God’s Sovereignty in Your Desperation

God’s Sovereignty in Desperation Through Mark 5:21-43

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Show Introduction and Upcoming Speaking Dates

Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, here with my repenting sidekick. I have to say that because if you see in the video, not only is his microphone repenting now, but so is his shirt.

Bud Alheim, how are you?

I'm very good, sir. How are you today?

Good. You know, so your shirt says, Repent and Believe.

The gospel.

Well, I can't see the whole part. I just see the repent and the believe part.

A shirt like this on me is a walking billboard.

Yeah, especially with the mask that you have there that says, Repent as well.

Yeah, right.

You know, we were at the, you know, we were at the, you know, we were at the, you know, and recently we had Dr. Anthony Silvestro and Mike Riddle from Creation Training Institute come out to our church and do one of their trainings.

And Mike has a sense of humor, but you know, the thing is, is that he sees people. He saw this guy that we know, Cliff. Cliff comes in with a, Cliff is an evangelist. He too likes to make sure he's always evangelizing, so he's got a shirt that said something about repent and believe and, uh, but he came in late, you know, because he had been, he had been working.

So he shows up late and Mike makes a comment about people need to repent of being late wearing shirts about, and he kept talking about repentance and this guy wearing a shirt.

About repent.

And Cliff is the kind of guy, he just rolls with it. It was, it was great. He was like, every time that Mike mentions repent, Cliff turns around, just points to his shirt. Like, yep. Oh, it was a good time.

As much for me, it's, you know, it's like, don't make provision for the flesh. Well, if I'm wearing something that it's like, okay, don't, you can't say that you can't, you gotta be Christ-like.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, I guess, bud, we, we can announce some things before we get started on today's show. Um, you and I are going to do a live, I think we can do a live recording, uh, coming in, in a month because you and I are actually going to be together because I will be down at your church, uh, preaching.

Better for me than it will be for you, brother.

I'm just, yeah, well, we're going to have to make sure either I'm going to have to bring my setup or you're going to have to have a setup we're going to have to see. But, uh, yeah, I'm going to be your way in, in, uh, Jacksonville, Florida area.

Cause that's the, the area roughly that you're at.

Yes, sir.

Uh, so I'll be in your area on December 13th, preaching at, uh, Christ Reform Community Church. And, uh, that's in St. Augustine actually, right?

Yes, it is technically.

You pronounce it St. Augustine, you know, St. Augustine.

That's right.

Yeah.

I just figured we'd see how you pronounce it. People get upset if you pronounce that one wrong.

So everybody calls it Augustine.

So I'll be preaching at your, at your church there on the 13th, which was a surprise to.

Me as of yesterday.

So yeah, well, you know, Pastor Andrew and I talked and, uh, because I I'm actually going to be that following weekend on the, um, on the 19th, I'll be at, uh, Bethula Baptist Church, which is, it's in the Orlando area.

It's actually Winter Garden. And I will be, Anthony Silvestro and I will be doing a, um, basically be preaching or doing a seminar on social justice. And then I will be preaching at that church, Anthony, I think is, I think the plan is Anthony's teaching Sunday school.

My guess could be wrong, bud. My guess is it'll be Genesis, Genesis with Anthony. It's, it's a safe bet. Um, at some point we have to let Anthony know there's 65 other books of the Bible.

Genesis, James, and the Sins of the Tongue

Yeah. Yeah.

There's more than, yeah. Hey, not that that's not important. You've got to get the foundation right.

Hey, I'll just say for the record, I had him preach this weekend at my church. Since we had this seminar, he, he preached out of James chapter three on the, basically the sins of the tongue. And you know, he did an excellent job.

He, you know, I do encourage people to go to themasterchurch .org and you can, you could listen to it. But I will say this, I was actually kind of surprised, bud. Do you know, it took Anthony 20 minutes before he actually got to Genesis in James chapter.

Three.

I mean, I, it was like 20 some minutes. I was shocked. I, I, you know, he's, that's, I think the longest he's ever gone without going and make, making some reference to Genesis.

Genesis. Yeah.

So, uh, I will be trying to mute myself on this episode as I still do have a lagging cough that, uh, is still lingering, but we'll, I'll try to catch them all. So I will be preaching though, after Anthony, uh, does Sunday school at Bethulah Baptist.

Church.

So, uh, if you want to check those out, I'll try to put, uh, in the show notes and we should have them up on strivingforeturning .org. I think we're going to, we should have those events, but I don't know.

I'll have to double check with the webmaster.

So get the name of the church, right? It's Beulah Baptist Church.

Beulah. Beulah.

Beulah.

Biblical name.

