We're going to continue in Luke's Gospel in our series, "Kingdom Come." So you're going to turn with me now to Luke 8. We're finishing up that chapter this morning, dealing with the last section of that text. We're going to be looking at verses 40 all the way through to the end of the chapter.
So as we do that, before we do that, let's bow our heads in prayer. Lord, you are a good Father, and you have established avenues of grace, means of grace for your people, Lord, places where we can come and we can station ourselves, and you have promised that you would extend mercy to us. And Lord, one of those is the preaching of your word. So I ask that you would protect me and protect us from putting any confidence in preparation, any confidence in, in the speaker. Lord, let our confidence rest in what you have inspired. Father, we want our confidence to sit solely and completely in you and in your perfect character and in your perfect revelation to us in the Holy Scriptures. So I ask now, Lord, that you would extend grace to us in the preaching of your word. We ask this in the name of your Son Jesus. Amen.
Well, as we said last week, we're picking back up in our series in Luke, Kingdom Comes. We're back in Luke's Gospel. We looked last week at Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee and entering into Gerasene and healing a man possessed by 1,000 demons, calling himself Legion because of the many, many demons that were inside of him and possessing him. And now Jesus gets back in the boat and He goes back across and He returns to Galilee.
So if you want to pick back up with me in verse 40, hear God's holy and authoritative Word. Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed Him, for they were all waiting for Him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was the ruler of the synagogue, and falling at Jesus' feet, he implored Him to come to his house. For he had an only daughter about 12 years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately the discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, 'Who was it that touched Me?' When all denied it, Peter said, 'Master, the crowds surround You and are pressing in on You.' But Jesus said, 'Someone touched Me, for I perceive that power has gone out of Me.' And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before Him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched Him and how she had been immediately healed. And He said to her, 'Daughter, Your faith has made you well. Go in peace. And while he was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore. But Jesus, on hearing this, answered him, do not fear, only believe and she will be well. And when he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter and John and James, and the father and mother of the child. And all were weeping and mourning for her, but He said, "Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping." And they laughed at Him, knowing that she was dead. But taking her by the hand, He called, saying, "Child, arise!" And her spirit returned, and she got up at once. And He directed that something should be given her to eat. And her parents were amazed. But He charged them to tell no one. What had happened. The Word of the Lord. May He write its truth upon our hearts.
Well, today's passage is one story that gets interrupted by another story. You have a dying girl and her father coming to Jesus and asking for help. And on the way, an encounter with a bleeding woman. But both of those stories, even while the episode of healing for the woman who's bleeding interrupts Jesus' journey to Jairus' daughter, even while there's two stories that seem to be kind of competing with Jesus' attention, Luke presents them in a way that helps us to see the same idea. He's again pressing on to us as the listeners, how are you going to respond to Jesus? He's showing contrast with how the whole region of the Gerasenes had shoved Jesus out and how Galilee is now welcoming Him back. How the people in Jairus' house responded to the supposed healing, how this woman responds. But He's asking that question, "What will you do?" More to the point this morning in these two passages, He's bringing it to a point. He's bringing it to a point and He's asking, "Will you put your faith in this individual?"
The main story is of Jairus, this local synagogue ruler. We saw how an entire region just last week, they see Jesus heal this man who's been in their midst for years and has lost his mind. He's insane. He's running around naked. Jesus comes in and He heals him and He casts out the demons. And instead of being excited, instead of welcoming the guy back into their community, they freak out and they essentially demand that Jesus leave. Well, the opposite is happening here. And as Jesus comes and as all the crowds of Galilee are anxiously awaiting His return, and they see Him and they're crowding around Him, Jairus shows up on the scene. And he's described as a leader of the synagogue. So essentially, he's a well-known, he's a prominent member of the community. He's a lay leader in what would be somewhat akin to their local church. And he comes and he throws himself at Jesus' feet and he begs. He begs Jesus to come and save his sick, dying daughter. And so Jesus sets off with him.
