A “Touching” Story: Hope and Healing
Mark 5:21-34
Introduction: Jesus had led his disciples into a
storm and showed His power over nature. They crossed the lake, it seems, to set
one man free from the bonds of a demonic legion, and to send Him as a witness
back to his own people. Now they came back across the lake, and in midst of the
multitude, we see two more “divine appointments.” We see two lives inextricably connected: one a
dying child from a prominent family (we’ll see more about her next week). The
other, at the center of the message today, a woman whose disease would have
left her outcast and marginalized. The child was 12 years old. The woman had
been afflicted for 12 years. The only hope for both of them is Jesus.
The Maine* Idea: Jesus is no respecter of persons. He came to give new life to all who reach
out to Him in faith.
I. Desperate
Intercession: Touch my daughter (21-24a)!
21 And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the
other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. 22 Then came one of the rulers of
the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 and implored him earnestly,
saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your
hands on her, so that she may be made well and live." 24 And he went with him.
Notice that there was no lack of ministry
opportunity when Jesus got back across the lake, the people were waiting! One
desperate man in particular finds his way through the crowd to plead for Jesus’
help. Humility and sincerity
are evident as he “…fell at His feet and
pleaded earnestly…” The word “pleaded
[earnestly]” is the same word [parakaleo]
that we’ve seen four times already in this chapter. The legion had “begged” not
to be tortured, and then “pleaded” to be sent into the herd of pigs. The people
of the land “begged” Jesus to leave, and the delivered man “begged” to go with
Him! And now this man, this synagogue ruler and desperate father, falls down
before Him, and “pleads” for Jesus’
help for his daughter. Remember that in
general Jesus has not been well received by those in authority throughout his
ministry in Galilee! Whatever this father’s position had been about Jesus
previously, he had seen enough to hope, in his desperation, that Jesus would
help his little girl. And so in his brokenness and desperation, he came.
“…Come and put your hands on her…”
Remember that Jesus has done considerable ministry throughout Galilee,
including miracles of healing. He had made a point of publicly healing a man in
the synagogue in Capernaum, and whether there or elsewhere there is a good
chance that this ruler had seen Jesus heal diseases and infirmities. And
even if he had not seen, there is no doubt that he had heard about the
miraculous healings that were happening as the crowds came to Jesus. There
is no sign of hesitation, the man asked, and Jesus “went with him.” The Scriptures
are full invitations to come to God in prayer. We are to call on God for
salvation (Rom 10:9,10). We are to ask Him for our daily bread. We are told to
keep knocking, keep seeking, keep asking.
As I read this
story I thought of a prayer meeting in our church in NJ almost 30 years ago. One
of the men in the church had never prayed aloud in prayer meeting, or in any
public meeting of the church as far as I know. In that prayer meeting, after
learning that his brother had a tumor on his spine, he prayed the most
touching, profound, and concise prayer I’ve ever heard. From the depth of his heart
he cried out and said, “Lord… touch my
brother!” that was it. And you know what? God answered that prayer. Not
through bringing healing in this life, but through leading his brother to a
clear, life changing, confession of faith in Christ as Savior and Lord. The Lord touched his brother, and he was ready
for heaven when the time came.
It is good and
proper to pray for healing in this life. Sometimes, when it fits God’s
purposes, He will do it. But when He does heal, just as when Jesus healed so
many during His earthly ministry, it is only temporary, it is only a picture of
what is to come. It is appointed unto men
once die… When He grants healing in this fallen world it points ahead to
the promises of the coming age, when, according to Revelation 21:3,4…
"…the dwelling place of God is with man. He will
dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them
as their God. 4 He will wipe
away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall
there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have
passed away."
The day will come for God’s people when the curse is undone
fully and finally. Jairus probably wasn’t thinking about the future kingdom, or
even whether or not Jesus was the promised Messiah. But He had healed others,
could it be that He could help his daughter and rescue her from the brink of
death? To say the least, the leadership of the Jews had not warmly embraced
Jesus and His message. But Jesus is no respecter of persons. A father was
asking, and a child was in need. Jesus came to give new life to all who reach
out to Him in faith.
