A Servant's Heart

There was a battle-hardened soldier of 25 years' combat experience who returned from the war's home to his family. When he arrived, he found that one of the workers, one of the servants in his house, was sick at the point of death. Now, this soldier had stared death in the face many times over his 25 years of service on the battlefield. He knew the smell of death, the pain of death, and the helplessness anyone faces at that moment of death, no matter how tough they are, no matter how seasoned they are, everyone at that point is helpless. He knew that. He knew when he looked into the eyes of his servant that death was imminent. Yet, he also knew he had a responsibility to that servant because that servant, as he looked upon it, was a part of his family. And he knew, being a soldier, that he had a responsibility. All the medical care had been fruit fruitless, but he had heard of one other possibility. There was one other source of help that he had heard about. This gentleman, the soldier, had heard about Jesus Christ. He had heard of his miracles. If you will, take your Bibles and turn to Matthew 8. Let's read about this story in Matthew 8.

It's the story of a centurion and his servant that is told in Matthew 8 and verse 5. Where it says, Jesus had entered Capernaum, and a centurion came to him pleading with him, saying, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented. And Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this 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 it, he marveled, and he said to those who followed, assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel. And I say to you that many will come from east and west and set down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then Jesus said to the centurion, go your way, and as you have believed, so let it be done for you. And his servant was healed that same hour.

And so, a miracle, a story of a servant, a centurion, who had a servant's heart. A centurion who was a man of valor. To understand just what this centurion was, it's helpful to have a little bit of a background and to understand why Christ said what he did about this centurion. Let me tell you a little bit about what it took to become a centurion in the Roman legions.

A centurion, first of all, was over a hundred men. That's how he was called a centurion for a century or a hundred. So he was responsible for a hundred men within the legion.

To become a centurion, a man had to have at least 16 years of experience to be able to be first appointed over a hundred men. It was not a political appointment. It was based on merit, on what he had done. The Roman legions, as have been most armies, at least down to modern times, at least. The highest rank sometimes could be purchased by nobility, by those with money. And yet, at that level of the army, a centurion, he was put there because he'd earned it after 16 years of service. A centurion had to carry 90 pounds of weight, 20 miles a day, train under the harshest conditions. He had to provide, in many cases, his own weapons and his tools for fighting. He had to be able to build a bridge, wield a spear. He had to do what all the other soldiers had to do and live the same way that they lived, but he had to do it all better. And he had to make sure that they did theirs as well as he did his. The centurion always led his men from the front. When they went into battle, his spear, his sword, was the first to touch the enemy. He wasn't in the back directing things. He was leading from the front.

He had no perks. The survival rate for a centurion was quite low. They also say that they had to pay into a burial fund to pay for their own funeral.

After 25 years of service, a centurion was given a cash payment and a small plot of land, if there was enough money in the treasury when he mustered out. If there wasn't, he just left with his years of service and a thank you. He could leave camp with nothing but his honor in some cases. The centurion was also responsible for the morale of his unit. He carried out punishments as well as gave rewards. That was the type of person that became a centurion in the Roman legions. By merit, they were leaders. They had to look after their men in a combat leadership situation. So when we find this centurion in this story, and we look at this, and there are two stories of a centurion in the New Testament. This one and the one in Acts of Cornelius, who was the first among the Gentiles, whether these two were the same, we don't know. It would only be a matter of speculation if they were. But those are the two examples, whether they are two separate examples or the same one, we don't know. But this one is certainly one who had faith and is held up by Christ as one who had a great deal of faith. But consider what he did by even going to Christ in the city of Capernaum. Now Capernaum was a small fishing town on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee. It wasn't a large metropolis like Jerusalem. You can go there today and you can see the configuration of the limits of the town. It was a small village, we would call it. It was smaller than some of our smallest towns around us here in northeast Indiana.

So he would have been a man that everyone knew about. As a centurion occupying the town, he and his family would have been well known. He was a Roman. Jesus was a Jew. And he was also kind of, you know, whether he certainly came from the same region, but Christ now was out on his ministry and he had a mixed reputation among people. And certainly among the Romans and the Jewish leadership, he didn't have always a high regard. For this man, the soldier of Rome, to go to Jesus openly, as the account indicates that he did, and to walk up to him in the midst of other people and ask his help, he was taking a risk.