6 · Describes the chaotic scene of the crowd pressing around Jesus as He moves toward Jairus's house
And it's there that we get the interruption. Things get interrupted. Jesus is on His way to the home. There's this huge crowd crushing around Him. I thought it was helpful. I was reading something and they're describing just the massive press of people. The image that kind of comes to mind is you think of after a football game when there's a big win and they storm the field and you see the the coach trying to make his way through the crowd. And they've always got those state troopers, right? If it's in the South, they've got the really weird-looking flat hats. And they're trying to fend off the crowd and the coach is trying to make his way. That's kind of what's happening to Jesus. The crowd is pressing around Him. And you can almost picture Peter and the disciples trying to form a wedge and make their way through the crowd. And somehow, Jairus makes his way up and throws himself on his feet. There's all this commotion that's going on.
7 · Explains the cultural and theological significance of the garment's fringe that the woman touched—a covenant reminder
Suddenly, Jesus senses that someone's touched Him. Luke says it's the hem of His garment. He's probably talking about the garment Jewish men would wear. This long rectangular piece of cloth they would wear around their shoulders and it would come out the sleeves of their robes. It was a blue garment. It was meant to remind them of God's covenant. They would wear it. It would set them out as Jewish men. But it was meant to remind them God has covenanted with them. God has called them to live a certain way and to obey them. And there'd be these little hems and strips that would come off the edge of it and they'd be blue. And so when it says that she touched the fringe, the hem of the garment, that's probably what she reaches out to grab. And so she touches it and Jesus realizes immediately power has gone out of Him. It's sort of this interesting phrase. Power has left Him. And so He stops the whole procession. You kind of picture now, like it's in the middle of the stadium, right? And all the people are crowding and Jesus just stops. The state troopers, the disciples, "What are you doing? We're trying to make our way through." He stops. And over the hubbub, "Who touched Me?"
8 · Provides detailed exposition on the woman's suffering: twelve years of bleeding means twelve years of ritual uncleanness under Leviticus 15, resulting in total social ostracization, probable unmarriageability, medical impoverishment, and diagnostic failure
You see the insanity of what Jesus is asking. Now Luke really doesn't tell us much of anything about this woman's identity. We don't get her name. We don't hear her age. We don't know exactly where she's from. It just sort of seems she's from around the area. All the details that we get center on one fact: the fact that for 12 years she's been bleeding. Now, the language that Luke uses means it's probably some sort of menstrual bleeding that she's been going through for for 12 long years. I was talking with my mom not too long ago about my grandparents and just asking how they were doing. They're now getting up in age. They're in their early 90s. And my grandpa in particular is just— he's one of those guys from that generation, if you know what I'm talking about, who doesn't know what it is to retire. We've been begging him for years to leave the family farm and to move into town. He won't do it. And so even up into the Into his 90s, he's still walking around the farm. And you look at his hands, these gnarled hands, you know, just a nasty grip with these knuckles that are just worn out from years and years of work. He's a tough, tough guy. The notion of retirement is just anathema to him. But I called and I asked my mom, I said, "How are Grandma and Grandpa doing?" I knew my grandma had been sick and particularly suffering through just old age and the things that happens to your joints. And so hips replaced and knees replaced, and now she had gone in for her third or fourth back surgery and another section of her vertebrae being fused. And she said, you know, they're not doing well. I said, what do you mean? Can you give me details? And she said, you know, I called and I came out to visit and it was just your grandpa. Your grandma was in getting care. And he just broke down crying. And it was just one of those, like, if you know my grandpa and if you picture this guy, I mean, I honestly don't know that I've ever heard him say "I love you" to a person. He's just this grim, stoic person. But under the weight of just years and years of physical difficulty increasing and growing with my grandma, he broke down in front of my mom and started crying. It was a reminder that long-term suffering is really hard. It's really, really difficult. My grandpa had just come to his wits' end. He didn't know what else to do. He just didn't know what— he couldn't explain to my mom what it's like to have to care for my grandma day in and day out, not knowing what meal to cook next because that wasn't typically what