Mark 5:25-34 | An Inconvenient Miracle

We are going to play and then I'm going to spend some time unpacking it.

And by God's grace and mercy, we are going to leave here with a resolve to live it.

It's Mark chapter 5, verse 21.

Mark 5:21

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 came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him 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.

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.

Let's pray.

God in heaven, we are in desperate need of your grace and mercy this morning.

We are in need of your grace and mercy that we would have our minds opened to understand what you are saying through your written word here this morning.

We need your help in this.

We can understand it apart from your work in our life.

We also, Lord, need your grace and mercy that this text and what we learn of it would not be mere head knowledge, but would make its way into our hearts, that it would develop into conviction that we would leave here and live it out.

As we see in your word here this morning, we see that there are people who are in desperate need of you from various different backgrounds.

Neither of them have the ability to affect their affliction.

Neither of them have the ability to heal themselves.

Only you, the great physician, has that power.

And Lord, I pray this morning that we would see beyond the physicality of the miracle, that we would see the greater spiritual truth, that it's not about physical healing of affliction, but rather the salvation of souls.

We ask for your help here this morning.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

In 1983, a guy who's much smarter than I am, named Warren Whitehead, published an article about the domino chain reaction.

Have you ever done that?

You set up the dominoes and you just kind of you see how far you can get and you knock them over and they go down one by one.

Well, there's actually an interesting thing that this guy wrote about regarding the domino chain reaction.

You knock over a domino, sets off the chain reaction, but the unique significance of Whitehead's research was discovering that a domino is capable of knocking over another domino that is one and a half times its size.

So a two-inch domino can topple a three-inch domino.

Uh a three-inch domino can topple a four and a half inch domino.

Uh, and four and a half inch domino can topple, I was never good at math, so it it's just a bigger one.

Okay?

Uh by the time you get to the eighteenth domino, you could knock over the leaning tower of Pisa.

Okay?

Now that's that's kind of cheating because it's already leaning.

Um but by the 23rd domino, you could knock over the Eiffel Tower.

And so you have, in effect, this small domino that sets off a much larger chain reaction.

In the realm of mathematics, there's two types of progressions.

Uh there's linear and geometric.

Uh linear progression is two plus two equals.

Okay, all right, well, maybe you need another coffee, we'll ask that question later.

Two plus two equals four.

Geometric progression is compound doubling, okay?

So rather than two plus two equals four, it's two times two equals four, and four times four equals uh sixteen.

If you take 30 linear steps, you're 90 feet from where you started, but if you take 30 geometric steps, you've circled the earth 26 times.

Faith isn't linear, okay?

It may seem linear in that you take one step after the other, but every act of faith has a geometric aspect to it.

It has this compound effect to it.

A chain reaction that sets off things that we would never even imagine if we tried.

And that's exactly what happens in our text this morning.

It starts off in verse 21 with Jesus' response to suffering.

You have Jesus crossing the other side of a lake, of a sea, and when he gets to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him.

Now there's tons of people who are constantly gathering around Jesus, and rightly so.

By this point in Mark, word has gotten out.

He is healing every single type of sickness and disease.

He is telling legions of demons to leave people, and they immediately obey.

You have demons freak out at the sight of Jesus.

Like, Jesus, have you come to destroy us before the time?

Like that's the kind of power that Jesus has.

So people are gathering around Jesus to see what's the deal with this guy?

What are we gonna see?

What are we gonna hear?

And so they're gathering around him.

And in the middle of this crowd, there came one of the rulers of the synagogue, a guy named Jairus.

Jairus, according to Mark and the other gospels, is a ruler of a synagogue.

And what that meant was that he's responsible for organizing and facilitating worship in a local synagogue.

If you couldn't go to the temple in Jerusalem, you met in smaller synagogues, much like we do in churches.

He's kind of somewhat the equivalent of a pastor in that he's facilitating the scriptures readings, who's reading it, the worship, uh, the liturgy, those types of things.

These rulers were often of the Pharisaic tradition, meaning they were part of a religious sect of the Jewish faith that were very devout and held to a very high view of scripture.

They knew their Bible backwards and forwards.

They could quote to you the entire uh entire Psalms just from memory.

Jairus, being a ruler of the synagogue, would have been well-respected in his community, and he would have likely been very wealthy.

And here you have this well-respected, highly religious man.

Again, crowds surrounding Jesus.