So his reputation to his standing. By asking him to come into his house and demonstrating a belief or a faith and a confidence in this Jew, no matter what the reputation was, he was taking a great risk of his own by going to Christ. But he wasn't concerned about that. He wasn't concerned about his reputation. He was concerned for his servant. He had an interest in helping him. And in this case, becomes a true example of service for all time. This centurion had determined in his life how to live. That's why he became a centurion. He was a warrior, but he was also a warrior who could lead men. And to lead men, you not only had to be tough, but concerned in a military situation then, as even today. The centurion had developed a code of honor that had been honed and tested through years of service to Rome. Now we could imagine that he was back home, and yet he had not lost that honor. And for a servant, for a servant, he was willing to go and do what he did. This man was exceptional. That's why he said, Jesus said, I have not seen such an example of faith at all among anyone else. This man was a centurion. He led people, but he had a servant's heart. And it is on that that we should focus for a few minutes here on this particular Sabbath. We are a week after our traditional Sabbath where we have the blessing of the children. And of course, you had no children to bless up here last week. But as we know, the second Sabbath after the Feast of Tabernacles in the church for many, many years, decades has been the traditional time set aside to have the blessing of the children.

We had one down in Indianapolis, and you had none up here. I mean, some of you need to get busy.

Now, next year in Indianapolis, God willing, we're going to have four. We got four in the oven right now down there. Found out we had three as of last week. I knew about, found out a fourth one this week. Okay, so we're going to have a big one next week. Now, it's not too late. If any of you, the rest of you, want to kind of jump in there to have somebody for next year. Well, we'll see what happens.

But because of the last Sabbath being that the Sabbath, and since I wasn't here to give you the sermon, I'm talking with you about it this morning, it is always a good time for us to focus on some aspect of what Jesus wants all of us to learn by adopting the attitude of a child. As you know, when He took those children up and He blessed them, and He said, of such are the kingdom of heaven. And if you don't have that type of an attitude, that of a child, you're not going to be in the kingdom, He said. And so we use that as an object lesson every year. And it is a good time for us to recalibrate and ask ourselves as Christians, as members of the church, where are we in developing that attitude of a child? And in this particular case, specifically a servant's heart, a servant's heart like we see here with this centurion who put into his life, his reputation, his care, and demonstrated his concern for a servant, someone that he literally owned. That's the way it was. This is not just a hired person hired to help. This was a slave in the system of the Roman Empire. But slaves often became family members, members of the household. And some slaves could even become adopted into the family and then be an heir to the individual. So it was a whole different situation than what maybe our historic understanding about slavery as the Romans had it. It's still a practice that had its problems. But this centurion looked upon this servant as his family, and he had a servant's heart. And we should understand that without this attitude today, now, in this life, we're not even progressing toward the kingdom. It's what we are being prepared for, the future role that we have. If we don't have it now, we won't have it then. It's the one role, that of a servant, that we are given the chance to all prepare for. Now, in Matthew chapter 20, turn over there. Matthew chapter 20 talked about the attitude of leadership of that of a servant. In Matthew 20, beginning in verse 25, Jesus called them to himself and he said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you. Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant, and whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. Now, this centurion we just read about was a Gentile. In other words, he was not a non-Israelite. He was an army officer, career army officer. He knew how the Gentile system of Rome worked and the hard authority and governmental approach of Rome when it worked, how exactly what it was like. He was a product of that. And when Jesus said here that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, this centurion worked within that system. It was a product of it. And yet, he was different by the example we have. He became, he served his servant.

And is it a good lesson for us, a good object lesson, an example for us to look at, what Christ brings out here as one who served, even the servant, and was willing to put his life on the chopping block, if you will, for his servant then to tie it in here.