Any, any other, you know, you, you want to correct Augustine. I'm just, I think I'm gonna call it Augustine just to see, cause it's a lot, it's, you know, the I has got to be long. There's a silent E there.

Just to see, I will obviously, I won't do that at the church.

How do you think his mother called him as a child?

You know, um, Gus, Gus, uh, well, most, most mothers call their, their boys trouble. That's usually the name.

Yes.

Some wives say that of their husbands.

Yeah.

Especially when you want to conquer the world, I think even more so. So yeah, I mean, he, he wants to have an impact on the whole world. So yeah, he's, he's a troublemaker.

Yeah.

All right.

Mark 5:21-43 and the Desperation of Jairus and the Woman

So let's, let's, uh, let's take a look. What we want to do today is to actually go through a passage of scripture. And that passage is Mark chapter five, 21 to 43. This is, it's going to sort of be for, for me, uh, this is coming out of my, you know, my sermon notes for, uh, what I'm preaching at church.

And this is one of the things with preaching is you can never get everything in an hour message that you study. So this is the advantage of doing this. And I know there's some podcasts where all they do, I know a couple where the, the whole podcast is just about the sermon from the previous Sunday.

It's the leftovers that the pastor didn't get to discuss and they just keep discussing.

It.

Uh, that's sort of what this episode is going to be. But we, we just, I thought that this passage bud with everything going on in America is very fitting for our times. Uh, just the overarching view of God's sovereignty in this passage.

So let me start with reading this passage. Um, I'll tell you what, do you want to, you want to read Matthew? Oh, sorry, Matthew. What am I doing? Wrong book.

I got to change pages.

You want to read Mark five, 21 to 43.

Sure.

And I believe, uh, had it printed out from the NASB. If not, then just follow along anyway. Uh, okay. The word says when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him.

And so he stayed by the seashore. One of the synagogue officials named Jairus came up and on seeing him fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, my little daughter is at the point of death.

Please come and lay your hands on her so that she will get well and live. And he went off with him and a large crowd was following him and pressing in on him. A woman who had had a hemorrhage for 12 years and had endured much at the hands of many physicians and it spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown.

Worse.

After hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind him and touched his cloak for she thought if I just touched his garments, I will get well. Immediately, the flow of blood was dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.

Immediately, Jesus, perceiving in himself that the power proceeding from him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, who touched my garments? And his disciples said to him, you see the crowd pressing in on you and you say, who touched me?

And he looked around to see the woman who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your affliction. While he was still speaking, they came from the house of the synagogue official saying, your daughter has died. Why trouble the teacher anymore? But Jesus overhearing what was being spoken, said to the synagogue official, do not be afraid any longer, only believe.

And he allowed no one to accompany him except Peter and James and John, the brother of James. They came to the house of the synagogue official and he saw a commotion and people loudly weeping and wailing and entering in.

He said to them, why make a commotion and weep? The child has not died, but is asleep. They began laughing at him, but putting them all out, he took the child's father and mother and his own companions and entered the room where the child was taking up, taking the child by the hand.

And he said to her, Talitha Kum, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. Immediately the girl got up and began to walk for she was 12 years old. And immediately they were completely astounded and he gave them strict orders that no one should know about this.

And he said that something should be given her to eat.

Okay.

The Importance of Historical Narrative and Context

So one of the things we always do first, bud, is I know you know this because we talked about this before we started going, we started recording, right? We can't just jump into a passage and ignore all of its context, especially in a book like Mark.

Mark is a historical narrative.

And it moves rapidly.

It does. Actually, the word immediate shows up in this book more than any other. And in the first chapter, it's like immediately this, immediate this, immediate. So this is a very quick paced book. But in a historical narrative, one of the things with a historical narrative is it's telling a story.

And you need to know where you are in that story. Now, some historical narratives are chronological. Some are going to be more, they're more in the line of events that may not be necessarily in a time order, but in an order that the writer is trying to lay out a story, a character, a case to be made.

So it's historical in its context. So one of the first things I want us to think about as we think of a historical narrative, one of the rules with a historical narrative, interpreting any historical narrative, is that what we have is what the scriptures say is what actually happened.

Not necessarily saying what should or should not happen. Now, bud, one of the things that I find, my background in studying world religions and cults, I've always found it interesting that so many of these cultic groups like to look at the historical narratives of the Old Testament and try to find something they pull into for themselves today.

And they go, well, see, it's in the Bible. It happened here.

Right?

One example. You see David having many wives. Therefore, we should have many wives. Solomon had many wives. Well, if you make that argument, there is a slight problem. And that slight problem is Solomon did have many wives to his own downfall.

