Transcription

Jeff
Hey, Wesley, did you ever see the movie The Untouchables?

Wesley
Yeah, I did see that. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff
Well, today, uh, that phrase or that word, Untouchables. That’s what we’re talking about. Jesus touches an untouchable. So this is Wesley, and I’m Jeff, and you’re watching the Bible, guys. Okay. Wesley. Man, it’s good to have you in the studio. Yeah, it’s good to be back. Yeah, this is great. So, uh, Kristen’s out of town today, and, uh, so we get to have you for the next few days. Yeah, actually, which is really cool. And, uh, so we always like to start these, uh, podcasts with a segment that, you know, we’re having a little bit of fun horsing around. And, uh, one of our favorites is to do the listening channel or the whisper challenge. Yeah. Have you ever done a whisper challenge?

Wesley
I’ve done that before.

Jeff
Yeah. Okay, so you know how it works. Yeah. So, uh, we we put on the headphones and then. And then there’s a, uh, music playing so we can’t hear. And then the other one will say a phrase that, uh, and we have to guess what it is. Yeah. Okay. So I’ll go first, I’ll put it on, and then the music is loud so I can’t hear it, and. Oh, my, it is loud.

Wesley
It’s too loud. Yeah. It’s loud. Okay. All right. Are you ready? All right. Okay, here we go. The waffle House has good waffles.

Jeff
Oh, man, I don’t know. Say it again, say it again.

Wesley
The waffle House has good waffles.

Jeff
Oh, I think you said something about waffle House. Did you.

Wesley
Say.

Jeff
Did you say I don’t know.

Wesley
You said the waffle House has good waffles. Yeah.

Jeff
You’re right. Actually, you know what? Uh, my wife and I were down in Nashville yesterday. Yeah, and we stopped at waffle House, and.

Wesley
Yeah, that’s a travesty. Yeah. It is. We all should have went. Yeah. I love.

Jeff
Waffle House. Not everybody loves waffle House. You know that, right?

Wesley
Yeah. Okay. Sometimes people are like, you went where? Yeah.

Jeff
I think you’re going to love my music. Okay. Uh uh.

Wesley
Okay. What do we got?

Jeff
Here we go. Okay. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay. Okay, okay. Uh. To be or not to be. That is the question.

Wesley
Oh man. That’s okay. You got to do that one again.

Jeff
To be or not to be, that is the question.

Wesley
Okay. I can’t figure that one out at all. These earphones are good because you can’t hear a thing.

Jeff
I was playing 2001 A Space Odyssey. Right? Bum bum bum ba dum.

Wesley
You can’t hear anything I said.

Jeff
To be or not to be. That is the question.

Wesley
Oh, man, I couldn’t get that one. That was pretty good.

Jeff
Oh. That’s funny. Those are so funny, man. It makes you feel so weird, doesn’t it?

Wesley
You’re like, what are you saying?

Jeff
We’re so dependent on the sense of sound. A lot of times. And it’s hard to.

Wesley
That was good.

Jeff
Well, hey, uh, we have been in this series. That is built around. There’s 250 events in Jesus life. Yeah. And that are recorded in the Gospels. And so what we decided to do is take them in chronological order and in parallel. So chronological means in the order of the time that we believe they happen in Jesus life. And the different authors Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, sometimes they skip around like Luke tends to tell the story in order. Others don’t always tell the story in order, and so they’ll skip around a little bit because they’re talking about topics like, okay, we’re going to talk about all the times Jesus healed blind people. Then we’re going to talk about all the times Jesus taught the good words, right? Yeah. So they teach in groups of topics. And so it’s not always in chronological order. Uh, so we’re going to do this, we’re doing this series in chronological order. And then we’re also doing it in parallel, meaning sometimes two of the three gospel writers or four gospel writers will say the same thing. Sometimes it’s three, sometimes it’s four. So today we’re going to look at one event that happens or is mentioned three different times. Yeah, in the Gospels.

