How to Impress God

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I had what was for me an earth-shattering realization this week, and that is that it is. . .

Most of what is on social media is just designed to try to impress people. And you’re probably saying, where has he been? That that was shocking to me.

But there’s a lot that I don’t notice. I can be a little slow. I don’t follow a lot of celebrities and entertainment type people on social media.

Most of my social media feeds are related to farming and homesteading, and you wouldn’t think there’s a whole lot of glamour in that. But I got to realize this occurred to me because I was watching a reel on Instagram where a lady was talking about something she had done in her chicken farm, and I thought, this doesn’t look anything like where my birds live. It’s everything so nice and so pretty and so clean, and she’s out there in a clean, nice outfit, and we come back from handling the birds looking like we’ve gone to war.

And I just, Madeline, God love her, she had to go in and do a lot of my stuff this week because it’s so wet from all the rain. And I saw even the chickens sinking about that deep in, and I thought there’s no hope for me, and the galoshes won’t fit me. So she’s in there trudging around.

It’s just a mess. There’s nothing idyllic about it. And I looked at this and thought, That is just bizarre.

And how long did it take this woman to stage that? And then I started looking at a lot of these. Everybody’s got nicely manicured lawns and porches that are clean and homes that are clean and children that are clean.

Just, this is not real life. And I realized a lot of this is done. Yes, they’re giving helpful tips, but they’re doing this to impress.

They’re just doing this to impress. And then there are other things where they’re just open about the fact that they’re on there telling you how to impress other people. Somewhere the algorithm that decides what you see is messed up because something popped up, how to impress somebody on a first date.

And I thought one of my goals in life is to die a happy man without ever having to go on a first date again. Amen? Or there was another one, how to blow somebody’s mind at a job interview.

And I thought, I don’t want to do that again either. So unless Instagram knows something I don’t know, Hopefully, I’m not looking at a job interview anytime soon. So I’m looking at the, but it’s all about how to impress people.

And I realized how much time we spend thinking about how to impress other people. Even if we would say, well, I don’t care what anybody thinks about me. Sometimes our actions show something different.

Most of us are very concerned to one degree or another about impressing people. Have you ever thought, though, about what it takes to impress God? Because around the same time I had this realization about social media, and I’m apparently the last person in the Western world to realize that that’s what social media is for, around the same time I had that realization, I was also looking at the text that we’re in this morning as we continue our study of the book of Luke and come to Luke chapter 7, and lo and behold, I come across a story where Jesus was impressed by somebody.

And so this morning, I want us to look at what it takes to impress God, because it’s very different from what it takes to impress other people. And so we’re going to read this story where Jesus was impressed by somebody. We’re going to be in Luke chapter 7, and we’re going to start in verse 1.

So if you’d turn with me to Luke chapter 7, and once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, and if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 7, it’ll be on the screen for you so you can read along as well. But here’s what he says in this story about this man who managed to impress Jesus. Starting in verse 1, it says, When he had completed all his discourse in the hearing of the people, that’s talking about Jesus.

The last few weeks we’ve looked at this sermon on the plain. That’s what it’s talking about. So when Jesus had finished this sermon on the plain in the hearing of the people, he went to Capernaum.

And a centurion slave who was highly regarded by him was sick and about to die. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders asking him to come and save the life of his slave. When they came to Jesus, they earnestly implored him, saying, He is worthy for you to grant this to him, for he loves our nation, and it was he who built us our synagogue.

Now Jesus started on his way with them, and when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, Lord, do not trouble yourself further, for I am not worthy for you to come under my roof. For this reason I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man placed 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.

Now when Jesus heard this, he marveled at him, and turned and said to the crowd that was following him, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith, And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health. And you may be seated. This morning, we’re going to look at the things about this man that were impressive from a human standpoint.

As a matter of fact, as we read about him, some of those things probably already leap off the page at you. Because we would look at the same things that people in that day would look at. The things that we would say on paper make this man very impressive.

But those were not the things that mattered to Jesus. So we’re going to look at the things that made Him impressive to them and the things that made Him impressive to Jesus and the difference between the two. Because we can learn from that difference.

