Transcript
Luke chapter 7, it should be noted that the story we are about to read immediately follows our Lord’s Sermon on the Plain. And it immediately follows His conclusion in which He exhorts His listeners to build their lives on the solid rock and not on the sand.
Reading therefore Luke chapter 7, verses 1 to 10.
Now when He concluded all His sayings in the hearing of the people, He entered Capernaum. And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear to him, was sick and ready 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. And when they came to Jesus, they begged Him earnestly, saying that the one for whom He should do this was worthy, for he loves our nation, and has built us a synagogue.
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. 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.”
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 those who were sent, returning to the house, found the servant well who had been sick.
Here is a name you ought to remember: Christopher Lee Marshall. Christopher is a pilot. And just last summer he flew his way into the aviation record books. Not bad when you stop to consider that at the time Christopher was only four feet eleven inches tall. He was only ten years of age, and he was a fourth grader in Oceano, California.
Now Christopher comes by his flying abilities naturally because his father is a Delta Airlines pilot. And this is what Christopher did last July the 18th. He took off from California on the first leg of a journey that would carry him 5,200 miles all the way across the United States and all the way back again. And when he landed on August the 13th at Burbank, California, he had broken the record previously held by an 11-year-old Texan named Kevin John Hill. And Christopher had become the youngest pilot ever to fly all the way across the United States and back again.
And didn’t he have fun? You better believe it. Christopher said the trip was so, so, so much fun. The sights I saw along the way like the Grand Canyon and stuff were unbelievable. Nothing like you see in the geography books. But the highlight of Christopher’s flight was when he was flying near a storm right over our own state of Texas. “I could see its winds whoosh around and around and around,” he said. But he managed to keep the plane on course. Most of the way we bounced up and down and all around. But he made it back.
And one of the reasons he made it back was he had a lot of good things with him in the plane. For one thing he had his flight instructor Roy Yates. And Roy Yates claims that Christopher did almost all of the flying. When he landed at Burbank, California, the backseat of Christopher’s plane was filled with candy wrappers and half-eaten boxes of breakfast cereal. And when he climbed out of the cockpit what do you suppose he waved? He waved a teddy bear. A teddy bear.
But hey, if you’ve got the courage to fly all the way across the United States and back again, nobody’s going to accuse you of being a sissy for having a teddy bear. And especially if you’re in the fourth grade and you’re only ten years old.
And this morning, friends, I’d like to talk to you about your own long-distance flight across the landscape of life. And I’d like to talk to you about your teddy bear. Your teddy bear.
Now don’t tell me that you don’t have a teddy bear because I’m not going to believe it. I’m not going to buy it. We all know what teddy bears were good for when we were kids, don’t we? When we were a little scared it was nice to squeeze the teddy bear just a little bit harder. And when the lights were out at night and it was dark in our room, it was really comforting to have the company of our teddy bear.
And we know childhood teddy bears all wear out and we throw them away. But when we grow up we get grown-up kinds of teddy bears. And then when we’re a little scared or a little insecure we sort of squeeze them. We clutch them when we’re facing a future that’s dark and foreboding. And we all need them. We all need them. And it would be very, very foolish for us to climb into the cockpit of life without a teddy bear.
So maybe the title of my message this morning is one of the strangest sermon titles that you have ever heard. But here it is. This is my title: How Good Is Your Teddy Bear? I’ll bet you nobody has asked you that question for years and years. But I’m asking you that this morning. How good is your teddy bear?
Now folks, it’s confession time. And I’m going to admit to you right up front that when I was a little boy I had two teddy bears. And with great originality and tremendous creativity I called one of them Teddy Bear and the other guy I called Fuzzy Bear. Now I also had some other stuffed animals too. But I refuse to tell you a single thing about Jackie Bow Wow or Whoopi Wolf or Horsey Warsi or Chicken Dickon. And if any of you folks ask me about those stuffed animals after the meeting I’m going to pretend I didn’t even hear your question.
But I can tell you this. For the very best of my recollection Fuzzy Bear outlived Teddy Bear. And toward the end of Fuzzy Bear’s career he had lost a lot of his stuffings and he had lost about 90% of his hair. And maybe that’s why one of the favorite rhymes around the Hodges household was that little nursery ditty: Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his hair. Then Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he? And that’s the way it goes with our childhood teddy bears, don’t you agree?
