We're speaking a series right now called Your First Touch. How many of you have ever felt like the Lord has touched you? Just wave at me. Thank you, guys.
You know, God has a way of imparting something to us when maybe we need it the most. Last week, we talked about a leper, a man with leprosy that came to Jesus and needed a touch, and the Bible says that Jesus was not just willing to touch him, was not just able to heal him, but he was willing and able. So he was the right answer at the right moment. But this week, I want to preach into your ears a different concept of what it means to have a connection with God.
One is when God touches you, but there's a different thing that can happen when you, in fact, touch God. So many times, we like to blame everything on somebody else. So many times, we like to blame everything maybe on our parents because they didn't do exactly what we wished they had done. Or if you're a child or if you have several siblings, you have this feeling that maybe one of them was treated better than you were, or maybe they got more than you got, or maybe they were favored over you or whatever.
And we've got this way of wanting to put blame on somebody else. We've got this, maybe if you were an athlete, you've got this one coach that, you know, he didn't like me, and that's why I didn't get to play. Or maybe in class, you had a teacher that didn't, you know, you felt like they gave everybody else the best grades. You didn't get the best grades.
We've got this inward nature to just blame everybody around us when the reality is, is almost all the time when we point the finger at somebody else, as the old saying goes, there's at least three fingers pointing back at us. We've got to get to where we look in the mirror and make our adjustments instead of trying to find a way to adjust everybody around us, you know? You can drive down the road and you can wish all day long there wasn't a curve or a bend in the road, but if you don't curve and bend with the road, you're going to find your car wrapped around a tree or lying upside down in a ditch. We have to make adjustments in our own life or before you know it, we're going to have big problems.
So for us, we have to recognize that touching God and God touching us is something that can happen at any moment, at any time, in any place, in any way. And when we recognize that he's not only there, but he's also available, that he's not just available, but he's also powerful and willing, now we have an opportunity to experience some of what God has to offer that maybe we wouldn't have otherwise. Luke chapter number 8, Behold, there was a man named Jairus, and he was ruler of the synagogue, fell at Jesus' feet and besought him that he would come to his house, for he had only one daughter, about 12 years of age, and she lay dying. But as he went, the people thronged on him.
So what happened is, is Jairus came to Jesus in the middle of all the people that were trying to get close to Jesus, and Jairus says, Can you please come to my house and heal my little girl? She's 12 years old, she's my only child, and she's sick, and if something doesn't happen, she's going to die. Now, now, if you have kids, you understand how amazingly sincere that prayer would be. He was so serious that he didn't care what anybody thought about him.
He didn't care what anybody said about him. He had to get to the place where he could get to Jesus, because Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, is the only one who can help when those kind of situations show up. So he goes to Jesus, but he's not just a man. The Bible says that he's a ruler in the synagogue, and a ruler in the synagogue is somebody very interesting.
They would be considered and perceived as clean in society's eyes. They would be considered to be kind of the upper crust, if you will, in society. And he throws all of his concerns and ideas away, because if you remember, Jesus oftentimes was not celebrated in the temple. He was oftentimes not celebrated in the synagogues.
Oftentimes he was ridiculed and told to be a heretic and told to be a man filled with demons, and all these other things. So what Jairus did is he set aside every societal ideology about himself and said, If this is the man who can help me, I don't care what anybody else thinks. I've got to have my daughter healed. Jesus looks at him and says, I'll tell you what, Jairus, I will come and I will heal your daughter.
And they begin to make their way. But the Bible says the people pressed upon him. The people began to throng about him, which means they were literally pulling on him and slowing him down in every way you could imagine. So he's walking through a crowd of hundreds, maybe thousands of people.
He's had a conversation with Jairus, and when he does, he gets to the place where all the people are pulling and slowing him down. Could you imagine what Jairus was thinking? If it was me, I would have wanted some way, shape, or form where I could literally push through the crowd myself, where I could wedge through the crowd myself. I would create a Mighty Duck flying V.
Come on, somebody help me. I would create a flying V, and I would have got through that crowd because I needed Jesus to get where my daughter was. Now, these are important imperative moments and instances that we have to pick up on. We have to notice and we have to recognize because if we don't notice and recognize the severity of the situation, oftentimes we begin to miss the mark.
We begin to think, oh, these were different people. These were not different people. They breathed oxygen. They bled red blood, and they walked on two feet.
