Jesus Skeptic - Jesus, You, and Healthcare, Part 1

Have you ever wondered why the top universities in the world were founded by me. Why was Oxford jail Harvard and Princeton even started for did you ever wonder why Harriet Tubman risked her life to rescue the slaves. They have a common thread. Wonder what that was yesterday stick around. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge year with shipment survival to this daily discipleship program motivating Christians to live like Drury or the middle of a new series called Jesus skeptic taught by our guest speaker John Dickerson. For those of don't know Johnson award-winning investigative journalist Pastor Ed connection point Christian church in Indianapolis and fell before we get started, try using our message notes while you listen. They contain John's outline all the Scripture references and much more. These notes will really help you remember what you maybe even sure what you're learning downloaded by going to the broadcasts cabinet LivingontheEdge.org Listeners tap to fill in here knows John with a stock Jesus you in healthcare. We all want the best for the people we care about in the world of for our kids or grandkids are classmates boyfriend girlfriend spouse. We want the best for those people.

I wonder who do you think of when you think of who you love the most and you want them living free from disease you want them living healthy. You want them living a life of prosperity, a life of well-being where they got enough food life for they have freedom who do you think of when you think of someone you really want that for now I think of my two daughters Zoe and Abby, Zoe and Abby are two of the best things that ever happened to me. I get to be there dad and there at that stage of life where they think I'm like the coolest smart as strong.

Guess that's awesome. I mean I'm just living it up because I guess some of you have teenagers have told me that maybe that changes like I did. I got my fingers crossed that it will not that there's still going to think I'm the smartest person in the world when their 16 will will save us. Zoe and Abby.

They have dolls that have dolls they have stuffed pets that have pets and they all have names and that these intricate life stories their bedroom as a whole village of these little imaginary creatures and you can pecan on them doing imaginary play on the ground and there's little conflicts to resolving all sorts of great stories.

It's a pretty peaceful world for the most part, but there is a villain using Zoe and Abby have older brother named Jack and Jack's actually as far as older brothers go speaking as someone who had three older brothers.

He's actually a very good older brother. He really doesn't take on that much and they play the three of them play together really well, but every once in a while Jack who was more into dragons World War II aircraft T Rex is everyone so I'll just be overcome with a creative impulse to raid the village and go in and it will wreak havoc and usually he helps them clean up but there was one day in particular were Zoe was just devastated her whole little world had been destroyed and she ran to me and she said dad I just feel like everything is ruined. As I was walking her down the hall to rebuild her world. My mind couldn't help but jump to the many adults I know really relate to that. Who in the last year and 1/2 their business or their family or their health has been completely turned upside down. Some days it feels like the world being torn apart around us. There is a villain. There's the evil of cancer, the Dragon of death, the villain of broken relationships, you know, as I help Zoe rebuild her little world. I think you meant. Would it be nice if it were this simple, in the adult world just realigned some stuffed animals and worldwide hunger goes away in inequality goes away disease goes away is the question were wrestling with today.

How can you be a force for good in a world that is so broken and so are because I'm guessing whether you're here as a long-time believer or a skeptic or somewhere in the middle that you have some part of your heart that you genuinely want to help the people around you. I'm guessing you and I have in common that you don't want to see people going hungry. You don't want to see people suffering.

You don't want to see people gasping for breath because of a viral disease if I can tell you today how you can be the solution to the thing that most grieves you in the world would you want to know how I mean, if there is a meaningful way.

