Lk.7:1-3 – After Jesus finished giving revelation to the people on the hillside, he went on to Capernaum. There he found a Roman military captain who had a beloved servant he valued highly, and the servant was sick to the point of death. When the captain heard that Jesus was in the city, he sent some respected Jewish elders to plead with him to come and heal his dying servant.

I often think of Palm Sunday as this pivotal day in the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus was literally drawing a line in the sand. He was asking a public question, “Who do men say that I am?” Even better, “Who do you say that I am?”. This was no time for compromises, if He is the Christ follow Him, if not just stay in your life of compromise and bondage. This Roman Centurion had been kind to the Jews even building a synagogue for them, now it was time to display what he really believed, it was time to stand with he Lord as He entered Jerusalem. Building a synagogue could be interpreted as a political gesture, following Jesus into Jerusalem as part of the entourage was a totally different thing. This was personal, the centurion was claiming to be a follower of Jesus.Here is how Barclay describes this centurion.

“He had an extremely unusual attitude to the Jews. If the Jews despised the Gentiles, the Gentiles hated the Jews. Anti-semitism is not a new thing. The Romans called the Jews a filthy race; they spoke of Judaism as a barbarous superstition; they spoke of the Jewish hatred of humankind; they accused the Jews of worshipping an ass’s head and annually sacrificing a Gentile stranger to their God. True, many of the Gentiles, weary of the many gods and loose morals of paganism, had accepted the Jewish doctrine of the one God and the austere Jewish ethic. But the whole atmosphere of this story implies a close bond of friendship between this centurion and the Jews.”

Jesus had already spoken of this soldier’s great faith, He was now having to live out His faith publicly. So how about you? Are you just sort of agreeable with the gospel and kind of just following along or are you all in? Whether you realize it or not your friends and acquaintances have their eyes on you. It is one thing to be sort of a secret admirer even asking for a prayer or something from the Lord. Following Jesus down the road is an entirely different matter.