In order to get to Jesus, you gotta push and shove your way to get to him.

And you have this highly respected ruler of a synagogue pushing and shoving his way through this crowd to get to Jesus.

And when he gets to Jesus, he drops down at Jesus' feet.

Now, feet back then were nasty.

Feet still are pretty nasty, right?

They're gross.

They smell, okay?

That's not a place you want to be.

You don't want to be around people's feet.

But Jairus, in this act of humility, drops at Jesus' feet and begs him.

It says implore, but it really means beg, plead.

Jairus is begging him.

He says, 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.

Imagine a few scenarios with me, if you will.

I really couldn't help but imagine, because uh I'm I'm a father of four, and my oldest is turning 11 today.

And it's pretty weird because he's in youth group now, and just looking at him the other day, I'm like, man, he is not a baby anymore.

My wife and I were talking about the day we brought him home, the the time where I woke up at 2 in the morning and I was not fully awake, and I took him to the changing table, and he kind of slipped out of my hands and I freaked out because but he landed on the pad, he was safe, okay?

Imagine your child.

You were there at her birth.

You watched her take her first steps.

You you saved her so many times from dangerous situations.

Like parents, you you've saved your children from running out in the road.

You you catch them when they're about to fall.

You work hard to raise her, you've cherished the young lady that she's become as she's entered her 12th year of life, and now she's dying.

She has this disease that you have no ability to affect.

And though you might be wealthy and influential and well respected, all of it means nothing because now your little girl is laying in a bed with a disease and is dying that you cannot change.

You have nothing left.

You've called on the doctors, they have no guesses, they have no cures, they have no remedies.

You have nothing except for that you've heard of this guy named Jesus.

You've heard about his mighty miracles and about how he's healed every kind of sickness imaginable.

He's casted out demons, he's taught with an authority that no one has ever seen or heard before.

Now imagine this: leaving your dying girl's side so that you can go find this Jesus.

This is before the era of Facebook and Twitter.

You don't check in where you're at in first century Palestine.

You have to go find Jesus.

You have to ask around, where is he?

And when you finally see him, you're like, oh man, this is a huge crowd.

How am I ever going to get to him?

Backing up, just speaking from a fatherly perspective, I would have the hardest time leaving my girl's side if she were dying.

I want to be there.

I want her last breath to know that I was there for her.

That I loved her.

I want her to know as she passes into eternity that Daddy was there with her.

Imagine the courage and boldness and the faith that it took for Jairus to leave his daughter's side and go find Jesus.

Desperate.

He has nothing.

And in faith, he leaves his daughter's side to intercede on her behalf.

He goes to Jesus.

I want to just pause real quick and ask parents.

I have a very soft spot for parents because that's that's just that's where I am, and I've realized a lot of my faults and failures in life, and I know I need Jesus more than anything.

Parents, who do we turn to when it comes to the condition of our children?

There's no parenting book on earth that's going to have any type of spiritual lasting effect on your children.

Your child may not be physically sick right now, but the reality is that they suffer from this insidious disease that you have no ability to heal.

And that disease is the disease of sin.

It infects everyone.

From the moment of birth, they are infected with that disease.

Your children don't, uh, they're not sinners because they sin, they sin because they are sinners.

They're born from the moment of conception, they're stricken with this sickness.

I've never taught my children to bite other people or push other people or knock them over when you don't get your way, and yet we see that demonstration when they don't.

Their condition is terminal.

Bible says the wages of sin is death.

Paul writes in Romans, who is going to save us from this body of death?

That's a rhetorical who?

What is going to save your children from the sickness, from their sin?

Not just from bad choices, not just from choosing the wrong college, but who is going to save your children from their greatest need, which is sin?

I want to encourage you this morning, parents.

Jesus responds to Jairus and his plea and his earnest begging of Jesus to come and heal his children.

And some of you might say, Well, my children walked away from the faith a long time ago.

In case you didn't notice, Jairus' daughter is dying.

She's not in great condition.

And maybe your children may not be in great condition, but that doesn't mean you don't stop going and fighting to get time alone with Jesus and pleading with him to intercede on your children's behalf.

The response is not always what we think it will be.

In fact, as we see in the narrative, Jairus begs Jesus to heal his daughter in 22 through 23, in verses 22 through 23.

If you jump ahead to verse 35, Jairus' daughter dies.

Not quite the outcome that Jairus was thinking, right?

