the Roman centurion. As we're going to see, this centurion, he's going to ask Jesus,

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who is a Jew. You have a Roman centurion who is the leadership of the garrison that is putting

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its boot down on the Israelites. And this one is going to come to Jesus, a Jew, and ask him to

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help his servant who is paralyzed or tormented, maybe through stroke or other symptoms or what

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have you. Now, with that said, his desire is that Jesus would heal the man, which Jesus freely says

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that he will. And yet the Roman centurion knows something that others did not. He knows that Jesus

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can do it without having even to enter the room that the man is in. He just has to say the word.

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And so in today's text, we're going to see that's what the man's going to tell Jesus. He's going to

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say, all you have to do is speak, and I know it'll be so. All you have to do is speak. Jesus, you just

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say the word from where you're at right now, and my servant will be healed. Now, why did that stand

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out? Why do you marvel at that? Why is that so surprising? Well, if you were in the first century

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the Capernaum, if you were in first century Jerusalem, if you're in first century Israel,

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one of the things that you encountered was that everywhere you went, the people were never

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impressed by doctrine and always impressed by signs and wonders. The people always asked Jesus,

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give us a sign, give us a sign, give us wonders, do things, heal that guy. Oh, you healed that guy,

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that's not enough. Write your name in the clouds, do things in the heavens, prove it, prove it,

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prove it. The Jews wanted signs and wonders. Look at Thomas. What did Thomas, he was told that Jesus

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is resurrected. Instead of going, amen, wonderful, praise God, he does what? He says, unless I see it,

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unless I touch the size and so forth, unless I see the nails in his hand, unless I see that,

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I will not believe it. Signs and wonders. Prove it, prove it, prove it. This was the culture.

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This was the age, even amongst Christ's own disciples. They wanted signs and wonders to

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prove anything that came out of your mouth. The Roman centurion did the exact opposite.

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He trusted what came out of his mouth apart from any sign. He says, I don't need a sign.

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I just need you to say it. And because of that, something Jesus was not accustomed to

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anywhere he went, he marveled. He says, I haven't seen faith like this. Nope, haven't

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seen faith like this. Not even amongst the very people I was sent to, which is ironic.

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the very people I was sent to, the very culture I grew up within, the very people of whom I am

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the Messiah, the Savior thereof, even they don't have that kind of faith. They all want the signs

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and the wonders. This guy, this Gentile, this Roman, this enemy, so to speak, of the people,

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he gets it. My own people don't. And there's going to come a day, there's going to come a day when

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there'll be people from the East and the West, Gentiles just like this man, who will sit down

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with, guess who? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Jewish patriarchs. And they'll sit down with them

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as family. Meanwhile, some of these Pharisees and some of these scribes and some of these

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who don't seem to know the right hand from the left, even though they may be Jews, they will be

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cast out. Because those who are of the kingdom of God are not necessarily of the kingdom of God

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because of their lineage or their physical ancestry, but because of their faith. And this

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Roman centurion, he's got that faith. He's got that faith. So he marvels. Jesus marvels when he

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hears that. Now, I mentioned a moment ago that there was two times when Jesus marveled. There

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was other times he would say, great is your faith, like Brian read in this morning's text about the

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Samaritan woman. However, there's only one other time when he flat out marveled at faith, but it's

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not going to be for the reason you would think. Let me read from Mark 6. Now, this is early in

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Jesus' ministry as well. Mark 6, then Jesus went out from there and he went to his own country and

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his disciples followed him. And when the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue.

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And many hearing him were astonished. And they said, where did this man get these things?

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And what wisdom is this which is given to him that such mighty works are performed by his hands?

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Is this not the carpenter? This the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and

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Simon are not his sisters with us. Who is this guy is what they're asking. And so they were

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offended at him. They were offended at him. They figured, who is this guy who's doing this? We know

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him. He grew up amongst us. What's going on here? So they were offended at him. But Jesus said to

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them, a prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his

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own house. Now he could do no mighty work there except that he laid hands on a few sick people

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and healed them. And then, now listen to this, and then he marveled, he marveled, he was astonished,

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He marveled because of their unbelief.