II. A Touch of Faith: A beggar reaching out to the King
(24b-29)!
And a great crowd followed him and thronged about
him. 25 And there was a woman
who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under
many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather
grew worse. 27 She had heard
the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his
garment. 28 For she said,
"If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." 29 And immediately the flow of
blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her
disease.
The language in v.24b shows the pressing needs of the multitude, “a great crowd followed Him and thronged
about Him.” Remember that Jesus is going with a desperate father to
minister to the need of his daughter who was sick and seemingly near death. Though some among the leadership of the Jews
were already plotting against Him, Jesus showed no hesitation in going with
this man. Jesus held no animosity toward the leadership of His people. He is
not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. There
was still time for them to repent and believe! So, He went.
Yet somehow, in this crowd, a woman had
worked her way near Him. Look at the description of her in vv.25,26. She had
been suffering with her condition for twelve years. According to Leviticus
15:25, her condition would have meant that she was ceremonially “unclean.”
Think about what that meant. She was excluded from the Temple grounds. She
would not have been allowed even to enter a synagogue to hear the reading of
the Scriptures. Being out in public, and in a crowd like this, would have meant
that she would have rendered any people that she came in contact with “unclean.”
After twelve years, had she been alienated from her family and friends?
We don’t know. If she was married, had her husband by now divorced her? The
Bible doesn’t say. We do know that she was desperate. She had seen many “physicians”
and had spent all that she had seeking a cure, and she had found none. What a contrast between this woman,
marginalized and outcast, and Jairus, a respected leader of the people! Yet we all are desperately needy. All have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not one.
Did these two understand the depth of their spiritual need? We don’t know. Jairus
was desperate, and this unnamed woman was, by any measure, a desperate woman… They both were looking
for help to the One who had come to be our Rescuer, our Savior.
A touch of faith… Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of faith is to
see what we believe.” It almost seems he was describing what we see in this
scene. The faith of this woman is explained starting in v.27. She had not, it
seems, been in the crowds that had seen the miracles that Jesus had done.
However, she “had heard the reports about
Jesus…” Others who had seen and heard Him were testifying about Him, and
word had gotten to her. And hope began to grow. No one else had been able to
help, but this man was not like anyone else! It may be that she felt unworthy to speak to
Jesus, to ask for His healing touch. Maybe
she knew that He was going on an urgent “house call” and didn’t want to slow
Him down. But as she pressed closer, she said, “…if I even touch his garment I will be made well…” She believed
Jesus could help her infirmity. It wasn’t a lot of faith. She seemingly didn’t
understand much about who He really was and what He came to do. It was like
a tiny mustard seed…
Faith may start
as a grain of mustard seed. More important than the greatness of our faith, is
the greatness of the One who is the object of our faith. J. Gresham Machen, one
of the founding professors of Westminster Seminary, said “The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the
greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our
faith.” This woman reaches out, hoping, believing, that this man of God who
is passing through the crowd is able to bring healing where no one else could.
And she touches the edge of his robe, and she is healed! Rich or poor, prominent
or outsider, He is able to meet our deepest need. Jesus is no respecter of
persons. He came to give new life to all who reach out to Him in faith.
III. A Revelation of
Grace: Daughter, your faith has healed you (30-34).
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone
out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched
my garments?" 31 And his
disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you
say, 'Who touched me?'" 32
And he looked around to see who had done it.
33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in
fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her,
"Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of
your disease."
Perhaps this
illustrates the interplay between the deity and the humanity of Jesus during His earthly ministry.
It seems that at times He manifests his divinity, like when he commanded the
wind and the waves to be still. On other occasions, it seems that in His humanity
He responds as a man filled with the Spirit, sensitive always to presence of
the Spirit and the Father, acting in obedience and submission to His will. The
woman touches Jesus’ garment, and “He perceives
that power had gone out of Him…” In
His divinity, He knew all about the woman, but in His humanity, He sensed that
something had happened, and so He asks, “who
touched me?” Think about that for a moment. Why stop to ask this question?
