Amazing Tenderness

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You don't get the power of Jesus just by being here. You get it by throwing yourself at his feet and admitting how desperately in need you are of his health. The power of Jesus flows out to those who touch him intentionally with desperation and faith who say to Jesus, I need you and I will do whatever you tell me to do. The question is not do you come to church and hear sermons, but do you desperately lean on Jesus for life and salvation? Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. You know, wherever Jesus went, crowds followed. People from all walks of life sought him out to listen, to learn, to be healed, to be seen. In today's message, we're focusing on Jesus's tender compassion toward an elite insider and an unclean outcast, two opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. It's part of our teaching series in the Gospel of Luke called Kingdom Come. If you've missed any part of this series so far, you can always catch up online free of charge at JDCreer.com. Now, time to grab your Bible, open it up to Luke chapter 8, and here's Pastor J.D.

with a message he's titled Amazing Tenderness. Kingdom of Jesus, when Jesus shows up in Luke, is surprising and unexpected and confusing for a number of different reasons. Jesus showed up preaching a kingdom that took a lot of people off guard. The reason it took them off guard is because he saw our problems differently than we did. We thought we needed some cosmetic changes. We needed world peace. We needed more food. Jesus said that our problems went much deeper.

Here's the statement from last week. Jesus offered a salvation we weren't expecting because we had a problem we didn't know we had. That made a lot of people stumble because they didn't want to admit that what Jesus said about them was true, that they needed a Savior. There were many people who resisted Jesus because they were too proud to admit they needed a Savior. There are others who were too stubborn to acknowledge that he was the Lord and in control of their lives. So Jesus showed us some surprising things about us, but Jesus also showed us some things about God that were surprising, the tenderness and the compassion of God for us.

It's somewhat of a paradox. We didn't think we were as bad as Jesus said we were, and we didn't assume that God was as loving as Jesus showed us he was. The gospel, that's how you know, by the way, that you're getting the gospel is you start to see that paradox. The gospel is that you and I are more wicked than we ever realized, but that God cares more for us than we ever dreamed or hoped. When you start to see that paradox, you start to get the gospel because you see the extreme depravity of our hearts and how badly we need salvation and the extreme tenderness of God, and it either makes you so mad that you want to crucify God or makes you fall desperately into his arms. That's why you know that if you've got the general reaction to Jesus of apathy or boredom, that he's kind of irrelevant. He's a nice guy.

You go visit him on Sundays and go to his house, but otherwise, he doesn't influence your life. You've never seen the real thing. It's either extreme hatred or extreme love, one of the two. What you're going to see in Luke Chapter 8 is you're going to see Jesus reveal some things about God that are so unbelievable that you're going to say, how could those things possibly be true?

That's what you're going to see today. You've got your Bible, Luke Chapter 8, verse 40. Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all watching or waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. This is a very respected man. He holds one of the top positions in a very religious society. So this is the who's who of the ancient world, ancient Israel.

And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house. What is surprising about this is grown men never did this in Jewish culture. Men of stature wore long robes. They were very stately.

They had long beards. They didn't show a lot of emotion. They would never run.

They would never appear to be in a hurry. And they certainly would not prostrate themselves at another man's feet. But this man is desperate, verse 42, because he had an only daughter. She's about 12 years old and she was dying. So Jesus listens to this guy's plea and he starts to go with him to his house. But it says, verse 42, that as Jesus went, the people pressed around him. There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and though she had spent all of her living on physicians, she couldn't be healed by anybody.

There's several important details in there. First, she has an issue of blood. That's a polite way of saying she has an uncontrollable menstrual flow. That meant that not only was she sick and in pain, she was unable to have children. She was ceremonially unclean, which meant that she was not allowed to be touched.

She couldn't go into public worship. She really should not be in crowds. And she's been this way for 12 years. For 12 years nobody's hugged her. For 12 years nobody has laid a hand on her to say that they were praying for her. She's lonely. You see, it says she's incurable.

By the way, Luke who wrote this, who wrote the Gospel of Luke was a physician, the book of Acts tells us. So in his estimation, this woman is incurable and she spent all of her money trying to get various doctors to cure her. But now she's beyond anything that they can do. She is poor, she is moneyless, and she's hopeless. Last little detail, it's actually a detail that is omitted, that you should notice that it's omitted, and that is she has no name. In contrast to Jairus, whose name everybody knows, this woman's not even given a name. In other words, in everybody's eyes she's insignificant.

You see, there's a contrast being set up here with Jairus. He's got a daughter who's 12 years old and sick. She's been sick for 12 years. He's the ruler of the synagogue. She's not even allowed in the synagogue. He has a name that everybody knows.

She's not even given a name. He was respected. She was rejected. The point that's being made, there is nobody too messed up, too unclean, too insignificant to get Jesus' attention.

