"The Gospel Makes You Live" Matthew 9:18-26 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 9, verses 18 down all the way through verse 26.

Matthew 9:18

This is one of the most well-known encounters of Jesus' ministry, and it really is a story of two women and two miracles.

One woman rich, the other poor.

One from a powerful family, the other in poverty and anonymous.

One elite and the other forgotten.

One who was doted on in her sickness, and the other one who was abandoned in hers.

One who had the personal and financial connections to summon Jesus to her bedside.

And the other who had to sneak up on Jesus from behind.

One was a child, the other an outcast, one twelve years old, and the other had been suffering for twelve years.

And yet both of these really opposite personalities collide here as Jesus encounters them both in quick succession.

Now, this is the story of, of course, of the synagogue ruler who comes to Jesus and begs for help healing his 12-year-old daughter.

And on the way, Jesus heals a different woman.

It's told differently by Mark, Luke, and Matthew.

Mark dwells on the details with the longest of all the accounts, gives you their names and ages.

Luke dwells in the medical perception of it.

Luke, of course, was a doctor himself, and Luke ironically highlights how doctors were unable to help these people.

Matthew skips all those details because Matthew just gets right to the chase.

Matthew's main argument here is that Jesus has the authority to preach a new gospel.

That he began preaching his message in the Sermon on the Mount, that he has challenged everything the Jewish leaders had taught.

He had told everybody if you believe what the Jewish leaders taught, you're looking at the world upside down.

He rebuked the Jewish leaders, told everybody if you follow them, you're like the foolish man, you build your house in the sand.

He turns the world right side up by giving a new way to understand God, a new definition of righteousness, a new way to approach the Savior.

Now, this is only new if you're unfamiliar with the prophecies of the Old Testament about the Savior, as of course the Jewish synagogue leaders and the Pharisees and those who sat under their teaching were.

And so Jesus is given one miracle after another to show that he has the authority to say the things that he said, that he has the authority to do the things that he's doing, and that he has the authority to preach a new gospel to the world.

This exchange here, these encounters with these two different women, if you take it together, it gives you, I think, a very powerful picture of the authority of Jesus and a powerful picture of what it means to bring a new gospel to the world.

Let me give you your outline this morning.

Three pictures of Jesus' authority to preach the new gospel in this world.

Three pictures of Jesus' authority to preach the gospel.

I view these two narratives as kind of a beginner's introduction to the gospel here.

We're going to begin with our first encounter here, which teaches us about God's compassion.

God's compassion.

Verse 18, while he was saying these things to them, Jesus is speaking here.

He's speaking in Matthew's house.

If you remember the scene, we looked at it a few weeks ago.

Jesus had done one miracle after another.

He had claimed the authority to forgive sins, and then he used that authority to forgive Matthew of Matthew's sins.

Matthew was a sinner, he was a tax collector, he was the worst of the worst.

In the Jewish mind, he was unclean, he was an outcast, he was a traitor, he had been using his Jewish connections to extort the Jewish people, to fleece Rome's pockets.

That's who Matthew was.

He is not worthy of salvation, and no rabbi or no self-respecting Jew should ever have a conversation with him.

And yet Jesus approaches him and summons him and makes him a disciple.

And from that exchange, Matthew goes to his house.

Matthew invites his friends, also sinners and tax collectors, because those are the only friends that would hang out with Matthew.

And they too become disciples of Jesus.

And they are throwing what I described a few weeks ago as a party in Matthew's house.

It's the church equivalent of a baptismal party.

They are celebrating their newfound relationship with Jesus Christ.

And if you recall, you have the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist and the religious leaders, the Sadducees and the synagogue rulers all on the outside looking in, wagging their fingers, wagging their tongues, really upset with Jesus for eating with sinners and tax collectors.

They demand answers.

How come he's not fasting like they're supposed to fast?

How come he's celebrating and they're not?

Aren't they the religious ones?

And why is he with sinners?

How could anybody be foolish enough to think he's the savior?

That's the scene.

And they demand Jesus come outside and answer for himself, which Jesus refuses to do.

He's still in the celebration.

And yet, now in verse 18, a new person arrives.

And while this is happening, a ruler, it's a synagogue ruler, somebody who leads the synagogue in the town.

He comes in, having to push his way through the crowd, certainly, and he kneels before Jesus in the house.

