Our Savior was touched with our infirmities. The God who cares suffered together with us. He understands what we lack. He wept for He cares.
(Hebrews 4:15; 5:7)

 

Speaker: Adam Speedy, Thomas Schaller
Date: 2026-10-07
Time: Wed 7:30 pm
Sermon #13218

P. Schaller –

Turn with me please to Judges 4 for a short word tonight. Halleluiah. Wow. Praise God for the night tonight and coming out to be together and hear the Word. We have many guests here I think tonight. We have P. Adam Speedy over here from Texas and P. Maciek from Poland. 

 

Anyone else would you like to just raise your hand? You came in from out of town for the pastor’s retreat up in Pennsylvania starting tomorrow. P. Jomy here from Texas also. And I asked P. Adam to share tonight, so I’m excited about that. And P. Maciek is going to take the offering and give greetings from Poland. 

 

I want to bring out one simple point here about Body life and this is from the book of Judges regarding Deborah who was a prophetess. Judges 4:4. We have three women in the Bible that have that. Huldah during Jeremiah’s time, Miriam, Moses’ time, and Deborah. And it’s a serious title that this woman was a woman of God, had the authority of God, wisdom of God, and could make judgment calls, and it was recognized by people. 

 

Look at Judges 4:4. There’s something in there that we can’t miss and that is the Spirit of God was with this woman and giving her the wisdom and the authority to lead and give direction in the nation, because at this time in their history in Israel, everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. And whenever that happens and I think we are living in a time like that today. Probably we could say about every era, every generation. 

 

But then there is an anchor for your heard and mind. Go to Deborah and look at vs. 5. I need this in my life. I need the gift that’ given from God to the Body of Christ, to the individual, to the leader and what she said I want to kind of get this kind, I want you to feel it in your heart that when you have godly leadership in your life, it helps you. It helps us in our thinking, Isaiah 30:20, Hebrews 4, Hebrews 10. 

 

Many times that you know at the door when we are saying goodbye to people after a service, that people say that they needed it or they heard or they got a word or were you with me in my living room last night or how did you know? And I felt like you were talking right to me personally. 

 

And that’s because we are drinking the same Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:13. And by the way, when we as pastors and leaders gather together for the next two days in Pennsylvania, this is what we are all looking for. We’re looking for passion, words, encouragements, excitement, enthusiasm, quietness, love. We are looking for the gifts that are in the Body: Kindness, tenderness, patience, insight, vision, and direction. 

 

Well, now I love it because this is a woman and how in a culture where women are not that honored, why did she have this honor? Because it was evident. It was the manifestation of God. We can say the anointing of God, the filling of the Spirit of God, the mind of God, the heart of God. And then like you could tell like somehow what she’s saying resonates inside. Like you can obey her. You can believe her. You can embrace it. 

 

Now, notice something. Like she’s under a palm tree. I’ll put some hair, long hair on her. Maybe a skirt. Okay. All right. So, now there’s a general and his name is Barak and he’s a military man. He is, he is high. He’s a very capable man and he has high status and he can rally an army together and he did. He got 10,000 men together to go to war against Jabin and Jabin general, Sisera. 

 

Now, Barak said something when Deborah told him, We’re going to go at him. We’re going to go against the oppressor. We’re gonna go. We’re gonna. And Barak, I need to get an army together and we are going to win. But the credit will not go to you. It will go to a woman. 

And the idea sounds like it’ll go to Deborah, but she doesn’t mean that. It was a woman, Jael, that executed the general, Sisera. 

 

I don’t want to get too much into the detail, but I want you to just follow this and make my point. I love it that we have people that we can follow. I love it that I can have, I can have somebody in my life that I can be submitted to. 

 

I love it when we are studying our doctrine and we have this amazing book that we can be submitted to in our hearts and in our prayer. I love it that we can have this in our heart. Cuz God will say to you someday, We’re going to go. We’re going at the enemy. God will say to you one day, Knock it off. It’s over. It’s done. Follow. 

 

I give you the victory. If you read the chapter, this is what happened. And she said, and Barak said, I won’t go unless you go. And I like that picture because it means I might be a big, I might be a big, strong guy, but I know I can’t do this cuz I need it. If God is in it, I can do it. If God is in this work, we can do it. If God is speaking to Deborah and Deborah is saying it and he agrees and he says, But it’s got to be Deborah, you got to do it and I will follow you and I will be part of the answer.

 

But I need, I need you guys. I know you have a gift and I’m believing what you are saying and it’s resonating in me and I would like to declare tonight in our service that there are people that struggle with personal sin and what they need is some authority in their life to say it’s over. You’re free. You have the Word of God. You have a victory. Christ gave you the victory. Christ gave you the victory. 

 

Embrace it. Walk by faith in it. The authority of God is in your life. You walk above to escape hell below. You are able. You are more than able. This is what the apostle Paul is writing in his epistles. And it resonates in us. I mean, that’s why we like listening to messages, because it resonates in us. Like we believe it and that’s why we have our open Bible and that’s why we’re looking in the Body of Christ for those that are leading. 

 

Last thing. We had a little word this morning about committee and I don’t, you know, I don’t – we had fun with it. What is a committee? And you can google it. I don’t know. P. Phil had a good one. Jen had a couple of them. The idea is that committees have a hard time leading. So, they can make decisions, have discussions, talk a long time for hours, and end up only with minutes. Talk for hours but end up with minutes. 

 

And so, committees have a function but they cannot replace leadership. And Deborah’s story is like that. And Christ’s life is like that. Christ came and it’s not a committee that saved us. It was Christ that saved us. And it’s not, it’s not a group of people making a decision over a long period of time that you can have full trust in. I mean, okay, yes, you can depending, but what that group needs is leadership and there needs to be the Holy Spirit speaking. 

 

The Holy Spirit is actually our teacher, our leader. Christ is a leader, but he sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we could follow him in the narrow way in that unique way of believing him and lead him, lead him to the cross. Lead us to losing our life and gaining his life. 

 

Committees are, you know, I’ve been in them and I know them and I’m part of them and I’m – nobody is saying anything in a way that it’s not needed to have group discussion and evaluation and many times they make many good decisions and the Spirit of God is in it. But I can also get very discouraged in a committee. I can also, my faith may be tempered by the reality of objective things. 

 

You cannot walk on water. Our committee did a study. You cannot walk on water. You know, they, the cancer cannot be healed. That money is not in the bank. There are many things that we can say as a group and they’re not wrong. 

 

But Deborah is saying in a dark time, we can do this. And there was somebody there who believed her and they went and they did it and there was victory. So, I am saying this tonight just by way of encouragement and we could, we could really say a lot about it but that’s enough. That you and I have an authority that is above and beyond the natural man, and it’s God’s Word and the more of this Word can get in us and the people of God sharing the Word of God, then there will be that faith. 

 

And in that faith, we can believe God to give victory over our sin, our personal problems, our heaviness, our problems in everyday life, our personal worries and our struggles and anxieties and all of this stuff that happens in life and that we are able to put on the new man and live in faith and see something fresh. 

 

And lastly, that’s what I want our prayers to be for this week. There’ll be a lot of joy in our pastor’s time. There’ll be a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of passion for God, and that we would be touched in a fresh way by God. Let’s pray. (Prayer)

*****

Adam Speedy –

Good. All right. Good to be back in these here parts. All right. That was great. P. Maciek told me that the plane, it got landed successfully. So, we’re all – yay, God! Praise the Lord! Okay. Praise the Lord. Good to be here.

 

Greetings from the great state of Texas down there. If you go pretty far down below Tennessee until you’re going to drive another 12 hours where no Greater Grace church exists, you’re going to come to a place called Plantersville. That’s where I live. Forty-five minutes there, you’re going to come to a place called Greater Grace Church of Bryan, Texas. So, greetings from them. And then 45 minutes in the other direction towards Houston, you’re going to find Ever Grace, Magnolia. So, greetings from P. Jason and Leah and the Body there. And good to be here. 