he did, and just feeling overwhelmed by it. To suffer for a long period of time can just be agonizing. Now, as tough as that is for my grandparents, they've got access to healthcare. They've got access to modern medicine. In fact, one of my aunts is actually a registered nurse who consistently goes and visits them and sees to my grandma's care. And even though there's pain, there's at least modern painkillers that can help to some extent to dull the pain and to alleviate it. And they've got family and friends and a community and a church and Elders who come around them. And they've got doctors who are able to diagnose my grandma and say, this is what's wrong. And even though it's going to be painful and be a hard recovery, we can go in and do surgery to at least somewhat alleviate the pain. But more than all that, they were just able to say, this is what's wrong. The woman in this story receives none of that. She's been living with this, this discharge of blood for 12 years, over a decade. Luke says she has spent everything she has on physicians, so she has nothing left. Maybe the hardest part, she's been seeking an answer and nobody can tell her what's wrong. Luke describes it as though the woman essentially is having her period all month long. With no end. And what he's saying by that is he's signaling to his readers that because that's the way she's living, she lives in a way that she is completely cut off and completely ostracized from the entire society. What he is saying to a Jewish reader would immediately call to mind Leviticus 15. Leviticus 15 deals with the details of how you interact with a woman during her time of the month. And during that time, every month, women are considered unclean. This chapter actually goes into a remarkable level of detail with how you figure out if you've come into contact with a woman in a way that's made you unclean or impure. Every woman in the Old Testament and in the Jewish mindset during that time of the month would be unclean and they would have to pursue purity. Except for this woman, it's not just one time during the month. It's perpetual. It's constant. According to Leviticus, everything you touch during that time as a woman becomes defiled. So for this woman, everything she touches is defiled. If she sits on something, it's unclean. If she wears something, it's unclean. Any home that she enters has now become unclean. Even if she touches nothing in the home, it's unclean. Any person who accidentally comes into contact with her is now impure. Her bed is unclean. The clothes she wears are unclean. And if you have intercourse with a woman during this period, the man is unclean. He's unclean for 7 days. It says you get the picture. You can't have anything to do with one of these people. And so knowing that, it's almost a guarantee from what Luke is telling us She's not married. She can't possibly be married. There'd be no way to actually live in a married relationship with a man. It's this incredibly difficult situation. And she's been suffering. She spent all of her money, the little that she had as an unmarried woman in a vulnerable position in that society, on doctors to get no answers for 12 years. No relief, no support, no husband. And there's no end in sight.
9 · Uses the analogy of a mother dealing with a child's bed-wetting to illustrate the daily, relentless routine of the bleeding woman—except she has no modern conveniences, no end in sight, and every day reinforces her social exclusion and shame
I was trying to imagine, like, what is that like for her? I think one idea maybe gets a little close. Just imagine the routine she goes through with her bedding and her clothing every day. Every mom in here knows the hassle of what happens when you get up in the morning and you realize one of your kids has wet the bed, right? Oh no, again. And so you've got to strip all the sheets off and you got to take the pajamas, you got to bring it downstairs and you got to go through the hassle of doing the laundry of all the bedding and then drying it and taking it all up and remaking the bed. It's especially a huge hassle if you have one of your kids who's in a period of wetting the bed and it just becomes this terrible routine that the mom dreads of stripping the bed, getting the pajamas, doing the laundry again, as if you didn't have enough laundry to do. But at least you have a washing machine, and at least you have a dryer. This woman, every day, is stripping her bed, taking the clothes she wore the day before. She's probably taking those clothes down to the local watering hole with the other ladies where they do their laundry, going a ways down so as not to make everyone else unclean. And every day she's reminded of her shame, and she's reminded of her sickness, and she's reminded of the fact that she is excluded. It's hard to get your mind around what that would be like, but every day doing the laundry, she's reminded She's not part of the community. She's unfit to even invite someone over. She can't even go visit a friend if she had a friend to visit. She's unfit to go to worship. She's unfit to be touched. That's her life.