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It seems like Jesus is marveling, all right.

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He's marveling for the exact opposite reason that he marvels in Matthew 8.

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See, both cases, faith is on the line.

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Both cases, faith is the proximate issue.

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Both cases, it's faith or lack thereof that causes him to marvel.

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In the case of the centurion, it's faith that you would never expect

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coming from the last person you'd expect to have it.

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So he marvels.

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But he also marvels when he went to his own hometown, to people who should have known better,

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to a culture he grew up in, to people who were looking for a Messiah and watched as they rejected

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him to his face. He marveled at that too. He said, it's just as amazing that that Roman centurion

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would have faith in me as it is that my own people would not. And so we see that he marveled.

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In today's text, we're going to see the focus is on both groups.

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It's not just the centurion.

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It's not only the Roman centurion that's the focus of today's text.

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It's also the Israelites, and we're going to see why as we work through it.

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All right, let me look at verses 5 through 7, and then we'll work our way through the passage.

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Verse 5, now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, pleading with him, saying,

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Lord, my servant is lying at home. He's paralyzed and dreadfully tormented.

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And Jesus said to him, I will come. I will heal him.

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All right, let's set the scene for a moment here.

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When I had the opportunity to visit Israel a few years ago,

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my favorite place is actually Capernaum.

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My very favorite place in all Israel was Capernaum.

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And the reason why is because the synagogue, it's still there.

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So Jesus enters Capernaum, which is a kind of a fishing village

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just over by the Sea of Galilee, you know, stones throw there from the sea.

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And for much of Christ's ministry, Capernaum was kind of his home base.

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This area that he's going into was largely his home base.

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I mean, he was pretty itinerant.

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He moved around a lot, but Capernaum was as much of a home as he had anywhere.

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With that said, although Capernaum was an Israelite town that Jesus spent a lot of time in,

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it was being ruled and governed, like the rest of Israel, by someone other than Israel.

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By who?

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By Rome, by the Roman Empire, so to speak.

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So that meant that Capernaum, it had its own elders and leaders, the Jewish leaders and the like,

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but it also had the boot of Rome.

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And the boot of Rome was most visible through the local Roman garrison.

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Wherever Rome conquered, they would leave soldiers.

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And the reason they left soldiers is to keep the local population in check.

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So they would deploy garrisons into regions.

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And there's every reason to think that there was a Roman garrison in Capernaum.

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Now, if there was a Roman garrison, how were those garrisons managed or governed?

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Who was a leader over them?

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Well, the centurion, the prefix, the Latin prefix cent, what does it mean?

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It means a hundred.

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that's why we get century. So the Roman centurion that we see here, he is the leader of the Roman

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garrison. It probably didn't have much more than a hundred soldiers, but he is the leader. So

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in this region of all the people who most were emblematic of the empire itself, if you had to

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put a face to Rome and you'd never seen Caesar before, you'd seen that guy, you'd seen the local

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centurion, you're familiar with him. And generally speaking, you would have not embraced such a man

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because he was the face of the empire that had oppressed you. So this guy is sort of the top dog.

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There's every reason to believe he's the top dog here in this text. Now, as a side note, if you ever

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want to read a parallel text in scripture, Luke chapter 7. In Luke chapter 7, you also see the

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same narrative, but in Luke 7, there's a few other details, including the fact that the Roman

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centurion first sent some of the Jewish elders to go and speak to Jesus on their behalf. Matthew

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kind of condenses the account down to the essentials. Luke gives a few other details.

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With that said, it's possible from what we see in the book of Luke that the centurion, although he

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was a Roman, it seems that he was a part of a group that is called the God-fearers. He was a

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Gentile, and yet he had helped contribute to the building of the local synagogue. In fact, in Luke

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chapter 7, some of the people say, hey, this guy's been really very benevolent. He's been very kindly

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to the local population. So there's some sense that he was part of this non-Jewish group called

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the God-fearers, Gentiles who had respect for Israel and even for Israel's God. So that's

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certainly possible. In fact, I think it's likely based on what we see in Luke 7. Now, let me stop

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and say something about centurions. We mentioned that a centurion is the leader of over a hundred

