The Tale of Two Daughters

Hey, what's up everybody?

Welcome.

I want to say, yeah, go ahead and welcome each other.

I want to say hello to everybody here live in person, everybody who's watching live online or whenever you might be getting this.

I hope you felt the love today.

I hope when you walked in you could feel uh just the fact that we're glad you're here.

And uh even within this video, you know, our our hope is that nobody goes alone, that everybody has community, has the support that you need, and that our church isn't just gathering people for a monologue or a worship set, but that we're actually doing life together.

And you'll find over the course of really authentic relationships, man, there are sometimes you need to lean on folks, and there are other times that uh you need to be that one that folks are there to lean on, and that happens uh when we make time to get into each other's world.

So we try to facilitate that the best we can.

All right, uh, I'm gonna jump into the message this weekend.

We're in a series we're calling Interrupted.

If you have your Bible, you can go to Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

I'm gonna get there in a moment.

If you um if you don't have a Bible, don't worry about it.

We'll have some scriptures up on the screen.

And uh before I get in, I just want to take a moment and just pray, all right?

Oh, before I pray, I want to say this uh to kind of frame up our time, to get the most out of this and to fulfill the purpose of what we're doing right now.

I want you to think of two words that both start with R.

The first is revelation, and the second is response.

Revelation is think of God revealing something to you, God showing you something.

Throughout the course of this conversation, you might hear something like, man, that really applies to me, or maybe there's something that sort of may serve as a metaphor to go, my life's kind of like that.

And so uh pay attention to those things and allow God to show you.

But then second is your response.

And what I like to say is, hey, don't predetermine the outcome, pre predetermine your response.

You say, I'm God, I'm gonna be obedient to whatever you show me.

I'm gonna have the courage and the faith to execute and to walk out whatever it is that you show me.

So let's sort of take that attitude right now.

God, we uh come to you receptive, open.

Uh Lord, we are fertile soil for the seed you want to plant in our heart.

So, God, I pray that you would help us to see uh the things, Lord, as we hear a word collectively.

I pray that you would customize it to our here and now, to our own minds and lives, our families and our world, and uh and then give us the courage and the faith to walk in obedience.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

Uh 101008, October 10th, 2008, my life changed.

It was the moment I became a father.

Uh really, my life started to change about seven and a half months before that, when Shaylin came downstairs on a Sunday morning before church with her eyes super wide, and she said, I'm pregnant.

And I said, Prove it.

And she busts out this test, and there, sure enough, man, there's two lines on it, and we went nuts, man.

We started jumping around, hugging, uh, dancing, and crying and all that good stuff.

And uh, I was pumped because I was on my way to church, so I'm like, I get to go tell all my friends, you know, the best news I've ever had.

And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

She said, I'm only a few weeks in.

We want to wait till to week 10 to do that.

So I had to go to church surrounded by all my friends and not say anything.

I felt like I was gonna bust.

Uh, but anyway, I made it through and we got our way to the ultrasound, and then there's that ultrasound where you can find out the gender if you so choose.

I don't I, to be honest, I have mad respect for those who go all the way to delivery with no idea the type of child they're gonna have.

You know what I mean?

Like, hats off to you.

I like the plan.

I want to have the paint colors right.

You know what I'm saying?

Before I don't like surprises, you know, it's like uh what are we having?

So, anyway, as soon as we were able to find out we did, and uh they come back, they're like, hey, you're having a girl.

And I was like, okay.

And I honestly at the time I was had imagined, you know, playing ball with my son.

I was thinking about having a boy, and it seemed like all of our friends were going, I don't know, man.

I just think you guys are gonna have a boy.

My my gut tells me this.

And so I kind of been thinking that, and then they tell me that I'm having a daughter, and then I started to think about that.

And when I started thinking about that, I got really excited.

I'm like, this is gonna be great, you know.

I might have a little girl, and so um 10, 10, 08, Shaylin's water breaks at 2 a.m.

Wakes me up, my water broke.

Now, we didn't go to Lama's, uh, and the reason being my wife is the oldest of the siblings, and so she kind of had a front row seat to three births and everything.

So she felt really confident and she didn't feel she needed to go, and I certainly wasn't gonna go to LaMaz by myself, all right?

