Only Believe | Mark 5:21-43 | Dr.Todd Williams

And now it's my great privilege to introduce our guest speaker for this morning.

Dr.

Todd J.

Williams has served as the president of Cairn University since 2008.

He's also a graduate of Cairn University, where he earned his Bachelor's in Science and Bible.

Dr.

Williams is also a graduate of Temple University, where he earned both his master's in education as well as his PhD.

Dr.

Williams is an experienced educator, a leader, an essayist who regularly speaks on biblical, cultural, and professional issues.

He has a deep passion for Christ-centered education and for equipping the next generation of Christian leaders.

He also serves as the chairman of the Board of Governors of the John Jay Institute and serves on the board of the Association of the Biblical Higher Education and Gospel Volunteers Inc., two different boards there.

He and his wife Dawn are rural life enthusiasts and have two adult children.

It's a special joy for me to welcome Dr.

Williams to be here with us today.

As a fellow Cairn alumni, I'm especially grateful for my education.

Back when I was there, it was called Philadelphia College of Bible.

They have changed the names two different times since I graduated.

But apparently now I'm a graduate of Cairn University.

Todd said it's okay for me to say I'm a graduate of Cairn, and that's what I'm sticking with because they have changed the name on me.

I received such an incredible blessing by attending that school.

The Lord really turned my life all the way around.

In fact, in a full circle moment, uh the pastor who married my wife and I, Pastor Jack, actually is the one who first introduced me to Philadelphia College of Bible.

He took me on a little trip, and that's where he had gone to school, and we checked it, checked it out.

Pastor Jack is actually Johnny Graves and Noah Graves' uncle.

And so it's a crazy story for me to be here like 25 years later serving at a church with his nephews who who did such a wonderful job discipling me and making a difference in my life.

So I'm so thankful for him pointing me towards uh Cairn University and all that they do.

And I'm especially thankful for the opportunity to welcome its president to share God's word with us today.

Would you please join me in a warm Millington Baptist Church welcome for Dr.

Todd Williams?

Well, good morning.

It's uh good to be here with you uh here at Millington.

I've heard so much about this church over the years.

We have some alum here and friends and others, and uh church has a great reputation for loving and proclaiming God's word for evangelizing and discipling.

Uh and it's great to be here uh with you all this morning in the in the second service.

I was here in the first service, you know, as they say, early bird gets the worm, second mouse gets the cheese.

Uh and so uh really good to be here uh this morning to open the Lord's word uh with you and uh and to share a little bit.

I also want to uh not just bring greetings from Cairn University, but to also invite you uh to get to know uh more about us, just about an hour south of here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

And so uh we uh are a full-blown Christian university where every student studies Bible and theology at the core of their curriculum, every student educated to serve Christ in the church, society, and the world.

You can find us online at Cairn.edu.

We also have a Faith in Truth media site where all of our chapel messages and written publications are available as a resource for the Christian community at large as well.

This morning, I would like to open a passage of scripture with you from Mark's Gospel, chapter five.

If you want, you can turn there.

I'm gonna read the entire passage, and then I will uh set some context before we begin to unpack this familiar record of two miracles that are stacked on top of one another, actually intersect with one another.

Actually, it's a bit of a miracle mashup uh here in Mark's Gospel, chapter five.

Beginning at verse 21.

And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea.

Then one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jarus, by name, and seeing him, uh uh, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death.

Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.

And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse.

She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.

And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, Who touched my garments?

And his disciples said to him, You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, Who touched me?

And he looked around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your disease.

While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house someone who said, Your daughter is dead.

Why trouble the teacher any further?

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not fear, only believe.

And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John, the brother of James.

They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

And when he had entered, he said to them, Why are you making a commotion and weeping?

The child isn't dead, but sleeping.

And they laughed at him.

But he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in to where the child was.

And taking her by the hand, he said to her, Talitha kumi, which means, little girl, I say to you, Arise.

And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was twelve years of age.

And they were immediately overcome with amazement, and he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and he told them to give her something to eat.

Father in heaven, we do thank you for this morning when we gather together in this place to sing your praise, to hear the teaching and preaching of your word.

We pray that you might give us grace now as we look into this passage of Scripture, that we might be challenged to think about what we know to be true regarding our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that our faith may be strengthened, that we may live in light of the teaching of this passage.

We pray, Father, that you might give us insight now to uh understand what is taking place here, that it might have an impact upon us.

And we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.

So this is a pretty familiar passage, uh, a couple of miracles that are relatively familiar to us.

If we grew up in the church and been around the Bible, I remember my first introduction to the miracles of Jesus, uh, using what I'm sure I'm not the only one in the room remembers, those things called flannel graphs, cutting-edge technology, pieces of fabric on a board covered with fabric, Jesus in the boat, Jesus heals the blind man, all of those sorts of things.

Uh the gospels are a very interesting uh uh thing for us as Christians.