Now, this on its own would be outrageous.

It's a synagogue leader, a synagogue ruler who would be visibly recognizable to everybody in town.

This is the equivalent of a famous person in the Roman Empire, right here.

This is somebody you would know.

And he pushes his way into the room through all the Pharisees, through all the other synagogue rulers that won't let anybody in, that are upset that this whole thing is even happening.

They would never darken Matthew's doorstep.

Nobody who's holy would ever go in there.

And here comes this guy right on in.

Around, bursting into the dining room, surrounded by all these sinners and tax collectors that are having a celebration, and the synagogue ruler comes in and kneels at Jesus' feet.

Well, nobody in this room has ever seen anything like this before.

That's for sure.

And he begins pleading with Jesus.

My daughter has just died.

And that phrase for just died, it's an idiom.

It could be translated, she's at death's door.

We know from Mark and Luke's account that she has not died yet.

In fact, the story is even sadder than it makes it sound right here, where she's just died.

The truth is the father was staying at his daughter's bedside until she was about to die.

He was trying to encourage her and comfort her and you know, praying for her restoration to health, and she keeps getting worse, she keeps getting worse.

And of course, the father doesn't want to leave her bedside, but now she is just about to die, and so it's time for a last ditch effort.

The father leaves to go seek out Jesus.

That's what he's doing.

He cuts across town, pushes his way into this house, falls at Jesus' feet.

When he left the daughter, she was on death's door.

She's almost dead, would be the idea.

She's just about there.

And he begs and says, Come lay your hand on her, and she will live.

He begs her.

Now, this is a remarkable scene in the Jewish world because the rich and the powerful are rich and powerful because they're righteous.

And they should not be experiencing this kind of physical suffering.

That goes against the grain of the Jewish worldview.

But here's a synagogue leader who should be immune from this, whose daughter is dying.

This teaches you the basic point of the rich and poor, the owners and the workers, the fathers and daughters, they all die.

Death comes to everyone.

J.C.

Ryle said about this passage: quote, We often talk as if the possession of riches was the great antidote to sorrow, as if money could secure us from sickness and death.

There is far more equality in the portions appointed to men than at first sight appears.

And this narrative is going to underline that point over and over again.

His daughter is dying, his money can't buy her help, and so he seeks out Jesus.

Verse 19 says, Jesus rose and followed him.

Now, we are often confused by the intersection of God's sovereignty and human suffering.

We understand that God is sovereign over suffering, and you have to believe that, otherwise, you wouldn't pray in light of human suffering.

You pray in light of human suffering because you know that God is sovereign over it.

He can do something about it.

But that then leads to confusion in our hearts because if God is sovereign over it, does that mean that suffering is according to his nature, that he wants us to suffer?

And that leads often to fatalism.

People who say, oh, someone's suffering, sirah, sirah, you know, whatever.

God's in charge and they're going through difficulty.

It must be his will for them to suffer like that.

I like that this synagogue leader teaches you kind of a balance in this.

He understands that God is sovereign over his daughter's suffering.

Otherwise, he wouldn't be going to Jesus.

If Jesus wasn't in control of it, then why would he appeal to him for help from it?

Yet at the same time, he knows that he's banking on really it not being Jesus' will that his daughter suffer and die.

It not being what his plan A.

If God is compassionate and gracious, this ruler is thinking, then certainly he will help my daughter if I can only make an appeal to his face.

Notice that he does not go to the devil.

He does not plead with demons here.

And that's because even a base non-believer understands that sickness and sin and suffering and sorrow, that's from the devil.

Sin enters into the world through Adam's transgression.

Sickness comes through sin.

When God encounters those who are sick, he extends compassion.

Now God is overarching the whole world.

He uses sin and suffering and cancer and sorrow for his glory and for our good.

He uses them for sure.

It is not always his will to heal.

Yet you have to understand a basic part of your theology in dealing with human suffering in the world is that suffering is brought by sin.

There was no suffering in the Garden of Eden.

Suffering has the fingerprints of sin all over it.

And the fingerprints of sin and God's fingerprints are not the same fingerprints.

And so here this ruler appeals to God.

And what is equally remarkable about this is that God then, through Jesus here, responds.

The Pharisees and John the Baptist disciples, they couldn't wrestle Jesus out of this party.

They couldn't get him to leave this festival, this celebration.