Wesley
So what’s kind of cool about that? Sometimes you’ll get a snippet that maybe is in John that’s not in Matthew. So that’s kind of cool. You get a little more information

Jeff
Or different details or whatever. Yep, yep. So it’s a lot of fun to to look at it that way. And so what we thought we’d do is pick right up in Matthew chapter eight. So it will read Matthew eight one through four, and then we’ll read Mark one, and then we’ll read Luke chapter five. Yeah. So it says large crowds follow Jesus as he came down the mountainside, and suddenly a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. Lord, the man said, if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean. Then Jesus reached out and touched him. I am willing, he said, be healed. And instantly the leprosy disappeared. Then Jesus said to him, don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy, and this will be a public testimony that you’ve been cleansed. So that is the book of Matthew, that Mark tells the same story. It says, a man with leprosy. This is Mark chapter one, which, by the way, we’re still in Mark chapter one. Yeah. After for the people who’ve been listening along for weeks. And Mark, just a couple sentences, couple sentences, couple sentences. So we’re still in the chapter one, a man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. If you’re willing, you can heal me and make me clean, he said. Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. I am willing, he said, be healed. Instantly the leprosy disappeared and the man was healed. Then Jesus sent him on his way with a stern warning. Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priests and let him examine you and take along the offering required in the Law of Moses for those who’ve been healed of leprosy, and this will be a public testimony that you’ve been cleansed.

Jeff
But the man went and spread the word, proclaiming to everyone what had happened. As a result, large crowds soon surrounded Jesus, and he couldn’t publicly enter a town anywhere. He had to stay out in a secluded places. But people from everywhere kept coming to him. Um, and then in Luke chapter five, it says, in one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground, begging to be healed. Lord, he said, if you’re willing, you can heal me and make me clean. And Jesus reached out and touched him. I am willing, he said, be healed. And instantly the leprosy disappeared. Then Jesus instructed him not to tell anyone what had happened, and he said, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required the law of Moses. For those who’ve been healed of leprosy, this will be a public testimony that you’ve been cleansed. But despite Jesus instructions, the report of his power spread even faster and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. Yeah. Isn’t that. Yeah. It’s neat how you get different little details, just little details,

Wesley
Little nuance differences.

Jeff
But they really add to the story.

Wesley
Yeah, yeah, the one part that kind of stands out to me and that’s the the section in Mark, uh, chapter 140 through 45 is just that simple phrase in verse 41 where it says, move with compassion. Jesus reached out and touched him. And I think sometimes as just human beings, I think we can think sometimes that our problems are too insignificant for Jesus to. I can’t pray for that, you know? Yeah, I need help in that area, but I, I can’t ask for that. God. God will never do that. And the response is always Jesus move with compassion and reached out. Yeah. So I think that’s really cool. Or yeah, I just think that’s a cool notion there that there’s nothing that you’ve done. There’s nothing, um, too insignificant that Jesus can’t fix. Yeah.

Jeff
I along those lines, that compassion kind of idea is the request itself is sort of timid. Yeah, right. I don’t mean to bother you. Yeah, but if you wanted to, I know you could. You could heal.

Wesley
Me. Yeah. I almost picture a little kid like, well, if you’re not doing anything and, you know.

Jeff
Just. He seems very uncomfortable with himself. Yeah, he probably shouldn’t be in that. Environment. Anyways, we’ll talk about in a second. Um, he he feels out of place. He feels like maybe Jesus might not. You know, Jesus heals other people. He’s already healed other people. Yeah, but, you know, why would he heal me kind of idea. And so if you wanted to, I my faith is to the point. I’m not convinced you will heal me. Yeah, but my I do have enough faith to say if you wanted to, you could. Yeah, but what’s.

Wesley
Awesome in that? He believes that Jesus can. Yeah. So which is awesome. That’s right. So I don’t know if necessarily it’ll work for me, but that’s the faith point that he’s at at that moment. But I believe that you are who you say you are and that you have the ability to. Right?

Jeff
Yeah. In that moment, there were other lepers in Israel. Not every leper in Israel got healed in that moment, but the one who asked did. Yeah, right. He he had the courage and the to begin, although he doesn’t say, you know, Jesus, I am proclaiming in my life that I am healed, right? He doesn’t come with boldness. He comes with a lot of timidity there. But that’s okay. It doesn’t offend you. Matter of fact, it kind of I think that’s one of the elements that brought Jesus to this place of compassion. Yeah. So let’s talk about leprosy just a little bit. Uh, there’s a lot of different diseases that are kind of bundled up in the ancient times. They’re all skin diseases, uh, that are kind of bundled up into this phrase or this worm leprosy. Um, and some of them were very contagious. Others not so much, but some were very contagious. They would usually involve, uh, the body beginning to necrotized and flesh would die. Eventually they would wind up losing. A lot of times they would lose, uh, digits. You know, their fingers, their toes. Sometimes they’d lose legs and and hands and arms. They’d lose facial features, noses and ears and things. And, um, the Bible talks about leprosy being one of these highly contagious diseases. And so if you had leprosy in a priest declared that you were unclean, you weren’t allowed to be in the village. You weren’t allowed to be around people. Uh, you weren’t allowed to participate in the ceremonies, all religious, uh, uh, duties and things that were going on. And you weren’t allowed to participate in the social. Yeah. Uh, segments. So if you had leprosy, you’d get kicked out of your family. You’d go with all the other people who lived with leprosy, which is terrible.

