Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 7:1-17
We're going to sing a little bit more after we study in Luke. There's an outline in your bulletin. Hopefully you got a bulletin on the way in this morning. So you can take that out. If you have your Bible, find Luke chapter 7. Luke 7, the theme verse for everything that we're talking about in Luke is Luke 19-10, which says, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, and we're going to come back at the end of our time this morning to talk about that verse and how it ties in. Luke chapter 7, we're going to read in a few minutes, Luke 7, 1-17. Before we do that, I want to start with the definition, and I'll put it up on the screen. The word "amaze." You know, most of us today, maybe not most of us, but what I hear the word "amazed" you use today is it's almost like a synonym for something really good. So we say, "How was the meal?" It was amazing. How was the ball game? It was amazing. And what we really mean when we say that is it was really, really, really good. It was fantastic. But this is the dictionary definition of "amaze," to surprise greatly, to fill with astonishment, and here's some synonyms, astonish, astound, stun, shock, and awe. If that's what "amaze" really means, then we probably overuse the word. And I sat down this week, and I started to think, and I was trying to be honest with myself. What are some times in my life, personally, where I have genuinely felt amazement? Where something genuinely, truly, really amazed me according to that definition? And here's my list. I'm going to share it with you my list this morning. You ready? Number one, the Harlem Globetrotters. I went and saw the Harlem Globetrotters when I was in grade school. I don't know, third, fourth, fifth grade somewhere in there. And as a third, fourth, or fifth grader, I don't know that they would truly amaze me now, although one of them set the record this week for the longest ever behind the head, one handed shot, all the way from the other end of the court. I don't know. I'm not going to say that that was amazing, but it was really, really good. But as a third, fourth, fifth grader, seeing these guys was amazing. The things they could do with the basketball, and the shots they could make, and the teamwork they had, to watch it was genuinely amazing for me at that time. Here's the next thing I put on my list. The Astrodome. When I was a senior in high school, I had a friend who had moved to Houston, and I went down as a senior and spent the weekend with him. It was the last season that the Astros played in the Astrodome, and it was the last series. It wasn't the actual last game. I wish I could say that. That would seem a little bit cooler for some reason, but it was the last series they played in the Astrodome. And I remember having never been in any sort of facility like that up to that point in my life, walking in and seeing the size of it and being amazed, thinking this is amazing how big this building is. Absolutely blew my mind. Number three on my list is the Royal Gorge, and I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I think if I had been to the Grand Canyon, that would have made my list. But I have been to the Royal Gorge, and twice I have rafted down the Arkansas River, down at the bottom of the Royal Gorge, and you get right down there underneath the bridge, and the guides always tell you, "Okay, lock your feet in there so you don't fall out in the river. Lean back, and you look up, and you just see those cliffs running straight up, and you see that itty-bitty, tiny bridge, and itty-bitty dots up on it way up above you." To me, that's an amazing, amazing thing. And then the last thing you thought I might leave this off, but I'm not going to leave it off, is specifically not everything they do, but seeing and witnessing the birth of a human being is an amazing, amazing thing. And I got to think in this week about when Emma was born, and Noel was born, and Amelia was born. And I remembered that when Noel was born, we lived in Frankfurt, Kentucky, and we barely got to the hospital in time. It was almost just an elevator delivery, made it to the hospital, got up in the room and they assigned a girl to Brooke. It was her first day on the job. And she was like 17 years old, first day on the maternity ward, and here we come. We come rolling in, and she is green as green can be. And she stands on the back wall with her hands pressed against the wall and her eyes about this big the entire time. But I'm telling you that I was not the only one amazed in that room. She was genuinely amazed, but that's an amazing thing if you've ever witnessed that. And so I talked to some people, and I said, "Tell me something that would be genuinely truly amazing," and had some good conversations with folks this week. But here's my point, and this is why I'm talking about things that are truly amazing. When you read through the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, people were constantly amazed by Jesus. Over and over and over again, we read in the Gospels, people were amazed at the things He said and the things He did. Sometimes in your Bible, it may not be translated amazed, it may be translated, they marveled at Him. But it's the same word and it's the same idea. People were amazed by Jesus. Literally their jaws just dropped when they listened to Him and when they experienced Him. Here's some examples of that, Matthew 7. After the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew says the crowd was amazed. They listened to Him preach that magnificent sermon and their response was pure amazement. Matthew 8, Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee and the disciples are amazed. You read in Mark 7, Jesus casting a demon out of somebody and the people are amazed that He just says it. He just tells the demon what to do and the demon does whatever He tells it to do. They were amazed by that. John 7, Jesus was teaching in the temple to the Jews, to the most educated, theologically astute people on the planet and they listened to Him and they were amazed. And then you back up, you say, "Okay, Jesus is constantly amazing people." Is Jesus ever amazed, twice that we know of? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, only two times do we read that He was amazed or that He marveled at something. You put the definition, there it is. He was surprised greatly, He was filled with astonishment. One time that happened in Mark 6, we read that He's preaching in the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth and the people who knew Him best did not believe in Him. And Jesus looked at their unbelief and Mark says He was amazed. The only other time we know that He experienced this emotion is our passage this morning, Luke 7, when He encounters the faith of a Gentile centurion, a military officer in the Roman army and He encounters this man's faith and Luke tells us Jesus was amazed. He marveled at this man's faith. It's strange to me to think about Jesus experiencing an emotion like this. It's a reminder that He really was human. He's not just some superman walking around pulling strings and He knows everything and He's in control. And yes, He's God, but He is also really man and He's amazed at the faith of this man. And then we read a story that Luke pairs with it, the story of Jesus raising the widow's son and He experiences another emotion that sometimes we don't think about Jesus experiencing and that's compassion. In these two stories that Luke crams together and when you read them together, it's obvious they go together, Jesus goes from feeling amazement to compassion. So we're going to read the passage this morning and then we're going to try to break it down, but let me give you the big idea, very, very simple. Jesus is the God-man who came to defeat, disease, and death. So Luke 19, 10 covers everything we talk about in Luke, the son of man came to seek and save the lost, you'd narrow in, you'd zoom in on this passage in particular. Luke is telling us Jesus is the God-man who came to defeat, disease, and death. We will read, beginning in Luke chapter 7, you follow along as I read the word of God. Luke 7 verse 1, "After He had finished all His sayings in the hearing of the people, He entered Capernaum. Now a centurion had a slave who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by Him. When the centurion heard about Jesus, He sent to Him elders of the Jews, asking Him Jesus to come and heal His servant. And when they, the elders, came to Jesus, they pleaded with Him earnestly, saying, "He, the centurion, is worthy to have you do this for Him, for He loves our nation and He is the one who built us our synagogue," and Jesus went with them. He was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to Him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you, but say the word and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority with soldiers under me and I say to one go and he goes and another come and he comes and to my servant do this and he does it. And when Jesus heard these things, He marveled at Him and turning to the crowd that followed Him said, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well. Soon afterward He went to a town called Nain, and His disciples in a great crowd went with Him. As He drew near the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out. The only son of his mother and she was a widow and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and He said to her, "Do not weep." Then He came and He touched the buyer and the bearer stood still and He said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." And the dead man sat up and He began to speak and Jesus gave Him to His mother. Scripture seized them all. And they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us and God has visited His people." And this report about Him spread through the whole of Judea and all of the surrounding country. This is the word of God. Let's pray. Father, we believe that these words are true. We believe that Luke wrote them inspired by your Holy Spirit. And now we pray that your Spirit would grant us understanding to understand what we read and what we see in these simple yet profound stories. Father, give us hearts to respond to you in a way that would honor you and glorify you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Very, very simple approach this morning. I want to talk about the characters in this story, to make sure you understand all the moving pieces. I want to talk about the responses that you see people making towards Jesus and then we'll try to sum it up with one idea at the end. So first of all, the characters, we start with the servant, the servant of the centurion. He was sick, he was near death, and he was completely and totally helpless. He had no ability to remedy his situation, to fix his situation, to change his situation. He was 100 percent dependent on the goodness of his friend and the power of Jesus, completely dependent on a friend in Jesus. And then you move to the sun, the parallel to the servant in the next story. Very, very similar, except if you take it a step further, he wasn't just sick to the point of death. He was dead. Stone cold, dead, really, really dead. Commentators say, well, maybe he was like in a coma and then he woke up in the middle of the funeral. Listen, somebody could fool me because I don't know nothing about dead bodies. The fact of the matter is most of us really don't have a lot of experience with dead bodies. These people