The apostles, or soon to be apostles, hadn't yet learned that. Keep in mind, we've come from chapter 8, several months, a year and a half or whatever it is, to chapter 20 in the story of Christ's life here in Matthew. And they still haven't learned it. And he's still having to teach them, look, if you're going to be a leader, you're going to be great, you've got to be a servant, you've got to be like a servant, have a servant's heart. And they had a mixture of understanding of what they had all seen from this Roman centurion earlier up in Galilee at the city of Capernaum. And yet Jesus holds this up and shows us that this is how we are to be. And again, this is a good time of year, a week later for us here today, but for us to focus on one of the most important lessons that Jesus gives to his disciples. And you all know that he carries that on to the very night before he died, where he stooped and washed their feet. And what he said to Peter, and what we repeat every year on the Passover service, of having that foot-washing attitude. Christ carried it all the way through to the last hours of his life to show them and to show to us the attitude of a servant. That the path to greatness is through serving. And he uses that, not just here in the Gospels, but really throughout the Bible. Christ gives the example of a servant above all. It is the one role that we see straddling both the Old Testament and the New Testament. You would have to go back to Isaiah 53, and I don't have the time to do that this morning, but you might want to go back to Isaiah 53, which is what we read regarding the Passover every year, the suffering servant. Throughout those latter chapters of Isaiah, there is the concept of the suffering servant, and Jesus, the Messiah, is to suffer. Israel is even referred in there, and it would take a longer study than this, but Israel is linked into the idea of the suffering servant from about Isaiah 40 to the end of the book. And certainly, when you come to Isaiah 53, you see where that is a description of the Messiah, that he is going to suffer. He's going to be mocked, cruelly treated to become the sacrifice for Israel and ultimately for the world. So it's there in the Old Testament. Christ uses it, models it, teaches it, illustrates it, and is teaching here in the gospel accounts that of being a servant, the role of a servant, to serve rather than to lord it over. And it is the one role, above all, that every one in the church has the equal opportunity to play or to model or to become that of a servant. Sometimes some people spend all of their years in the church dreaming about being a deacon or a elder or a minister. You know it and I know it. Others could care less. I know that too. But some, and perhaps to the degree all of us, in a right way, we certainly recognize and honor those positions. We understand their role within the church. But you know something? No deacon, no elder worth his salt, no pastor worth his salt, no member worth their salt, ignores and does not become a servant. Every one of us has that opportunity, male and female, old and young.

Every one of us has the opportunity to learn this role that Christ holds up as the greatest, to be a servant and to serve in some capacity within the body of Christ. That is an equal opportunity employment. How else should I put it? You don't have to be appointed. You don't have to be ordained to become a servant. You choose to be a servant. You choose. You choose to serve. You choose to have a servant's attitude. I choose it. That's the beauty of what Jesus is saying. And when we do, God notices and He is well pleased. We choose. You do not have to be given permission to be a servant. You don't have to be on a chart. You don't have to be on somebody's list to be a servant. And I know some of you serve in ways that nobody else will know about.

That happens every day within the church. And that's what God knows. Others serve in very open ways, too. The role that we sometimes shoulder because of our gifts and our talents sometimes may be more prominent than others and in some other ways. But to do any job within the church, from a deacon to a deaconess to an elder, a pastor, the president of a church, a member of the governing body, an employee of the church, whether it's at the home office or in some other way, heading up a committee for a social, for some service project at any given time, teaching a Bible class, doing something to make the church work, it takes a cert to do it well. It takes the attitude of a servant, of a selflessness, of a giving, and of a willingness to want to provide for someone a measure of joy, encouragement, teaching, service, aid, through a phone call, through a card, through a tangible act, noticed and unnoticed, large and small.

It takes that willing attitude to do it. And if you're going to do it well, if you're going to be a good minister, if you're going to be a good president of the church, you have to have a servant's heart. And that is always putting other people first. I mean, we could go for days and months in training, talking, listening, and going through all of this, as we well should.

When there's breakdowns in the church at any level, when there's conflict among people within the church, it inevitably can be traced back to the fact that somewhere along the line, someone, some group, is not modeling this attitude of a centurion who had a servant's heart, this attitude that Jesus spoke to of having a childlike attitude and all of its qualities, doing what he says here in Matthew 20, wanting to lord it over. Every crisis that I have observed or been involved with in 37 and a half years in the ministry, and many years beyond that, in total, in terms of being a part of the church, every crisis that I've seen that we've had to deal with, large and small, and certainly the larger ones that have impacted the church, comes about because there's a breakdown at some level, sometimes it's very high, sometimes, yeah, it's very often among the ministry.

But when that attitude of being a servant and serving one another, that Jesus talked about here in Matthew 20, is not done, then there's a problem. But I guarantee it. When someone cannot step down, when someone cannot decrease, when someone cannot properly use authority that is given for the good, if it's not handled with the attitude of a servant, what we could call a centurion's heart, there could become problems within the church, within a government, at any level.