Wesley
You know, not only do I have this, um, incurable disease at that time. Yeah. Now I’m basically shunned. I’m ejected from society. So it’s kind of like a double whammy, right? You know, as a matter.

Jeff
Of fact, I read one time that families sometimes would host funerals. Yeah, for the person there.

Wesley
They were going out.

Jeff
Yeah. Because they wouldn’t know when you died. Yeah. Right. So you were alone. You were in a leper colony. And then because, uh, being clean. Right? Not being ceremonially unclean, but being clean was so important in the Jewish society that they would on purpose, they would force people with leprosy or that were unclean to walk on the other side of the street. Yeah. And lepers would have to call out that I’m unclean, unclean, and people even then would treat them like dogs. They’d throw rocks at them to keep them away from them. So this idea that Jesus, the man comes up very timid probably is not supposed to be here. Yeah. He’s he somehow he gets in front of Jesus, probably not supposed to be there, and then timidly says, if you wanted to. Yeah, you could heal. Like you probably don’t want to. Yeah. You know why? Why would you heal a person like me? And then, uh, who was it that says, um. Oh, Luke said an advanced case of leprosy. Yeah. Now, I think it’s really interesting that Luke makes that declaration. Luke was a doctor. He was a medical doctor. Yeah, right. And he tends to speak with a lot of precision, especially when it comes to diseases. So he says this guy had an advanced case of leprosy. So at this point now maybe he doesn’t have a nose, maybe he doesn’t have ears, maybe he’s missing portions of his cheeks or, you know, just has stubs for, uh, his fingers. Uh, it’s an advanced case. So he’s lived with it for a long time. Yeah, a lot of rejection. And to come to Jesus and go, if you wanted to, you could heal me. Yeah. And Jesus looks at this guy and has compassion, which is beautiful.

Jeff
But not only does he have compassion, he does the absolute unthinkable. All three of these passages say he reached out and touched this guy. Yeah, which in advanced case means he hasn’t been with normal citizens, healthy people in years. Maybe. Which means he hasn’t been hugged or touched. He hasn’t had his little kid, his little daughter, his little son come up and hug him and kiss him. He hasn’t had anybody compassionately or affectionately touch him in years. And then the first thing Jesus does, he doesn’t just heal him. He meets him on a on an emotional level. Yeah, that is is if you’re not careful, you’ll blow through it. But he reached out and just touched this guy and said, I do, I do want to heal.

Wesley
He was just being human in that moment, man.

Jeff
Yeah. So it wasn’t just the physical that needed to be healed. Yeah. And so Jesus healed both. And then obviously there’s the spiritual. So I love that. I love that part of it.

Wesley
Yeah. I just just love that interaction. And when I think about it. You know, Jesus reached out and touched him. You know, like you were just talking about. The way that I think about that in my mind is we all, all the listeners, everyone may have that area in their life that they feel is untouchable. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, God can’t. I’ve been on drugs so long, God could never help me in that area. I’ve been an alcoholic for so long. God could never do that. I’m. My marriage is on the rocks. There’s no way that God can redeem this and fix this in the Bible says he moved with compassion and reached out and touched that area. Yeah, yeah. So I think that’s really cool that the area that we think is unfixable, Jesus can still reach out and touch in that area, right? Yeah. Which is.

Jeff
Just fantastic. It’s beautiful. We could just end right there. Yeah, if we wanted to. There’s a lot of other things that happen here. So Jesus tells him, now don’t go tell anybody. Yeah.

Wesley
Now why do you think that? And we see that in all three. It would the most to the average reader just reading the Bible, you would think you would want you, you would think that Jesus should say, go out and tell everybody that I’m the Son of God and that, you know, I’m here to, you know, deliver and heal. But instead Jesus says the exact opposite. Don’t tell anyone. Yeah.

Jeff
You know, so there might be.

