Thank you, Worship Choir. And now would you open your Bible with me please to the Gospel of Mark and the fifth chapter where we're going to begin reading in verse 21. If you don't have a Bible, there may be a Bible in the pew near you. It's on page 995 in the pew Bible. 995 is Mark chapter 5 beginning in verse 21. What a remarkable record we have in the Gospel of Mark of the life of Jesus. He presents Jesus in seemingly two contrasting ways. On the one hand he presents Jesus as a servant.
And so in the Gospel Jesus is going quickly from one place to another, serving and assisting people who are hurting and who are in need. On the other hand he presents Jesus as one who is in, has complete authority. Jesus is able to speak to storms or to devils and they obey him. Jesus touches the diseased with his healing power or he feeds the multitudes with miraculous supply. He is God you see says Mark in the clothes of a servant. And that theme continues as we see beginning in verse 21.
When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came there. Seeing Jesus he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, my little daughter is dying, please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live. So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years.
She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had. But instead of getting better she grew worse. She heard about Jesus, she came up behind him and the crowd and touched his cloak because she thought if I just touch his clothes I will be healed. Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. And once Jesus realized that power had gone out of him, he turned around in the crowd and asked, who touched my clothes?
You see the people crowding against you, his disciples answered, and yet you ask who touched me? But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and trembling with fear told him the whole truth. He said to her, daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. While Jesus was still speaking some men came from the house of Jairus, the ruler, the synagogue ruler.
Your daughter is dead, they said. Why bother the teacher anymore? Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, don't be afraid. Just believe. He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw commotion with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep. But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, talitha cum, which means in Aramaic, little girl, I say to you, get up. Immediately the girl stood up and walked around, she was 12 years old. At this they were completely astonished. And he gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this and told them to give her something to eat. Let's pray.
Father, I pray this morning that the Holy Spirit will indeed be very present in this service to speak to us. Because we have sensed your presence, Lord, in the worship. So now in the teaching of your word, be near. And I pray this in your name. Amen. Well, as the story unfolds that Mark brings to us in this text, Jesus returns to his own town in verse 21. Mark simply says that he crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake.
I suppose in one sense it's a good thing he said he crossed over by boat because he could have walked across the water if he wanted to, but he makes the point that he went by boat. Matthew adds that Jesus went across the lake to his own town. The apparent reference here is to Capernaum, that village where Jesus had established himself now. And it says that a large crowd gathered around him as he arrived at the shore.
Luke says that indeed they saw him coming and they were expecting him to arrive and so the great crowd. The story further unfolds by Jesus receiving an urgent plea, verses 21 to 22 rather to 24. There was a ruler of the synagogue there who came to him. The ruler was the administrator of the synagogue. He was the one who kept it in order. He was the one who selected the participants, each Sabbath or Shabbat, who would read the scriptures or make remarks. So he was a man with authority.
He was probably a man of some means. And he was undoubtedly a man who knew Jesus personally. Because he had before this selected Jesus to read the scriptures here in this synagogue. He came to Jesus and he fell on his knees before him. He is a man who comes with an urgent plea. He's got a problem. He's married you see and he and his wife have a daughter, we learn later, she is 12 years old. And this young girl is dying. Matthew abbreviates this whole story.
He only spends half as many words telling this whole story as Mark does. And so Matthew just says here that he said my daughter has died. But at this point as it was unfolding, she was still in the last throes of life. She was very near death. And this man, Yerush, is probably how it's pronounced, Aramaic nor Hebrew have a J sound. It'd be Eerush. He came to Jesus. He got down on his knees and said oh Jesus, Jesus my daughter is dying. Please come Jesus. She needs you.
It's possible that Jesus knew this little girl because he knew her father. Now put yourself in his place. Suppose it was your child. Would you come to Jesus? Would you be on your knees? Wouldn't you be begging Jesus to come? Of course. And some of us have. You see Yerush believes that Jesus can heal her. And so Jesus immediately responds and agrees to accompany him. But then something happens, something unexpected.
As Jesus is moving through the streets of this village, this large crowd continues to press against him. In fact, Luke says the crowds almost crushed him. And so you get the picture here of what happens, for example, at an arena when people are standing outside and the doors open at seven o'clock and what happens at seven o'clock? Everybody rushes for the door. And there's elbowing and there's pushing and there's shoving.