So I was like, yeah, no, if you're cool, I'm cool, okay, that's fine.

And uh, but I didn't really know what to expect.

So actually, when she tells me her water broke, my only reference point was the movies.

And in the movies, water breaks, babies on their way.

So in my mind, I think, oh no, it's go time.

So I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

You know, am I supposed to get in the shotgun?

You know, I didn't know, like, is this like am I doing this here?

You know, or like a little house on the prairie.

Do I need to go boil water?

You know, like I don't know.

I think we're at we might be having this baby right now.

And so I'm like freaking out, you know, and she's like, no, no, no, it's cool.

Like, well, we do need to have a sense of urgency.

All right, so we get to the hospital, and I down two jumbo coffees because I want to be squared away.

You know, this is a moment I'm gotta be ready as go time.

And uh the doctor comes in, you know, and they check her and everything.

They're like, oh, she's not even dilated, you know, it's gonna be hours.

And they're like, just go back to sleep.

And so Shaylin's like, and I'm like, I got this caffeine just coursing through my vein, wide awake, didn't sleep a wink, okay?

And uh, you know, about 10 hours later, you know, uh she she gives birth, and I remember every moment is frozen in my mind.

Like I will never forget uh laying eyes on Ella.

And I had this flash forward.

I'm just thinking, wow, like this little person, you know, is gonna develop and and and and we're gonna do homework together, and we're gonna take vacations together, and uh we're gonna take dates together, and we're we're gonna have uh conversations together, and and someday I may, you know, walk her down the aisle, you know, and I'm just like, I'm just thinking of all these hopes and dreams, and and and and um I felt vulnerable, you know, in that moment.

I remember being a bit annoyed with the nurse because the nurse is just like, you know, this is just a Tuesday or whatever, you know, and she's just like, you know, and and and they put her under a heat lamp, you know, it's really hot.

And I'm like, does she need like sunscreen?

I mean, it's just like hot.

And then we go put the baby carrier in the car, and we go to drive off, and I'm the driver, and and I've got my hands at 10 and 2, you know, for the first time since my driver's test, you know, at 16.

And I'm really noticing traffic patterns and behaviors, and I'm I'm like five miles under the speed limit, and and I have this thought, and I remember it so well.

And the thought was now somebody could hurt me.

Now somebody could really, really hurt me.

Before this, yeah, you could kind of hurt me.

You can't really hurt me.

I can bounce back.

I realized I'm now vulnerable to a tremendous amount of pain.

And this is a visceral reaction, it is a deep primal feeling in moms and dads, and I think this is why, you know, this is why dads sort of enter into that shtick when their daughters get a dating age, you know, where somebody comes to take her out on a date and the dad's got the shotgun out and he's making sure it's clean, or he's sharpening his knives, or he's got his big friends over and they're doing bad boys too interrogation tactics.

And because it's terrifying, and you're going, dude, if you drive like an idiot, you could take my whole world out.

If you physically overpower her, you could do something terrible.

And that's why you say things like, you know, whatever you do to her, I'm gonna do to you.

So just make sure you think about it, you know, and you say, why, why, why do you do this, all jokes aside, it's because you you you know deep down this is my job to protect and and and to provide, and you know someone can hurt you now.

Um in Mark 5, we have this guy, Jairus.

And it says in verse 22, 23, is when he comes on the scene, and Jairus shows up, and he's the leader of a local synagogue, which I want you I want you to remember that because we're gonna come back.

And it says when he arrived, he saw Jesus and he fell at his feet and he pleaded fervently.

Now look what he says next.

He says, My little daughter is dying, he says.

And then I want you to notice this.

If you have your Bible, you can underscore this or highlight it, or you can just put it in your memory bank because we're gonna come back to it.

He asks Jesus specifically, will you lay your hands on her and heal her so she can live?

I want you to notice he calls her his little daughter, his little girl.

We we actually, if you read ahead in the story in verse 42, you're gonna find out that his daughter is actually 12 years old.

She, when you see little daughter, you probably think of her as little, she's 12, which to us we go, oh, that's still pretty little.

But in that day, actually, culturally, 12-year-old girl was on the verge of being considered an adult.

