The Jesus Touch

Thank you, choir. Thank you, Murray and Frank. If you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to Luke, chapter four? Luke, chapter four. Just want to let you know I had nothing to do with these two characters who showed up today.

So I think they let him out of jail on a bond basis. But anyway, only thing true about that was that I went barefooted at church. Mama put shoes on me, and I'd have to take those shoes off. So I have a legacy that used to be at Central Baptist Church. And then I went barefooted.

Real men go barefooted. Amen. If you want to feel bare, want to go barefooted today, just take your shoes off and leave. But don't leave them in the church if you take your shoes with you when you ask. That was amazing to me.

When I was at Elkdale, we found somebody's shoes. They had left them in the church. So take them home with you. Now. We're getting close to Easter, not too far away.

Beautiful flowers this morning. I appreciate this on the altar, but we've had. In Fairhope, we've had Mardi Gras and finally got rid of that. We had Tuesday, was Fat Tuesday, and then Ash Wednesday, and it gives us 40 days of Lent until we get to the point where we get to the basics of our faith, which is according to crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And I don't know if you've given up anything for Lent.

I have given up Chinese food. I won't eat Chinese food. Sushi. I don't have any crumb. But I still like kaneka sausage.

So I'm carrying my kaneka sausage into my Lent season. But we're getting close to it, and. And I want to share today about the first of Jesus public ministry and how he began it. It didn't look like very much to start with. It was Jesus preaching from place to place and as a kind of solo act.

Later on, he added his disciple. And the first place that he preached was in his hometown of Nazareth. And he started off with three pronouns. The Lord has sent me, and the spirit of the Lord is upon me. And he gave them that sermon.

And then he sat down, and they were almost there, almost persuaded, very close to being there.

And then they backed away and they said, physician, heal yourself. And Jesus began to share with them about you won't do miracles. And he was ready to do miracles in his hometown, Nazareth. But they rejected him. He went back after that.

And when he went back, there was still the same hardened attitude. Once you've had that kind of hardened attitude. You've almost got there. You feel God's presence and he's moving in your life and you feel his presence and he just calls you to make that decision. And almost they're almost persuaded.

But to bring somebody back to that point, it would take a special miracle of God. And I've seen people who have gripped the pews during the invitation time and they walked out and they never got back to that point ever again. Nazareth could have been a place of great miracles, but it never was. It's an unmiracle story a about what happened to Nazareth. And that's kind of a hard way to start your ministry with spirit of rejection.

But Jesus moved on to another place and he goes to Capernaum. Capernaum is one of my favorite places to. When we, Susan and I were in Israel, we were there twice. And there's a lot of commercialism there about what's happening, what happened at Capernaum. There's still what the remnants of a synagogue that was there.

And it's still the remnants of Peter's home that was there, the fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. But there he began a ministry. And it's a ministry that has spread throughout the whole world. It's the most powerful movement that's ever come, this world has ever seen. And there are churches in Russia and there's churches in China, there are churches in Korea, all over the world.

And it's even come to Selma, Alabama, that powerful movement that Jesus started in a place called Galilee, which began with rejection. Now let's read about. There are five instances here of things that Luke gives us about what happened in the fishing village of Capernaum. And if you have your Bibles, look in verse 31. And we're just getting in the middle of this.

Okay. In honor of God's word, would you stand and let me read for us beginning with verse 31. Now I'm going to read this so you don't have to worry about standing up all of this. But we'll read the first part and then go from there. Verse 31.

And he came down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and he taught them on Sabbath day. And it was Jesus strategy to go to synagogues. And the synagogues developed during the Babylonian captivity when the children of Israel were away from the temple and they couldn't get to the temple. And so each community had a synagogue. And in the synagogue, if you had 10 Jewish men, you would have a synagogue.

And the Word synagogue means to gather together. And so each village and town in Israel, as well as other places throughout the world would have synagogues. And when Paul began his missionary activity, he went throughout the world in Greco Roman world, and he would go to places where there was synagogue. So Jesus began his ministry in these synagogues. And he came to the synagogue here in Capernaum, and he preached on several Sabbath days and he taught them concerning God's Word.

Now what he would do would take God's Word and he'd make it fresh. He would take the Old Testament and give it that newness that only Jesus could give. So he taught God's Word and his ministry began teaching God's Word, doing miracles and casting out demons in verse 32. And they were astonished at the doctrine or the teaching that he taught, because he taught with such power and authority. Greek word there is the word ecclesia.