That's what's happening in this crowd around Jesus and they nearly crush him. It's like a celebrity who arrives at a scene and the crowd is near and presses upon him. But as you're looking at this scene in your mind, I want you to pan in with Mark because Mark wants us to see one woman in particular. There is in this crowd behind Jesus. He's moving one direction. She's behind him coming through the crowd as fast as she can.
This is remarkable because this is a woman who had hemorrhaged for 12 years now. She was a woman who was therefore probably anemic and weak. Not only that, because of her bleeding, she was, according to the Jewish law, ceremonially unclean. And she was not acceptable socially because anyone who touched her or whom she touched would therefore be ceremonially unclean. And so she's something of an outcast. She's not normally around crowds. But here she comes through this crowd.
She had heard about Jesus. We don't know who had told her about Jesus. Perhaps she lived in this village and knew of him that way. Or perhaps there was somebody like you who told her about Jesus. And she came up behind him, the text says. She came up behind him. She did not want to be seen. She did not want to be observed. She was reasoning in her mind, if I can just get close enough to touch his clothes, that's all. Just touch his clothes. I know I will be healed.
And so she reaches out through the crowd and with her finger she just touches his clothing. And it says, at once. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He was facing this way. She was behind him. She touches undoubtedly the back of his clothing. Some say it was just the tassel on his clothing that she touched. And immediately Jesus knows something's happened. Power has gone out from him. And he stops.
The mark is very graphic, Jesus now turns around and he says, who touched me? Who touched my clothes? And in verse 31 the disciples are just nonplussed by this. You could paraphrase it by saying, Jesus, are you kidding me? Who touched you in this crowd? They're coming in from every direction and you want to know who touched you? And Jesus says, power has gone out from me. Who touched me? And he keeps on looking. He doesn't leave it just one question. He keeps asking, who touched me? Who was it?
And finally this woman who was standing in the crowd realizes that she's been healed. And she steps forward. And she too falls before Jesus on her knees. And she's trembling. She's trembling with fear. Mark says that she did this in the presence of all the people. So what you need to understand is that there was this little opening that was created in that big crowd. And in the middle of that opening was Jesus and one woman. And Mark really pans in on that picture of just the two of them.
She told Jesus the whole truth. We don't know what that means. It could be the fact that she was ceremonially unclean and why she was unclean and how long this hemorrhaging had lasted. The details were known by the gospel writer at least. She told him the whole truth. And so Jesus speaks these wonderful words of assurance to her. Notice that he says to this woman, who in the last 12 years had hardly known the touch of another human being.
Now you think about that when you consider how important touch is to a female. And hardly anyone would speak to her because she was unclean. And Jesus says to her, daughter, isn't that great? Jesus embraces her with this warm and intimate and personal word of family. He says, daughter, he says, daughter, your faith has healed you. Now it wasn't the fact that it was her faith itself. It was that she had faith that Jesus could do it. That's the point here. And her faith wasn't very much.
It was not even enough that she was willing to face Jesus and ask for healing like Yerush. Instead, she sneaked up behind him just to touch. But she did believe down deep in her heart that if she touched, she would be healed. And Jesus says to this trembling woman, go shalom to you. Be freed from your suffering. The words that Jesus uses here suggest not only physical release from disease, but spiritual salvation as well. I believe we'll see this woman in heaven.
The text seems to be very clear about that. And while Jesus was still conversing with her, the story continues to unfold. We have now an absolutely desperate father because word comes from the household of Yerush that his daughter is now dead. They say, why bother him any longer? Yerush is too late. She has breathed out her last breath. She's lying there dead. And this man's heart just melted. He was filled immediately with fear. A wave of fear just hit his heart. It's too late. It's too late.
Jesus was interrupted. This woman, because of her, my daughter is dead. If Jesus had just been able to come immediately and not been stopped, he might have made it on time. Comparing what the report was, Jesus said to the ruler, stop being afraid. It's a command. It's in the present tense, indicating that this man was afraid. He says, stop being afraid. And then he says, again, a command in the present tense, keep on believing.
You see, there's a tug of war that's going on here in the heart of Yerush. You can identify with this. He came believing. And then this word of impossibility, this word of death hit him. And so this wave now of fear hits him. And so he's pushed back the other way. Jesus says, don't allow that wave of fear to overtake you. Yerush, keep on believing. Keep on believing. Push back the other way. It goes on to say that Jesus thinned the crowd at this point.