But this morning I’d like to introduce you to a grown-up man who had a very adult kind of teddy bear. And I want to assure you that his teddy bear had all of its insides and it had all of its fur and it was very firm and it was very solid. And when he gripped it in time of emergency it didn’t let him down.
And I hope you’ll let me have a little preacher’s freedom this morning and continue to talk to you in teddy bear terminology. Because the very first thing that I want to tell you about this man’s teddy bear is that it had a lot of nice soft pleasing fur. Or to put it another way, this was a man who had a lot of compassion. This was a man who had a whole lot of love.
I’m surprised by that. You know, I’m really sort of surprised by that. You see the man we’re talking about was a centurion. And probably a Roman centurion. And that meant that he was in the army or had been in the army. And that he was an officer in the army. And yes, he may now have been retired and living in Galilee because as far as we know there were no Roman troops stationed in Galilee at this time.
But I want you to understand this. That nobody got to be a centurion in the Roman army by being everybody’s favorite doormat. You didn’t reach this position if you had a Mr. Milquetoast type of personality. A centurion commanded a hundred men. And he had to be tough. He had to know how to give orders in battle and expect those orders to be obeyed. And in the heat of battle he had to be cool. He had to be calm. And he had to be efficient.
And to a very large extent the success of the Roman legions depended upon the efficiency of their centurions. And it’s not surprising that almost every centurion that we meet in the New Testament shows signs of being a remarkable and outstanding man.
And yet, and yet, here is this tough, battle-hardened soldier who has a slave who is seriously sick and about to die. And even though that slave was nothing more than a piece of property, the centurion cared about him. The slave was dear to him. And the centurion did something that was very unusual. He went to the Jewish leaders of his community and he urged them to go to Jesus and to beseech Jesus to come to the centurion’s house and to heal his servant.
And the elders of Capernaum are only too glad to do this. And when they got to Jesus they assured our Lord that the man who was asking this favor was worthy of this favor. And they said because he loves our nation and he’s built us a synagogue.
How impressive. How very, very impressive. A rough, rugged Roman soldier who cares about his slave, who loves his slave. But more than that, he loves the foreign race which he has conquered. And he has dug deeply into his own pocketbook so that the city of Capernaum can have a synagogue where people can go and hear the Word of God.
And dear friends, wouldn’t you admit that this is a lot of nice soft pleasing fur? Wouldn’t you agree that this man possessed a lot of compassion and a lot of love?
Let me stop just here to give you a warning. One of the greatest dangers that we face as individuals and as a Christian church is the danger of losing our compassion for people. Losing our concern for other men and women. We are in danger more than we know of losing our love for our brothers and sisters in the Christian church and losing our burden for unsaved men and women who are all around us.
And the Bible says in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision really matters. What matters is faith that worketh by love. And nothing works right in the Christian life if we lose our love.
Years ago in England there was a little girl by the name of Catherine who was running down the street with a hoop and a stick. And she happened to see a criminal arrested by a constable. And he was taking him to the lockup. And there was a mob around the criminal and they hooted him and they derided him with catcalls. And there was something about the loneliness of this criminal that touched this little girl’s heart. And quick as you could think of it she sprang to his side and she walked down the street with him. Because she wanted somebody to know that there was somebody who cared for this man in his suffering, whether he had done good or bad.
And would you believe this? When that little girl grew up she married a man by the name of William Booth. William and Catherine Booth founded one of the most compassionate organizations that has ever existed in the world. They founded the Salvation Army.
And it’s amazing. It’s amazing what God can do through a heart that has compassion for other people.
There is a very lovely Jewish legend about two brothers who lived side by side on adjoining farms. One of them was married and had a large family. The other lived alone. One night the married brother was lying awake and he was saying to himself, “My brother lives alone and he doesn’t have a wife and children to comfort him in the way that I do. While he is asleep I will get up and take some of my sheaves of grain and carry them into his property and put them in his field.”
