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September 9, 2026 | Ozzy Wei teaches on the theme "How to Have Amazing Faith" by exploring the faith of the centurion in Luke 7:1-10. He highlights three essentials for amazing faith: reaching out to Jesus, recognizing our unworthiness, and resting in Jesus' authority, emphasizing faith that truly amazes Jesus and trusts in God's sovereignty.
Various midweek classes on wednesday nights
Hey, just like last week, I would love if we could start at our tables and read our passage for tonight. So tonight it's going to be Luke 7 and the first 10 verses, so verses 1 through 10. And as you're reading that at your table, maybe you'll have someone read it out loud, maybe you'll all read it together at once. Discuss what you see, what stands out to you, and then as a table, try to answer this question. What was so amazing about the centurion's faith? You're going to read about a centurion and how he amazed Jesus. Why do you think and why do the people at your table think his faith was so amazing? Take a few minutes and then we'll break it down together. All right, let's go ahead and bring it on together and let's jump into this text together. So think about that question, what was so amazing about the centurion's faith? Clearly Jesus was amazed by something the centurion did, and so today we're going to break down why that is. If I had to give this lesson a title, it's how to have amazing faith. Clearly Jesus was amazed at what just happened, and we too can have the same faith, but there's a certain kind of faith we need to have that will actually amaze Jesus. It's not just ordinary faith like most people, it's actually extraordinary, just like the centurion showed. Think about something that takes your breath away. For me, I love nature. I especially love large bodies of water because they remind me how small I am and how small this world really is. I also love marine life. When I'm underwater, like snorkeling with colorful fish, or I just see these like massive whales and sharks, I'm just amazed at how small I am. So what is that for you? Something that takes your breath away. Jesus was amazed. His breath was taken away at the centurion's faith. Your translation might say something like marveled. Same idea. And you can only imagine the look on Jesus's face when this centurion modeled this faith. Almost like this face of like, you're really showing me that kind of faith? I haven't seen anything like this in Israel before. So you have to imagine what it was like being around him. Now the Bible only records two other times where Jesus is amazed at something. There's only two other instances, and here they are. The first is Mark 6, 6. And he was amazed at their unbelief. He was going around the villages teaching. So one way to amaze Jesus is to not believe when you have every reason you're supposed to believe. You know how someone gets like a really simple answer wrong? Okay, and it's just like appalling. It's amazing to you. Jesus was amazed at these people's unbelief. Like, how could you be missing me right now? I'm right in front of you. I'm doing these miracles. That's one way to amaze Jesus, is not believing when you have every reason you're supposed to. The second is the one that we just read, Luke 7, 9. Jesus heard this and was amazed at the centurion. And turning to the crowd following him, he said, I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel. So Jesus is bragging on the centurion right now. I haven't seen anything like this before. Like, do more of what this guy is doing, because he's doing it right. And so the second way to amaze Jesus is to show that you believe when you're not supposed to, or when the odds are stacked against you. And we're going to break that down a little bit more. The centurion actually had every reason not to reach out to Jesus, but he chose to. And that's what amazed Jesus in this instance. So from this story, we can learn how to have amazing faith. There are three things that need to be true for us to have amazing faith. The first is we need to reach out to Jesus. All right, start with the basics. It's got to be Jesus. It can't be ourself. It can't be finances. It can't be drugs. It can't be alcohol. We all have faith in something, whether it's God, self, or something else. And so to have faith that amazes Jesus, it's got to be faith in Him. Jesus, I trust you. Verses three through five. When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to Him, requesting Him to come and to save the life of his servant. When they reached Jesus, they pleaded with Him earnestly, saying, He is worthy for you to grant this, because He loves our nation and has built us a synagogue. So