10 · Asserts that the woman's Old Covenant exclusion is precisely what the Gospel abolishes—Christ has declared the unclean accessible, and therefore the church must not abandon those suffering chronic illness or isolation
And I think part of what we need to stop and remember here is one of the great blessings of the gospel is that this woman's plight should never be the plight of a believer in a church. What this woman is going through is what God set up to say, "I'm going to set up these rules for Israel so it will be very clear you are different from your neighbors and that you live in the presence of a holy God, and so you're going to pursue purity. And when you're not pure, you're going to be excluded and sent outside the camp." And the people who are sent outside the camp women who are during that stage of the month, dead bodies and corpses, and lepers. What she's experiencing though, because of the Gospel, shouldn't be experienced in the church. Because we don't live under that part of the Law anymore. Christ has come and He has declared those unclean aspects are now accessible to us. And so we can now extend grace to each other. When people are going through long-term difficulties and sicknesses, we don't have to withdraw. We shouldn't withdraw. We should actually move towards them. We should do what we can to care for them and to walk with them and to seek to help them.
11 · Calls the congregation to empathy for the chronically suffering and to actively pursue community with them
Part of, I think, what we should get from this account is empathy for what this woman is going through. And a renewed reminder to extend that grace and to extend the pursuit and love of community to those in our midst who are long-suffering. Having people with chronic pain and long-term illness, I think, is one of the greatest tests that churches face. We shouldn't have women in our midst, though, who are abandoned. People who we treat as if contact was forbidden. Because the Gospel changes how our communities operate.
12 · Highlights the extraordinary faith required for the woman to enter the crowd at all—she risks public exposure and rage by defiling everyone she touches on her clandestine mission to reach Jesus
If we go back to the woman now, one of the most significant things Luke is highlighting is the enormous faith on her part that it takes to even enter the crowd. Remember, she's totally, constantly ritually impure. If she touches anyone, they become impure. And so here she is. Imagine the stadium again, this crush of people. Jesus is in the middle of the crush. Everyone's crushing towards Jesus. She decides, "This is my chance. I've got to get to Jesus, and the only way to get to Jesus is to elbow and push my way there." She's in this clandestine mission to get to Jesus for healing, realizing if anybody recognizes me, if anybody takes their attention off of Jesus for a moment and sees impure Susie, I'm toast. They're going to go nuts. They're going to be enraged. There's this incredible belief and just the determination to get to Him.
13 · Describes the second level of the woman's faith: when Jesus calls her out, she could have fled, but instead she comes forward trembling and publicly confesses her condition and her act before the entire crowd
And then Jesus senses He's been touched, right? Who touched Me? Peter, kind of incredulous, "What are you talking about, Jesus? There's people everywhere. We're all being touched." But he knows. She makes this clandestine approach to Jesus and she sneaks through the crowd. She tugs on his hem. And Jesus calls her out. "Who touched me?" He's demanding to know. And here I think is where if there wasn't incredible faith just to come and pursue Him, now the faith goes to a whole other level. Jesus calls her out. She's been immediately healed. Like she senses immediately, "I'm better." And He calls out, "Who did it?" And wouldn't you just be tempted to kind of disappear back into the crowd? Just kind of hide behind the state trooper's hat? That's what I would want to do. Who's really hearing what Jesus is yelling anyway? If I hightail out of here, nobody's going to know. But her faith is so incredible, she comes forward. Luke says, "When the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling." She came trembling. She's scared. What's the crowd gonna do when they realize? What's Jesus gonna do when he realizes she touched him? And yet she comes forward. Now, we can think, "She doesn't have to be scared. It's Jesus," right? She doesn't know that. Remember what she's just done. She's touched him. She's technically made him unclean. And then Luke says she tells her story, quote, in the presence of all the people. Everyone stops, all the attention turns to her, and she confesses to everyone why she touched Jesus and how she was healed. She details to them, I have been bleeding nonstop for 12 years. For 12 years I have been ritually unclean, and I came in the midst of you elbowing and shoving and passing on my impurity to all of you along the way so that I could touch him, the Nazarene, and maybe be healed. And when I touched him, the bleeding stopped.