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men in Israel. Let's add something to the centurions. When you think of centurions in

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scripture? Did any other stand out? Well, as you think about it, you might think of the centurion

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at the cross at Calvary, the centurion who identifies correctly that this is, this is the

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son of God. In the New Testament, you find seven different centurions. And what's interesting is

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that each time a centurion is mentioned, the centurion is mentioned in terms of what seems to

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be good acts or actions. Here you see this centurion who has the greatest faith. At the cross, it was a

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centurion who spoke of the divinity of the one who had just died. In the book of Acts, there's a

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number of centurions who assist and protect Paul during the course of his ministry. So what's

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interesting is centurions, when you encounter them in scripture, when you see them in your own

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studies, notice that generally speaking across the balance of the seven, they're identified through

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good and proper activities and actions. And the interesting thing about that is that they're

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Roman centurions who are held up in this sort of positive light. If you took just a word study

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on Pharisees and centurions. You'd expect them all to be bad. Who wants to go to dinner with

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either one of those groups? Pharisee? No. Centurion? No. But the irony is centurions

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actually in Scripture, at least the ones that are identified here in Scripture,

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are identified in a more positive light. Meanwhile, the Pharisees are almost uniformly

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negative. And that's a tremendous irony. And it's an irony that Jesus is going to address

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in just a couple of verses from now. All right, let's look at verses 8 and 9. So Jesus says,

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I'll do it. I'm on the job. I'll heal. I'll be right there. Let's go heal this guy. So in verse

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eight, we read this. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that you should come

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under my roof, but only speak a word and my servant will be healed. For I'm also a man who's

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under authority and I have soldiers under me. And I say to this one, go. And he goes. And I say to

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another come, and he comes, and I say to one servant, do this, and he does it. All right,

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let's stop here. So Jesus says, hey, I'm on the job. Let's go get this done. The centurion says,

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hey, no, no, we don't need to do that. Now, let me ask you a cultural question. Would it have

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been an acceptable practice for a Jew just to go on and hang out in a Gentile home? No,

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not only unacceptable, but forbidden. This wasn't forbidden in scripture, but it was forbidden

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according to the local culture. You just didn't do that. To go into a Gentile house was to make

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yourself unclean. And that was the one thing you weren't supposed to do in any of your practices.

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From the food you ate to things you touched and the like, you didn't want to be unclean. So Jews

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just didn't go into Gentile homes. The centurion would have known that, no, that's not the practice.

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That's not what you do. If you're a Jew, you don't go out and hang out in a Roman home and you don't

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invite the Roman centurions or others into your house either. If you're a Jew, you don't hang out

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with your Gentile buddies. In fact, you don't even have any Gentile buddies because again, that's not

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the practice. So what Jesus was saying he was about to do would have been scandalous.

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It's one thing for Jesus to demonstrate a willingness to heal, but evidently this man's

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paralyzed. The man can't come to him. We know that by the word paralyzed, which is providentially

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arranged in this exact way. This servant cannot come to Jesus, so Jesus knows that he would come

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to him as an alternative. But interestingly, the centurion not only does not want to put Jesus in

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that position, but he knows it's not even necessary to begin with. So the Roman centurion was used to

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bossing people around. When you're one guy and you're in charge of 100 guys, it probably goes

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to your head a little bit. You know, you say, jump, they say, how high? And that's effectively

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what he says. He says, I say, go, and they go, and I say, come, and they come. And I know how

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authority works, Jesus. I do this all the time. This is kind of my thing. And if I know how it

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works to just say a word and make it happen, I'll bet you do too. Now, again, this is not normative

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practice. Physicians usually can't heal those they don't touch. I'm not a doctor, but I imagine the

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doctors in the room would say, in order to perform surgery on a man, the man needs to be there. The

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doctor and the man need to be in the same room. That's just standard practice. Well, again, here

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the centurion is saying that proximity is not necessary. It's not necessary. So then, how is

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it going to be accomplished? If Jesus, you don't need to come in order for it to happen, what

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needed to happen then? Well, the centurion tells Jesus in verse 8, he says, just say the word,

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just speak it, and it will be so. Speak a word, verse 8, and my servant will be healed.