He did not allow anyone to follow him further in this journey. He stopped the crowd. Maybe the other disciples had to stay behind and do crowd control. I don't know. But Jesus took only three of the disciples with him, the three that were often with him in this inner circle group, Peter and John and James. And they came, along with the ruler, to his house. We don't know how far it was. It must not have been very far because Capernaum was not a very large village, a few thousand people.
They came to his home and there was this tremendous commotion going on. The house was filled with a crowd of people. Now we don't know if these were professional mourners. Yes, they had those in those days. How would you like to have had that job? You think flipping hamburgers and McDonald's and stuff. How would you like to have been a professional mourner? You are hired to go to somebody's house and they're to weep and to wail when somebody dies.
And Matthew tells us there were also flute players, people who were playing the flutes, mournful tombs. And so here's the commotion at the house that they encounter when they arrive. And so Jesus asks the question that he does in verse 39. He says, while this commotion and wailing, the child is not dead but asleep. Now did Jesus mean by this she's in a coma? There are some who would say that and that she was in a coma. I don't believe that's the case at all.
That may be how the crowd understood it. I think what Jesus was saying is what you and I believe, and that is that death is temporary. That there is a resurrection coming. And in this case it's going to come very soon. That death is compared to the New Testament at least for believers as sleep, isn't it? We do not mourn like those who have no hope. For those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, says Paul.
You see for the believer, death is compared to sleep because the body is like it's asleep as we all know who have been to a funeral. The body is like it's asleep. It's put into the ground. The word cemetery that we use comes from the Greek word for a sleeping place, an inn. It was viewed when the word was created, the cemetery was viewed as a temporary place for the body because they believed in the resurrection. Jesus says she's not dead, she's asleep. And notice how they respond. They laugh.
Here are people who are one minute crying and mourning and weeping and wailing and the next minute they're laughing. And they're not laughing merely because they think it's funny. They're laughing in derision. They're scorning Jesus. They're ridiculing him. Jesus, don't you think that we know when somebody dies? And they heckle him. Well, immediately Jesus puts them out.
Forceful words here described in the gospels that Jesus just drove them out of the house, shuts the door, and then he brings the other five with him into the area of this house where the child's body is lying. And Jesus does what is unthinkable for a Jew and particularly a rabbi. He touches a dead body. Again, this makes you unclean, you see. You can't touch a dead body and be ceremonially clean as a Jew.
But Jesus goes over to this little girl and he takes her by the hand and he says to her, little girl, I say to you, get up. Now you've got to look at this sentence. Of course, he doesn't say just get up. He says little girl. Because if he had said get up generically, the graves would have emptied. You see, he had to make it specific to this little girl or there would have been a lot of commotion in Capernaum, let me tell you. It's the same reason he said Lazarus come forth.
The whole hillside would have erupted with bodies coming out of graves. He says little girl, I say to you, can I tell you a little secret? There have been times when I have stood beside a casket and I thought, Lord, if only we could have the power that you gave the apostles in certain cases. This family is so sorrowful. Lord, this is such a tragedy. This is all going on in my mind, right? I'm not saying this out loud except to you now. Lord, if only you could touch this little one.
I volunteered for some years as a police chaplain in Covington, Kentucky. I will never forget the call that I had to come to Booth Hospital and to meet with a family whose little girl had just drowned in the Ohio River. They were in the emergency area back in a room. I didn't know them at all. As representing the police department, I went and I walked through the room where the little girl's body was. I had some children at that age.
There she was, stretched out on the table, dead, a little younger than this girl. I thought, Lord, if only I could pick her up and take her into her family. But I couldn't. So I had to go in and do the best I could to comfort this family that was just totally lost. Just totally lost. I would love to have been there on this day. So if you could just pick one miracle where you could go back and be there, this is the one I would pick.
Because as a parent, I identify so much with what this mom and dad are going through. And Jesus says, little girl, I say to you, get up. And suddenly those eyes that had sunk and fluttered and the color that had drained away from her cheeks suddenly came back and she was pink again. And she got up and she began to walk around. Can you imagine how Yerushin and his wife felt? Well, they were totally astonished.
They were absolutely overwhelmed in every way that their little girl who was clearly dead was now alive again. Jesus said, don't tell anybody. You see, he's back over on the Jewish side of the border now and he doesn't need things getting out of hand over there. Remember last week he said to the demoniac who had been delivered, go and tell your family and all the Decapolis about this. And now on this side of the border he says, we need to keep this quiet.