Not not pie in the sky but a meaningful way that you could attach your life to a powerful movement that's bigger than just you and actually as a result, clothes, people who are poor feeds people who are hungry gives healthcare to people who otherwise could not have it. Would you want to be part what I want to answer this question today through the words of Jesus and through the lives of some who have taken his words seriously see the challenge with studying Christianity at this point in history is that today, one out of three people in the world claims to be Christian, but not all of them actually read the words of Jesus and do what he says sorta look today at some heroes of history who actually read the words of Jesus and did what they said and I want to show you how you can do the same or first story is from Rochester, Minnesota starts in August 1883 when an F5 tornado destroyed the entire city of Rochester, Minnesota. It was one of a series of tornadoes that came one after another and as a result, they killed 37 people more than 200 were injured all their little wood homes and buildings right after the Civil War were destroyed, businesses were lost children were orphaned wives became widows. Now the city of Rochester. Like most cities in the US at this time did not have a hospital in the city just had a few private practice doctors will within that rubble within that debris. There was a young woman. She did not have money. She didn't even have a lot of power.

She had one thing, a willful resolve to do the words of Jesus where she lived. Her name was Mary.

Most and Mary Moz went around ministering to the injured caring for the sick, the hurting, the homeless, finding homes for the orphans, making sure that the widows had a place to sleep and as she did this she had a vision vision that you might have to call it a God sized vision because she saw that the only doctors in the area. They just practice private medicine for the rich people.

Essentially, they were the only people who could afford to have a doctor come to their house and she met a young doctor there in Rochester, Minnesota, and she share this vision with them. She said to him, if you can gather a few doctors we could create a little hospital where poor people could come anyone could come and get healthcare and he said what we would need a ton of nurses. She said what I'll do it. I know a number of other young women who have given their lives to follow Jesus. We will change the sheets we will change the bandages. We will feed the ones who can't feed themselves. We will lift them to the bathroom where he will do the work. If you can gather a few doctors so the doctor agreed and Mary Moz gathered together a number of other young followers of Jesus, and together with that doctor. They started a little clinic that clinic grew and grew and today if you were to ask a non-Christian medical researcher. What is the number one hospital in the United States. Better yet, what's the number one hospital in the world they would say that it's the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. You see that doctor that Mary Moz met was named Dr. Mayo and Mary Moz story is one of many when it comes to healthcare in the developed world.

In fact, if you were to go to the Mayo Clinic today right in the middle of their whole campus, you would see this building behind me, which is called St. Mary's Hospital St. Mary's a real person is the person we just saw its Mary Moz is a you might be thinking I'm never going to start a hospital. I'm just an ordinary person will Mary Moz was just as ordinary.

What she did. She lived out the teachings of Jesus, where he placed her in her life is proof of this, God uses ordinary people who believe the words of Jesus when he said to feed the poor, to set the captives free to do onto others as we would do to ourselves. God uses ordinary people who actually believe that and they live it out and through them.

He does extraordinary good Mary Moz is not some radical exception when it comes to the founding of hospitals but I want you to think about this God is not the author of evil. But he says in his word that he takes what Satan means for evil, and he turns it for good. And I just want you to think about this God can take a tornado that killed 37 people and he can turn that into a hospital that saves hundreds of thousands of people. In fact, in the case of the Mayo Clinic. It's not just hundreds of thousands. The medical advances that it has exported out to other hospitals around the world as a model in healthcare have saved millions of lives. When I was working as a journalist was having doubts about Christianity. I was in the middle of an investigative report on healthcare there in Arizona. I was noticing that all these leading hospitals were named St. Josephs or St. Vincent's or Baptist. This method is that her mercy this Franciscan that and I knew those were all Christian terms and as I research as a journalist I got wire. None of these hospitals, named after atheists where none of them named after Islamic leaders where none of mind after Buddhist leaders are Taoist leaders. Is it a coincidence that they're all named after Christian people may have the Christians pull this off. I began looking into the founding of the best hospitals in the country and in the world and Mary Moz story is just one of dozens that I found your look at the other top five in the US, you would see Massachusetts General Hospital there in Boston started by two pastors, two pastors who had just graduated from what was a Bible seminary at the time called Harvard and they had such a heart for the poor in that city that they started a hospital there and today Massachusetts generals.