If I may, I'd like to, before we dig into this passage, set a little context for the message by talking about the Gospels themselves first, then a little bit about Jesus and how we need to think about him, particularly when we read uh the Gospels and passages like this, and then a little bit in the immediate context of this uh set of miracles, uh, so we can unpack it, I think, in a way that that makes it uh meaningful.

First is the Gospels, uh, if you're like me and you have sort of uh been around the Bible and and Christian work and Christian church and Christian schools and Christian education for a long time, uh we tend to think of the New Testament in terms of the epistles, all the instruction for how we're to think as Christians, all the great cataloging of Christian theology and doctrine.

We look to the Old Testament for what God did in ages past, the story of creation and all of the things leading up to the advent of Jesus Christ.

And then the Gospels can very easily become, they were in my own education, became a compilation of Jesus stories, maybe proof that he actually was born and lived, uh, and the story of his death, burial, and resurrection.

But little did I think about it in terms of the instruction that it provide that the gospels provide.

And I think it's important for us when we when we think about the gospels of Jesus Christ, that we not sort of relegate them to a place in our mental bookshelf of stories about Jesus.

They are actually the revelation of Jesus Himself.

And there's no way that the revelation of Jesus Himself is not instructive, that it doesn't challenge the way we think and the way we live.

They're not just inspiring stories, they actually, there's something for us to glean, something for us to learn, something for us to put into practice, something there to strengthen our faith.

In fact, John actually testifies to this in his own writing of his own gospel.

John says there were many things that Jesus did.

I could not write them all down.

These I wrote down, these are written down that you may believe.

Now, while John's gospel was circulated to unbelievers as a fantastic evangelistic tool, John's audience were Christians.

He was writing to Christians these this record of Jesus' life that they might believe, that their faith would be strengthened.

Because the early apostles knew it wasn't just that we needed saving faith in Jesus.

Our faith in him must grow and get stronger every day, that we might walk with him in faith, in a knowledge of his goodness and grace, that we might learn more about him and come to trust him more and love him more and serve him more.

And John says, these things are written down that you may believe.

They are written down for the strengthening of our faith.

And the more we know Jesus, not just about Jesus, the more we know Jesus, the stronger our faith in time of need.

And this particular record of these two miracles served that purpose very well.

The Gospels are instructive.

Every time that Jesus speaks and teaches, every time that Jesus interacts with human beings, there is something powerful to glean, to learn, to strengthen our faith.

The other thing that I'd like to say isn't just about the Gospels, but about Jesus himself.

Again, turning to John's Gospel, John says this about Jesus.

He says that Jesus needed no one to instruct him, for he knows what is in the heart of man.

In other words, Jesus is never surprised, never taken off guard, never wrong.

He's never out of character.

He's never missing pieces of information.

He's never needing anything from those around him to help him in his ministry.

He is the Son of God.

He was there at the beginning of all things.

He created all things.

Humankind is made in his image and likeness.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit spoke those things into existence.

Humankind created in the image and likeness of God.

Jesus, while he came and took on flesh, doesn't cease to be Jesus, the Son of God.

And he is never caught off guard when he interacts with people.

When we see these records, these stories in the records of the gospel, we should never be tempted to think, well, they pulled one over on Jesus there.

Well, they caught Jesus.

Boy, it's a good thing Jesus can think on his feet or they would have gotten him.

It's not like that.

When Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness, Jesus knows exactly what is up with Nicodemus.

He knows exactly what his insecurities and fears are.

He knows exactly what he's after.

Every time that Jesus interacts with someone, he knows what's in them.

The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.

Who can know it?

Jesus.

John tells us that.

What a great comfort, what a great encouragement, what a great strengthening of our faith.

That in our hour of need, in our moments of darkness, in our moments of silence, of aloneness or desperation, when we're about to be trampled by a crowd or we're laying dead in a room in a quiet corner somewhere, Jesus knows what is in us.

He's never taken off guard.

He is never surprised.

Likewise, he is never acting in a way contrary to his nature.

He never violates his own attributes.

Jesus is always right, always wise, always loving, always gracious, always merciful, always just, always holy.

Why?

Because those are his attributes, and he cannot behave counter to them.

I was telling a group the other week speaking on the issue of the faithfulness of God.

The faithfulness of God is not like the faithfulness of a human being.

A faithfulness of a human being is an attitude and an action.

For God it's an attribute.

He can't not be faithful.

He can't not be it's not fickle, it's not based upon circumstance and condition.

He cannot be anything but faithful because it's a divine attribute.

Same thing with Jesus.

Now, when we look at Jesus through the lens of our 21st century minds, we make mistakes.

The point I use to illustrate this all the time is Jesus with Peter.

Remember that time Jesus is talking about his arrest, his betrayal and arrest, and eventually his crucifixion, and it unnerves his disciples so much so that Peter intervenes and basically says, Jesus, you've got to stop talking like this.

It's not good for people to hear this.

Not good for you to talk this way about the end of things and your death, especially such a violent and embarrassing and humiliating death.

That's not we should stop that talk right now, Jesus.

And Jesus turns to Peter and says, What?

Get thee behind me.

Not a very nice or affirming thing to say by contemporary standards.

But in it is perfect love.

Because Jesus loves Peter too much to let him be wrong.

And he loves the people in earshot too much to have them be confused about why he came to earth.

Jesus is never wrong.

Even when Jesus on the on the temple steps is driving off the money changers with a cord that he's swinging, swinging, it is out of love and mercy, the fulfillment of God's purposes, his justice and his righteousness, married to his grace and his compassion.

He can never be anything but the perfect, holy Son of God.

So when you encounter him in the Gospels, teaching and speaking and interacting with others, you must remember that.

In here are in the Gospels is instruction for the strengthening of our faith and the changing of the way we think and live.

Also, in here is a revelation of Jesus as we see him, not the way we'd like him to be, not the way we think he fits into our world, but rather the way he is revealed to us as the Son of God.

And that's really important when you come to passages like this because it actually makes for a much more robust scene for us to learn from.

And in this passage that I read, we have these two individuals that are that interact with Jesus.

They're these one-on-one, essentially, interactions in the midst of masses and crowds.

And it's really important not just to understand the nature of the gospels and the nature of Jesus, but the nature of this particular moment that Mark is recording for us.

Now it's important, I think, to catch this.

Mark's gospel, written by John Mark, is probably recorded at the telling of Peter.

In other words, this young man, John Mark, he's the individual that Paul and Barnabas had the great divide over.

Paul said, No, he can't come.

Barnabas says, I'll take him.

And in the providence of God, it was not right for Barnabas or for John Mark to go with Paul and what he had to do.

Barnabas takes him under his wing, and John Mark is discipled, and lo and behold, here we are years and years later, where John Mark is actually useful to the apostles, even to Paul later, but to Peter.

He's with Peter in prison, recording Peter's telling of these stories.

That's what this is.

This John Mark is the young man, probably the young man whose cloak was stripped from him in the garden when Jesus was arrested.

It is his family's house where the early church likely first met.

He's very much tied to all of this.

And here he is with Peter, near the end of Peter's life before his martyrdom.

And Peter is telling John Mark the things that happened during his time with Jesus on the earth.

And you can almost sense the emotion and energy in that prison where Peter's saying, and then you should have seen it next, John.

Then what happened was we got in that boat and a storm came up, and you wouldn't believe how terrified we all were.

And you couldn't believe what Jesus did now.

We were standing there and the crowd was there.

We had nothing to give them.

And Jesus looked out and said, We should feed them, and all of us thought he's nuts.

And then he did this.

This is what's happening here.

John Mark isn't relaying something that he heard third hand.

It's not something passed down via oral tradition.

The one who was there is telling him, Don't miss this one, don't miss this one, don't miss this one.

Peter, John, Peter tells John Mark things that Mark records that are not in other Gospels.

The Gospels are not different because they're inconsistent, they're different because they're told by different people with different perspectives.

They're all right there.

And so Peter comes shining through in this moment, as you'll see as we unpack the passage.

And so John Mark is recording for us this particular instance, and it's at a time when Jesus is now on the scene.

He's out there.

He's begun to actually perform miracles.

We have first the water into wine and then multiple healings and the casting out of demons.

And word is out that something is up with this Jesus.

Everywhere he goes, things change.

Everywhere Jesus goes, every time he opens his mouth, every time he touches someone, every time he heals someone, every time he casts out, the world is turned inside out and upside down for those individuals and everybody watching.

And the word is out you got to get to Jesus.

You got to get to Jesus.

In fact, after the early miracles, Jesus finds himself in Simon's house and heals his mother-in-law.

That's a great act of ministry, right?

Peter actually wants to help his mother-in-law.

And so Simon brings Jesus, and Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law, and the whole town hears about it, and the Bible records for us that the whole town was at their door.

Everybody wanted to bring their folks who were infirmed or oppressed or discouraged or they bring them all to Jesus.

Fix all of this, Jesus.

Jesus is healing, doing all of this.

And everybody is overwhelmed.

And everywhere that Jesus goes, there's a crowd following.

But even in the midst of the crowds following after Jesus, there's something interesting that begins to happen.

Jesus, I think, I think that Jesus is a very, he has a very confounding nature.

And what I mean by that is some of I think a large portion of the disciples' learning experience with Jesus is to constantly be humbled that you think you know what he's doing.

You have no idea.

You have no idea.

In fact, in that instance, when the whole town is at Simon's house and they all want to be healed, they're actually looking for Jesus later.

And it turns out he slipped out under the cover of darkness and went someplace quiet.

And the disciples are actually wondering where he is, and they they they said, someone said, Well, I saw him go out the back door and he's out there in the darkness somewhere, and they go out and they find Jesus in a quiet place and they go to him and they ask him, What are you doing here?

Everyone is looking for you.

Now they're not saying, Jesus, don't you know everyone is looking for you?

Jesus knows everything.

He knows everyone's looking for him.

They say, Jesus, what are you doing here?

Everyone's looking for you.

In other words, they're saying, Jesus, this is stupid.

We should be where everyone's looking for you.