And there's nobody too good or too powerful to not need him desperately. Gee, some people don't come to Jesus because of unbelief. They think that God could not possibly put together the shattered remains of their life. They think they have disqualified themselves. They are too messed up, too dysfunctional, too beyond the scope of help, and it's unbelief that keeps them from God because they don't realize how powerful and willing God is to heal them.

There are many of you here this morning that are in that very category. But then there are others of you who don't come to Jesus because of pride, and that is, I don't really need him. But pride and unbelief on either side will keep you away from his love. Verse 44, she came up behind him and she touched the fringe of his garment.

She thinks, I bet, I bet he can help me. He's got so much power and I've watched him be so compassionate that just brushing his clothing might heal me. By the way, I love the fact that the crowds did not keep this woman from Jesus.

Let me tell you why I say that. Because I see as a pastor, the crowds keep a lot of people today away from Jesus. The crowds for you might be what other people say about you if you come to Jesus. And so you're worried about what your spouse would say, what your parents might say, what your kids might say.

You're worried about what other friends would say if you really went down this particular path that you're thinking about. You are gaining an interest in Jesus, but you are afraid of what the crowds would say to you. For others of you, the crowds would be more like what I hear all the time of, well, there's just too many hypocrites. It's all these ridiculous people around Jesus and their double standard compromising lives. That's why I won't come to Jesus. The people in the church are so hypocritical and I don't like hypocrites. Listen, newsflash, Jesus doesn't like hypocrites either. That's why he's always calling them out in the Gospel of Luke and he's clear that on the last day, no true hypocrite will have any part of his kingdom. But it seems to me that the greatest hypocrisy would be to see the truth about Jesus and allow some lame excuse about people who are not Jesus to keep you from doing what he says. That's hypocrisy to me. Why are you sitting around using other people who may or may not really know Jesus as your excuse for not doing what you know Jesus would tell you to do?

Right? You see what I'm getting at? It's almost like if you had an experience or you knew of a doctor that was a bad doctor, he was a quack, you don't give up on the medical profession, the whole thing. Well, I saw on 60 Minutes one time I was a doctor and he ripped people off so I'm never going to the doctor again. I just drink herbal tea when I'm sick. That's not wise, okay?

Just because there are bad doctors doesn't mean the whole medical profession is off. If Jesus is who he says he is, he deserves your full attention. This woman worked her way through the crowd who was keeping her from Jesus and got straight to him. So she touched the fringe of his garment. By the way, fringe doesn't just mean the edge like, you know, Jesus wore cool jeans with little like, you know, things down the bottom that you know fringe.

That's not what he's talking about. That is not the way their clothes were. A fringe was a very specific part of the Jewish holy man's clothing. It was called a zizot. There's your Hebrew word for the day. Zizot. A zizot was a little tassel that hung down off the edge of the robe that represented the law.

If you want to get what they look like, go to Numbers chapter 15 and it'll describe these things to you. They hung down, you know, kind of around the ankle and she reaches out and she grabs a hold of this fringe of his garment that represents the law. And the word for touch, by the way, when it says it grabbed it, it's a very interesting Greek word because, this is your nerd moment for the morning, it's in the middle voice in Greek, which what that means is that she clutched it. It's like she grabbed it like the rope of a bell that you're trying to ring and she grabbed onto it, which means it wasn't just like swatting at it. She grabbed it and you can imagine Jesus walking with his robe and like kind of pulling a little bit, right? And so it says verse 44, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. Turns out it was like a bell.

She grabbed a hold of it and power rings out of him, right? Verse 45, Jesus said, who was it that touched me? Now, does he not know? Does he not know? This is the sovereign God of the universe who spoke everything into existence with the word. Does he not know who touched him?

No, of course he knows. What's he doing? He's giving her a chance to come forward. It's kind of like when I come downstairs and the cookie jar is open in our kitchen and there are three little girls sitting there, two of them with clean faces, one of them with chocolate all over her face, and I say, who got into the cookie jar? And all my girls are like, oh, I don't know, including the one with chocolate all over her face. And I'm like, well, the cookie jar is open. There's cookies missing.

We don't know. I mean, it's a miracle. The cookie gremlin came. It was a cookie rapture.

The rat just got raptured out of that. We don't know. I know. I know who was in the cookie jar. I can see it on her face. It's not that I don't know. I'm giving her a chance to repent. Jesus is asking this question not because he doesn't know, but because he wants her to come forward.

So you can't stay private forever. You got to acknowledge Jesus and he calls you to come forward. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. We'll be right back to today's teaching in a moment. But first, are you looking for a great resource to help walk someone through the life and the teachings of Jesus? Or are you wanting to learn more about Jesus yourself?

