The Kindness of Christ Exemplified

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, the fifth chapter.

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When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about Him, and He was beside the sea.

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Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying,

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My little daughter is at the point of death. Come, lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.

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And he went with Him. And a great crowd followed Him and thronged about Him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years, who had suffered much under many physicians, and who had spent all that she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse.

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She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment. For she said,

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If I touch even His garments, I will be made well. And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

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And Jesus, perceiving in Himself that power had gone out from Him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said,

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Who touched My garments? And His disciples said to Him, You see the crowd pressing around You, and yet You say,

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Who touched Me? And He looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Him and told

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Him the whole truth. And He said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.

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And while He was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?

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But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not fear, only believe. And He allowed no one to follow

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Him except for Peter and James and John, the brother of James. And they came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

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And when He had entered, He said to them, Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping.

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So they laughed at Him. But He put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with Him and went in where the child was.

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And taking her by the hand, He said to her, Talitha, Kumi, which means little girl, I say to you, arise. And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was twelve years of age.

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And they were immediately overcome with amazement, and He strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus, amen.

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I remember as a kid attending Christian school, and as part of our chapels, there was this song that was from Maranatha Music that you may be familiar with.

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I won't sing it here, maybe I will, I don't know, I'm kind of hanging on the fence here. But you know the lyrics,

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

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Great is your faithfulness. You remember the song? Let's see if I can do this. The steadfast love of the

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Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.

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They are new every morning. New every morning.

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Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord. Great is thy faithfulness.

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You remember the song. Aren't the lyrics spectacular, right? The steadfast love of the

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Lord never ceases. Have you ever come to church thinking, you know what, God's probably just about this close to saying

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I'm done with you? Yeah, if you're like me, I've felt that before.

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Because when I look across my life, the law of God condemns me greatly.

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And you'll note that the law of God never gives us the power to obey. The law of God stands there and says, you shall do this, you shall not do that.

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And then I look at my life and the thing I was told to do, I haven't done. And the thing

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I was told not to do, I've done. If you're honest, this is you as well. And you'll note that Scripture teaches us to fear

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God and to fear His wrath. And these words, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and His mercies come to an end.

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It's from, of all books, the book of Lamentations. Lamentations, written by Jeremiah, the weeping prophet.

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This is the guy that God sent to Judah to prophesy to them, and he was the last resort.

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And they didn't listen to him. And so all the prophecies of Jeremiah, of God's judgment, came true.

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And God called for Nebuchadnezzar, kind of whistled for him like he's a pet. And Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem, sacked

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Jerusalem, killed 90 % of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The remaining 10 % were packed up and hauled off to Babylon.

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All because of God's great wrath against their impenitence, their idolatry, their syncretism, and their sexual sin.

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It's all listed for us in Jeremiah. And so we rightly fear

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God's wrath. In fact, listen to the opening verses of Lamentations.

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How lonely sits the city that was once full of people. There's Jeremiah writing while his eyes are beholding what's left of Jerusalem.

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The walls have been broken down, the people are all gone, the place has become a ghost town. How like a widow she has become, she who was great among the nations.

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She who was a princess among the provinces, she has become a slave. She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks.

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Among all of her lovers, she has none to comfort her. And all of her friends have dealt treacherously with her.

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They've become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude.

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She dwells now among the nations but finds no resting place. Her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

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The roads to Zion mourn. For none come to the festival, all her gates are desolate.

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Her priests groan, her virgins have become afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.

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Her foes have become the head, her enemies have prospered because Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.

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And you'll note, it's in this context, in this book, that we hear those words.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. In fact, the tail end of our

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Old Testament reading, it says the Lord will not cast off forever. But though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

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For he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.

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You'll note that when you think about what is God like, what is he really like?

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Is he that stern, cold, hard father that you can never, ever get even the slightest hint that he's proud of you or that he loves you?

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He's so stoic and standoffish that you always wonder what he's up to. And then, of course, if you cross him, oh boy, out comes the volcano.