And in fact, when news hits him that his daughter is dead, they say, why trouble the teacher anymore?

Why bother?

What's the use?

Jesus' encouragement to them at that moment is do not fear, but believe.

Don't despair, don't give up, don't be afraid.

Believe Jesus.

Believe that he is who he says he is.

Believe that he responds when you go to him on behalf of others.

Believe that he cares for them.

Believe that he alone has the power to save the lost and heal our brokenness.

Believe that he has the power to take those who are dead in their sins and raise them up to new life.

Parents, go to Jesus on behalf of your children.

They don't need the top education.

They don't need sports.

They don't need the greatest college education.

The biggest thing your children need from you is your prayer for them.

Go to Jesus for your children.

Parents, Jesus responds.

Jesus responds to our requests.

Now that's that's enough about Jairus right there because really he's not the focus of this morning.

It's someone else.

And again, like I said, there's a domino effect happening here.

The request of Jairus sets some things in motion that end up affecting other people.

Obviously, something happens between verse 24, where Jesus leaves with Jairus, and verse 36, where they're informed his daughter is dead.

So what happened in the middle?

Well, the second thing we see in this narrative is a woman's courageous act of faith.

Out of nowhere, after verse 24, in the middle, as Jesus is going with Jairus, it says a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

And then all of a sudden, verse 25, 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 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.

Here's a few things we know about this woman who just kind of shows up randomly out of nowhere.

She's not named.

She has no name.

Mark doesn't identify her, Luke doesn't identify her, Matthew doesn't identify her, she has no name.

And it's not that she doesn't have a name, it's just left out.

There's some conclusions that we can draw there.

None of them would be particularly helpful.

Most of them are conjecture.

The next thing we learn about her is that she suffered for 12 years from what is called a discharge of blood.

Now, we have a good uh good guess, okay?

We we can pretty get pretty close to saying that what this discharge of blood was, based on how the particular phrase is worded, the disease that she suffered from, in all likelihood, is causing uncontrollable menstrual bleeding.

And I know it sounds gross and disgusting to talk about here in the middle of the service, but that's where our text is.

Some of the side effects of this type of condition, she would have had severe fatigue.

She would have had constant weakness, shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches.

And not only that, I was consulting with a doctor of our congregation, and he just said, imagine the hygiene of first century and the smell that would have accompanied it.

This would have likely been a byproduct of that first century hygiene.

And not only has she suffered from the condition itself for 12 years, she also suffered under the medical care she received.

John MacArthur writes this in New Testament times, it was common practice in difficult medical cases for people to consult many different doctors and receive a variety of treatments.

The supposed cures were often conflicting, abusive, and many times made the ailment worse, not better.

There was no medical board of ethics during this time.

There were doctors who were looking to expand their prestige by looking at what they could do to try and cure this woman to show how informed they were.

And instead of making things better, made it worse.

As if that wasn't enough.

Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity.

And everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity.

And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening.

In short, your life is defined by being impure, unclean.

It's not enough for her to suffer from the condition itself.

She suffered under people who were supposed to help her.

But rather than help her, they made things worse.

And if that wasn't enough, according to Levitical law, she is unclean.

She is a societal outcast.

No one wants anything to do with her because by association they themselves would be unclean.

You don't touch her, you don't look at her, you stay far away from her lest you become contaminated.

That was this woman's life for 12 years.

Years.

Twelve years.

She is sick.

She's been tortured.

She is alone.

She's a woman who in every respect seems without hope.

Friends, if you are here this morning and you believe yourself to be at the end of your rope and without hope, I want you to look at this woman.

Look at this woman.

It just so happens that this woman hears about a guy named Jesus.

Funny.

Jairus also heard about a guy named Jesus.

This domino chain reaction leads to this woman who heard about a guy named Jesus.

She's heard reports of this Jesus, a man so powerful that he's healed every kind of affliction.

A man so powerful he casts out demons, they obey him.

She heard reports of this Jesus, a man so powerful he commands the wind to stop blowing and the waves to be still, and they obey him.

She's heard reports of this Jesus, a man so powerful that he speaks with the authority of God.

And I'm willing to guess, but by this time, those reports, she's concluded in her mind that this isn't just a man.

He is the promised Messiah, the God man who has come to rescue his people from sin and build his kingdom on earth.

Now, with nothing else to lose, likely towards the end of her life, she sets out to find this Jesus.