If so, this month's featured resource is for you. It's a book of devotionals Pastor J.D. wrote called Kingdom Come 20 Devotions from Luke. We are making it available to our generous donors and our gospel partners. And it coincides with our Kingdom Come teaching series here on Summit Life.

This is a great way to grow in your understanding of who Jesus really was and what he really taught us. And we'd love to send you a copy today with your gift of thirty five dollars or more. Looking for a way to disciple a friend or a loved one? Consider this resource as a first step in that direction.

To give, just give us a call at 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching here on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Public confession, by the way, is called baptism. There are a lot of people here who have never done it. You're like, well, it's inconvenient. You've got to get wet in front of everybody. I mean, I'm not trying to be, you know, trite or pedantic, but Jesus hung on a cross naked for you for six hours and you won't stand up in front of a group of people and get baptized? Seriously, could we have an adult conversation?

Of course, yes, it's inconvenient. But you publicly coming forward and saying, yes, I acknowledge what Jesus has done. If you know that he's healed you, you know what he's healed you from, you'll be willing to put that on display to others. Just a quick question as we go through this. Have you ever done that?

Have you ever been baptized as a profession of your faith? Well, when all denied it, when all denied it, Peter said, Master? I mean, the crowds surround you and they're the ones that are pressing in on you. Peter has this fantastic ability to fill silence with stupidity, doesn't he? I mean, you ever get the impression, I mean, here's Jesus like, seriously? Oh, oh, oh, the crowd. I get it. Thank you, Peter, for your tremendous insights.

What would we do without you? You get the impression sometimes that that real ministry happened. This is, by the way, the leader of God's church.

He's going to be the leader of the new church. And you get the idea that God's going to build his church, not because of the apostles, but in spite of the apostles, which brings me as a pastor a great deal of comfort because Jesus is still using people like Peter and people like me. Verse 46, Jesus says, no, no, no, somebody touched me, for I perceive that the power has gone out for me. Yeah, yeah, lots of people you see are touching me, but this touch was different. Lots of people touch Jesus casually, very few people touch him intentionally. What I mean by that is, listen, you don't get the power of Jesus just by being here, as if you just kind of sit and soak in it.

You get it by throwing yourself at his feet and admitting how desperately in need you are of his help and surrendering yourself fully to him. We got lots of people here this morning touching Jesus casually. But the power of Jesus flows out to those who touch him intentionally with desperation and faith, who say to Jesus, I need you and I will do whatever you tell me to do. The question is not, do you come to church and hear sermons, but do you desperately lean on Jesus for life and salvation?

That's the question. We got a lot of people here in the casual, even people who know a lot about the Bible. That's one of the things I remember from seminary. I'm into seminary. I went to seminary for like 19 years.

I'm into Bible knowledge. But there's just a lot of people who get into touching Jesus casually and never lean their soul on him for life and salvation. I know you're here touching him casually, but you don't get this by listening to sermons. You get it by prostrating yourself at his feet and saying, Jesus, please, please.

There's something only you can do. Verse 47, when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before him, declaring the presence of all the people. See that little presence of all the people, why she touched him and how she'd been immediately healed.

You know, there's something sweet there, isn't there? This unloved woman, rejected woman, this woman who's never been touched for 12 years, this woman who is desperately insecure, now trembling before Jesus and in front of everybody who has rejected her. She begins to talk about her condition. She begins to talk about what happened and she's flooded with this question of what's he going to say? Is he going to rebuke me? Is he going to reject me? Is he going to publicly humiliate me? He knows that I shouldn't have touched him. He knows that I shouldn't be here.

He knows who I am. She lays this out here, this broken desperate woman lays out with trembling lip, lays out in front of him everything about who she is and then comes the greatest moment in her life. Ultimately, this is the greatest moment in the universe for each of us.

It's really the central question of the whole Bible. What's it like to be completely exposed in all of your defilement? What's it like to be exposed in all of your guilt?

What's it like to be exposed in all of your shame before a holy God? Verse 48, and he says to her, daughter. Daughter is a term of intimate endearment.

In fact, this is the only person in the gospels that Jesus refers to by that name. Only one, daughter. The girl that nobody wanted is adopted by the ultimate father. The girl that nobody would touch is embraced by the strongest and most tender arms in the universe.

You see the contrast? Jairus is a dad who is pleading the cause of his daughter before Jesus, but this woman has no father, so Jesus will be her father. To Jairus, he will be the healer, but to this woman, he will be both father and healer because he is the father to the father of us. And there are certain things that you experience about Jesus in pain that those who are not in pain never get to experience, and that's one of the beautiful things about Jesus. Some of you as you've been watching the NCAA tournament may have seen this, ESPN's been running this little like short human interest story about the football coach from the University of Georgia who is a very committed believer, and it talks about recently he was over in Ukraine with his wife, and they have, you know, several kids, but they were at an orphanage and there was a little three-year-old girl who had severe facial deformities.

