The Conversion Of Lazarus Series

Luke 7:1-10

There was an old man on his deathbed and he knew the end was near. His nurse, his wife, his daughter and his two sons were with him. He asked for two witnesses to be present and a camcorder be in place so he could record his last wishes, and when all was ready he began to speak: "My son, Bernie, I want you to take the Mayfair houses." "My daughter Sybil, you take the apartments over in the east end." "My son, Jamie, I want you to take the offices over in the City Centre." “And Sarah, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings on the banks of the river."

The nurse and witnesses were blown away because they didn’t realize how extensive his holdings were, and as he slipped away, the nurse say to his wife, “Your husband must have been a very hard-working man to have accumulated all this property" and his wife replied, "Property"? .... He had a Paper Route!"

Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum. 2 And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die. 3 And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant.

4 And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, that he was worthy for whom he should do this: 5 for he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.

6 Then Jesus went with them. And when He was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto Him, Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof: 7 wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee: but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. 8 For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, go, and he goeth; and to another, come, and he cometh; and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it.

9 When Jesus heard these things, He marvelled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. 10 And they that were sent, returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick.

The events of the day we’re focusing actually began in the previous chapter and in chapter 6, verse 12 we see Jesus had spent the night in prayer on the top of a mountain and following this He called His twelve disciples; and then together they all went down the mountain where they saw a huge multitude of people who had come from several towns and cities. These were people who wanted both to hear what Jesus had to say and many who came to be healed of whatever problems they had.

And as you can imagine, with these great crowds that some of them were looking for answers to questions about God and maybe life in general and several would be making requests of one kind or another; but while He was in the middle of helping these people; Jesus turned His attention to His disciples and gave them a shorter version of the beatitudes He had given in Matthew chapter five and basically, what He did was to take what many of them would have considered to be common-sense teaching and turned it all around.

For instance, many of the Jews had believed that good living resulted in prosperity and the prosperous were guaranteed a place in heaven but Jesus began by saying that those who live for Him may be actually be called to live a life of poverty; but someday they're going to experience true riches when they're enjoying life in the kingdom of God.

I think the best example of this is found in Luke 16 where we see a man named Lazarus who we’re told was faithful to God in spite of the fact that he was not only extremely poor but was obviously was too sick to even fight off the dogs that wanted to lick his sores; but when he died we see him enjoying all the comforts of heaven. On the other hand, we also see the rich man who enjoyed to the full but was absolutely oblivious of the needs of those around him and he ended up dying and spending eternity suffering in hell.

And then Jesus said that those whose faith causes them to experience hunger are going to know what it means to be well fed, particularly when they find themselves sitting down at the marriage supper of the lamb; because they’ll not only be enjoying the feast of feasts but they also be sitting in the very presence of God Himself.