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Is God like that? No, he's not. You'll note that he doesn't willingly afflict.

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And God, when he is provoked by our sin, he is slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love, pardoning iniquity.

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And it's in this context, with these thoughts, I would like to consider again this wonderful text. I love it when it comes up.

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Three years ago I got to preach on it. Today I get to preach on it again, this gospel text. And this is one of the quintessential examples of the kindness of Christ.

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It exemplifies it and gives us hope. And in the midst of this, I would remind us about two very important things that the law of God tells us.

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Number one, the wages of sin is death. We all have a date with death coming as a result of our sin.

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We all know this. Have you ever had that moment where you've woken up in the middle of the night with a start, maybe that big gasp, and you went,

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I'm going to die someday, and I'm going to stand before God. When you have that fear, you recognize that the law of God, which is written in our hearts, you don't even have to hear it preached to you, that law of God that is written in our hearts, it is doing its work of condemning us, of showing us that we're sinners, and that if we seem to think that we can stand before God with all of our little charts of good works that we've done and say, see,

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I've done enough good things, God, so you've got to let me into heaven. Oh, boy, you're in trouble.

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You can't use those things to bargain with God. That's not a currency that he recognizes. And the other part here is we must remember that in the

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Mosaic covenant, in the Mosaic covenant, when a woman had an issue of blood, think feminine things here, that she was considered unclean during that time, and there was a cleansing ceremony that had to happen once the blood stopped so that she could be declared to be clean again.

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And the issue is that anybody who is unclean, they are outside of the synagogue.

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They're not allowed to come to church. And so we read about this woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years.

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And, well, she's kept outside of the worship of Israel. And with that in mind, let's consider then our gospel text.

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Jesus, when he had crossed again in a boat to the other side, if you remember, Jesus just before this, he was on the other side of the

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Sea of Galilee. That's when he cast out the legion of demons from that poor fellow, the demoniac of the Gerasenes.

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And, of course, they went into the pigs and off the cliff, and the farm insurance claims are still being worked out right now on that one.

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So it takes a while, the red tape. But you get the idea. So Jesus has crossed again back to Capernaum, the town where he has a home.

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And as soon as he gets onto the docks, a great crowd had gathered around him, and he was beside the sea.

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And this is when we first learn of Jairus. Jairus is the synagogue ruler, and the synagogue is really just maybe 400 or 500 yards from the shore of the

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Sea of Galilee. And Jairus has, well, he's in trouble. His daughter is sick, seriously sick.

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And as she's been getting worse, you can tell he's been looking out his window to see if Jesus is around because he knows that Jesus can heal his daughter because he's heard the reports.

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He's seen that Christ is capable of healing people who are sick. And so no sooner does Jesus land, the crowd gathers.

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Jairus leaves his house and hoofs it. I mean, he's probably going as fast as he can. And he falls at the feet of Christ.

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An important bit here. Synagogue rulers in ancient Israel in the time of Christ, these are people who were respected, who were honored.

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And people fell at their feet. People honored them. And this guy, in total, well, humility, casts aside his own pride, and he falls face first on the ground at the feet of Jesus.

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And here's his words. 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.

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I always like to correct the English here. The Greek actually says, so that she may be saved and lived.

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Sozo is the Greek verb. I always like to put that back in there because I just think our English translations miss something by saying made well.

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It sounds so medical, clinical, but it's more than that. This is desperation. This is needing to be saved.

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But see, here's the thing. Remember what I said. The wages of sin is what? Death. And you may not be at the point of death right now, but each and every one of you have a date with death.

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Wouldn't it be great if Christ touched us today and saved us so that we might live? And isn't that what he does?

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It's exactly what he does. So Jesus went with him. No questions asked. Jesus is all, let's go.

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We're on it. And so the crowd followed him. You can just see the crowd going, cool, we're going to see a miracle. Jesus is going to heal a girl.