I mean severe deformities. Her parents, because of how messed up she looked, felt like they couldn't handle it and just dropped her off at an orphanage. And he and his wife, this coach and his wife, were taught, he's a very successful coach, talking about when they looked at this little girl and just asked the question, who is it that's going to love this little girl?

His parents rejected her because of how she looked, and this coach, you know, this winning coach from the University of Georgia says, we will take that one, and we're going to take her into our home when they have and paid for several operations that are trying to correct this deformity, but loving her regardless. And on this little, you know, five, six minute expose on ESPN, him making the statement that this is how I know that God saw us. Because see, that's the Gospel. The Gospel is that you and I were deformed. You and I were outcasts. You and I were the ones who were fatherless. We were the ones who were unclean. We were the ones who were unloved. But it wasn't because of a birth defect.

It was worse. It was because of our sin. And inexplicably Christ set his love on us and was tender to us literally when anybody else who saw the real us would have walked away from us. The Gospel is that we are more wicked than we ever realized and more loved and accepted than we ever dreamed at the same time because of what Christ has done for us. Sinners and outcasts made into beloved sons and daughters. By the way, if you ever get that, if you ever really get that, suddenly you start to have a heart for people like the orphan and the outcast.

Not that you don't need to be told to. You don't need me standing up here saying, hey, we've got this goal as a church. I want you to help us reach.

I want you to give money over here. I want you to adopt over here. It just becomes your natural instinct as you see people on the outside and you look at the things that you have and say, I don't really want to use this just for me. I don't want to use this to enrich my lifestyle.

I want to take people who were like I was on the outside when I was the one who was outcast and I want to help them be brought in to the Father's love. It just becomes part of your nature. It becomes part of your nature. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Probably the single most shocking thing from this story is what happened when she touched him. This is a little deep.

So hang on. Usually when an unclean thing touches a clean thing, the clean thing becomes unclean. If I'm sick and I sneeze on you, what we say is, I gave my cold to you. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that you now have it and I don't. That would be awesome. I gave you my cold.

You're it. But what that means is that you and I both now have my cold because when the unclean thing, me, touches the clean thing, you, the clean thing becomes unclean. But in this case, when the unclean thing, her, touches the clean thing, Jesus, he doesn't become unclean, she becomes clean. The unclean thing touches the clean thing and instead of the clean thing becoming unclean, the unclean thing becomes clean.

Write that down, all right? That's because, listen, that's because the ministry of Jesus is one of substitution. Listen, this is the heart of the gospel. On the cross, he took all of our defilement. On the cross, he would take our sin and our sorrow.

On the cross, it would literally be like what I said it wasn't like with the cold. It wasn't that he became unclean and she remained unclean. He absorbed into himself her uncleanness and her defilement so that what would flow out from him to her was healing and salvation.

He became our sin so that we could become his righteousness. The unclean thing touched the clean thing, the clean thing became unclean and put it away forever and now the unclean thing can become clean in him. I've noticed it's a common reaction when people, their soul feels dirty, they want to take a shower.

You see this, they say, with rape victims. Even though it doesn't logically make sense, there's just something about wanting to be cleansed that makes you at least temporarily feel like you're removing that. I know that sexual addicts will go through this as well. They'll get into something and they'll want to wash themselves. Muslims and Jews make this as a regular part of their prayer process to cleanse themselves before they go into the presence of God. But you realize that this water on the body, it's a symbol. It may help you mentally think about some things, but it never really gets to the heart of the issue and that is your soul feels dirty. I mean, how do you cleanse the real part of you that cannot be touched with water, the part where the sin dwells, the part where the defilement seems the most acute?

How do you deal with that? The answer is the blood of Jesus Christ. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Today's message from Luke chapter 8 described Jesus' amazing tenderness toward us as He covered our dirtiness and our sin. We'll conclude this message tomorrow when we'll look at what happened after Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead.

If you missed any part of today's message, you can hear the complete message online at JDCreer.com. Here on Summit Life, everything we do is possible because of the generosity of our financial supporters and gospel partners. Your gifts are what allows us to reach your city and cities around the country with the life changing message of the gospel. And as a way to say thank you, we offer a featured resource each month for those of you who make this ministry possible. We choose these resources specifically to grow you as a disciple making disciple. And this month we're offering Kingdom Come, 20 devotions from Luke, which coincides with our current teaching series right now on the program.

It's a great way to take your study of Jesus' life and ministry to the next level, and maybe bring a friend along for the ride. To support this ministry, give us a call at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or give online now at JDCreer.com. That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R.com. I'm Molly Bidevich inviting you to join us again tomorrow as we hear the conclusion of our message titled Amazing Tenderness. We'll see you right here Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.