let's break this down. Who is the first person you would call in an emergency? So who's that person that you can trust in your contact list that says, this person is guaranteed to pick up if something goes wrong? The centurion sent for Jesus. He could have sent for the magicians of the day, like Pharaoh. He could have looked for palm readers, which is popular in some parts of the world, or shake a magic eight ball, saying, Hey, tell me what I need to do next. Tell me a prophecy. What do I need to do? But he believed Jesus, the person, the human, God Himself could do something about his emergency. So amazing faith needs to start with Jesus as the object, as the person of your faith. Now here, you'll notice, this is kind of interesting. The representatives say, Jesus, this guy is worthy of you to actually come visit him. Like he deserves your time. At first, that sounds a little bit entitling. That sounds a little bit off-putting, like I would not want to help somebody who thinks they deserve my help, per se. But what these representatives are saying, essentially, is that this is a kind person. The translation doesn't communicate it very well, but essentially, this person has loved his nation, like he's serving his country, and he's actually built a place for people to worship. And so I think this guy is worth your time. It's more of that tone than this guy is worthy for you to do something for him. Now, let's go a level deeper, because something more is happening than just Jesus visiting this other person. Luke wants us to see that Jesus's ministry extends to who we call the Gentiles. The Gentiles, when you hear that word, you'll hear it a lot in the New Testament, it's referring to those who are not Jewish. Okay, so Jewish is referring to the people of God. And so you have the Gentiles, the non-Jews. So there was a little bit of pride, Jewish pride, being God's people, making the Gentiles kind of like enemies. Also, Jewish leaders and Roman soldiers did not have the best relationship. So if you put all of this together, you have a Gentile and Jew that are about to interact, and you have a Jewish rabbi and a Roman soldier about to interact. So four very bad things coming together. Luke is showing us something very important with all these things happening at the same time. Jesus had just preached on loving your enemies, and so now Luke provides this story shortly after to show the gospel's for everybody. And for the people of God, the Jews during this time, this would have been amazing to them. Like, the gospel's actually going out from our people to those enemies. And for us, it's a reminder that the gospel is not just for a specific nation. It's not just for a specific ethnicity, or gender, or personality. The gospel's for everybody. And Luke wants us to see this with this interaction. So because of Jesus' sacrifice for our sins, there's nothing that stands between us and him. We have no excuse. No excuse to say that we can't go to Jesus directly. Is your first response in hard times going to Jesus? To have any sort of faith that amazes other people, any faith that will amaze God, it's got to be faith in Jesus first. It can't be drugs. It can't be alcohol. It can't be pornography. It can't be money. Whatever it is, it can't be anything other than Jesus. And so in hard times, we learn first, make reaching out to Jesus your first response. Just like that first dial when you're in trouble. Who would you call? Now, I'm not saying don't call that person, but that same mentality. How many of us run to everything else but Jesus who can actually do something about our situation? He's got to be our knee-jerk reaction. Practically, this is what I would say. When you pray, pray honestly about what's going on. You don't need to perform. You don't need to come up with the right words to say. Pray honestly. Lay it all out before Jesus. There's no problem that's too big for him to handle. God wants to hear what you have to say, and he wants you to know that he's going to take care of the situation. Philippians 4, 6-7. This is the most highlighted verse in all of scripture. Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I don't know if you see it there, but there's actually a formula here. Don't worry about anything, so God assumes we're going to worry about things, but in everything, everything's everything, pray. Make our requests known to God, and by doing that, we will have peace from Christ that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. There's peace that comes from taking your worries to Christ. And how many of us have a first reaction that takes us away from Christ rather than to him? God's word gives us an offer of peace if we make our requests.