Here's the main point in the story this morning. When Jesus is near, you need not fear. Just believe. When Jesus is near, you need not fear. Just believe. Each of the main characters in this text teach us some lessons about faith. For example, the ruler. The ruler believes Jesus is in control. He really believes that. He comes and he falls on his feet before the Lord, on his knees rather, before the Lord and he says, Lord, my daughter is sick.
Please come, put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live. He believed Jesus is in control. I received two emails this week, both of them on the same day. One of them is a prayer request for a loved one and in the email this person quotes her loved one and says, here's what she said, I'm going through a physical trial and will be having a medical test. This looks like it is very serious according to the doctor I saw yesterday. We know God is still in control. My sister wrote me.
She had some testing done at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston this week to see if they have any advice for her regarding her battle with colon cancer. She talks about being in the waiting room after the test and waiting for the doctor to come in now and to give her and her husband, Lou, the reports.
She says, I had that little book by Charles Stanley entitled God is in Control with Me while we were waiting for the doctor to come back in and talk to us and I kept reading little parts of it to Lou and how God was in control no matter what news we were going to hear shortly. Folks, this is bottom line to our faith. Either God is in control or he's not. And if he is not, is he God? Now I know that that raises all kinds of questions about suffering and why and so forth, but here's the deal.
The bottom line of what the Scripture teaches us, despite all the questions, Jesus who is God is in control. He is in control. Just as that old hymn says that we used to sing a lot, at least in the church where I grew up, no waters can swallow the ship where lies the master of ocean and earth and skies. Indeed, no demon can stand in his presence. No disease can ignore his touch and even death must heed his command.
There's a great song that I heard for the first time I think right here in this auditorium when Twyla Parris did a concert here a few years ago. It's pretty well known now. She has recorded it in others. It's called God is in Control. It says this is no time for fear, this is a time for faith and determination. Don't lose the vision here carried away by emotion. Hold on to all that you hide in your heart. There is one thing that has always been true. It holds the world together.
God is in control. We believe that his children will not be forsaken. God is in control. We will choose to remember and never be shaken. There is no power above or beside him. We know God is in control. Whatever your circumstances today, however painful, however sorrowful, however threatening, however awful, I want you to remember what Yerush remembered. Jesus is in control. It does not mean that he is never going to allow you to hurt or your loved ones to die or for you to suffer loss.
These are all a part of the fallen world in which we live. They're a part of the reality of our race, the consequence of our being the children of Adam and his sin. And yet God's sovereignty is at work despite it and through it all. He is in control. That's the foundation to your faith and mine. There's a second lesson that I see here and that is from the woman who was healed. The lesson I see here is that Jesus' power is available. This little girl was 12 years old.
That was the same year that this woman began hemorrhaging. For 12 years she suffered. She had been in Capernaum before this, we assume, but this time somehow the arrangement was such that Jesus was close by. He was close enough for her to literally take out her hand, reach out with her hand, and touch him. And she took the risk. It was a small act on her part, but it was enough to make contact and it proved her faith. How Jesus may demonstrate his power is not really up for us to decide.
It's only for us to connect with him in faith and then let him choose how he may answer. But I want you to know that you too can experience the power of God every day of your life. You see, this is the resource of our faith. If the fact that he's in control is the foundation of it, the resource is that his power is available to you and to me. I say to the hurting souls here this morning, claim the healing power of his grace by faith.
I say to you who are single parents and who are under the load of all of that responsibility, yes, you can do it. You can, though you don't feel like you can go on another day, another week, you can do it because his power is available. I say to you defeated saint out there, you can get up off of that place where you've fallen. You can go on because his power is available to you.
I say to the grieving widow, I say to the sorrowing husband, I say to the fearful child, Christ can give you courage to face the future. His power is available. All you need to do is reach out and touch him, connect with him in faith. And then the Lord himself gives us some lessons about faith here. You're three of them that I see. Jesus wants to say something to you and to me as we represent him in the world, just as he was representing the Father.
The first thing he wants to say to us, and each of these by the way requires faith. The first thing is make time for hurting people. Make time for hurting people, Jesus did. All around you there are people who are hurting, right here in this worship center I mean. All around you are people who are hurting. We look pretty clean, pretty brushed up, pretty calm and composed on Sunday mornings we go to church. That's the way we go to church, right?