They're just like you and me. So when you read about somebody who's believing God for their sick and dying daughter, you can take yourself and put yourself right in that situation and say, if God was willing to go to his house, then I know God is willing to go to my house. But in our life, we have to recognize Jairus set everything aside. He set all of his societal or synagogue ideologies aside, and he said, I've got to get to this man named Jesus, and I've got to bring Jesus to me.
So while he's going, there's a lady comes by, and the Bible says a woman having an issue of blood for 12 years, which had spent all her living upon physicians. Neither could be healed of any meaning. She went to the doctor, but she couldn't be healed. The doctors couldn't do anything for her.
The Bible says she had an issue of blood. Without getting too graphic, it literally means she just bled all the time. And in those day and age, that would mean that you were considered Hebraically unclean, which means her condition dictated where she went. Her condition dictated where she could not go.
Her condition dictated everything about her life. And when you and I recognize that our condition cannot control us unless we give our condition the authority to control us, it's in that moment that now we have an opportunity to excel past whatever's come on us. But literally, this woman had an issue of blood for 12 years. 12 is important.
If you remember, the little girl that Jairus is asking Jesus to heal was 12 years old. This woman had had the condition for 12 years. And if we're really honest, everybody that's ever born has a condition of blood of some kind, an issue of blood. Oh, ours might not be physical.
Ours might not be in the natural. But everybody, and I mean everybody, has an issue of blood. 12 years this issue told her what to do, told her what she could wear, what she could not wear. And maybe it would be better to, instead of calling it just an issue or a condition, maybe it would be more apropos to call it a yoke.
Now, most of us in here are not farmers. Even though at my house we have a small garden, we do not use oxen to plow it. Those days are over, at least on this side of the Pacific and the Atlantic. But so many times it happens where you get yoked with something, and just like the oxen pulling the plow, that yoke tells you where you can go, where you can't go.
I met a man one time. He had these two champion longhorns. They've been in several movies, as a matter of fact, that were yoked together. Big longhorn steers.
Their backs are this tall. And I said, Man, how did you train these longhorns to stay like this? Because, I mean, they're sitting there gentle as lambs. He said, Well, it's simple, really.
He said, When they're a young calf, you put a yoke on them. He said, And at that time, they're not stronger than the yoke. But if you get them to think the yoke tells them what to do, even when they're strong enough to break it, they won't break it. This woman has a yoke, an issue of blood for 12 years, that has told her where to be, how to be, how to get there, told her the kind of company she could keep.
Everything about her issue was dictating her life. The Bible says that she spent all of her money on physicians. Let me just say this. Jesus never one time rebuked anybody for going and seeing a doctor.
Somewhere in the Spirit-filled And Jesus said, who touched me? It's crazy when all denied, which means even the lady denied touching Jesus. So she went from being full of faith, respectfully, to being dishonest. Jesus didn't take her healing away because she was dishonest after she received it.
Can I just say this? Stop beating yourself up. If you make a mistake, you repent, you turn away from it, but you quit acting like God is some kind of a roulette dealer, and he's trying to give some people a healing, give other people a sickness, give some people this. No, no, no.
He's a good God. He's the God that healeth thee. By his stripes you were healed. There is no other way.
There is no other Bible. So she comes to him, she touched the hem of his garment. Jesus said, who touched me? And when everybody denied, Peter, the one who's always close to Jesus, that's why I like Peter.
Peter's a straight-up rascal, but he's always close to Jesus. One of the things that I knew growing up, and I had some rascal days, don't get me wrong, but one of the things I always knew is I knew who to be around. I knew when to be ready. I remember 10 years ago, we'd be getting ready for a big meeting at our church, and I'd be outside, and I'd be detailing my truck.
I'd be detailing our car. Chris said, what are you detailing the car for? Why are you cleaning our car? I said, because if Pastor Jeff calls me to go pick somebody up, I'm going to be ready.
She said, well, did he say he was going to? I said, no, but I won't have time to clean it because if he calls me, I'm going to have to leave work early, and I can't clean my car, but I'm going to be ready. In season and out of season. I know who to be around and how to be around.
Even if I'm acting like a rascal, I know who to be close to. Peter, this is the same guy who threw a cussing fit when somebody asked him if they knew Jesus. He said, you know Jesus? No, I don't know him.
You know Jesus? No, I don't know him. You know Jesus? Blankety blank, blank, blank, blank.