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Yay for Jesus, right? And now the story takes just a weird turn.

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There was a woman, a woman out of nowhere. She just pops up out of nowhere. We learn this about her. She had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and she had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse.

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Now, here's where we have to recognize, put a little context here. As you read throughout the

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Gospels, oh, man, the leaven of the Pharisees, the false teaching of the Pharisees, the self -righteousness of the

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Pharisees is just teeming throughout the Gospels. So how much would you like to bet that this woman was told that the reason why she has an issue of blood is because she's a rank sinner and God hates her?

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Good chance of that, right? And even if nobody told it to her, because she was kept outside of the church for 12 years, you know for a fact that she had to think that way.

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What have I done? What have I done that's so terrible that God will not even allow me to come and hear his word in the synagogue?

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Now, it's easy for us to sit there and say, well, she didn't make any conscious decision. There's no reason given here.

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In fact, the text doesn't say, well, the reason why she had an issue of blood is because she did this sin or that sin or the other one.

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It doesn't say that at all. But don't be fooled for a second here that somehow sin is not involved here.

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Did I not hear you confess that you are by nature sinful and unclean? And so you'll note that under the curse, because of sin, we suffer all kinds of bizarre physical maladies and conditions, and this is not a result of a specific sin other than Adam's sin.

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We've brought this on ourselves because we're the ones who are responsible for Adam's sin. But here's the thing.

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What this woman suffered, we're going to see here in this text. I'll translate another word. Let's just say it was psychologically intense, spiritually almost unbearable.

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So she had heard the reports about Jesus. After spending all that she had, this woman is poor.

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She tried everything. Nothing worked. Every time she tried to fix her problem, it just got worse. But she had heard the reports about Jesus.

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There's this fellow, and of course, remember, she's required to social distance. According to the Mosaic Covenant, she's not allowed to be out anywhere.

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The only difference between her and a leper is that a leper would be required when in public to cover their lip and say unclean.

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She wasn't required to cover her lip, but she was still unclean. She was treated just a tiny bit better than a leper.

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So she's required to social distance. She had heard the reports about Jesus, and she concocts a scheme.

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She's going to break the social distancing laws. She's going to break a commandment here, and she's going to crowd surf in, surreptitiously touch

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Jesus' garment, and sneak, steal a healing. Can you do that?

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Can you steal a healing? This is like a Mission Impossible thing. Right?

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She's going in. Right? And she touches it, and guess what? It worked!

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It worked. Oh, whoa.

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This is challenging here. After touching Jesus' garment, just that little tassel hanging off his shirt, the text says, immediately the flow of blood dried up.

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And note, before this, it gives us what her thinking is. She said, even if I touch just his garments,

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I will be saved. That's what the text says.

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If I touch his garments, I will be saved. So she touches, and she's saved. And she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

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And so Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out for him, immediately turned around in the crowd and said,

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Who touched my garments? Now, the disciples come in because they're thinking maybe

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Jesus has lost his mind a little bit here. And you can just see him going, Jesus, you see the crowd pressing in around you, and yet you say,

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Who touched me? Come on, look, Shlomo over here, he was touching you. Moshe over here, he was touching you.

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How about Itzhak? He was touching you too. All right? What do you mean, Who touched me? Right? What's going on here,

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Jesus? We've got a girl that we've got to go rescue, and you're stopping in the middle of nowhere to ask who touched you.

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But Jesus continued to look around to see who'd done it. And here's the interesting thing.

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This woman, it says that she was healed of her disease when the flow of blood stopped after she touched

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Christ. In fact, the word disease there is the word mastix. And it's best if we translate that for what it is, because a mastix is a scourge.

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It doesn't say disease, it says scourge. So she had been healed of her scourge.

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Mastix, that's the same word used for Jesus in its verb form when Jesus is lashed to a pole and those

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Roman soldiers grab the cat of nine tails and open up his back with it right before his crucifixion.