Yeah. Scripture is clear that his many wives caused his heart to walk away from God and follow after the false gods of his wives. So what we look at when we have a historical narrative is the fact that it records what actually happened.

In other words, Judas took his own life. It doesn't mean you should.

Right. Yeah.

But it is accurate in the fact that what we have recorded actually happened. The reason this becomes important is because people will try to use the scriptures to say, oh, well, look, this event happens.

This happened. Therefore, it gives us the right to go and do something, whatever that something is. And the scriptures are recording where Israel went to war, where Israel does things, where the disciples do things.

It's not necessarily saying that in a historical narrative, we should go follow that. I'm just going to say that because what will come up in this passage is an issue of healing. And some people will look at this and say, well, see, there's a healing so we can heal today.

That assumption is not the way that we would interpret a historical narrative. This event that we read actually happened, and it happened the way that it's laid out. But it doesn't mean that we go around and do some of these things.

But let's get some context now. As we started this, before we started recording, you wanted to go back to, because you noticed in the end of Mark chapter four, you noticed something that I had picked when I was preaching through this, I had pointed out.

But I want to let you explain, there's four things that you saw in chapter four and chapter five, where the way that I word it, you'll word it differently, but this is Christ putting his deity on display, and he does it in four different ways.

So what were those four ways that you had brought out?

Christ's Authority Over Nature, Demons, Disease, and Death

Yeah, I mean, this was just, you know, you look at the broader context, you told me you were going to look at this section in particular. So let's look at what surrounds it in the text. And if you go to the end of Mark four, you have Christ in the boat with the disciples and the storm, and he's asleep, and he arises and he speaks a word and stills the storm.

Then you get into the opening of Mark five, and you've got the demoniac healed with legions and you've got that whole episode there. So he casts out the demons. Then in this text of scripture, you've got the woman with the issue or the hemorrhaging woman, and then the story of Jairus' daughter.

So in that quick end of chapter four and chapter five, you got four things that Jesus is showing his divine authority, his sovereignty over. He's showing his authority, his power over the natural world by stealing, stealing the sea, the supernatural world by casting out the demons.

He is showing his authority over disease with the woman who is hemorrhaging. And then finally, he's showing his authority over death in raising Jairus' daughter. And in each of those, the natural world, the supernatural world, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I was just going to recap the natural world, the supernatural world, disease and.

Death. Yeah. And as we see each one of those, this is his deity on display. I mean, that's what he is displaying here, that he has this authority, whether it be over the weather, because when you look at that passage in Mark four, it's really interesting.

And I don't know if you've ever picked up on this, but when I preached through this, I was pointing out the fact that when you end up seeing this, they're in the boat. This storm is a fierce storm that is very violent in the way that it's worded there.

The word there for fierce gale of wind is like a mega hurricane. That's how we understand those terms, a mega hurricane. And as quickly as this arose, and that's the idea here is that this that there arose quickly, like immediately there arose this storm.

But then that same mega, the term that we have is is for mega calm. When he said, hush, be still, as quickly as this storm came up, it quieted down. Now, why do I find that as interesting? Because if you've been at sea, you know that the wind pushes the the water and that's what creates your waves.

It's the wind pushing water and it creates the wave. And that even if the wind dies down, you don't have the waves just stop. They continue to ripple until they they settle down. That's not what you have here.

It ends up saying that that the wind died down and it became perfectly calm, mega calm. So still that there was no more wave that that wave defied nature because it should have kept rippling and it just dissipates.

The wind just stops and it just dissipates. And that's why they became afraid. In verse 41, they became very much afraid. When I preached through this, I was saying the fact that the one thing scarier than being in the center of a storm is realizing you have God Almighty in the boat with you.

Right. Yeah, exactly.

But here's the point that you end up seeing, just as in this passage in Mark 4, when these disciples were in the center of a storm, they were in the center of God's will. And people don't often think about that, because when we think of a storm, we think about being in a storm.

We don't want to be there. We want to be out of that situation. It's no different than we have difficult times in life. Right now, the country seems to be in chaos. There's questions with the election and people trying to steal it, you know, or it's someone trying to be a dictator and not leave office.

The accusations back and forth are tearing the country apart. And we could sit here and go, what in the world is going on? Is God in control? Does he know what's happening? Well, the answer is yes. God knows exactly what's happening.

But for the disciples, they had a lesson to learn. And Christ allowed this mega storm, this mega hurricane, so that he could bring a mega calm. He knew what he was going to do, but he's putting his deity on display in nature.

But as you pointed out, he then goes right from there. And it's just so interesting how Mark lays this out, because it's like, oh, then they came to the other side. I mean, they're basically just crisscrossing back and forth over the sea.

