[LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] If you could open your
bibles to Mark, Chapter 9-- [LAUGHTER] I want to preach a
message to you that I'm calling "Wash Your Hands." It says in Mark, Chapter 9-- and by the way, just to set
the scene before I jump in, this happens just after
a miracle the Bible calls the transfiguration. If you are familiar with
the story of scripture, you know the Bible
says that Jesus took three of his 12
disciples and led them up a high mountain, where he was
transfigured before them, which is to say that he gave them a
small peak of the glory that he will have throughout
all eternity. When we encounter Jesus he won't
be gentle Jesus, meek and mild. When he returns
there's a glory to him. There's a shining to
him, a power to him. And so he gave them,
on the mountain, just a small peak of
the miracle of heaven, of the power of heaven. And for the occasion he even
pulled a Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and brought
Moses and Elijah-- Old Testament saints
who were no longer on the earth, Moses
because he died, Elijah because one day
God sent a fiery chariot to pick him up-- OK. And these two came back to hang
out with Jesus on the mountain and to talk about the cross,
because the cross was coming. And they were
talking with Jesus, just speaking about what
was about to happen, the death that he was
going to die on our behalf. And Peter, James, and
John got to witness this. And then Jesus and
his disciples began to head down the mountain. Now, Peter would've
had them stay there. In fact, while they were
talking Peter interrupted Jesus speaking to Moses
and Elijah and said, man, this is great. We should stay here forever. Which is always
the temptation when God does something
powerful in your life, to want to keep it to yourself. We should just
stay here forever. But the point was not to
remain on the mountain, but to go back down
the mountain and die for the sins of the
world so that all of us could experience
the power of heaven. Come on. This is too good to
keep to ourselves. [APPLAUSE] The work that God
has done in our life, we've got to share
with the world. We want more people to know. [APPLAUSE] And so God the Father
interrupted Peter and said, hey, Peter,
could you please be quiet and listen to Jesus? He's got something to say. And then they went
back down the mountain. And as they were
coming down, the Bible says an enormous crowd rushed
up to Peter and James and John and, of course, Jesus. And that's where we are in
verse 17 of Mark, Chapter 9. It says then, one of the crowd
answered and said, teacher, I brought you my son,
who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes,
him it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, gnashes
his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples,
that they should cast it out. But they could not. He answered him and said, oh
faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. Then they brought him to him. And when he saw him, immediately
the spirit convulsed him. And he fell on the ground and
wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So he asked his father, how long
has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood. And often he has thrown him
both into the fire and the water to destroy him. Can you imagine this? Seeing this child doing this
to himself, harming himself? But if you can do anything, have
compassion on us and help us. Jesus said to him,
if you can believe, all things are possible
to him who believes. Immediately the
father of the child cried out and said with
tears, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the
people came running together, he rebuked the unclean
spirit, saying to it, deaf and dumb spirit, I command
you, come out of him and enter him no more. Then the spirit cried out,
convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so
that many said, he is dead. But Jesus took him by the
hand and lifted him up. And he arose. And when he had
come into the house his disciples asked
him privately, why could we not cast it out? So he said to them,
this kind can come out by nothing but
prayer and fasting. And Father, we pray that you
would speak something special, precious, and
important to our hearts as we quiet ourselves for
a moment to listen to you. Entering into a new year
is nothing to take lightly, because your word says you
crown the year with goodness. And your paths, they
drip with abundance. And so we want all you have
for us in this new year. We want to see Jesus. We ask this in his name, amen. Amen. Before we jump into the
talk, if you could just shake someone's hand near you. Come on, just right hand, left
hand-- doesn't really matter. And now your second choice--
for whatever reason-- shake their hand as well. Very good, very good, very good. Everyone's got a hand shaken? Excellent. You know, they say globally,
four out of five people don't wash their hands when
they leave the bathroom. [GROANING] I'm sure the people you
just shook hands with do. I'm just saying, on the earth,
out of all the human beings on this planet,
four out of five-- when they use the toilet,