But this suffering father, Jesus responds to him, even though he is a synagogue ruler.

He's not there in his capacity as a synagogue ruler.

He's not there with his hat and his tassels and commanding Jesus with religious authority to get out of there.

He's there as a broken and desperate man, pleading with this last resort, the Lord incarnate.

And Jesus responds and goes.

I hope you appreciate from this.

The first step of understanding the gospel here is to understand that God is a compassionate God, that it is his desire to save, that it is his desire to rescue, it is God's desire to be a savior.

He responds according to his nature.

He is not reluctantly pried out, he doesn't have to be talked into this.

It is in the heart of Jesus Christ because it is in the heart of God to respond to those who are suffering.

God is a savior.

He has compassion.

He is not a reluctant savior.

You don't have to elicit tears from him.

He responds willingly to those who are suffering, to those who cry to him.

Now, this passage is going to go on to make a broader point about sin.

We'll see that in a second.

But your entry point here into understanding the gospel is that you are also sin sick.

You are also terminal.

You're also on death's door, so to speak.

You might not be showing signs right now, but believe me, you're going to die.

I'm glad you're sitting down for me to break that news to you.

And after death, the judgments.

You die, and then the judgments.

That's the way the world works.

It is God who knows the hour of your death.

You don't.

But appreciate that when you die and stand before God for judgment, you will not be able to give an account for your sin.

And yet God shows compassion to you.

He shows compassion to you.

Specifically, he shows compassion to you through Jesus Christ.

And that's what you encounter here.

Understand that even though you're lost in your sin, God is still a compassionate God.

He has unparalleled power and unparalleled pity.

And he extends that to those in need.

That's our first building block here, our first picture of the gospel through this exchange is Jesus' compassion.

But it goes on to the sinner's conversion.

Jesus' compassion yields to the sinner's conversion here.

Jesus arose and followed him, verse 19 says, with his disciples.

That could just be the twelve, but chapter 10 is going to use the word the apostles to cover the twelve.

So it could be a bigger crowd, which would be quite the entourage.

Mark lets you know that there's hundreds, if not thousands, of people pressing against Jesus in this exchange here.

So it's likely all the tax collectors who have recently been converted and sinners who have recently been converted are parading with Jesus across the town over towards the synagogue ruler's house.

There's a massive crowd.

The crowd only grows, remember?

It was just earlier where the crowd was so thick outside the house nobody else could get through.

They had to saw the hole in the roof.

I mean, if you remember that.

I mean, there's a massive crowd around Jesus pressing in on him from every side.

He's making his way.

Again, Mark and Luke let you know there's haste involved, that he's trying to get there before the girl dies.

There's an urgency.

If they had lights and sirens back then, they'd be activated as he's racing across town to get to the girl who's about to die.

But on the way, verse 20, behold, remember that's Matthew's way of saying, you're not going to believe what happens next.

A woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment.

Leviticus 12 and Leviticus 15 both say that if a woman is suffering from a discharge of blood, that she is unclean, and that anyone she touches is unclean, and she's unclean for seven days, and there has to be a sacrifice at the end of it to demonstrate her cleanliness.

So she is designated as unclean, she's not fit to be in the synagogue, she's not fit to be in temple worship, and she's been that way for 12 years.

She is the picture of an outcast.

Luke fills in more details about her that she's been suffering for 12 years, it's been bleeding, it's been endured by doctors who just make her situation worse.

She's declared bankruptcy to buy new doctors, and they, the new ones haven't been able to help, and so now she's poor and helpless.

She's all alone in the world.

She's practically a refugee.

No one can touch her, no one can be near her.

She's living like a refugee, blocks from her home.

It's a very sad situation.

She's likely disguised, or she's wearing a covering over her head, so people don't recognize her.

And she is just like Yarius, the synagogue leader, she is pushing her way through the crowd.

Yarius had to push his way to get into Jesus' or to get into Matthew's house.

She too is following his footsteps.

She's pushing her way through the crowd.

And remember, everybody she touches would then be defiled.

She pushes her way through the crowd.

Nobody knows who she is or recognizes her, wrangling her way to Jesus because she's unclean.

Now she is a sinner.

Her sin is not what's making her unclean.

This is the point of Leviticus 12 through 15.

That things you can't control do defile you.

You are unclean because you are a sinner.

You're living in a sin-filled world and you're defiled by your own human nature, you're defiled.