experienced it every day and they knew what dead was. This guy was dead, completely helpless, completely dependent on the power of God. Unlike the servant, no one went looking to Jesus to bring him back. Jesus found him, but completely and totally helpless. So you start with these two characters and you just take a time out and you say if nothing else, these two characters remind us of our mortality. That may not sound like a very upbeat, uplifting thing to talk about, but you need to remember it from time to time and you need to think about it. Unless Jesus comes back for you, the day is coming where you will face severe sickness to the point of death and then you will take the next step and you will die. That will happen. There's nothing you can do to change it. You're helpless and powerless to prevent it. I read a story this week about George Steinbrenner. You ever heard of George Steinbrenner? Some of you guys know who he is. He's the former owner of the New York Yankees and he was known as, anybody knows Nickname? Anybody? Nobody? If you ever watched Seinfeld, you know he's the boss, right? He's the boss and he liked that Nickname because he said, "I rule this organization with an iron fist. The buck stops here. You do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, how I tell you to do it and if you don't, you're gone." And he had this reputation as a very, very tough, severe, stern boss and he liked that reputation. In 2004, he did an interview with Sports Illustrated Magazine and the guy doing the interview started talking to him. He was older in life in 2004 and he said, "What are you afraid of? You instill fear in everyone, your players, your managers, your employees, the guy selling hotdogs behind the counter. They're all afraid of you. What are you afraid of?" And he kind of him hauls around, "Oh, I'm not afraid of anything, blah, blah, blah." And the guy says, "Are you afraid to die?" And George Steinbrenner stops and he thinks about it and he says, "I used to not be afraid to die. What I used to say is I'm not afraid of a heart attack because I give people heart attacks." He said, "But I'm getting older and I can feel it in my bones and I go to these funerals of my buddies, people my age, people younger than me." And he said, "I'm afraid to die. I fear it. I wonder, am I going to be okay? What's going to happen next? I really don't know." He admitted to this reporter he was fearful to die. 2010, the morning of the all-star game, George Steinbrenner at home with family dies. Guess how? Heart attack. I don't know if you ever got to the point in his life where he wasn't afraid of that, where he had the hope of Christ in his life, have absolutely no idea. But I do know that unless Christ returns, you and me, and everybody else you know whose heart is beating today, will face the day just like George Steinbrenner did, just like the sick servant did, just like the dead son did. It is a reminder of our finitude, a reminder of our mortality. Think about the centurion with me. This is maybe to me the most fascinating character in the story. He works for Rome. He's in charge of a hundred men in the Roman army. Centurions were known as the backbone of the Roman army, and you couldn't just sort of move up the ranks to be a centurion. You had to sort of be a cut above. You had to be sort of different than all your other soldiers serving alongside you. One Roman historian says this about centurions. They have to be men who can command. They have to be leaders. They have to be steady in action. They have to be reliable, not anxious to fight, but when pressed, ready to die at their post. They must be men among men. Not just anyone could serve in this post. And it's interesting, when you flip through the pages of the New Testament, every time you read about a centurion, whoever's writing that book in the Bible speaks highly of them. They always put them in a positive light. They're always presented for doing or saying noble things, and that's certainly true of this man. We know, for example, that he had a relationship with his servant, or just to be very blunt with you, his slave. That was a rare thing in Roman days, because Roman law said your slave was no different than your tool, and when your tool breaks, you throw it away and you get another one, and when your slave breaks, you can do the exact same thing if you want to. This slave was broken, laying on his deathbed, and the centurion had every legal right to toss him out, throw him away, recycle him, and to get somebody else. And instead, he cares about him. He's concerned about him. He loves this man, or this woman. They have a relationship. We also know that this centurion was a spiritual man. When he sends this delegation of Jewish leaders to Jesus, they basically say, "This guy built us the synagogue." Maybe he supported the funds to build it. Centurions were paid vastly more money than a soldier in the Roman army, so maybe he had the money to do this. Maybe he took his hundred men, and he said, "You guys are going to build it." We got nothing else to do right now. People put the bricks up. But one way or the other, the Jews looked at this man. They respected him. They said, "He loves our nation. He loves our people." And he built us this synagogue, interesting side note. Take your Bible, and you flip backwards a page or two to Luke 4, 31, 32, and 33. It talks about Jesus. We looked at this a few weeks back. Jesus preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. That's probably the synagogue that he built. He paid for it, he made his soldiers build it, he rolled up his sleeves, and he got in there with them. We don't know. But the Jews said he built it. And here's Jesus preaching in that building, and you remember that story. Jesus in