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In fact, Scripture describes Jesus' scourging. She had felt that her disease was a scourge.

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For 12 years she has felt that she's received from God God's backside, his backhand, his no answer to prayer.

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Everything she tried, nothing worked. In fact, that's kind of the thing about the law, isn't it?

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You can spend all your money, send all your tithe checks to Pastor Roseborough in the hopes of trying to save yourself, and it won't work.

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You'll only get worse. The law cannot save you. And you cannot save yourself by trying to keep it.

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It's impossible. But one touch of Jesus and that scourge is healed.

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And so this woman now, seeing that Jesus has stopped and is hunting for her, good luck hiding from the

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Son of God. Adam and Eve couldn't even pull that off, right? She now breaks down.

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And the woman, knowing what had happened to her, she came in great fear and in trembling, and she fell down before Jesus and she told him the whole truth.

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Now this is the second person in less than five minutes who's on their face on the ground in front of Christ.

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And you can just see, because of the fact that this was a scourge, her eyes are down on the dirt, and she has got to be thinking,

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I'm going to get it now. This is it. Jesus is going to let me have it.

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He's going to yell at me. He's going to shame me in front of all of these people. He's going to expose my sin to the whole world, and He's going to cast me off into hell.

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Who was I to think that I was worthy to receive a healing from Christ?

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That's all there in her fear and her trembling and her confessing everything. Here it comes. The first word out of Jesus' mouth, though, is something totally unexpected.

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Thugater, daughter. I always like just letting that roll around in my head a little bit.

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Here she's expecting God's anger, His wrath. And the first word out of Jesus' mouth is one of tender comfort, a reality that all of us share as well.

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His first word to her was daughter. Daughter, your faith has saved you.

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Is that not the same thing that Scripture tells us? We who were dead in trespasses and sins, children of the devil, deserving of nothing kind from God except for His wrath and hell, that because Christ has gone to the cross and bled and died for your sins and mine, the sins that have been imputed to us from Adam to the sins that we've committed in thought, word, and deed, by the things we've done, by the things we haven't done, well,

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Christ has bled and died for all of that. And because we have been made alive in Christ and have been adopted by His grace, we cry out,

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Scripture says, Abba, Father. And so note then that we came to church today and we confessed our sins.

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We confessed that we deserve nothing but God's wrath. And what did we hear from Jesus today? Son, daughter, your sins are forgiven.

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Your faith has saved you. Is that not what we heard? Tell me

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Christ isn't kind. He's the epitome of it.

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So many people think that the God of the Old Testament, He's just mean and wrathful. No, He's not.

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He's slow to anger. And it is not His will. He doesn't willingly afflict men.

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And here this woman was afflicted for 12 years and she thinks she's going to get it, and Jesus says to her,

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Daughter, your faith has made you well. And then in the next part He says, Go in peace and be saved.

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Be healed of your scourge. He knew what she suffered.

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And He wanted her to know that He knew. And that she had now been released.

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The nightmare was over. The wondering if God will ever answer my prayers has ended.

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And the answer to the prayers didn't come back with God's wrath. It came back with peace, forgiveness, shalom, with saving.

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Jesus is that good. Now, of course, while all of this is going on, Jairus' daughter, she didn't have much longer to live anyway.

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She died. Jairus fell. Despite his best efforts.

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Despite his vigilance. Despite his prayers. His 12 -year -old daughter died.

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And they came and reported that to him. Words that no parent should ever have to hear. Jesus overhearing this, you can just see

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Him. You can just see Jesus looking Jairus right in the eye. Look at me. Do not fear.

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Only believe. And you can almost hear

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Him say, believe what? I know you're capable of healing people who are sick.

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But it's way too much to expect you to raise somebody from the dead. Only God can do that. Isn't that the point, right?

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So, at this point, Jesus says, no more of the crowd. The spectacle is over. He dismisses them and takes with Him Peter, James, and John.