And when we find ourselves tempted to emphasize in our own lives the things that impress other people, it can be a reminder to us to stop and think about the things that impress God. There’s nothing wrong with impressing other people. There’s nothing wrong with being good at things and doing a good job.

There’s nothing wrong with those things. It just shouldn’t be our emphasis to the point that we forget about the things that impress God. So what we see here right off the bat as we’re looking at this man and his story, we see that humans are more concerned with our attributes, our abilities, and our appearance than God is.

We see this from the description of the man in the first five verses. This centurion was an impressive individual. He was somebody that you would have looked at and thought, Now, there’s an important man, or there’s a good man. He’s somebody that would have stood out to people.

Just by virtue of his rank, we can make some assumptions about what kind of person he is. Now, I’ve never served in the military, but I’ve been around enough of you who have, and heard enough jokes that being an officer is not a guarantee of any. .

. according to people’s, oh, how do I say this? According to jokes that I’ve heard made, being an officer is not always a guarantee of any particular skill.

But when you talk about particular officers, I’ve heard people described with respect and glowing terms. When my grandfather died, he was buried in our family cemetery, so there was nobody to put the grave marker there. It was provided to him by the Veterans Administration, and it was sent to the funeral home weeks after the funeral. I had to take my truck and trailer and go get the headstone and transported it out to the family cemetery, and some gentlemen from the Choctaw Nation came out and helped, and we set up the marker ourselves. But when I went out to get the marker from behind the funeral home, one of the funeral directors was out there, and we were talking about my grandfather, and I said, I was talking about what an amazing man he was, and he looked at his headstone and said, well, if he was a first sergeant, he had to be.

He had to have been impressive, and I didn’t really understand that, but after doing some research, I realized first sergeant, they’re in charge of a company of men. They’re not an officer, but as far as the enlisted men, They’re the ranking enlisted man, if I’m using the right terminology. And you’re not always just handed that position.

He had to work his way to that position. I’ve heard stories about people, oh, so-and-so, he went to church here and he made general. We talk about these ranks that people achieve. And jokes aside, usually you have to earn those.

You have to have done something to demonstrate your leadership abilities, your battle skills, your bravery, your capability with administration, your capability with social and political things. And it was no different for a Roman centurion. For this man to be taken out of the company that he served in and to be put over a hundred or so men as their leader, he had to have shown some capabilities, some leadership skills.

That already you’re looking at this guy and saying, there’s something impressive about this man. In addition, he seems to have been unusually compassionate. That’s not necessarily something that Roman centurions were known for.

But when you look at verse 2, it talks about his slave here that he highly regarded. He had some. .

. Christy didn’t know what I was going to be preaching on this. Well, I mean, you probably knew the text, but you didn’t know where I was going with it.

When she talked about honoring somebody. As a free Roman man, you did not have to honor people like slaves in your household. And yet he cared enough about this man.

It says he honored him. He esteemed him. And he actually went to enough effort to go and seek out a Jewish healer.

It was somebody that really didn’t run in the circles. He didn’t. And it might have been embarrassing a little bit to go and ask this itinerant preacher to come and do something for his slave.

He was also attuned enough to the situation in Galilee that he was aware of Jesus. It said he had heard about Jesus in verse 3. And he knew just the people to go and find to send on his behalf.

The Jews and Romans did not always get along. So it said something for this man that he was able to convince these Jewish leaders to come and do him a favor and go to Jesus, who they weren’t necessarily all that enthusiastic about either. Are you beginning to see the picture here that this is just an unusual man?

He’s unusually good at dealing with people, at leading people, at convincing people to do things. He’d shown great care and generosity toward the Jewish people. He’d built their synagogue.

He’d even earned the admiration of the Jewish leaders. Like I said, they didn’t necessarily like the Romans, but they liked this guy. Verse 5 tells us, so much so that they went to Jesus and they told Jesus that this man is worthy.

We know he’s a Gentile. We know he’s a Roman. We know he’s part of the brutal Roman army, but this guy, he’s worthy.