And she's actually concluded that he's so powerful that if only he touched, she touches just the farthest fringe of his clothing.

That's what Luke says.

Just the fringe of his garment.

Just the tip of my finger on his clothes.

I will be made well.

What's the result?

What's the result of this hopeless woman who has nothing, who has suffered for many years.

Immediately.

I want you to underline that word in the Bible if you're into that sort of thing, if you're into marking up your Bible, underline that word immediately because there was no pause between her touching Jesus and the healing that occurred that followed.

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

Quite literally, without delay.

What you and I might look at as a small act of faith led to the biggest transformation for this woman.

Imagine that moment, feeling in your body, I am healed.

Not only healed, I'm clean.

I'm no longer impure.

I can talk to people.

I don't have to be sick.

I'm not going to be weak just getting up and going to get something to eat.

I'm not going to be short of breath.

I'm not going to have the constant headaches.

I'm whole.

I am made well.

Her life is completely changed in an instant, all because she had the faith in who Jesus was and what he could do.

We're going to talk some more in a few minutes about the issue of faith.

Before we move on, I want us to notice several things.

I want us to notice the parallel between this woman and Jairus' daughter.

The contrast, this is from Warren Wearsby, contrast between these two needy people is striking and reveals the wideness of Christ's love and mercy.

The woman was an anonymous nobody.

Yet Jesus welcomed and helped them both.

Jairus was about to lose a daughter who had given him 12 years of happiness, and the woman was about to lose an affliction that had brought her 12 years of sorrow.

Being a synagogue officer, Jairus was no doubt wealthy, but his wealth could not save his dying daughter.

The woman was already bankrupt.

She had given the doctors all of her money, and yet none of them could cure her.

Both Jairus and the poor woman found answers to their needs at the feet of Jesus.

I love this because it reveals, regardless of your background, eventually you find yourself in need of Jesus.

And Jesus is not discriminatory on who you are.

He welcomes all people.

His compassion does not know boundaries.

His compassion is not limited within a particular demographic, regardless of how wealthy you are or how poor you are, what your family background is, it doesn't matter.

Whatever your need is, you can go to Jesus.

Jesus is who both of these people went to.

You see, you and I, as I said earlier, with regards to our children, you and I are stricken with the disease of sin.

And by implication, we are made unclean before a holy God.

God looks at you and your sin and sees you as unclean.

And because he is infinitely holy, he cannot associate himself with uncleanliness, with impurity, with sin.

You and I, in a spiritual sense, are in the exact same boat as this woman.

What are we to do?

I'm not going to lie, I'm very repetitive.

I'm not ashamed of it.

What are we to do?

We're to go to Jesus.

Go to Jesus in faith.

He has the power to make our sickened souls well.

He has the power to bring dead people to life.

It doesn't matter how much you failed, it doesn't matter how much you've sinned.

God's grace and power is infinitely greater.

As we look to wrap some things up, I want to change gears just a bit.

He wants to look at an interesting exchange between Jesus and the disciples.

Again, this woman touches Jesus.

She's made well.

Jesus perceives in himself that power had gone out from him.

It's not like he had lost power, like he got weak all of a sudden, like, oh, somebody touched me, okay?

Jesus just knows.

Okay?

You can't come in contact with Jesus, and Jesus doesn't know.

And so Jesus turns, he stops.

He stops what he's doing and he says, Who touched my garments?

Who touched me?

Now, parents, you might understand this kind of question.

It's not as if Jesus doesn't know, okay?

It's the kind of question that I ask when I sit down on my couch after a long day and I see socks, dirty socks, with pink unicorns on them, who only fit certain feet in my house.

And I pick them up and say, oh kids, whose socks are these?

Right?

I already know whose socks they are.

I know who belong.

They left their shoes right there, okay?

I know exactly whose shoes they are, too.

I know whose they are.

Jesus is asking a question to elicit a response.

Who touched my garments?

And based on the woman's reaction later, she seems to hear Jesus' response of who touched my garments, but that's not my point.

Jesus stops and he's looking for this woman, but notice the reaction of the disciples.

They say, Who touched my garments?

Here's an opportunity for the disciples to say, I don't know, Jesus.

You want us to find them?

Let's join you in your work in finding somebody.

If it's important to you, Jesus, it's important to us.

But rather, there's indifference in their voice.

It's almost like they're impatient with him.