Ecclesia means it's coming out from the inside out. It was a power of the Holy Spirit that was preaching that kept your attention. And you didn't walk away from that. You listened to that power and it had kind of grabbing power. And it still has grabbing power now.

May God bless the reading of His Word. And you may be seated.

When I was at Elkdale, there was this person that gave Susan and I was tickets for our family to go to the Auburn, Alabama game, which they played then at Legion Field. And so we were getting ready to go to the game. We looked forward to it at the end of the week. And on Friday I received a call that a lady that I knew very well, who had worked with my mother, her husband had passed away. And so I went to see her and had prayer with her and encouraged her heart.

And she said, Dr. Henry, we would like you to do the funeral. And I said, sure, that's fine with me. I mean, her husband was a fine man, and I knew that. And they said, we want the funeral to be at one o' clock on Saturday.

Now listen to that for just a moment. Guess what was happening at one o' clock on Saturday? It was an Auburn, Alabama game that was happening at one o' clock on Saturday.

So first for pastor, ministry comes first. And I didn't even slow down. I said, sure, we have that funeral that day and I'll be there to preach the funeral and encourage you at graveside. And so we gave tickets, somebody else gave them to other people to take our kids. And so Susan and I had the funeral and we were driving back from the church, and as we were driving back from the church.

We were going to the grave site. And as we were going to the grave site, I turned the radio on and began listening to the Auburn Alabama game. And we got to the grave site and Alabama was about to kick a field goal. And so I was sitting in there in the car listening to see if they would make that field goal. Well, the pastor always leads the casket out.

So I was sitting in the car listening to the Auburn Alabama game, and the funeral director thought I was in the car praying, but I was really.

I might have been praying, but it wasn't for the situation we were in. So Alabama missed the field goal. And so I was like, yes, well, it's hard to get out of your car and you're going to family around the casket when you're just like, yes.

And so. And you know what happened then? God rebuked me. That's what he did. He rebuked me about the wrong spirit that I had.

And he's kind of told me, this football game will come and go, but there's a family that needs to have hope and distractions come into our lives and wrong spirits come into our lives, and they can distract us from the things that we should be putting priority on.

After that rebuke, I went and just preached to that family. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me, in my father's house. I mean, imagine.

And as I shared with them the hope later on, she came up to me and said, thank you for being here. Thank you for feeling. Help us to feel God's moment in the middle of this situation.

But there are times that we struggle with the wrong kind of attitude in the right kind of situation. And we almost miss those opportunities that God has for us because we have the wrong kind of attitude.

Now Jesus comes to Capernaum, and part of his ministry was not only miracles, but it was this personal touch. He had a touch.

There was a family that was coming out of a city of name, and Jesus was coming into the city. And what he did was he touched the dead body. Nobody touched the dead body.

And this young boy, this lady's only son, widow's only son, got up and he gave him to his mother. A Jesus touch. There was a leper that came to him. Nobody touched lepers. If you touched a leper, then you would have the leprosy that the leper had.

But if Jesus touched the leper, then the leper would become cleansed like Jesus. He was more powerful than the disease, and what he touched was cleansed. This week I had a funeral for a very special man. Susan and I left here Sunday and we were anxious to get back to Fairhope because there was a person that wanted me to have his funeral. He knew he was in his last days.

And his name was Cecil Palmer. And we got there to Daphne, where he lived. And we went in the room and they had this bed in the center of the room. And his family was all gathered around him. And he was still there, not.

I prayed for God to be with him and watch over him and take care of him. I touched his shoulder as I prayed for him. He taught us in seminary to touch people. But when you go from place to place, you got to really wash your hands. You got to be careful in hospital meetings when you meet people.

But there's this touch that is so important.

And Cecil had this Jesus touch on his life.

And as I prayed for him, after I prayed for him, I always pray for God to make him well. And he looked at me and where it came from, I don't know where it came from. But he said, as God answers your prayer, I have a casket for sale. I thought, man.

But his love language was tightness. He was frugal, very tight. In fact, when he asked his wife to marry her, he immediately put them on a budget.

Frugal, Is that a good word? He was very tight.

But he passed away the next day.

And at his funeral his family were gathered. But before he passed away, he shared with his family as we were all gathered around the bed there. He shared with his family his testimony and how he came to know Christ as a young boy. It was in a church outside of Greenville and little small country church, his grandparents church. And he and his brother went down doing the invitation.

And they invited Christ into their life.

He was baptized in a place called Bushy Creek. And they baptized the men and boys in one creek. And to baptize the women and the girls in another creek. Cause they didn't believe in mixed bathing. Have you ever heard of that before?