I don't know him. And Jesus looks over at him, and as if love could pour out of his eyeballs and wrap Jesus in a Galilean hug, he looks at him and says, you're fixing to feel conviction, but don't you think that I've given up on you. Even when you're a rascal, you better know who to be around. Peter says, Lord, all these people around you, how in the world could you ask who touched me?
Number one, Jesus never asks a question he doesn't know the answer to. He just wants to know if you'll be honest. Because if you're honest, he can work with that. If you're not, you know he's a good God.
The Bible says, who the Father loves, he chastens. If you'll be honest with God, you can take the next step. If not, it's kind of like when you were back in gym class, and the coach goes, oh really? Take another lap.
And you're trying to figure out why you feel like you're on the merry-go-round of spiritual growth, and it's because when he asks you a question, you think you can tell him something that's not accurate. But he didn't ask you because he doesn't know. He asked you to find out if you'll be honest. And when you are, now you get to graduate to the next step.
But he says, who touched me? Peter goes, how can you ask that, Lord? I can just see Peter. This same guy walks on water with Jesus.
How can you ask that, Lord? There's so many people around you. And if I was Peter, I would be looking eye level. I would be looking right here because the disciples, they served as a full helps ministry, which means they were security detail.
They were the ushers. They were the janitors. They did everything. And I could just see Peter holding Jesus by the arm because Jesus is just smiling and loving people and probably kids are coming through and he's picking them up and kissing them on the cheek and setting them down and telling them, oh, you've got a great future.
You're going to be amazing. Oh, God's going to use you. And Peter's holding him and Peter's probably rushing and saying, you know, Jairus' daughter's going to die if we don't hurry up. And Jesus is sitting there going, nobody dies around me unless I allow it.
And by the way, death doesn't mean the end, Peter. So he's walking beside him, and Peter, the man standing right there, didn't even know who touched him. Didn't even recognize who had reached out. And Jesus goes on and says, well, listen, Peter, I understand you don't understand the question, but somebody touched me because when they touched me, I perceived King James says that virtue went out of me.
But that word's very interesting. It's actually the word dunamis, which is sometimes pronounced dynamis, which is where you and me get the word dynamite from, which Jesus said, I know somebody touched me because dynamite power just shot out of me. He looks around. She realizes she can't be hidden.
She can't hide what had happened. And she came trembling, falling down before him and declared unto him and all the people for what cause she had touched him and how she was healed immediately. Now this lady was considered unclean. So for her to testify meant she might be embarrassed for a moment, but because she was willing to testify, she got to hear the voice of God speak directly to her.
She says, I had this issue for 12 years and I just knew if I could just touch you, that I would be healed. So I know I'm not supposed to, but I pushed through the crowd. I accidentally knocked that guy down. When your disciples tried to push me away, I said, fine, if I can't get to him walking, I will crawl because the only way she could have touched the tassel by his foot, she would have had to been on the ground.
She reached out and she said, as I was getting closer, I just knew if I could touch just the hem of your clothing, I would be healed. And she said, when I did, nobody could know this but me, but I was instantly healed. She was terrified because nobody knew how Jesus functioned and where the power came from. Maybe they'd heard stories about Samson and how as long as Samson had long hair, he had power.
But if his hair got cut, then he didn't have power. Maybe they looked at Jesus in that light and maybe she had a kryptonite mentality where she thought if something unclean touched the reminder of how clean the rabbi was, then his power would be drained out of him and he couldn't pour it out on anybody else. Maybe she was terrified that she had just stolen the gift from God. She didn't have the luxury of our Bible to know that he's the beginning and the end, that he is infinite in all of his ways, that when you think about him, you can't think because he's going to go heal somebody else.
That means he can't heal me, because this person received a healing. That means I can't receive a healing. No, just because somebody next to you receives a healing, that means part and parcel to the fact that he's no respecter of persons. If he'll do it for them, he will do it for me.
But she couldn't know this. She could know none of this. And Jesus, in just the way that he always speaks, he looks at her and he says, Daughter, be of good comfort. Don't be scared.
If Jesus could say anything to you today in an audible voice, he would say, Don't be scared. I know the world is scary. I know there's a lot of uncertainty. I know sometimes you've got more bills than you have money.
Sometimes you've got more issues than you've got patience. Sometimes you've got more problems than you've got solutions. But if God himself walked in here to speak to you today, the first thing, the salutation that he would give you would be the same salutation that almost every angel shows up with when an angel comes to speak to a human. He would say, Do not be scared.