Because of the fall.

It's not that your particular sin makes you defiled in this particular way.

The whole point of that section of Leviticus is that things you cannot control defile you.

Welcome to being a human being.

This is a messy world, and we sin and we're culpable for our sin, but we also experience sickness and suffering and defilement for things that we don't control and that we're not morally responsible.

And that's the case with this woman.

She is not morally responsible for her bleeding.

Yet she is unclean.

And anyone she touches would be unclean.

That is a picture from the book of Leviticus about the nature of sin.

It corrupts us, it defiles us, it makes us unable to approach God.

She, in a very practical and physical way, cannot go to the synagogue.

She cannot go to the temple.

She's unable to worship according to the Torah.

She is cut off.

And yet she, like the synagogue ruler, is at the end of her rope, and it's time for her last ditch effort.

Like the synagogue ruler, she places her faith in Jesus' ability to heal.

Look what she says.

In verse 22, or verse 21.

She's saying to herself in her mind, if I only touch his garments, I will be made well.

That word for touch is the word for cling, which makes sense because the word for garment is the word for tassel.

It's describing the don't picture Jesus wearing just like a normal robe like in the you know children's Bibles.

He's likely wearing a rabbi's robe, which has the tassels at the end of it.

Most Jewish men would have tassels somewhere on them, but Jesus would probably have had his on the edge of his robe.

And this woman is thinking, if only I can grab onto his tassel and hold on to the tassel of his robe, then my sickness will go away.

Then I can be clean, then I can go worship.

That's what is going on in her mind.

So don't picture she's trying to touch.

She's trying to hold on to Jesus.

Now she can probably get away with it because there are a thousand people pressing against Jesus right here.

In Mark's gospel, it makes it sound almost comical how many people are pushing against him.

And she is, I don't know if she's crawling or what's happening, but she gets under and through everybody and grabs on to the tassel.

Again, an outrageous scene.

I don't know if she thinks that touching the tassel will heal her or if that will force Jesus to turn around and address her.

I don't really know.

The text doesn't say which one she was banking on, but neither happened because instead she grabs the tassel and it says that she feels a change.

This is in Luke's gospel.

She feels a change inside of her.

As soon as she grabs the tassel, she feels different immediately.

Meanwhile, Jesus, Mark says, felt power go out of him.

I don't even know what that means.

And he stops and turns around and says, Who touched me?

And you remember the disciples' response?

They start laughing and say, There's a thousand people pressing against you, and you want to know who touched you?

And the girl, remember, she runs away.

She's afraid.

And Jesus summons her and says, Oh no, you don't.

Get back here.

And she comes back again because she's afraid.

She's unclean.

She's not allowed to touch people, and now the rabbi is calling her out and bringing her front in the center.

She thinks probably to shame her.

Who knows what is going through her mind?

But you know what's going through Jesus' mind.

So far, the synagogue leader, he has been the picture of faith in the story.

But Jesus is not going to let that stand.

He's not going to use the Jewish synagogue leader as the picture of saving faith.

Rather, on his way to his house, he's going to summon this girl.

Again, like Matthew, the unclean of the unclean, unclean for 12 years.

You can't touch her.

She can't worship.

He's going to bring her front and center and have her be the picture of what saving faith looks like.

She comes forward.

Verse 22 picks up in Matthew.

Jesus sees her and says, Take heart, daughter.

A New Testament phrase only used for believers, by the way, from Jesus here.

He's speaking to her because she's converted now.

Your faith has made you well.

That word for made well, it's not the word for you know healthy, it's the word so-zo is the Greek word, salvation.

Your faith has saved you, is what it says.

This is the declaration.

It's the word the New Testament uses in Romans and James both for salvation being through faith.

Jesus looks at her and tells her, your faith has saved you.

Now she feels physically different.

That's not what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus is saying her faith has removed the penalty of her sins from her.

She is converted.

This is an outrageous thing to say.

Keep in mind, firstly, they're living in a world where nobody is cured of illnesses.

Nobody's cured of illnesses.

There wasn't a cure for diseases until the 1800s.

Doctors didn't have the ability to understand the pathology of disease until like the 1840s.

So keep in mind, with both the girl dying at home and this woman with blood, there is no hope of a physical cure.

You get sick and you die.

That's what happens living in this kind of sinfallen world.