Wesley
The Bible doesn’t say so. This is just speculation. Just guessing.

Jeff
It might be reverse psychology. Yeah. Don’t go tell anybody. And of course he’s going to go tell everybody. Yep. So some most people say that I’m not sure I think that’s what it is. Jesus mission was not to go heal everybody. Mhm. Um it’s beautiful that he did. But he didn’t come down from heaven so he could heal people. If that was his case then everybody should have been healed. Yeah. He should have just walked out and said okay, everybody in Capernaum is healed.

Wesley
And then just walk by and touch Tiberius.

Jeff
Everybody in Tiberius. That’s what he says because he literally healed people with his with his words. Yeah. He didn’t even go. Remember, the one rich man comes and wants Jesus to heal his son and Jesus that he is healed? Yep. He doesn’t even go to the guy’s house, which means Jesus could have just declared healing to everybody. But it’s not why he came.

Wesley
Yeah, the centurion’s servant and and.

Jeff
So so Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. The message. We read this in the book of Mark. Uh, a couple, a couple a week or two ago, um, where he said, I came to declare, uh, that the kingdom of heaven is here. Repent of your sins and turn to God. Right? That’s he. So he came to tell people, turn to God, turn away from sin. Turn to God. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. And he came on a mission to pay the price at Calvary. Right? That’s what he was there for. I think that the healing and things were all incidental. They were just he had the power and the ability to. And his compassion just drove him to heal people. But that wasn’t what he was there for. Yeah, right. He was there to disciple his disciples because his disciples were going to change the world. And then, you know, he did many miracles and it didn’t make a big difference a lot of times, remember, we’re going to read about it. He feeds 5000 people. Yeah, 5000 men plus women and children and. They all leave after their full bellies. They leave and Jesus is disappointed and he turns to his disciples. Are you guys going to leave me too? Yeah, right. So he understood that a lot of these miracles people misunderstood the miracles. Yeah. People misunderstood why he was doing what he was doing. And so I think I think perhaps the hint that that may be the reason why he said, don’t go tell people. Yeah, is because it says, uh, the crowds kept getting better and better. But despite, uh, Luke chapter five, verse 15, despite Jesus instructions, the report of his power spread even faster and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of diseases.

Jeff
But often Jesus withdrew into the wilderness for prayer. Yeah, right. And in market says, um, he had to stay out in secluded places, but people from everywhere kept coming to him. Yeah, right. Because the crowds were just so big. I think it was. He could, so he did. But that wasn’t his mission, and it was distracting him from his mission and pulling him away. And it was exhausting.

Wesley
And I can imagine back then they really wouldn’t have understood miracles. So it was like having a magic genie. Absolutely. That’s kind of how they viewed it.

Jeff
The genie Jesus came into our town. Yeah. And he’ll make all your wildest dreams come true, right? Yeah. Uh, and which, quite honestly, I think is a, you know, that’s not uncommon. We do the same thing today. Um, for most of us, it’s not that, you know, uh, most people don’t. That claim to be Christians haven’t come to Christ because they, uh, are desiring a relationship with God. Uh, most of us initially come to Christ because we need him to do something in our life. Yeah, we need him to.

Wesley
Something’s broken

Jeff
Fix our marriage, you know, give us peace from our guilt or whatever. And and so, you know, our motivations aren’t any more pure than theirs were. There’s nothing wrong with desiring to be healed. Nothing wrong with that. But it just wasn’t his main mission. Yeah. And so I think it was a very exhausting element. You find him many, many times after big healing times, he would go out and and has to hide for a while and just catch his breath. Which, by the way, that’s okay. Yeah. It’s okay. So is Jesus was human and he needed a break. And this is why God gave us the Sabbath was to have a day off. We’ll talk about this soon. Uh, have a day off. We work hard, and then we should have a day to take a break. Um, and then it’s okay. You know, doing good is important. Raising a family, investing in your marriage, uh, you know, working hard in your career, uh, maintaining your house and all those things. Those all those things can be exhausting. And so it’s very important that we focus on having time to pull away, to pray, to spend time with God. That’s why we commend our listeners and our viewers all the time. Is this is a good thing? You’re taking 20, 25 minutes in your morning. I hope you you spend some time just talking to God, even just for a few minutes. And this is feeding your soul when everything else is taking from you. Yeah. This is you feeding you, right? Yeah, it’s the same thing. Make time to work out. Make time to to invest in, in your health. And that’s what you find Jesus doing. In two of these three passages, it says that he he had to leave town because the crowds were too great. Jeff
Yeah, it was too stressful. And even then they came and found him. Yeah.