known to Him. Then after you pray, I would say surround yourself with Christian friends you trust. Have people who speak life into you, who will carry the burdens with you, who will mourn with you, who will celebrate with you, who will remind you of Scripture. Fewer things are more strengthening in hard times than the comfort and encouragement of fellow Christians. And so surround yourself with believers you trust that can encourage you. Proverbs 11 14, Without guidance a people will fall, but with many counselors there is deliverance. The first step to have amazing faith is having faith in Jesus. And that includes surrounding yourself with people like-minded who also want to have amazing faith. So let's talk about these two questions at our tables. What is your usual reaction when life feels out of control? Are you calm, cool, and collected or are you a mess? What do you like when life is out of control and what would it look like for you right now in your situation to reach out to Jesus? What would that look like for you? So take a few minutes and then we will continue on. Alright guys, let's go ahead and wrap up those conversations. And before we move on to this next point here, I just want to emphasize our culture teaches us so many bad ways to cope with our issues. There are so many bad ads out there, and there's a reason all these marketing schemes are working, is because we're looking for wrong ways to help ourselves. The devil wants us to believe that we're self-sufficient, that we're able to take care of ourselves, that we don't need anybody's help. We don't need God. We talked about that a couple weeks ago. It's one of the lies of the devil. You can live without God. You know, Jesus turned the stone into bread. And the world is giving us substances, giving us video content, it's telling us to do all these different things that are not in Scripture. And we have in God's Word, look to Jesus. He is sufficient to be our Savior. And so this is a very practical call to action, is don't look to the world to try to satisfy you and fulfill you. It's not going to. The foundation of your faith has to be a person, and what he's already done on the cross, but also what he can continue to do for you and I, and caring for us. So the first step to having amazing faith is to reach out to Jesus. The second is to recognize your unworthiness. Recognize your unworthiness. And this is exactly what the centurion does. Verses 6 and the first half of 7. Oh, I guess I don't have that up here. I showed you guys my little secret funny slide. But essentially verses 6 through 7 talk about how Jesus is on his way to the centurion's house. And a centurion says, hey, you're on your way, I don't need you to come here under my roof. In fact, I'm not worthy to have you underneath my roof. Okay, so that's what we're gonna break down here in verse 2. So the reason I had this slide right here, I'm gonna show everybody what it is, all right? So imagine if somebody famous was going to visit your home, right? Take a Brad Pitt or an Elvis, or if neither of those two are, like, really piquing your interest, think of somebody important that's coming over. You'd probably make a lot of effort to make a good first impression. You'd want to make sure things are in order. There'd be some level of respect, whether or not you actually agree with them or like them as a celebrity. There'd be some type of admiration of, like, you're a pretty big deal. Okay, and that's the point that I'm trying to make here, is that in a grander way, this is Jesus, the Son of God, and He is making His way to this person's home. Think of it this way, if you made a request to your boss, or you talked to somebody just notable in society, you'd probably want to go about it in a more careful and respectful way, right? Just as a way of showing, this is what I think about you, I think highly of you. It's not that you want to manipulate them by being careful and respectful, but it's a way of honoring them, it's a way of esteeming them. And so the centurion modeled respect and reverence for Jesus. He recognized his own unworthiness. And as Jesus was about to enter His home, the centurion actually, I don't know if you caught this in the story, sends a second set of representatives, different from the first. Jesus agreed to visit this Gentile's home, and now as Jesus is on His way, it kind of freaks Him out. And so He sends another set of representatives. And He does this because, back to the Jew Gentile cultural thing, if a Jew were to enter a Gentile's home, it could have defiled the Jew. And so the centurion goes out of his way to not inconvenience Jesus. He was considerate and he admired Jesus, and his genuine faith was showing. And Jesus is showing you and I that the gospel goes beyond social and religious barriers. Now I mentioned earlier that the Jews would have been surprised that the Holy Spirit, that the gospel would reach the Gentiles, and Luke writes about this in his other book in the New Testament, the book of Acts. The Jewish believers who came with Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles too. The Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles too. Our enemies, our Lord and Savior, is taking our gospel and is now bringing it to the people that we don't really like. And this is what Jesus is trying to do, this is what Luke is trying to show us early on, is Jesus is hinting at, hey, this gospel is gonna reach beyond just us. This is gonna even reach the people we don't like. This is gonna reach the people in our workplaces, those difficult family members, those difficult neighbors. The gospel is for everybody. It's not for rich, it's not just for the poor, it's not just for a certain race, it's for everybody. Paul says in Galatians 328, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus. The centurion was aware of his unworthiness, but Jesus still wanted to visit him. The centurion wanted Jesus to do something for him, but he went about it in a way that amazed Jesus, like we've been saying. So let's talk about how this would work in our own life. Let's talk about prayer. The centurion could have easily said, hey Jesus, please heal my servant. You know I want him healed. It would be great if you could heal him. A quick transaction with no reverence or care about who he's talking to, just his own request granted. Just give me the desires of my heart. Now think about how often we pray and ask God for something without actually worshiping Him. Our God is worthy of our worship just because of who He is, not what He can do for us. And how often do we just pray for things so that we would be happy and then ask for the next thing? So when was the last time you prayed with a spirit of unworthiness before God? When Jesus prayed and modeled for us the Lord's Prayer, He begins with admiration. He begins with praising God. He doesn't just immediately jump into God, I want you to do all these things for me. And I think it would be a good exercise for us, a needed practice to actually give God the praise that He's due before we begin asking for things that we want or need. This is the Creator of the universe, this is our Father in Heaven. He graciously saved us from our sins. It's okay to ask God for things, but we need to remember one thing, and that's that we're not entitled to anything. We're not entitled to anything that we ask God to grant our prayer requests for. Amazing faith carries no sense of entitlement. This is one of those we need to be put in our place a little bit. There are things we want, and God knows that, and don't hear what I'm not saying God is a loving Father, and He wants to give us good things, as you would want to give your children good things, or your nieces and nephews. But often we can ask with the wrong motives, and this is what James is saying. One second Jesse, let me get through this real quick. James 4.3, you ask and don't receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your own pleasures. If I'm honest with you, there are times I pray, and I'm kind of hoping God doesn't catch me with why I'm asking for it. I know that what I'm asking for is kind of for my personal pleasure, and I know God can do something about it. And so I ask Him for it, but there's a deep part inside of me that knows that God's probably not gonna give this to me, because He knows why I'm asking for it. And so we need to check our motives when we ask the Lord for things. We need to remember that this is the King of the universe. He already knows every word that's gonna come out of our mouth before we even pray. And so we ought to give God some respect, some admiration. And then, as we do that, of course He wants to hear what we want. He loves that, and He loves blessing His children with good gifts. We just got to get the carpet for the horse. Jesse, did you have something?
and that's why you put it the way that you put it. Right, and I think on that note, Jesse, sometimes that's all we have to pray. Like I'm not saying you have to perform in your prayer. Sometimes you just gotta throw a quick one up there. What I'm more saying is when you view prayer and everything that you say is simply for your own selfish desire, the Lord's not gonna bless that, He's not. And secretly we can carry a sense of entitlement sometimes when we pray, but amazing faith, faith that amazes Jesus goes, Jesus, you're worthy, I'm not. Anything that you give me is just a cherry on top. We were talking at our table about fiscal shifts and fiscal employees and customers saying, just we have to take a minute sometimes to just say, please, Lord, give me patience, give me through the day, and just go back to work. Right, Lord help them, right, and help me, give me strength to make it through the shifts, right? Right, I was reading this quote, it's by a pastor named Eric Reid, and this is so convicting, and I wanted to share it with you guys. Eric Reid says, in all my years of pastoring, I have learned this one lesson, a person's spiritual maturity is not truly visible until they don't get their way, and then you see the person. Right, picture a child who hasn't gotten their way, oh my gosh, right, I wanna get out of that room, right? Sometimes we just get very pouty as God's children because God did not give us what we prayed for. Now, I don't wanna be insensitive here, there are some very real needs in the room. There are some pretty scary things going on, and there are some pretty frightening things. There are deadlines coming up, and you need an answer from the Lord. There's somebody difficult in your life, and you need the Lord to intervene. I'm not referring to those situations, and these types of situations, the one that are more difficult, and you really genuinely need God to move. We need to understand that sometimes God has a better plan, and it's not exactly the results that we want. It's hard to accept, but we have to trust that he is God and we are not, and he allows certain things, like evil sometimes, he allows results to be a little different, to grow us spiritually, to grow our faith, and he is moving around us in ways we can't even understand, and we have to have amazing faith just to make it another day. Sometimes God does not give us what we want, but sometimes that's better because he gives us what we need. Amazing faith carries no sense of entitlement. We have to remember that we are unworthy. Amazing faith wants God's kingdom to come, not your own. Amazing faith wants God's will to be done, not your own. We were made to be an ongoing relationship with God, and that begins with recognizing