they don't wash their hands, which is devastating. And as a result, many people
die of unnecessary, preventable diseases. Many kids especially-- 6.6 million children will not
reach their fifth birthday this year. The two primary killers
are diarrhea and pneumonia, both of which can be
prevented, both of which can be treated in
many instances. They actually say that if
people around the world just washed their hands,
when you're just coming out of the bathroom, you just
washed your hands as a rule, then worldwide, diarrhea
deaths would be cut down by as many as a half. Wow. And that respiratory diseases
would be cut by a third. Now, the interesting
thing about this is that the problem isn't
that they don't have soap. Most homes in the world
have a bar of soap in them. As high as 90%, even in
developing countries, have access to soap. It's been around
since 2800 BC, when the Babylonians discovered it. So soap is normal. And soap is widely available
and relatively inexpensive. In many homes, though,
throughout the world, soap is reserved for
special occasions. It's viewed as this
commodity, this luxury that's there for washing clothes
and washing dishes. And yeah, when you
take a bath every once in a while, whenever that
happens, yes, you use soap. But it's not viewed
as something you need to use all the time, every day. So here we have people dying-- like this child here,
who's throwing himself in the fire, this child who's
in grave need, people dying not because they don't
have access to soap, but because they don't
take advantage of the soap. The problem isn't availability. It's awareness and action. Interestingly enough,
here's these disciples who are unable to cast this
demon out, unable to help this child-- which, by the
way, they have successfully done before. These disciples, Jesus had sent
out on ministry assignments. And they had come back,
literally, and said, the demons listen to us. We do ministry in
your name, Jesus. And it works. And Jesus said,
just remember, you shouldn't brag about
the fact that you've done great things for me. Just be stoked that you know me. Right. Yeah. Just rejoice that your
name is written in heaven. Rejoice that you have a name
on a table setting in heaven. That is to say, stay humble. Stay small in your own eyes. Don't get too big
for your britches. Don't start feeling your oats
and talking with an accent. Oh, yeah, look what we did. You don't have an accent. What are you doing? Right? Don't start wearing
sunglasses at night, right? Just be grateful to be saved. Stay humble. And if you stay humble, there's
no telling where you'll go. Someone said that there
is no end to what God can do with a man or woman who's
willing to give Him the credit. Yeah. And so here's the disciples,
able to command demons when they were humble, when they
were small in their own eyes and dependent. So obviously here,
what's happened is they have gone out
in their own strength. They went to try and do
this in their own strength. Now you're like, well, hold on. Why did Jesus take the
good disciples with him? Of course, these other nine-- Bartholomew, what
has he ever done? He took Peter, James, and
John with him on the mountain. He left the JV team down below. Of course they couldn't do it. Nah, I think you have
it exactly backwards. I think the reason he always
took Peter, James, and John with him is because
they needed supervision. I think these were the most
responsible of the whole team here at the bottom. And they couldn't do it. The ones who were able to be
left without a babysitter, they couldn't do it, because
they had gotten their eyes off of Jesus, which is
why he tells them, you weren't praying and fasting. Now, of course, he
doesn't literally mean like, encounter the demon-- OK, stop eating. Everyone at lunch, don't eat! Don't eat! Don't eat! Don't eat! We can't take this demon out. No, the point is, these
are the two things that foster the kind of
spirit of humility that is needed for us to be able
to do the things that God has called us to do, a
dependence on God which we foster through prayer,
a dependence on God which we foster when
we set aside a time and say we're going to
fast, so we could have a time devoted to
seeking the Lord, to make that space to seek him. So the disciples
couldn't help this child, not because they didn't have
access to what they needed but because they didn't
take advantage of it. Maybe like us, they
made the mistake of treating prayer like
people in the Third World use soap-- for special occasions,
for dire situations. We betray our viewing
prayer this way when we say things like, we just
have done everything we can do. Now it's in God's hands. All we can do is pray now. Hey, news flash-- prayer
shouldn't be a last resort. It should be your
first line of defense. [APPLAUSE] Prayer should be the
first thing we do. We should call on God
before anything else. Someone said, you can
do more after you pray. But you can't do anything
until you've prayed, truly. And so we should
view as, like I said, a first line of defense, this
idea of praying and fasting, to keep seeking God paramount. Because the problem in this