I mean, remember, they're on their way to see a bona fide miracle, another one.

They're gonna go see a little girl be made well from a highly respected religious leader.

And Jesus is stopping the bus saying, Who touched me?

Jesus, do you not see the crowd surrounding you?

Like, come on, Jesus?

You're supposed to be God?

I mean, do you not know?

Do you not see?

Everybody's around you.

Lots of people have touched you.

Notice how that doesn't stop Jesus.

And here's a missed opportunity for God's people.

When God is actively seeking out people, we can be indifferent to those people.

Might just be another name in a crowd to them, but it's someone important to Jesus.

And I hope that's a lesson for God's people.

Let us not be indifferent to the people that God is trying to reach.

Let us not look at guests and visitors with a scornful eye or an indifferent attitude, but rather join with God in his desire and mission to save all people.

There's indifference in their voice, and that doesn't stop Jesus.

He goes and he seeks this woman out.

He looks around to see who did it.

Again, it's not that Jesus doesn't know, but it's like trying to find this woman and she's trying to hide and it's not working because she realizes, verse 33, the woman, knowing what had happened to her, she came in fear and tribbling and fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.

Now remember, she was unclean according to Jewish law.

If Jesus were at the very least a prophet of God, touching him by implication would have made him unclean.

I'd imagine there'd be great fear and tribbling in this woman because she did something that was completely unimaginable.

She touched something that was holy while she herself was unclean.

And she confessed everything, not knowing what Jesus' response would be.

Look at this beautiful statement of verse 43.

This nameless woman who has lived in the corners and in the shadows of society and suffered for many years, I'd imagine for the first time is looked straight in the eyes by Jesus himself.

And says, daughter.

Daughter.

Not woman.

Not an impure one.

Daughter.

Your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your disease.

Your faith has made you well.

Or rather, better according to the Greek word there, it's your faith has led to the word is salvation, which leads me to believe that Jesus is not just referring to a physical act.

It's not that your faith has led merely to a physical salvation, it's something much bigger than that.

Your faith has made you well in a way that transcends any type of physical healing.

It's a type of faith that gets to the crux of the matter.

The reason this woman is sick is because of sin.

It's not that this woman did something in order to incur that disease, but because we live in a sinful world, people get sick.

What we need ultimate deliverance from is not the disease.

We need deliverance from sin.

Jesus looks this woman in the eye and he says, daughter, your faith has saved you.

And that's the offer for you here this morning.

Even for you, Christian, if you're struggling in sin, if you're having hard times getting into the word, or if you're having a hard time fighting your sin, it is not your work that is going to muster up some sort of strength to fight it.

It is by faith that you are saved, not of your works.

There are works that accompany our faith.

This woman didn't just have an idea of Jesus, a belief in Jesus that caused her to sit at home and say, Well, I believe in Jesus.

It was a type of faith that compelled her to go to Jesus.

And that's exactly what our faith does.

It compels us to go to Jesus.

I want to invite you to come to Jesus here this morning.

Whether you've been walking with the Lord your whole life or never at all.

Maybe it's the first time you've heard this.

Let me encourage you, friend, come to Jesus and He will heal the greatest need that you have ever had.

That guilty conscience you carry with you.

You might try, like this woman, to hire out all sorts of remedies to soothe that conscience of yours, but the reality is it's going to make matters worse and not better.

Only Jesus has the remedy for your soul.

Come to him this morning.

Come to Jesus in faith.

Trust him with your life.

Believe not only in who he is, but believe him for what he says.

Believe him for what he's done.

That while you and I were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

That while you and I were walking in our sin, Christ 2,000 years ago took your sin upon himself.

He went to a cross, and on that cross, he didn't just die a physical death.

He bore the wrath of God that both you and I deserve.

And he paid that penalty in full.

And he buried it in a tomb and rose again so that everyone who has faith in Christ can have new life, can be made whole, can be made clean before a holy God.

Will you trust Him with your life here this morning?

Let's pray.

God, I ask that you would help us.

Help me.

Help me and guard me from thinking better of myself than I actually am.

Help me to see myself as someone who has absolutely no hope apart from Jesus.

Because when I am in that place, I am willing to step out of faith and go to him.

I pray this morning, Lord, that we would be so bold, that we would have faith as small as a mustard seed to come to you this morning, to confess our sins to you, and receive the forgiveness that you offer.

We pray this in five days.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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