And at the very same time the other brother was lying awake. And this is what he was thinking. He says, “My brother is married and he has a large family and his needs are greater than mine. And so while he is asleep I’m going to get up and get some of my sheaves of grain and carry them and place them in his field.”
And so it happened that they both got up at the same time and they met each other at the line that divided their property. And there they embraced. And the legend says that years later the temple of God at Jerusalem was built in that location. The altar of God stood on the very spot where the two brothers embraced.
Now it’s a legend but its lesson is very true to life. For wherever there are brothers who can embrace in compassion and concern for one another there God can be manifested and God can be worshipped and served.
And make no mistake about it. The story that we are talking about this morning would never have happened. It would never have happened at all if the centurion had not cared for other people.
But if this man’s compassion is like nice soft gentle fur, let me carry the comparison one step further. This man’s teddy bear had all its insides together. It had all of its insides together. For you see at the very heart, at the very core of this man’s relationship to God there was a spiritual quality that is absolutely priceless.
You see after he had sent the delegation of Jewish elders to meet Jesus, this centurion began to think. And he began to wonder if he had made a mistake. He began to realize that he was causing Jesus some unnecessary trouble. I mean he had asked Jesus to travel to his house and Jesus really didn’t need to do that.
And so he collected some of his friends and he sent these friends to Jesus with a new message. And that’s how it happened as Jesus was getting close to the house that He was met by these friends. And the words that the centurion speaks to Jesus through these friends are splendid and they’re completely unforgettable.
For the centurion says to our Lord, “Lord, don’t trouble Yourself. Don’t cause Yourself any more trouble by traveling. I’m not even worthy when I stop to think of it to have You under my roof. And to tell you the truth that is the reason why I didn’t even come to You in the first place in person. Because I did not consider myself worthy to stand in Your presence.”
Very impressive, don’t you agree? Very, very impressive.
And if it is true that this centurion was a man of great compassion, it is also true that he was a man of great condescension. He was a man of deep humility of spirit. And in the depths of his heart he understood profoundly his own insignificance in comparison with the greatness of Jesus Christ.
And how sad it is sometimes, isn’t it, friends, when we get a little mad at God because He’s not doing things the way we want Him to do them. He doesn’t seem to be exerting Himself very much on our behalf. And it’s tragic when we get to the place where we feel we not only deserve to stand in His presence but we even deserve the favors and the blessings which we are asking Him for.
You see the Bible says God resists the proud and He gives grace to the humble. And the Bible also says humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him because He cares for you.
And you and I will never be able to cast our cares on Jesus Christ the way we should unless first we have a humble and condescending heart.
There used to be a governor of Texas by the name of Neff. And on one occasion Governor Neff went to a state penitentiary to address the prisoners. And after his talk was over he announced that he would remain behind for a while to talk to anyone who wanted to talk to him. And he also stated that anything that was said to him would be said in confidence and nothing would be used against the person who said it.
A large number of prisoners stayed behind to talk to the governor. Many of them were lifers. One after another they came before the governor to explain to him that the reason they were there was because of an injustice or because of a frame-up or because of a judicial error in their case.
But there was one man who came to the governor and he said this. He said, “Mr. Governor, I just want to say I’m guilty. I did the thing which they sent me here for. But I believe I’ve paid the price. And if I were given the opportunity to get out of here I would do my very best to be a good citizen.”
Do I need to tell you that out of all of those men the one that the governor pardoned was that man?
And you see when we come into the presence of the Governor of the universe, when we stand before the King of Kings, there’s no use pretending to be something that we are not. We may as well own up to our unworthiness and cast ourselves on His mercy.
On one occasion the chaplain of the United States House of Representatives was late and could not open the session in prayer. So an older congressman got up and he went forward and he prepared to pray. And the Speaker of the House rapped hard with his gavel on the desk and he said, “By what right does the gentleman pray?” And the older congressman said, “By the right of any sinner, sir.” And the Speaker of the House permitted him to pray.
And we ought not ever to forget that the only real right that we have to stand in the presence of God is that we are sinners saved by His matchless grace. And apart from that we couldn’t even come into His presence.
It is said that the fishermen in Brittany in France used to have a very simple prayer which they prayed when they launched their boats out into the deep water. And this was their prayer: “Keep me, my God. My boat is small and the ocean is wide.”