Why would you be hiding?

Don't you know how marketing works?

When they're talking about you, you keep your foot on the gas.

You don't disappear into the darkness.

And Jesus said to them, let's go to another village that I may teach there also, for that is what I came to do.

You can almost hear the disciples' wheels turning.

I know he wants to teach.

Does he understand how well these miracles are working?

I mean, every time we cast out a demon, every time there's a healing, the crowd grows exponentially.

The teaching thing usually just gets the Jews mad and people confused.

And yet that's what Jesus constantly wants to do because that's he says, that's what I came to do.

He's always confounding them.

He's confounding his disciples and drawing crowds.

And now that's the context here.

In fact, in the immediate context of this, is that dramatic, that dramatic exorcism where Jesus casts the demons out of that young man whom chains could not bound.

Bind.

He he he this this this young man is breaking chains.

Chains couldn't hold him.

And Jesus casts out the demons, and he doesn't cast them out, he casts them out into a herd of pigs that go off a cliff.

That's that's a crowd stopper.

That's a big one.

And then after that, the crowd pushes Jesus toward towards the shore, and he gets in a boat.

They're going back and forth in a boat, getting away from this crowd.

Now I need you to understand something about the crowds that are being discussed in this passage of scripture and in the early parts of the gospel.

These are not, this is not this is not Black Friday.

This is not three days before Christmas when husbands are panicked about getting the Christmas gifts.

This is not that kind of crowd.

This is thronging chaos.

This is someone screaming five days.

In a music, in a, in a, in a concert or in a movie theater.

This is a stampede.

This is the kind of crowd where people get hurt, people get pushed in directions, they do not want to go.

These are thronging crowds.

And they all want a piece of Jesus.

More of Jesus! More of Jesus! More of Jesus.

Which is very different than the crowds that we will hear from after the triumphal entry when the crowds are screaming, crucify him, crucify him, crucify him.

Crowds are fickle.

But the crowds now have pushed Jesus into a boat after the casting out of that demon.

And he crosses over to the other side.

And a great crowd gathers there.

And he's beside the sea.

Now I want to just paint a little picture of the crowds.

Imagine, if you will, the disciples, they're Jesus' students, they're his followers, but they also feel some sense of responsibility for him.

Everybody wants a piece of Jesus, right?

The crowds want a piece of Jesus for their own benefit.

The Jews want to catch him in something.

The leaders of the religious establishment are trying to trip him up and get rid of him.

And so the disciples' angst around these crowds has to be significant.

At once they're excited, you can imagine, because this is big Mo.

This is momentum.

Man, the crowds are with us.

We could do a lot with this.

At the same time, where are the assassins?

Where are the critics?

Where are the people trying to trip us up?

How are we going to keep from losing Jesus?

If we lose him in this crowd, we'll never find him again.

And then Lord knows what's going to happen to us when he actually reunites with us and says, Where were you?

How'd you let me get pushed in that direction?

They're human beings, and the crowd dynamic and dimension is a real burden for them.

So here they are in this crowd, and this man, this Jarus, finds his way to Jesus.

Mark records for us, his Jarrus by name, they know his name.

He's a ruler of the synagogue, one of the rulers of the synagogue.

He is a member, he's part of a group that's part of a group, that's part of a group that isn't real happy with Jesus.

In fact, they're not just trying to marginalize Jesus.

They're not just trying to get him to soften his message or to cancel him.

They actually want him eliminated.

We have to get rid of this guy.

He's a threat.

When they go to great lengths to accuse Jesus of being a blasphemer, it is not because they think then that the Washington Post will hit Jesus really hard with an article.

The issue is if they can label him as a blasphemer, they can justify killing him.

They're out for blood.

Jesus has to be stopped.

And this man, Jarus, a ruler of the synagogue, finds his way through the crowd and comes to Jesus.

And you can almost see Peter saying, We saw him coming.

We saw him coming.

This ruler of the synagogue.

And I thought, here he comes.

He's coming to trap us, he's coming to trick us, he's coming to deliver some accusation.

And lo and behold, he fell at Jesus' feet.

And he cried out, My daughter is very near death, but if you will come and lay your hands on her, she will be made well and live.

This ruler of the synagogue, who's part of the group that's part of the group that's part of the group that's out to get Jesus, is at such a place of desperation, knowing that his little girl, his daughter, the apple of his eye, she's about to die.

And there's only one hope, and that is Jesus.

He shuns all privilege, all power, all prestige.

He doesn't come to Jesus and say, Do you know who I am?

I'm Jarus.

I'm one of the rulers of the synagogue.

I can make it a lot easier for you for you with the Jews if you come help me.

He doesn't go to him and say, Do you know who I am?

I'm Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue.

You should want to help me because I can help you.

He doesn't come and say, You owe me.

He doesn't come and say, on the basis of my position and privilege, you actually should come help me.

He falls at the feet of Jesus in the midst of this crowd and says, Only you can save my daughter.

Please do so.

It's an expression of faith and desperation.

Brothers and sisters, there's something for us to glean from this.