14 · Asserts the proper relationship between faith and healing: faith does not itself heal, but faith is the means by which the woman accesses Jesus' power
And Jesus knows exactly how exposed she feels. And so he gently tells her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace." And that's this really helpful moment in the story. You can have this idea like Jesus is just sort of oozing power, right? Anybody just comes up and kind of touches him and, "Whoa! Hey!" You know? I had the chickenpox and I touched Jesus and now they're gone. That's not what Luke is saying here at all. It's not what Jesus says. There's power to be accessed in Jesus, but everyone in the crowd who's bumping up against Him isn't accessing the power. This woman, Jesus says, accesses the power for one reason: she has faith. "Your faith has made you well." Now that's not saying her faith is what heals her. Jesus is who heals her. But it shows us the very definition of what biblical faith does. Faith isn't the thing that heals you. It's the thing that connects you to what heals you. It's the thing that connects you to what saves you. We're saved by God's grace through our faith. And that's exactly what this woman experiences with Jesus. Her faith allows her to access Jesus' healing, saving power.
15 · Balances the church's call to care for the suffering with the reality that no human community can be a substitute for Christ
I think it's also an important reminder for us where to ultimately place our hope. This woman has nobody left she can go to. She's exhausted her resources. She has gone to the Mayo Clinic of Galilee, and they didn't know what the problem was. She has nothing left she can do, so she goes to Jesus. Us. And I think there's a subtle reminder here for us. In your troubles, whether they are small troubles or whether they are huge, chronic, 12 years, 20 years of suffering and troubles, you're called to take them to Jesus, to go to Jesus. And I think part of Luke's point is Ultimately, there's no substitute. As a body, we have a call to make sure no one in our midst encounters and endures what that woman went through, feeling totally impure and cut off from the community. As a church, we have that calling. And yet, as people who are suffering, whether it's short-term or long-term, we have a reminder: no one in this room can be Jesus for you. No one in this room can sufficiently care for your needs, can sufficiently bind up your hopes. No one in this church, no one in any church can fully and sufficiently do everything that you need them to do for you in small troubles or in huge troubles in the way that Jesus can. There's no substitute for Jesus.
16 · Uses the woman's example to call believers to fight against self-pity and unbelief in the midst of long-term suffering
Even more, her faith is just an incredible example of what to do in the midst of trials. You think of the massive temptation that she— 12 years, over a decade she's been suffering. How massive is the temptation to self-pity for this woman? I suffer for 12 minutes and I feel sorry for myself. Hannah will attest. Dude, suck it up. It's not that bad. And guys, we are especially bad about this. We know it. Our wives know it. Our pain threshold is lower, but we think it's higher. It's not. We go to self-pity much. This woman, 12 years. I mean, massive temptation. Wouldn't we understand if she was just wallowing in unbelief, and the story is she gets healed because Jesus has to force the crowd over to her and she's moping on the side and He says, "I'm going to heal you in spite of your lack of faith to show My power." I would get that. I would get how 12 years leaves you just feeling like, "This is never going to change." But that's not her. She fights for faith. She fights against unbelief. She's heard the reports of Jesus, this miracle worker, and he's returned. I thought I had my chance. Then he left. He got in the boat and he went across the lake and now he's back. And so she goes and she goes out to him. That's a call for us in the midst of trials. It's a reminder. Short-term trials, long-term trials. You have to battle against bitterness. You have to fight against self-pity. Because if you resign yourself to it, you won't go to Jesus. You won't cast your cares upon him. That's what we see from the woman.
17 · Signals the return to the main narrative thread—Jairus and his dying daughter—reminding the listener that while the woman's healing was significant, the more urgent crisis awaits: death itself
And that's just the second story that interrupts the first story. The first story is really about the daughter, about Jairus and his daughter. And literally as soon as Jesus commends the woman for her faith, we're reminded that there's a much graver concern going on. As bad as it is for this woman suffering for 12 years, there's another guy with a 12-year-old girl literally on her deathbed.