For Jairus, it was a delay that no doubt was testing his faith. His daughter
was desperately sick, dying, and Jesus stops and asks such a question! Even the
disciples were stunned, “Look at this crowd, how can you ask that?” He did not need to identify the woman. But it
seems He wanted her faith to extend beyond mere physical healing. He wanted
her to have a better sense of who He is, and hopefully to trust Him for her
spiritual needs as well.
Notice a couple
of details. First of all, the woman responds to Jesus’ question. She was afraid,
but she came and confessed it was her who had touched Him. Could it be that her instantaneous healing had
deepened her faith, helping her to understand more fully who this man is? She
fell down before him and “told Him the
whole truth.” The disciples were afraid when Jesus stilled the
storm, the people across the lake were afraid when they saw the
authority of Jesus in casting out the legion. Now this woman, falls before Him,
in fear and trembling, and
tells the whole truth. And Jesus calls her “daughter.”
What a tender address! As far as I can
find, this is the only place in the gospels where Jesus addresses someone this
way. Jairus had come asking for help for his beloved daughter, could it be that Jesus’ words were not only
for the woman, but for the others that were there as well? She had been
outcast, unclean, rejected, but Jesus says “you, daughter, are part of my
family!” And he says “your faith has
healed you.” The word “healed,” is the verb sozo, which can also be translated “saved.” Your faith has saved you.
By the way, Jesus
hadn’t forgotten about Jairus and his daughter. We’ll get to that next week. But
Jesus took the time to lead this woman to a deeper faith. Our destination is
the new heavens and the new earth, but God is also interested in the journey. Have
you been impacted this week by the depth of suffering in this fallen world? I
have. But God will use the trials we go through to grow us. George Mueller, one
of the great men of faith in the modern age of the church, said,
God delights to increase
the faith of His children...I say, and say it deliberately--trials,
difficulties and sometimes defeat, are the very food of faith...We should take
them out of His hands as evidences of His love and care for us in developing
more and more that faith which He is seeking to strengthen in us.
Jesus is no respecter of persons. Regardless of class or position, all people are
equally important to Him. A synagogue ruler, or an unclean, outcast of a woman,
it didn’t matter. They equally reflected the image of God, and they equally
needed deliverance from sin. That is the “Maine* Idea” in this passage…
What is God saying to me
in this passage? Jesus
is no respecter of persons. Remember who He is. Remember why He came. He came
to give new life to all who reach out to Him in faith.
What would God have me to do
in response to this passage? It is not wrong for us to cry out to the Lord for our temporal needs. Jesus
said elsewhere, “…ask and you will receive…”
(John 16:24; cf. James 4:2,3). We are to pray for our daily bread, and for
forgiveness, and for deliverance from temptation and evil (Matthew 6:11-13). The
effects of the fall are all around us. He, the sinless Son of God, came to
rescue us from the curse that Adam’s disobedience brought on humanity. We need
to believe He is God the Son, we need to trust that He paid the price for our
sins and that He rose the third day. Like the woman, we need to reach out our
unworthy hand to touch the hem of His garment. For Jairus, for the woman, for
the people who were watching this encounter, the disciples and others, this was
an opportunity to grow their faith. It forced them, it forces us, to answer the
question the disciples had asked on the boat, “Who is this man?” It invites us
to consider why He came. It calls us to follow Him. As Jesus met with His disciples that last
Passover in Jerusalem, He gave them a perpetual ordinance that would be a
reminder of what He was about to do… He came to lay down His life, to be the
substitute for all who would turn to Him in faith… He took our sin in His body
on the cross… we receive, by faith, His righteousness. Peter said it this way, “…and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to
sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. 25 For you were continually
straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of
your souls…” (I Peter
2:24,25). Amen.
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