situation wasn't the things the disciples tried to do. No doubt, they tried to do
many things for this child. They tried to do many things. The reason they were
powerless wasn't because of what they did do. But it was because of
what they didn't do. And maybe you feel stuck. Do you ever feel like,
in your walk with God, you're not taking
ground like you should? And you're going,
what's the problem? Maybe I read my Bible,
or this or that. Maybe the problem isn't
what you're doing. The problem is what
you're not doing-- to take some time to pray and
to fast, to cultivate humility and hunger for God, to watch him
move in your life in that way. I jotted down three
things that will happen if you give yourself
over to praying and fasting. Number one, it
will slow you down. It will slow you down. Literally, physically, it will
slow you down a little bit. When you're feeling
anxious, when you're feeling just
sluggish spiritually, I wonder if you don't notice
that oftentimes you're hurried, you're rushing. The enemy of the spiritual
life is rushing around, hurrying to and fro. So when we pray,
we intentionally slow down a little bit. And there's something
beautifully inefficient about prayer. Think about it-- to get
on your knees and to pray, you know what you're not doing? Anything else-- namely, all the
things you need to do that day. Right. I can't pray. I'm very busy. Someone said that on those days,
you're too busy not to pray-- Yes. Because you need
that strength to go about the rest of your day. So it's inefficient. But I've found that
when I take that time and set aside a space to
seek God, there is more of me and a better version of me to
face all the things on my list than if I just were
to rush into the day. I watched this TED Talk about
how, supposedly worldwide-- this is crazy; this number
is just outrageous-- 13 billion pounds
of paper towels get thrown away every
single year in this country. 13 billion pounds of these-- it's a lot. And the answer, to this
TED Talk was saying, is for us all to just cut back. Because if you're like
me, you sit there and-- [MECHANICAL SOUNDS] right? And you get all these out there. And then you're just like-- sometimes it's so irritating
when it only spits out four inches. You're like, what am I
supposed to do with that? [LAUGHTER] What am I supposed
to do with that? I don't like the little
crank thing, either. I don't want to touch
anything in a bathroom. I'm like, get in
there with my elbow. I don't like it. [LAUGHTER] I don't like it. I don't like it. And so when we designed
these bathrooms, we made sure there was no doors. I don't know if you noticed,
you don't touch anything go in. And you don't touch
anything going out. It's very beautiful. And so he was like, but when
you think about it, he said, if we all just use
one of these a year, I mean just think of
millions of pounds less going into the landfill every year. And he says,
though, the secret-- this is crazy-- the
secret to using one paper towel is to
fold and to shake. To fold-- so you
have to fold it. And then you have to shake. All right, so when you have
wet hands what you have to do-- you already folded it. You already did that. You have to do
that ahead of time. Otherwise it's
going to be a mess. So your hands are
wet now, right? You have to shake 12 times. He said there's something
secret about the number 12. In the video, he says 12
is the number of apostles. 12 is the number of tribes. 12 is the number of the zodiac. And 12 is the largest number
with only one syllable. All right, so now we've
shaken our hands out 12 times. And now, with the
folded paper towel, you can perfectly dry
your hands only using one. [APPLAUSE] Hey, and check this out. If you take the time to-- that's not fast. Sit there in the sink-- you're never going
to forget that. The rest of your life you're
like, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine-- baby steps, baby steps to
the trash can, baby steps. But that's
inefficient, time-wise. But there's less
waste because of it. I'm telling you, if you take
the time to slow down long enough to pray, if you take the
time to begin a year by seeking God through fasting, you will
see a better version of you because of that inefficient
use of your time. Don't you notice that it's so
easy just to tear through life at warp speed,
multitasking all the time? CNN on, and thing over
here, and oh, yeah, I got to watch that on
Netflix, and just always something to do. And we're all feeling like
smoldering fear of missing out, right? Because I'm here, but is there
something better going on? Did I not get invited? Are they having fun without me? And as a result, we
can sometimes not be present anywhere. Ravi Zacharias, in his
book The Logic of God, he talks about how
there was a day when he was in Russia at a museum. His wife wanted to
see some paintings. And he tolerated it, went
to the museum with her. And she was looking
at all the paintings. And he was like, come
on, honey, let's go. Come on-- at her elbow the whole
time-- let's get through this. We've got to get out
of here, got to speak, got to go to the airport. And so he didn't really get
anything out of the experience. And later on-- a couple
of years went by-- he was reading a
book by Henri Nouwen. And in the book,
Henri Nouwen talked about how he sought
out a time in his life to go to St. Petersburg, Russia,
and go to that exact museum because he had seen a
duplication of a painting by Rembrandt on the
prodigal son, the return of the prodigal son. And he wanted to
see the real thing. And so he got on a plane,
flew all the way to Russia just to see this painting,
and went to the exact museum that Ravi had blazed through
and found the painting. And when he found it,
he sat down on a bench and stared at it for four hours. And in the book Ravi--
that's too long. But in the book Ravi was
reading Henri was saying, that day changed my life. While looking at that painting,
God so spoke to me clearly about what I was
to do with my life and how I was to transition
out of one career, go into another career. So life was never
the same for Henri because of what God did while
looking at that painting. And Ravi says, reading the book
he felt like such an idiot, because he had looked at
that exact same painting and gotten nothing out of it,
because he saw it in a hurry. And then in the book-- Ravi concludes it
by quoting A. W. Tozer from Tozer's
devotional, Mornings with God, where he says, and I
quote, I have often wished that there was some
way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual
life painlessly by short, easy lessons. But such wishes are in vain. No shortcuts exist. May not the inadequacy of much
of our spiritual experience be traced back to
our habit of skipping through the corridors of the
kingdom like little children through the marketplace,
chattering about everything but pausing to learn the
true value of nothing? God has not bowed
to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods
of our machine age. It is well that we accept
the hard truth now. The man-- don't miss this-- the man who would know
God must give time to him. That's right. Or as another theologian put it,
if you end your training now, if you choose the quick
and easy path as Vader did, you will become
an agent of evil. [LAUGHTER] All right, so now we've
gone from Yoda to Tozer. And in it all, what
we're discovering is that we all need to be
slowed down a little bit, to not rush into our day, to not
rush into another year without pausing. That's what this fast is. It's to disrupt our schedule. It's to disrupt the regularly
scheduled broadcasting that is your life, because
you're going to blink and it's going to be gone. You're going to blink and
you're going to be at the end. So this is a chance to
say, hold on a second. I want to smell the flowers
that God has put in this world. I know it's all covered in
snow, or mud, at the moment. But I want to smell the
flowers, come spring. I want to seek God. I want to slow
down a little bit, because God wants to
spend time with us. And the person who wants to know
God must spend time with God. Second thing that prayer and
fasting will do is tap you in. They'll slow you
down and tap you in. And when I say "tap you in," I
mean tap you into new energy, tap you into new power. I think all of us at times
feel run down, feel tired. Coming to the end of one
year, beginning of another, sometimes it's
possible to think, I don't know how I
can do this again. Look, I'm going to
be honest with you. I feel that a lot. It's been-- next year
we'll celebrate 14 years. I hope you'll come
out next week, as we celebrate our birthday. And I'll continue the series,
preaching on fasting some more and prayer some more. We'll just really see
this journey unfold in this "Not Quickly
Broken" series, so that God can make
us anti-fragile, strong on the inside. But there is sometimes
a fatigue that sets in. I remember-- just one year
ending, another beginning-- I was driving to church for
the evening service the weekend we gave the 2020 offering. And as amazing and as much
of a high mountaintop it was, I remember feeling tired
thinking about writing a 2020 year-end giving sermon. And I don't know why
that popped into my head, like, hey, you're
going to have to write another sermon like that
in a whole 'nother year. And I literally was like, ugh-- just tired. Life is like that. It's monotonous. And there's times like,
I have to do this. My reward for this mountain
is another mountain in the distance. [LAUGHTER] Awesome! And yet, the Bible says, when we
are run down, when we are weak, guess what? He is not. He is strong. He doesn't get tired. [APPLAUSE] He doesn't get weary. So what's so beautiful is that
when I get down on my knees and I stop striving
and stop working, and I just stop for a minute,
he's like, hey, guess what? I didn't stop working. Hey, guess what? I didn't stop. I'm not tired. And I want you on
your knees so I can put my strength inside of you. God will give you new strength. He'll tap you. Don't you need it? Don't you feel
your need for a God who can mount you up
with wings like eagles so you can run and not grow
weary, and walk and not faint? Come on, God doesn't just
want you to be slowed down. [APPLAUSE] He wants to slow you down