When Jesus touches you or you touch Jesus, fear has to go. Jesus says, Be of good comfort. Your faith. Everybody say faith.
I'm going one more time. Faith. That sounds so good. Your faith has made you whole.
Go in peace. Jesus says to her, I understand how it feels. I understand what desperation feels like because I could just see him picturing in his mind the desperate need to have relationship with you and me that caused him to endure the passion before the cross, the crucifixion of the cross. And then he himself to descend into the pits of hell to defeat the devil finally, take his keys from him and bring them back so that you and I would never have to taste that.
That is the same level of desperation that you and I have got to get to when we decide we are going to touch God. If it means I crawl, if it means I walk, if it means it takes some of my sleep away, if it means it takes some of my time away, I'm going to get contact with God. Last week, we spoke very clearly about the leper that Jesus chose to heal with a touch. Jesus chose to heal him by stretching forth his Galilean hand and a man who hadn't been touched in years physically by another human being received the touch from the Messiah.
Instantly, he was made whole. Today, we're talking about the same thing, but in reverse. Hundreds of people walking around, but nobody was You begin to leak. You can tell they're having an encounter and you're like, what?
How come you're having an encounter, but I got nothing. You see, we all have the same opportunity to touch God. We just have to purpose to do so. There's several lamps here, you can see them.
And each one of them has a plug associated. This represents the power which of course makes the lamp turn on. And I can put the power real close to the plug, and nothing happens. I can tie the power to the plug, and nothing happens.
And really, that's what we're trying to do when we're praying for our loved ones who don't live for God, who don't love God, who don't serve God. We're going, God, rescue them! And we're trying to tie a knot around them so that they can be pulled back. And we're wondering, God, how can they not feel you?
I've invited people to church, and we've had like a slobber knocker service. Which is a technical term, which means it was like totes cray-cray. I'm hip. I'm cool.
Just a service. Who's ever been here on a Wednesday night wave at me? Would you recommend it? I think so too.
I mean, if you want to see, I mean, it'd be worth being a spectator on Wednesday nights sometimes. But just the presence of God is so strong. I brought people to services like that. I remember one time I brought some people.
We had a revival going on, and I brought some friends of mine. I'm like, just beside myself, like in a vision, just crazy. We get out of service, I'm like, man, what did you think? He's like, it was all right.
I'm like, it's all right? The heavens just opened up over our church building. But you can get people close to the glory. You can throw the glory on top of them.
But there's only one way to make the light come on. Sooner or later, you take the masses, and somebody's got to say, I'm going to quit going with the flow. I'm not just going to live in the pile anymore. I'm not just going to live, and maybe it starts to look like the crowd starts to thin out.
Maybe it starts to look like somebody starts to, whatever. And then sooner or later, you say, if I have to crawl on my hands and knees, I'm going to find a way to connect with the power that I not only need, but I desire. And when you do, miraculously, the light comes on. But what I find it very interesting that even though I got one connected, nothing happened with the others.
What I'm saying is, we have to take responsibility for our faith walk. When we hear that there is a God who will love us and touch us, who longs to forgive us, then it is our responsibility to do what we can do to touch that God who longs to love us and heal us and fill us and fill us and empower us and change us. And when we do, the light comes on. And if you'll notice, the light is not restrained.
And I would venture to say that some of these other bulbs start to get a little bit jealous about what's going on with this one. And then all of a sudden, the light starts to come on for other ones. And the situation is that just because one received it didn't mean the others couldn't receive it. But with God, there are times in His sovereignty when He stretches forth His hand and He touches each one of us in the area of our need.
And I'm ever thankful and grateful for that. But I could not be more thankful and I could not be more grateful to know that the God that I love, that the God that I serve, when I find myself yoked in some type of bondage that I can know that if I can just reach far enough, that if I can just crawl fast enough, that if I can just get through the crowd of doubt and unbelief and lack and fear and a poverty mentality and sickness and every other issue and name that can be named, if I can just get to the place where I can touch the hem of His garment, dynamite power is accessible to me! Your first touch oftentimes is somebody winning you to God and God reaches down, saves your soul from a fiery furnace of hell, sets your feet on a solid rock, and then establishes you a life and a life more abundant. But mature Christianity is when the enemy comes in like a flood and the wages, excuse me, the raging war of this world wrecks and ravages at your soul that you remember that you, His child, can touch Him at any moment.
Stand to your feet, please. I'm done teaching.