One of the top five in the nation. Another one would be John's Hopkins similar to the Mayo Clinic. Many of the practices of Johns Hopkins have been exported all around the world to save lives were to Johns Hopkins come from well it was started by a Quaker Christian who bears that same weird name John with an S attached at the end that's actually spelled properly. Johns Hopkins is the end of his life. He gave his fortune to do three things he wanted a Christian hospital a Christian university and because this was before the Civil War, and he hated slavery is a Quaker Christian. He gave the other third of his fortune to start an orphanage for young African-American children who did not have parents. These believers are like players in a great team. If you think of Jesus being like a college football coach at all, that might be a little sacrilegious but you think of that half time talk for the football coaches like now go and do this, Jesus told his followers to go in the world and do a certain thing help their neighbors love their neighbors and they've gone out and they've done it and we now live at a time work if we can infection we just go to the doctor's office or hospital we just assume it's there. They were there 200 years ago who put them there. Why did they put them. The top ones that I studied all had stories like St. Mary Moz there believers in Jesus who did with their coach or their leader said to do here is one example of how Jesus put it in Matthew five he said this, you are the light of the world. If you call yourself.

One of my followers like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. He continues and he says this.

No one lights a lamp and then hides it under a basket or a bushel. Instead, they set it up on a table so that it can give light to everyone in the house and Jesus says this to any follower of his who takes him seriously. He says in the same way, let your good deeds shine true followers of Jesus are to affect our neighbors in such a way that the people around us see something in such a way that it gives praise to our father in heaven. Other two groups of people. I want to address in this moment. The first is those of you who aren't yet a believer. Or maybe you've been raised in a Christian home and you're kinda doubting in your deciding for yourself what am I gonna believe the first challenge I want to give to that group is this.

I want to encourage you to look for the people who actually do what Jesus said I know in my life. I had some people who were called Christians. But as I read the words of Jesus for myself. I realize that's not actually follow Jesus are not doing what he said and when you find these people have done these terrible things and they claim to be a Christian. You'll find they're not actually doing what Jesus said, called cultural Christianity. They've they've claimed the label but they have not followed the leader and I would encourage you if you're a doubter or a skeptic that if you will get yourself around the people who take Jesus words seriously you'll see something that you won't find anywhere else in the out to the believers. I want to give the same challenge from the other perspective. And that's this if you call yourself a follower of Jesus to the people who live in your home to the people who work in your office do your classmates, teammates, relatives see any of this and you do they see some good deeds that you're not doing them to earn God's favor, but your overflowing the love of God is overflowing from you to your neighbors.

You don't have to be perfect, but it becomes were all known by our actions. Even a child is known by their actions to the people around you have this sense of wow that's what followers of Jesus are like. I'm interested well after I learned the impact of followers of Jesus on the top 10 hospitals and these are all documented in my book Jesus skeptic.

I then looked into who were the leading anti-slavery voices who ended open and legalize slavery both in England and the US because it was the British Empire that then spread the end of slavery to much of the world and the US as well.

But the US was late in the game. Sadly, before that slavery was a global norm on every continent. So who are the people who ended it. People like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and when I read their writings for myself for an Harriet Tubman's case, she didn't get an education, but many of her words are written down.

I found that they were also followers of Jesus, and not in an incidental manner, but in a motivating manner. One of them is Elijah Lovejoy.

He was a pastor and he was a newspaperman and he became a martyr. He was the first casualty of the Civil War before shots were fired.

In war he was using his printing presses to say that slavery was evil that flew in the face of God's nature, and it's so inflamed people who were for slavery that they burned down his printing shop and they shot him with shock.

