For the last four weeks we have been in a series called Shoes. We have been in the shoes of people who have experienced Jesus first-hand. We have read their stories and learned their lessons. In the first week we slipped on a pair of flip flops. We met a guy named John the Baptist who was a prophet in the wilderness who had one major message. It was this I want less of me and more of God until it is Christ alone. The next week we put on a pair of wingtips and we met an academic Jewish scholar named Nicodemus. We saw as he came to Jesus with his questions and went from doubter to defender to devoted. The next week we met a woman who was wearing a pair of stilettos at a well in the middle of the day. We saw that Jesus confronted her with truth and grace, her life was immediately turned around in one conversation. She became one of the first missionaries and went back to her home town to tell everyone what she had experienced. Last week we kicked our shoes off and we sat around a table with the disciples and Jesus in the upper room at a thing called the last supper. We saw how Jesus removed the robe and put on the towel to wash the feet of His disciples as they ate. We met Peter who at first objected to Jesus doing anything like that but immediately repented and surrendered himself. This morning we are going to meet a guy who is wearing a pair of work boots. If you have your Bibles turn over to Luke Chapter 7. We are going to move from John to Luke this week and we are going to meet a guy in work boots. We are going to hear his story and learn his lesson. While you are on your way there, let me propose an idea to you It is all about our approach. How we approach certain situations will often determine how they turn out. If you are being dragged to a movie by a friend that you know is going to be terrible and you will hate it, guess what is probably going to happen. You are going to hate the movie, right? A lot of us have decided before we ever show up how we are going to experience what is next. I came to the conclusion that a big part of our approach in any situation is the shoes we are wearing. Ladies, are you with me? This is why you need so many. Each situation applies to a different outcome. So, flip flops if you are wearing a pair of flip flops you are saying I am relaxed and I am not worried about someone stepping on my toes. That is what you are saying. It would make sense to wear flip flops to a beach. It would be appropriate to wear flip flops to the beach but inappropriate to wear them to the board room. You would wear wingtips to the boardroom. If you brought wingtips to the beach, it would be a problem. The sand would get into the little perforated holes and for years you would have sand coming out of your business shoes. Wingtips say that I am important and I am about to make a certain amount of money. Where would you wear stilettos? I am just asking, ok? I really have no idea where you would wear them. I can assume that a night club. One place I know they would not belong is on a treadmill. Stilettos on a treadmill would not end well for you and would probably end poorly for your face. It just wouldn t end up well stilettos on a treadmill. What about barefoot? Where do you go barefoot? Some of you saw some of our staff members walking around barefoot last week drawing attention to Samaritan s Feet and you thought that was a bad approach. In our living rooms I don t know anyone who wears their shoes and socks. You would not go barefoot at a construction site tools and nails everywhere. Work Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
boots would work well at a construction site, not in your living room. One of the most important things we can do is show up with the right kind of shoes. Two big things go into our approach when we come up on any situation or when we meet certain people. One is preconceived notions. We all have preconceived notions. We all assume that we know things when we show up and we meet someone. We all have preconceived notions. I am from Kentucky and that is cool but when I meet people they say oh, you are from Kentucky and you don t have an accent. Do you assume all of us have an accent? Like we were all on the show Hee Haw? That is the way everybody pretends that is how we are. If you are too young to know about the show, Hee Haw is a show about people from Kentucky. So you just assume that I draw out my words and I talk really slow. Then they ask if I grew up riding horses like we don t have cars. No, I have actually never ridden a horse. If you grew up in Indiana do you shuck a lot of corn? Is that what you do for fun? You are a corn shucker. We have preconceived notions we meet someone and we jump to conclusions. It happens all the time. Many of you showed up this morning with some preconceived notions of what you were going to see here. You pulled up into the parking lot and thought this is probably going to be really showy worship. They probably will have some light teaching and maybe ask us for some money. This is what we think sometimes when we show up to church. We have some preconceived notions. Another thing that goes into our approach is our past experience. Things that we have experienced in the past we apply to our future circumstances. Maybe you had a great experience at another church. You loved it. You were plugged in and the kids loved going and then for some reason you moved or there was a change in life and you show up at a place like this. You are always comparing