Girls started being betrothed and married about 13, 14 years old.

Mary, right, Jesus' mother, likely was about 13, 14 years old.

They start having babies, 14, 15.

So she was on the verge of being walked down the aisle.

And yet to him, to him, she's his little girl.

Why?

Because he remembers the moment she was born, he remembers anticipating hopes and dreams, he remembers, he remembers her when she took her first step, he remembers when she first started talking and calling him Abba, Abba, Abba.

She he remembers all of that and he'll never forget it.

And to him, no matter how old she gets, she'll always be his little daughter.

That's why I have I've got a lot of love for Jairus and I feel his pain.

Because when I think about 10108, for me, all of the things I anticipated, I never once thought of or considered that I might have to bury my daughter.

Or that I might outlive her.

Never thought of that.

And I'll bet you Gyrus didn't either.

So now he's faced with an interruption, and the interruption is that she's on her deathbed.

And so this is why he goes and he fervently pleads at the feet of Jesus.

Would you help me out?

I don't know what else to do.

And Jesus squares away and he starts going with him.

And yet then there's this crazy moment we've been talking about the last three weeks where Jesus stops his momentum and he heals a woman with the issue of blood.

And he stays there with her.

And Jairus has got to be going.

Like if it's me, ah, to be honest, I know me.

I get real pushy in there.

I'm like, excuse me, ma'am.

Okay, yeah, I know it's bad, okay?

And I'm not trying to belittle you or no disrespect, but you're gonna live.

My daughter's gonna die.

We gotta go.

And yet Jesus is aware of this, Jesus knows all this.

Why?

This really begs the question.

Why would Jesus, why would Jesus take this detour?

Why would he stop with this woman?

Why was that as big a deal as this over here?

That's what I want to wrestle with.

Chances are Gyrus probably didn't have the presence of mind to connect all the dots because when you're faced with something that immediate and the stakes are that high, it's really hard to be aware of everything.

But we have hindsight on our side.

So we're gonna go back to Mark 5 and we're gonna look actually and connect all the dots in this text.

Um, what Jesus was was about, not just in Mark 5, although we're gonna see how he was about this in Mark 5, but what he was about on a macro level in terms of his purpose is Jesus was in the process of introducing massive change.

Change.

Change is uh something I don't know what kind of relationship you have to it, but you better have a relationship because it's coming.

Okay, that's like one of the like one of the only constant things in the world is change.

Uh, Dr.

Dobbins used to say uh people don't tend to change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.

They don't want to change, but it hurts so bad to not change that now I will change.

Um change is something that you can do reactively or proactively.

It doesn't matter uh how much you don't want things to change, they are going to change.

It just is a it just is what it is.

And when you think about how do you change well and how do you lead change well, Jesus was showing up to really lead change well, but we got to sort of look at how he goes about doing it.

In Matthew 5, uh, and I believe it's verse 17, um uh Jesus says, Don't misunderstand why I've come.

He said, I did not come to abolish the law of Moses and the writings of the prophets.

No, I came to accomplish their purpose.

I didn't come to burn down the roads that have been paved.

I came to make them better, to iterate toward the future, which, okay, let's just think about any area where you need to change or you need to lead others to change.

You you've got to sit in the tension between two schools of thought or two philosophical differences.

One is conservative thinking, and the other is progressive thinking.

You've got to sit in the middle, okay?

Conservative thinking.

Well, conservative thinking is we need to protect something that's worth protecting.

There are some important things, some values.

There have been some hard-earned lessons, there are roads that are soaked in blood that we need to learn from.

So we don't just blow everything up for the sake of novelty.

There's wisdom in knowing the past.

Those who do not know history are what, they're doomed to repeat it.

So we've got to be, we've got to understand what is worth preserving and protecting.

So conservative philosophy is worth having in your bag.

Progressive philosophy is also worth having in your bag because to think progressively is to think how do we contextualize the spirit of the law or the spirit of the past in the day we live in in an ever-changing world.

We can't always do it the way we've done it.

Uh, you would bring this into play in every area of your life, okay?

Hopefully, you do this with your family.

Okay, if you grow up, you let's say you get married, you start having children, you have a family.

You wouldn't want to just copy and paste everything your parents did.