Two weeks ago, when we were in Paris, Debbie and I took one day, we took a day trip out to the palace of Versailles. How many of you, any of you here been to the palace of Versailles? A few of us have been there. Hancock's. The palace of Versailles was built by Louis XIV, the Sun King of France. A fabulous estate. Huge building palace. The Hall of Mirrors, if you've ever seen pictures of it. It's a huge palace on the outskirts of Paris today. It was in the country when he built it. Hundreds of acres, beautiful grounds, been maintained by the government, but it was built on the backs of the people. And by the time Louis XIV's successor, or Louis XIV's successor, Louis XVI lived in it, the people had had enough, and they revolted. And they can, you can show the, they'll show you that when you go through this on the tour, they'll show you the bedroom that Marie Antoinette lived in, and the little door that she fled through when the people attacked the palace. And you know what happened to Marie Antoinette, along with her husband Louis XVI.

The French Revolution of 1789, they rose up and they threw them out. They'd had enough. Now that revolution turned inward on itself, and Napoleon, the dictator, had to come in and take over. But it's an object lesson today to walk around and to see all of this splendor built on the backs of the people of France. When kings, dictators, presidents, ministers, you, me, any of us, do not practice these principles, there will be problems, there will be an overturn. In some way, in some shape or form.

Christ said this is the path to greatness in the kingdom. This is how you will be. If you want to be first, be a slave. Serve. And we all can make that choice. Peter learned this. When you go to turn back to 1 Peter, I have to think that when Peter wrote some of the things that he did in his first letter, Peter may have been thinking about this centurion who was from his hometown.

You see, the centurion and Peter both lived in Capernaum. Peter, I think, happened to think, in my own imagination, knew the centurion. Peter was a fisherman based out of Capernaum. The centurion would have been someone that he would have known, known of. And this example, certainly he knew about it as a disciple, when he watched it. But I have a feeling he knew about him before. He certainly knew about him after the fact. But I wonder if Peter had this centurion in mind when he wrote some of the things that he did here in 1 Peter, because he wrote about suffering.

And he talked about, in chapter 3 and verse 18, he talked about Christ's suffering. And he said, Christ suffered once for sins. Chapter 4 and verse 1 of 1 Peter, he said, Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind. For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. And he talked about the idea of suffering. That connects with the idea of the suffering servant from the book of Isaiah. And he brings out that, and he says, you know, you and I, or as Christians, are going to suffer, sometimes for just being Christians.

We'll always suffer when we do wrong. And he brings out here that we'll also suffer when we do right. That's part of, part of it. But down in verse 7 of verse chapter 4, he talks about serving. He said, The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers. And above all things have fervent love for one another. For love will cover a multitude of sins, be hospitable to one another without grumbling.

As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another. As good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it with the ability which God supplies.

That in all things God may be glorified through Christ, Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Between verses 7 and 11, he gives some good action steps. Be serious and watchful in your prayer. Have a fervent love for one another. Be hospitable. If all these are aspects of service, if you have a gift, minister it. Let it be something that allows you to serve someone else because you've been given grace. Extend that outward. If you speak, recognize that you're going to be, all of us will have to give an answer for the words that we speak.

Speak as if you're speaking of God, something of God in that sense. It's a good one to read. This whole epistle, in one sense, I think is a good epistle to read to discern the heart of a centurion because I happen to think Peter must have had him in the back of his mind as he wrote. If he didn't know that centurion, what he was like, and perhaps had studied the man's example, and he was able to model some of that and to bring it out into some of these deep spiritual lessons that he shows here.

This is a good time of year, as I've said, for us to recalibrate and to think about ourselves as servants and choose whether or not we will be a servant. It is the one path to greatness all of us have before us, as Christ said. And none of us have to be ordained to it. None of us have to be appointed to it. We've all been commissioned by Christ's words.

It is the one element of government and authority that it's at the basis of any just government, any just authority, both religious or spiritual, having an attitude of a servant. Christ said of the centurion who went to bat for his own servant. He said, I've not seen such great faith.

And there's going to be people coming from all different angles and places, positions in the kingdom, and sit down. And he said, we won't be any greater than this. Everyone will have to live up to that model.

Examine ourselves on that. Use this time of year as a lesson for us all to learn and to determine whether or not we will be servants and have the heart of a centurion for one another.