Wesley
He’s like, can I get five minutes to myself? Five minutes, man. It’s almost like a mom who’s like, had, you know, the kids running around the house all day and it’s like, can I just there’s actually a video of that where a mom is just trying to eat her candy bar in, like, the closet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, like, the kids are right outside the door. Can I get, like, two minutes?

Jeff
Our kids would do that. Bonnie would just go crazy. You know, we have we have a kind of a small house, and the kids were little, and they would just be harassing my wife, and she’d just go in and lock herself in the bathroom. Yeah, just just for a few minutes. And I was like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Right.

Wesley
You see the fingers underneath the door?

Jeff
Yeah, there’s no no place that’s private, you know? And sometimes it’s just exhausting. So it’s important not that you abandon your responsibilities, but it is important that you you invest in your own spiritual healing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that’s developing the routine to have that, uh, in other places when it talks about Jesus going out in the wilderness to pray, it said it was his habit to go early in the morning. Yeah, right. So sometimes it might be just that you need to get up an hour before everybody else does. Yeah. Or stay up an hour later than everybody else does. If you’re morning owl or a morning person or a night owl.

Wesley
Yeah. And I was just going.

Jeff
To say the rhythm is that.

Wesley
And that’s really good that you said that because some people may say, oh, I’m not really a morning person. What do I do then? But it’s okay to do it at night or whenever you’re at your best.

Jeff
My dad, uh, when he, my dad was such a is such a hard worker and all that. But he was working at General Motors. He was a stock chaser. He drove Ford truck, General Motors for 35 years. And when he became a Christian, he just began to realize, you know, we were basically maintaining a homestead. We heated the house with wood, and we grew all our own food and all that stuff. So he’d get home from work. And then it was another full day’s worth of work at home in order to maintain all that. Yeah. And, uh, so my dad began to develop. He had a one hour lunch break, and so he would immediately the whistle would blow for lunch. He’d go out and sit in his truck, roll the windows down and read his Bible, pray, and just kind of decompress. And he said, man, I’d sometimes it’d be 15 minutes. Just silence. Because that was the only 15 minutes of silence I had in my life. And he said, you know, I’d hear from God during those times. I’d, I’d, I’d think I’d meditate on what I read. And that was one of his rhythms was that that one hour lunch period was his one hour of the day. Yeah. He was just alone.

Wesley
Yeah, I think that’s really good. Someone I think needs to hear that in the sense that your prayer and your quiet time with God doesn’t have to be this very formal thing. Yeah. Your quiet time with God could be lunch. Um, you know, it could be.

Jeff
Quiet time with God.

Wesley
Yeah. Your lunch in your car, you know. So I think that’s really good. I think sometimes we view it well. I have to be at home. My eyes closed, kneeling with the Bible open. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You can definitely do that. But. Maybe you know when you’re sitting in your car waiting to pick up your kids. Yeah. Um, you know that ten minutes that you’re sitting there you could be listening to. Yeah, um, a podcast or something.

Jeff
So. So one of the benefits of looking at the gospels is, you know, God’s goal for you is not just always to be happy and to make all your wildest dreams come true. The Bible is very clear. God’s goal for you is to grow up to become like Jesus. Yeah. So when we read the Gospels, here’s what I know. I am not likely. Unless God decides to do a supernatural miracle through me, I’m not likely to heal a person with leprosy. But I can choose to have compassion on the untouchable in society. And if I’m going to be like Jesus, I need to act like Jesus. And Jesus refreshed himself often by spending time alone with God.

Wesley
And I think that one of the keys in that is you’re really of no value to others when you’re empty. Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So it’s like you need to be refreshed so you can refresh others. Yeah. So I think that’s a really important thing. We think oh I have to give, give, give, give. But if you’re running on E it’s kind of like if you need an oil change, if you don’t get an oil change, eventually you’re going to burn up the engine. That’s right, that’s right. Yeah.

Jeff
And so that’s the purpose behind it. So if you’re going to be like Jesus, make sure that you are investing in your spiritual life and in your physical life so that you can be healthy. Yeah. And if you’re healthy, you can help other people. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Well, I think that’s a great place to end.

Wesley
Yeah, I think so.

Jeff
So thank you for joining us. And I hope you’re with us again tomorrow with The Bible Guys.