18 · Points out Luke's deliberate parallels between the two stories: twelve years of suffering versus a twelve-year-old girl, a woman past marriageability versus a girl on the threshold of marriage, social exclusion versus social prominence
Now Luke has been drawing comparisons between these two implicitly since the very start of the story. It's not a mistake that here's a woman suffering for 12 years and Jairus' daughter is 12 years old. Here's a woman that probably almost absolutely couldn't be married because of her uncleanliness, and here's a girl who in that culture you hit the age of 12 and you've now entered into adulthood. Girls were now considered of marriage age at 12, and between 12 and 15, they'd be betrothed and married. Now, that seems foreign to us. We think that's a little young. In that day and age, that's how it worked. And so there's this massive contrast. Here's this woman who has nothing left. She's impoverished. She has no husband, no family, not a part of the community. Here's this little girl. Her whole life is in front of her, just full of hope and optimism. She's the daughter of one of the leaders of the community. There's this huge contrast going on.
19 · Describes the devastating news that Jairus's daughter has died and the cultural belief that death is the one irreversible finality
No sooner though is the woman healed, then word comes that this 12-year-old girl is dead. Verse 49 says, while he was still speaking, while he was still speaking to the woman, Someone from the ruler's house came and said, "Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore." That's devastating news. The crowd in Galilee knew people could be healed. There's a crowd there because they know people can be healed, and this Jesus guy is healing people like we've never seen before. They've just witnessed one of the healings. He didn't even know it, and someone reached out and they were healed. But in that day, it was a commonly held belief. You can pray for things, you can ask God to miraculously intervene, but once something has happened, once the moment has passed, you can't roll back the clock. You can pray for victory, you can hope for victory, but once the word comes that defeat has happened, there's no good, the rabbis would teach, in praying for victory anymore. You can't roll those things back. You can't undo what's been done. And the most absolute of those things was death. Nothing was more absolute in its finality than death.
20 · Invites the listener into Jairus's emotional turmoil—his desperation, his anguish when Jesus stopped for the woman, his temptation to anger at Jesus for the delay
So just pause and imagine Jairus' anguish. And just think of Jesus. You think of going from one extreme to the next. He's just healed a woman, proclaimed peace over her, seeing the freedom and hope restored to her, and now he turns back and here's a father with hope literally just draining from his face. His little girl, his only child, his only daughter is dead. Don't you think there's a part of him that's just agonizing when Jesus stops in the crowd? "Somebody touched me." "Who cares, Jesus? Let's keep going. We gotta get there. You gotta hurry. My daughter's dying. I thought I explained it when I prostrated myself before you. My daughter's dying. We can't pause. Let him get the power. Let's keep going." And then the word comes that she's dead. Now, if I'm Jairus, my gut reaction after absorbing the first punch is probably a temptation to be angry with Jesus. "I knew you needed to hurry! Why did you wait? You could have come back and healed the woman. She's been suffering for 12 years. What's another day gonna matter?"
21 · Identifies the theological issue at the heart of Jairus's trial: trusting God's timing
There's a piece in this that reminds us, I think, how hard it is to trust God's timing. Isn't that right in front of him? I think that's part of what Jesus challenges him to. He says, "Don't be afraid, only believe." Part of the fear is no doubt just thinking, "How could you not know? How could you not go to her?" Luke hits on one of the more subtle themes of his gospel. There's this relationship that he keeps talking about in his gospel between fear and between faith. Bad fear that's connected to unbelief, and then when faith happens, how it gets transferred into awe and godly fear of the Lord. But he's constantly setting these two things side by side in his gospel in really subtle ways. Jesus gets right to the heart of the matter. Don't be afraid, Jairus. Don't be afraid of death. Only believe. Don't be scared that your daughter's dead. Put your trust in me. I can overcome this.