And what they’re doing is they’re trying to diplomatically twist Jesus’ arm and say, he deserves this. You need to do this for him. You need to grant this request because he’s worth it.

For these elders, there were a lot of their own people they wouldn’t even have said that about. But there was something about this man that convinced them that he was worthy. And the way these elders looked at him is the way we often look at ourselves, the way we often look at other people, we look at what boxes a person can check.

We look at what characteristics they have, what attributes, what do they look like, what have they done, what are they capable of doing, and we make judgments about them based on those things, and we try to determine how worthy somebody is for this or that. I heard news stories this week about the new pope, and everybody’s trying to guess what kind of what kind of pope he’s going to be. And really what they’re going off of is I heard discussions of he went to this school that I’d never heard of, but apparently is a huge deal. And he was the head of this organization within the Catholic Church.

And they’re making these determinations based on what boxes he checks. We do that on a smaller scale. I’ve sat in on search committees for ministry things, and you’re looking through all these resumes, and I’ve heard somebody make the statement, well, I don’t know about that guy because he went to this school.

What does that matter? Well, everybody I’ve known from that school was kind of snotty. Okay, do we know anything about this guy?

No, but he went to that school. Okay, great. So we’re really just reducing people at this point to the boxes they check.

It’s unfortunate, but that kind of thing happens. We make determinations based on what we observe. God is different though.

Thankfully, God is different. We go all the way back to 1 Samuel and the story of when God sent Samuel to call the next king of Israel because Saul just wasn’t cutting it anymore. And he goes to the house of Jesse and he’s looking through Jesse’s sons and Samuel thinks, surely it’s got to be this guy.

He looks really impressive. He looks really good. He seems on paper like he should be the guy.

And God tells him there in 1 Samuel 16, 7, God sees not as man sees, for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. And that’s when God sent Samuel to call King David. who was not the person on paper that you would have picked to be king of Israel.

It was exactly the person God had in mind. There’s this principle throughout Scripture that God doesn’t pick based on what boxes we check. God is not all that concerned with our credentials, what skills we have, where we went to school, what family we came from, how much money we make.

God is not concerned about checking those boxes. That’s what man focuses on, but God looks at the heart. So we’ve got this man who was very impressive, but even he recognized he was not impressive enough for God.

As we go to verses 6 through 8, his response, as he has time to think about it, shows us that all of our goodness can’t make us worthy by God’s standards. You take all the things that you can do, all the credentials you have, all the things you can do that are impressive. And I guarantee you, everybody in this room has something you can do or something you’ve done that would impress on paper.

But that’s not enough for God, because that’s not what He’s looking at. The things that impress us don’t impress God. I remember right after I earned my doctorate, and somebody said, oh, that’s something along the lines of, oh, that’s so impressive.

You have to be really smart to get a doctorate. I said, you would think that until backstage at the graduation when they had all these PhD candidates and told them to line up by last name in alphabetical order, and they had to bring in somebody to help. And suddenly, some of those credentials are not as impressive anymore.

The things that we have on paper don’t impress God because He sees who we really are. The centurion had second thoughts about his request. After he sent these people to go and bring Jesus back to heal His servant, he had second thoughts about it, not because he began to doubt Jesus’ abilities, But he had second thoughts about his own approach. Did I handle this the right way?

So by the time Jesus got close to the house, the centurion was sending word through some friends in verse 6 that he no longer expected Jesus to come to the house. He said, Lord, don’t trouble yourself. Don’t bother coming to the house.

And it’s a strange thing for us. Why should Jesus not come to the house? Well, traditionally, and I couldn’t find anything in the Old Testament that said this was a rule.

It was one of those things, I think, that had become a tradition based on things in the Old Testament. But traditionally, Jewish people didn’t go into Gentiles’ homes because of the risk of uncleanness, ceremonial uncleanness, not that they had filthy homes, although some of them did, I’m sure. But traditionally, they just didn’t go into the Gentiles’ house.

It wasn’t an Old Testament rule, but it was a cultural thing that had developed over time. And so when he kind of came to his senses, the centurion who knew enough about Jewish life looked at Jesus, looked at this man that he held in high enough regard that he thought this man can heal my servant, and said, I should not have asked him to come to my house, because after all, I’m just a Gentile. I’m not part of the covenant with God.