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Now, was the power in the word itself? Leading question, no. The power was in the word,

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the power was in the speaker, the power was in the authority, the one saying it.

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So here, he's not appealing just to a magical word that Jesus might say, he's appealing to

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the authority of the one who would speak it. In a sense, this centurion who knew what it was like

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to be an authority and to be able to command 100 people around, he knew that Jesus' authority was

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even greater. Jesus could summon an angelic armada to do his will. He had all the power

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and the authority in the world combined. Jesus had the ability to change any circumstance he

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encountered, to conform reality around his will. And no one else could do this. And he could do it

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again, by just speaking. In the case of the Samaritan that Brian read earlier, what happened?

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He spoke. In that very hour, someone he didn't even see was healed. So the centurion knew that

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he could do it. He knew that that's what would happen. But again, that stood out against all

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the Israelites because that's not the way they thought. Like Thomas, they thought, until I touch

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it, see it, taste it, smell it, observe it, not just once, twice, but thrice, unless I have all that,

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it's not true. The centurion operated with much greater faith. So let's look at verse 10 to see

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Christ's response, when he hears that faith, when he hears the guy say, just say the word, Jesus,

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and he'll be healed. Let's see what Jesus does in verse 10. When Jesus heard this, he marveled,

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and he said to those who followed, assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith,

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not even in Israel. All right. In verse 10, Jesus is making two very important points. We usually

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only think of the one, but he's making two very important points. Now, the first is to highlight

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the faith. That's usually our takeaway. We go, wow, God, great faith. Nice job, centurion. So we read

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that and then we move on. We say, I hope I have that faith someday. Well, that's sort of, I mean,

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that's not really the point, but that's sort of the first observation you could take away. This man

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did have faith. At the very least, he had faith that was different from the faith Jesus was used

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to encountering. The faith that needed to be augmented by all the signs and wonders and all

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sorts of stuff. The sort of faith that had to have a thousand different proofs in order to finally

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trust in it. This guy had something far, far greater than that. This guy had faith in just

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the word of Jesus, not necessarily Jesus going and touching. Remember a lot of times Jesus touched

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and wiped mud on eyes and did different things. He says, just speak it and it will be so. So that

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was unusual faith. Jesus didn't encounter that very frequently. He really didn't encounter that

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almost never. It was not normative. So the first observation we can have in verse 10 is that Jesus

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says, boy, that faith is something else. And then we could try to have that sort of faith in the

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future. But, but the second huge point of verse 10 is Jesus isn't just marveling at this one guy's

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faith. Rather, he's marveling that this faith that he's witnessing from this guy did not come

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from one of his own, from an Israelite.

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He says both things in the text.

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He says, this man's faith, I haven't seen it.

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It's amazing, great faith.

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But what's more, I haven't seen such a faith

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amongst the people you would have expected

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to have seen the faith in.

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The people entrusted with the oracles of God.

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The people to whom I was sent

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don't have the sort of faith that this guy did.

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You know, Israel had been given

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every advantage under the sun

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that Rome hadn't, that Greece hadn't, that other places in Asia hadn't,

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Israel had been given every spiritual advantage in order to cultivate faith. You would have thought

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that faith would be growing on trees, so to speak, there regionally. They were God's chosen people

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living in God's chosen land. They had the temple just down the street, so to speak. They had the

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priesthood. They had God's word, his oracles, his prophets, his law to study. God's own son had been

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born in their cities God's own son had grown up in their midst and yet and yet the only marveling

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Jesus did at their faith was their lack of it in spite of all the advantages they had that's why

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Jesus he'd stop when he comes into the city before his passion week he looks at Jerusalem that has

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all that as temples as priests tall pointy hats sacrifices the whole nine yards and he looks at

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that and he weeps because they have all the advantages and yet they don't have the cumulative

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of faith of that one Roman he met in Capernaum. He said, in my hour of visitation, they knew me

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not. Despite all the advantages they have under the sun to have been able to figure out who I am,

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they did not, could not, would not. And because of that, the city is going down, which is what

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he told his own disciples in Matthew 24. There is a comeuppance on the horizon. And he's going to

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talk about it in our next verses 11 and 12. Let's look at verses 11 and 12 as we come around the

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bend here. Verse 11. And I say to you that many will come from the east and from the west, and

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they will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the

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kingdom will be cast out into darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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In verses 11 and 12, we have this study of contrast. On the one hand, there's this reference

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to the Gentile nations, people from the East, people from the West. That's everyone else.