the middle of his sermon and a demon-possessed man pops up and he says, "I know who you are. You're the Holy One of God." And Jesus cast the demon out of him immediately. That story happened in the synagogue that this Roman centurion built. Here's the kicker, Luke 7, verse 4. The Jews come to Jesus and they say, "This man is what, worthy." He's worthy. He's worked enough and done enough and put in his dues and paid his part and contributed. Jesus, you owe him this. And maybe in the back of their minds they're thinking, "You've been preaching. In the synagogue that he built. You owe him. He's worthy for you to do this." And when Jesus is on his way to his home, he sends another group of people and what do those people say on his behalf, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not worthy. I am not worthy." You say, "Does he have self-esteem issues?" No. He's a realist. And he has a small, tiny, but accurate understanding of who Jesus is. And when Jesus is on the way, he panics a little bit and he says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm not worthy. I don't care what the guys told you about me. I'm not worthy for you to come into my house." Can I tell you something really important? Until you get to the point in your life where you believe what this centurion believed, you're not ready to meet Jesus. As long as you're coming with some sort of resume to prove your worthiness to Jesus, you're not ready. This man got it. He was really ready to meet Jesus. And you see that when he says, "I'm not worthy to meet you. I'm not worthy for you to even come into my house." So there's the centurion. What about the widow? Only the opposite of the centurion, male, female, rich, probably destitute, at least going forward had no prospects of making money to support herself. One had power and influence, the other had none. One everyone thought was worthy, the other one everyone thought was pitiful. And I don't mean that in a negative way to run this widow into the ground, but they pitied her. They looked at this woman and she said her husband died. She's lost her husband. She has no one left in her family. She just walked this very same road, not that long ago possibly, to bury her husband. Now she's burying her last living family member, her only son. And they looked at this woman and they pitied her. Her situation was genuinely pitiful. And unlike the centurion, she was in no way shape or form looking for Jesus. She is leading the funeral procession of her son. Let me show you some pictures of what this may have looked like. These are modern day Jewish funerals. So other than the clothes and the hats, everything's pretty much exactly the same. They take the body, they wrap it up in a cloth. They anoint it with spices and perfumes and different things like that. They put it on some sort of stretcher. Usually they did not use coffins or any sort of box. So they just got a stretcher and they're carrying this person out. And there's a big horde of people, a big crowd of people, all the folks from town walking alongside. And there would be professional mourners in Jesus' day. There would be people who would be paid to walk alongside the casket, or not the casket, but the stretcher, and to cry and to wail and to make a commotion. And so there they go, walking out of town, all of these people. The family, immediate family, would be closest to the casket and the mother or the parents or the children, if it was an older person, would lead the procession. And so you get a picture of what this looks like. One in name gathers together for this pitiful woman. And they've got the son up on a piece of wood, wrapped up in a cloth, and mama's in the front, and they're walking the exact same road she walked to bury her husband. It's pitiful. And everyone looked at her and said, "This is pitiful. We pity you." And into that, mass of people walks Jesus. "You read the gospels, I don't know about you, but I read the gospels and I want a few more details." And I want to know, did he say anything to the lady, to the mom? Other than don't weep, did they have a conversation, a back and forth? Did he make eye contact with her? What happened? What all Luke says is he walks up to the group, he stops them, he says don't weep, and he walks back to the sun and he touches the wood that they were carrying him on and he pops back to life. The only other character you could really talk about in this passage is the crowd and name. And we're going to talk about them when we talk about the response. So there's the characters, Jesus being the last one, he heals the centurion's servant, whoever makes it to the house, because the centurion says what, only say the word. Does Luke ever tell us that he says the word? And you wonder, did he say it? Did he think it? Did he snap his fingers in his pocket? What happened? We don't know. But we know that when they went back to the house, the servant was well. And then you see Jesus stopping a funeral procession saying to the most pitiful woman in town, don't be sad anymore, and he touches the sun and the sun pops back up to life. What do you do with a guy like that? What do you do with a guy like Jesus? A couple of thoughts about how these people responded to Jesus. Number one, respond with faith, respond with faith, believe Jesus, trust Jesus. If he says it, take it to the bank. Jesus is amazed at the faith of this centurion, only twice we know of that he was amazed. This is one of those instances. Emulate that faith. You say, well, what did the centurion really believe? Some people might say the centurion really believed that Jesus would do what he was asking him to do, that Jesus would certainly raise or heal the servant. I don't think that was his faith at all. I don't think he presumed on