so he can tap you in, so he can mainline His Holy
Spirit into your heart. Jesus said, you
shall receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you. Come on, life is
draining and taxing. We need the power
of the Holy Spirit. [APPLAUSE] And when you have the power
of the Holy Spirit on you, you could stare down a giant. You can run over a valley. You can leap over a wall. When you sense the Holy
Spirit of God upon you, you just think,
there's nothing I can't do because I have the God
who created the world in me. When I feel tired,
when I feel worried, it's because I'm not praying. I've never been singing to him
and exalting the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and at the
same time felt run down. It's just impossible to do that. You sense the Holy Spirit. So it'll slow you down. It'll tap you in to
his energy inside you. And then thirdly,
it'll clean you out. It'll clean you out. There is truly a sense in which
the water of the Word-- when you meet with God
in scripture, when you pray to him, the Spirit
will just cleanse you. There's a cleansing
that happens. We live in a dirty world. Now, Jesus has
cleansed our heart. And this all fulfills
the Old Testament, because when the priest
would represent God-- you would go to a priest. We go to Jesus now. We'll talk about how
that became possible. But first, you went to a priest. And the priest
couldn't just show up to work without first
washing their hands. There was a ceremony they
went through, a way of saying, sinful man can't just
stand before God. There has to be a washing. There has to be a sacrifice. But it got perverted. It got distorted. And by the time
Jesus showed up-- I won't read it to you. But read on your own
time, Mark, Chapter 7-- just two
chapters to the left from where we sit in Mark 9. Mark 7, there's this
amazingly funny story where the disciples of the
Pharisees and scribes, they come to Jesus and go hey,
why do your disciples eat with unwashed hands? And you're like, well,
they're onto something. They shouldn't do that. That is gross and unsanitary. It wasn't like an
issue of germs. It was an issue of not
going through the rituals that the Pharisees had
added on to the tradition. They had made it all about them. They had made it all about
what they would do for God. And so they had this huge
thing they would go through. They would wash their hands,
like all showy and public, like "I'm too sexy for
my shirt" and stuff. And they would even wash
their couches, all icky weird. And so the Bible
says, in Mark 7, they came to Jesus having
found fault. Sidebar-- if you look for faults,
you'll always find them. I say, in this new year,
let's stop looking for faults. Let's look for the good. [APPLAUSE] Let's look for the
best in people. You will find
whatever you look for. And if you're
looking for a reason to get offended, if you're
looking for a reason to get hurt, if you look for
those things, you'll find them. So they were looking for fault.
They found fault with Jesus. He was healing people. Could they have looked for that? He was preaching God's word. Could they have looked for that? But no, they found fault.
And Jesus said, my disciples are not going to
do your traditions. And Isaiah, the prophet,
put it this way. He said, my people worship
me with their lips. But their hearts
are far from me. What the Pharisees
didn't understand was the whole culture of
washing hands was never meant to be a showy,
religious thing that was happening on the outside. It was about a
supernatural reality that God wanted to
do on the inside. Yes. It wasn't as much about
washed hands as washed hearts. And through you
seeking God in prayer and seeking God in
scripture-- that's what the weekly
gatherings are about. That's what the small
groups are about. Ever since Jesus
rose from the dead, his people have given
themselves over, as they've grown, to large
group meetings on the weekend to worship and
small group meetings for life change
and discipleship. When we meet in small settings,
in homes and Bible studies and coffee shops, as we
do life with one another, that's where we grow. We go, how are you doing? Can I pray for you? How's life going? A dinner, sitting at a table-- that's a place for
transformation. This corporate worship
on a weekend is powerful. But if it's not followed up by
a small, intimate, relational approach to sanctification
and growing, it will never be
what it could be if you would give yourself over
to it, because it'll clean you out. It'll just wash you. How does it work? Well, James 4:8
puts it this way. Draw near to God and he
will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. And purify your hearts,
you double-minded. I like how the
message translation puts that when it says,
say a quiet yes to God. And he'll be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. I love that, because
it's easy to like, on Sunday worship God,
and then Friday this way. And it's like, put
your right foot in, put your left foot out. We'll love God a little bit
and shake it all about, right? [LAUGHTER] And what he's saying
is, no, come on, seek God with your heart. Draw near to God. Make that space for God. He'll clean your hands. He'll clean your heart. He'll change the way you think. He'll change what you value. He'll start making
you love what he loves and hate what he hates. [APPLAUSE] There's just a
cleansing that happens. It starts to purify your heart. And you rise up without regret. I have never in my life
regretted praying-- except for when I pray
for patients, right? Joking-- because God
will answer that one. But when we think back on 2019,
I'm sure we all have regrets. But none of us are going, I
regretted reading scripture. I regret telling my
friend about Jesus. Those things we're grateful for. But the beautiful thing
is the more we seek God, the less we do in
between that we have reason to have heartache about. And that brings us to James
Garfield, our 20th president. I have a lot of respect
for James Garfield. I read a book about him by
Candice Millard this past year. And I didn't know anything
about James Garfield. So I wanted to know
everything about him. And he didn't want
to be president. He was the last president to
be raised in a log cabin-- very poor, didn't have
shoes for a while. And when he finally went to
college-- his family just realized, he was very smart. You need to go to college. You have a great gift. You need to use it. So they made it possible
for him to go to school. He nearly drowned at
one point, and realized, maybe God has a
plan for my life, because he should have
drowned, by all rights. And in school he
put himself through, paying for tuition by
working morning and evenings as a janitor at the college. But something happened
when he started studying. He realized he was given
a very powerful mind. He said, a slumbering
thunder awakened in his soul when he began studying. Yeah, make that guy president--
a slumbering thunder was awakened in his soul. I hope you live long
enough to discover what awakens a slumbering thunder. What is it that God put
you on this earth for? Maybe it's not a
political office. Maybe it's designing
a building in CAD. Or maybe it's treating a sick
puppy in a veterinary clinic. I'm just telling
you, God has put us all on the earth for something. And when you do the thing
that God's called you to do, come on. There's a slumbering
thunder ready to be awakened in your soul. [APPLAUSE] And he excelled. And everybody around him said,
you're a natural-born leader. And he was a
reluctant president, because he was a
dark-horse candidate and never wanted the
office for himself, never actually put
his name in the ring. Someone else nominated him. He was there at the
convention to give a speech on behalf of someone else. And someone said,
what do we want? And someone goes,
James Garfield. And he's like, no,
quiet, shut up! I'm not running. And they said, yes, you are. Eventually, he's president. Here he is in the Oval Office-- didn't want it, didn't ask for
it, but was willing to serve, willing to do it. And so he begins to serve. And he hates it. He hates being president. He hates everything about
the way it's all set up. And he wrote in his
journals, my God, is there anything
about this job that would make anybody seek it out? It was the end of the
spoils system era. So anybody could
come and petition, make their case
for why they should get this post or
this assignment-- be postmaster, ambassador to
France, or whatever it was. And so there was open
hours at the White House. Anybody in the country could
just barge into the White House and demand to make their
case for the [? president. ?] And he did not like that. He said, these people would take
my flesh, my brains, my blood if they were able to. They just want to just
take, take, take, take, take, take, take. Now, sadly, we never
really got to see what he had within
him as a leader because he was only president
for six short months. And two of those
months he spent dying in a bed in the White House. And that's because one day,
when he was heading to the train station to board a train to
go spend a little bit of time with his wife,
who was recovering from malaria at their home
out of the White House, a man named Charles Guiteau
walked up and shot him in the back twice. And there's drawings of
what that day looked like. Now, you're like, where
is the Secret Service? Incredibly, even
though this is 20 years after the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, the 20th
president, James Garfield, had no Secret Service
with him at all. The country figured the
assassination of Lincoln was a fluke, and more to
do with the Civil War. And they didn't want a
king who had bodyguards. And so they didn't
protect their president. They didn't protect
their leader at all. So this deranged madman,
who was very much the mirror opposite of Garfield-- he wanted to be great. Guiteau wanted to be wonderful,
wanted to be known worldwide. Actually, the last thing he did
before shooting the president in the back was going to a
shoeshine and having his shoes shined, because he figured
the world was going to celebrate what he had done. And he wanted to have shiny
shoes on the occasion. So he was able to just walk
up, shoot the president in the back. He was just there
with two of his sons and some members
of his cabinet-- including Robert
Todd Lincoln, who was Abraham Lincoln's son,
who, of course, had been there as a small boy when his
father was shot in the head. He now here is witness to
President James Garfield being shot in the back. And-- this is incredible-- 20 years from now, from
the death of Garfield, he will be present the
day William McKinley is assassinated as well. If you are president and you see
Todd Lincoln anywhere around, I would just say no. [LAUGHTER] You-- no, no. You go. Go, go, go, go. You're not welcome. This guy witnessed three
out of four assassinations, everybody but JFK. So Robert Todd Lincoln rushes
off to fetch the doctor. Garfield's been shot
in the back twice. He goes to fetch a doctor. Who does he get? He gets Dr. Doctor Bliss. I didn't stutter. His first name was "Doctor." Dr. Doctor Bliss,
the same doctor who had tried unsuccessfully
to save Abraham Lincoln. And he comes. And he's very
excited, because he was kind of a celebrity seeker. So he loved the idea-- the shot at redemption
this offered to him, to save a president. That was what he
was going to do. So he begins to
commandeer the scene. Everyone out! I'm in charge here. And for the next two months he,
like a pit bull or a bulldog, guards the room,
very jealous of who's allowed to treat the president,
who's allowed to come in, who's allowed to be there,
and guards the scene, and for two months
unsuccessfully tries to save the president's life. He figured that
one of the bullets was lodged next to the liver. And so his number one goal
was to get the bullet out. If I'm going to save
the president's life, got to get the bullet out. And so as daily
newspaper bulletins were telling what was
going on, the president's progress-- he lost 80
pounds, very weakened. We've got to get the bullet out. Someone reading all this,
named Alexander Graham Bell-- who invented the telephone-- said, well, I want to
help however I can. So he goes ahead-- since
he's Alexander Graham Bell, he invents
the metal detector, which is a great accomplishment
really, if you think about it. And he calls the White House--
he has a phone, because he's Alexander Graham Bell. [LAUGHTER] Calls the White House and
says, I invented the machine that I think could help
us find the bullet. So they bring him in. And Dr. Bliss says, the
bullet's on the right side, by the liver. And that's the only part
of the president's body he lets him search with
the metal detector. Well, he's searching
and scanning. There's no bullet there. There's no bullet there. And none of it's successful. But there's a lot
of interference. It turns out, they
find out later it's because he was on a bed
with metal springs, which is not great for a metal
detector to work on. But Alexander Graham
Bell is just horrified. He feels like a complete
failure-- no bullet. Well, Bliss was wrong. The bullet wasn't
on the right side. It was on the left side. But he wouldn't Bell
search that side. But it didn't really
matter, because the bullet was doing no harm. They would find out
later, during the autopsy, that this was a distinctly-- here's the words of
the autopsy report-- survivable gunshot wound. Both bullets had avoided all
vital organs and the spine and had lodged themselves
in pockets of tissue and were doing no harm. And the entry wound, of course,
was cauterized by the bullet as it went in. So Garfield would have likely
survived this had they just left him alone. But Dr. Bliss did
not leave him alone. Starting on the floor
of the train station, he inserted an unwashed
finger into the wound to try and fish out the
bullet from within moments of Garfield being shot. And he repeatedly did so for the
two months between the shooting and September of '81,
when Garfield finally died-- not of a gunshot
wound, of infection and blood poisoning because of what
Dr. Bliss had repeatedly introduced into the body
because of his unwashed hands. Now, the worst part
of it is the fact that it was completely
and totally unnecessary, because a man named Dr. Joseph
Lister-- and you hear Lister, you're like, like Listerine? Yep, Listerine,
named after him-- 16 years before the shooting
had postulated a theory about germs being
responsible for infection, as opposed to bad air,
which is what they believed. Bliss believed air, bad air
was what caused infection. And you know what they
thought brought bad air in? Changing bandages
and washing wounds. We can't do any of the
things that bring cleanliness into the environment because
that will bring bad air in. So Bliss's creed was-- listen to me-- the
dirtier, the better. He refused to let Garfield's
bedsheets get change. He never changed his scrubs. He never washed his hands,
because you wouldn't want introduce any bad air. But Lister was saying-- 16 years-- saying, I
think there's germs. If we just clean
our instruments, just use clean bandages,
and just wash our hands, our patients will do better. By this point, most
of European doctors were listening to
Lister's advice. And people were doing well. And when Lister began preaching
this in the United States, most doctors ridiculed him