22 · Explains the cultural practice of professional mourners, the urgency of burial in a hot climate, and the mourners' laughter at Jesus' claim that the girl is sleeping
And then they enter the house and they get there, and it's really interesting. Luke says that he limits it. He takes 9 of the 12, and says, "You guys gotta stay outside." Just takes Peter, James, and John and the girls' mothers into the house, and the house is full of mourners. And probably culturally, they're probably professional mourners. Now that seems really weird to us. You don't hire people to come mourn at a funeral, but in that culture, you do. It's something you would do. You would come and you would hire people to mourn. Part of the reason for that is when someone dies, you gotta deal with the body right away. You're in a hot climate, and when a body is in a hot climate, the decomposition happens quickly, and all the bad stuff that happens with that happens quickly. And so there wasn't always time to go tell the next of kin 2 towns over, "Come, hurry, come to the funeral. We're going to bury them in 3 days." No, in 3 days nobody's coming to the funeral. Nobody's coming within 200 yards of that tomb. So you would hire professional mourners to stand in for the family who couldn't come, because once the death has happened, you're going to immediately prepare the body and take it off to be buried. And so you've got this room of people who hire their services out. They're women and guys who can get themselves hysterical in a heartbeat and can cry and make a big hubbub. And so He walks in and the people are crying. And Jesus sees them and He tells them, "You can stop crying. She's just sleeping. She's just taking her afternoon nap." And understandably, they all laugh at him. These are professional mourners. Hey man, we don't come out when somebody's maybe dead. Like, we get our fee when they're dead. Like, we know dead when we see dead. She's not alive anymore. They're thinking, who is this guy? What kind of trick is he playing on the mother and father? How can you say that? Part of the reason they're laughing though is because they know Jesus has come to heal. And now he's there and it's impossible. There can't be healing.
23 · For the second time in the passage, Jesus touches something unclean—now a corpse—and rather than being defiled, He reverses the effects of sin
But Jesus takes Peter and James and John and the mother and father, and he goes into the little girl's room. And then for the second time in this passage, he touches something that's unclean. The first time, the woman touches him. Now he reaches out and he touches the dead body. He touches the corpse. And every Jewish person who's reading Luke's Gospel or who's hearing the story afterward, when they hear he goes into the room, they go, "Go to the room, the dead body's in there." And then he reads, "No, don't touch the girl." But Jesus touches her. And for the second time, Jesus touches something that's unclean and he isn't made unclean. For the second time, he overcomes the aftereffects of sin. This woman is bleeding nonstop for 12 years because her body is broken. Her body isn't functioning the way God designed it to function. Because the world is on a steady course of decomposition because sin has entered the picture. And in the most ultimate and final sense ever, this little girl isn't breathing anymore. This little girl is gone because sin has had its final say. She's died. But Jesus doesn't become unclean. He talks to her. It almost seems like a parent going into the room. Like, I can think of when I go in to wake Lincoln up from a nap, and I go in and I rub his back. Wake up, buddy. Wake up. That's the picture I get. He walks into the room and he reaches and he touches her, right? Child. Wake up. He's not doing that because Jesus actually thinks she's asleep. Luke actually says her spirit returns to her. She's clearly dead. She has been dead. She's been dead for long enough. They had to make their way to the guy's house. This isn't like they got there soon enough and charged up the paddles, you know, and Jesus rubs his hands together. Wake up, child. That's not what happens. This is Jesus' power, so amazing. When a woman just reaches out and randomly touches the hem of His robe, her bleeding stops. When Jesus walks into a room and this girl is dead, her spirit is gone, He touches her and says, "Wake up." And His power is such that death is like she's taking a nap. And she sits up and He asks for food. Feed her! She's alive now, she needs to eat! She's had an experience!