 

So, Hebrews 4:15. Sympatheo, sounds like sympathy but it’s sym, together and patheo, suffers with us. He suffers together with us. This is our high priest. Vs. 15. And then just turn over to the next page, Hebrews 5:7. King James says “from death’ but springs out of death. This is talking about the garden of Gethsemane where he was actually crying to the Lord and with tears, praying that he will be, the sacrifice will be accepted, and he will be raised out of the realm of death. And he was heard. Praise the Lord. And that he feared. 

 

He’s a high priest who’s touched by the feelings of our infirmities. And don’t we have a lot of infirmities? Yes, we do. But we’re not talking about that today. We’re talking about a high priest who is touched by the feelings of our infirmities. 

 

And of course, this is the epitome when he comes and at the cross where he suffers and he takes upon the sin of the whole world and he enters into the domain of death, that final enemy, 1 Corinthians 15. And he enters in, Luke 16, to the domain of death and he comes and he preaches to, you know, to those that were held captive spirits and then proclaims to those that are in Abraham’s bosom that the payment is made and he leads captivity captive, Ephesians 4:8-11. 

 

And he’s touched. He wasn’t prepared to be in a perfect heaven, even with the Father, even with the Spirit alone without Jen Lynch and P. Adam and Pastor – I was thinking of all the people that when I was in Bible school. Pastors up there and Tony Self’s up there and P. Scibelli’s up there. And they’re going to have a – soon, they’re going to have a bigger convention than we’re going to have down here. 

 

And he was touched by the feeling of our infirmities. I’ll come and become in our language like being an ant, you know. You know what I mean? And takes on the body of a human. Is it a zygote or whatever it is. Like a little single cell and he comes and just comes into this dirty, messy world. 

 

You know, a brother came to me after the service Sunday morning and just riddled with guilt and you don’t know what I’ve done and I’m a, I feel like I’m a monster and God is judging me and just like this godly leadership that says there’s a God that cares. 

 

And I was thinking of Deborah is a bee and they, on one hand, they have this sweetness to them but they can also sting as well. The meaning of Deborah. And that’s what godly leadership is, right? It’s – godly leadership is someone who, yes, they got wisdom, but they also care, right? Anyone ever got burned by A.I.? It’s got a lot of knowledge and stuff like that, but doesn’t really care about you, right?

 

And when you’re able to look at a brother who’s got infirmities and who’s riddled with guilt and they go to the world and the world puts their little labels on you and diagnoses you and gives you some half-baked kind of a healing that doesn’t quite work. And we’ve got a God who’s touched by the feeling of our infirmities. And that’s what this ministry is about. 

 

This ministry, we might not be polished, but we care because we got a God that cares. We could do with some polishing, some once in a while, but the fundamental is we don’t want to lose, we don’t want to lose the care. We don’t want to lose the heart.

 

I was with a brother today on the – went up in Houston two and a half hours and I think I went through the whole Bible with that brother. He had been in seminary which was a cemetery and missed and struggled and read the book but missed that it’s not about Noah and his failure. It’s not about Moses and his failure and David and his failure. It’s about a God who cares. Amen. 

 

That’s what it’s about. Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. That’s what this ministry is all about. That’s why if you go into there and you’ll see an outreach team on Wednesday night in the, over there, and they’re praying for Miss So and So and Miss So and So, Mr. So and So down in Highlandtown with P. Jerry in his chair cuz they’re touched by the feeling of people’s infirmities.

 

I was looking at 1,000 pictures of P. Scibelli when he visited us over the 10 years that I lived in Africa. He called me more than my, than I was, than many people that are in my and God bless. I said how does he – he cared. He touched by the feelings suffered with us. 

 

I looked at those pictures and I was stuck by the fact, you ever notice how he talked with his hands? Like he talked with his hand and had the authority. I saw the finger up, a lot of, the finger, you know, with the authority of the godly leadership. But godly leadership that cares and had such a personal interest. 

 

I said to my wife, I said, I feel like he was planting a church in Kitwe in Lusaka and Zimbabwe and South Africa and Morocco and all that and kind of leaving us in, you know, to caretake during the year, you know, but had this connection with every, with people and put his, so many of those pictures had his hands around broken, broken people. Just people who, you know, like there was, there was, you know what I mean, right? 

 

Like the hand around and you can’t buy that and you can’t manufacture it and you can’t replicate that by, you know, learn that in a cemetery. You learn that when you get to know the God, the God who cares. And that’s what, that’s an integral part of this Body. 

 

When one member suffers, we all what? We suffer. There’s a, we suffer together. And that’s what the anointing is. The anointing, 1 John 2:20, is when the Holy Spirit whose indwelling starts to take over my faculties and give me that sense and I and we weep. We don’t know where it’s coming from. 

 

And there’s a word in season that comes from the heart of God where a God who cares. A God who cares. This is the most important thing. A God who, a God who cares. A God who, a caring God. 

 

I was looking at the three times that Jesus wept. One was in the Garden of Gethsemane. The other one was with Lazarus’ funeral at the grave. And I was thinking of Mary as she came and she came to his feet, just put her hands around his feet and in the air was this thing. They kept saying it. The one sister said it. Then the other sister said it. Then the other sister said it in Luke 11. Like if you had been, you know, like didn’t you care?

 

You could have done something. It was like it was in the air. And we’re living in a world system and we’re living in Satan’s world system in Ephesians 2:2, Corinthians 4:4 where the god of, the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 6 is beaming that out. And sadly sometimes, churches can be so polished where that is not there. 

 

But praise be to Jesus that it says he wept. And the word “weep” there is not the same word as it uses that they had where they wept. That was a grieving. That was groaning. But it says that he shed tears. That’s the word there. He shed tears. Can you imagine a God that shed tears? 

 

Yes, that’s my God. A God who steps into a broken world. And people say, Why was he crying? He was because he was touched by the feeling of our infirmities. He was suffering with them. And he had an amazing sensitivity to the needs of men. 

 

There’s one Gospel that says where the rich young ruler came and the one Gospel it says that in Luke 18 where he says you, well actually, the one Gospel, Matthew 19:20, the rich young ruler said, What do I lack? But then the other Gospel and that’s Luke 18:22, Jesus said one thing you lack. And I don’t know which one they said who said what first, but could it be they said it at the same time. I lack something. Yes, you lack something. Like he knows. I know you, Nathanael. I’m touched by the feeling of your infirmity, and this is, this is so, this is so amazing, isn’t it? 

 

This is why it’s the call. This is why, yes, we don’t retire. This is why, our ministry, you know when someone cares. You know when people are, when the preacher has is – I was looking at P. Schaller at the face-to-face and it, we don’t have a – I was thinking of a James 2 kind of a ministry, right? Remember when he said, you know, God bless you. Be warm. 

 

But we have a 1 Thessalonians 2 ministry. Where he comes and he, 1 Thessalonians ministry where Paul said, I came and I stepped and I hugged you and I embraced you and I shed tears with you and I wept with you and I sat with you in Ezekiel 30:15. And we’re touched by the feeling of God’s infirmities. We’re not interrupting. 

 

We’re not waiting to see what we can say. We can, we’re listening and we’re sitting where people can, where people sit. And the Holy Spirit sheds the love abroad, his love abroad in our hearts in 5:5-8 of Romans.

 

I’ll never forget the first time I met P. Stevens. I’ve been seeing him on the video and it was amazing. And he and then he said, he came in the classroom and he said, Can all the foreign students stand up? And I stood up and all the foreign students and then there were just real tears coming out of his eyes. Just real tears. And he couldn’t go on and he left. 

 

And I said, What is this? This is the God that cries, right? Never trust a preacher that doesn’t have tears. It ain’t the real thing. Not every time, but it’s getting more the older we get because we’re seeing what the way God sees. 

 

And we’re calling people. The broken brother on Sunday morning but the God who’s, who’s touched by the feeling of your infirmity wants you to look away from yourself, wants to look at him. It’s not about who you are. It’s about who he is. It’s not about what you’ve done. It’s about what he’s done. It’s buried. It’s buried. It’s buried. It’s buried. It’s buried. 

 

And then maybe lastly is Jesus Christ discipleship is walking with people and being touched with the feeling of their infirmities. And I was thinking of Peter and how Jesus Christ, you know, he said, I will never deny you. And he goes. Even though these guys will deny you, I will never deny you. And God allows him to see his depravity. And then he denies Jesus. And the Bible says he went out and he wept bitterly. He wept bitterly. 

 

And Jesus looked at him, but that wasn’t enough. And then Jesus appeared to him in the resurrection. And it’s strange to say, but even that wasn’t enough. He was so filled with guilt. He was so filled with his own infirmity. 

 

And I love this Jesus Christ. He makes this statement in Mark 16:7, Go and tell his disciples and Peter. And then he takes this trip. I don’t know whether he was, whether he was, what do they call it? Transported or went by foot or whatever, but he goes all the way back there to Peter in John 21. 

 

And it’s not just seeing Jesus, but it’s seeing the heart of Jesus that builds in us a capacity to trust and realize that we’re forgiven. It’s seeing not just God, but seeing the heart of God, the God who cares, the God who cares. We see it in the Body. We see it in missions. Missions without care is not, is nothing. It’s just a program. 

 

Missions with care like we saw year after year with P. Scibelli coming. Missions with care, with the touch, with the suffering, with the sitting where you sit, with that making that trip for that guy who thinks he can never do it, for that guy who things he’s just going to be a fishermen for the rest of his life. 

 

And this is the kind of godly leadership that’s inspired us. It’s personal. It’s personal. It’s caring. It’s remembering your name. It’s and we could go through the list and I was just looking out and getting tickled pink and edified and just built up and we could mention almost everyone’s name in this Body. 

 

But I believe heaven, we get a new name where we’re going to realize there’s a God who was touched by the feelings of our infirmities. Molly Harrison that knows, that knows us better than we know ourselves. That loves us more than we love ourselves. Amen. And that suffers with us. 

 

We’re going to realize he really did care. He really did walk with me. He really did bottle my tears and he really cared for me. And then Peter stands up. One minute. Peter stands us and he’s delivered. He had a leader in his life that cared. He goes, You denied the Holy One of Israel. He’s either a hypocrite or he is so forgiven and liberated and set free and restored and cared for and confident and with authority. 

 

Where did that come from? Care does that. God, the personal God with tears does that. It leaves you with a confidence that he knows me. He cares for me. I’m God’s man in Bryan, Texas, or wherever the heck I am. Sorry. Wherever I happen to be, have planted, I’ve got a personal God that cares. And it really doesn’t matter what people think in one sense. What cares is I know God is for me and he loves me and he cares. 

 

He cares. He cares. He cares. That’s a good praise the Lord for that in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. He cares about the one person that’s in here that doesn’t have assurance of salvation. Amen. He cares about what happens to me when I die. Cared enough to pay for my sins. But he doesn’t just offer you a Savior. He offers you a caring Savior. And if you’re not sure about heaven, Jesus loves you, died for you. He cares for you. He rose for you. And that same eternal life that’s in Jesus Christ is extended and offered to you. It’s yours for the taking. It’s a gift. You can have it by faith in the person of Christ. 

 

Say, Jesus, I believe that you died, were buried and rose again. And I’m receiving by faith the gift of eternal life in you right now. You care for me and I’m receiving the God that cares for me now in Jesus’ name. 

*****

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