In your moments of need, do you feel so strongly that Jesus is the only one you need that you would push through every crowd and drop your entire identity just to fall at his feet and say, please, please, please, give me what I need.

The only thing that I need you.

That's what Jarrus does.

He pushes through the crowd and falls at Jesus' feet.

I have to imagine the disciples are saying, Now what?

And Jesus says, We're going.

Jesus just said, Okay, let's go.

Now, this isn't recorded for us, but the disciples are human beings, and I got to figure that again.

They're saying, Here we go again.

Here we go again.

Some of them are probably saying, This is gonna look really bad for us.

We got a crowd of everyday people who are coming to Jesus for miracles, and Jesus is going with this guy, one of the establishment people.

That's not gonna look good.

And then other disciples are saying, actually, this is great, because you know, those Pharisees, they're gonna see that Jesus helped one of them, who's one of them, who's one of them.

Maybe that'll go in our favor.

The disciples are human beings, they're trying to figure out what's going on.

Here we go again.

Jesus is leaving a place where we've got something going on to do something that we don't fully understand and help somebody that we're not sure he should be helping.

Is it a trap?

Is it a trick?

Are they laying in wait for us?

Is this a ploy?

Here's the beautiful thing about Jesus.

He doesn't do traps, he doesn't do tricks, he doesn't do ploys, he doesn't do gimmicks.

He's going because this man believes.

He's acting in this man's life because this man has put his faith in Jesus.

While they're doing this and getting ready to go, and the crowd is actually beginning to follow with him.

Says here, and a great crowd followed with him.

So here we go again.

The crowd is going and thronging about him.

There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years.

Now I read the passage, and you know the story.

This woman finds her way to Jesus as he's moving from this point to Jarris' house, and the crowd is thronging about.

Now, again, very specific terminology here.

This crowd is thronging about.

This is not a single file line.

This is not a battalion of soldiers in step.

It's a thronging, chaotic crowd.

Jesus' disciples have not established a perimeter around him.

This isn't that way.

This is a crowd that is pushing people in a direction they don't want to go.

People are banging into one another.

It's the America 250 year.

You've got an event coming up.

It's uh what they're calling the semi-quincentennial, which is a mouthful.

When I was a kid, we went to the bicentennial.

A lot easier to say.

I remember being taken to Philadelphia with my parents and my aunts and uncles and cousins, and we went to Philadelphia for the bicentennial.

My crazy uncle thought that was the place to be.

My dad hated crowds.

I thought this is gonna be great.

We got there, I think we ended up 10 blocks from where we started against our will.

My dad was freaking out.

If if those if those kitty leashes from the 90s had been present in the 70s, we would have all been like a team of horses that he was hanging on to.

I mean, it was we were all going in different directions, and the music's blaring, and people are bumping into us, and fireworks are going off, official and unofficial, it is Philadelphia.

Uh and my dad's panicked about, you know, how are we gonna get back to the car?

And I'm thinking, you don't have to worry about the car, it's upside down.

This is Philadelphia.

I mean, you won't have to worry about getting to the car.

It was absolutely insane mayhem.

That's the picture here.

They're moving along, and in the middle of that kind of madness, this woman finds her way to Jesus.

Now, a little bit about her.

She's very ill.

She's been bleeding for 12 years.

That's a long time.

That's over a decade.

No help.

You know, bleeding is not a good thing for a human being to do.

What's the first thing you do in first aid?

You stop the bleeding.

If you don't stop the bleeding, you at least become anemic or expire.

She isn't just a sick woman.

She is a weak and frail woman.

She is weak and frail from bleeding for twelve years.

Not only is she weak and frail and has this illness, it says that she's actually poor because she had given everything she could, had, to physicians.

And she, the Bible says very clearly, they they get this detail later, I'm sure.

Not only did she spend all she had on medical treatment, she didn't get any better.

Rather, the Bible says she got worse.

Sickness upon sickness.

In ancient medicine, one of the treatments for this kind of illness was to feed to patients grain that had passed through animals.

That's not a good thing to do.

She's not just poor, she's getting sicker by the moment.

She's anemic, she's weak.

She's a woman.

And because of her issue, she is untouchable.

She is ceremonially unclean.

No one can lay hands on her.

Her husband can't touch her, no one can touch her.

She's she it's a perpetual bleeding.

For twelve years, for twelve years, she has not been the recipient of a kind touch, a hug, a pat on the back.

If you do so, you violate the law.

This is a woman at the bottom of the bottom.

How different from Jarrus.

Both compelled by two things their desperate state and their faith that Jesus is the only one that can help them.

They are so far apart from one another, it's dramatic.

And only the gospels were recorded in this kind of honesty for us.

Peter says, Then this woman, this woman with an issue of blood, she finds her way to Jesus.

And we learned later that she said, if I only touch the hem of his garment, other versions, the hem of his garment, if I only touch the hem of his garment, that's all I need.

Just to reach out, touch the hem of his garment, I'll be made well.

That's her faith.

I don't need an audience.