Jesus in any way, shape, or form. In fact, he says to Jesus through his messengers, look, I understand authority. I'm a man of authority, and I know how hierarchy ranks and the pecking order. And I realize I'm asking you to do something, and I know that when I ask someone to do something, they go and do it, because I'm over them. And I am appealing to you a higher authority to do something. And I realize here's his faith. If you say it, it will happen. That's his faith. Not that Jesus certainly would heal the servant, but that if Jesus said the word, he would certainly be healed. I believe it. Now intellectually, I hope that most of you, if not all of you, believe that. I should have faith in Jesus. If he says it, I can take it to the bank. Do we really believe it? Do we believe it in John 6 when Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me, I will never cast them out." A lot of people don't believe that, and a lot of people try to give you the business of, "You don't know what I've done. You don't know how many times I've done it. You don't know who I've done it too. I'm past that point in my life." And Jesus says, "Listen, if anyone comes to me, I will never cast them out." Do we believe Jesus in John 10 where he says, "The Father has given me certain people, and I will never lose them. I hold them in my hand, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." Do we believe that? Most people struggle with that, and they say, "Yeah, but you don't know what I've done. You don't know how many times I've done it. You don't know how stubborn I am. Jesus says, "If I've got you in my hand, I've got you. Believe it." Do we believe John 14 when Jesus says, "Look, I'm leaving. While I'm gone, I'm going to give you the Spirit." And as Tyler said, "It's to your advantage that I leave and the Spirit come, but I'm coming back for you. And I'm preparing a place for you, and I'm going to take you to be with me forever." Listen, if Jesus says it, believe it. That was the faith of the centurion. If Jesus would speak the word, it would happen, and it would be certain. Second idea is this. How do we respond to Jesus? Respond with fear. Fear. Can I tell you what I mean when I say fear? Fear. I'm always amazed to read really smart guys talking about the Bible and writing about the Bible. And they come across a verse like this, and they say, "Well, it doesn't mean fear. It means reverence. It means respect. It means awe. It means fear." It means fear. They're walking in a funeral procession. The sun is dead. Jesus walks into the middle of it and touches him, and he comes back to life. They were afraid. And when you read the Gospels, you see two sides of Jesus. Sometimes they seem paradoxical. They don't seem to fit sometimes, but they do. On the one side, you see this Jesus who has compassion, and he's comforting, and he's welcoming, and he says things like, "If you come to me, I will never cast you out." And then you see the other side of Jesus, and he does things, and he says things, and you think to yourself in an honest moment, "If I heard him say that or saw him do that, I would freak out." I would be terrified. And these people saw Jesus raise this young man from the dead, and very simply they were terrified. They feared. Number three, how do you respond to Jesus? You respond with worship. With worship. Luke 7, 16, "Fear sees them all, and they glorified God." They praised God for what they saw happening in Jesus' life. If you can walk away from the stories of Jesus, and say they're nice stories, and you don't respond with worship, you didn't get the story. If you can walk away from a sermon series in the Gospel of Luke, and you can walk away saying, "Nice talk, really good, interesting, fascinating, learn some stuff about Capernaum, centurians." Wow, that was great. But you don't worship, then either one or two things have happened, either I've failed or you've missed it. These people experience Jesus, and their response is worship. If you come away from this book thinking, "Nice plotline, interesting characters." I like the twist there at the end, and I like how Luke ties it all together, and it's great literature. That's fantastic. But you don't respond with worship, you don't get it. These people experience Jesus, they respond with faith, they respond with fear, they respond with worship, number four, respond with words. And I know that's a little bit of an awkward statement, but it just fit the rest of what I was saying and responding, so I said respond with words. Here's what I mean. These people in the funeral procession, they see it. They see Jesus touch the thing and the kid pops up and he talks. He starts talking to everybody, and there he is, he's with his mom. They see all of that happen, and Luke says what, Luke 7, 17, this report about him spread throughout the whole of Judea in all the surrounding country. They could not help but talk about what they had seen. They could not keep it in even if they tried. They went immediately and they talked to their best friend and their neighbor. You weren't at the funeral, but you won't believe what happened. You were out of town when we had the service, but you got to hear what Jesus did. They were compelled. No one had to tell them to go tell, they just did it. What a sad verse for some of us who have spent a lot of time with Jesus. Others with Jesus, and we struggled to get up the guts to use words. These people met him for a moment, and they could not help but talk about what they had seen and what they had heard. They did it with words, and they told everybody they knew, you won't believe what happened. One last thought is this, we'll try to wrap it up. There's a danger in a passage like Luke 7, 1 to 17. The danger is, I stand up and I say, here's all the