the old place to the new place. I used to be able to find a parking spot or the greeters were different, the children s ministry was different, or the offering was different. A lot of us have ideas as to how things were and how we want them to be. On the other hand maybe you had a really bad experience with church. You got burned by a pastor you thought you could trust or you thought you had found a home and then they closed the doors. A lot of us have a lot of baggage and hurt when it comes to church. Like Aaron said last week, we are so glad you are here. You can take as much time as you need to in order to heal. But at some point we have to admit that our preconceived notions and our past experiences play heavily in how we approach certain situations and certain people. In Luke Chapter 7 we meet a guy who is all about the approach. We are going to start in Verse 1. When Jesus finished saying this to all who are listening, he entered Capernaum. (Let s just take a pause there for a second. Here is what is going on Jesus had just finished preaching the most famous sermon he had ever preached; the Sermon on the Mount. If you look in your New Testament you have some red letters there. There is a big bulk of them and that is what that is the Sermon on the Mount. And He says things like blessed are the poor because they are going to inherit the Kingdom of God. He says blessed are those who mourn for soon they will laugh. He said things that are counter-cultural that would have blown their minds and would have confused some of them. He just gets done preaching that sermon, comes down off the mountain into a town called Capernaum. Now this is not the first time He has been in Capernaum. In Luke 4 we see His first trip. What He did is that He walked into the synagogue and starts teaching and the people were amazed. I mean they had never heard anything like this. It says they were amazed because His teaching had authority. I mean they were blown away by what Jesus was Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2
saying in the synagogue. And that on top of that He casts out a demon from a possessed man there in Capernaum. Needless to say He builds a reputation. People were talking about Jesus in Capernaum. Here we are in visit number two. We are going to pick it up in Verses 2 and 3. Here is what it says.) There a centurion s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. (Now I need to just say something real quick about the different type of people we met in this series. If you notice, Jesus hung out with a lot of different people. For some reason we have developed an idea that Jesus has a type. That there is a certain type Jesus hangs out with and the rest of the people he doesn t really hang out with. Maybe they are financially stable or their kids are really good or they have a nice smile. Whatever Jesus type is, He has a type of people that He likes and then other people He just kind of ignores. But watch this. We first went with a prophet who ate honey and locust in the wilderness. Then we met an egghead who was really into books and he was a Jewish scholar. And then we met a woman with a wild past and a lot of embarrassing mistakes. Then we went to a group of disciples who were immature and uneducated and just didn t get it. And now we meet a pagan military officer. Jesus does not have a type. Jesus type is people. Like anyone. So, if you at any point have ever been convinced that you are not Jesus type; like this whole church thing and this whole God thing. That can t be for you. It is for other people who seem to have it together. But for me with questions, me with mistakes, me when I stick my foot in my mouth all the time there is no way I can be Jesus type. Jesus type is you. Jesus is for you and everyone you ever met. Jesus loves people. So, in Verses 4 and 5 we see what happens with the centurion.) When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue. So Jesus went with them. Now I am going to try to explain just how absurd this really is. You have Jewish officials going to bat for a pagan military officer. These two could not be further from each other. Here is how different they were. The Jewish elders would have been monotheistic, right? One True God, Yahweh, the One, big G God. That is what they believed in. A pagan military officer would have been polytheistic. A bunch of different gods; a god for the sun, a god for the moon, a god for the harvest, a god for the kids, and a god for everything So they are on different pages there. Jewish officials would have been really into cleanliness laws to make sure they were pure and ready for worship. Pagan officers would say we are going to live our life. We are going to eat what we want, drink what we want, wear what we want, behave as we will. So they were on completely different pages morally and ethically. And then on top of that, on top of the different world views, imagine a foreign political officer being in charge of you. The Jewish elders were not in charge. This was a pagan centurion, which meant he was in charge of 100 soldiers, was in charge of them. Anytime throughout history we recognize that when foreign countries are in charge of another country, it usually doesn t go well. They are not really big fans of it. So this is what is going on. Now imagine this would probably put them at odds but for some reason the Jewish elders are going to Jesus and asking Him a favor on behalf of the pagan military officer. Now why? Why in the world would they do that? There are two different types of authority we can exercise in people s lives. That is what the centurion had. He had authority in the Jewish elder s eyes but he had it in a little different way than we might think. One is authority by position. That means I have authority in your life because of who you are in relation to me. I am higher on the organizational chart, I have a certain title. It is on the nametag. Check Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 3