I don't need him to look me in the eye.

I don't need him to touch me.

I don't need him to hold my hand.

I don't need him to know my name.

If I could just get close enough to touch his garment, I know there's power in him and I would be made whole.

And so that's what she does.

This weak, frail, anemic, ill, untouchable, destitute, outcast of a woman makes her way through the chaos to get to Jesus' garment, the hem of his garment, which has been dragging through the streets.

The primary means of conveyance at this time is either your own feet or an animal's feet.

The streets are covered with dust and filth and manure, dried and otherwise.

She is on her hands and knees, crawling through that kind of filth and that kind of crowd with the threat of being stomped to death.

And there she is, trying to find her way, and she makes it.

And she touches his garment, and lo and behold, boom, she feels that she's been healed and made whole.

It would be a great story if it stops there, but it doesn't.

Jesus always adds a little wrinkle.

Jesus feels power leave him.

Now, folks, that's a remarkable thing.

That the Lord of the universe would feel power leave him to heal a woman who only touched the hem of his garment.

That's incredible.

But it's even more incredible that Jesus was already being touched by dozens of people.

This is not Jesus in the pocket, right?

A past protection pocket where no one's around him.

This is more like the tush-push, right?

This is total chaos.

Jesus is being slammed on all sides, right?

People banging into him from every direction.

He feels power leave him.

That's the attention to detail of the Lord of the universe to the needs of an individual.

You may feel at times like Jesus doesn't know.

Jesus knows when the hair, a hair falls from your head.

He knows when the hem of his garment has been touched by a destitute, frail, anemic, weak woman, an outcast.

Says, I felt power leave me, and then he adds another wrinkle.

He says, Who touched my garments?

Now, again, going back to the earlier context, and you actually see it later in the passage, because there's no record that anybody told Jesus who it was.

He saw.

Jesus knows who touched his garments.

He said, Who touched my garments?

For the sake of the disciples.

He said, Who touched my garment for the sake of the woman?

He said, Who touched my garments for the sake of the crowd?

Jesus doesn't need anyone to tell him who touched him.

He made everything.

He knows us.

He knows us before we were formed in our mother's womb.

He knows us.

He doesn't need anyone to tell him who touched me.

He says, Who touched me?

Now, here's where it gets really interesting.

I think this is Peter.

This is Peter and his sort of his sort of constant sense of humor.

Remember, when they go after the resurrection of Jesus, uh they're they're they're crying out.

Everybody can hear him.

Everybody heard the banging on the door, but it's recorded for us that Peter kept on knocking.

That's a little like that's a little, that's personality coming through, right?

You can just yell, you can just, and we banged on the door, they're on their way.

Peter keeps on knocking while everybody's sort of scrambling, right?

That's Peter.

He says, then Jesus turned and said, Who touched me?

And Peter, in all honesty, tells John Mark, we looked at him and said, Are you nuts?

Who touched you?

How are we supposed to know who touched you?

Do you see the crowd, Jesus?

You're asking us who touched you.

How could you ask us that?

There are so many people here, we have no idea who touched you.

Jesus, you're insane.

Who touched me?

Why do you need to know who touched me?

Can we just keep moving here?

What's the problem, Jesus?

Why do you need to know who touched you?

These are the kinds of things that human beings would think.

But then, because they are human beings, they're thinking, yeah, they're so comfortable with Jesus that they often find themselves confronting him and wanting to correct him.

I have some students who do that to the teacher.

You know, they're that comfortable.

They have that kind of intimate relationship, they've been together a lot, they have no problem speaking their minds to Jesus.

But he is Jesus.

He is Rabboi, Rabbonai.

He is their teacher.

So at once they're incense that he's asking who touched me?

And then I got to figure, then they're thinking, but the teacher gave an assignment.

So let's figure it out.

And you can almost picture them grabbing people.

Did you touch him?

Did you touch him?

I didn't touch him.

Did you touch him?

Did you touch him?

Did he touch him?

Did she over there?

Did he touch him?

Grab that guy.

He's walking away.

Find out if he touched him.

And all of a sudden now it isn't just Jesus and the disciples wondering who touched him.

The whole crowd's freaking out.

What do you mean who touched him?

I bumped into him a half an hour ago.

Are you looking for me?

Who touched me?

And they go looking.

Who touched him?

Did you touch him?

Did you touch him?

Did you touch him?

It's easy to get up caught up in the disciples saying, I have no idea why he wants us to know, but we're going to figure it out because we're not going to disappoint Jesus.

We're going to find out who touched him.

Imagine that woman on the ground.

All I wanted to do was sneak up and touch his hem.

Now they're looking for me.

I don't want to get in trouble and I don't want to give it back.

Who touched me?

Did you touch him?

Did you touch him?

Did you touch him?

And she's laying on the ground, and I have to figure she's thinking, please, please, please, please, please, no, no, no.

And Jesus says to her, daughter.

In the chaos, in the mayhem, in the electricity of the moment, in all the confusion and human emotion of wanting to please Jesus and at the same time thinking he's crazy for wanting to know who touched, Jesus is actually heightening the energy level all around.

