Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Jesus is Willing. Jesus is Able. | The Gospels | Luke 5:12–26

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Has shame shaped how you see yourself and how you approach God? What if Jesus’s response is not rejection, but a willingness to come close and the power to heal? In today’s episode, Luke shares how Jesus’s touch of the leper and his forgiveness of the paralyzed man in Luke 5 show that he is both willing to come near to us and able to make us clean.  Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Luke 5:12–26

Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. There is a voice. And if you're honest, you probably know this voice pretty well. It's not loud. It doesn't scream at you. It's more like background noise. It's that low hum that follows you around. And if you happen to hear it, you'll probably hear something like this. You're not good enough. You don't measure up. If people really knew you, they wouldn't want you around. You're too much.

You are damaged goods. Maybe it started somewhere specific, like a parent, a failure, a thing you did, or a thing that was done to you. Or maybe you can't even trace it back to anything. It's just always been there, this quiet, persistent sense that somehow you don't quite make the cut. This is the voice of shame. And here's what the voice of shame. does over time. It doesn't just make you feel bad about yourself. It shapes how you relate to God. Now, shame is not guilt. Guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong.

Guilt is about your actions. Shame is about your identity. And here's the thing that makes shame so sneaky for Christians specifically. It doesn't usually look like unbelief. You believe in Jesus. You believe in grace. You could explain the gospel to. someone, you might even share the gospel with others. You know the right answers. But somewhere beneath all of that, at the level of your heart, at your core, the place where your deepest assumptions about yourself actually live, you don't experience the gospel as true for you. Today, we're in Luke chapter 5, and there are two stories that we are going to read back to back in this passage. And what I want you to notice before we even get into those stories is

the type of people in these stories. In the first story, we meet a leper. And in the second story, there is a paralyzed man. These are outsiders. These are people on the margins of society. They are the lowly and downcast. People who in their culture would have felt great shame. They probably know that voice that you hear in your head. But these are also people who were desperate. They were hungry. They wanted. They needed to get to Jesus. And in these two moments, these two stories of desperation, Jesus is going to give us two vital truths about himself, two truths that if you truly believed would change your life. Before we dive in, can we just pray? Father, open up your word to us, that we might hear it and understand it, that we might submit

our lives to it. Holy Spirit, be at work in your word today. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We pick up with the first story in Luke 5. verse 12. While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Now, you have to understand what leprosy meant in the ancient world. This wasn't just a skin condition. Leprosy made you ceremonially unclean, which meant you were cut off from the temple, from worship, from community, from your family. You had to announce yourself and public. You had to scream unclean, unclean, so people knew to keep their distance. You lived on the

margins of society alone, and everyone around you understood that to be your permanent address. This man had been living like that. And somewhere in that isolation, he hears about Jesus, and he doesn't wait for an invitation. He doesn't send a letter asking Jesus if he would be open to a meeting. He comes. He falls on his face. He begs. He forces his way in because he is desperate, and he has nowhere else to go. And notice what he says. He says, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. He doesn't doubt the power of Jesus. He says you can. He knows Jesus is capable. What he's not sure about is whether Jesus would want to, whether someone like him, unclean, cast out, written off, whether he was the kind of person Jesus would bother with. Maybe you've prayed something like that. Not can you,

but would you for me? I know your God, I know you're powerful, but would you actually want to help someone like me? Is your grace, God? Is your specific forgiveness? Is that for me? Look at what happens next in verse 13. It says Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

Stop right there. Before we even get to the healing, there's the touch. Jesus touched him. A man no one had touched and who knows how long. And in the ancient world, touching a leper made you unclean. Jesus didn't have to touch him. I mean, there are other stories where Jesus heals people from a distance.

He could have just said the word and snapped his finger, but he reaches out and touches him. And then he says, I am willing. Be clean. I am willing. Not I suppose so. Not you've made a compelling case. Not let me check if you've earned this. No, I am willing.

That is the answer to the question that shame has been asking you your whole life, whether Jesus would want to help you, whether he looks at you with compassion or not, whether you're the kind of person he'd bother with, whether your mess is too much, your history too long, your failures too many. And Jesus looks at the most excluded person in the story, the one everyone else had already decided didn't belong, and he says, I am willing. The second story picks up right after in verse 17. It says, one day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with

Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles in the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus. I love this story. These guys, these friends cannot get through the crowd so they climb up on the roof and they tear a hole in it and they lower their friend down through the ceiling directly in front of Jesus. They are not taking no for an answer. They are desperate. They are going to get their friend to Jesus if they have to dismantle the building to do it.

And that's the thing about both of these stories. Nobody waited politely. Nobody stood at the back of the crowd and hoped Jesus might notice them. No, the leper came and fell on his face and begged. These men tore open a roof. Desperation has a way of making you bold. We go on in verse 20. When Jesus saw their faith, he said,

Friend, your sins are forgiven. The religious leaders in the room immediately start grumbling. Who does this guy think he is? Only God can forgive sins. And Jesus knows what they're thinking. So he says in verse 23, which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or to say, get up and walk? And then he heals him right there.

After he's forgiven him his sins, he heals him. And the man picks up his mat and walks home. See, Jesus does both. He forgives and he heals. He has authority over the spiritual and the physical. He goes to the root and he deals with the fruit because Jesus isn't just willing, he is able. See, here are the two truths that we learn from these two stories, that Jesus is willing and that Jesus is able. Willing means he wants to. Abel means he can. That voice that follows you around attacks one or both of these. Either it tells you that God wouldn't want to help someone like you, or it tells you that even if he wanted to, what's broken in you is too broken.

You've been this way too long. The damage runs too deep. Things don't actually change. Jesus can't actually fix you. And Jesus walks into both of those lies and demolishes them. He touches the untouchable and says, I am willing. He forgives the sinner and heals the paralyzed and says, I am able. He has authority and he is willing.

And what Jesus did for these two outsiders, these desperate hungry people who forced their way to him, he ultimately does for all of us through the cross. He reached out and touched our uncleanness and took it on himself. He became the excluded one so that we could be brought in. He bore our paralysis, our inability to fix ourselves so that we could get up and walk. So whatever that voice has been telling you, here is what God says, I see you, I want you, I can help you, I am willing and I am able.

Let's pray. Father, there are people listening to this who have been haunted by the feeling that they're not good enough. Not good enough for other people, not good enough for you. They are haunted by shame. Would you please speak louder than that voice today? Remind us that you touched the untouchable and healed the broken and that you are willing and able to meet us right where we are. Thank you that in Jesus we are not excluded but are brought in.

Amen.