how unworthy and undeserving we are. So in our last table discussion, let's talk about these two questions right here. What are you, or should you be, praying about right now? What are you, or should you be, praying about right now, and how will you honor God even if you don't get your way? All right, talk for a few minutes, and then we'll close out our time. All right, y'all, let's wrap up those conversations, and we're gonna finish our passage out here. So, two steps to have amazing faith. The first is we need to reach out to Jesus. Not anything in this world, not anything within. We need to reach outward to the person of Jesus. Second, we need to recognize that we are unworthy. Now, this is not to put us down. This is to put us in our right place, and to remember that God is king, but he's also our father, and we don't wanna get that out of order. He's worthy of our worship, but he also wants to give us good gifts, and he also wants to hear what we want, and so we just wanna make sure we give him the honor that's due. And then lastly, I think this is the hardest one of the three. We need to rest in Jesus' authority. Rest in Jesus' authority. We get this in verses seven through 10. The centurion says, "'But say the word, and my servant will be healed. "'For I, too, am a man placed under authority, "'having soldiers under my command. "'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. "'Jesus heard this and was amazed at him, "'and turned to the crowd. "'Following him, he said, I tell you, "'I have not found faith so great, a faith even in Israel. "'When those who had been sent returned to the house, "'they found the servant in good health.'" So to make this point, we need to look at the centurion. He brings up his work responsibilities. He's like, hey, I know what it's like to have authority. I send a soldier over here because I'm over him, and I tell a soldier to come to me, and he comes to me. The soldiers obey. And so in the same way, God, Jesus, is sovereign over the universe. When he says something, things have to obey. Creation is under the authority of Jesus Christ. Here's an example in scripture. Matthew 21, 19, "'Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, "'he went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves. "'And he said to it, "'May no fruit ever come from you again.' "'At once the fig tree withered.'" So the fig tree is under the authority of Jesus Christ. It had to obey when Jesus spoke, just like the soldiers had to listen to the centurion when he spoke. So Jesus was surprised to see the kind of faith the centurion possessed. And it was a faith that said, I know that you're in control of this. I know that you can do something about it. I'm not even gonna have you come all the way over to my house. I just need you to say the word. I know that one word from you changes everything. For you and I, amazing faith looks like trusting more, trusting more than God to get us to heaven, but also trusting him with our life now, trusting him with our life today. A lot of people know that God can do something about our circumstances. Not many can trust him because he is worthy and he is in control. That's amazing faith. The centurion knew that Jesus could do something about his dying servant, which is why he reached out to Jesus in the first place, but he also recognized that he was not worthy. And then he rested in Jesus's authority to take care of the rest. He gave it to him completely and said, I know you can do this. It's up to you. Amazing faith rests in Jesus's authority. Amazing faith rests in Jesus's authority. You know, there's a part of scripture, Matthew 11, 20 to 30, where Jesus says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You know, it's a lot easier to be at ease when you know there is a stronger force around. When we're in danger, we might call 911. When there is conflict with the country, we know that we have a strong military. In a similar way, we know that our circumstances are so small compared to how big God is. And so we actually have a command here in 1 Peter, cast all your cares on him because he cares for you. That means that you and I can walk out of this room tonight fully rested. And I don't know how many of us need to hear that tonight, but we can actually have this posture of rest if we fully surrender our anxieties to God. And often I think we wear ourselves out by trying to be self-saviors. We try to take care of things in our own hands. We try to figure it all out when we were not meant to do that. We were meant to put it all on Jesus and let him figure it out. Now there's one last thing I wanna address before we end here. If we're not careful, we can walk away from this lesson with a name it, claim it mentality. And what I mean by that is people might say, if you just believe enough, then this is gonna happen. Or like somebody wasn't healed, it's because you didn't believe enough, that didn't happen. As if we can manipulate God by how much faith we had. Now I think people mean well when they say that, but I think it's more scriptural to be content no matter the outcome. It's more scriptural to say, God, your will be done, not my own. That's exactly what Jesus says. Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Amazing faith is amazing trust. And somebody who has amazing faith is bold, they're rested, they're confident that Jesus has heard their prayer, and they can rest easy tonight knowing that he is onto something. You don't have to lay awake in bed all night because you know that you've given your cares to God and he is working on it. So I wanna ask you, are you gonna walk out today with ordinary faith, just that God can do something about it, or amazing faith that God is worthy and he's also doing something about it? Let me pray for us.