But this woman grabs the tassel, feels healed on the inside, and then Jesus says, Your faith has Saved you.

Your faith has saved you.

And then tells her to go away.

In Mark's gospel, he says, shalom to her.

Go in peace.

Understand, this is a picture of conversion.

When a person puts their faith in Jesus' ability to save, they are transformed and they are saved.

This is not teaching that if you have faith, your sicknesses will be removed.

Of course not.

It's not teaching that if you have enough faith, Jesus will heal your physical diseases.

It's teaching that if you have faith in Jesus as the Savior sent from God, as the Messiah, as the one who has the authority to preach this kind of gospel, that your sins will be forgiven of you.

That's what happens to her.

Physical illness is not in focus here.

What's in physical illness is what drove her to the Savior, but that's not how the Savior responds.

He responds to her by removing her sins from her, and her faith has made her well.

And you don't have to guess about it.

That's what Jesus says.

Your faith has healed you.

Your faith has made you well.

Like the demoniac, like the paralytic lowered to the roof.

And it's been so clear with all of these exchanges we've seen in this section of Matthew, when Jesus says that phrase to people, he's not talking about their physical sin.

And to drive that point home, the start of Matthew 9, remember, he reverses it and says, Your sins are forgiven.

Oh yeah, now pick up your mat and walk.

The point is that when Jesus uses this language, you're converted.

So your introduction to the gospel here, that God is compassion towards sinners, that God is compassionate and extends his compassion towards sinners in Jesus Christ.

When sinners who recognize their lost condition, who recognize that they deserve death, who recognize they have no hope to save them in and of themselves, cry out to Jesus Christ and place their faith in him for salvation.

You reach out and you grab hold of his tassel, you cling on to him, that is saving faith.

And your faith removes the penalty of sins from you.

You are adopted into the family of God.

You become a son or daughter of the Lord.

Here's this woman who came to him broken, rejected, unclean, and separated from God, and she leaves him healthy, accepted, clean, and reconciled to God with a life of ministry in front of her.

That's this scene.

She becomes the picture of saving faith.

And I love that this all three Gospels record these events the same way.

That he's on his way to help the synagogue leader's daughter.

He encounters this woman, makes her the picture of faith before he carries on.

What an example.

Well, the third component of the gospel here, you see Jesus' compassion, the sinner's conversion, and thirdly, you see the saints' resurrection.

The saints' resurrection.

Jesus keeps going.

Mark and Luke lets you know that at this point, the synagogue ruler's servants arrive and they tell Jesus and Yarus that your daughter's dead.

Leave the teacher alone.

Your daughter died while you were gone.

And in Mark's gospel, there's a note of derision in it.

They're upset that Jesus delayed.

They're upset that Jesus stopped and ministered to this woman.

And they're upset even at the they're mocking the synagogue leader for thinking Jesus could help.

I mean, come on.

I could picture a poor person or a leper reaching out to Jesus for help, but you're a self-respecting synagogue leader.

Are you kidding me?

You're gonna go to Matthew's house to ask the Savior, and of course it didn't work.

Obviously, it didn't work.

Of course your daughter is dead.

I hope you learned your lesson.

Let the so-called teacher go his own way.

That's the conversation that happens in Mark's gospel.

And Mark and Jesus responds to him by saying, just have faith.

In other words, don't worry.

Hold on to your faith.

And Matthew picks it up here.

In verse 23, Jesus kept going to the ruler's house.

In other words, they've already heard she's dead and he's going to keep going.

They arrive at the house and they saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion.

Now you wouldn't understand this because you haven't been to a Jewish funeral in the ancient Near East or something.

Their funerals are very different than ours.

Ours are sunglasses and black suits and black ties and maybe boxes of Kleenex.

We put boxes of Kleenex in the front pews right here.

So if you're crying, you can, you know, dab your eyes and tactfully blow your nose, and it's quiet hugs and solitude, and you wander across the hallway for you know snacks in the atrium, and then you drive with your headlights on to the graveside.

That's the way our funerals go.

The most noise you'll see there might be a military band, you know, playing there.

That's an extreme funeral.

That's not the way Jewish funerals went.

Jewish funerals, first of all, you needed flute players and the Jewish law actually said for every funeral, even for a poor person, you need two flute players and at least one wailing woman.

No wailing men need to ply.

