Life of Christ #8 – What Happens When Faith Touches Jesus? | The Power of Christ

Now then, the soul often, unfortunately, soars and has experiences that are similar to the Spirit. Believe me, I have been, and I have vivid memories of being in the seminary when I got hold of some big theological idea we had to wrestle with. I would research it, and I would run down scriptures, and I would begin to understand that thing, and I’d get deeper into it, and I would begin to see. It was almost a religious experience, but it was totally within the realm of my intellect.

My intellect can reach out and begin to have things that look like revelation. Many times, the thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of Christian leaders who are guilty, and I underline the word guilty, of preaching a gospel in which they denude from that gospel all emotion and all things of the spirit and things of the spiritual realm are so into their heads. They feel that if you get down there and study hard enough, those moments of intellectual apprehension are what each of us needs and almost the duplication of the spirit’s operations.

That’s not what’s happening here. Here is something happening on a level not above the Adam’s apple. It is below the Adam’s apple; it has got nothing to do with the head. The woman sensed she would be healed, and when she was healed, she sensed she had been healed. She had a knowing.

Now, Jesus Christ operated largely on an internal sense, not on intellectualism, rationalism, logic, or knowledge. The Lord Jesus Christ betrays in everything He says that He is not a great intellect. What was His chosen profession? He was a carpenter. Obviously, this man is not impressed by the need to teach in seminary. I doubt that in the history of mankind there has ever lived a human being who is a well-known teacher who was…are you ready for this word… so much a “monosyllabist,” and the very use of that word proves I need help.

Do you understand what I mean by monosyllabist? Do you know the word? He was a one-syllable-word man. People have studied the Lord’s words and found out something like 70% of all of His words were one syllable, something, I don’t know, maybe it’s 60%. Another 30% is two syllables, and with a few exceptions, virtually all the three-syllable words He said were towns, cities, people’s names, and places. He was mostly a one- and two-syllable man, and He taught with parables. His teachings are with earthy things, and yet, dear brothers and dear sisters, we’re talking about the mind of God.

This is God’s mind and revelation. You people who teach this business, you’ve got to go out and get a college education to glorify your Lord. Shame on you. Oh, you’re anti-education. Hush your mouth. I didn’t say that. Don’t you say I said that. I am telling you, you’re making it sound like intellectual education, or any other kind of education, is needed for spiritual insight. God came to earth and told earthy stories about sparrows falling out of trees, grass growing beside the road, lilies in the field, and a farmer who had two sons. This is not my theological library.

He talks about the wind. Talks about the will of God. He talks so simply. He did not have a titanic mind. He lived in His spirit, not in His soul, and the spirit is not intellectually endowed. The soul is, and a large amount of our intellectual endowment is a result of the fall. It is not proof of our Christianity. If we had not fallen, we would be simpler than we are. The soul grew more complex because of the fall, not because of overcoming it.

Adam was a simple man. If you don’t believe that, listen to God’s instructions to him. Take care of this garden. Make sure nothing gets in it that’s all that bad. And eat herbs. That’s all the Lord told him. The man was a farmer by trade, and yet he had more capacities than all of us. What might Adam have told men about God if he could sit or stand today in theological school and tell only what he knew before the fall? It is things below our Adam’s apple that make us Christians.

Now then, let us look at the Lord and His “internalness,” and before I go any further, I have to ask you: did the Lord know who touched Him? And was He using this, or did the Lord not know who touched Him? I haven’t the foggiest idea. I look at this one way; I appreciate it. I look at it the other way; I appreciate it. I think I’m going to tell it from the viewpoint of His not knowing, and I’m going to take it as it’s told here.

As she was healed of her affliction, Jesus had a knowing. He had a knowing. He had an internal sense that something had left His body, or His soul or His Spirit had left Him and passed out of His body through His garment into someone. He stopped cold and said, “Who touched Me? Who touched My clothing?” Well, everybody around said, “I didn’t touch You. I didn’t touch You. I didn’t touch You. I didn’t touch You. Oh, it wasn’t me, Lord.” They all thought they were in trouble. Even the guys who were pressing up against Him said, “I didn’t touch You.” And, of course, Peter stated the obvious.

Two things I want to say about that. This word master is a common word. It was a word used for anyone who was a rabbi, and in the traditional Jewish eye at this moment, the Lord was seen as a rabbi. He was going around teaching about God. He was an itinerant rabbi going from town to town. Rabbis did this. Teachers made their living doing it. So the word doesn’t have to denote reverence. Maybe it does, but he states the obvious.

I wonder if Peter is making the mistake that a lot of us do when we meet unusual people. We think maybe they’re so simple, they’re simple-minded; that in his great genius he is simple. I’ve known two people I felt I had to relate to them that way. They were so brilliant in one area that I felt I had to explain to them how a door opened because they might be deficient in another area.