Life of Christ #2 -The Centurion’s Faith: Jesus, Spiritual Authority & the Unseen Realm

Incredible insight this centurion has. It really is awesome. This man has touched the unseen realm in his understanding. He is a Gentile who can see the unseen. He sits in his home, waits, knowing that if that man out there can heal, he can heal my son anywhere, because when I give an order about Nazareth, I don’t see Nazareth, I don’t go to Nazareth, but my will is done in Nazareth. I am a man of authority, and I understand that.

This one has unseen soldiers, and He does not have to give orders He sees, or go there to get it done. He can give commands, and those commands are obeyed on the earth, and they are obeyed in the heavens. This is what the Gentile sees, and this is what the Jews don’t see. The Jews are escorting Him to a house and to a little boy, and the Lord is going to go there because of their lack of seeing, because of their lack of understanding. I can really appreciate why the Lord won’t go there. I mean, when the Lord is told to go somewhere, He goes. Because if He just says He’s healed, if they don’t see it, they will- yeah, they will ascribe it to something else. They are only helped in their faith if they see. They have to watch Him and the response, but this man doesn’t mean that. This man is sitting there with faith growing.

If Jesus Christ can do this, it means He has authority over illness. If He has authority over illness, He has an authority greater than mine. My authority is an unseen authority. I give orders that I never see carried out. I sit right here in this home and take care of a hundred square miles, and never do any of it. So the servant says this; all of this is what the servant says to the Lord. And the Lord is really astonished. This man knows my history; this man has tapped my memories; this man has understood where I come from; this man has understood spiritual authority. Anything that has the word spirit or spiritual in it is something that transcends physical matter, and it really does not belong to this realm.

The Lord marvels, and He said, “I have not seen anything like this among all of the chosen people.” He seems to be both overjoyed and relieved at the opportunity to heal on this basis. But I love His words; I find His words fascinating. He does not take responsibility for healing that child. That’s not exactly what I mean. It’s almost like the Lord said to an angel, “You go to that house, and the amount of faith you see is the amount of healing you give.

He said to the servant, “Go to your home, and according to the centurion’s faith, according to the amount of faith that centurion has, shall that child be healed.” And what is faith? What is faith? It is the evidence of things not seen. I can’t land that and make it real clear. All I can tell you is…both the Lord and the centurion had evidence. The Lord knew that man had looked into His world, the Lord’s world. That meant he had faith, a lot of it; when you can see the unseen, it doesn’t make you special so much as it makes you one who has a lot of faith.

What is the key to opening the realm that is not seen? Faith makes unseen things seen. Invisible things visible. Things that do not have material…material. Things that do not exist…existing. Faith is the key that unlocks the door to another realm. The Lord knew the man had faith because the man had seen the unseen, and He turned it around and said, however much faith that man has, so shall the servant be healed, and He knew how much faith that was. It was faith enough to see and have evidence of what has no evidence whatsoever. I’m arrested! I am really, really arrested. It makes us ask: what is authority, and how do we deal with authority? I think our immediate response would be to have a lot of faith, but I think I would have to stand with the centurion and not the Lord. I think it’s seeing how much of what we are as Christians has nothing to do with this world.

Brothers and sisters, as we go through this, and you folks out there, as we go through this, there is one thing that keeps coming back to me. How much of the life of Jesus Christ is free from time and space? We don’t ever look at this. You can’t find a book on it. You can’t find a paragraph on it.  But the Lord was going to go heal that man with nothing that He had on that child, with nothing that He had on this earth, but something He had in another world, but He didn’t think anybody knew that. Then He meets the centurion who does know it. The Lord was about to break the laws of physics. Everybody believed He could do that. The synagogue leaders knew He could do it, but they saw it as something generated in this world, because they said, ” Go to the man’s home.”

The Lord knew it had nothing to do with going to the man’s home. It had to do with the realm He had lived in throughout all His eternal past. It had to do with angels. It had to do with authority, spiritual authority. I think the more we see the unseen, the more we see, even looking through the Lord’s life; keep looking for that which wasn’t bound by time and space. If the scripture says the Lord knew, He perceived, He understood, He understood men, He knew what was happening. This isn’t about somebody who’s clairvoyant. This is somebody who can break time and space and know what’s going on two miles from here. What’s going to go on in Jerusalem, 50 miles from here. What happened yesterday, and what will happen tomorrow. I would encourage you to open your eyes to see as much as you can of the unseen. That is faith.

I’ve never liked the word faith and I never will. I don’t particularly want to. It’s not that I’m against faith. It’s not that I need another vision. It’s just that it’s such a…it’s out in the ectoplasm. “Have faith, brother.” Don’t tell me to have faith. Tell me how to have faith. Tell me where faith comes from. For the centurion, it was taking everything he knew, well, and realizing if you turn the coin around, the same principles existed in heaven.
When he saw that, then he saw a whole world he had never seen before. He’s the only person that I can think of right off, other than Nathaniel, who really impressed the Lord.
I’m glad he was a Gentile, because I’m a Gentile.

Now the Lord doesn’t end His comments here about time and space. He says that the chosen will come from the east and the west, and do what? You tell me. Eat supper, have a feast. The word is a feast. Now then, what has He just done? He has just blown soot out of time and space once more. He makes this statement so casually; we pass it up so casually, that there will be those who come from the east and west. What is that? That’s geography. That’s this earth. This is this planet. And they will sit down with who? The Jew will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Well, there will be others other than the Jews? I’m sorry, you’re right; other than the Jews, who will come from the east and the west.

My point is, are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob part of time and space? No, they are not. They have to be somewhere else, unless they are going to sit down on top of somebody’s casket and eat a meal. I’m just arrested one more time: that at some point in time, a bunch of Gentiles are going to sit down in the heavens, who come from the east and the west, and they’re going to sit down in the heavens and eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Well, you say, Gene, it says the kingdom of the heavens. Maybe that’s going to happen on earth. Maybe it is? But I’m telling you, either Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have got to come through that door and bring heavenly realms with them, or those men from the east and west have got to go through that door into the heavens and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One of the two has got to take place. Something that’s not now has to take place.