These are professional wailers.

You need two of the flute players at least because their notes are supposed to be uh discordant.

They're supposed to clash, they're supposed to have a sound of dissonance to it.

I have some homeschooling daughters right now, and they're learning to play the recorder.

I know how horrible one of them can sound.

Now imagine two of them together making a cacophony of noise, and now you've got a you know, wailing and weeping and shrieking woman behind these two flute battles going on, screaming and mourning, and they're not, they don't even know the person who died.

They're professionals.

They hover around.

I mean, I think Friday afternoons when people go to the mosque, they park in the parking lot there, and the tow truck drivers are hovering around to tag their cars and yank them away as soon as they park in McDonald's spots and run over the mosque tow truck.

These guys are like sharks circling around.

There could be a tangent here about you guys parking in the McDonald's lot on Sundays, but they haven't towed us yet, I guess.

These mourners are like that.

They're circling around.

They hear that there's someone dying in the house.

And they start circling around, waiting for the word to come from the window.

She's dead, and they pounce.

You know, the first ones to play are the ones that get paid.

The woman starts wailing and shrieking.

The crowd grows.

Yarius is not poor, so he's gonna have way more than two, by the way.

And now Jesus, with this band of misfit, sinners and tax collectors and apostles, rolls up on the scene with this broken father, the newly healed woman.

I mean, this would be quite the parade.

And he comes and encounters the flute players, and look at what he says.

He says to them, verse 24, go away.

For the girl is not dead but sleeping.

Has that ever worked with a tow truck driver, by the way?

Just go away.

It's not illegal, it's legal.

I declare it.

Go away.

It's not gonna work with professional mourners.

Jesus says, go away.

And they laugh, it says.

Verse 24, they laughed at him.

I mean, that's quite funny for them.

They're professional mourners who are laughing.

I mean, this scene keeps getting more and more ironic, doesn't it?

The mourners are laughing at the funeral.

Only Jesus can do that.

They have seen the body.

Jesus has not.

Jesus doesn't arrive and walk in and teck the pulse and say she's not dead.

He says so from the courtyard.

He hasn't even seen her yet, and he's kicking out the mourners.

The whole thing is ridiculous.

They've got their dirge and their dance, it's a doleful commentary on how they view death.

They don't even know her in their mourning.

Meanwhile, Jesus says she's not dead, but sleeping.

The girl's death is real but temporary.

Jesus is not delusional.

He's not saying she hasn't died.

He's just saying the death might be real, but don't call it death.

It's only for a little while.

It has more in common with a nap than it does with a grave.

Because I'm going to go wake her up.

The New Testament picks up on this, by the way, and uses this language to define death throughout the New Testament.

When Christians die, they go to sleep in Jesus.

They're only dead for a little while.

Your body goes in the ground, and Jesus is going to come back and raise it right up.

That's what's going to happen.

And that's what Jesus does here.

Look, the crowd had been put outside, verse 25.

The other gospels let you know Jesus throws them out of the house.

I don't know how he threw them out of the house, but he just cleansed the temple a few years ago, so he can figure out how to do it.

He gets them all kicked out of the house, which is an act of kindness to this girl, by the way, because imagine being resurrected and waking up and seeing all these mourners around you wailing and shrieking.

I mean, it would scare you half to death.

You get what you pay for.

Jesus throws them all outside, he goes in, he takes the girl by the hand, and the girl arose.

Mark lets you know that he says to her, he takes her by the hand, he says to her, Talatha kum, which means in Aramaic, little girl, wake up.

Little girl, sit up.

That's what you might say to your daughter.

You know, we go through through night church, I wake my youngest up from her nap to get her ready for night church, and we go through the progression.

You know, the first one is, hey sweet Geneva, would you please wake up?

The next one we turn on the lights, you know.

Twenty minutes later I'm throwing the cat at her.

You know, there's a progression.

Jesus just grabs her hand and says, Little girl, wake up.

Now, this is not the first resurrection in the Bible, of course.

In fact, this is almost identical to how Elijah and Elisha raised servants' child from the dead, servants' children from the dead.

But they did it with such panic, do you remember?

Elijah leans over the boy and is, you know, doing like waving his arms and his legs and breathing on his face and crying out to God and just begging God, please, God, it doesn't make sense for this boy to die.

You have to hear me, you have to hear me.

What will people think?