You can't bring the two of them together. And you got to really be careful when you're baptized in the creek. Because I baptize in the creek and you got to do kind of upstream because you do it downstream. They get away from you and they go way out here and you gotta go chase them down all over the place.

But he had a Jesus touch on his lot.

And he shared about how he met his wife so that all his family could hear his testimony. And all his family could hear about the Crucial points in his life where God had touched his life.

The song I wanted to sing, if I could have sing. May all who come behind us find us faithful.

May the faithfulness that we have influence those generations coming after us. May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe.

May all who come behind us find the faithful. And he left a touch of Jesus on their life. That touch. Here's a ministry where Jesus touches. He touched the little children.

As the little children came to him, there was this touch that he had. And you know, when you've had that touch of Jesus, now look back at your scripture, if you have your Bible, and let's look at there. Five instances. I don't know if I'll get to all five of them or not. But what we'll go through is what happened in verse 33 in the synagogue.

Now, Capernaum was in a state of spiritual confusion. And the reason they were in a state of. Because there was these evil spirits in that church. I don't know if you've ever been in a church that had evil spirits. I've been in churches that had evil spirit.

In business meetings, I have seen evil spirits come out of people and go at each other. Churches have been destroyed because of evil spirit. Brothers and sisters have been separated because of evil spirit. Husband and wives have been separated because of evil spirit demons. I mean, we had two that came to church today.

These two up here. Two demons came to church today. We cast them out and they come back. You know, that's the way it is.

So it was these demons or evil spirits in the church. And as Jesus is preaching, he's preaching in verse 33. And when you preach the evil spirit, you preach God's Word. And to a person with an evil spirit, it's like somebody taking their fingernails and running across chalkboard. It's irritating for them to hear God's Word.

You don't want to hear God's Word. You want to have. You want to give in to that kind of evil spirit. Sometimes it starts off as an irritation. Then it kind of grows into a certain form of anger.

And then it can get to the place of chronic frustration and chronic irritation. So that there's this running through a church and running through a relationship, this kind of relationship. And that separates and pushes people away.

So Jesus cried. They cried out with a loud voice in verse 33. And the reason being because God's word is getting to your heart. And when God's Word getting to your heart and you want to hold on to that evil spirit, Kind of attitude that you have. You don't want to let go of that attitude.

So they cried out and they said, jesus, we know who you are. You have come here to destroy us. And they're trying to get control of Jesus, and he backs them down and he says, stop, and he rebukes him.

And the evil spirit convulsed in this guy and threw him. And the idea is, like, he threw him towards Jesus and they came out of him.

And all of a sudden, that crazy attitude that was in that church and in that synagogue became a clean place because Jesus was there.

When I first came to First Baptist Church in Faro, they had had three splits.

And I'd call people and tell them, say, tell me about first. Dr. Groans was there as an interim pastor trying to pull that church together.

And I asked them, they said, tell me about First Baptist Church. And they said, you don't want to go there. They kill three preachers. I thought, man, I'm stepping into something. But God gave me a sense that that's where he wanted me to be.

And every week I just preached to him, preached to him. God's word, preached to him about trusting the pastor, preached to him about the fact that God wanted to do something in that church. But you had to come together. The anger was so filled with that. Groups were in here and groups over here and groups over there, and they would meet in the sidewalk.

You know how church in those county, they meet in the sidewalk and parking lots, and this group calls them up over the phone or hit it on Facebook, and can you believe what they're doing in that? And it just hits there and it separates the church. And some of you are here today at First Baptist Church because you know what happened in a church that you once were in. And you don't want to be in that kind of fellowship, which is an absence of fellowship. So the first thing Jesus did in synagogue, there was a clean house.

And he emptied that kind of evil spirit that was in the synagogue from the synagogue. He went to Peter's house. And if you have your Bibles, verse 38. And he arose and did left the synagogue and entered into Simon's house. And you can still see the ruins of what used to be Peter's house in Capernaum.

And his Simon's wife's mother had this kind of strong fever. And this fever just had a control over her. And it looks like the fever was taking her in the wrong kind of direction. I have an uncle, a great uncle, anyway, that's buried in Ebenezer Baptist Church's cemetery in Stanton, Alabama, because he fell in a creek when he was coon hunting and he had pneumonia. And there was a time back then, this was before Peninsula, and there was a time if you could break the fever, then you would live.

But if you didn't break that fever, you were gone. And he didn't break the fever. And it seemed like that Jesus is talking to somebody who has this fever. Same way he was talking. He's talking to the fever just like the same way he was talking to the evil spirit.