Certainly, you want to preserve some of it, but you would want to be thoughtful about it.

You would want to be conscious about it, proactive in analyzing the way you were raised.

Because there's some things you want to progress on, other things you want to protect.

You don't want to do it all the same.

You have some issues, and they raised you.

You don't want to hand those issues down to your kids.

How do I get a new iteration and progress?

But I certainly don't want to throw it all out.

You should do this in your business.

If you're in the educational system, man, you should sit in the tension between tradition and protection and preservation, and then how do we get go to the essence of what we do, which is to educate a workforce for the world that's coming?

We got to teach kids how to solve problems that don't even exist yet with tools that don't even exist yet.

How do we, what what are the raw skills, what are the soft skills, what are all the things we need to do?

What's the best way to educate?

So we don't, we're not uh we we don't cling so hard to our past and our traditions that we don't innovate.

But we don't innovate so much that we forget about the fundamentals of education.

You gotta sit in the tension.

And that's where the power is, that's where the health is to sit in the tension.

Of course, you when I use terms like conservative and progressive, we tend to think of politics.

And it's one of the difficult things about our world culturally, is actually something that is best used in tension.

Tension often becomes about winning and losing.

Winning and losing.

Instead of valuing both mentalities and going issue by issue, case by case, to look and go, hey, in this case, should I lean more progressive or should I lean more conservative?

We tend to think in terms of parties or candidates and to just line up because that's how people win.

That's how people get power.

Okay?

The greatest way is to sit in attention, but what happens?

How do you get elected?

Well, you get elected by winning.

How do you win?

You win with a strategy.

What's a strategy?

To understand the fears of the people.

Okay, if the person who controls your fear controls your life.

So to know your fear, that I get in understand your fear, then what I can do is say, hey, everybody on that side, whether conservative or progressive, they are an existential threat.

And all the evil is over there.

All the evils of, there's no evil over here, all the evil's over there.

And of course, we know how divisive this is because, okay, it's a binary choice.

Okay, you don't get I don't get to vote for 30% of him and 20% of her and 10% of that guy over there, and and and and 12% of that lady over there, and I'm not voting for 10% of any of them.

Okay, you gotta you have a binary choice.

And so the stakes to drive people to actually care enough to vote, it's gotta be good and evil winners and losers.

And so now I'm not only afraid of this evil person on the other side, but all of the people, the 50 million people that voted for them is evil too.

And I don't live next to him, but I live next to all of them.

They're all in work, we work together and we live in the same community.

So I'm really ticked at 50 million people are ticked at 50 million people who are all ticked at 150 million people who didn't even vote.

I ain't running for anything, I'm just a citizen, okay?

The healthy point of view is to go, you know, I'm not pledging allegiance to a party.

I I think that's weak-minded.

If you do that, that means a hundred issues, a hundred issues, you're you're gonna wait for a party of people to come tell you what to think?

Or are you gonna go issue by issue and go, hmm, does this need to progress or do we need to conserve?

What do we need to protect?

What do we need to change?

What do we need to iterate?

When Jesus says, I came not to burn down the law or destroy the law, I came to fulfill it, he's saying, I'm actually coming to take the spirit of the law, the spirit of the Torah, and I'm here to bring fulfillment to it.

What's interesting about Jesus is Jesus was a challenger.

Now think about this.

If you've ever had to lead change, you know change, change brings challenge.

Okay?

If you're a change leader, you know it's hard, people don't like to change.

But the the truth is on the front end, too, is that challenge, challenge brings change.

You got to challenge ideas, you have to challenge beliefs, you have to challenge thoughts, you have to challenge paradigms, you have to challenge systems.

Jesus actually didn't, he did not implement change, he challenged things to equip us to think correctly for us to make changes.

Okay?

I'll prove it to you like this.

Jesus didn't show up with a new Torah.

The Torah was 613 laws of the Old Testament.

Jesus didn't go, hey guys, I came, I've got a new constitution and bylaws.

I've got a new Ten Commandments, I've got a new Torah 2.0.

Because he knew if he contextualized the spirit of the law to the day he lived in, there might be people like us that cling just as much to that specific Torah, contextualized to that day, just like the guys in his day were clinging to the old Torah.