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Two witnesses are required to establish the thing. And Jesus takes one extra. And so they came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue.

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Jesus saw a commotion. People weeping and wailing loudly. And when He had entered, He said, why are you making a commotion and weeping?

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The answer to this question is actually quite simple. They were paid to. It's a weird thing. It's a cultural thing.

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Paid mourners. It still happens in Haiti, by the way. There's folks in Haiti that you can purchase.

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So when a relative of yours dies, you can buy different packages. For so much money, they'll come and they'll cry and they'll weep and they'll wail.

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And if you pay them more, they'll really make a ruckus. And then if you buy the special package, they'll even throw themselves onto the coffin after it's lowered into the grave to show how distraught they are.

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But it's a weird thing. So, yeah, in Jesus' day, they had paid wailers and weepers.

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It's just weird. Good to point this out. So Jesus says, the child's not dead.

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The child's sleeping. And you just say, everyone say, uh -huh. Right, Jesus?

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Right. The girl can't fog a mirror. She doesn't have a pulse. The corpse is already getting cold,

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Jesus. So they laughed at Him. But what did He do? He threw them out. And then He took the child's father and mother and those who were with Him, and He went into where the child was, taking her by the hand.

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Now, wait a second. Remember that woman who had the issue of blood? She was unclean, and she touched the garments.

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The reason why she was so surreptitious and so sneaky is because she didn't want to make Jesus unclean.

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Well, if you know your Mosaic covenant, touching a body, a corpse, makes you unclean.

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And I've pointed it out before. I always like to point it out. You ever see the movie The Shining or something like that? You get that weird dolly zoom, like the hallway just starts stretching out, and everything's in slow motion.

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It's that weird moment. Of course, you've got the weird, whee! kind of sound to it.

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So you can see Jesus' disciples, Peter, James, and John. Jesus takes that girl's hand, and they're going, no,

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Jesus, don't. Right? Because He's going to become unclean. Well, He took her by the hand, all right.

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Was Jesus made unclean by this? No. And then, in another tender moment of kindness,

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He says to her, little girl, I say to you, arise.

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And immediately, the girl got up, and she began walking. She was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement.

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And Jesus strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Never. His mercies never come to an end.

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They're new every morning. Great is the faithfulness of God. So let me say this.

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We all live under the consequences of the sin that we've brought into this creation. We all do. We're all growing old.

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I keep pointing out I look worse today than I did two weeks ago when you last saw me. And a year ago, and seven years ago when

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I first came. And it's just going downhill from here. Those of you who keep coming periodically, you know, good to see you,

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Marlene. You can attest, yeah, Pastor Roseborough looks worse than ever. All right? All right?

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This is the consequences of my sin. And also yours. But I have this news to report to you.

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God isn't done with you yet. Though your sin be as scarlet, Christ's blood washes them away and makes them white as snow.

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And although yesterday you were ashamed of the sin that you committed, today when you woke up, that account of Christ's mercy and grace was renewed and replenished.

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His mercies are new every morning. Great is the faithfulness of God that He would save sinners like me and like you and do so freely.

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So do not despair. Though we experience the consequences of our sin,

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God will have compassion. He will not cast off forever, Jeremiah says. Though He cause grief,

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He will have compassion. And He will do so according to the abundance of His steadfast love.

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He does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men. And that's you and that's me. Even though for a season we might have to go through difficulties, struggle, pain, and even go through the valley of the shadow of death itself,

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Christ will never leave us nor forsake us. His steadfast love never ceases. It never comes to an end.

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His kindness, you can count on it because that is what Christ is like. And the ultimate exemplar of that is the fact that He bore your sin in His body on the cross so that you can be forgiven and pardoned.

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He died so that you can be saved and lived and live.

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What a great, kind, merciful Savior we have in Jesus.

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That's what He's really like. In the name of Jesus, Amen. We thank you for your support.

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All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.

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And again, thank you for listening. Amen.