Right. It's it's like just picture the scene. Here you have Jesus. You got a crowd of people. And when you read through Mark four and five, it's like he's over on this side. There's a crowd of people.

You'd think, OK, hey, you should you should want the crowd. You're going to build a big platform. You can get the message out and be great. What does he do? He leaves the crowd to go to the other side.

What does the crowd do? They all follow, you know, whether in boats or they run around. I mean, it's like they're all looking to get more from him. And he's just crisscrossing back and forth across the sea, finding other places to go and to preach.

And each time there's these large crowds. So he goes to a place where you have, you know, the demoniac. And he is basically no one can control him. This is the account. If for folks to remember, this is the account where the demons legion, they want to go into the swine and the swine run off a cliff.

And, you know, again, what happens there? The locals want Jesus gone. Yeah, they're afraid of him.

Fear. Yeah.

It says here that in verse 15 of chapter five, they came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon possessed, sitting down, clothed in his right mind and the very man who had had the legion and they became frightened.

This is so first you see is a common reaction both between the disciples and the people in this region. They see Jesus do something that's divine and they're afraid. One of the things I reason I'm happy is you're going to see that same consistent pattern here, at least with the woman.

She's going to be fearing and trembling. This is actually a proper response to Christ deity. That's one of the things I note here is that we see that. Well, let's look at some accounts. You have people like Beth Moore, who I think she had Jesus brushing her hair in a dream and she saw Jesus and he was brushing her hair.

And you have accounts of people who they had snowball fights with Jesus. I think that I think that was Paula White, you know, Trump's spiritual advisor. Yikes. You know, he's he needs he needs a real spiritual advisor.

Right. But I think it's Paul White that had a snowball fight with with Jesus. You have I forget who it was that had a splashing fight in the in the River Jordan with Jesus. You know, just look at the accounts of people that say they've they've had a vision of Jesus and then compare it to these accounts.

When Jesus actually walked the earth and put his deity on display, people didn't find it as, oh, let's go have a lighthearted thing. No, they were afraid. The disciples saw him do many miracles. But when when they were in a storm that they knew, keep in mind, they were experienced fishermen.

They knew this was not a normal storm. They see Christ calm this storm. They know it's supernatural. They know that's something only God could do. And what do they do? They're afraid. Yeah. Kind of reminds me of Jonah, you know, when when they're in the storm and Jonah says, you got to throw me overboard and they like they don't want to do it.

No, they don't want to do it.

No. And what happens the moment they throw him overboard?

Calm. Calm.

Right. And then what's their reaction to that calm? Because they know this was God doing this. They feared and worshiped. Yeah. That should be the reaction to the deity of Christ. Unfortunately, I think that too many Christians have been desensitized to the thoughts that we should be in awe of who God is.

And when we we read passages like this and we see God on display, we should be afraid.

Just like they were.

Christ should be our new normal every day, not the circumstances that we find ourselves.

In. Yeah.

And as we look through this, you know, here's some interesting things I thought in the study of this Bud was, OK, here you have Jairus. Now we have some explanation. He's he was one of the synagogue officials.

OK. Now, right off the bat, we we want to when we're interpreting scripture, it is good to, you know, have scripture interpret scripture. In other words, we don't take something from one spot and just suddenly grab, oh, it's another.

That same word is over in this spot. We slam them together. No, they have to be within their context. But what we can do when we examine scripture with scripture is we can look at the Jewish religious leaders and their behavior and what they what they did.

Now, why do I say that? Because there were times when Jesus would heal people. And we have one account of a blind man who's healed. And what what happens with his parents? They they start charging the Jewish religious leaders go after the parents and they say, hey, go talk to him.

We can we can verify he was born blind. We can verify that. But we don't want to answer. Why didn't they want to answer for a very simple reason? Because the Jewish leaders had threatened that anybody who was following with Jesus was going to be put out of the synagogue.

OK, now let's put that into the context here. Is this a light thing that Jairus is doing? His his daughter is is sick. She's not dead yet, but she's to the point of death. He recognizes that and he comes to Christ.

Do you think, Bud, that this man counted the cost, right?

Yeah. You know, you even mentioned earlier the fear that they had. And it doesn't expressly say that. But but here's this guy, a synagogue official. He may have been a Pharisee. You know, we don't know that text doesn't tell us that.

But he's a synagogue official. He comes up to Jesus, seeing him, he falls at his feet. Now, that could be merely an act of respect. But we see that elsewhere in Scripture as obeyance to the sovereignty and divinity of God.