You still won't touch this woman with this issue of blood because thousands of years ago they told you she was unclean.

And so what does Jesus do?

He agitates, he challenges.

And he challenged them on every front.

He challenged them by healing on the Sabbath.

He heals on the Sabbath.

You heal on the Sabbath.

He goes, Hold on a second.

You you would pull your animal out of a ditch on the Sabbath, and yet you're upset that I healed this man with dropsy on the Sabbath?

What's he doing?

He's he's checking their value system, he's checking essentially their theology.

A lot of their law, when you think of the law he's talking about, it's a the nation of Israel, it was directly linked to their view of God, to their theology.

So Jesus is challenging.

Why would you pull your ox out of a ditch on a Sabbath?

But when I heal a man on the Sabbath, you have more regard for your ox than you do this guy right here.

Jesus touched lepers who were considered unclean.

What's he doing?

He's challenging because he wants to lead to a change.

Um he he befriends notorious sinners.

In fact, his disciples were were some of them included people who would have been considered notorious sinners or tax collectors in society.

And he's actually but the the big thing that they said against him was this guy is a drunkard, he parties, he hangs out with uh notorious sinners.

How can he be good?

So what's he doing?

He's challenging, challenging, challenging their thinking.

But Jesus himself actually was setting us up to institute changes in the spirit of the law with the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

So what you see is, and this is one of the beautiful things about having the whole New Testament, is that we now see that actually after Jesus left, and he left them with no rules, he only left them with a new a way to think, sit in between these paradigms.

When he left, over the next 20 to 40, 50 years, human beings.

Took the spirit of the law, the power of the Holy Spirit, and made specific changes.

Okay, fast forward.

Book of Acts, chapter 15, which we put it in the timeline about 20 years after the resurrection.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

20 years after the resurrection, they're trying to figure out within the law of the Old Testament how do we implement Gentiles who were previously unclean?

Well, what had Jesus done?

He set a standard because he went into the homes of Gentiles.

He he um interfaced with Gentiles, he went to the Samaritan villages.

Okay, so they're going, that's the spirit, that's the values of God.

So what do we do now and how does this work?

And when you read Acts 15, they now have a council in Jerusalem where they sit down and go, let's think about this.

Let's look what Jesus brought, let's look what changed at the resurrection of Jesus, and let's come up with a new thing.

So then they prayed about it and they came out and they wrote a little letter and they said, Hey, it seems right to the Holy Spirit and to us that you should only have to do these four things instead of all of those other things, because we're contextualizing the spirit of the law.

Look at this in Hebrews, in Hebrews, which was written 40 years after the resurrection.

Hebrews 8, 6, and 7.

It says, now Jesus is our high priest.

Jesus is our high priest.

Now, think of this in as we've been talking tension between conservative and progressive.

How do I wrestle with this?

How do I sit in the tension?

How do I value the tension?

The tension's good.

I'm gonna value it.

Instead of thinking winners and losers, I'm gonna think about tension.

And I and I should I should just lean, I should really go.

What do I do here?

He said, Hey, Jesus is your high priest, so he takes a conservative in the old covenant.

The high priest was the middleman between God and people.

You go confess to the priest, and the priest, I got it from here, and I'll go talk to God for you.

And that's the old system.

That's that was what many were trying to conserve.

And yet now uh in Hebrews they're instituting a new system.

He says, Hey, uh Jesus is now the high priest, he's been given a ministry better, far superior to the old priesthood, so we don't need to conserve that anymore.

He said, in fact, um, he's the one who mediates for us a far better covenant.

We're gonna progress based on better promises.

And the first covenant, if it had been faultless, uh there would be no need for a second one to replace it.

In fact, verse 13 says, when uh God speaks of a new covenant, it means that he made the first one obsolete.

It's now out of date and will soon disappear.

Okay, Greg, what is this, what are you talking about?

What does this have to do with?

Okay, in the old covenant, you had to kill a lamb.

You had to kill a lamb to for the remission of sin.

The wages of sin is death, so you had to kill a lamb.

What is Jesus?

Better covenant, progressive.

It's new.

He's the lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.

He shed his blood, and and by his blood we have healing, and and we have remission of sin, and we have redemption and forgiveness, and and and so we don't have to, the the old law doesn't need to happen.