it out. I have authority over you by my position. I have expressed my love for the TV show Law and Order before. Any L&O fans in the house? No one calls it that, I just made that up. But Law and Order is the same episode every time, which is the brilliance of it. Every episode, about a third of the way through the episode the detectives get stumped. They have exhausted all of their leads, they have used all their resources, and they just don t know where to turn. They walk into their lieutenants office and they say, Lieu, we don t know what to do. They are hanging their heads and they are just defeated. Then the lieutenant looks them in the eyes and says the most obvious thing you have ever heard. She says, Have you considered the bloody spot in the apartment? or Have you questioned the guy with the gun? Their eyes open up like they had never considered this, they had never thought of this. They salute her, walk out, and solve the crime. I had asked my wife so many times; why can t life be more like that? Why can t people walk into my office, I say something blatantly obvious, they think it is brilliant, and then they walk out of my room. That is the way things are supposed to be. But it doesn t work like that, does it? We don t get that respect sometimes. We don t get that authority. Maybe you are a boss or a supervisor or you are a member of a team at work. There have been moments that you know you have very clearly explained what you expected. It was beyond a shadow of a doubt what was supposed to happen. You bullet pointed it. You made a powerpoint. Everybody knew what they were supposed to do and then they failed to meet the expectations. Like what is wrong with them? Why aren t they listening to me? Don t they know who I am? Don t they know what I can do? Maybe you are a parent and you lead by position sometimes. So you very clearly explain what you expect from your children. You very clearly explain to them what is going to happen if they don t follow through. And then they don t. And you think why aren t they listening to you? I am your mom, I am your dad, I am your boss, I am your friend, I am your husband, I am your wife. Why are you not listening to me? Why do I not have authority in your life? When we don t get that authority it comes out in frustration and we start demanding respect. You will listen to me. But true authority is not demanded, it is given which comes to our next option - authority by influence. Here is what authority by influence does. Instead of leading by position, even though we could, we lead by influence. Even though I am your boss, even though I am your parent, even though I am your spouse, even though I am your best friend, I am going to choose not to use that and I am going to influence you. What about generosity. When you see someone freely give their money or their time or their resources, don t you respect them? Don t you grow in admiration for them? Don t they have authority in your life? What about hospitality? You open your doors and you welcome them into your home, you sit them on your couch and you feed them a meal. Guess what happens? You start developing influence in their life. You have authority. What about sacrifice? When people see you put others above yourself, guess what is going to happen? You are going to have authority in their lives. It is pretty clear the centurion took this route. The centurion had no obligation to love the Jewish people. The centurion was not an elected official. He was not out lobbying for votes. He was not making empty promises. That was not what he had to do. He was placed there. He had job security. But if you read the Jewish elder s plea, they said he loves our nation. He helped us build our synagogue. It is clear that the centurion didn t just come in and say you will do what I say because of whom I am and because of whom you are. He loved them. He had authority by influence, not by position. Here is the truth. When our approach is humble, others are grateful. I came to the conclusion this week that there is not a single arrogant person in my life that has true authority. What about you? Arrogance is that immediate wall. Once you start speaking to me, if I Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 4