And Mark tells us that Jesus. There were four people there. There was Peter and Andrew and James and John, who would later become his disc.

And Mark tells us that he grabbed her by the hand, Jesus grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up. I know there are a lot of mother in law jokes. Amen. Have you ever heard any mother in law jokes? There was this guy that I know of, he was a Christian man.

And his girlfriend told her mother said, listen, he doesn't believe in a personal devil, but otherwise he's a Christian, great guy. And she said, well, go ahead and marry him because we'll teach him about the personal devil.

And sometimes that happened. I was doing a wedding at Elkdale and going through the vows, and I said, do you take toligram? Do you take so and so to be your lawful wedded wife? And I said, the bride's mother, do you take so and so to be your lawful wedded wife? And he said, no.

And I said again. And I said, do you take so and so's mother be your lawful wedded, take so and so to be your lawful wedded wife? And I used the mother's name again. He said, no. And then I realized what I was doing and I said, it's a package deal.

You get one and you get the other.

But this one was a good cook, evidently. And there was no lunch there at the synagogue after the synagogue service. And so Jesus healed her fever, just called the fever, rebuke the fever and left. And so Jesus healed her and she got up and started serving, went to cooking kaneka sausage and all these other things that they. No, she didn't do any sausage.

Not in a Jewish home. But I know it wasn't Chinese food either. She didn't cook Chinese food.

But here the point is, she served because she was healed. She didn't serve to be healed. She was served because she was healed. And Mark tells us that she had Jesus touched.

She had a Jesus touch. And when you have a Jesus touch, you find ways to serve your master.

Well, it was sundown. If you have your Bibles, it was sundown. And they brought all these people together. And in verse 40, if you have your Bible now, when the sun was setting, because they couldn't bring a sick person, you couldn't bear a burden on the Sabbath day. That was one of their ruses.

So it was a sundown service. How many of you remember coming to church at night? Would you raise your hand? Remember? Evidently, that's gone out of class.

We don't do church at night anymore because everybody's fine. Amen. We don't need it. But we're so busy, we've kind of ruled out church at night. So here's a sundown service.

And they brought all these people in to be healed. And Jesus just healed every one of them. And it says he put his hands on them. He had this Jesus touch, and he healed them. And those that were full of demons, he cast those demons out.

And they said, jesus Christ, we know who you are, the son of the living God. But he didn't allow them to give a testimony, because a testimony coming from a wrong person is a bad testimony. And he looked at, where does this originate from? And there are people say, I love the Lord with all my heart, but you can tell by their lies that they really don't love the Lord with all their heart. But it was a great service that day, that afternoon.

But as Jesus was healing and preaching and doing all this, it just took a lot out of him. It always does. It takes a lot out of him. So the next morning, while it was still early, he got up and spent time with the Father.

And I hope you have those times when you spend time with the Father. Susan and I have our own quiet time that we do every morning. We read God's Word and we have devotionals that she and I read every morning. But we also have times that we pray together. And those are like steel girders in our marriage that hold us together.

And I've shared this before. There are times that I wanted to pray, God, be with her and help her to realize how wrong she is and how right I am.

Now, I won't ask you to hold your hand up if you've ever prayed that prayer about your mate, but it just doesn't work.

And so as we pray together, there's always things that kind of brings our hearts together. Even times when there are kind of distant feelings, even times that we have attitudes that are not right. There's something about praying together that pulls us together so early in the morning. Even Jesus found time to spend time with the Father. To kind of re energize his life.

To get direction and purpose for which direction he would like to go.

And in fact, they came to get him, to keep him in Capernaum. And he said, no, I need to go through other cities. My time is short. I only have short time here. So I got the mace the most.

And he would go from town to town. He left Capernaum and went to all these little bitty cities. And there he would preach God's word. I want to talk about the Lord's touch on your life.

It's something you know about, but it's also something you feel. I have felt God's touch doesn't always come, but I felt God's touch usually when I needed it the most. A time when I was down. And the energy level in my life was so low that I needed a fresh touch.

Now I've been with God early in the morning. And just poured out my heart to him in ways that he could. I knew he was there. And somehow in the midst of that time. I felt his presence and his touch on my life.

And sending me in this direction or sending me in that direction. It's God's touch on our life. Sometimes it's rebuking me to get rid of the wrong attitude that I have. And God has to really sometimes grab me. To let me know this is a wrong attitude and you shouldn't have it.

But it's God's touch.

He touched then, and he still touches.

There are different love languages and different love ways. Do you express. And one is quality time. You spend quality time with somebody and that kind of draws you together. And we can get so busy in things that we do.

That we fail to have quality time with each other. Then there are words of affirmation. That is another love language. And that. That love language you tell somebody, I want you to know that I love you.

And I remember one girl telling me how much she felt. Knew that her dad loved her. But he never told her then. That kind of gifts which you give. And I hope this week you gave each other some gifts for Valentine.

If not, you can find them on sale at Walgreen and make up maybe for a lost time. And in their acts of service. I mean, my mama used to punish me for vacuuming by making me vacuum. And I still feel her punishment. But Susan will see me vacuum in the house.

And she said, he loves me because he's vacuuming. The house, and there are acts of service, but then there's touch.

My dad had a hard time touching. He grew up in a time when life was hard. And when I came back from Vietnam, they met me in Montgomery, and everybody hugged me, but my dad shook my hand.

He came from a family, just hardly ever hugged each other.

I won't be a Mennonite for several reasons. I'm really impressed with the Mennonite, but one reason I won't be a Mennonite is because women don't shave your legs. I think that's in scripture somewhere. It ought to be that women ought to shave their legs. I think that's a good thing.

But also, the men kiss each other on the lips. Now, I don't want to go that far. I really don't want to go that far. They greet each other with a holy kiss. They take that really strict scripturally, and the men do that.

But I will hug people and I hug my boys. And I grew up hugging them, and I hugged my grandchildren. And they're men that I hug because I thank God for them. And I thank God for their stance as Christians, and I appreciate them very much.

God's touch. We need God's touch. There was a pastor in New Orleans, and he was. He was preaching in New Orleans. And at night in New Orleans, when they preached to R.G.

lee, one of the great Southern Baptist pastors. And at night they would open the windows, and on Monday morning, there was this girl that came to see him, and she said, I was standing outside that window last night, and she was like 17 years old. She had been a prostitute on streets of New Orleans for three years.

And she said, Dr. Lee, do you think God could ever forgive me?

And then she shared her story. And he said it was like somebody had taken a cesspool and poured it on his pastor office. And so he was taken back for a long time.

And then he got his wits to him and he said, sure, God can forgive you.

And they got down on their knees in that office of his, and she invited Christ into her life.

She now had a Jesus touch to replace all those other wrong touches.

Two years later, Dr. Lee went to Memphis and he built a beautiful church, big church there in Memphis. But there was a knock on his door. And he opened the door, and this was this lady, and she had found a guy who also had come from a bad experience in life. And she said, we want to get married. We both have felt Christ in our life, and we want to get married.

And so Dr. Lee married him there in his home. And as she was walking out of that house, it was like a full moon was up in the sky. And she looked up and she said, thank you, God, for giving me a second chance.

That's what Jesus tug.

Now, maybe you're here today and you just need a Jesus touch. Maybe you're here today, you need to have a renewal of a Jesus touch in your life.

If you have your hymnal, would you take your hymnal and would you turn it to our invitational hymn, which is in 6:28. 6:28.

I really like the Gaithers. They are.

They're just great songwriters. God has given them the gift of songwriting, and God will give them a song. And he talks about. It's like manna from heaven, and if you don't sit down and write it down, then you'll lose it. So whenever there's a song that comes to him, the words of a song that God kind of sings, like he says, like this manna from heaven, you get down and write it down quickly.

And he was leading a revival somewhere in Indiana, and. And the singer there said, why don't you write a song about God's touch? And so this is what he did. If you look at the top lines in your hymnal. 6:28.

Shackled by a heavy burden Neath a load of guilt and shame Then the hand of Jesus touched me and now I am no longer the same he touched me oh, he touched me and oh, the joy that floods my soul Something happened and now I know he touched me and made me whole and now would you bow your heads for just a moment?

Just you and the Lord.

Maybe you've never felt God's touch in your life.

Maybe it's time to say, Lord, I need your touch.

Those attitudes that I have that should not be there.

There's anger that's taken control of my life and sometimes there's a demon that comes out of me.

So, Lord, I pray that you would just give me that touch in my life. Rebuke me where I need to be rebuked for I need your rebuke.

But also make that rebuke a place where your grace flows.

Maybe you need a fresh touch. Maybe you know somebody that needs God's touch in their life. Maybe you know a relationship that needs God's touch. Maybe you need a church attitude. God's touch.

Would you just open it, Tim?

In the quietness of a moment, feel God's touch.

Thank you, Father.

For a Lord that not only touches, but he can be touched.

In Jesus name I pray, Amen.