We're gonna progress to a new one.

He says, in the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse a person from ceremonial impurity.

But think how much better now the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God.

For the power of the eternal spirit, God offered himself to God, or sorry, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sin.

I just want to reiterate this and make sure that we get this.

Jesus came as a challenger of their thinking.

He teaches them how to think, he teaches them how to wrestle, he teaches them how to challenge, but Jesus equipped people and leaders to take the spirit of the law and the Holy Spirit and to wrestle, and He let them, He let them articulate the boundaries of the new covenant.

The reason Jesus didn't just lay down the law was because he wanted to equip us to lay down the law in the day we live in according to the same transcendent values.

Let's go back to Mark 5.

Okay, why does Jesus deviate from this the pathway to this little girl?

And he stopped for this woman with this issue of blood.

Why does he do this?

Because Jesus, right here, sees an opportunity to have a massive relationship between two miracles.

He heals the woman with the issue of blood for her sake.

In a moment, he's gonna heal Jairus's, he's actually gonna raise Jairus' daughter from the dead for her sake, but he's doing something really big here for Jairus, not only as a father, but as it says in Mark 5, a leader in the synagogue.

Let's take advantage of hindsight and airlift ourselves into the story and connect all the dots.

The woman with the issue of blood, like we said a few weeks ago, because she was ceremonially unclean, she was unable to darken the door of the synagogue.

She had been put out of the synagogue.

Here you have Jairus and this woman now, for the first time in 12 years, occupying the same space at the same time.

And Jairus is a leader who, according to the law that was current, saw her as unclean.

And now Jesus is essentially saying, not just to Jairus as a father, but Jairus as a synagogue leader.

You won't touch her, but I will.

I brought it up a couple weeks ago.

It's the only time recorded in the Gospels Jesus calls anyone daughter.

The text, in the text, the word daughter is so loud, it's deafening.

Because Jesus calls her daughter, and then in the next verse, Jairus gets word, your daughter is dead.

And so here's Jesus calling her daughter, and Jairus is like, yeah, daughter, daughter.

And Jesus is like, daughter.

And he's like, daughter.

And Jesus is like, daughter.

Jairus, I know how much you care about your daughter.

My question is, how much do you care about mine?

Because you're a synagogue leader.

You're a leader of a system that right now sits in the balance between what to protect and what to progress.

And that's not an easy answer.

If it's easy, it would have just been self-evident.

It's not.

We got to wrestle with it and we got to think about it.

But he's going, before you're even willing to make a decision, you need to see the right way.

Do you see her that way?

Notice this.

Let's go back.

Let's go back to the initial plea, the initial plea from Jairus.

It says in Mark 22, uh, Jairus is a synagogue leader and he comes to see Jesus.

Verse 23 says, pleading fervently with him, look what he said.

My little daughter is dying.

My little daughter is dying.

Look at this.

Please come lay your hands on her so she can live.

Please come lay your hands on her so she can live.

And Jesus is saying, Whoa, you want me to lay my hands on your daughter, but you won't touch mine because she's unclean.

You won't even touch mine.

You think mine's unclean, but you want me to come lay my hands on yours.

So she'll live.

So she'll live.

And he goes, Yeah, yeah, she's about to die.

He goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No.

My daughter felt death in her body every day for 12 years.

She felt death in her body every day.

Something that was meant to cycle, she was stuck in, and she felt death and grief and blood in her body every day.

So we're not picking one over the other.

It's I want you to see both.

Jesus is helping Jairus see both.

I know how much you, you know, what does the text say about the woman?

It says that she was frightened and trembling.

She was frightened and trembling.

Hey Gyrus, I know your daughter's frightened.

She's on her deathbed.

She's got to be terrified.

I know your daughter's frightened.

So is mine.

I know your daughter's weak and feeble and trembling.

So is mine.

Do you care about both?

Are you willing to sit in the tension?

Because, Jairus, in the next 20 to 40 years, you're going to be one of the human beings who've been put in a leadership position.

You might get invited to the Jerusalem Council to make a decision about what we do with unclean people.

So I'm not just here to heal your daughter today and to close that loop.