24 · Asserts that faith in Jesus means believing the impossible—the world laughs at Christian hope, just as the mourners laughed at Jesus
Do not fear, only believe. Only believe, Jairus. That's what Jesus calls him to do. That's what he calls us to do. Fear Unbelief. The nice word we use for it: anxiety. In so many ways, they're the antithesis of faith. The whole room of mourners laughs at Jesus. Dude, you're too late. She's dead. There's nothing you can do here. The world laughs at our hope as well. Well, sometimes we don't really like to think about what we believe in comparison to what the world believes. But let's be honest, we believe in the impossible. Those mourners laugh because they think it's not possible for Jesus to do anything. There's no more hope for this family. There's nothing Jesus can offer. And as Christians, we still Just like Jairus and his wife, we still believe the impossible. That's what our faith is. That God, through Jesus, is doing supernatural, impossible things that we can't fathom and understand to His glory. The dead are going to be raised. Part of the reason why He hushes everyone, tells them not to tell anybody, He keeps the party small going into the room It's not time for people to realize that Jesus is going to conquer the grave. The full disclosure of that revelation still has to come. But Luke has talked about this before. The very beginning of the Gospel in Luke chapter 1, the angel comes to Mary, right? And so Mary's freaked out and she's scared. There's an angel in front of her. And then the angel tells her, "You're going to have a baby, Mary." And her response is, "How is that possible? I'm a virgin." Well, you're going to be conceived by the Holy Spirit. The power of God is going to be upon you. And then the angel says, for nothing, nothing will be impossible with God. There's no scientific way that Mary should be pregnant. And she is. And the world laughs at that notion. Jesus later in the Gospel is going to talk about it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to enter the Kingdom of God. And the crowd around Him despairs and says, "If that's true, then who can be saved?" You're getting the point. On your own, you can't be. How does Jesus respond? What is impossible with man is possible with God.
25 · Calls the congregation to embrace the incredible, impossible nature of Christian belief rather than diminish it, and to identify the specific forms fear takes in their lives—fear of finances, fear of intimacy, fear of being beyond grace
Don't make the mistake of trying to decrease the incredible nature of what you believe. It is incredible. It strains what would be credible. And that's what you believe. Fear says there's no hope. Fear says God can't help. Fear says you're too late, she's already dead. Fear says it's not possible. And our fears can have all sorts of different forms. But Luke's point is your fear works against your faith. Your fear is a form of unbelief that fights against belief and trust in Jesus. What's the form of your fear? Is it fear of bills piling up? Is it fear of the unknown? Fear that you don't know what tomorrow's gonna hold? Is it fear of commitment? Is it fear of intimacy? Fear of transparency? Of really being known by people and walking with them? Is it fear of living in communities? Is it fear of confessing your sins even before God? Maybe it's fear of failure. It's a fear of rejection. Maybe it's deeper and more fundamental. It's just a fear that you're so broken, you're so twisted, your sins are so great that you're too far gone for God's grace. When you tie any of those fears back though, I think ultimately they all come back to the fear of death. They manifest themselves in all sorts of ways, but it's all tied to the fear of death. But the gospel says, "Do not fear, only believe."
26 · Closes the sermon by reading 1 John 4:13-19, grounding the sermon's call to forsake fear in the doctrine of God's perfect love
I'll end with this from 1 John 4:13. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. And so we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Here's the gospel: we love because He first loved us. We believe the impossible, but God does the impossible. Do not fear, only believe.
27 · Closing prayer asking God to encourage the suffering, stir up confidence to reach out to the community and to Christ, and expel fear and anxiety from the hearts of believers
Lord, I pray through Your Spirit that that you would bring encouragement. Lord, I pray for those who are sitting here and just feel the weight of trials and difficulty and suffering. Lord, I pray that, that you would stir up in them a confidence to reach out, to reach out to fellow believers, to reach out to members of their care groups, to reach out to their pastors, Lord, that, that they can be help, that we can come alongside and carry burdens. But Lord, I pray that you would stir up faith and confidence, a willingness to come to you and to cast those burdens on your shoulders. And Lord, I also pray that you would expel fear from our hearts. Lord, fear in whatever way it manifests itself. Father, we ask Lord, that you would extinguish anxiety. We want to be anxious about nothing. We want the peace of God that transcends all understanding to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And so we ask now by your Spirit, Lord, we don't want to fear. Help us to believe. In Jesus' name, amen.