The fact is, every one of us is struggling somewhere. And we can't help everybody, but around you are people who do connect with you. Make time for hurting people. It takes faith to do that. Because we're busy people. We're busy people. And we're distracted by many things in our lives. And it's easy for us to think, not now, maybe not ever. I just can't handle it right now. Jesus says, I want you, my servant, I want you to take a step of faith and make time for hurting people.
Jesus was on a mission to Jerusalem's house when he was stopped. And he made time for this woman. That leads me to my second point. I think Jesus would say to us today, by faith I want you, my servant, to allow for interruptions. It takes faith to do that. Because we have our priorities, right? One of the hardest things we have to do in the world, I think, is to make a judgment between what is important and what is urgent. It's not always easy. I remember talking to a lady one time.
She had a problem, a real problem. And as she was talking to me about this problem, she was holding her baby. And he had the smelliest diaper you ever saw, could ever smell. And at that moment, I couldn't tell which was more important and which was more urgent. I really couldn't. And it's tough to know. But the fact is that we do need to allow ourselves to be interrupted. You've heard of the law of the coffee break, haven't you?
The law of the coffee break says that when you have poured a cup of hot coffee, your boss will give you an assignment that will last long enough for the coffee to get cold. Interruptions. Jesus says, I want you to believe that I bring these interruptions. I want you to allow for them. Now, we have to make a judgment. Is my interruption one that is really important to this person, or is it just something that's urgent? We have to sometimes make judgments about this.
I remember a lady years ago in a church who would call our house night after night after night, just about dinnertime, with a problem. And finally, I had to inform her as politely as I could, and it wasn't very that she needed to deal with these issues at other times in the day or in another way, but not to call me as she had been. She eventually came back to church. And then third, Jesus would say to you and me, ignore ridicule and discouragements. Oh man.
If the first two take faith, think about this. I want to tell you, it's tough to stand in the middle of a crowd, as Jesus did, and to be jeered at. To take a stand for Christ on your campus, to make a statement about your faith in the classroom, to ask a pointed question to the science teacher that kind of sends him reeling back a little bit about the dogma he's trying to get across to you, and to have other students look at you and say, oh, come on.
Or to have the teacher come back at you with some kind of a snide remark about your Christianity. It's tough to do that in an office setting, a family reunion. It doesn't make any difference. It's tough to be jeered at. It's tough to be ridiculed. But Jesus says, I want you to believe. I just want you to do it. I want you to be my representative. I want you to say what I want you to say, and do it by faith, and don't worry about what others say, and I'll come through for you.
Well, folks, Jesus is near right now, right here. What would you ask him to do? What big thing? Perhaps some seemingly impossible thing. Something that is really hard, but which is weighing down upon you this morning. It may be in your own life, or it may be in somebody you love. It may be a situation that's out there in the future that is just haunting you, or maybe it's something in the past, and it's eating away at your joy. What is it that you would ask Jesus to do?
We're going to give you an opportunity to do that this morning, because Jesus is near. You need not fear. Just believe. Believe. I'm going to ask the worship team to join me here in the front. I'm going to ask the elders, the directors, and pastors, and spouses who wish to, to come forward and to form a line here across the front. We're going to close our service this morning with some singing. And as we prepare our hearts and sing, I want to invite you to come.
Now, none of us is Jesus, but what we are is representative of Jesus, and we would love to pray with you. And I'd like you to scatter out just a little bit more than you are, just to give some space here as much as you can, because we want a little bit of confidence here. What I'd like for you to do is to bring to someone here whatever that big thing is, and with them, believe. Let them lead you in prayer for that. We don't have time for counseling sessions. We have, I'm serious about this.
We have lay counselors who can help you with issues. We have celebrate recovery where you can find help with some kinds of issues of hurt, habit. This is not for counseling this morning, per se. It's for prayer. And so sum up in your mind what you would like to say, what that need is. Make it a sentence or two and say, here it is, and then let them briefly lead you in prayer. And let this be the way that you reach out and touch the Lord this morning.
Father, grant I pray that in the minutes that follow as we sing, as we wait upon you, that there will be many who will take that step requiring faith, but give them what they need to do it so that they might see what faith can do. May they not be afraid, but believe. In Jesus' name, amen.