But his motive is his daughter, his daughter's dying, and he has no doubt heard what Jesus has been doing because these miracles are this is why these crowds are following him. So, yeah, it's very provocative that he has had to have thought this could cost me.

But I love my daughter. I want my daughter healed. And it was no light thing to be an outcast that, you know, the parents of the blind man that that did not merely mean you didn't have access to religious worship.

It was also a social issue, buying, trading, dealing with neighbors. You would become an outcast.

Well, and that's one of the things that we don't appreciate as much with the synagogue life. But the synagogue was more than just the place that you went to worship. It was more than the place that you learned God's word.

It really was the center hub of Jewish life. To be put out of the synagogue is to be put out of everything. You couldn't talk with your family. You wouldn't be able to talk with friends. You wouldn't.

You might not be able to work. You would have to leave that area and go in to a Gentile living because nobody in the synagogue would talk to you. So this was it shows a couple of things with Jairus. And this is when we look at scripture, we do want to kind of not just read over these things, but meditate on them and think about Jairus.

I mean, he must be desperate. He must be at a point of such desperation that he's willing to throw off all of the trappings of the culture. I mean, you think about this for some people getting thrown off Facebook would be devastating to them and they couldn't tell everyone what they had for breakfast.

It would be horrible. But we don't have that same mindset. We're so disconnected from our neighbors that we really don't know the people that live next to us that well. We don't. It's not. It's a different culture that we're in that we don't really value.

And appreciate this. We unfortunately live in a culture where far too many Christians just pick up and move up the street to a new church when it's something they don't like. They didn't have this option when the synagogue.

And so right off the bat, as I'm looking at this here, you got this guy. He's got this 12 year old girl. He loves her. He cares for her. He knows she's at the point of death. And what does he do? He comes in and falls at the feet of Christ.

Now, when people fell at the feet of Peter, what did he do? He said, get up. You don't worship me. Jesus didn't say that. Jesus didn't say stand up. At least not that we have recorded. This man comes and worships.

He's because that's what it actually the word worship is to bow down. And so he comes down. He lays his hands at, you know, he lays himself at the feet of Christ and just implores him to just lay his hands on his daughter.

Now, here's the interesting contrast that we have between Jairus's daughter and this woman, because the account with the woman is right in the middle of this account with Jairus. And as I look at this, I see that there's a contrast, I think, that Mark is also trying to point out here in giving these details.

But with Jairus, he feels that Jesus has actually come to the house and lay hands on the daughter. Contrast that with the woman who she doesn't even want to be seen. Right. Yeah.

She's hidden in the crowd.

Yeah. And why is she hidden? For a very simple reason. If you have a disorder of blood, it makes her unclean.

She would have been almost like a leper. Yeah. She had, by virtue of that malady, she couldn't have been in the synagogue anyway.

Correct. So for 12 years, she's out of the synagogue. So let's look at the contrast between these two people. Jairus, he's an official in the synagogue. So the synagogue is not only a major part of his life that where everything revolves around, but he's a leader in there.

He's a man. Then you have this woman who, because of her affliction, she's not going to be able to go to the synagogue. She's ailing. So Jairus is of good health where she's ailing. And for 12 years, the same amount of time that this little girl has been alive.

I know you may want to see a little bit more with that than I would. Right. I don't I don't know that there's a significance.

I don't. I don't think there was.

Yes. Curious. But I don't. One of this is a good general principle, though, when it comes to interpreting scripture is I don't apply or look for things that are not clear in scripture. In other words, just because the girl is 12 years old and this woman has been struggling for 12 years, they both mentioned 12 years.

It doesn't necessarily mean that there's some connection there. Maybe Mark noted that, hey, 12 years old and this woman has been struggling for 12 years and he found significance there. But I won't say there's a significance if the scripture doesn't.

The scripture doesn't point that out.

Yeah. But it is interesting that as long as this girl has been alive, this woman has been struggling with this disease. And so but in the contrast and in similarities between these, that is some we note.

We know Jairus synagogue official male, this woman who would have been out of the synagogue because of this ailment. She's going to hide in the crowd where Jairus is going to come straight up to Jesus and fall on his feet and beg him to come and heal his daughter.

This woman is hidden in the crowd, doesn't even want to be known. And she just comes up and she convinces herself, if I just touch his garment. Well, Jairus is saying, come lay hands on my daughter. But this woman saying, I just need to touch his garment.

He doesn't need to touch me. Now, that's different than the way the faith, those that say they could do faith healing, do things right. We don't see people getting saved just by touching their garments.

Well, actually, it's probably because we don't see people getting saved by them at.

All or healed, right? They're waving their jackets at them, the white jacket, you know.