major characters and players. You've got the centurion and the mom and the son and the servant. You've got the people in name and the procession. You've got all these people. I pat you on the back, and I give you an out of boy, and I say, now, go out and be just like them. Be just like the centurion in his faith. Be just like the people in name, in their witness, in their worship, in their fear. Do exactly what these people did. If we end a sermon like that, who's the hero of the story? The centurion and the people in name, and all the people I'm telling you to follow and to be exactly like them. Sum it up with this last thought. In the end, we need to remember, and we need to be reminded that Jesus is the hero of the story. He's the hero, not the centurion, not the people in the funeral procession. This is the hero, he is God who came to seek and to save the lost. Keep your Bible open. I know that most of you are like me, and you get that last blank filled in and you want to pack it up, but I want you to see this. Look at Luke 7 in verse 16. Look what the people say. Fear sees them all. They glorified God saying, here's the first thing they said, "A great prophet has arisen among us." They're there, they watch it, the kid gets up and they say, this is not what you and I would say, but this is what a group of Jewish people said, "A prophet has arisen among us." And you say, well, why did they say that? Why didn't they just say, well, that was amazing. You could have laughed at amazing, Tony got it. They say a great prophet because they're thinking of the Old Testament and they're thinking about 1 Kings 17, 2 Kings 4, when Elijah and Eli Shuh, the prophets raised people from the dead. They knew the Old Testament and they're putting the dots together. They're trying to find a category for this guy, Jesus, and they say, well, okay, here he is. We've heard he's preaching. He's doing amazing things. Funeral, he raises the kid up from the dead, Elijah did that, Elisha did that. He must be a prophet maybe. Look what they say next. Fear sees them all. The glorified God, a great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people. God has visited his people. You'd like to look at that and say, they knew that Jesus was God. I don't think they did. I think they had no clue, but I do think they knew the Old Testament. And they knew passages like Exodus 4, 31, where Moses walks back into Egypt. And he says to the people, I'm going to take you out of here and God's going to do some great stuff. And do you know what everybody says? God has visited his people. They weren't out yet, but they knew that God was about to do something big. And they say, God has visited his people. I think it's like the Book of Ruth, chapter 1, excuse me, chapter 1, verse 6, where Naomi has left Israel, she's left the Promised Land, and then she hears the famines over. We can go back. And so they go back, and when they go back, they find it's true. There is no more famine. And they say, guess what? God has visited his people. The harvest isn't in yet, but they know it's coming. They know that God is working. I think it's the exact same thing here in Luke 1, 68, a passage we looked at a couple of weeks ago where Zechariah, remember he was mute because he didn't trust the word from God about his son and his wife being pregnant, so he couldn't talk, but when his son is born, he speaks up and what does he say? His name is John. And everybody looks around and you know what they say? God has visited his people. And they say, we don't really understand this thing, how the old lady got pregnant and how he couldn't talk, but now he can't talk. We don't know how to put all these pieces together, but we know God's about to do something big. This is important. And these people look at Jesus and they say, okay, we've heard about the teaching, we've heard about the miracles, now you're raising people back from the dead. God has visited his people. What they're saying is God's about to do something big. They were right. They probably had no idea how right they were. They really didn't understand that it was literally true that God had visited his people and he was standing right in their presence. And they didn't fully understand yet the idea that the Son of Man had come to seek and to save the lost. God was about to do the biggest thing that he's ever done. And that's come himself to walk among people like us who are not worthy, are not worthy. And for Jesus to die on a cross for your sin, for my sin, to take the punishment that should have fallen on us and to bring the big idea of loot to fulfillment and completion. The Son of Man had come to seek and to save the lost. That is amazing. Let's pray. Father, again, we believe these words. We confess that we are not worthy, regardless of what other people think of us, how good our reputation may be, Father, we know deep down that we are not worthy to call you Father, to have a relationship with you. And we are amazed this morning at what we read about Jesus in His words and His actions. That He came to defeat, disease, and death. That He came to seek us and to save us while we were still lost, while that we're amazed. We want to respond in a way that would honor you. We want to be people who believe, who have faith in Jesus and His promises. We want to be people who tremble in your presence, who understand our unworthiness and your worthiness. We want to be people who worship. We want to be people who cannot help but talk about what we've experienced and what you've done on our behalf. So Father, this morning, right now we want to respond with fear and faith in worship. We pray that as we sing together and lift our voices that you would be honored and we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.