Title: The One Who the Lord Praises
Contents
who the Lord is proud of
Luke 7:1-10
Our daily life is lived by meeting people. However, there are happy encounters and bad encounters. When you meet someone, you feel good. I want to praise and I want to brag. There is such a person in today's text. People praise it. This is the centurion that Jesus also praised. We too should be like this. Our church is a church where no one is alone. We must become saints that we can be proud of in meeting with each other. Why did Jesus praise the centurion?
1. I loved people.
He was a person to be proud of. Its center is love. He loved the servant he had. At that time, slaves were not treated with dignity. Not only that, I was ill, but it wasn't just a cold, but a paralytic (Matt. It was a colony's servant that was burdensome to leave behind. But the centurion loved the sick servant with a precious soul as a valuable personal being. He took pity on and loved the things that people looked down on.
This centurion showed love not only to his servants, but also to the Jews. It was a time when the Roman soldiers were recognized as better soldiers the more cruel they were. In our human relationships, we should also become people that the Lord can praise and boast of with the love of this centurion.
2. You sacrificed yourself.
Jewish elders praise him for loving them. And they tell the specific reason that they built a synagogue for them. It would not have been possible without self-sacrifice for the centurion to build a synagogue for the Jewish subjects as a Roman officer. He was a soldier on a salary set by the state. You cannot exploit the Jews to build a synagogue. From the point of view of the Jews, the Gentiles were the object of ignorance, and the national sentiment toward the Roman officer who took the sovereignty with a spear was not good. Nevertheless, this centurion gets praise from the Jewish elders. It shows how much he showed sacrificial love for the Jews, such as building a synagogue.
Life doesn't have two chances. You don't want to live on this earth forever. In the end, what is left of us is what I lived for. You must not live for the devil. It doesn't make sense to live your whole life just for yourself. Living for others is worthwhile, but we must further work for the glory of God.
3. He was a man to boast of his faith.
Jesus praised the centurion because of his faith. He entrusted to Jesus what he could not do. Because they acknowledged the power of the Lord. And I had humble faith. He confesses that he is not worthy of Jesus coming into his house. Not only that, he recognized the authority of the Word and believed that it would come true. If Jesus just spoke, the servant's disease would be healed.
We too must have the faith that Jesus boasts. In times of crisis as well as in everyday life, when difficulties and sufferings come, we must trust and rely on the power of the Lord's word, leaving it entirely to the Lord. The Lord praised and boasted about the centurion who loved people, sacrificed himself, and showed the greatest faith in Israel. I hope that we too can become the pride of the Lord through love, self-sacrifice, and faith.