You've got to hear me, and just crying out in his anger at God.

And if you know the story, I mean, this was a huge deal in Elijah's life, that the person who let him stay with him, this son died.

I mean, this is huge.

And Elijah's begging and crying out to God and just, it seems like smothering this child, trying to get him to resurrect.

That's very different than how Jesus does it, isn't it?

There's no panic here.

There's no smothering the child, there's no breathing, trying to breathe your own life into him.

Jesus just grabs her hand and says, Little girl, let's wake up.

And she comes back to life.

She sits up.

Luke lets you know that they fed her lunch then.

They gave her food.

That shows you that her resurrection is real.

She's not a ghost.

She comes back to life.

Now, do you appreciate for a second that nothing that has happened to this girl is any different than what will happen to you if you believe in Jesus Christ.

That you will die, your body will go into the grave, your soul will be with the Lord, and then Jesus will reach into the grave and pull your body back to this world.

Your soul he will bring with him in the air, and your soul and your body will be reunited.

That will happen to every person who has faith in Jesus Christ.

That's why for every one of us, death is only a nap.

It does have more in common with sleep than it does with the non-believers' idea of the grave.

You know, at the non-believing funeral, it's a final goodbye.

It's we're never gonna see each other again.

It's just so sad and sorrowful compared to the believer's funeral, where you're sad.

I mean, that's the interesting thing.

You're you're so sad for the woman who's left behind, for the widow who's left behind, you're sad for her because she's gonna live the next few years of her life, however long they might be without her husband.

That's what you're sad for.

You're not sad for the guy in the grounds, you know he's in glory.

You're not sad ultimately for the woman because you know they'll be, they'll they'll see each other again.

You're just sad for that time in between.

It breaks your heart.

But how different is that from the non-believer's funeral?

Where there's just mourning, and you know it's you're never gonna see that person again.

That's it.

It's all over.

Jesus here is letting you know that if you're lost in your sin, God shows compassion through Jesus Christ to you.

If you place your faith in Jesus Christ as the one who suffers on the cross and dies for your sin and rises from the grave on the third day, your sins are forgiven.

And if that is true of you, that when you die, the Lord will reach into the grave and bring your body back to life.

Clearly, this is a declaration of the deity of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 2, verse 6, Yahweh kills and Yahweh makes alive.

1 Samuel 2:6

Yahweh brings the shield and he raises up.

Only God can do this.

And here Jesus does it, and he does it with ease.

The story proves that Hannah is right, that God can bring the dead back to life, and it proves that Jesus has the authority to preach this new gospel to the world.

The crowd, of course, leaves.

In Mark's gospel, Jesus tells them, don't say anything about this to anyone.

All the mourners are outside, and the 12-year-old walks out and says, You can go now.

I mean, are they not supposed to say anything to anyone?

Again, Matthew skips that part and just tells you verse 26, which I think is funny in light of Mark's version.

The report of this went through all that district.

Everybody heard about this.

Of course they heard about this.

Jesus raised the girl from the dead.

What's incredible about it is the picture of saving faith is not even in the girl.

It's in the first woman that he encountered.

As I mentioned, this is a story of opposites.

Two mourners, one rich and one poor, one powerful, one powerless, one with a 12-year-old daughter who's dying, the other dying for twelve years.

But both have faith, the only kind of faith that matters, and it's the kind of faith that reaches to Jesus, and Jesus in turn shows them that with faith in him, death is but a phantom, it's just a shadow.

It'll pass over you for a moment, and then it will be gone.

Who reaches into the grave.

Even figuratively speaking, we're born in this world and our souls are in darkness, our spirits and shadows chained to sin, and yet the work of the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and brings us to life.

What a joy it is to have a relationship with you, a relationship of life, not of death.

We know you're the God of the living, not the God of the dead.

So we're thankful that you're the Lord of resurrection.

I pray for anyone here who has never put their faith in you, who's never trusted that you are the Lord of life, who's never believed that you're the one who died to bear the penalty for their sin.

I pray that today they would believe that.

Today they would see Jesus, the one who leaves a celebration to minister to a grieving father, the one who stops his procession to minister to a broken woman, the one who's not intimidated by noise and volume and death and mourning and grief and suffering, but who just pierces right through it all into the grave to bring us to life.

That's the Jesus we believe in.

We're grateful for him this morning.

In his name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.