What right do I have to expect that he would come to my house? But there was more to it, even than that. There was more to it than just, you’re Jewish and I’m a Gentile and I shouldn’t have asked.

He considered himself to be personally unworthy. Because you look at what he says in verse 7, and he says, for this reason I did not consider myself worthy to come to you. He’s talking about back in the very beginning when I made the request. He said, I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come and approach you.

It wasn’t just about, I shouldn’t have asked you to come to my house. I’m not good enough that I should expect to be able to come to you. And that’s why he sent other people.

That’s why he sent the Jewish elders as intermediaries, because he recognized that there was something about Jesus that he was unworthy in contrast to who Jesus is. And why would he consider himself unworthy? If he’s looking at Jesus and he’s a Jewish teacher, he’s a healer, he’s a miracle worker, you might be in awe of his power, but you’re not necessarily going to jump immediately to I’m unworthy even to come and see you.

But look at how he describes Jesus in verse 8 and the authority that he says he recognizes Jesus has. And by the way, I missed this until I was putting together the handout that I would have given you tonight, but is out there. In verse 7, the way we read it, he says, just say the word and my servant will be healed.

That’s strong enough. Hey, you don’t even have to come here. You just say the word and he will be healed.

In Greek, that is a third person imperative, which doesn’t, unless you’re a grammar nerd, doesn’t mean a whole lot, but we don’t have those in English. An imperative is a command. We can do first person imperatives.

We can say, let’s go. That’s a command. You and the kids, come on, we’re going to the car, let’s go.

You can also do a second person command, go, tell somebody else to go. We don’t really have a way to command a third party, but in Greek, they do. And the closest we can translate this into English is, if you say the word, he must be healed.

It’s something we can’t really express very well in English. But he’s saying to Jesus that if you do this, if you say the word, it’s a command to that guy that he will be healed. And it’s much stronger than what we even read here in the English.

He is expressing enormous faith in the power of Jesus to do this. And then we go to verse 8. He says, I’m also a man placed under authority.

I have authority vested in me as part of the Roman army. And he’s comparing himself to Jesus because he says also, Jesus was invested with tremendous authority because of being sent by God the Father. Now, we recognize he’s God the Son.

They didn’t understand all of that at this point. But he’s saying, just like I have the authority to serve on behalf of the emperor, you have authority to serve on behalf of God. And he says, just like I tell a soldier go, and he goes, and I tell a soldier come, and he comes, or I tell my slave do this, and he does this.

He said, in the same way, you can command his illness, and he must be healed. He’s not looking at Jesus as just a healer, as just a teacher, as just a miracle worker. He’s looking at Jesus as something more than a man.

And I believe he arrived at that conclusion because back in verse 3, all the things that he had heard about Jesus, that Jesus had done and taught. Does this mean he understands everything about who Jesus is? No, but he understood enough to recognize this was no ordinary man.

And he says, I was not even worthy to come to you. That is a huge admission from somebody who is this impressive on paper, has all of these characteristics and all these qualifications that he would look at this man who doesn’t even have a place to live and has assembled a random collection of outcasts to follow him, to look at him and say, I am not even worthy to come to you, but I believe you can do this. And if you do this, if you say the word, he must be healed.

He reacted to Jesus the way others did, many others did when they witnessed his power. He was amazed and he recognized his own sinfulness. And we see this pattern repeated all throughout Scripture.

When somebody recognizes the holiness and the authority of God, it shows them their own sin in contrast, and they just kind of fall apart at the recognition of their own unworthiness. Wednesday night, I talked a little bit about Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah sees a vision of God in the temple and falls all to pieces because he recognizes his own sinfulness.

And the closer we come and the more we glimpse the light of God’s glory, the more that light exposes our flaws and our sinfulness. I believe that’s what this man experienced. All of our goodness, everything that made this man impressive on paper wasn’t enough to impress God.

And that’s because God is not impressed by our credentials, but by our faith. We look at verses 9 and 10, and it says Jesus marveled at him. Now, I struggle with this because I believe the Bible teaches that Jesus is God in human flesh, that he is fully God and fully man.