feel you are coming to me full of yourself with a big ego, I am not listening. I might have to do what you say. But to have true influence in my life, it is not going to happen. I follow humble. I allow humble people to speak into my life. So when our approach is humble, others are grateful. Let s pick up our story in Luke 7 Chapter 6. We are going to read Verses 6-10. He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him, Lord, don t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, Go, and he goes: and that one, Come, and he comes. I say to my servant, Do this. And he does it. When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel. Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well. I imagine that word got back to the centurion that Jesus was coming over and he said wow, the house is a wreck. Do you know how your house gets when someone gets sick and there are blankets everywhere? There are bowls of chicken noodle soup and there is a funk. You can see the funk and he thinks I cannot possibly have Jesus over right now, the place is a wreck. I think it was probably a little more than that too. I think the centurion had a healthy view of who he was in relation to who Jesus was. He said I am not worthy. I know what my friends said they said I deserve this but I don t. They were just being really nice. In fact I am completely unworthy to even have you show up. And so it says Jesus was amazed at his response. Anytime you have the opportunity to amaze Jesus, I would take it. Just do that. What did he do? What was it about the centurion that amazed Jesus? This brings us to our even bigger question. How do I approach God, when I show up to talk to Him in prayer or when I come to worship or read the Bible? How do I approach God this is like big G God. He created the Pacific Ocean and the Himalayan Mountains, and the Grand Canyon God. Like He says one solar system isn t enough so I am going to create multiple galaxies you won t even find out about God. I am supposed to come and talk to Him. How do I show up? What do I do? There are two main ways we are to show up when we are about to talk to God. The first one is entitled. Now very few of us would self-identify as entitled but we would absolutely be able to spot it in someone else. Entitled looks like: I deserve this because We fill in the blank with all kinds of answers. I deserve this because I think there are two different types of entitlement. One of them might be the way you were raised and the other is generational. I think some of us say I am entitled because I have done a lot of good stuff. I deserve this because I am a really good person, God. When I approach God I bring my resumé with me. I slide it across the desk. God if you notice in the Spring of 86 I led a children s VBS. That was pretty successful. Fall of 92 I led my friend to Christ. It is on youtube check it out. God, here are all the great things that I have done. Look at me. Check me out I am a great person. I ve got all gold stars on my Sunday morning attendance chart. I give my money. I influence people. Look at all the great things I have done. I deserve your blessing God because I am such a good person. Then there is another type of entitlement. I think some of this applies maybe to some of the younger people in the room, myself included. I deserve this because I am alive. I am breathing so I deserve to have your blessing. I ve been given everything else in my life, so God why wouldn t you give me blessings? Why wouldn t you give me grace? The author, Donald Miller tells a really good story about a time when he was living with a family and it was dinner time. They were having spaghetti and so they all sat around the table and their little Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 5
daughter decided she didn t want spaghetti, she wanted chicken nuggets. That is reasonable, right? She wanted chicken nuggets. So the dad said, No, we are having spaghetti, we are not having chicken nuggets. She loses it. She loses it because she wants the chicken nuggets. It is the only thing that will satisfy her hunger in this moment. Donald, over there, is this young guy without kids and he is thinking just give her the chicken nuggets. How hard could this possibly be? Just zap them for 30 seconds and boom issue closed. But you have been there, right? As parents you think you can t give in, you can t give in or else they will think I just get the chicken nuggets whenever I want. And then later he saw this pink Cadillac Escalade driving down the road with the word Barbie written on it. I don t know if you knew this but Cadillac is not in the business of making pink Cadillac Escalades with the word Barbie. That had to be custom ordered. So someone went out of their way to customize a pink Barbie Cadillac Escalade. He saw it throughout town a few times and thought what in the world? Unless you were an official representative for Mattel, there is no reason for this to happen. So he just sees her. One day he was driving, sees the pink Cadillac Escalade and he follows her. Like you got to know who is driving this pink Cadillac Escalade. They get to the place and she parks and gets out. Out comes this woman who has her face lifted, fake body parts, and unnatural hair. It finally clicked. She got the chicken nuggets. So at some point during her life she decided she didn t want spaghetti, she wanted chicken nuggets. And guess what happened? She got chicken nuggets. And now she got the pink Escalade and now she got the looks that she wanted. And she has never been told no. Parents, we can t keep giving them chicken nuggets, right? Because guess where it shows up? It doesn t just show up with their friends. It doesn t just show up at school. It doesn t just show up on the playing field. It shows up in their relationship with God. My mom and dad never said no and I am talking to God and he is saying no and I don t get it. I ve encountered so many students that were so frustrated because their life isn t what they thought it would be. Their life isn t what they thought they deserved. Because I am alive... Because I have done great things So I have treated God like this cosmic vending machine where I put in my obedience and out comes my blessing. I do good things and out comes everything that I wanted. So I say I deserve good things God because I am a good person. Or maybe in the negative. God, I didn t deserve that because I am a good person. God, I didn t deserve to get sick. I didn t deserve to lose my job. I didn t deserve for my family to fall apart around me. I am a good person God. You see there is this really dangerous road we could head down when we talk about what we deserve with God. Because in the Bible, if you read it carefully, it says some really clear things. That the wages of sin is death. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Technically what we deserve is punishment for our sins. But guess what we don t get? Punishment for our sins. We ask this question all the time why do bad things happen to good people? The author R.C. Schroll said this. Why do bad things happen to good people? It happened once and He volunteered. So we show up and we say God, I ve earned the blessing. I ve done enough. God, no one tells me no. Neither should you. So we show up with this entitled attitude. So what is the other option? It is humility. You see the centurion stops Jesus in His tracks and says I don t deserve this but I know you are powerful. I m still going to ask. Watch what happened here with these shoes here. We started out with a guy that said more of you and less of me. Then we went to a Jewish scholar who had a bunch of questions up front but then showed up to take a dead body off a cross and put it in a grave. Then we had a woman who was convicted of her sin but didn t shut God out. Then we had a disciple who first was reprimanded and instead of pulling into his shell and putting his front up, he Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 6
was corrected. Now we have a centurion who could have easily showed up and said hey, Jesus, I am a centurion and you do what I say. I have authority over you and I can make you do this. He said no, I know I am unworthy. I am still going to ask. I still need your help. Humility looks like a bunch of wet people in the Baptistry saying I need help. None of us ask for the doctor unless we know we are sick. No one asks for the life guard unless they know they are drowning. We don t ask for a counselor unless we know we have problems. Some of us have just gone around walking around when we are bleeding out. We are so hurt and we are so damaged and we are so in need of help. We just can t ask. The absurdity of it all is that we are trying to earn something that has already been given to us. It s insane but we do it anyway I do. But what the centurion did is that he showed up and said God, I know I don t deserve it but I need you. When our approach is humble, God s response is graceful. When we stop showing up and saying this is what I deserve God can you please follow through on your end of the deal? When we say God, I know that I messed up and I know that you are perfect and I know that I don t deserve it but I need you now. So when our approach is humble, others are grateful. When our approach is humble, God is graceful. That is the truth that we needed to hear this morning. Here is the deal for this morning. We are going to do this thing called communion. We do this every week here at Trader s Point. It is an opportunity for us to say alright God, less of me and more of you. It is an opportunity for me to say God, I am broken and I need your help. For those of you who might be new to this, let me explain it really quick. In Luke in that room at the last supper that we talked about, Jesus gave them this opportunity to remember Jesus and what He had done. It is called communion and what we do is take a piece of bread that represents His body that hung on the cross. And then we take some juice that represents His blood. And in that moment every single time that we do this we are saying I needed you, Jesus. I needed you. Otherwise I would be dying and I needed you and I still need you every single day. I m never going to get it figured out and I m never going to get it all put together. I need you every single day. I know that this becomes routine sometimes. A lot of you have been showing up for a long time and you get this every week and sometimes we think about what we are getting for lunch or what we have to do for the rest of the day. I know that. What about today just give it a shot. We remove anything else that is going on in our minds and say thank you. We say God I am done raising myself up, I am done doing it on my own and I need your help. After we do communion we are going to sing this song. It is a beautiful song three simple words. It says I exalt thee. I am literally going to raise God higher than myself. I am going to make Him more praised. I am going to make Him more famous. God, you deserve to be exalted, not myself. I need you and I am pushing you up. So I am going to pray for us, we ll take communion, and then we are just going to sing our hearts out to the God that saved us. God, I need you. We are broken and we are sick and we are lost. The beautiful thing of it all is that you showed up first. You came to us when we were broken. You came to us when we were sick. You gave us everything we needed and it just took us to get out of the way. It is time for us to get humble. It is time for us to get real. It is time for us to have a healthy view of you and a healthy view of ourselves. You are so great. Words don t do it justice. We exalt You. It is in your name I pray. Amen. Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 7