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And he says a day is coming when people from these Gentile nations, people like my Roman

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centurion friend over here, people like him from all over the globe will come and they will sit

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down with the people that the Jews thought were theirs, Abraham, Jacob, Isaac. A Roman centurion

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will sit down with Abraham. You start saying that sort of thing, you begin to figure out why they

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killed him. He told a Jewish community that not only would Roman centurions who were oppressing

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them at that very moment sit down with Abraham, but many of them would be cast out into darkness

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where they'd be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Do you see this? It's not simply the faithless

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centurion that this text is about. It's a proclamation against the faithlessness of Israel.

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It points to the faith of this man, which is a template for the faith we have all these years

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later as people who've come from the east and the west, people who one day will sit down with

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Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So he talks about that in the positive, but he also talks about the

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negative. And the negative is this, that the very people that he had come to who did not recognize

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him in the hour of his visitation, many, if not most of them in his era, would be cast out into

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darkness. And he said this standing in a Jewish village, and he said it again and again in other

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places. Again, you wonder why they killed him. Everything he said was right. Everything he said

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was true. Everything he said, if they followed it and learned like the centurion did, would not only

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give them a saving faith, but would help them in the days yet to come. And yet, overwhelmingly,

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they rejected him, they rejected what he said. So Jesus promises in verse 11 and 12, he promises

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kingdom status to Gentiles. And then he says that some of his Israel compatriots would fail to

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receive the same status that the centurions would. Now, what's the hinge on which eternity turns? If

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you're a Roman centurion or a Pharisee, what's the hinge on which eternity turns? Heaven or hell?

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what's the hinge it's one word starts with a j jesus faith in christ jesus was the hinge

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jesus isn't just the hinge he's the door the roman entered in through christ others said nah not for

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me i mean we got moses we got the law the law come on guys the law and jesus said i'm the fulfillment

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of the law and i tell you this no one comes to the father but through me the hinge on which

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to turn, he turned. For the centurion, for the Pharisee, for you, for me, is the same. It's always

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been the same. Faith in God's own son. Faith in the one who is sent. Faith in the Messiah. We are

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all saved by grace through faith. All right, let's look at our last verse as we wrap up this morning,

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verse 13. Verse 13, then Jesus said to the centurion, go your way. And as you have believed,

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so let it be done for you. And his servant was healed that very hour. All right, verse 13,

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Jesus declares what we just mentioned. This man's faith, his faith was the proximate cause,

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was the catalyst for God's response. And to prove the point, the man's servant was healed not a week

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later, not a month later, not a year later when it can be chalked up to anything, but right then,

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that very hour. You know, there are people who come to this text within a Christian context.

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They look at this text and they go, okay, so it's all about faith. And this guy had really strong

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faith. And because of that, Jesus just jumped and did what he asked him to do. And so some

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traditions, some denominations come to what's called a word of faith understanding, a word of

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faith theology. And what they come to believe is that if you just speak it and you really believe

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it hard enough, it'll be so. You can name it and claim it. You've probably heard that phraseology.

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Now, what does that do? What wicked thing does that do to God? Well, it makes him a genie,

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not a God. It says, okay, if the centurion just had enough faith, then if I sit here and gin up

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enough faith, I'm building the faith, I can feel it building, and then I'll say it to God and he'll

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do it. As odd as that seems, there are a whole host of modern-day believers who believe that

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exact thing, that God will kind of jump at their command or their request. You know, there's a lot

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of things. I'm in vocational ministry, and there's a lot of things I ask God for. Spoiler alert,

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he hasn't done all of them. And here's the reason why, because not all the things I ask for are

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either wise or smart or appropriate. I don't necessarily know that at the time. I think it

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seems pretty shrewd when I'm telling God what he ought to do. But I can assure you that's just not

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the way that it works. My prescription, I say, all right, God, I'm bringing my prescription to

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the counter. Would you please fill it, good sir? Here's the thing. I'm putting myself in a

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deliberately weak way because that's the way it is. I come to God with my petitions and I kind of,

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here it is, here's my prescription. I assume we're seeing eye to eye, God. Well, again, if God loves

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me, he won't do a whole lot of stuff that I ask him to. Why? Because he knows better than I do.

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and much of the things that I might ask him for might be selfish or wrong

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or just not fit into his greater plan.

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And because of that, God bless him for not doing all the things I ask him to do.

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God bless him for following his own path rather than mine.

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I can't see what he sees, and neither can you.

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I can't know what he knows, and neither can you.

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And so I don't find myself trusting in my prayers

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that if I gin up enough faith that that'll do anything.

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I mean, I hope to have increasing faith.

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Don't get me wrong, that's good and appropriate.

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And I pray, and I pray, and I pray.

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Saturdays, it's most of what I do.

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I just walk around and just pray.

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But my confidence is not that if I pray just enough

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that I'll tip the balance in favor,

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or if I just close my eyes enough or say it loud enough

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that he'll respond.

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That's not faith.

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That's a prescription.

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I don't find myself trusting in my own prayers,

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but I do trust in the one who hears him

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and in his ability to respond in ways that are good and right,

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in spite of some of the things I've suggested that he might do.

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This week, you may be struggling in various aspects of your life,

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and you may have a prescription that you're giving to him.

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And it's okay to petition God.

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It's okay to ask him for stuff.

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That's not the end of the world.

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In fact, we're called to lay our burdens before him, bring him our anxieties.

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That's okay.

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We can do that.

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But we remember at the same time, he knows more than we do.

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And in all likelihood, although he will take in everything we bring to him,

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every tear we cry before him, everything we put before him,

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although he'll hear it, he will honor it in a way that doesn't necessarily answer it

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the way that we might have originally desired. This week you may be struggling with things in

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your life, and part of your problem may be the way that you petition God, but other times your

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problem may be that you just don't think you're worthy enough for God to respond. The Roman

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centurion, on the one hand, he had great faith. On the other hand, he also, on some level, didn't

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think he was worthy of God to do anything. It's good to be humble. We should be humble in our

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approach to God, but sometimes we think, God knows what I did last week. He knows what I did last

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year. He knows all of it. Why would he help me? Sometimes we think that God helps the spiritual

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people, that people really got it together. But when we're broken or when we did something really

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awful in our past, we think, I'm not in a position for him to help me. Why? Because I'm unworthy.

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Here's the thing. Jesus doesn't wait till you're worthy. If he did, he'd never answer any prayers.

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Jesus didn't wait for the leper to make his case.

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Jesus didn't wait for the centurion's servant to come to him.

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He couldn't.

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He healed him where he was at.

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The centurion had faith, but he was not worthy.

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This morning as we pray, we're not worthy that God should do anything on our behalf,

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but he is good.

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And when we come with faith that a good God will do good things,

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and that he's watching over us,

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no matter how dark the horizon may be in front of us or behind us,

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When we have faith that a good God is sovereign, he's in charge, he loves us,

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he's cradling us in his hands, and he will take us to a good ending

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even if I don't know what it is today.

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That's the sort of faith that allows you to get by day to day

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even if you don't know what tomorrow is going to bring

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or how you're going to get through the hurdles, the 10, the 50 hurdles

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that you right now could chronicle in your own life if you were to address them.

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Jesus doesn't wait until you've got your act together.

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He doesn't wait until you're worthy.

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He doesn't wait until you've ginned up enough faith.

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He doesn't wait until you've run 10,000 miles to find him on your bloody kneecaps,

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climbing up mountains to get into his presence.

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Right now, in this room, is a Savior who loves you, who cares for you,

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who answers prayers, and who will meet you in whatever condition of faith you have today,

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even if it is that of a mustard seed.

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My encouragement would be the same encouragement we see in today's passage

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to lepers, to centurions, and to others.

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Trust in him.

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Let's pray.