as being completely a quack-- though not all. Some listened. In fact, the company
Johnson & Johnson was started after
listening to what Lister had to say when speaking
at the 100-year anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence in Philadelphia. At the big fair expo,
he spoke about it. And Johnson & Johnson
started as a way to make clean surgical
instruments and bandages. And they've done pretty
well for themselves. But Bliss was like,
ah, that's ridiculous. Let's keep dirty-- the
dirtier, the better. So he reveled in the filth. When Guiteau was finally
hanged for the assassination, his last words were--
well, among them-- I may have shot the president. But it was his doctors
who killed him. And he actually isn't
far from the truth, because of a lack
of washing of hands. And as I was reading this
and preparing to speak, God just impressed upon my heart
the last day of Jesus Christ before he died. That was what Moses and
Elijah were talking with him about on the Mount of
Transfiguration, the death that he was about to die. But the Bible says, on Jesus's
last day a washing of hands was involved. Matthew 27, verse 24-- when Pilate saw--
he's the governor-- that he cannot prevail at all,
but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and-- say it aloud with me-- washed his hands before
the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the
blood of this just person. You see to it. Listen to me carefully. Garfield died because his
doctor didn't wash his hands. The day Jesus died, it was
after Pilate washing his hands. But the reason God
sent Jesus to die was so that he could
wash our hands. [MURMURING] Not through our
religious achievements, not through us keeping the law,
or perfect church attendance, not through how many
prayer times you'll have in this next three
weeks, not through anything. Titus 3:5 says that our
works of righteousness which we have done-- how is salvation, how is
the washing of hearts, how is the washing of hands? According to his
mercy he saved us, through the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. [MUSIC PLAYING] Do you see that the message
of the gospel isn't try? It's trust. It's not do. It's done. What should be our
response to that? What should be our
response to a God so good he would wash our hands for
us without us doing anything? He stood there as a
sheep before a shear is, silent as Pilate tried
to wash the blood off of his hands, not realizing
that you can't get out of making a decision about Jesus. Every one of us must
make a decision. But what should our response be? Our response should be
what Romans 12:1 says. It should be in light
of the mercies of God we should surrender
ourselves to him afresh as a living
sacrifice, which is your reasonable service. It means it only makes sense
that we would stand up and give our lives to God every
day, wanting to seek him, wanting to know him. If he loved us so much that he
died for us, what should we do? We should give our lives to him. Is anybody with me at all? [APPLAUSE] Come on, hop up on your feet. Father, we're here for you. We want to seek you. We want to know you. We want to dedicate and
surrender our lives to you. As we're praying, if you're
resonating with this, if you would say,
yes, that's me. I want to dedicate my
life afresh to God. I want in these weeks and these
days, I want to be slowed down. I want to be tapped in. I want to be cleansed by God. I'm sick and tired
of the normal. I want to see something
supernatural in my life. I want heaven to come. If that's you I'm describing,
can you just raise up a hand? Just let God know-- God, I'm in. I want times of refreshment
from your Holy Spirit to come. I want to set myself
apart, believing I'm going to see wonders worked. Yes. Thank you, Jesus. Pour out your spirit. Bless us in these days, as we
seek you together as a church. You can put your hands down. I want to give an invitation
for anybody who's here and you would say, I've never
really given my life to Jesus, I think. Maybe I thought I did. But it was more like
pouring water on a couch. My hands might be clean. But my heart's not. Jesus wants to come
into your life. And I believe God brought you to
this moment, to this awareness, to this revelation, to
the thick sensation of God being right there with
you so he could touch you. And I would just caution
you not to put this off, not to say, oh, I'll get
right with God later. I have a whole year ahead of me. I want to get through college,
or maybe when I'm older, I've had some fun. Doesn't James Garfield's
death tell you how quickly the end can come,
how much life is a vapor? Why not now? Why not here? Why not this moment,
respond to God? With heads bowed
and eyes closed, I would love to lead
you in a prayer. It'd be a privilege. It'd be an honor. As you give your heart to Jesus,
responding to the Holy Spirit not by what you've done but
God's mercy, he'll wash you. Let him wash your hands. Pray this with me out loud,
meaning in your heart. Dear God-- Dear God-- Come into my life. Come into my life. Make me new. Make me new. I give myself to you. I give myself to you. In Jesus's name I pray. In Jesus's name I pray.