And in the midst of that chaos, piercing, gentle kindness to use an intimate term, daughter.

Untouchable one.

Ceremonially unclean woman.

In the dirt and dust and dried manure.

Sick, frail, anemic one.

Daughter.

Your faith has made you well.

Be healed of your disease.

Go in peace.

Which means you have believed.

Go with no fear.

No one here is going to hurt you.

It's over.

It's over.

Daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace.

That's one thing to get caught up in the moment of that and think, okay, you've got Jesus and the disciples, you've got Jesus and the woman.

You have all of this chaos.

You have Jesus piercing through the noise and chaos and madness of the moment to show compassion and kindness to this woman who's been more than a decade suffering with this illness that has not just rendered her physically and financially ruined, but socially ruined.

And Jesus changes her life because of her faith.

It's one thing to think about all of that, but imagine back up a little further.

Here's Jarrus.

What's going on?

Every minute matters.

Every minute matters.

Every minute matters.

And now we're stopping because a woman touched his garment, and then he wants to know who it was.

Who does it matter who it was?

Move on.

And then he's got to talk to her.

Move on.

Jesus, my daughter, is near death.

I came to you in faith.

You said you were going with me.

Let's go.

We're wasting precious moments.

We should be moving.

In the midst of everything that's going on in all of the human dimension of this particular scene, there's Jarrus who came in humility and faith to Jesus to say, I need you now.

Yes, I'm coming.

But something happens.

There's an interruption, there's a distraction.

Has he forgotten about me?

Doesn't he care?

Won't he deliver?

And the worst thing imaginable happens.

He looks up through the crowd and sees a familiar face coming towards him.

And then those words.

Let it go.

She's gone.

Don't bother him anymore.

It's over.

And then Jesus, in the kind of piercing way that only he could do, turns to Jarrus and says, Don't be afraid.

Only believe.

Don't be afraid.

Only believe.

Don't be afraid.

Only believe the faith that compelled you to fight the crowd and lay aside your honor, to fall at my feet and beg for my mercy.

Just hold that.

Don't be afraid.

Hold on to your faith.

Brothers and sisters, in our moments, whether they're dramatic or they seem benign and trivial.

Faith in this Jesus, believing that He knows.

He says to Jairus, only believe.

That's the message that Christians have clung to from the very beginning.

The disciples, upon martyrdom, how could they go to their death?

Because they know He will never leave me nor forsake me.

Lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

Yes, but I'm about to die, and you will be with me in paradise.

Forever.

Only believe.

Death is not the end.

Only believe.

For centuries, as Christians were facing persecution and martyrdom, as they're piling up wood around the pyres to set us on fire.

Only believe, do not be afraid.

Yes, but I might die.

Only believe, do not be afraid.

But they're gonna feed my children to wild animals.

Only believe, do not be afraid.

But they're gonna make fun of me.

Only believe, do not be afraid.

But we're gonna lose political power.

Only believe, do not be afraid.

But people won't like me.

Only believe, do not be afraid.

Jesus then goes on, and this is interesting.

He says no to the crowd.

Stay back.

No one goes but Peter, James, and John.

The crowd's out.

How did he do it?

I don't know.

He's Jesus.

Now, the one thing I'd say is it means he could have done it all along and didn't.

But now he says no.

So just Peter, James, and John go on to Jairus' house.

And when they get close, they hear the mourners and the weepers and the musicians.

And these people acted fast.

In Jewish tradition, most of these people were paid for this service.

Word had gotten out so fast that Jarus' daughter had died.

Probably they're hanging around like a bunch of vultures, waiting for her to pass because they knew she was near death.

And as soon as she dies, they're employed.

And there they are, weeping and wailing and moaning.

And Jesus hears them from a distance as they get closer.

Jarrus must have been agonizing over all of this.

And they get, he says, It's true.

There was no mistake.

It's true.

She's dead.

The mourners are here.

And Jesus confronts the mourners and says, Why are you weeping?

The little girl is not.

Dead as you suspect.

She's only asleep.

They mock him and they laugh.

But they don't know what Jesus knows.

He's not diagnosing her current state.

He's not saying she has swooned.

He's not saying you mistakingly called the code and labeled her as dead.

He's actually proclaiming his authority over death as the resurrection and the life.

He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

Jesus is not trying to change the diagnosis that you made a mistake, she's not actually dead.

He's declaring his authority as the Lamb of God over death itself.

And he goes into that room, that dark room, that room where the sense of grief must have been palpable.

The little girl laying there still, the apple of her father's eye, who had been struggling with illness and is near, was near death for days.

Now she lays there still and breathless.

And Jesus walks in the room and says to her as though she were alive, little girl, get up.

And she gets up.

She's 12 years old, she starts walking around.

Everybody's astonished.

Everybody's amazed.

Why?

Because she was dead, dead as dead.

I reminded that passage in Ephesians, but we who were dead in our sins, but God being rich in mercy, while we were dead in our sins, made us alive in Christ.