So I don’t think Jesus got surprised in the same way that you and I would get surprised. Jesus knew what was in people’s hearts. Jesus read people’s thoughts.

Jesus is omniscient. So when it says he marveled, it’s probably a little bit different from the way you and I would marvel. Like when I come to a realization and say, man, I can’t believe that.

Or man, I didn’t see that coming. Okay, Jesus, Jesus never had that thought. Oh, I didn’t see that coming.

But Jesus expresses what we understand as amazement. What would for us be amazement? Jesus marveled.

Jesus was impressed by this man’s faith. That was what impressed him was his faith. And he drew a contrast here between the faith of this man and the faith of all the people that he had encountered in Israel.

And he says, I have not seen faith like this anywhere, even in Israel. Now, the reason why that matters is because Israel, they were the ones who He had initially come to as their Messiah. They were the ones who for thousands of years had been in a covenant relationship with God.

They’d had access to the Scriptures. They knew about God. They should have been the ones that had the spiritual maturity to respond to Jesus in faith.

Whereas the Gentiles didn’t know God. The Gentiles were strangers from God. They disobeyed God.

They worshiped their own pagan gods. They did everything they could to ignore God’s word and God’s way. So you have the people who should have known Jesus and should have responded to Jesus in faith, at best weren’t sure, and at worst rejected him.

And then you had this man over here who was lost as a goose, and he saw Jesus and responded in faith that was so far beyond what Jesus had even seen in Israel. Jesus marveled at it. For us, if we’d been there, it’s shocking.

We wouldn’t expect that. It’s so much more, the faith is so much more incredible when you realize this man’s spiritual background. But Jesus was impressed with this man in a way he was never impressed with the elders.

He was never impressed with the Pharisees and all their rituals and all their deeds. He was never impressed with the people at the temple. He was never impressed with the teachers of the law in this way.

As much as he marveled at this Gentile, this person from a pagan background, who looked at him and as much as he understood of who Jesus was, he believed and he trusted that he could do what he said he would do. What makes a difference with God is not where we’ve come from. It’s not what we do.

It’s not what boxes we check. It’s not how impressive we are on paper. Listen to me, you’re never going to impress everybody.

I’m never going to impress everybody. One of the hardest realizations I have to remind myself of all the time is sometimes you can do everything within your power and people are just going to think what they’re going to think. And you just have to learn to be okay with that.

You’re never going to impress everybody, no matter how hard you try. You’re never going to be able to check all the boxes. And if that’s your strategy for being right with God is to try to check enough boxes, you’re never going to be able to check enough boxes.

but he’s made it clear there’s one box and one box only that we have to check. Do we trust him enough to take him at his word? Do we have faith that he is who he says he is?

Do we have faith that he can do what he says he’ll do? For you and me, it’s do we have faith to believe the promises that he’s given us? Do we have enough trust in him that we’re willing to walk by faith when he calls us to do things that we don’t have a guarantee of, but because we trust him.

Now, we don’t see exactly how all the circumstances are going to turn out, but we trust him to do what he said he would do because we believe he is who he said he was. That’s the kind of thing that impresses God. And this morning, if you’ve come with the idea that if I, you know, I’m going to go to church, I’m going to go to church more often and try to do right and try to get right with God.

That’s great. We’re glad you’re here. But checking that box of going to church is not going to make you right with God, no matter how many times you check that box.

What if I give money? Hey, that’s great. We’re thankful for that.

But no matter how many times you check that box, it’s not going to be enough. What if I just try harder to be nice to other people, to be kind, to do the right thing? You will never be able to check that box enough.

Because checking those boxes don’t deal with our problem of sin. You and I have sinned against a holy God, and that sin had to be paid for. Jesus Christ came to take responsibility for that sin.

That’s why he was nailed to the cross and shed his blood and died, was to pay for our sin in full. And now there’s only one box left for us to check. Do you believe that he died for your sins and rose again?

Do you trust him to be your Savior? Do you trust Him enough then to go and follow Him?

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