And happy is that Christian man. Happy is that Christian woman who always understands that his boat is small, that the ocean is wide, and that the Lord our God is very, very great.
So the centurion understood that about Jesus, didn’t he? He knew that. But there was something else that he knew as well. And the statement that he goes on to make to Jesus through the lips of his friends is one of the greatest statements that has ever been expressed by man.
Already the centurion has admitted that he’s unworthy to have Jesus standing under his roof. And then he says this to our Lord, “But speak the word. Just say the word, and my servant will be well. I’m a man under authority and I understand authority. I have soldiers under me. And I say to one of them, ‘Go,’ and he goes. And to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. And I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
Staggering words. Staggering, staggering words. You see the centurion is saying to Jesus, “You don’t need to come a step further. Your word has absolute authority. And if You say to the sickness in my servant, ‘Go,’ it will go in the same way that my soldier or my servant goes at my command.”
And it isn’t often, folks, that we read that Jesus marvels. But the Bible says that when Jesus heard these things He marveled at him. He marveled at him. And He turned to the crowd and He said, “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.”
And are you surprised that when these friends got back to the house they found this servant who had been sick and ready to die completely healed?
And if the centurion was a man of great compassion and if he was also a man of great condescension and he was both of these things, the centurion was also a man of great confidence. He was a man of great confidence. He had tremendous faith in the absolute power and authority of the word of Jesus Christ. “Just say the word and my servant will be healed.”
And that brings me back to the teddy bear. You know the name of this man’s teddy bear? Its name was faith. This man’s teddy bear was his deep confidence in the power and authority of Jesus’ word.
And folks, that’s a teddy bear we need everywhere we go.
You know what caused me to lose interest in Fuzzy Bear years ago? Well it wasn’t just that I got older. That was one of the things. But when Fuzzy Bear lost his hair he wasn’t any fun to touch anymore because the fabric underneath was rough and coarse. And when Fuzzy Bear lost his stuffings he wasn’t any fun to squeeze anymore because he collapsed every time I squeezed him.
And here’s this: If you lose your compassion for other people, if you lose the condescension of a humble heart, there is a danger that you will lose your confidence in the Word of God. Faith worketh by love. And God gives grace to the humble.
So if we are people who care about other people, if we are men and women who have a humble heart, we can also be men and women who have great confidence in God’s Word.
There’s a beautiful story that comes out of the Civil War. During his final campaign through the South General Sherman changed commanders over some of his divisions. And he appointed General Howard as commander of a very special division. Not very long after that the war came to an end and there was going to be a grand review of the entire army in Washington D.C.
The night before the review General Sherman summoned General Howard to his quarters and he said, “General Howard, the political friends of the officer whom you replaced as head of your division are determined that he shall ride at the head of the division. And I would like you to help me out.”
When General Howard’s first response to that was very much like our response would be, he said, “But it’s my command and I have a right to ride at the head of my division.”
“Of course you do,” said General Sherman. “You led those men through Georgia and the Carolinas. But Howard, you are a Christian and you can stand the disappointment.”
Now General Howard was a Christian. He was also a good soldier. And after all this was his commander-in-chief. And so General Howard replied, “If you put it on that basis there can be only one reply. Let him ride at the head of the division. Yes sir, General Sherman, let him have that honor. But you will report to me at nine o’clock in the morning and you will ride at my side at the head of the entire army.”
Now folks, we’ve been talking about a soldier this morning who recognized his Commander-in-Chief and who acknowledged the authority of his Commander’s words. And Jesus put him at the front of the army of faith and praised his faith more than the faith of anybody in Israel.
And here’s this: If you would like to bring up the ragtag rear of the Christian army build your life on the shifting sands of your own opinions and your own desires. But if you want to stand tall in the army of faith build your life on the solid rock of the absolute authority and power of the Word of God.
Or to put it another way, wherever you go in life, whatever you do, take this teddy bear with you.
Shall we pray?
Father, thank You for this man, this Roman soldier whose name we don’t even know. But what a challenge to us he is by the greatness of his confidence in Your Son and in Your Son’s word. Teach us this lesson for our everyday lives, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.