Here's the thing: we were dead.

We weren't flailing in the pool.

Jesus throws a life preserver in and says, swim for it.

We're dead, lifeless, on the bottom of the pool, and God reaches down and breathes new life into us.

That's the gospel.

Jesus turns to this little girl and says, Little girl, arise, and she's alright.

She rises.

She's alive.

The parents are ecstatic.

Everybody's happy.

The weepers and mourners outside have been absolutely wrong.

He does have authority over death.

He's made this little girl alive.

But then the beautiful compassion of Jesus, he makes sure that she has something to eat.

It's astonishing.

The master and creator of the universe raises a little girl from the dead and then says, you know, she's famished.

She's been sick for a long time and she's been dead, which is exhausting.

Let's get her some food.

Let's get her some food.

I think that Peter includes this because he talks about the feeding of the multitudes, and it's very interesting.

It's not a marketing gimmick.

The disciples must have been really floored by it.

The crowd's going with them, and he looks out and he says, you know, they've been following us for a long time.

They've been on their feet.

We should really feed them.

The Bible says he looked out and had compassion on him.

He didn't do the loaves and fishes thing as a trick or a miracle to gain attention.

It was actually an act of compassion.

There's too many people here.

They're all hungry.

Let's feed them.

What do we got?

We got two fish and a couple loaves of bread.

I got it.

We'll take care of it.

Like everybody's got to eat, right?

And Jesus, in compassion, feeds the crowd.

Here he raises this little girl from the dead and he's concerned about her well-being.

Give her some food.

Give her some food.

But what's really striking to me is that Jesus says, tell no one what happened here.

That's confounding.

I don't know which ones of Peter, James, and John would have thought this, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine.

One of them thought, what do you mean, don't tell anybody?

This is a story, man.

This is one.

This we could sell seats if we tell this one.

Jesus says, don't tell anyone.

Now, earlier when Jesus heals people, he says, Go and tell everyone you know what I've done for you.

In fact, one man gets healed.

He's supposed to tell everybody he goes about telling, so much so that he becomes a spectacle, remember?

They actually take him from court to court.

Who did this?

You're not the one.

He doesn't look like the same guy that was there every day.

I don't think it's the same guy.

I think it's an imposter.

That guy's life was turned upside down and inside out because everybody was trying to prove or disprove the miracle of his healing.

And his life became a bit of a spectacle in a circus.

He's trotted around and interrogated and used as a pawn by all sides, but Jesus says, not this little girl, not her.

That won't be her life.

His love and grace and compassion to this little girl is he, her father came to me saying, You're the only one.

And now she lives.

Whether we are experiencing the kind of dramatic life conditions that we could, in some way, parallel to the woman on her hands and knees trying to touch the hem of garment, or we find ourselves in some sort of desperate need, feeling, well, I've done all the right things and my life should be better than this, like Jarrus, or that little girl laying all alone in a quiet room, dead, literally dead to the world.

Jesus reaches in to all of those lives, regardless of who they are, regardless of where they're from, regardless of what they have, he does not care about their immutable characteristics, he doesn't care about their socioeconomic status, he doesn't care about their ethnicity, doesn't care about their race, doesn't care about their background, doesn't care about their past.

All he knows is humanity is all judged equally on the basis of their sin and all saved equally on the basis of their faith.

These two individuals come to Jesus believing he was the only answer for what was wrong.

And that faith casts out their fears.

Brothers and sisters, that's the kind of faith that this passage calls us to.

That's what there is to learn from this record.

It's not just a great miracle that we can tell that talks about how great Jesus is.

There's something to be learned here.

In our moments of need, our faith should be called to mind.

We should exercise that kind of faith to feel so compelled to get to Jesus that whatever he decides we need is all we need.

And a very good friend, one of my right hands at the university, who died of cancer.

She was diagnosed with cancer, and two and a half weeks later she was in the presence of the Lord on Easter Sunday morning.

Two weeks in the hospital, that was it.

They gave her experimental chemo treatment, and it was a very brutal her last two weeks were absolutely painful.

Couldn't breathe, couldn't swallow.

Every word she spoke was utterly painful.

I was in the hospital on Good Friday to see her with a friend who of hers who was there.

She took a sip of ice water and it burned her throat going down.

And she stopped herself and said, Jesus, I need a bless.

No.

Jesus, you are my blessing.

See the difference?

Jesus, I need to make this go away.

She reminded herself that Jesus is her portion.

That's the kind of faith that compels us to throw ourselves at his feet, keeping our eyes fixed on the author and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ, no matter what circumstances we are experiencing.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we do give you thanks for your word and for what it records for us to strengthen our faith and to teach us.

We pray that your spirit would use your word to do your work in us.

We pray that this passage from Mark's gospel would speak clearly to us, that our faith would be strengthened, but that that faith might compel us in our hours of need to fight whatever is going on around us, to fall at the feet of our Lord in faith.

The faith that drives out fear.

Give us grace to follow hard after Him.

In this way we pray.

Amen.