I meet people who gave their lives to end slavery, who according to their own writings when I sat down to read them said I'm doing this because I believe in a God who made all people in his image up today we take for granted that even a six-year-old knows what an immune system is 300 years ago people didn't know what that was, as a whole field of medical research called immunology and it's because of immunology that we can now not only treat disease but we can prevent a lot of diseases. It's why we don't fear polio or a number of other diseases that use the white people out because it immunology who is the father of immunology Edward Jenner devout Christian is credited by medical researchers is saving more lives than anyone else in human history and found the same to be true with the founding of the top universities because so much that we take for granted about our modern world is the result of the engineers who are trained at the leading universities. Where did they come from and it's not guesswork it's not opinion is just good old boring research you can find the founding charter in the original crest of every university, and here's what I found of the top 10 Oxford Cambridge Harvard, Yale, Princeton, not 8/10 are 9/1010 out of 10 were started by Christians, for the purpose of teaching the Bible and then over the years, they added additional curriculum listening to the first part of our guest teacher John Dickerson's message to healthcare from series Jesus skeptic Chip and Joan will join us here in studio with some additional thoughts of application in just a minute. If someone were to ask you how you know Jesus actually lived or can we really trust the Bible, what would you say in this new series pastor and journalist John Dickerson answers those questions using evidence from multiple reliable sources in the well documented impact of Jesus followers throughout history jungles are credible case for the Christian faith or hope is that this series will help you confidently say Jesus is real. The Bible is true and I can prove it. For more information about Jesus skeptic go to LivingontheEdge.org or the chipping roadmap or call AAA 333-6003 will before we go on trips. Join me in studio knowing chip you had something special you want to share with our listeners.

Thanks so much Dave.

Well the midyear matches come to a close and I just want to pause before we go any further.

In today's program and say thank you. What an amazing miraculous act of God as he continues to meet our needs in ways that blow our minds, especially in the kind of world that were living in right now with all the pressures people have. I don't have the final number yet, but you know 27 times in a row the Lord has built a match through a small group of people and often it's very different people each time and then no matter what that number is we've seen God through faithful people like yourself respond thousands of people respond with, you know, large and small and medium-size gifts as God leads in great things happen in the issue isn't the match or the number even it's the ministry we get to do its loving people's teaching God's word. It's cultivating people into small groups. Its daily discipleship since helping pastors here and around the world and is reaching the next generation. That's why we all gave and that's what were trusting God to do. I want to pause and say thank you and give credit to the Lord well is trip said will have all the information about our midyear match on her website soon so keep an eye on LivingontheEdge.org for the details but we want you to know that we are celebrating every gift we received and are really excited to see how it will impact the work God has called us to. So from all of us.

Thanks again for your support over that.

Let's hear some final thoughts on this message from Chip and John, thanks so much Dave John. Thanks again for today's message and it was so amazing to hear how God moved through the lives of these well-known figures actually shapers of history of science and all the rest. John what is it about the Christian message with the impact of Christianity, you wanted to make sure that we didn't miss yet. Thanks for asking. Chip I want to make sure we don't miss the encouragement of this. I think there's a healthy sense of that kind of family ownership of wow that's my family. I am part of the movement of people who invented modern healthcare who launched the University system.

Many people know how to read because it Christians people are free from disease because of Christians peoples lifespan has been doubled. The average lifespan and so if you're a follower of Jesus. Let that encourage you today. I would hold that in a prideful way that says were better than others, but it is a measurable, tangible reality that people who believe what Jesus taught, make the world a better place and that's not to diminish or demean other people who believe other things but that is a way that lifts Jesus hi, it's a way for us as followers of Jesus today to not be intimidated other people in our culture who don't understand this history, they haven't been taught the reality of the roots of modern healthcare or the University system and they've actually been taught that all beliefs kinda have the same consequences for culture but the reality is believing in Jesus not only sets you free. As an individual but the more people in your family, and the more people you love who you can also teach to follow Jesus, the more freedom it will create for them and for the world around them. So my heart and all of this is that followers of Jesus would be encouraged would be strengthened would be more confident to walk full of grace and truth in a way that continues to shine the light of Jesus today great challenge. Joan FedEx before we go.

Let me remind you of an easy way to listen to our extended teaching podcast here chip anytime on Amazon's Alexa echo and echo.just say Alexa open Living on the Edge and you'll hear that days extended teaching any time you want to join us next time as our guest teacher John Dickerson continues his new series Jesus skeptic until then this is the same. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge