Trapped In A Lonely Place

I do need you to know that the reason the

reason some of you feel like you feel is because

God's hand is on you and you're different.

You're different. You're different.

That's why you find yourself when people that are around

you they're being kind of hateful or or they're making

fun of someone and they're calling them gay, or they're

calling them this, or they're calling them that, and you

just kind of can't go along with it. And even

when you find yourself laughing along, you're like, and that

doesn't feel right to me.

You're a leader.

That's not what God put you here for, is just

to be a part of that mentality. You're like one

of those shining stars that was in Holly's Bible study

that she taught that is faultless and pure in the

depraved generation, that you would shine like a star.

That's you. Yeah, but leaders are lonely. I think Jesus

was very lonely.

Nobody got him. They were always trying to talk him

out of going to the cross. That's the whole reason

came down in pampers. He didn't come to feed them fish.

He did that, but that's not the main thing he

came for.

So you will see this pattern Jesus shows to be alone,

they're looking for you. You gotta do amazing things like

even that's what the devil told Jesus right before, right

before he was going to start his ministry. He had

to be tempted, and the devil said, do something spectacular,

you know how Right now, one of the only ways

to be popular for girls.

Sometimes is to go on certain.

Social media and kind of like show everything that's too much,

that's really not for everybody else to see, that is

really sacred to you. But if there is something inside

of you that knows that's not who I am, that's

all right, that's all right, that's all right. I'd rather

be fruitful for thirty years than famous for thirty minutes.

I got something inside of me, and Jesus chose to

be alone. But when I read you the text, there

was another man who was lonely, not because he chose it.

The Bible doesn't say his name. I doubt many people

ever asked him his name. The Bible just tells us

his condition, which was a skin condition called leprosy. Now,

the Bible was pretty clear about what leopards were treated

like in this culture, and it wasn't that they were mean,

y'all thought social distancing was so twenty twenty, way before

everybody was wearing masks around social distancing. And the Bible,

the Bible has all kinds of stuff that is way

more relevant.

Than we think it is.

So when people tell you all the Bible's outdated social distancing,

in fact, it wasn't six feet. If you had the

skin disease called leprosy, the first thing you would have

to do is go and show yourself to the priest.

And what would normally happen is a spot would start

to form on your skin, So they'd check you out

and they would see if the spot was just on

the skin like a scab, or was it in the skin,

And if it was in the skin and the coloration

of the skin was starting to change and it was starting.

To spread, then they would quarantine you.

And they would keep you outside of the camp until

they could see if it got worse, if it got

worse after seven days, when you came back to the

priest and he checked you out, the sons of Aaron,

the ones who kind of ran the church of that

day when you came back to them. Now all of

this is in the Bible in Leviticus, what verses did

I give you?

Leviticus?

The Leviticus verse I gave you put it up for

me thirteen is that anyone with a defiling disease must

wear torn clothes, which some of us do by choice,

but for the lepers this was to signify something about

their skin condition. And not only did they have to

wear torn clothes, but they couldn't shave their beard.

Cut their hair.

Man, this sounds just like March, April, May, June, and

July in the United States of America.

How did Leviticus know? But put it back up?

It said, This is the satis part about it. For me,

it says, cover the lower part of their face and

cry out unclean, unclean. So that means before anybody even

got to know who you were really, they identified you

by what they saw on you. And I need you

to get that context because a lot of us, in

our lives, we have issues, but they're not.

On our skin. They're not spots on our skin.

There's spots on our soul, the places inside of us

that keep us isolated.

What's your spot? What's your spot? Oh, everybody's got a spot.

And if you look at me with that holy.

Heart playing church face, Gabriel, I will look in your

eyes and prophesy every demon that you've been.

I mean, I'm.

Telling you everybody in this room has a spot. Not me, no, no,

Yours is just a little deeper. When I thought about

this man in Mark chapter one, I noticed that when

he came up to Jesus. Because remember, he's not supposed

to get near Jesus. In fact, he's not supposed to

get near anybody, let alone the spotless son of God,

let alone a rabbi.

He's supposed to stay back. How far back? Not sixty

fifty steps back. Now.

I preach this text a couple of years ago in

our church, but it feels a little different right now

where I roll this, This feels really like it's for

us right now, fifty feet back.

You know how lonely that would be to live your

life fifty feet back from human touch.

You know how lonely that would be.

That every time you walk into a room you had

to announce yourself by what was wrong with you?

Unclean? You had to say aloud too. If you didn't,

they could stone you to death if.

They found out that you were carrying something that you

didn't let them know about because they saw it as

being contagious and they were trying to protect people from it,

and that.

Was the reason for it. It wasn't to be cruel.

They were trying to be careful, so they kept them back,

and you had to walk in the room and tell

them not who you were, not, what your hopes were, not,

where your dreams were not, what your gift was not,

how you had a good heart unclean. How many of

y'all would have come tonight to hear me preaching. I

want you to really really think about this. If before

you came in you had to shout every sin you

struggled with at the door, they didn't. They didn't get it. Elijah, listen.

He asked me. The other day we were watching youth Chts.

I don't remember who we were watching preach?

Do you?

You said, if every thought that you had right now

came on the screen at Youthets, would you still have

your job as the pastor?

I said, oh god, no, I said, would you have

any friends?

He said no? I said, well, what are you thinking?

That would be so bad? He said, I'm not telling you.

I said, I'm not telling you either, and then we

finished our workout.

But I want you to really think about it.

What if you had to stand at that door and

shout what you struggled with before you walked in. What

if you walked in the door and instead of taking

your temperature, you had you had to name your biggest temptation.

What if you had to walk in the room porn

that was too real, porn.

I don't think there would be any men that would

come in and watch me preach if you had to

name your greatest temptation.

Out loud before you walked in.

Jesus, Christ, Lord and Savior helping me preach. I'm preaching

to the Holy people right now. And yet sometimes I

think it would be better if our issues were on

the outside than on the inside, because when your spots

are on the inside, you can learn how to manage

around them, so you never really deal with them. This

man walked up to Jesus and he begged him on

his knees Verse forty. If you're willing, you can make

me clean and think about this. He hasn't been this

close to anybody. We don't know how long, and we

don't really know this man's story, not fully anyway, We

know that he had leprosy on his skin, but we

don't know when it started or how far it has spread.

We know that since leprosy attacks the nervous system, one

of the things that it impairs is your ability to feel,

your ability to feel, and it's been a long time

since this man had felt anything. That's a lonely place.

That's a lonely place when you can't really feel anything.

And I'll tell you this, I've been around some people

who are really famous, who are the loneliest.

People of all.

Because although a lot of people know their name and

know what they do and see how they perform, to

most people, they are just an idea or an image,

not an individual.

And so when you think.

To yourself, oh, I'll be famous and then I'll feel fulfilled,

it's a lie of the enemy. You don't want to

be famous. You want to be fruitful. You want to

be fruitful. And what good is it for you to

be famous if it just makes you more isolated because

you have to fake it for fame.

This is what I love about the man.

He was willing to risk being seen and his issue being.

Exposed in order to be touched. And the first person

who touched this man.

Since his disease showed up on his skin was the

sinless son of God. I love how Jesus touched him

because we know that Jesus didn't have to do that.

Jesus had the ability to heal people and elsewhere he

did just by the power of his word.

But he decided to.

Do something that would communicate more than syllables could. He

didn't just want to show this man that he had

the power to heal. He wanted to teach him a

lesson about what God is like. And I want everybody

in here who is struggling with shame right now to

hear the word of the Lord. I want you to

hear this in Argentina. I want you to hear this

in rock Hill. I want you to hear this right

now in Tennessee and Alabama and Idaho.

I want you to hear this right now.

Sitting watching this all by yourself, and you've been isolated,

and there's something inside of you that makes you feel

like there's something.

Wrong with you.

See in the Old Testament, if the priest touched something

that was unclean, it made the priest dirty.

That's why he couldn't touch it. But Jesus was not

just any priest.

Oh wish I had an organ like it was Sunday morning.

Jesus was not just any priest. This is not a

human priest. This is the lamb of God. This is

a great hot priest. He is not a file, He

is not a shame. He knew no sin.

So watch this when you touch Jesus.

The unclean doesn't make the clean unclean. The clean makes

the unclean clean your lack like y'all want to praise

God for our seventy one of uzacs twenty twenty, come

on and let him touch you.

I have a word for somebody.

Today who has been carrying shame.

And has had you in a lonely place, a lonely place.

Oh yeah, you still text people, but it's not really

you texting. It's a representative of you that's trying to

figure out what to say that's going to create.

The image that you think they won't reject.

And the places that you go when you're lonely often

make you even more lonely.

It's a lonely place outside the camp.

It's a lonely place when the spot isn't on your skin,

but the spot is in your soul. And you think

if anybody knew that part about me, they wouldn't love me.

But they didn't make you. They didn't make you, they

didn't die for you. And let me promise you something,

they got their own spot too. So for all of

you feel like, I'm not one of these good people.

I'm not one of these good Christian kids, one of

the I'm not one of the church kids.

I'm not one of these.

Notice how Jesus did not resist the man when he

got at a distance that he wasn't supposed to be,

he said, watch this, you ready?

This is what I came for. This is what I

came for.

I didn't come here to win a popularity contest.

I came to touch people and use people and raise

people and heal people that nobody else would touch.

I want to I want to use that kid right there,

the weird one, the weird Where are the weird ones at?

Where are the weird ones at? Where the weird ones at?

And I know you feel weird sometimes, and so do I.

But the text says that when that man came out

of his lonely place, lonely place, lonely place, it's a

lonely place when you have an addiction and you can't

you can't tell anybody about it.

It's a lonely place.

It's a lonely place when sometimes you have suicidal thoughts.

It's a lonely place. It's a lonely place when your

dad wasn't there to raise you. It's a lonely place.

It's a lonely place when you've only been able to

hang out with your eight year old sister and your

mom for the last fourteen years, and y'all are all

wearing masks together, watching the same movies on the couch

for the hundredth time.

It's a lonely place.

When you can't even come to church for youthex, you

got to watch it on your phone. And yet the

Lord says, don't make life decisions when you're in a

lonely place. Don't make life decisions when you're in a

lonely place. You do some things that you have to

live with the rest of your life. And some of

the places that some of y'all are going so you

won't be lonely are making you more lonely, because now

you're on here comparing, and now you're on here posing,

and now you're on here just and now you feel

more lonely. So when that man came to Jesus.

And Jesus touched him, I'm sure he was surprised and

the leprosy left him immediately.

You don't have to wait the next five years for

the shame to fall off your life. It may take

a while for the behavior to change, but you can

leave the shame right here today, right now.

Right here, right now, right here, right now. The shame

stops here, right here, right now. Hey, thank you for watching.

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