What I'm here today to do is to burn in your mind the theological values of God so that you can do your job in the day you live in to contextualize the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the law in the day you live in to make a decision, sitting in the balance, not of winners and losers, but in the balance between two schools of thought that one or the other can't win, we got to wrestle issue by issue, person by person, situation by situation.

Jairus, you got to know the difference between what's sacred and what's a sacred cow.

If you don't know the difference, if you don't know the difference, I don't know that you should be leading the synagogue.

This is the kind of leader we need.

So I'm talking to you as a dad, and I'm talking to you as a leader.

And he's going, daughter, daughter! Why?

Because what he wants to do is, Jairus, you need to hear the same feelings you have of protection, the same primal feelings you have about your daughter's life, I have about this woman's life.

And it's easy to see it in somebody who's completely vulnerable, a little girl on her deathbed, but what about this grown little girl that I care about who looks scrappy enough to fight through a crowd, but is feeling death every day?

Do you care about her?

And guys, we got to get past winners and losers.

We got to sit in tension because it can't be this or that.

It's gotta be, we gotta be able to see it all.

You gotta be able to show up to a crowd like Jesus did and to see it all, to see it all.

Um now I'm gonna go in for just a hot second, so stay tuned and send all your angry emails to somebody else.

This is what I'm gonna tell you.

I think we should be able to care a lot.

I think we should care tremendously about unborn babies.

I think we should care tremendously for this reason.

Stay with me.

We should care tremendously about unborn babies because there's nobody more vulnerable than an unborn child who's gonna fight for them.

So I think there's that.

But I think you should take that same energy if you're pro-life and be all the way pro-life.

This can't just be about pro-birth, it has to be about pro-life.

Somebody comes out.

Now I gotta care about the mom.

Who's gonna care about the unborn?

And who's gonna care about the mom?

And who's gonna care about that child now that the child's born?

It's not like, oh cool, baby was born, now our job's done.

Who's gonna help raise?

Who's gonna help support?

Who's gonna help give hope to a mom who's like, you know what?

I'm gonna go ahead and hang on to this baby because I know somebody's got my back.

I know somebody's gonna help me and support me.

Somebody's gonna come alongside of me.

You see, you know, think it all the way through.

Now it doesn't have to be this, is to the uh to the exclusion of that.

You gotta be able to see.

Jesus is telling Jairus, you see this one over here?

She looks vulnerable, so you feel it for her.

This lady over here matters just as much.

In fact, I'll sidetrack here to come back here to show you how I see her.

Daughter, daughter, daughter, take all those dad feelings you have and don't just put them here.

Actually, trans translate them over here to this lady over here who she looks scrappy and she looks angry, but she's actually experienced death for 12 years every day.

Do you see her the way I see her?

Do you see her that way?

I want us to take a moment to do what would have been near impossible for Jairus to do in the fervency and the frantic nature of his emotions and his feeling and his fear that his daughter was about to die.

To see the relationship between the two miracles.

Because what Jesus was about to do is he was about to stop all the interruptions.

He puts the crowd away, he takes the three guys he knows will not interrupt him, Peter, James, and John, let's go.

And he goes and he raises this little girl to life.

And yet in that moment, I wonder, you know, I wonder if Jairus got it.

I wish I knew more.

I wish I knew if he was at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.

I wish I knew if he was one of these guys that whenever it came to that tension between what do we protect and what do we progress, he's like, oh, hold on, let me tell you a story.

If we're trying to get to the heart of Jesus, who's at the if you've seen him, you've seen the Father at the heart of God, this is what I learned.

This is what I learned at the darkest moment of my life.

This is what I learned about God's values.

But we don't know if he connected the dots.

The blessing we have is we can connect the dots in our life.

So I encourage you today to take a moment to really think about what Jesus taught Jairus and let him teach it to you and me today.

And then maybe you look at a situation where you've been maybe responding to the things that are most immediate to you and yet maybe not seeing the entire picture, not seeing the whole crowd, not seeing the other woman or the other person or whatever it might be.

And this may be a uh a direct situation in your family, in your community, in your place of business, whatever that might be, to step back and allow God in this moment to short sort of shine a spotlight on the thing He wants you to see.

So let's take a moment and let Him speak to us.